Tag: Leading

Tozer Talks

“Appropriating the Blessing of God“

Appropriating the Blessing of God

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

June 1, 1958

In the book of Exodus, the 23rd chapter, you know where the text is these nights. Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Then, verse 23, for mine angel shall go before thee, to bring thee in unto.

Now, that is all tonight that I want to deal with. They asked me what I was going to speak on tonight, and I said, making our enemies work for us. But I got one jump ahead of my development. That will be next Sunday night, making our enemies work for us.

But tonight, I want to talk about the appropriating of the blessing which God has given us. Now, it says here, bring thee in unto. Those words just sink down into your mind. God said to Israel, the angel which I send before thee will bring thee in unto.

Now, this was the benign purpose of God for Israel. He would bring them into their possessions. But you know, there is a little bit of simple logic here. They were not in their possession. They were somewhere else.

So, God said, I will bring thee in unto your possessions, the place which I have prepared for thee. They had been in Egypt, the iron furnace it was called, that terrible place of bondage. And in order to get them in unto their own land, He had to bring them out of the land which was not theirs. In order to get them into the good land, He had to bring them out of the bad land.

So, it was out of and in unto. Those prepositions are very important here. Out of, in, unto. Now, that’s very simple.I suppose that it couldn’t be made simpler than that unless we had a chart that God had given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the land which was way up on the north round Lebanon and was to be cleared down to the Dead Sea, that was to begin at the Mediterranean and go across the Jordan way east. And it was a vast territory there and extremely rich and fruitful.

And God said to Abraham, now this is mine to do it as I will, and I will to give it to you and all your descendants after you. But they had had a little lapse in their development, and they had been in Egypt for a hundred years, not their land. They were slaves there.

So God said, I bring you out of, and now you’re halfway in between out of and into. So now while you’re in this vacuum, I want you to know that I am sending my angel before you that he might lead you in unto.

Now, any child can make the application here for their spiritual principles that lie here as deep and solid as the hard rock upon which the temple is built. The purpose of Christ is exactly the same for His people, to give us a glorious inheritance. Not a little piece of land or a big piece of land, not even a rich piece of land or glorious piece of land that lies between Lebanon and the Dead Sea.

But His purpose in Christ is to give to us a spiritual inheritance infinitely greater than this land which He gave to Israel. That was a symbol or type of that which He’s giving to us. But you see, He cannot give it to His people while they’re in the old land. So He brings them out of the old land in order that He might bring them into the new land. He brings them out of the bad land that He might bring them into the good land. He takes them out of their sinful yesterday that He might lead them into their blessed today and tomorrow.

Now, there it is, as simple as can be. But there is a breakdown among us, and that breakdown is that we accent the importance of the out of, without following it with the into. If that sounds technical and dull, I’m sorry, but maybe we can get past that. Do you see what I mean? That the breakdown is that we are getting people out of and not getting them into. So that’s why we are the way we are.

You see, you can’t get people into till you’ve gotten them out of, and the out of is first. You’ve got to get them converted first. You have to get them regenerated first, forgiven first. You have to get them turned around unto God first. That’s getting them out of. But there is a vast and rich and sun-kissed land in the spiritual realm for His people now.

God’s people are extremely ingenious in dodging around spiritual responsibilities or even spiritual privileges. We have plaintively and poetically made the good land to be heaven, and some of our most beautiful hymns make it so. And I’m not going to stop singing them because I understand that God has another land for us, that land which He has for us in the world to come, that going across spiritual Jordan finally into the heavenly land.

All that is true. But in emphasizing it, we forget one most critically important matter, and that is that the good land is for us to enter and enjoy now while we are here in this present life. And yet almost nothing is said about it. They talk about getting us rid of our sins, and the average testimony has to do with, I used to chew, and I chew no more. I used to smoke, and I smoke no more. I used to take dope; I take dope no more.

Now that’s getting us out of. Then we sit down and pray for me that I may hold out faithful. We say, but the fact is that’s only the negative element. God wants us to now begin to emphasize the positive and begin to talk about that into which the Lord is leading us.

Now, somebody will say, will not this follow on automatically? If we get out of Egypt, will we not automatically get into the holy land? If we get out of our bondage of sin, will we not automatically enter into the place of spiritual victory? The answer is an emphatic no.

Remember this, and all of you embryonic preachers who will someday yourself be preaching and pulpits and having people listen to you, allow me to tell you this, that truth is effective only when we emphasize it. Unemphasized truth is never effective. You have to come down on truth with a hammer in order to detonate it and set it off. There are many churches in this town that say we believe in the new birth, but they never preach the new birth.

And the result is nobody ever gets the new birth under that kind of ministry. There are those that say we believe in the separated life, but they’re careful never to preach the separated life. Or they say we believe in tithing, but they never preach it. They believe in missions, but they never preach missions. They never preach these things, and the result is they are not in their midst, that truth is effective only when it is emphasized.

And Christians will not seek to enter a land they do not know exists. If we place the emphasis upon getting out, we will all line up on the bank of the Red Sea and build our tabernacles there and thank God for getting us out of the iron furnace. And we should thank Him, and we should never forget that we were once bound in sin as a captive I lay, neath the snare of the tempter under sin’s mighty sway. We mustn’t forget that any more than Israel should forget that she was once in Egypt in slavery. But we must remember that the only reason God took Israel out of Egypt was that he might get her into the land long promised her in the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So, when the Lord forgives a man’s sin, He doesn’t forgive his sin in order that the sin might be forgiven. He forgives his sin because He can’t take him in where He wants him to be until the sin is forgiven. When the Lord breaks a habit in a man’s life, He doesn’t break it that it might be broken. He breaks it as a means to an end, as a way of getting him into the new land. So this is that which is overlooked in our time, and the result is decadent Christianity.

We three preachers were upstairs here, as we do three times a week in prayer, and a good brother called up and wanted to come. That is, he called up a little while before and said he’d like to come and pray with us. I’m not going to mention his name, for I don’t want to quote him without his permission. Although, knowing the boldness of his preaching, I’m sure he’d say it if he were here.

But he is on the staff of Moody Bible Institute, at least he works with Moody Bible Institute and has for years, goes up and down in the land, and I said to him, brother, so-and-so, I’d like to ask you a question. You get around a lot among Bible conferences and in prophetic conferences and Bible classes here and there. What is your opinion? How do you find the gospel churches? He said, rotten from head to foot.

This was a Moody man, a man who you might know certainly isn’t going to go too far overboard in saying things. He said, rotten from head to foot, he said, the tragic condition of things among the gospel churches.

Well, you know why? It’s because we have put the emphasis, the accent of importance, upon getting people out, getting their old life record canceled, getting them eternal life so they’ll be sure to go to heaven at last. But we say little to them about this glorious spiritual land that is now ours, and into which we can now enter by faith in Jesus Christ. And I wonder whether that terrible expression, rotten from head to foot, couldn’t be explained by reading something in Matthew 12.

Listen. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out. And when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself. And they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first.

Now, I do not want to press the interpretation that a man who lies down on the shore of the Red Sea and never goes any further is worse than if he was in Egypt. I wouldn’t press it that far. But at least it’s a significant and ominous chapter here, this section of this chapter. Significant and portentous. Our Lord spoke those words.

Now there is a land of promise, my brethren. And as I have said, it is not heaven at last, that it eventuates in heaven. It will be there at last. But there are too many people living in defeat, waiting to be set free when they go to heaven, hoping that somewhere between the time that they die and they arrive at heaven, they will go through some sort of a purifying experience that will set them free from all their bondage, and they will discover all the blessed land which they were supposed to have had while they were here on earth. But I believe that that is a great mistake and a misunderstanding of the Scriptures.

The land of promise is chosen for us by God, out of the goodness of His heart, and secured for us by oath and covenant, and all the infinite resources of God are back of it. When God puts Himself back of anything, all of God is back of that. All of the infinitude of God is back of that. The limitlessness of God is back of it. Oh, I pity people sometimes, people who don’t have much. I’ve never been too rich. But I’m touched when I see how little some people can get along on.

My little grandson who has a bank account of a dollar and a quarter. A dollar? Well, he’s got two and a quarter. Now he had a birthday. And he got himself another dollar, so he had now two and a quarter. That’s a pitiful little amount, isn’t it? Two and a quarter in this day. This day of lots of money, little lad that’s five years old, and he has himself a bank account. In his own name, two dollars and a quarter.

Well, now if he were to put his resources back of anything, it wouldn’t be very much, would it, really? You couldn’t do much with two and a quarter now. But when General Motors puts their resources back of something, or Ford or Rockefeller, you’ve got money back of you.

And so, when we think of God, we think of limitlessness. We think not of any limit. There’s no little thing. God says, now don’t be careful. This has got to last a long while. And this grace I’m giving you now is, there’s only a small amount of it, and they’re using it up pretty fast. So be careful of it. No, no. The grace of God is equal to God, because the grace of God is not something God has, it’s something God is.

You see what I mean? The grace of God is not something God hands out bit by bit, as a father might hand out dimes and quarters to his growing children. It’s not something God has, gives, and hasn’t got. Because he’s given it, it is something God is. The grace of God is God. It’s a facet of God.

You take a great diamond, made out of one thing, carbon, and under tremendous pressure, geological pressure, made into a diamond. They cut that diamond into many facets. And how you can turn it around and look at it from a dozen different ways, and if it’s a good diamond, it’ll flash and catch the light and throw it back. Every facet is the same diamond. It’s just another facet of the same diamond. It’s all one thing.

And so, God is all one thing. Whether we’re talking about the love of God, it’s all one thing. It’s God-loving. We talk about the mercy of God, it is not something God has, it is God showing mercy. We talk about the grace of God, it is not something that God has, it is God being gracious. If we talk about the goodness of God, it is not something that God has, it is God, in his goodness, being good to people, so that we have it in infinite degree.

So, when God redeemed His people, redeemed us sinners, His lost sheep out of the land, His poor Israelites out of the bondage of Egypt, you and me, whatever our race or creed or color or background, when He redeemed us, my brethren, He secured for us this good land out of the goodness of His own heart. Never forget that. And what was this land into which he took them?

Now I want you to notice that this land was not a primitive land, waiting development, as it was here in America. There was a time on this continent when this land was primitive, when the buffalo roamed here, and the Indian. And when there was scarcely more than a patch here and a patch there in corn, outside of that it was a vast wilderness from what the politicians called the rockbound coast of Maine to the sunny slopes of California.

And men came here and with their axes and their spades and their shovels and their plows and their oxen and their horses and their good, tough, sweaty muscle, they conquered this continent. It was something they had to develop. And they began with a hut on the east coast and ended with all the glory that California claims for herself. So my brethren, that was America. But listen what God says about the land He gave to Israel.

When the Lord thy God shall have brought thee in unto the land, this is Deuteronomy 6, 10 and 11, in unto the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities which thou didst not build, and houses full of all good things which thou fillest not, and wells digged which thou didst not dig, and vineyards and olive trees which thou didst not plant. This was all worked out for them. It wasn’t something they had to do.

What busy beavers we are, and we’re always ready to sign a card or accept a challenge to go do something real hard and real fast. We’d like to sanctify ourselves and get victory for ourselves by wrestling it out, working it out. God said to Israel, now, normally men go in and take over a land and they develop it, but this is the land I promised to your fathers. This land’s already developed. This is already rich. There are pomegranates on the trees and there’s fruit there, as they well knew, so big that one bunch had to be carried, grapes had to be carried between, on the shoulders of two men. And he said there are rocks there who are out of which the honey flows.

I remember the honey trees. Do you remember them, brother? You ought not to remember the bee trees of other days. Why, the bee tree, my father, you used to watch bees. And a fellow would sit down and he’d look up, and they might think he’d lost his mind, but he knew what he was doing, he was watching the bees. He was watching which way they went. And then he’d get up and move in the direction, sit down a while again, and getting their beam, finding out which way the bee was going. And after a while he’d find that bee tree, and he’d cut the thing down and he’d have enough honey to last him for several years. And you’d find it literally flowing out of caves and out of bee trees, back to where I come from.

And that was exactly as it was in Palestine. It was a land where the bees made honey, and where it flowed with milk and honey. Somebody says, what about that, flowing with milk and honey?

Now, I want to be delicate, but I have driven many a herd of cattle home with the udder leaking, with the milk literally flowing. They were so full of it and so well bred and so well taken care of that they couldn’t wait for it to be milked. And I just wonder how many gallons of it’s lost on the road coming home. Flowing with milk and honey, the honey flows and the milk flows and there’s butter and wine and food of every kind.

All you have to do is to recognize that what Israel had on earth, His people have in the Spirit. What they had in the flesh, we have in the Spirit.

Now, God would drive out these people, he said, and give this whole business to Israel. But somebody raised a question here and says, how could this be? Did not the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Jebusites and the Amorites and the Philistines and the rest, did not they own this? What right had God to take it from them? The answer is, they owned nothing at all. The great God Almighty gave them breath for their lungs and blood for their veins and brains for their heads and muscles to move their bones about. The great God Almighty had given them everything and had given them that sweet, beautiful land that lay between the seas.

God had given it to them and their response had been to degenerate a people so filthy, so vile, so completely bad that Dr. R. A. Torrey said that God was forced to amputate them. As you amputate a cancer out of the body, they had gone so bad. They were rotten with syphilis and many other kinds of diseases. They were worshippers of the vilest gods. They offered their little children to Moloch.

Do you want to know what that means? You want me to be tolerant? That’s the word we hear now. If you express a conviction, somebody says, now be tolerant, be tolerant. They want you to be tolerant. Nobody is supposed to have a conviction about anything or be on the side of anything or against anything. Oh, you can be on the side of mother and against polio, but further than that, they want you to sit and say, now be tolerant, brethren. There are some things you don’t tolerate. You just don’t tolerate them.

And God in His sovereignty was not going to tolerate Moloch, for instance. Who was Moloch? Moloch was a great iron or metal of some sort, thing cast in the shape of a man, and his arms extended forward like this. And he was hollow inside, and there was a grate underneath. And those arms were hollow as the rest of the god.

And a man, an Amorite or a Hittite or a Jebusite or a Philistine or whatever it was, would, in order to appease the wrath of Moloch, would heat that furnace red-hot until those arms were hot. Then he would take his little baby boy or girl and throw it into the arms of Moloch. And there would be a wild, piercing shriek, and then a gurgle and death for that little one. Thank God it didn’t take long. They died quickly, but they died there.

And the Almighty God said, you caused your children to pass through the fire unto Moloch. And God wouldn’t have that. God had given them everything they had in the first place. God had given them breath for their lungs. God had given them intelligence to develop that land. And He said, you forfeited your right to the land, and beside that it belongs to Abraham. Abraham holds the deed to this land, and you have usurped it. He said, I’m bringing in My people. He said, here, it’s all yours.

They never quite took it all. They compromised with those frightful heathens. They’d have had a few Joshua’s, the son of Nun who never would quit till the work was done. If they’d have had a few Joshua’s, they might have done better, but they didn’t. The result was, they took the land, but they never quite took it. It was only half taken.

And so they mingled with the Amorites and the rest. And the result was a degeneration on the part of Israel, and so with the children of God. We either don’t go in, or we don’t go fully in, or if we go fully in, we don’t take it over.

Now, I want to talk a little more about our high spiritual inheritance, this gift from God, and I want to bear down on it that it’s a gift from God. You say, what is it, Mr. Tozer? Well, it is what we call the deeper life, or the spirit-filled life, the victorious life, and it is the sovereign goodwill of God that has given it. Remember, in God’s good heartedness.

You see, the reason you get things from God is not because you pray or because you fast. The reason you get things from God is that God’s goodhearted. God is good. His mercy brightens all the path on which we move. And it’s the goodness of God, it’s the goodness of God that decided to create us in the first place. I’m glad I was created.

Are you? Are you glad, or are you defeated? Do you wish you were dead? Do you wish, like Job, you never had been born, or being born, you’d been carried dead from your mother’s arms to the grave? I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. And I don’t anticipate the time will ever come when I do. Maybe I will when I get old, but I don’t, I am not now.

Now, stop your laughing. I mean, when I get older, maybe I will. But up to now, up to now, I’m glad I’m alive. And though I’ve suffered a lot, I suppose being sensitive, I’ve suffered more than a lot of people. I often tell about the dentist.

I said to a dentist one time, don’t you think some people are more sensitive than others? Brother, he said, some people’s pain threshold is so low they suffer from practically nothing, and other people never suffer much. He said, I had a truck driver fall asleep in my chair while I was pounding, pounding fillings into his teeth. He couldn’t suffer at all. Well, I’ve suffered some, and I’ve suffered more than other people.

And a lot of things that never happened to me have hurt me. You know that so too. A lot of things have never happened to me, but I’m still glad I’m alive. And if I’ll die five minutes from now, I’m glad I’ve lived this long. And I’m glad I’ve seen God’s sunrise in the morning. And I’ve seen the clouds drop down their rain and water that places below from his chambers above.

And I’m glad I’ve seen little children. And I’m glad I’ve read poetry and heard music and watched the birds fly and heard them sing. And I’m glad I’ve stood with others and sung, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. I’m glad I was created, brethren. Some of you may have some cracks about that now. I don’t claim to be another Stan Musial.

But I’m just a man made in the image of God, and that was itself a gift from God. That was itself. That God made me not a cat or a worm, but a man in His image was a gift from God. And the wondrous personality that He’s given us. I grieve that people don’t develop themselves. We don’t develop our personality.

I said that some two or three Sundays ago when I was preaching about young men, last Sunday I guess, and how they waste the powers that lie within them. They study only when somebody gets behind them with a ball bat and threatens to bash their brains in. They study. And then as soon as they get out from under the thumb of the teachers, they go back to the comic strip and the baseball score. And they don’t develop that thing that is in them.

But some people say, but I never had an education. Neither did I. And I have known many that have not. Education, all the books of the world can be bought now for anywhere up to a dollar, and lots of dollars around to buy them. All the books of the world. And in this city of ours, you can get a musical education. You can get an artistic education. You can get an education in almost anything if you just apply yourself.

But the time that we waste, the wondrous personality that God has given us. Little, you’ll excuse the expression, little grandson today was looking at the cat. And he said, Daddy, why can’t I talk to her? Now that wasn’t a foolish question. There was an intelligent boy of five come up against the question of the inability to communicate with the lower world.

You can talk with God above you, but you can’t talk to the beast below. Half a dozen words he knows, but that’s it. But you have personality. You have the image of God built in. That was out of the goodness of God. He didn’t have to do it. He could have left us here to be guided by the stars, but He gave us a whole Bible. Sixty-six books. Sixty-six wonderful books.

Oh, Thy Word is forever settled in heaven. Here it is, out of the goodness of God. God owed Abraham nothing, the old idol-maker. He owed Isaac nothing. He owed Jacob nothing. He owed no man anything. But He gave us our Bible, and He gave us our Savior, and He gave us pardon, and He gave us the Holy Ghost to be in His church. And He guides His people.

Quote it here tonight, guidance. And I thought of another verse on guidance. When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them. No true shepherd ever drives His sheep from behind. He leads them from before. He guides His children, and it’s all out of the goodness of His heart.

When will God quit? When will God run out of blessing? Never while the ages roll, never while the stars shine, never after He has rolled up the heavens like a vesture and laid them aside. Never, never, for as long as God is God, God will be all He is now. And the goodness of God is guiding you. God will guide you by His goodness.

You know, someone quoted here tonight this verse, I will guide thee with mine eye. But do you know that’s not quite correct? That’s correct as we have it in the King James. But if you look at other versions, you’ll see it says, I will guide thee with mine eye upon thee. Somebody let a couple of words fall out there in transcription down the centuries. I will guide thee with mine eye upon thee.

Dear old Nicholas of Cusa got an icon, a picture. He said, now look at that picture there, look at that. One of those pictures, you’ve seen them, wherever you go, they seem to be looking at you.

Did you ever see a picture like that, a face and the eyes? And anywhere you went, they followed you. As a boy, I used to go out and look at the moon and try to run away from it, run all around over the yard or field. And everywhere I went, the moon followed me.

And so these eyes follow us. And old Nicholas of Cusa said, now let that be an object lesson to you. Just as this picture, the eyes on you, wherever you go, any part of the room, so the eye of God is eternally and forever upon you, and you can’t walk out from under it, and you can’t hide from it, and you can’t get away from it.

I will guide thee as long as my eye is upon thee, and my eye is upon thee as long as I exist. I am what I am, that is my name forever, the eternal God. From the eternity past to the eternity to come, God is God. And so the goodness of God is guiding us, and all the land is before us.

Now, I want to read here a little passage from Joshua 1 and show you how we take this, how we take this victory, how we take this guidance, how we take this place which is ours. God says to the man Moses, after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead, period. No, no, no, no, no, semicolon; Moses, my servant, is dead, now therefore arise. Go over this Jordan, thou and all this people unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you as I said unto Moses.

Now I want to tell you something. God has a free, full, victorious, God-conscious, God-blessed life for every one of His redeemed children. We can enter into it right now, right now, for every one of His redeemed children. And we can have just as much of it as we’ll take. We can go just as far as we will go.

But somebody says, if I entered into a deep, full life, would that mean that there would be no opposition? No. It would mean that for the first while people would point to their heads when you weren’t looking and say, always it’s that way, brother. The devil has an understanding with all the deacons and elders and half-dead pastors and soggy church members that everybody’s to stay half-saved.

But if anybody insists upon getting all the way in, they say he needs to see a psychiatrist. And they say he’s sick. You can expect to hear that now. That’s the charge they make against you. They used to just toss a man to a lion, and there was a groan and a crunching sound, and he was in heaven. But now they’re more subtle, you see, brethren.

If you don’t believe what is the proper thing to believe, what we hear from Washington and Moscow and the University of Chicago, if you don’t believe what you’re supposed to believe if you insist upon being a little bit individualistic, they say you’re sick. They say, well, he’s disturbed. I know who’s disturbed, but it ain’t me.

It’s the fellow that wrote the book, he’s disturbed. And the professor that stands up there before the church, he’s disturbed. When my disturbance has long gone down the drain, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, and my Father in heaven goes before me. So, they’ll say you’re disturbed.

I well remember it. I well remember it. I went through the whole business, even in our Christian Missionary Alliance. If anybody’s here a missionary or preacher from the Christian Missionary Alliance, say nothing about it in New York.

But it’s true, nevertheless. When I began to seek God, some of our good friends in the Alliance Church worried about me. They worried. They should have worried, but not about that. Ever notice that when you get a good, tough critic after you, he never criticizes you for the thing that’s wrong with you? He always digs up something that you’re not guilty of and blames you for that. And the thing that you and God know is wrong with you, he never sees that at all.

I’ve had that happen all down the years. Every time I’ve been put on a griddle and made to sizzle and fry, it’s been for something I didn’t do. But the things that did do and should have been jailed for, the Lord never brought up, because the blood of the Lamb cleansed them all away.

So if you go ahead with God, my brother, you may be perfectly sure that some stodgy old wooden Indian down there will say, I’m afraid he’s disturbed. Well, John Bunyan, you know, wrote about the man who got disturbed. His name was Christian. He started on the road toward the Celestial City and his wife wasn’t disturbed, neither was his family, but he was. He got out of there and started off for heaven.

Most of you, I think, don’t know that John Bunyan wrote a sequel. And in the sequel, Christiana, the wife got disturbed, and she came along after him. Did you know that? In the regular first part of Pilgrim’s Progress, we end with the Christian having a few gurgles in the stream and getting across to heaven and getting up on the other side. But there’s a sequel to it, and Christiana gets disturbed and says, now that I think it over, she said, I’m afraid we were tough on my dear husband now in heaven. So, I think I ought to become a Christian, too. So, she takes the whole family and follows that.

Now, you may be sure that you can’t get, you can’t go on with God and be let alone. If you took up almost any kind of sin, they’d let you alone. They’d say, be tolerant, let him alone, let him alone, be tolerant. But if you get right with God and then go on with God, they won’t let you alone. But the dear Heavenly Father will look after you.

This promise, an angel before thee, is valid, and it’s valid for you tonight, and it’s valid for me. But you say, how do I do this, Mr. Tozer? How do I, how do I put my foot down? Well, a lot of God’s people overeat and keep on overeating, but their mind never quite clears up.

Finney said when he felt the power lift off of him sometimes and he wasn’t as effective as he had been, he took a half day off fast and prayed. He said it took time out to wait on God. He didn’t eat any breakfast, just waited on God and got straightened out.

And if some of you dear people would risk being called queer and fanatical and would just decide some morning that you were going to give God a chance at you and put yourself in a position where the Lord can talk with you, and you can talk with the Lord.

Get the Bible before you there, get on your knees and wait. Don’t worry, wait. See what God the Lord will speak. And insist on pushing through. I like to push my prayers on God and insist that God listen and hear me. Your personal spiritual experience, God will guide you into it. It’s there for you. Your desire for guidance, so necessary in this big old dark world of ours, God has that for you.

And for this church, and that’s really why I started preaching this series, which continue yet for a few Sundays, this church, we need guidance now. We’re going to get it. And the fact that we don’t know what doesn’t bother me at all.

If God would tell me 24 hours ahead what He was going to do, I’d be one of the stuckiest-up fellows on the Southside, you know. But He just lets me follow along step by step, and then look back and see all the time God’s been with us.

Did you hear that song our brother sang a while ago? It says, I will make the darkness light before thee. Do you believe that? Where does it say that in the Bible? Doesn’t it say that in Isaiah? I will go before thee, and I will make the darkness light before thee? Yeah, Isaiah, on about 43rd, 45th chapter. What is wrong, I’ll make it right before thee.

Now listen, I will send my fear before thee and will destroy all those to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their back, and I will send hornets before thee. I won’t read the rest. All thy battles I will fight before thee, and the high place I’ll bring down.

When thou walkest by the way, I’ll lead thee, and on the fatness of the land I’ll feed thee. And a mansion on the sky I’ll deed thee, and the high place I’ll bring down. With an everlasting love I’ll love thee, though with trials deep and strong I’ll prove thee, but there’s nothing that shall hurt or move thee, and the high place I’ll bring down. But you know the trouble with you and me? The trouble is we try to be so modest in the presence of God. Why don’t we push in and take? Push in and take.

Moody told about a dog. He said that a friend of his had a dog, and it was customary, oh, my wife wouldn’t allow this, but it was customary, feed the dog at the table, just the scraps. No more, just the scraps. If somebody was eating a nice piece of meat and there was a little part too tough, he gave it to the dog. And he got used to that. He got used to living on the scraps that were tossed. There’s something even about that even in the Bible.

And so Moody said to him, do you know something? You conditioned this dog to live on scraps until he couldn’t eat a good piece of meat if he gave it to him. The fellow said, oh, I’ll show you. So, he took a steak and he set it down on the floor. The dog looked at it and then looked up at the master and looked down at it, looked up at the master, said, go ahead. Looked at it and then looked up at the master and said, this isn’t my, this doesn’t look like my rations. He said, I’m used to scraps. And he went over and laid down. He said, you win. He has been conditioned to live on scraps until he won’t eat steak when he’s got a chance.

Moody said a lot of Christians like that. He said they’ve lived on crumbs so long that when God sets a whole table before them, they’re too modest. They go off and lie down and say, no God, excuse me, but I’m poor worm and no man and a miserable man and don’t deserve it. Of course you don’t deserve it. Nobody argues that you deserve. You don’t deserve to be led. You don’t deserve to be guided. You don’t deserve the rich land of victory and hope. You don’t deserve the fullness of the whole. You don’t deserve anything. But can’t we stop seeing or begin to see and stop thinking that it’s deserved? It’s nothing we deserve.

It’s out of the goodness of God. Goodness of God. God’s good and therefore you get it. Not you’re good and therefore you get it. But he says, yes, but brother, so-and-so’s a good man. He fasts four days a week. He isn’t a good man because he fasts. Fasting is a convenience for him, as I suggested here a while ago. But it’s no virtue and no merit. And it doesn’t change God’s mind any.

God is good and our God already has given you rich spiritual land flowing with milk and honey. And it’s out of his goodness and not out of your merit.

Why don’t we do something about it instead of just listen and then go home. You dear young people. Now here you are. You’re in your teens now. You’re impressionable, alert, intelligent. God can talk to you. In ten years, you’ll be in your twenties, middle twenties, late twenties. Ten more years you’ll be getting middle-aged. Ten more after that and you’ll be starting down the hill.

We have them all around us. Old dried-out empties that had a chance or were brought up in our Sunday school and church, that heard the best preachers in all of America, and I don’t refer to myself, preaching from this pulpit and missionaries ablaze with God. And they had every opportunity in the world, but they settled for crumbs. And now they’re getting old and they’re getting rigid and rigor mortis is setting in their soul before they’re dead. They hope to go to heaven, but they’re not even too sure about that.

It would be a convenience if there were a purgatory, but there isn’t any. It would be a convenience if there were for some of God’s poor people. They might go there and straighten out. But Paul said, absent from the body, present with the Lord.

Where’s purgatory? No purgatory. As the Nazarene preacher said once in my hearing, he believed in purgatory, but he believed it was right down here now on this earth. When the fire of God falls on a man, that’s purgatory. God cleanses him then. I believe in that kind, but not the other kind. Not a niche somewhere where God hangs souls up to cool off and dry out and purify. No, I don’t believe it. I don’t care how high up in the ecclesiastical scale you go, I still don’t believe it. God wants to do it for you now.

Some of you young people may be impressed a bit now that you’re going out of here tonight and you’re going to go off quipping, joking, fooling. You’re going to go out and eat a lot of stuff, and then you’re going to go kidding and joshing off to your house and go to bed. Tomorrow morning, any good that God may have wanted to do for you has dissipated like the morning dew. It’s all gone.

Oh, that God would raise a few, and he’s done it. He’s done it. We have a high batting average here. He’s done it, that God would raise a few serious-minded young men and women who break loose from the frivolities and nonsense of youth and seek the face of God. Will you? Will you? Will you?

If I give an altar call, say, will you come down here, come down, sniff, blow your nose, and go home. I don’t want that. I want you deep, deep inside of your heart, I want you to settle it. God first. And I’m going to give God my life, and I’m going on if it costs me my friends, and if I’m thought queer, and if my people think I ought to see a doctor because I’m disturbed, I’m still going on with God. We raise a few like that up. You’ll see what God will do for you.

May God bless you. I send an angel before thee. Every place you put your foot is yours. Take it tonight. Take it. It’s all yours. You don’t have to fight for it or work for it. It’s all yours. A gift from God. Amen?

Father, we pray tonight. We pray tonight in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. O God, we don’t have to beg Thee. We feel sheepish in begging. It’s like begging it to rain when it’s already pouring. It’s like begging the sun to shine when it’s blazing at high noon without a cloud. Like blazing the river to flow when it’s flowing a mile wide out to the sea. O God, we can’t beg for Thee to bless us nor lead us. Already Thou art all prepared to do that. Thou art out ahead of us, looking back, wondering why we tarry.

Pray Thee for all these people that have been here tonight. We want guidance for our future. We want victory for our present. We want help, and Thou has promised to give it to us. Blessed be Thy name. Blessed be Thy name. I will break asunder the gates of brass, and I will cut the bars of iron, and I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places. And I will do these things unto thee and not forsake thee. Blessed be Thy name.

So we’re not going to beg, we’re going to thank and praise Thee this night, and ask only that Thou will touch one after another, that they might slip out of here with a hush of the Spirit upon them to find some quiet place in there with open Bible to press on and in until it’s all settled and the die is cast and the bridges are burned.

And as Elisha slew his oxen and used his wooden plow to cook their meat and make a feast, he couldn’t go back to farming because he had no equipment left. He’d slain it and burnt it. Help, we pray thee, that these friends may slay the oxen and burn the plow and not go back anymore, but go ahead. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Tags Blessing, Leading, Victory

Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Victorious Leading of the Lord“

Secure Download Download

The Victorious Leading of the Lord

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

May 25, 1958

Please turn to the 23rd chapter of Exodus. Exodus 23, everybody, let’s look at that, beginning with verse 20 on. This has been and will be, for some time, the scriptural basis for my series of talks on the victorious leading of the Lord, the angel before thee.

Now, the passage I particularly want to use is this one. If thou shalt indeed obey His voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. In verse 27, I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come. And I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.

Now, it is necessary, if we’re going to get anything out of this, it’s necessary that we believe. Once more I repeat that this has been my life chapter for thirty years, more than thirty, about thirty-two. And I have paid no attention to those who would not accept it as being for New Testament Christians. I believe that it is. And in order for us to get anything out of it, we’ve got to believe.

Not that this was written to us, for we well know better than that. We know historically this was written to Israel. But as I have tried patiently to explain from night to night, the spiritual laws here disclosed are operative in the kingdom of God.If we do not believe this, we limit ourselves tremendously. If we insist upon putting everything in its dispensational pigeonhole, we end up with nothing but the Book of Romans, and we don’t understand it.

But we’ve got to believe. And if you don’t believe, if thou shalt not believe, thou shalt not be established. And if you don’t believe, then I have no message for you at all. But if you believe, and will believe, that the spiritual laws here disclosed are operative now in the kingdom of God, I wish God’s people could see that. That while there are different dispensations, there is only one God and only one human race. And God never changes his mind and works one way one time and one way another.

There are those who believe that in the Old Testament, God saved by law, and in the New Testament he’s saved by grace, and no sillier thought could ever be entertained. A man would have to spin around for a half an hour to get that much many bubbles in his head to believe a thing like that. That in the Old Testament, law, men were saved by keeping law. In the New Testament, they are saved by believing. In the Old Testament, they were saved by law. In the New Testament, they are saved by grace. All this is wrong. It never was taught in the Bible. It isn’t taught in the Bible. It is a fiction, pure and simple, imposed upon us by Bible teachers.

The simple fact is God never saved anybody from Abel to this hour in any other way than by grace through faith. And you’ll find as much about faith in the Old Testament as you do in the New, and you’ll find as much about grace in the Old Testament as you do in the New.

The word, grace, occurs over and over in the book of Psalms. I don’t think the word grace, the actual word, grace, would be found as often in the Old Testament, but the idea of grace goes all through the Old Testament Scriptures. God saves by grace in the Old Testament as He saves by grace in the New. And a righteous man is justified by his faith in the Old Testament as in the New.

In fact, when Paul wanted to get established in the doctrine of justification by faith, he had to go back to the Old Testament to get it. And it was David in the 32nd Psalm who talked about the man who was justified by believing, and it was the minor prophet in the Old Testament who talked about justification by faith. So that the same spiritual principles that operated back there operate here. It’s such a liberating thing if the people of God could only believe that. We must believe, I say, that these laws, our spiritual principles are ours and they’re operative now toward God’s redeemed children everywhere.

Now, if we don’t believe this, by our unbelief we can hinder ourselves. We can hinder the operation of these laws by not believing in them. We can impede our progress in the Christian life, and most people’s progress has been impeded terribly. We can interfere with the Lord’s leading of us, and we can wander aimlessly around in the desert when we ought to be over in the land feeding on grapes of Eshcol.

Now, I want to talk a bit before I enter into the main part of the sermon about how you can identify unbelief. Unbelief is not the attitude of the atheist. Unbelief believes all the promises. That’s the subtle thing about unbelief, it believes all the promises. Every last one of them. Unbelief, I suppose there are some unbelievers that don’t believe anything in the Bible, but I’m talking a bit about unbelief up on the level of Christians and in the kingdom of God.

Unbelief believes all the promises for someone else, somewhere else, some other time. That’s how you can always tell unbelief. Unbelief says, I believe some other time, not now. I believe that God will do these things for some other people, not us, somewhere else, not here.

Those are the three errors that unbelief makes. And faith changes it around, and faith says, if some other time, why not now? If some other place, why not here? And if someone else, why not us? You can always tell faith, for faith is ready to believe if God did it for Moses, He’ll do it for me. If He did it for Isaiah, He’ll do it for you. Faith is always ready to say, if some other time, some other place, to some other people, why not now, here, and us?

Now, let us look. If thou shalt indeed obey my word and do all I speak. Now, the question comes up, does this disqualify everybody who has slipped? Since the Lord says, if thou shalt indeed obey and do all that I speak, then does this disqualify the people who have failed God, who have slipped, who have failed, who have lapsed, who have disobeyed, somewhere back down the line? Is everybody that has ever failed or lapsed or fallen, tripped or fallen on his face in the kingdom of God, is he mournfully to walk away into the shadows and say, this spiritual principle doesn’t apply to me because it applies to the person who is obedient, and I have failed the Lord? Well, let me answer it. Circumstances being what they are, and what are the circumstances? Well, the circumstances of our fall, to begin with. We are a fallen race. The circumstances of our inborn depravity, and the circumstance of our weakness and of our flesh, and the circumstance of there being a devil and sin in the world, that being true, then God could not possibly be naive enough to make His plan depend upon the indefectibility of His people.

I’ll explain what I mean by that. I mean that if the Lord is going to do anything for us at all, knowing us as He does, and He does know us, taking into account all the circumstances, and He does take them into account, if God is going to do anything for us, then He does not make His promises dependent upon our never defecting, our never lapsing, our never failing. For Him to do so would indicate imperfection in the Godhead.

Because if God believed in me and you, and said, Now I will bless my people, and I will make promises, and I send an angel before them, but only on the ground that they be perfect, then God would be starry-eyed and unrealistic, and He wouldn’t be the wise God that He is. But being the wise God that He is, and knowing us as He knows us, and being perfect in all His attributes, then God has thought ahead of us on this, and God has fixed it so, while He doesn’t want us to be imperfect, and He doesn’t excuse us when we fail, He has a way of curing us.

A mother does not want her children to be sick. She doesn’t want them ever to run a fever or to get a disease. She doesn’t want it, but she’s studied up and she’s in touch with her doctor, and if anything goes wrong, she thinks ahead and goes after it.

And so, God says, little children, these things write I unto you, that you what? Sin not. I don’t want you to sin. Don’t imagine I’m preaching here that imperfections and falling and lapsing is a part of God’s plan for us. It definitely is not a part of God’s plan for us.

But God being the realistic, wise, perfect God that He is, knows us too well to trust us too far. So, He has fixed it so that if we should fail Him, instead of surrendering and saying, O God, I give up, I’m going to go back into Egypt, we say, O God, pardon me, forgive me for Jesus’ sake and I’ll start over right here.

I want to read what a dear old German said. He said, it’s further written that love hides a multitude of sins. Perfect love and confidence cannot be where sins are, but love does hide completely. Love knows nothing of sin, not that man has not sinned, but sins are blotted out at once by love and they vanish as if they had not been. This is because whatever God does, He does completely like a cup running over. Whom He forgives, He forgives utterly and at once, much preferring great forgiveness to little.

Complete confidence is like that, he says. Moreover, to be forgiven much is to love much, as our Lord Jesus Christ said. Now that’s a quotation from an old devotional theologian of several hundred years ago, and he might have said that to us just five minutes before and would be as fresh, it would be no less fresh.

Now this, I’d like to tell you most, most to encourage your heart, that the Lord wants us to be obedient and He will not overlook, He won’t let us pile up a lot of wrongdoings, He won’t let us go one way and have Him try to lead us the other. There’s got to be an approximation of faith and belief and obedience, and if we should fall, He’s a Shepherd and He’ll help us to our feet again if we want to get up.

Granted that, now, and granted that this is for you and me, that if it was for Fletcher, it’s for us. If it was for Calvin, it’s for me. If it was for Wesley, it’s for you. If it was for anybody, it’s for anybody. And until you get there, you won’t have the buoyancy in your spirit that ought to be there.

Now notice what He says, I will be an enemy to thine enemy and an adversary to thine adversary. Now why does He talk about enemies and adversaries? Because He’s going before you to lead you into that glorious place He has for you right now down in this world, and He being the realistic God that He is and knowing what He knows, He knows that the devil won’t take this lying down. I admire the old scoundrel. I at least like a man who will fight for his rights, or fight for the thing he conceives to be his rights, and the old devil won’t allow any Christian to take one forward step without protesting it.

Modern teachers are trying to make pussycats out of Christians, but the devil’s no pussycat. He’s a roaring lion going about seeking whom he may devour. And he’s going to oppose you and straddle clear across the way, as John Bunyan said in Pilgrim’s Progress. He’s going to straddle clear across the way and try to keep you away from the delectable mountains and from the city of God.

So, you figure on enemies. You say, who are they, communists? No. Who are they, liberals? No. Communists and liberals and all that gang, they’re a thousand miles from you, friend. Don’t blame your backsliding on the liberals. Don’t blame the fact that you haven’t gone forward ten feet in ten years. Don’t blame that on the communists. They’re bad enough, God knows, and there’s a hell waiting for all such, but don’t blame somebody else for your own weaknesses and faults.

The trouble is, you’re not obeying and not doing what you should, not believing, and the angel of God can’t lead you. The Spirit of God can’t lead you because of your own fault. Don’t let’s blame the Catholics and say, it’s the priest. There’s no priest big enough in all the wide world. He was fourteen inches between his eyes and had horns four feet high. He still couldn’t stop you, not stop you one inch, if you want to go on.

Well, He says, I will be an adversary to your adversary. Now what’s the difference between the adversary and the enemy? Well, I suppose I ought to identify the enemy. I said who he was and now who is he? Well, the devil is your enemy chiefly, and demons and people and circumstances, those are your enemies. And the devil’s back of the whole business, just as the communists in Moscow are back of all of this stuff that’s going on around over the world. There’s one old devil in the Kremlin there, some they say there’s twelve devils in the Kremlin, and all this devilishness streams out from there.

So, there’s one devil called Satan and that dragon and the old serpent, and he works through demons, through people, and through circumstances to keep you from being led into the way which God has prepared for you, that beautiful, rich, fruitful way. And he works to oppose you, and he’s going to oppose you, and not only that, he’s too strong for you. You’ll never be able to whip him, you’ll never be able to beat him, you’ll never be able to outthink him, and there isn’t a gadget that’s ever been invented the devil’s afraid of. These theological screwdrivers and sanctified light meters, and all of these gadgets that men have invented in the kingdom of God in the modern day.

You know, a preacher nowadays has to be an engineer, a chemist, a chef, and an artist, and a sign painter, and he’s got to have at least a brush-up course in engineering in order to be able to preach at all. I wonder how our fathers managed with the hymn book and the Bible. I wonder how they got along. Maybe that’s why they had fire and all we’ve got light, and it isn’t even the light of God, it’s the light of a bulb.

Well, anyhow, I didn’t intend to say that, but I thought I’d throw that in. That the demons and the people and circumstances, they’re your enemy, and they’re too big for you because the devil’s back of them. He’s pouring in plenty of money and plenty of arms and ammunition, and he’s out thinking you all the way along.

The young fellow that struts out and says, I’ve got ideas. Yeah, you have, but there’s one idea that you ought to get, and that is how little and worthless and weak and helpless you are. Until you find that out, you’re a sucker for the devil and a victim of his power and his wiles.

So God says, now I’m leading you out, and I’m leading you in, and all I require of you is that you do what I say and go along with me and read your Bible, obey it and believe it, and come cheerfully along with me, and I’ll take you in. But I’m going to have to take you the rough way, and I’m going to have to take you the way that is surrounded by enemies. I’m going to be on the left of you, on the right of you, and in front of you, and all around you, but I’ll take you through.

Well, you say, God, how can we do it? How can we advance under such tremendous firepower aimed against us? How can we advance? Well, God says, I’ll handle your enemies and your adversaries.

Now, the difference between an enemy and an adversary is very fine. It’s really splitting your hair nicely, but as I see it, an enemy is one who is hostile to you, who has ill will and an attitude of hate toward you, but who may be inactive temporarily. An adversary is an enemy in action. The enemy may lie back and sulk, but the adversary is up after you, and they may be the same fellow under two different phases, the enemy and the adversary.

And God says, these enemies of yours and these adversaries of yours, they’re too big for you. Don’t imagine that you can ever study up on how to win over them. Don’t imagine you can ever read a book on how to beat the devil. You can, but don’t bother. Better read the comic strip, because that book is wrong. You never, you never can win, and you never can defeat him. You’re not as smart, you’re not as wise, you’re not as knowing, you’re not as powerful, and you’re not as sly, and you’re not ubiquitous.nHe’s so fast that he can get around you.

They used to say about Henry Armstrong, the prizefighter, that he fought, he fought and struck so fast that blows came from all directions, that the fellow that was fighting thought he had half a dozen adversaries in there, because Henry was pumping them in from all directions at once. Well, that’s the devil for you. You never know where to locate him, because if you say, I’ve got him, he’ll hit you from the other side. But he’s too much for you.

So God says, God says, I will be an enemy to your enemies. In other words, I will identify myself with your enemies so completely, and you with me, so completely, that every enemy you have, I take as my enemy. Every adversary that you have, I take as my adversary.

And I want this church to hear this. I want the people of this church to hear this. I want you to get that chin up off of your Adam’s apple. And I want you to hear God say, if you’ll just listen to me now, and be good and obey me, and do what I tell you, you won’t have to worry, because these laws operate now. They operate as powerfully as the law of gravitation.

God says, what I’ll do to the enemy, I will become your enemy. Let’s read verse 27. I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come. And I will make all thine enemies turn their backs upon thee. Now, how to treat our enemies? I will send my fear before thee.

Now, religious persons, for the most part, try to send their fear before them. I’ve seen this lots of times. Somebody, you know, that had a degree and was elected to something, if you criticized him, he swells up and looks dignified and stuffed shirtish and stands on his record. Oh, no, come on down off the pedestal, boy, because the devil isn’t afraid of you nor your record. He isn’t afraid of your swelling up and huffing and puffing. God says, I’ll send my fear ahead of you. He didn’t say, I’ll send your fear ahead of you. The devil isn’t afraid of you, and he isn’t afraid of me. He is afraid of God, and God’s the only one he is afraid of.

Devils, of course, there is a sense in which the fear of a man who has God in him, Satan’s afraid of the man who has God in him, I realize that. But it’s God he’s afraid of and not the man. I said God, I think, but I mean Satan is afraid of the man that has God in him, but he’s not afraid of the man without God.

So, keep that in mind. And instead of swelling up and standing on your record, I’m a Christian. I want you to know that you, you, this, this is, this is an impudence and a terrible thing for you to accuse me of this.

And so we defend ourselves and argue and write letters and get insulted. Nobody can insult a Christian. You’re only insulted if you’re insultable. But a Christian oughtn’t to be insultable. Nobody can insult Jesus Christ. Nobody ever could. They abused Him and condemned Him and lied about Him and called Him a devil, but they couldn’t insult Him.

A fellow that suddenly gets tart and brittle and acts insulted and walks out not angry, but very dry, he thinks he’s sending the fear of him ahead of his face. No, he’s not. He’s just making a donkey out of himself, is all. God says, I’ll send my fear before thee, but we write letters. I understand that you said that I believed so-and-so, or that I did so-and-so. Come on now, friend, don’t try to defend yourself. He that defends himself has himself for his defense, and he hath no other.

But he that humbles himself and looks to God has God for his defense, and I don’t know how you’d want any more than that. God will look after the man who lets God look after him. But the fellow that struts out and says, now, you have impugned my honesty. You have reflected upon my uprightness. Oh, dear, dear.

They called Jesus a devil and nailed Him on a cross. And we go around looking dignified and swelling up and standing on our record. One man one time sat in a meeting, and I wasn’t fussing, I was just sitting there trying to be good. And they were, this young fellow, he slapped me on the knee and he said, I’ll match my ministry with your ministry any day.

Well, I wasn’t matching ministries, nothing for me to worry about. So I just let him match and said, shut up, and never answered. And last I heard of him, he divorced his wife and married a 16-year-old girl and was running a cleaning and pressing establishment.

That’s what happened to his ministry. He was out matching ministries, oh no. Don’t compare yourself with anybody. Don’t defend yourself against anybody. Don’t write a hot letter and try to get untangled. Just say, Lord God, behold, here he is. Look at him.

Remember when Hezekiah’s enemies came and cursed and swore and used obscene language on the wall? Hezekiah took the letter, that beastly, ugly letter, took it in, turned it around so God could read it and said, God, look. God said, that’s all right, I’ll handle that. He said, I’ll take care of it. He said, I’ll put a hook in his jaw and out of here he’ll go. Hezekiah got up and brushed off his knees and said, all right, God, I knew I couldn’t do it because I’ve only got just a little handful of soldiers, and they’re half scared to death. But he said, if you’ll take care of it, I’m not afraid of Assyria.

So, the Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold and his cohorts were something in silver and gold, but before the night was over, they lay dead. 185,000 of them. Hezekiah never as much as used a water pistol. No, never did. He just took it to God.

Now, I’m not fooling. I’m preaching serious truth to you here. And here’s some of you fellows are going to be preachers in the time to come. Somebody’s going to start a rumor about you. And you’re going to write in to the district superintendent or the bishop and try to get it untangled. Never do it, boy, never do it. I will be an enemy to thine enemy and an adversary to thine adversaries. And if God takes him on, why should I worry about it?

Maybe I told this some years ago, but I knew a preacher, a Southern preacher, a great man of God years ago. Hent into a neighborhood and began to hold a meeting in the church. And the town big shot, who owned about everything. And what he didn’t own, he bossed just by his chin, going around sticking his chin out, everybody’s afraid of him. And he hated the meeting. He hated it, hated evangelists and evangelism and God and church in general.

So he hired a brass band and went across the street and on his lawn across from the church. He was bothered by their singing, so he hired a brass band. And every night at 7:30, when the meeting would start, his brass band would start and away it would go. And of course, all they could do was to close the church house and go home. And that went on night after night until finally this good brother said, I gave it up. He said, nothing I could do.They just brass banded me out of the town. Oh, he said, they wanted me to do something about it. No, he wasn’t going to do anything about it. He’d committed it to God.

So, he, a short while after that, got a call. He said, come quickly, this fellow that hired the brass bands on his deathbed, and he wants help. And he raced there, but as I recall, got there too late. And there he was, stiffened out, and his soul in hell. And they came to him and they said, Reverend, would you preach the funeral sermon for this man? Yes, he said, I will.

So, he said he was going to preach on the love of God. I suppose it would be John 3, 16, for God so loved the world. He said he went down on his knees and said, Father, I got to preach a funeral sermon for the man who had run me out of town, literally with a drum. And he said, what’ll I say? And God said, take your text. And the rich man died, and in hell, he lifted up his eyes. And the preacher said, oh, no, God, no, no, I couldn’t do that. It’d be awful. He said, they’d ride me out of town on a rail this time. He said, I couldn’t. God said, you do what I tell you. No, no, God, he said, I want to preach on love. He said, I want to show I love the poor man.mNo hard feelings. God said, you do what I say.

So when the day of the funeral came, the preacher walked in, in fear and trembling. And the whole town was out, you know, they’re afraid of the old guy even after he’s dead. And the whole town was out, and they gathered from everywhere. And the preacher got up and took his text. The rich man died, and in hell, he lifted up his eyes. He preached a sermon about the rich man who died and gone to hell, and here he was lying right in front of them.

Well, you know the result of that? And that little southern town, the result of that was the wife of the dead man, the widow got converted. The children of the dead man got converted. As things spread like wildfire, they reopened the church without a brass band. And in a short time, a fire of revival struck the whole town. But it took one man going to hell to get it.

God says, I’ll be an adversary to your adversary and an enemy to your enemy. Use your typewriter for something better than writing hot letters of protest. Don’t fight anybody. We try to fight people and only succeed in getting our noses bumped and our hearts injured, and nothing happens.

God says, I’m acting for you, and I’ll take your place, and I’ll accept your enemies as my enemies, and they’ve got to deal with me. And I’ll make them turn their backs on you. You’ll see the face of the enemy, but pretty soon all you’ll see is his back. No enemy can stand before you all the days of thy life. God throws a secret and mysterious fear in an enemy.

I’m a fighter by disposition, and if God hadn’t given me this when I was a young man, still in my twenties, I suppose that I would have been one that had joined some of these fighting fundamentalists as being a fighter, because I got it in my disposition. But I’ve never written a letter of protest. Did I ever? I don’t recall that I ever did since. If I did, I shouldn’t have, and if I did, I know that I got the worst of it. But I can’t recall having done it.

So. people write me letters, and I never reply. Or if I do reply, I write them one of the neatest little disclaimers you ever heard in all your life. People write me and tell me that I am a terrible fellow, and I write back and say, Dear friend, your charges are such that it would not be the coming of me to defend myself against them. Therefore, I must ask you to pray for me until I become such a man as you want me to be. Sincerely yours.

My wife said that was hypocrisy. I don’t know whether she’s right or not. But I mean it, I mean it, I mean it. If he’s got something on me and he really sees weaknesses, he can pray for me.

But don’t imagine I’ll defend myself, because just as soon as you start defending yourself, your knuckles get skinned and your knees get stiff. Get on your knees and the Lord will take care of your enemies. I’ll make them turn their backs upon you. You can destroy every enemy without lifting your hand or raising your voice, by turning them over to God. Accept the covenant and vow never to defend yourself.

Years ago, Dr. Simpson was going through the country putting on missionary meetings. He was quite a preacher, and people came to hear him in numbers. They do that with only a few preachers in a generation. He was one of them. And he’d go to a town and have a big hall and they’d come and hear him, then he’d go to the next town.

So, a certain enemy of his decided that he was going to go ahead of Dr. Simpson just about a day or two and ruin him. So he went, thought he’d start in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He’d hire the big hall there, knew Simpson was coming in say on Sunday, and he got there on Friday and announced he would preach and he was going to undercut Dr. Simpson. Dr. Simpson wanted not to get anybody, just trying to preach missions and the victorious life. He wasn’t mad at anybody.

This fellow didn’t like Simpson. So, he was quite a preacher too and could draw crowds. So, he had a supper one night just before the first meeting. He had a supper and he had a piece of fish. And he was sitting there, I suppose, thinking over the sermon, the pulverizing, devastating, annihilating, decapitating sermon that he was to deliver against Dr. Simpson. And suddenly he began to shake and rub his neck and said to somebody, I think I got a bone caught in my throat.

And sure enough, God used a whale to swallow Jonah. And he used a fish bone to stop the enemy of a good man. And that fellow never did get to preach that night. He had to go to a doctor and have some kind of a minor operation, if I remember, have that little silver fish bone pulled out of his epiglottis. The result was he gave the whole thing up in disgust and went back home. Somebody told Dr. Simpson, Dr. Simpson said, oh, him, I turned him over to God long ago and he went off about his business.

It’s always that way, my brother. If you want to fight your battles, you fight your battles and you lose nine times out of ten. But if you want to win nine times, ten times out of ten and not have to do any fighting, you believe what God says. I will be an enemy to thine enemies and an adversary to thine adversaries.

And for these 32 years, I’ve never asked for money. I’ve never asked for a raise. I’ve never asked for a job. I’ve never written and asked if I could come. And I’ve never grumbled if I got little. And I’ve never demanded more. And very often, uh, not very often, but sometimes at least, I come out in the hole in some of my meetings, financially. But God says, now you, I’ll take care of your money, and I’ll take care of your enemies and I’ll take care of everything. I’ll go ahead of you.

And the result is, now I know I have a friend, God bless his memory, he’s still alive. But, uh, he, uh, he and I began to preach about the same time. And he fights everybody. And I don’t think I ever met him that he wasn’t two sizes larger than normal, huffing, huffing, huffing, puffing, puffing. Superintendent, you wronged me, I tell you, it wasn’t fair.

And, uh, he and I went along together and God met me and taught me 32 years ago what to do with the fellas that are not fair to you. Just pay no attention to them. Turn them over to God, mention their name on high, and then go about your business.

And this dear brother’s been getting littler and littler all these years, trying to get big enough with his enemies. One of these days he’s going to go on, retire and move to Carlisle or some other home and sit there and sulk over the way he’s been treated by his enemies. And my enemies have never done anything to me only to drive me to my knees.

I told you when I began to preach, I was going to do some testifying, and I don’t apologize. This is too real to me to make it into an ordinary objective sermon. It’s real. I live in this.

So, God looks after His people, and He’ll go ahead of them, and He’ll lead them into that wonderful place, if you’ll just obey Him. Some other time, Lord? All right, if some other time, then why not now? If you did it some other time, why not now? If you did it for some other people, why not us? If you did it somewhere else, why not here, says faith.

And the wise anointed eye will see tonight, and the anointed ear will hear, and the illuminated heart will understand, and the others will go out huffing and puffing and saying, he wasn’t dispensationally correct. Go on your way, bud. Have your dispensation, and when it’s all over, you’ll end up bruised and beaten and cold and hard and brittle and stiff.

And the ones who are ready to be malleable and obedient and believe God and go ahead, they’ll be way out there so far you can’t even hear them whistling anymore. And you’ll be coming stumbling along behind, trying to beat everybody’s skull in, and do it in a good dispensational way. You obey God, brother, and everything will be all right.

Are you ready to believe that? Are you ready to believe it? Is this church ready to believe it? Sure. This church, we’ve been led down the years, we’ll be still led. Don’t you worry about it. Don’t worry at all. Keep cheerful. Every time you wake up at night, thank God everything’s all right in your Father’s house.

When you get up in the morning, bless God before you get your coffee. Thank Him before you get your your eye opener. Praise him. Keep on doing it. God wants to be praised. He wants to be loved. He wants to be blessed. He wants to have people going cheerfully along.

I wrote a phrase the other day, God’s redeemed children, and the thing struck me one night. I said, isn’t this wonderful to be one of God’s redeemed children? Belong to God, to be redeemed. No more auction block, no more shackles, no more slavery. Free as a bird that flies. God’s redeemed child. You look at me, you go ahead.

Now, I’ve got an awful lot more to say on this same subject. We’ve got to talk next time about these parasites and highlights and satellites and Jebusites and all the rest. And what all this means, what all this means when translated into its spiritual meanings in the New Testament. And about bowing down, I want to talk about that next Sunday night.

Well, it’s time to go home. Let’s stand.

Thank Thee Heavenly Father tonight that we have a Friend, oh, such a friend, that He loved us ere we knew Him. And we thank Thee that as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so are the Lord’s round about His people. And the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth them. We thank thee, Father.

We thank Thee we love everybody. We love the people that don’t like us. We love the people that are bitter and wish we were dead. But Lord, we thank thee they can’t kill us by wishing. And they haven’t got the courage to do it any other way. We thank thee, Heavenly Father, thou dost turn the edge of every sword. We bless Thee for the back of necks that we see. Here’s one and there’s one. He huffs and puffs and then turns his back when the fear of God strikes him.

Oh, help us, Father, we beseech Thee to live in Thy love and dare to obey and be obedient and try to remember everything that Thou hast promised and live in it. And then see our enemies go down before us and go in and inherit the land of the parasites. It’s our land and we’re going to take it.

And all the people said, Amen, we’re dismissed.

Tags Leading, Victory

Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Leading of the Lord“

Secure Download Download

The Leading of the Lord

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

May 11, 1958

In the book of Exodus, the twenty-third chapter. I want to review just a little bit and point out that this passage which we read was spoken by God to Moses for Israel, and that it is also spoken for our admonition, upon whom the end of the world is come.

Now I want you to be sure that I am not spiritualizing this passage, as they say. Or if I am, I am in good company. For the passage of Israel from Egypt to Canaan was held to be a type of the Christian’s progress from earth to heaven, in one of its aspects, and from conversion on toward the victorious and fruitful life in another of its aspects.

Those who teach that the passage of Israel from Egypt to Canaan was a type of the Christian’s progress from earth to heaven have had a bit of a quarrel with those who teach that it stands for the progress of the Christian from his conversion to the period when he reaches the victorious life. But I do not see why there should be any disagreement about it for the simple reason that it’s both.

And in teaching this, that we have a right to this passage, that I have a right to take it as I have taken it and used it and applied it to my heart tenderly over the past years—thirty of them, really, thirty-two of them, as I’ve explained. In using it this way, we are quite in accord with Paul, who freely took the story of the Old Testament characters and applied them to the new, who freely explained that the Old Temple was the physical manifestation of the Heavenly One, and in the whole book of Hebrews is dedicated to that doctrine, that everything God did for Israel was physical and earthly and has its heavenly and spiritual counterpart.

And we’re quite also in accord with John, particularly in the book of Revelation, and we’re in accord with the Church Fathers. The Church Fathers, I mean from the early Church Fathers down to the present day, and we’re in accord with the hymnists who sing about, Lead me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.

The whole thing is an image drawn from the Lord leading Israel through the wilderness, and you will find this all through our hymn books. Now that I say because I want you to know that I am doing a piece of legitimate exegesis here, and I don’t want you to be argued out of it by somebody, somebody with an accountant’s mind.

There are so many God’s children who have accountant’s minds, that is, they’re adding machines, and their theology is about as imaginative as an adding machine. And you’re likely to fall into the hands of these pedestrians, and when you do, smile and say, I’m in line with Paul and John and the book of Hebrews and the Church Fathers and the hymnists and the saints generally.

Now, He says the place which I have prepared, and I want to point out and take a step beyond what I spoke of last week, that God had a place prepared for Israel, and He has a place prepared for His church, and He has a place prepared for every individual member of that church. And that that place is to be understood in two ways, as provisional and final.

God had a provisional place prepared for Israel, that is, God had a long-range plan for Israel, but to get Israel to the final long-range place He had a short-range plan. And the short-range plan dealt with an hour from now and tomorrow and next week and next month, whereas the long-range plan dealt with the place of the next millennium.

And so let’s look a little how this short-range provisional plan of God, the place which I have prepared, I’m going to read to you a bit out of the Word of God. I’ll read from Exodus first, Exodus the 40th chapter. Here’s what the Holy Spirit says, Then the cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys. But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day it was taken up. For if the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, the fire was on it by night, in the sight of the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.

And then, that passage in Deuteronomy 1.29, Then I said unto you, Dread not, that is, Moses is saying, I said unto you, Israel, dread not, neither be afraid of them. The Lord your God, which goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes. And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the Lord bare thee as a man bares his son, in all the way that he went until he came unto this place. Yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God, who went in the way before you, to search out a place to pitch your tent in.

Now the Lord had Canaan in mind as the long-range plan, and He finally took them there. But you notice here, you pitch your tent at the end of a day, or maybe it was two days, or however long it was. But he said, the Lord went before you to search you out a place to pitch your tent in. He went in fire by night to show you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day.

Now there is the provisional short-range leading of God. He led Israel, not only into the land finally, but he led them step by step in order that they might go to the land. You can see this, can’t you? That if God is not able to lead us the next mile, he cannot lead us the next hundred miles. If He cannot lead us the next ten feet, He cannot lead us the next mile.

The Lord leads His people. He has led the church through all her history, and He leads the Christian, the individual Christian, and He is grieved when the Christian makes Him say, yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God, who went in the way before you to search out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night and in a cloud by day. And He leads a local church. If we are in His will and stay in His will, I believe in the leadership of the Holy Ghost. I believe that the Spirit of God is to the church what the cloud and fire was, for it is the same thing to Israel.

But then there is the final and long-range plan of God. That is, Israel was to be in full possession of the land, and the church is to be in full possession of the Father’s house at last. But for the individual Christian there is also this, that the Lord would lead us into a place of fruitfulness and power and heaven at last.

Now I have prepared you this place. The great trouble is, and I repeat, that we want a place, and we want to pray that the Lord will lead us to the place which we have chosen, whereas God says, I will lead you into the place which I have prepared. And there is very often, a good part of the time it would not be too much to say, a good part of the time there is a controversy on between the Christian and God over that place.

The Christian says, I want Thee, O Lord to lead me to the place which I have chosen. And God says, I will, O child, lead thee to the place which I have prepared. We have got to settle this. Are we going to have this controversy all our lives, seeking the place which we have chosen, or are we going right now to cut the red tape and lower the overhead and get it over with and say, Lord God, here take me.

The place I want would not be all right anyway. Take me and lead me into the place which Thou hast prepared. If we will decide to let God lead us into the place which he has prepared, we’ll have His leadership, not only His long-range leadership, but we’ll have His day by day, short range provisional leadership.

Then he says, an angel to keep thee and to bring thee. You see, if Israel was going to reach the holy land, she had to be led by a power equal to or superior to the opposition. If God led Israel by a power equal to the opposition, they would reach a stalemate. If He led Israel by a power less than the opposition, He would never be able to move Israel toward the holy land. It became necessary, therefore, that God should bring to bear upon the opposition a power superior to their power.

And that’s exactly what God said He would do. There were enemies there and they did fight. They weren’t cowards. They didn’t lie down and take it and let Israel walk over them. They did oppose Israel. But God said, I will send an angel before thee to keep thee and to bring thee in.

And now my messenger, he said, the Holy Spirit, God’s omniscient providences, these are what we mean, the Holy Spirit and God’s omniscient providences. What do I mean by his omniscient providences? I mean that God, being the sovereign God that He is, plays over the chessboard of history, and He can always outthink and outmaneuver the enemy, and can always be there ahead of the enemy.

And if He needs power, He can crush the enemy by His power. If it’s wisdom, He can outmaneuver the enemy by His wisdom. But always in His providences, He leads the people of God.

My brethren, I am not at all sure that I would exchange, if God were to say to me, now son, I have led you a good many years by my providences. You have trusted Me, and I have led you, but I’ll exchange this now and I will give you a visible fire by night to hover over you, and I will give you a visible cloud by day. Nobody else will see it but you, but you will see the cloud and fire visible to you. I think I’d not exchange it, because anything that I can see with my eyes, the time can come when I can no longer see it.

But you can’t outthink the providences of God. No man can do that. God’s providences are His plans which He lays down, and He leads his people into it by a kind of a holy dance of circumstance. And when it’s all over, then we look back and see that God has led us all the way.

Now he says, beware of him. That’s verse 21. Beware of him, because he provoke him not, for He will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. Now right here, this verse 21 will discourage some people, and they will say, well, in that case then, Mr. Tozer, you’re preaching to some perfect, pure person, but you’re not preaching to me, because I have not lived my life, my Christian life, since the Lord first took hold of my hand to lead me into the place He hath prepared. I have not obeyed the angel in every particular, and I have transgressed, and if therefore it says that He’ll not forgive your transgressions, then that cuts me out. Your sermon is preached to some Joseph, or some Daniel, or someone who has never had any trouble.

But I don’t think we ought to look at it like that at all, because the Lord says, beware of the angel. That is, don’t think that I make an unconditional promise that I’m going to lead you and let you get away with murder. Don’t think for a minute that I am going to make a unilateral promise to you here, and I’m going to promise myself, and promise myself like John or like Herod did before the assembled guests, and get myself in a jam that I can’t get out of, and for the sake of the guests around me, I’m going to have to fulfill my promise no matter what you do. Now, let’s not think like that at all. That’s to have rigor mortis of the theological intellect, and a lot of people have that.

But what the Lord says is this. He said, now remember, you’ve got to be pliable if you’re going to be leadable. You’ve got to be malleable if you’re going to be made into the right kind of vessel. You’ve got to be mobile if you’re going to be led. God says, in effect, I can’t guide a bicycle when it’s standing still. I can’t lead an arrow to its mark when it’s still on the string.

You’re going to have to put away your stubbornness. I can’t overlook your stubbornness. If you’re stubborn and refuse to be led, I can’t lead you. And if you’re rebellious and rebel against my plan to lead you, then I can’t lead you. And if you’re filled with unbelief and don’t think I will lead you, then that hinders you. And if you’re disobedient, that hinders you.

You see, the physician, if he’s going to cure the patient, has to have the cooperation of the patient. If a guide is going to lead someone through the wilderness, the man is going to have to go along with the guide. And he will not overlook, says God.

Remember now, you Christians, I am leading you, and my plan is that I’m to lead you into the place I’ve prepared. But I’m not expecting that I’ll lead you without your cooperation, because the Spirit has no authority to just wink and act as if you hadn’t sinned. If you sin, then you’ve temporarily slowed things down. If you sin, then you have hindered me, and I can’t lead you right.

And I wouldn’t be so foolish as to preach to a church where I knew that the members of the board were unconverted, and the Ladies Auxiliary was carnal, and the Sunday School superintendent drank. And I wouldn’t preach this way to that kind of church, because God said simply that this isn’t, you can’t do this.

He said, beware of him, because walking with God is a pretty serious business, and you can’t get loose and go at ease in Zion and learn the ways of the world if you’re going to go with me. If I’m going to take you out of that iron furnace and take you on into that grand land where the bees make honey in the rocks, and where the cows walk with great udders across the grassy meadows, where milk and honey flows, and where grapes of Eshcol are thick and large and juicy, and where pomegranates are sweet.

If I’m going to lead you in there and establish you there, you’re going to have to walk pretty close to me. Beware, because this rule that I laid down here is not for worldlings. This rule that I laid down is not for carnal people who want to have their own way, and then who want to try to get leadings when they’re not intending to obey. He has no authority, said God, to let you live like the world and be led like a child of heaven. You’ve got to obey the voice of the Lord.

Now that’s plain enough, and it ought not to discourage anybody. But you say, but I haven’t obeyed the Lord fully in everything, and I have had periods when I failed the Lord. What can we do? Well, you can come to yourself. Do you remember that’s what the prodigal son did. He came to himself. He’d been living out in the suburb, and then he came into himself.

You can come to yourself, and you’ll see what the history of Israel tells you. Read the history of Israel and see that when Israel failed God anywhere, God punished her, corrected her, disciplined her, and then took up and led her on. And if she failed him again, he punished her again, forgave her, disciplined her, and took her on. The way wasn’t a smooth and easy way. It could have been, but Israel chose sometimes not to make it so. And the history of Israel has been the history of failure.

I wish that I could say that a Christian takes off from the ramp like a conveyor, right, just zoom, and it’s off into the air and gone. I wish that I could say that’s the way. No, that isn’t the way. That’s not realistic, so to speak, so to say. It’s not realistic, and nobody here needs to stand up and tell me that he has never had any difficulty with himself since his conversion, that there never has been a fall, never a failure, never a lapse, never any trouble. He has moved with calm precision upward and onward. Don’t anybody tell me that. If you’ve been converted over one day, don’t bring me that because I’ll have to look at you and turn away. I can’t believe it. It just isn’t so.

Human beings aren’t like that. Israel wasn’t, and the Church wasn’t, and the Twelve Disciples weren’t, and the people in the Book of Acts weren’t, in spite of all we say about them. They still have failed the Lord sometimes, but always the story of Israel is that God forgives. God forgives. And the story of the New Testament is, God forgives.

Jesus took his Twelve Disciples to lead them into the place which he had prepared, and all but one of them entered that place which he had prepared. All but one of them. Judas, the son of perdition, never found it. Judas sinned away any possibility of it. If he indeed ever was converted, he sinned away any possibility. But the other eleven made it through. And always it’s so in the New Testament. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all righteousness.

I have a prayer in my little book which I carry with me, and I lose everything under the sun, but in 15 or 20 years I’ve never lost my little prayer book. It’s all badly worn out now, but still legible. And I have a little prayer in there saying, O God, because I have been the worst of men, therefore let grace operate to do the most for me. Where sin abounded, let grace much more abound. And I believe God’s going to do that. He has in some measure been doing it, as I have believed. And He’ll do exactly the same thing for you.

Sin will prevent the Lord from leading you, but not sin repented of. Sin repented of will be cleansed, and it will not prevent you. You see, if God made no provision for human failure, then there could be nothing but human failure. If God made no provision for human failure, that would be the end of it.

And granted that God knows humanity, granted that God knows humanity, that He knows the human nature, human flesh, then imagine that God should make a redemption and send it to the world and make no provision for the frailties of the ones to whom he sent it, would be, even to think that, would be to think unworthily of God. If God made plans contingent upon human perfection, then there would be no use to make any plans, because if we were perfect, we wouldn’t need God.

If we were perfect, we would not need any leadership. We’d not need any angel to lead us at all. We would not need to be admonished not to be afraid but go forward. We wouldn’t need it, but he does not. God is not so unwise as to make His plans for us contingent upon human perfection. He makes His plans for us contingent upon His goodness and His grace and His willingness to forgive and to renew. And if God made His plans contingent upon human perfection, then they could only fail. And that God’s plan should fail would be unthinkable, that God should be unwise would be unthinkable. No.

We must remember, beware of him, he says. And I don’t see this, I don’t see this as any reason. Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee and to bring thee but beware of him. I don’t see anything here to stop me. Suppose that Israel did stumble and fall on their face, and they did. But remember, the cloud and the fire never left them.

It took hundreds of years of persistent incorrigible sinning before the cloud and the fire lifted. And then the cloud and the fire only lifted for a while. And God will yet restore Israel to Himself, and the cloud and fire will one time more hover over the temple in Jerusalem.

Read the book of Ezekiel and see. God Almighty never brought you out and said, no, I’ll bring him out, but I can’t bring him in. Because God said about Israel, He said, I’ll never allow them to say that about me, that I brought Israel out, but can’t bring Israel in.

The whole human race would have laughed at a God who started to build and found to His red-faced embarrassment that He didn’t have enough material to finish the building. The whole human race and the angels in heaven would laugh at a God who started to bring a nation out of Egypt and wasn’t able to bring them in where He had planned to bring them. He did bring them in, and He did establish them there.

And for hundreds of years, they did worship God there. They did build a temple there. And David wrote his psalms, and Solomon built his temple, and the children of God met and worshiped and praised God, hundreds of years they were in that land.

So, remember that you’re being led by One who’s got a plan for you, and nothing short of a 100 percent persistent and perpetual rebellion with refusal to return can stop the sovereign plans of God. Do I sound like a Calvinist? I don’t know whether I do or not, but I sound like the truth. And if any of you who are over on the other side should be shocked, a shock is good for you, brother. It’s good for you. I believe that God Almighty will lead His people.

And don’t you try to pin me down and make an Arminian out of me nor a Calvinist out of me. I’m neither one. I’m a lover of the Bible. I believe the Bible. I’m not going to be pinned down by anybody. Are you a Simpsonian or a Wesleyan or a Calvinist or an Arminian or a Plymouth Brethren? I am none of those things. I’m a Christian by the grace of God, a poor one, but a Christian. I’ve got my Bible here, Old Testament and New.

Some fellow comes in and wants to tag me and put a tag on me and say, now, here, you wear this button. I’ll wear no button. You can categorize a man and put him in his place, say, Tozer, oh, he’s a, and then they can invent a name that long and dismiss a man like that. I’m none of those things. I’m a Christian and here’s what the Holy Ghost says in the Book. My heart speaks out against me.

David had an awful time with his heart, you know, he had a time with it. It lectured him and he talked to it, and he lay in bed at night and talked to his soul, meditated, and sometimes he wept and sometimes he got up and played a hymn on his own made harp. But when our own hearts speak to us about our past, now think about it, be realistic.

I’ve been thinking it over the last few days, and you know what I’ve decided? I’ve decided that for the most part, evangelical Christianity is just plain dumb and that stupidity and Pollyannaisms has pretty well taken over. That anything like tough, realistic thinking, daring to search the Word of God and obey, daring to shake yourself loose from tradition and stand up and say, this is what God says and I don’t care what Dr. so-and-so says. We’ve got very little of that left anymore in our country. We’re the spongiest bunch of mediocre people you ever met in all your life.

I confess frankly that I can’t read the average book put out by the fundamentalists and yet I’m a fundamentalist. I’m a believer clear down to the roots and I believe everything the Bible teaches and I go back to Moses and Paul and believe it all at the same time. I get nothing from hearing the average man or from reading the book because everybody’s scared, cautious, got to guard yourself.

But listen, if you say this, what will these people think of you? I don’t happen to care and it doesn’t make any difference. And if they write me off and I’ve been written off, you and I went someplace one time, Ray? You sang and I preached. They never invited us back. They said they were going to, but the mailman didn’t get the letter to us. They never invited us back. But I don’t care about that because if they shut one door, God will open twelve more.

And if I had toes and hands and all the hairs left in my poor, rather shaggy head, were preachers, I could put them all to work. Hear me? Oh, if we could get out of this cowardice and this mediocrity that the evangelical church has become a paradise of mediocre clowns, what we need is courage and anointing and a bit of daring and, above all things, obedience. Obedience.

I will send mine angel before thee and he will guide thee, young fellow. You don’t have to worry one little bit. All you have to do is be sure you don’t take the bit in your teeth. The Lord says, if you take the bit in your teeth, you’re in trouble. As long as you’re obedient, you’re being led. You’re being guided. As long as you want God’s will. But if you want your own will, of course, that’s different.

Well, here was Jacob and Jacob was a terrible failure. Do you remember Jacob’s failure? But you remember how on that riverbank he and God had it out? And wrestling, Jacob prayed through and limped away.

Oh, if I were an artist, what a picture I could paint of Jacob. I wouldn’t paint a picture of God or of Christ. I think both pictures of God and Christ are borderline blasphemy. To try to picture the infinite God or to try to put down on a canvas that wondrous, beautiful being we call Jesus, I think it’s horrible to try to do it.

But I wouldn’t have any hesitation painting pictures of Bible characters. And I think one character I’d paint would be old Jacob, a little bald on top. Jacob’s hair was gone and his wife and his children and his camels and all the rest were gone before. And Jacob was on the riverbank all night. He wrestled all night. He wrestled.

The doctor said, Jacob, you better not stay up at night because you need your eight hours, Jacob. Remember, you’re not as young as you were and you need your eight hours. Now, remember, you take care of yourself and take a few hours, take a few days and go to Florida. But Jacob wrestled all night with his God.

And the next morning he got blessed. But along with his blessing, he got a limp. And you know, he was marked out as a limping man. He was a limping man. He limped from that time on. And it says the sun did rise upon him. I can just imagine him limping up out of the sandy riverbed, having crossed it now wet to his knees. But he limped up on the other side with a big smile on his face and the sun making a halo around his shiny bald head.

And when he appeared all the way down there where his family was waiting, somebody said, I wonder what’s keeping Dad. And somebody said, who’s that coming there? That looks like Dad. And wife said, no, that couldn’t be Dad. That man limps. She didn’t know that he’d had an experience that night that made him different. He walked different from everybody else from that time on. But Jacob was a terrible man, really. He was a terrible man. There isn’t anybody here much worse than Jacob was, unless it’s me by nature. Jacob was that kind of man.

Then there was another old fellow who said, I am vile. I am vile. And you know, his end, the Lord took the vileness away and gave him twice as much of everything. And he went marching out of the last chapter of the book into the glory. And he’s there now. And there was a man named Elijah, and he was so discouraged. He said, let me die. I’ve always been afraid to ask God, let me die. Because sometimes, you know, God just takes you at your word.

And I’ve always been cautious. I remember the Greek said that if there’s ever a time that a man ought to tell the truth, it’s when he comes into the presence of the gods. And if a Greek would think that up, I think a Christian ought to know that much.

So, I’m very cautious about going to God about things. And I’ve never gone to God and said, O God, let me die. But there are times when I had a sneaking hope. But I’ve always been afraid to say it, for He’d take me at my word, and I got some things to do yet. So, I didn’t pray that.

But this man did, O Lord, let me die. It looked as if that should have been the end. But you know, he left in a chariot, of fire, this man left in a chariot. God is a whole lot easier on His people than we are, because He understands them.

I like to sometimes let my imagination run in a little piece about St. Paul or somebody applying to a mission board, or Stephen applying to a conference for ordination, sitting around being examined for ordination. Stephen never would have made it, because he’d have jumped up and looked far into the distance and gone out and started to preach. And they’d have said, well, he’s a well-intentioned young fellow, but he’s a fanatic.

And I don’t think there’s very many people here in the New Testament that would have got along. Elijah never could have. He never could have graduated from any school on the North American continent. Never, they’d never have given that old fellow.

Could you imagine his going around with a parchment saying, to whom it may concern, this is to certify that Elijah has completed his studies, and therefore is authorized that we grant him this diploma. Never would have made it, never would have made it. Elijah couldn’t have made it. But he left in a chariot, brother, at last. He left in a chariot.

And there was Peter. Peter cried; I never knew the man. I never knew the man. What a liar he was. Dirty mouth Peter, lying Peter. I never knew the man. He lied, he did.

Paul Richards, the French satirical philosopher, said the first Pope said, I never knew the man, and he lied. But if the present Pope would say it, he’d probably tell the truth. I never knew the man.

But he was the man at Pentecost. He was the man at Pentecost. He was the man. The Lord had got to him. The Lord said, Peter, beware of him, beware of the angel. Peter stumbled and fell and said, I never knew the man. The Lord said, Peter, that wasn’t you talking. Get up on your feet. And Peter got up and wept bitterly.

No, my dear brother, God never overlooks sin, or failure, or weakness, or flaws. He never overlooks them, but He knows what to do about them. And the angel in the meantime pauses and turns around and waits, and says, is my boy going to get up and come on, or is he going to give up and lie there in the gutter?

Meister Eckhart is a quotable fellow, and Meister Eckhart said this. I marked it with pencil, drew lines along it. I want to remember. Eckhart said, when God forgives a man, he starts all over with him from right there. And his past is automatically canceled out, as far as God’s concerned.

And not only that, but God trusts him as completely as if he’d never sinned. I believe he’s right. God trusts the man. Starts all over with the man right there. You can’t out-sin the mercy of God if you repent sincere.

Some people have misunderstood the Methodists. They think the Methodists got converted and then got perfect love. And from that time on, never sinned, never failed God anywhere.

Well, it wasn’t God’s plan they should. Certainly, John Wesley tried to prevent them. And all their class leaders and exhorters tried to prevent them. And they’ve had a pretty high batting average, I’d say, on the whole. But you read the writings of Wesley. Read the little book of Discipline, which I have read with such great care.

The only book of Discipline I ever cared for in all my life was the Methodist book of Discipline. You could set it to music. They knew what to do with a man if he failed the Lord. Beware of him. He has no authority to let you go and just act as if nothing had happened. If you fail him, something has happened. You got to deal with it immediately and right away. How do you deal with it? Name it.

I used to hear Paul Rader say back in those great days when he was preaching those great sermons, the like of which I’ve never heard on the North American continent except his. He said, if you’ll name it, God will break it, talking about shackles, shackles. He said, they’re on your wrists, they’re on your ankles. Name it and God will break it. But if you call it something else, it’ll be right there for two weeks, two months, two years.

If we could hear with our spiritual ears as we can with our physical ears, when we dismiss this meeting tonight and you start out, there’d be a clanking sound. You’d think there were 40 ghosts in the attic rattling their chains because so many of you wear on your ankles, chains, spiritually. We can’t hear them because we can’t hear except with these ears.

But the dear Heavenly Father knows they’re there. If you name them, God will break them. Temper, bad disposition, love of money, lust, pride, unholy ambition, self-love, stubbornness, rebelliousness. Name them and God will break them. Jacob had to tell God his right name, Jacob. You’ll have to tell Him your right name. Whatever it is, tell Him your right name.

There is such a thing as a repentance. As Kierkegaard has said, there’s such a thing as a repentance that is so acute that you feel you want to help justice find your sins. Did you ever experience a repentance like that? Where you turned against yourself and wanted to help God find your sins instead of covering up and hiding and running from God, you race to God and say, God, I want to tell you this and this and this and this. That’s repentance. That’s repentance.

So, if you repented like that, sincerely, the guiding angel isn’t leaving you. He’s just pausing, just pausing. The individual, this church, any church, evangelicalism, I wonder if I were this church, I’d dismiss this pastor. You need somebody that’s a lot more local. My burden is not this church only. My burden is for the whole evangelical church. I grieve over the whole evangelical church. I pray and have my prayer list with the whole evangelical church.

I worry over the whole church that calls itself fundamentalist. My heart cries to God that He’ll help me some way to write something or do something or pray in such a way that it’ll begin to lift and jar the whole evangelical church back out of her shameful Babylonian captivity, that God might lead us again to the place where we ought to be.

And a man that has a burden for the whole church of Christ must divide his time somewhat, at least his prayers. So I may be somebody that could think in narrower terms, could do more, but I’ll never be able to get over it because I had to make my choice to be dumb and happy, or to be informed and be miserable, to not know much about what was going on and thus keep a kind of a cheap tranquility, or to know what was wrong with the church and grieve over it. And I grieve over the church.

I grieve over what’s happening in the church of Christ and the Alliance too. Any of you brethren should be here on your way to Council. You hear me say this and I don’t care who. The Alliance as well as every other. We’re on the same greased skids that the others are. And unless God can break us down and stop us and turn us around, we’ll never find the place He’s called us to.

Tags Angel, Leading