Tag: New Year

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Looking Forward in Christ“

Secure DownloadDownload
Tozer Talks · Looking Forward in Christ

Looking Forward in Christ

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 28, 1958

For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring. And they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the watercourses. One shall say, I am the Lord’s, and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord and surname himself by the name of Israel. Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. I am the first, I am the last, and beside me there is no God.

Thus saith the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him. And I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut. And I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight, and I will break in pieces the gates of brass and cut and sunder the bars of iron. And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places. Thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name.

I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. There is no God beside Me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known me, that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have created it. Part of Isaiah 44 and 45. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank Thee by the wonder of the Spirit in working. Thou dost take these words drawn from an old, old book, written to a people that we are separated from by origin and by every human thing. And yet by Thy Spirit they are applied to us as though they were written for us and sent down just this morning.

We bless thee for these encouraging, hope-filled words. We thank Thee not only that Thou hast made them applicable to Israel and fulfilled them in Israel and will yet fulfill them, but we thank Thee for the thousands and multiplied thousands who have slept off, resting their heads upon such comforting words, who have gone into battle, who have gone to far parts of the earth, who have faced impossible situations trusting in these words. And Thou dost never, never let them down, but Thou dost bless them and keep them.

O Father, we pray Thee, Jesus Christ our Lord, that Thou wilt help us now, since our fathers trusted Thee and were not forsaken. Grant that we may trust Thee, and we know we shall not be forsaken either.

And we pray Thee, O God, Thou wilt be with our people scattered round over the earth, be with the nations which we are apart, down on our human side as our President, and we pray Thee for the Congress soon to convene again.

We pray thee, O Lord God, for those who labor in these high places, simply men, poor men, men with breath in their nostrils, and, O we ask Thee, Father, thou wilt make them able for their jobs. And we pray Thee for Thy work round the world in the cause of missions, wherever there are men and women preaching the gospel.

We pray Thou wilt bless every radio program, Thou wilt bless every effort of men and women to get a language, to learn it, to preach in it, and to win people and teach them and instruct them in the way they should go and baptize them and make them into little groups that form churches.

Help Thou, we pray Thee, our God, this day. Give us a cheerful outlook on life, and let us expect that we shall see a performance of all things promised us. Bless the sick and the bereaved and the troubled and the distressed. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.

In the book of Hebrews, the twelfth chapter, beginning with verse 22, But ye are come unto Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

And then a passage in Acts 14, verses 21 and 22. And when they had preached the gospel to that city, that is, Derbe, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God.

Now, this being the last Sunday of a very eventful year, and being a kind of springboard over into a new year that will, for our church, be a momentous year, and for the whole world, I want to summarize, and sort of add up, some of the things that I find in the Book, and tell you what it’s all about, and why we’ve got to go on.

In the book of Hebrews, I read to you that we are come unto. And the real work of any minister of the gospel is to present Christ in such a way that people gather unto Him. He says that wherever there are those gathered unto Him, in His name there am I in the midst of them.

Now, when we meet His conditions, and they’re not hard, really, they’re not hard. When we meet His conditions, we are a church. I wish that I had, in the very earliest time of my Christian life, been taught of the wonder of the Church. I had to learn it by myself. Not even in the Christian and Missionary Alliance is the emphasis placed, where it belongs, on the assembly of the saints, the gathering of the people unto Christ. We believe it, of course, everywhere, but the emphasis doesn’t fall there as much as I feel that it should. But when we meet His conditions, we have His unseen presence.

Now, this I want to say again, this is a summary, and I’ll probably say many things I’ve said before, but I want to repeat that we gather unto Him, and when we gather unto Him, we have that unseen Presence. Now, this to me is more important than anything that possibly could be offered to me, that we are met where Jesus sheds the oil of gladness on our heads.

And the conditions are unto me, not unto a favorite preacher. It is too bad that churches follow preachers. This I say is too bad, but it’s true in a measure, I suppose everywhere. But we do not please our Lord when we gather to a man, no matter how good a man he may be. We do not please our Lord when we gather unto a name, no matter how great the name may be, except it be that Name which is above every name. And He says that we are to gather in My name, and that means not in the name of any denomination.

We are met here this morning not in the name of a denomination. Or if any have come in the name of a denomination, then I would kindly ask you to rethink this and see whether you are serving God rightly. For we are not met in the name of a denomination, neither are we met in the name of a cause.

That is why I sometimes look rather with a dull interest upon those gatherings, those bristling, scintillating gatherings that are met unto a cause, met to promote a cause. No, an assembly of Christians never meets to a cause. They meet in the name of a Person, and they gather in Christ’s name, not in the name of a cause.

Now, there are many causes, many excellent causes, the cause of foreign missions, the cause of world evangelism, the cause of jail work, or many, many, many causes that are being promoted by the people of God, and properly so. But if we meet in the name of our cause, it won’t be very long until the cause becomes the center of attraction and Christ fades into the background. And that is always bad. Christ must be first and let him tell us about the cause.

We are met to worship. We are met to worship, to worship the Triune God. And then as we worship the Triune God, He’ll whisper the cause to us. He’ll whisper to us what He wants us to do.

And then we’re not met in the name of any peculiar doctrine. We are Protestants, of course, and we stand for all the truth, the doctrines of the truth, but we’re not met in the name of a doctrine. We are gathered unto Him today. And we are gathered sort of as the lame were gathered there at the troubled pool in the fifth chapter of John. You remember why they came there to that pool? Because an angel went down once a year and troubled the waters, and whoever was in first, he got healed, according to the story we have here.

And, oh, I suppose that maybe there were times during the year when there weren’t so many there. But when it came around about the time of the troubling of the waters, or when they hoped the waters would be troubled, then they gathered and lined up as they do in front of a ballpark or somewhere else, and waited long in turn. And Jesus Christ, our Lord, came, and he became to them the Healing Pool. He has been to many thousands the Healing Pool. Do you know, my friends, that if your heart is all right, you can stand almost anything else.

If your heart is all right and you’re restful inside and you’re relaxed inside your spirit, in your heart, and everything is all right between you and God, you can stand just about anything. There’s almost nothing that will get you down if you’re restful inside your spirit, if your heart is warm.

Any of you who may be having troubles of any sort, financial troubles or home troubles or any kind of troubles, I recommend that you take a few hours off. You can do it. You say, but I haven’t the time. Certainly, you have the time. You could fall down and break a hip, and then you’d have time. Take days, weeks off. You could get hit with a car and you’d have time. You could have a heart attack, and you’d take time. You can have time, all right. Take some time off and go before God and do this.

I recommend you do this. Do it before the new year comes in. I recommend that you go and write down your faults and flaws and sins on a piece of paper and lay them before the Lord. And then turn to the Scriptures that tell you that if you confess your sin, you’ll be forgiven, and God will cleanse from all unrighteousness. And get your soul shriven. Get it bathed completely. Get it washed. Get it forgiven. Get it so that you’re not troubled.

If your conscience isn’t bothering you, but God seems close and everything’s all right, it’ll be a healing pool to you, my friend. And even if you are troubled about the matter of physical healing and you do have difficulties, physical difficulties, you’ll find you can bear up under a physical difficulty with great equanimity if you have a restful heart. But the troubled heart, who can bear?

And then we’re gathered today unto Jesus Christ as the Jews gathered to Joseph. You’ll remember when Joseph went down into Egypt that he was the sort of the key to the whole thing. And when he went down there, things started going bad for the folks back home. Then came troubles and then the hour when there was a famine in the land and they went down to Egypt and there they found Joseph and they had to keep going back to Joseph. And finally, they went back and gathered around him and he stood for them before the great land of Egypt and before Pharaoh and he got them a place and got them established and got public favor on them. It was either Joseph or starvation.

So, we gather to Jesus Christ. Not one of two possibilities, nor one of three possibilities, or one of ten, but one of one. It is either Jesus Christ or starvation. And so we gather today to Jesus. And I wish we could keep that in mind. And I wish that sense would suddenly come over us that we are gathered unto him, unto Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, unto the innumerable company. Not we are going to be gathered, but we are gathered unto, it says. In the present tense, we are now gathered unto. We’re gathered unto that which, though invisible, is completely real and trustworthy.

And then we’re gathered unto Jesus as disciples gathered to a school, as students to a college. We’re learners from Jesus. I often think of that famous saying of the great educator Mark Hopkins. They said, if you put a boy on one end of a log and Mark Hopkins on another, you had a college. Just let Mark Hopkins sit there and talk to a boy on a log and you had a college. And so we learn about the things we are to be taught by our Lord.

Well, Jesus Christ, of course, is the whole faculty. He’s the whole teaching staff. By the Holy Ghost he reveals truth to us. And we’re thus disciples gathered unto Jesus, nobody knowing it all and nobody being the final word.

Occasionally somebody will write me. I have a letter now that I have to answer, saying, I’d like to know about thus and thus.  Whatever you say, we’ll accept. Whatever you say, we’ll believe. Now I don’t want any reputation like that. I don’t think it’s very widespread, but a few people foolishly believe that if I say it, that’s it. I don’t like that at all, because I could be wrong.

I remember once hearing Dr. L. H. Zimmer, that great German preacher who established that great church that’s still going on, the largest church in the Alliance with a missionary offering of nearly $100,000 a year. Why, I heard him stand up in the New York board meeting with President Schuman there and the vice president, I think I was vice president at the time, and the others gathered around there, the leaders in the Alliance, and some question came up, and they said, well, Dr. Simpson believed this way, and somebody read a passage from Dr. Simpson, and that great preacher got up, put his hands on the table in front of him and said, brethren, Dr. Simpson could be wrong.

And I’ve enjoyed that. I’ve enjoyed remembering it, that here was a man, though a loyal to his society and a loyal to his fellowship, yet he was not going to take the word of a man. Any word I give you might easily be temperament.

My opinions could rise out of temperament, out of a background you know nothing about, out of just sheer ignorance.

I remember when Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer, made the first English dictionary. He defined the word hock, and he said the horse’s elbow. And gathering afterward, a literary gathering, some woman who wasn’t too delicate said to him, Dr. Johnson, why did you define hock as a horse’s elbow? And she expected, of course, a very learned defense of his position. He stopped eating long enough to look her full in the face and said, ignorance, madam, sheer ignorance, and went on eating. Even though he was perhaps the most learned man in England, or one of the most learned men that England ever knew, he still was willing to admit, I did that because I was just plain ignorant. And it’s entirely possible for a man with all the best intentions in the world to say things that are not so.

But Jesus Christ is the teacher, and we come unto Him and the anointing which you receive of Him abided in you, and you need not depend upon your teacher altogether. You can use him, and he’ll help you, but don’t lean on him. For that same Anointing teaches you all things, says John.

So, we gather unto Jesus because we’re so tragically ignorant and so filled with truth that isn’t the truth at all, but something else that we need to get rid of.

And then we’re a spirit-drawn company also. You know, I was meditating over this and thinking of what draws people.

I have a friend, I don’t know why I could call him a friend, he’s a very jolly fellow and very friendly to me and to Mr. McAfee when we go down for tickets. He is always friendly, and he’s a barn dance fan. And he’s a nice, kind, middle-aged man, but he just loves barn dances, square dances, and that’s all he wants to talk about. And sometimes I tease him a little and say, how are you coming? Oh, wonderful, wonderful. He even invited me to join, but I don’t think I want to at my age. But when they gather together, they gather unto barn dancing.

I suppose it’s harmless enough, I don’t know. I never did and don’t intend to start it. I don’t recommend it. But they gather for that. Others gather for literary reasons. Some gather to hear concerts, and that’s a legitimate thing. Some gather to hear political speeches, that’s a legitimate thing. Some gather to hear scientific papers read, and that’s a legitimate thing.

Well, there are many reasons why people gather together, but a church gathers for only one reason. They are a Spirit-drawn company gathered unto Jesus Christ the Lord. They’re gathered to Him, and that’s their reason for gathering. And there isn’t any other reason, or if there are other reasons, there are secondary and tertiary and on down the line. They are not primary. Spirit draws us together, and we are gathered as a delegation. We are gathered as a delegation unto that, making up that company.

I don’t know whether I overdo this or not, but I think that this is one of the most delightful passages in the entire Scripture. We are come, we are come unto Mount Zion, of course that’s a spiritual Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels.

God, why can’t I see the angels? Why are we so blind? Why are we so given up to mechanical things and material things? Why do we see walls and chairs and seats and pulpits and pianos? Why don’t we know that we are gathered unto an innumerable company of angels and to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel. And there we are gathered unto all these, these are thy riches, O Israel, and these make you rich, and you need very little else.

Well, you know when Moses blew the trumpet, all Israel gathered together, whatever they were doing, women busy in their tents with their housework, taking care of the baby, and men busy doing whatever the men were doing, and the children busy playing.

But when the high note of the silver trumpet sounded, all Israel gathered unto Moses. And then the trumpet sounded again, and the clouds started, and away they went through the wilderness on their way to the promised land. Then they were on the way, and that comes to my second text, where they met these men of God, and they exhorted and confirmed the souls of the disciples, and exhorted them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation come into the kingdom of God.

Now we are coming up to the end of the year, and some of us have lost loved ones from our home this year. Some of us have had loved ones leave and go to far parts of the world, and we have all lost good Christian friends who have moved away to many parts of this country and have gone from us. There have been distress and trouble, and many of us have suffered physically this year.

There have been a lot of troubles, but I want to exhort you to go on this morning. I want to exhort you. I don’t want to teach the Bible to you because you know your Bible, but I want to base my exhortation upon what you already know about the Bible and teach you that you ought to go on.

Why? Why? If I had to answer the devil, I wouldn’t honor him by talking to him. I wouldn’t. If he were to come, I wouldn’t answer him. I would not reply. But if I had to answer him or had to answer anybody, let’s settle for communists. Let’s say that some communist would come to me and say, now you are entering into a new year. You’ve been a Christian during 1958, and you’ve had a lot of troubles and all the rest. What’s the idea of your going on?

You know what I could say to that man? I could say to him, oh, my brother, I’m a weak man and I may backslide before Groundhog’s Day and have to be prayed back again, I don’t know, because let him that standeth take heed lest he fall, and I don’t know, I’m not boasting. Peter boasted and then he denied his Lord before nine o’clock the next morning. So, I’m not boasting and saying what I’m going to do, but I’m going to give him reasons for hoping that I’ll be doing, what I think I’ll be doing, and that is following on in the way.

Well, Earth’s greatest figure leads on out of there. Never forget that my friend. We have great figures, great men, you know, and they come up and go down and come up and go down, but He came up and never went down and never went into eclipse. He’s the star that never sets and never has and never will, and He’s the bright morning star and He shines out there and He leads on.

Some will be following Bob Kennedy this year or next and some will be following Paul Douglas and some will be following somebody else. And those men, I suppose, mean well and are as good as the average rank and file of men. I’m not speaking against them at all. I only say that I’m not following any man. I’ve not picked any man I want to follow.

I thank God for Wesley, I thank God for Henry Suso and John Tauler and Augustine, and I thank God for the great hymn writers and the good men who have written good helpful books. Of course, I’m grateful for all of them, but I’m not following any of them, because the world’s greatest Figure stands there supreme above them all, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

They’ve had Him in a manger over the last few days, the last ten days. He’s been shrunk back to a babe again and they’ve been carrying Him around in plastic, and He’s been a babe in the manger. No, no, that babe hasn’t been in that manger for nearly two thousand years, my friends. And though we celebrate the birthday, what we think is the birthday, though nobody knows, remember that that Babe hasn’t been in that manger for two thousand years.

Jesus Christ, our Lord, is not a babe anymore. He is the man Christ Jesus, having gone through death and risen and now living at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. He certainly is the Shining Star. He’s the greatest of all Adam’s sons, because He’s also the Son of God.

So, I couldn’t follow anybody else. I don’t know anybody else who could I follow. Could I follow Socrates. Socrates is dead and he never rose from the dead. Should I follow Joseph Smith? Joseph Smith is dead too. Could I follow Mary Baker Eddy? She died. They expected her to rise, but she disappointed them. She’s still dead, and the way things are, I don’t ever want to see her or have her get up.

But Jesus Christ rose and lives, and He has the appeal and the magnetic attraction that no other one does in all the wide world. So, I could reply, well, I’m going to follow anybody, right or wrong, I’m going to pick the greatest of them all, whose name is Jesus. So, the best I know, I’m going to be a follower of Jesus Christ the Lord.

Now, I’ll tell you another thing. Have you ever stopped to think about it? You Christians have invested an awful lot now. You’ve invested so much now. Think of you older Christians, what you’ve invested. Think of what some of you could have had if you hadn’t invested so much in the kingdom of God. Think about it now, some of you.

Look back over your lives and think how much you’ve given to the Lord’s work. Think of the tens of thousands of dollars and running into the perhaps hundreds that some of you have given to the work of the Lord. Think if you had that now, what a split-level home you could have with a picture window, and what all you could have, and how you could go to Bermuda. And up into Canada when it gets hot.

But you invested, you invested in this Kingdom. You know, there’s such a thing as putting so much in that you’d be a double-barreled fool if you gave the whole thing up. You’ve just invested so much you can’t afford to go back. You can’t afford to say, well, I’m not going to work so hard at the things of God this year because I just feel that I deserve a little vacation from it all. No, no, no.

You don’t deserve any vacation because you’ve laid up your riches in heaven, and there they lie, and there they are, and they’re there for you. And so therefore let no man take thy crown, and let no man take away thy riches. I’ve put so much in and have so much there that there’s no place else to go.

Peter said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Can you think of anybody? Can you think of anybody? I can’t think of anybody that I’d want to follow because I’ve put so much in the following of Christ that my riches all lie there anyway. Would you want to follow the latest scientific venture? I just learned a horrible thing this week, this last week, a horrible thing. I think it’s one of the most awful things.

I said last week that if anybody went to the moon that I didn’t want to go. But I don’t know, but I may change my mind about that now. Because you know what I have learned this last week? I have learned that the Ford Motor Company and the Coca-Cola Company have for the last couple of years foreseen the talking satellite, foreseen it.

Only a few days ago President Eisenhower was saying peace on earth, goodwill to men from a hunk of metal flying around up in the air, that satellite. But you know that those two companies, the advertising departments of those companies had foreseen this two years ago and have been quietly working to put their advertising in a satellite and send it around the world, changing the language with the longitude or wherever it is. If it’s going over Holland it’ll be saying drink Coca-Cola in Dutch and when it gets down to France it’ll be saying drink Coca-Cola in French and when it gets into Africa it’ll be saying drink Coca, I don’t know, I think the moon might be a place of refuge, a place to hide in an hour like this.

How much longer is God Almighty going to let the peddlers take over His world? God made a garden eastward in Eden and he put flowers and trees and beauty there and put men there to relax and rest under the shady bowers.

But we’ve gone mad in our selling. And over the radio this last week when you’d be listening to a beautiful Christmas carol, the next would be, and so the thus and thus beer company sends you their finest holiday greetings. And then they would break into an anthem telling about Burpo Beer, the finest beer on the market. I wonder how much longer God Almighty is going to allow this thing to go on. I don’t know, brother, I don’t know.

But I do know this, that you and I are going to see some tribulations ahead, we’re going to see some hard times. We’ve spent a lot of time, some of us have, we’ve had so much money and so many fine things and so many gadgets and we’ve pushed so many plastic buttons and had so many little machines hum into our workforce. We haven’t known in this country what it is to endure anything.

And when we got so we had a few people out of work, we sighed a sigh like the Israelites in bondage and called it a recession. And yet everybody had everything. Brethren, we’ve got some troubles out there ahead and how are you going to go into them? You’ve got to go into them one way or another.

And I recommend you go into them following the Lamb, whithersoever He goeth, because you can’t even think of anything else now, it’s too late. You’ve been a Christian so long, some of you, that even if you’ve only been a Christian twenty minutes, you’re a child of God and your name’s written in the Lamb’s Book of Life and God holds you in His hand and no man can pluck you out of His hand.

Well, another thing, some have loved faces looking down. I’m a very cautious man and I speak on these tender things only very rarely. Some have faces looking down and they expect you, you’re discouraged and want to quit and say, ah, I’m giving the whole business up.

I tell you that there are faces looking down, they say that it used to be among the sheep, an old shepherd when he wanted to get his flock across a river, he’d carry the lambs over and then the old sheep would swim. They’d swim across because the lambs were already over there.

A lot of people, any of you that have been a long time around our church ever sat down and counted up how many have gone from us these last times? Most recent one was Helen Asplund. They’ve gone, they’ve gone, they’re not going down the valley one by one with their faces toward the setting of the sun. Whoever wrote that ought to have his liver looked into because he was sick. We’re not going down the valley one by one, we’re going up the mountain toward the sunrise, one after the other.

Am I going to live long enough to bury a whole generation? I’ve almost done it, a whole generation of God’s dear Saints, and I’ve laid them away all around this whole area. I’ve planted seeds in the ground by the grace of God and sent earth to earth over I don’t know how many scores. Their prayers aren’t dead. He catches all our prayers in his bottle and all our tears, and their prayers haven’t become ineffective because they’re gone. They’re still effective, yonder, and I know they’re praying for me.

Godliness pays big dividends, my friends, and no matter what the future may hold, what it may be there next year, godliness pays big dividends. It’s always right to be right, and it’s always best to be on God’s side and to take God’s side and to live right.

Some of you could live a smoother, easier life if you weren’t so faithful, I’ll tell you that. The devil’s told you that, so it’s nothing new to you. You could get along a lot easier if you didn’t give so generously and get up and go to church when you felt like sleeping.

You didn’t get out and do God’s service when you feel like sitting in front of the TV. You could get along a lot easier, put on a little more weight, feel a little more comfortable or uncomfortable. But I’ll tell you, godliness still pays, brothers and sisters, it still pays to follow God. It still pays to be on the good side.

I’ve had funerals of people that I knew hadn’t been very big successes. That is, you know, there hadn’t been great successes as the world or even as the church counts success. But as I thought over their lives, I remembered one thing. If they knew what was right, you could be sure they were always over on that side. God takes that into account. A man knows what’s right, and he’s always over on that side; he’s found over there, and it pays, pays.

Well, another thing is, the best company on earth is in the church, and I’m going to stick to it myself. I’ll have to be chased out of the church, or out of the church, blacklisted and forbidden to enter any Christian assembly, otherwise, you’re going to find me in the house of God on the Lord’s Day, and sometimes in between. Because everything else being said, the best company in the world is the company that meets unto Jesus.

You say, but I happen to know there are some hypocrites there. Yes, so do I, so do I. So did Jesus. One of you shall betray me, said Jesus. And each one said, is it I, is it I, is it I? Even Judas said, is it I? Sure, Jesus had His hypocrites. The first church had their Ananias and Sapphira.

Paul had his Demas, the young man that he leaned on. Here was this old balding apostle, wearing himself to a shred, traveling around up all hours of the night, out in deep, driven out of cities, chased and whipped and beaten and thrown into jail. And he got a hold of a young fellow named Demas. And Demas was all full of fire, and Paul said to God, O God, maybe, this is my boy. And so, he leaned on Demas. And just when Paul got in a tight place, Demas remembered the old crowd and went back. Paul said, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. I know that there’s a Demas, he’ll be around, I know it.

I get literature, I could show it to you now, if the janitor hasn’t carried it out and burnt it. I can show you literature that comes, Christian literature that comes from Communism. Christian Communism, Communist Christianity, if there’s such an unholy thing, praising the freedom they have in Czechoslovakia or Russia or someplace else, praising the Communists for their religious freedom. I know that, and I know that there’s a lot wrong with the Church.

But brother, give me five hundred people who regularly gather unto Jesus, and then show me five hundred that don’t, and put them side by side and take your choice. I know that side I’ll be on, if God will bless me and help me, and the people put up with me. I know whose side I’ll be on this year. I say, a man is weak and it’s easy to fall, not fall from grace, but fall in grace. God will keep you.

I’m talking about this miserable business of getting cold or lukewarm. They’ll put up with me, the best company in the world, not this church necessarily, but the church, God’s children, wherever they’re from.

Go into any town, any town, get up in an airplane, say to the pilot, what’s that town down there? And he says, that’s Pittsburgh, all right, land. He lands. Go and hunt the best people, where’ll you go, nightclubs? No, where’ll you go, bowling alleys, pool rooms, saloons? No. If you’re looking for the best people, hunt up a gospel church. They may be a little narrow-minded, may be a little narrow-minded, I don’t say they weren’t narrow-minded Christians, but I do say, nevertheless, they’re the best in the city. And if they’ll put up with me, I want to put up with them.

Well, time is going to be short anyhow. It doesn’t seem very long since we ushered in 1958, now 1958’s a tattered relic, very little left, just a shred or two, then it’s gone, then we enter 1959. I don’t know how many of these years we’re going to have yet, before our Savior comes.

Time is short at any rate, Christ will return, or death will come, but in patience possess ye your souls, for there is a crown at the end of the way. Take heed that no man follows, no man takes thy crown but follow the Lord and trust Him and put your hand in His and He’ll lead you through.

The Son of God goes forth to war, the kingly crown to gain, his blood-red banner streams afar, who follows in his train. Who best can bear his cup of grief, triumphant over pain, God remembers the rest of it, who patient bears his cross, he follows in his train.

So, let’s follow in the train of the Savior this year, let’s expect trouble, let’s expect trouble. Don’t be like the newly commissioned second lieutenant that was thrown suddenly up to the battlefront. He let out a yell and started to run and said, they’re shooting at me. The tough old sergeant said, well, what are you up there for?

So, I say to you, they’ll be shooting at you this year, but what are you up there for anyhow? Of course we’ll be shot at. Some of us will have bullet holes in our ears. Before the year is over, if the Lord lays a hand on us and heals us, if we keep our hearts right and keep right inside, we can endure an awful lot of pressure from the outside. When you’re not right on the inside, you’ll collapse. When you’re right inside, no pressure can collapse you, but when you’re not right inside, you collapse like an eggshell.

So keep right inside, walk with God, make the Book, make the Book, I’ve decided that by the grace of God, I’m going to read the Book more and other things less. Study the Book, learn it, memorize passages. I’m memorizing the Book of Revelation, part of it at any rate. Let’s memorize, let’s study, let’s live by it and above all things, let’s obey and be prayerful, and God will lead us through. He will make the darkness light before us. He will make the crooked straight before us, and all our battles He will fight before us, and the high place He’ll bring down. Amen.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Repentance“

Complete Message in PDF FormatDownloaD

“Repentance”

January 4, 1959

Now, I want to talk today, this morning before the communion, on the 51st Psalm. We read it previously, perhaps a few of you came in late for it, very few. But it’s the 51st Psalm, and David that starts out, to have mercy upon me O God according to Thy lovingkindness and according unto the multitude of a tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Now, we come to the communion service, the first communion service of the New Year. And of course, we entered the new year. It’s 1959, the first Sunday of the new year. And there are some things we want from God and we want them legitimately. They are not the whimpering of spoiled children. They are the legitimate and appropriate desires of mature Christians. I’ll name about five or six things that we want. We want protection during this coming year. You and I can no more dare face the year without the protection of God than we dare face a thunderstorm or a blizzard without shelter.

Then we want guidance during this coming year. Every one of us will want guidance. We want personal guidance and we want providential guidance, because you will be sought, and your exploitation will be attempted by 10,000 persons who want to make something of you. You will be asked here and there, you will be. Suggestions will be offered to you by the scores, and you want guidance. And you have a right to want prosperity. Not financial prosperity necessarily, though that is not even wrong to desire that we might prosper financially.

Then we hope you will want growth. We hope you will want to fulfill the Scripture that says, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we hope you’ll want to make spiritual progress and advance in holiness. If you do, I believe you’re in the will of God. If you do not, then I’m afraid you have wasted the last year, because last year should have made us desirous of having spiritual progress the next year. And then this year we’re now in should prepare us to want more spiritual progress in the years that may lie ahead. And if we do not I say, if we are languid and perfunctory about all this, if even one of us, even one of us, it’s all then, we have wasted last year to a large degree. We have lived like a turtle or some other animal that barely vegetated. We have spiritually, merely vegetated, merely stayed alive.

Then, if this is true, and I think it is true that we do want during this time, a protection and guidance and prosperity and growth in grace and spirit to make spiritual progress and to advance in holiness and likeness to God, then one quality must be present to assure these benefits. And that one quality is true repentance, contrition. I wonder why we can’t see this, that repentance is not something you do and get over with. Repentance is something you feel. It is a state. It is contrition. And contrition is not something you feel and then get over with as you might take a shot of penicillin soon, to cure, to kill the bugs inside your blood and heal you have, a disease and then forget it. We cannot thus think of contrition. Contrition is rather a permanent state of mind. Flaring up or dying down as a fire might a little as we go along, but always present. The glow of it ought to be in our hearts always and it must be.

The 51st Psalm is a classic example of contrition. It had a historic reason for it. But it created a mood in which David lived. And we do well to let this Psalm create a mood for us. And to try to keep that mood, it’s far better than to try to seek comfort this coming year. If you will have decided, or secretly even decided that you’re going to enjoy yourself more this year, that you’re hoping to have more comforts, more conveniences and a better state of affairs, so you’ll comfort yourself and live better, then you haven’t properly, you haven’t learned Christ yet, as you should.

Now to enjoy ourselves, that’s the counsel of unbelief, to desire to do better, feel better, to be more consoled and to rest more and relax more and work less and have more of the comforts which we tell ourselves we have well, well earned. All right, if that’s your plan for the coming year, then that’s the counsel of unbelief. That’s, that’s what the rich man wanted. That’s what Demus was wanted. But that isn’t what the children of God ought to want. We ought to want guidance and protection and spiritual growth and advance in holiness whether we’re comforted or not. I don’t care whether I feel good this year or not. You know, you can get so busy with God, you don’t notice whether you’re feeling good or not. And if somebody asks you, how do you feel, you have to stop and ask and consult yourself to see if it’s worth the problem?

Well, this contrition is found here in Psalm 51. There are two things I want you to notice about it. One of them is that the writer says no good thing of himself. And he says only good of God. For after all, there are only two persons here. There was a lot of sin and a lot of involvement. David was involved with various persons and he’d sinned against a lot of people, against his country and against the people that trusted him. He had sinned a lot. There was a lot of involvement. But when David began to pray, he recognized that all that involvement was secondary. The Primary Person is present here too, then, David, he saw that there were just two persons here. I against Thee, Thee only have I sinned. Against Thee and I. That’s all David talked about.

Now, he said nothing good about himself. He offered no excuses. And he offered no defense. I believe this is greatly pleasing to God, to come to God without excuse, and without defense, I believe greatly pleases God. For God is pleased with some things and displeased with others that we do. And I believe the heart that comes to God without defense and without excuse, greatly pleases God. A woman who came to Jesus and asked him to do certain things for her. He looked at her in amazement and said, why, surely woman, great is thy faith. He was pleased with the woman. With others, He was displeased and said, oh ye of little faith. I think it’s pleasing to God to come to Him without excuse, without defense.

Then, he says only good of God. He doesn’t come to God whimpering or complaining or finding fault. He throws himself on God’s mercy. And I believe that’s the safest place in the universe, throw himself, throw ourselves on the mercy of God. From every stormy wind that blows, says Stowell’s song, from every stormy wind that blows, from every swelling tide of woes, there is a calm, a sure treat: Tis found beneath the mercy seat.

Now, the mercy seat is not a poetic hiding place. The mercy seat has a sharp theological meaning. It is, it is the cross, it is the mercy seat where Christ sits. It means to throw ourselves on the mercy of God without excuse and without personal buildup and without defense, and without any whimpering or complaining against the treatment God has given us; to come to Him thanking Him for every good thing and admitting frankly we deserved every bad one and throw ourselves on the mercy of Gods.

You know, the problem with us is, and the reason that our good resolves don’t last, it is a joke. It’s a cartoonist joke it. It is the joke of the comedian and the funny paper and all the rest that we make a resolution and break it. But the reason Christians make these resolutions and break them, whether it’s at New Year or whether it’s sometime in the middle of the year at some convention or revival meeting, is inadequate repentance. Inadequate repentance, that’s our trouble. To have sinned or be practicing sin and to know it and yet to be unable to feel sorry about it. I tell you, that’s worse than cancer. That’s worse than multiple sclerosis. Those things are physical, and they can even be healed, but you can’t heal this.

To sin, to practice sin, to be living with sin on you and to know it, and you to be unable to feel sorry about it. And, in order to feel sorry and be too weak to amend, that’s, that’s inadequate repentance. And inadequate repentance always is a sandy foundation. And all of your good intentions will fall apart and you will not make any progress if there is inadequate repentance there. I say, to feel sorry for our sins and yet not to be able to make any changes, or to know we have sinned and yet not even to feel sorry, this is greatly to aggravate our evil and compound the felony. And then to admire ourselves and to defend ourselves, it’s to deepen the intensity of sin and make it grave and critical. And I believe it’s greatly to displease God.

And then while trying to repent, secretly to desire to continue in the thing we’re trying to repent of. What inconsistency is this, what incongruous praying, what hypocrisy; that we’re trying to repent and secretly intending not to repent at all, but to go back and do the same thing over again. And to be so little concerned even while we’re repenting that we break off without concerned to eat or to sleep or to chat or to seek entertainment.

You know, Israel in the olden days when they were repenting, they put on sackcloth and ashes. Do you know what sackcloth is? It’s a gunny sack we call it now. It’s about as coarse a cloth as there is. Nobody would want to wear it. And if you wore it next to yourself, you’d be scratching continually and suffering after a while with a rash. And ashes, what about ashes? Nobody can say a good word for ashes. I can’t think of a good word to be said for ashes.

And Israel put on sackcloth and threw ashes on their heads, up into their hair, down their necks and down over their bodies. Why did they do that? Was there some sanctifying virtue in the sackcloth? No, they didn’t think that and you don’t think that. Nobody does. Did ashes have anything in it, ashes. No, ashes have nothing. There’s nothing in ashes or sackcloth. But what they meant was, O God, we have sinned and we mean to repent and we’re trying to repent and we want to repent and we’re willing to even lay aside even the common and legitimate pleasures. Even the legitimate pleasures, we relinquish them in order that you might know that we mean what we say. Instead of breaking off to eat or sleep or look at a TV program, why, they put sackcloth and sat and threw ashes on their heads. It looked silly, and it did not have any Biblical commandment. There was nothing in the law of Moses that they were to do it so far as I know. But they did it because they wanted themselves to know and they wanted God to know that their repentance was going to be adequate. They were ready to give up the legitimate things in order that they might make their repentance effective.

Now what is the uses, or are the uses of sorrow in repentance? For the Bible talks about sorrow and repentance. But I believe that sorrow chastens the soul. To sin and to get off easy and sin again and get off easy and to sin again and get off easy and continue, pretty soon you’ll get a habit. You get a habit of it, to sin, commit the sin of omission. Any sin of omission and to get off easy, and then to commit it again and continue to commit it, pretty soon we’ve established tracks for our hearts to run on.

And because sin didn’t cost us anything, but we cheerfully said, well, Jesus paid it all. He’s forgiven me and it cost us nothing, we don’t know how bad it is. We don’t sense it. And so, sorrow is the chastening of the soul. Sorrow is the sackcloth. A man who had worn sackcloth for two or three days, he didn’t forget it. And he hesitated twice before he went back to do that thing again, for he remembered the rash and the itching and sleepless nights and the sneezing from the ashes and the dust and gritty ashes in his hair, he remembers that. He punished himself a little.

Now, I know self-punishment does not atone for sin, but it does serve to make a man sick of it. And that’s why Paul said there was a sorrow not to be repented of. He that sorrows unto repentance, sorrows with a sorrow not to be repented of. Nobody ever repented of having repented. Nobody ever did yet repent of having repented. And the chasing of the soul by the Holy Ghost in the sorrow of contrition, helps to cure us so we don’t want to do this thing again. It’s a kind of therapy, a cure, a psychological cure, to make us sick of the condition that we’d gotten ourselves into. I believe that we would do well my serious-minded friends. I believe we would do well wo enter this, vibrant, living, dangerous new year, this threatening, louring new year, to enter it in a state of contrition.

But I would close by asking you to beware of contrition without hope. Because contrition without hope becomes remorse, and remorse is sick repentance. Judas did not repent. But Judas felt remorse. The repentance of the man Judas was a sick repentance and the result was he simply tormented himself to death, went out and committed suicide and knew the foretaste of hell before they went there. That’s sick repentance, which is contrition without hope, I want to warn you against it. I want to warn you of the frivolity, the spiritual frivolity which allows you to go on and on carelessly on your way without checking on yourself. But I also want to warn you, that if you allow yourself to become so serious and so heavy hearted, that there’s no hope in it. Then your repentance is a sick repentance. It’s self torment and it’s not the repentance of faith.

True Repentance is three things. Let me give them to you and then we’ll close. True repentance is a realistic self judgment, a realistic self judgment. I do not believe God is pleased to have me say worse things about myself and it is true, if indeed I could imagine anything worse than is true. I don’t believe it pleases God. I have heard and I’ve smiled, I’ve heard young girls, say 14-15 years old, stand and testify, very emotionally moved and eloquently tell what vile wretches, what terribly depraved, deeply sinful and abandoned creatures they have been. And I smiled to myself and said, God bless the little honey. I suppose the worst thing she ever did in her life was slap her little sister or drink Coca Cola. But, you know, she was calling herself names, abusing herself because that was the proper thing to do you know, where she came from. That was the proper thing to do. Never, never lie about yourself, not even not even to please what you think is pleasing God. Be realistic in your self judgement. David said, let everyone, not David but Paul said, let every man think soberly of himself. Not more highly than they ought to, but soberly.

So, judge yourself. That’s the word, judge yourself. Judgment isn’t a 100% condemnation. Judgment is an appraisal of the depths of the guilt and the handing out of punishment in keeping with the degree of guilt. If it’s only secondary murder, then they’re not going to hang a man. They’re going to give judgment according to the depths and degree and intensity of the sin. And so, we must be realistic about this thing. And then, when we’ve been judged ourselves realistically, we must make full determination to change, any sweet talk before God about how bad we are that isn’t accompanied by a quiet determination to change, is not repentance at all, but nothing else.

Then there should be a third thing and that is a cheerful confidence in Christ. Ah, the devil must grind his ugly teeth together when he sees a Christian so penitential that he’s tremblingly before his God and pleading for mercy, and yet sees a smile on his face at the same time. Because the smile is there, out of cheerful confidence in Jesus Christ the Lord. The same day that he wrote Psalm 51 he also wrote Psalm 103. And these are the words of Psalm 103. No remorse here. No sick penitence here, but wholesome sound repentance followed by cheerful hope and good expectation of God’s forgiveness. The Lord is merciful, said this same David, and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, nag. Have you had friends about you, husband or wife or anybody, father, mother that would just nag continually? Your faults were a subject of continual nagging. God will not nag. He will not always chide. Neither will He keep His anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. And as far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.

When I first came to the city of Chicago, there was a great pulpit orator in this city by the name of Dr. Frederick Shannon. Maybe somebody would remember him. Dr. Frederick Shannon. He preached somewhere in one of the downtown churches. I used to hear him occasionally on the radio. He was one of the old-fashioned orators, an Irish orator. He would talk about the robin as the bird with the sun down on his breasts, I remember hearing him. And he said that once he was preaching in his church and there was a great retired professor of mathematics sitting down near the front. And he was preaching from the text, as far as the east is from the west so hath He removed our transgressions from us.

And he spoke out and said, Dr. So and So, how far is the east from the west? And he said, instinctively, the old man reached in his pocket, pulled out a pad and a pencil. Then he stopped, and put them in back and looked up at the preacher and grinned. You can’t figure that Brother. How far is the east from West? Nobody knows. Not all the mathematicians in the world can tell you that. And that’s how far God takes sin away. For like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame. He remembers that we are dust. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children. Bless the Lord ye His angels, blessing in all places of His dominion.

Let us enter the new year in a state of cheerful contrition. Before God, contrite always. But also, cheerfully hopeful that our God is forgiving, kind and loving and tender. He’ll never deal with us as we deserve, but deal with us out of His own heart. That’s my hope for this year, that I’ll be dealt with out of God’s heart. God will never look down and say let’s look Tozer over, so we’ll decide this year what to give him. Uh-uh! If He did, oh, I’d be remorseful to the place of sick, pathological penitence, but would never have hope. But He will look in His own heart and say, out of my heart, I decide how good I’m going to be to him.

So, that is our hope friends this year. God will treat you the way God is, not the way you are, provided of course that you have done as I’ve suggested here, that you have realistically judged yourself and determinedly changed to please the will of God and then cheerfully hope. I believe that God will keep us during this year, and that we shall grow in grace. We’ll have His protection and His kind watchfulness in all the days ahead.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“So Teach us to Number our Days 1“

PDF Format DownloadDownloaD

“So Teach Us to Number Our Days 1”

December 29, 1957

So teach us, or teach us so, to number our days. Or, if Thou will teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Now, I have a negative and a positive sermon. I have one for tonight that I think will be helpful and cheerful for everybody. This morning I want to talk to you. I trust you’re intellectually and spiritually mature enough to be talked to plainly. And let me begin by saying that this we’ll consider the last day, though it is not quite by two days, the last day of the year. The last Sunday it is. And I shall continue to talk as though it were the end of the year. And you will make such mental adjustments as may be necessary as I go along.

But this is the last Sunday of the year, which I have no doubt, when seen in the wrong perspective of history, will prove to be or have been among the most momentous of the Christian era for a number of reasons, which you may read anywhere and which I’ll not take your time to enumerate now.

If you have been listening to the radio or reading the newspaper or if you have been a reader of Newsweek, Time, United States News and World Report, or any other of the magazines or journals that chronicle the news, you will have been finding out what we call, or learning what we call current history. But in this last year you and I have been writing a history which is infinitely more important than anything that took place in the Kremlin or Washington or London or Bonn or Paris. We have been writing a history which will probably not yet get into the books. But it is the history of our own lives that we’ve been writing. And that history will stand accurate and forever.

If you were to sit down and write up the last year and try an autobiography or journal, a diary for the last year, it would not be quite accurate and would likely be forgotten before many years. The reason it would not be accurate would be two reasons. It would be two. One would be a faulty memory, and the second would be that nobody quite likes to tell the truth about himself. And then, we would have to discount your journal or mine a little because we are more or less prejudiced in favor of the subject, and our memory would be faulty. Therefore, it would not be accurate.

But this which you and I have been writing, for though it is past, it will be there in our future. And it is being written with the thoughts we have entertained, the words that we have uttered, the deeds that we have done or left undone. How we dare not flip this book shut as a child flips shut a Mother Goose book or a comic book, as something that is amusing, but scarcely serious. We must close this book of ours reverently. And we must put it carefully away knowing that we shall see it again.

Now, think about this last year. During the year, we have been given a number of gifts from God. We have been given 365 days; 365 times since this time last year, the sun did rise and the sun did set. We have been given also, 52 weeks with 52 Sundays and 52 Wednesdays. Why do I mention 52 Sundays and 52 Wednesdays? Well, I mentioned them because we claim to be Christian. We say that we’re a part of the stream of Christian tradition and thought. And while we’re not Sabbatarians, yet Paul said on the first day of the week, let him. And the church has, all down these centuries except for splintered, little marginal splinters, the church has been meeting and worshipping on the day commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and not the seventh day which is the Jewish Sabbath.

And we have had 52 of these given to us last year, in which we could take time out to cultivate our souls and seek the face of God and hear the preaching of the Word and sing together the songs of Zion. And then we’ve had 52 Wednesdays, but somebody says, what’s Wednesday. Let every man decide in his own heart what the day is. I’ve read that too. I know that’s there. And I know that Wednesday isn’t any holier than Monday or Saturday at 4:15. I know all that. But I also know that Jesus went into the temple at stated times as His customize was. He wasn’t too big to recognize the custom of His times. And I remember that Paul went out to the riverbank where a prayer was want to be made.

There are those who say, well, you can’t bring my neck under a yoke from which our fathers escaped. I refuse to come under your yoke. You said Wednesday is a prayer meeting day. And then you’ll condemn me if I do not come, and thus you lay your conscience upon my conscience and we get quite a talk. But isn’t it quite significant that the apostles, those great big men, those apostles, Peter, who went up to the housetop at the time of prayer. And Paul who went to the riverbank at the time of prayer though nothing in the law commanded it. They accepted it as an opportunity. And they fit it in with the people of their time, and they worshipped their God together. They weren’t too big to do it.

And my brethren, let me say that the Christian who so interprets the New Testament as to free himself from the spiritual obligation to mingle with the children of God a few times a week, that Christian is not big, he’s little. And he is proving his littleness by doing what he does. And though he says, I am a free man under grace, He is using the grace of God to cultivate his own carnality. The apostles and the Lord of all the apostles recognized that in every year, God gives them 52 days or 52 or more times, during the weekdays, during the week when they can worship God. It’s once a week, or if it’s three or five or ten times in the early church it was every day.

Well, these are the times and I’m not going to ask, but you’ve been writing history my young friend. And my older friend, you’ve been writing history. And if you were writing it, you’d no doubt could put in some footnotes to clear yourself completely. But the history is being written by words and thoughts and deeds done and deeds left undone.

Well, in addition to the 365, or not added to them of course, but as part of them, you had 8,760 hours given to you last year, 8760 hours. If you just had 8,760 dollars and that was, and you weren’t to have any more, you’d watch it. And you wouldn’t say, oh, it’ll only cost a dollar. And yet, I hear people say, it only takes an hour. Well, there aren’t many of them. Twenty-nine hundred and twenty of those hours we’ve spent in unconsciousness, most of us, and some of you have spent considerably more. And twenty-nine hundred and twenty again we spend at work. And when you add going and coming, and getting ready, why, we have very many more than that taken off, leaving us maybe, maybe 2,500 hours. Twenty-five hundred hours that we weren’t working or asleep or going or coming.

What were we doing? Well, there were certain things we had to do and that we properly needed to do. There was for instance: eating, drinking, bathing, dressing, and the little amenities that are ours by virtue of the fact that we’re part of a social order. And that cuts down those hours a great deal more. And so how few of the 8,000 hours that God gave us last year, have we had to prepare for the last hour? And how few have we had to prepare to meet our God. And yet the hours, oh, there were plenty of them. There were plenty of them, a couple of thousand anyway. I’m just wondering. I’ll not ask what we did with them. But anyway, during those hours we were writing history, I was writing history and so were you. And that is written in the Book of Deeds. It’s written in the Book of Deeds. And though we are redeemed from hell by the blood of Christ, and though His righteousness is imputed to us, still, He is not turning us loose like unbroken calves or colts from the stall to run our wild way. We’re disciples of Jesus. And He’s given us these hours to learn of Him and to prepare ourselves for the last hour and to meet God.

Then have you noticed this little thing too, that during this last year your heart was busy. Your heart, that vital engine that pumps away most of the time you don’t think about it all until you hear somebody died of coronary occlusion, and then you think about your heart for 10 minutes. Or you read an article in Reader’s Digest about the heart and then you think about it for an hour. But mostly, it just goes right on.

And you don’t think about it. But it’s that vital engine which must not stop. It must not stop. If it stops, you can’t keep going. It must not stop. And each hour it beats 4200 times if you’re normal physically. And each day It beats 100,800 times and last year, you know how often your heart beat? Now, mine didn’t. My hearts about 62 instead of 72. I always was slow about things. And my heart beats usually about 62 times to the minute. So, I got caught short here, but if you’re an average 6 or 72er, I counted at 70 to make it so there would be nobody complaining. Your heart beat 36,792,000 times last year. And if it had just missed two or three or four of those, you wouldn’t be here and the total wouldn’t have been pile up. You would have been among those who went from us last year, and whom we reverently laid away to await the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, those were the gifts God gave us last year. That’s not all, but those are the ones we usually don’t think about: 365 days and 52 weeks and 8760 hours, and 36,792,000 heartbeats. God gave them to us last year. And you know this? All of it was the pure mercy of God.

I wish I could live another 100 years just to find out a few things; find out some of the wrong things that I’ve been taught, and to find out the things that I hadn’t learned yet. For instance, I think I’d stop making a distinction between the things that are of God’s mercies and the things that are not. Somebody says, well, I go out and I work and I get my money. I buy my house. I buy my goods. And I walk on the earth and I, the sun shines on me and the rain falls and I drink and eat and live. And that’s not the mercy of God. But if I get saved and accept Jesus Christ, that’s the mercy of God.

My brethren, did you ever stop to think that God never acts any other way except in mercy? And that it just took as much of the mercy of God to keep your heart beating 36 million times last year as it does to save you by the death of Jesus on calvary? Did you stop to think that, that they, ever stopped to think that the 365 days God gave you last year were as surely an act of His mercy as when He gave you eternal life through Jesus Christ your Savior?

Did you ever stop to think that every hour He gave you and every heartbeat and every breath you drew were acts of God’s mercy. David knew it. And David said, have mercy upon me O God and hear my prayer. Why, he meant that even God’s hearing a man’s prayer was an act of mercy. But we divide the world, we divide our lives up into two divisions, and we’re schizophreniacs, religious schizophreniacs. We say, well, now this part, this is the secular part over here. This over here, I get that by virtue of the fact that I’m a man born in the world, it’s mine, and that I have a right to it and all the rest.

Did you ever think that when you first sinned, your first sin, you violated every right to everything that you got when you came into the world? When you consciously sinned, your first volitional sin, and did it out of your own will, you forfeited your rights and gave up your rights and died under law, and that therefore, anything God gives you is an act of mercy. That car you drive, you say, I sweat for that, but who gave your heart the impulse to beat on and on and on and on while you sweat? You say that house God knows I’ve sweat for that. Who gave you the power to sweat for that house? Who breathed life into you and even though you had sinned, kept you alive and kept you going?

No, my brother. Don’t you take all these gifts of God as being natural and only eternal life has been merciful. Why, every gift God gives you is as much a gift of grace as when He sent his Son to die on the cross. Each day is a day of grace. Don’t forget it. It’s another day of grace. Long time ago, you were sentenced to die. When the political prisoner in England years ago was sentenced, “I sentence you,” he said to the judge, “to die. And nature sentences you, Your Honor, to die,” said the prisoner and walked boldly out of the room.

My friends we’re all under sentence and every day is a day of grace. Why doesn’t the sentence, why doesn’t the sentence fall? The trial is over. The verdict has been brought in. The day that thou eatest, thou shall surely die. There is no use for any more evidence. There is no use for any more pleas from prosecutors or, or defense. No reason for it, it’s already settled. God the Lord hath spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof.

Therefore, you’re already under sentence. But the day of grace, every day is a day of grace whether it’s raining or whether the sun gets out of bed before you do. And you wake to a beautiful, clear day. It’s a day of grace. It’s another chance. It’s another chance to change. It’s another chance to change. And it’s another proof of God’s patience. How utterly patient God is.

One of the great faults of my life, one of the great faults of my life that I have not yet conquered, I hope you’ll pray for me, is that I can’t be patient with people when I see they’re so obviously wrong. But oh, how patient God has been with me and with you. And we’ve been so obviously wrong, and yet God has waited and waited and waited. He waits that He might be gracious it says in Isaiah. And that long, long, long waiting of God and grace and mercy and love. So, every time the sun rises, instead of getting up and grumpy, we ought to get up and say, thank God, thank God it’s one more day. One more day I didn’t deserve.

You know, we take too much for granted. We Christians, we take too much for granted. We say at the beginning of each year, well, we’re, especially around watch tonight, we’re pretty sober. And we say this may be the last. And ominous echoes of broadcasts that we’ve heard and news reports come to us and we say, this may be the last. But then, it isn’t the last and we wear out another year and it doesn’t wear us out. And we come up to the end of another year, and we say I was foolish last year for worrying.

Like when I was a boy, I used to go home sometimes from down a little way where I would be, maybe at the store or something down in the little town near. And I would have to come through a dark place we called Wildcat Hollow. I always said that they called it that because there were no wildcats in it. There never had been any in my time nor I think in my father’s time, but it was known as Wildcat Hollow. And there was a road or path that went through it and the overarching trees. It was completely pitch dark. And as a young boy, 12,13 or 14 years old, naturally, I was scared.

And I used to make good vows and good intentions and pray a little as I went through Wildcat Hollow and then, when I came out of Wildcat Hollow into the moonlight, I forgot all about it. I forgot that I was religious and forgot I needed God when I got out over the dark places. Occasionally an owl would let go just off to your right, and it sounded like the devil himself and you were terribly frightened. And then your little heart sent up a little more prayer. But the moonlight somehow rather took all your fear away. And as you walked across the green sward in the moonlight, you soon got thinking about something else.

People are like that as the year ends and a new one begins. We’re a bit serious. We say, well, this could have been the last year, but then it wasn’t. We said that five years ago and 10 years ago. We’re going to say it again now. But did you know my friend that that’s likely to make us bold and arrogant, very likely to. For don’t forget that all things have an end. The pitcher goes at last once too often to the well. The old tree braves one too many winter storms and comes down with a great shout in the forest and echoes across the hill. And the heart beats weaker and sputters out. It’s been doing its little job so long we think, oh well, what’s this worry? What’s this worry. I don’t believe what I read. Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But all things have an end. And the pitcher goes to the well and the tree falls to the ground and the heart sputters out.

So, teach us to number our day said Moses. Teach us so to number our days. Teach us to number our days O God. You know that the Christian should be of all people the most serious. He should also be serene and brave. I’m always bothered when I see a Christian stampeding. Always when a Christian gets hysterical, I’m bothered. Why should a Christian get hysteric? Why should he get bothered? He should be serious. People who live for fun and live for entertainment and pleasure, if they see it going from them, they get frantic. But there’s no reason for a serious-minded Christian to get frantic. The Christian should be serious and brave and serene. He may see humor in things. I don’t say he shouldn’t. And my concept of a Christian doesn’t fit exactly with that of the monks of the early centuries. I do not think it’s a sin to smile. God made it possible for the muscles of the face to pull themselves in a little web, coordinated web that makes the face look pleasant, and I don’t think it’s a sin. But a Christian ought to be serious and brave, and his attitude toward life ought to be serious. My great, my great grief over the modern churches is that her attitude toward life is not serious. She doesn’t take it serious. Christians should be realistic and unafraid.

A Christian shouldn’t have to have things kept from him. The Christian has a cancer. He ought to be told it, he ought to be told it. If there’s anything wrong with him, He should know what. The Bible says this or that. He should know that. You shouldn’t live in a fool’s paradise to keep things from him. I trust my family will never keep anything from me. I’m a grown man. I’ve lived and suffered and sinned and been forgiven and pardoned and cleansed and I love God. And I don’t want to live in a paradise of idiots and be happy only because I’m ignorant. I want to know. I want to know however I feel about it.  I want to be realistic about this whole thing. For a Christian has no superstitions. And he has no fears. A Christian isn’t afraid. He may have the normal instincts. Jesus had an instinct that when He knew He was going to die, He sweat blood, because He was going to have the sins of the world poured upon Him.

And if I should suddenly poke my finger toward your eye, you will go that way. And the bravest soldier that ever lived in all the world would recoil if you started to stick a pin into his eye. So there’s such a thing as the reaction. It’s normal. That’s one thing, but it’s quite another thing to go about in fear. Go about in fear, afraid of dead people, afraid of numbers, afraid of tokens and superstitious things.

Oh, my friend, the voice of God sounds from above reassuring His people. Reassuring His people, lo, I am with you all the days. And I will hold thy right hand saying, fear thou not for I am with thee. I will not forsake thee. When thou passeth through the waters I will be with thee and through the fire, it shall not kindle upon thee. And down to old age all my people shall prove my gracious, unchangeable love.

My brethren and sisters we’re not to be afraid. God’s people ought to be great grateful. You can’t be grateful if you’re shallow. And you can’t be free from fear if your shallow. But the plans you’ve made for after church tonight, I don’t know what they may be. But if the plans you’ve made for after church are all filling your mind. If those are suddenly caught away from you, you will be disconsolate. But if God is enough, if God is enough, if you’re a Christian indeed, and nobody can take away your plans from it. I plan to die in grace and go to see the face of my Savior. You can take that away. Nobody can take it away.

Well, a Christian doesn’t plan to stay here, for he knows he’s a pilgrim. I thought about this yesterday or Friday when I was running over all this, my getting ready for today. I really got this up on the train coming home from Nyack two weeks ago. But I put it in shape and rethought it for you. And I thought about this. The difference between a religious pilgrim, so called, who makes his long trip to Rome and returns, or to Mecca and returns, or to the Ganges River and returns, those are the pilgrims. And almost every religion has its holy place, and people go there and are considered very wonderful if they’ve made a trip there. The Mohammedans, and I think the Buddhists have a certain headdress that they, for which they indicate that this holy man has made his pilgrimage and returned.

But you know that a Christian pilgrimage is one way, and he ain’t coming back. He isn’t coming back. He’s not going to go to heaven and return. He’s not coming back until the restitution of all things, when God has made the world over and changed it and all that the prophetic teachers know so little about and described so fully. But in that day, my brother, we may come back. But, in the meantime, we’re not planning to come back. We’re not going there and return. It’s a one-way trip, this pilgrimage, because there we’re going to our Savior and be in where– the house of the Lord forever.

So, let’s be cheerful What is that song? Come let us tune our cheerfully. What is that song? We could sing that couldn’t we? I think that’s a wonderful song. Anybody that says hymns are draggy they don’t know what they’re talking about. There’s more lilt in this and more dance and joy in this and there is an all the rock and roll that ever rolled and rocked. That song we’re going to sing next, Come let us join our cheerful ayes as we surround the throne. Brother, if ever there was joy, you could have felt the swift beat of the angel wings in that song.

So, let’s be cheerful. We’re traveling home and we know where we’re going. We know where we’re going. We’ve had a good year, we’ve had a moment this year. We’ve had a year of writing history. But we’ve also had on our side God the Father Almighty and Jesus Christ, the Mediator, and also the Comforter, the Holy Ghost. And we still have them there with us. So let’s be wise and let’s be triumphant. Let’s be grave and let’s be serious. But let’s tune our cheerful ayes and let’s be happier than Elvis Presley. Let’s be happier than all the Pat Boones and Rosemary Clooneys in the world.

Father, in a fear drenched world, we keep our heads above it and worship the Lamb that was slain. And thank Thee for mercy and grace and another day that’s ours. Thank Thee Heavenly Father together. We rejoice that we’re Thine. And we join with angels and saints and beasts and living creatures and elders and serphim and cherubim and worship the God who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and made us kings and priests unto God. And now may grace and mercy and peace be with us through Jesus Christ our Lord.