Tag: Obedience

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date January 9, 2022

“In Christ, a New Creation“

Transcript of Sermon in PDF Format DownloaD

“ In Christ, a New Creature ”

September 21, 1958

Now, in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, beginning with verse fourteen, for the love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead. And that He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again. Wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now, henceforth, know we Him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.

Now, Paul says here that he once knew Christ after the flesh. And this is not meant to be an answer to the scholar’s dilemma, the problem of whether Christ and Paul had ever met in the flesh. He said that though we have known Christ after the flesh, and Paul’s predilection for the use of the plural “we” for “I” has led some people to think that this was a testimony on Paul’s part that he had known Christ while Christ was alive, yet before His crucifixion. Now, this is one of the things that we will have to leave unsettled until the day when we know a little more than we know now. But it is not important, because what is considered here hasn’t anything to do with personal acquaintance or even friendship. For Paul saying we once knew Christ after the flesh means we once regarded Him from a human point of view. Whether he had ever met Him or not, I do not know. I would be inclined to doubt that. But whether he had or not, what Paul said here is, though we once regarded Jesus as a man and tried to appraise Him as a man and think about Him as a man, now we do so no more.

This appraising our Lord or this attempt to do it has provided rather vain employment for natural men who are with a religious bent all down the centuries. They try to capture the essence of the Master or they try to explain His person or appraise His genius or by some technique of analysis, they try to understand Him. What was He, a Jew? They say, well, no. Yes and no. He was born of the seed of Abraham and of the line of David, and his mother was a Jewess whose lineage could be traced. So that makes Jesus a Jew according to the flesh. That much we know. But the religion of Jesus, the religion of Judaism as it was practiced in Jesus’ time, was as far apart as the poles. So, it is not proper to say that Jesus was a Jew, meaning that Jesus was part and parcel of the Judaism of the time of Jesus. He was not. But He was a Jew in that He was a Jew in the flesh of Abraham.

There are those who say Christ was not a Jew. And of course, that’s a great mistake. It’s a modern heresy and an error, but yet, He was not a Jew. There was nothing about Jesus like the Pharisees or the Herodians, Sadducees, the Essenes, or any of those who were the Jews of Christ’s day. Neither did He have about Him anything of the Greek philosophies. They’ve wondered what was, did He learn from the Greek? The answer is no. Our Lord God, Jesus, being God, knew of course everything the Greeks knew and infinitely more. But His doctrines partake not of the Greek’s doctrine. There’s no trace nor flavor of Greek philosophy in the teachings of our Lord. Neither was he an oriental. They sometimes try to classify the Jews as Orientals and the Bible is an oriental book. But anybody who has read even in the most cursory manner in the religions of the Orient know, that there is a flavor in the gospels completely absent. And there is something in the Oriental religions wholly different from the teachings of our Savior. There is no likeness at all.

So, this Jesus has been the despair of Adam’s race. A few have worshipped Him and had their hearts satisfied. But the others have tried to explain Him and have run upon the rocks. They can’t do it and so they go into despair. The man Paul said, henceforth know we Him no more. Henceforth, we consider Him not according to the flesh. We regard Him not from a mere human point of view. You see, Paul had met the triumphant Christ on the road. The result had been conversion, illumination and transformation. The man Paul was completely changed. And he fully accepted Christ as God and Redeemer. And this complete change of viewpoint resulted concerning Christ.

So, Paul said, that I see Him no more as a mere man. I see Him as the redeeming God, the Head of a new race, whose death has doomed the old life. For said Paul, if He died for all and are all dead. His resurrection had established the new life. The inadequacy of a merely earthly Christ, we can’t over emphasize it or overstate it. This is the time when Christ is very chummy for everybody. But the Christ of homey companionability is not the Christ of the New Testament. He’s not the Christ of the throne or the Christ of the glory. The Christ of the feminine charm who is sweet but helpless and bewildered among real men. Christ who is the idealist who died for His ideal but failed, and whose religion can never be lived. Christ the martyr who gave all and died in a noble and praiseworthy attempt to change man. And Christ the wonderful one by comparison and by some pulpit orators spend half their time drawing comparisons between Christ and somebody else, Christ and Shakespeare, Christ and Plato, Christ and Caesar.

I believe that all this fawning upon the human Christ is little short of an insult to His Majesty, because you see, we cannot compare the incomparable. We dare not attempt it. Comparing that which cannot be compared, that’s what we’re trying to do. Jesus Christ stands alone. We compare Him with nobody for His is the incomparable Christ.

Now, the man of God said, though we once knew Him after their flesh, we know not only Christ no more after the flesh, but we know no man after the flesh. Now, what did he mean there? He didn’t mean he had no human acquaintances. He meant in the kingdom of God, mere human standards are no longer valid. Human standards are valid on Earth, but they’re not valid in the kingdom of God. The standards of race, they are not valid standards. We cannot separate races into colors and say this is superior, this is a little further down the scale, this is higher. We cannot do that. We dare not do that because there is no superior race.

We’re all made of one blood. There’s no superior color. In the kingdom of God, there’s no such thing as race or color. There is neither Jew or Gentile or Scythian or bondman nor freeman. We are all one in Christ Jesus and new people that has been raised above race and color, physical beauty, size and strength and cultural levels and wealth and education and position. Not one of these counts in the kingdom of God, not one. Even in James day, the church had forgotten that. At least parts of the church had forgotten it. And they were busy praising some men who wore big rings and had much gold and looking down upon those who are poor. And James wrote a very scathing chapter in which he told him to cut that out. That God’s people were judged by their faith. They were rich according to faith. And that men should in the church of Christ not be judged according to their bank account, their education, their social level or color. They should be judged according to the faith they had.

And so we must judge, and the church of Christ must judge. And as men differ from men and men do differ from each other in the church, we’re not all alike. The church of Christ does not consist of one dead level of conformity. In the church of Christ, we differ from each other. The star differs from another star in glory yonder. And in the great day when Christ shall come back to judge the world, we’ll find that we’re not all alike. Some are 60-fold, some 30-fold, some 100-fold, never a man shall be rewarded according as he hath done. So, the church should remember that.

But the difference in the church of Christ is not a difference by the old standards, by the old judgments of mortal flesh. According to the flesh are the key words there, key phrase. The church should put a different estimate upon men. We should judge men according to their faith and the man of God said the church should do that. We should judge them according to their love. We should appraise them according to the purity of their lives. We should judge them according to their generosity, according to their unselfishness, according to their unselfish Christ’s likeness. And we should not judge them according to the flesh.

Nothing else comes in the kingdom of God Paul says so, nothing else comes. The church I suppose, is still having a hard time to remember that her Savior was a peasant. Still having a hard time to remember that her Savior never had a degree from any college. It is still very difficult for us to keep in mind that our Savior was born in a manger among cattle. That the first voice you heard after the crooning voice of His mother was the sound of the lowing of oxen or the braying of donkeys.

It’s very hard for us to remember that he was born, not born in the beautiful, softly colored manger and stable of the Christmas cards. He was born in a dirty, smelly, stable, in the manger part no doubt on the straw. But He was born there nevertheless in that dirty place. The world doesn’t like to believe it and the church doesn’t like to believe it, but it is so. If He had been born up on a high level, it would have instantaneously condemned everybody beneath him. But He was born so low down, and anybody can come down. If we had to have a million dollars to be saved, it would rule out practically everybody except a handful. But if you don’t have to have a cent, anybody can come. Because that’s a simple matter. Anybody can have nothing, but not everybody can have a million dollars.

So, if we had to have an IQ of 180 and been able to appreciate all the great philosophy and art of the world; if Christ had been born on that kind of level, it would have discouraged every common man in all the wide world who read the story of the gospel. But the Man was born in a manger among the lowing cattle. He had nothing. And he grew up helping His father in a carpenter shop, his supposed father. So, that settles it for everybody. That’s why you can preach Christianity in a coal mine or among the naked savages of New Guinea. We know no more any man after the flesh. Our judgments are not earthly judgments. They’re heavenly judgments and spiritual judgments.

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, he continues. Old things have passed away and all things have become new. Redemption, you see, is not an improvement of the old order. Christ never attempts to improve Adam’s flesh. If we could only remember that. This closely ties in with what I said last Sunday morning, that the old vessel was always with us. And if you could improve yourself and you were consciously improved, it would be a source of pride to you and like the seraphim and cherub rather that covers, perhaps you would fall in sin, because you would regard yourself, you’d become self-regarding.

In psychology they call that narcissism. The looking in and on upon and admiring yourself, from the old legend that a god by the name of Narcissus looked at his image in the glass or in the water, flowing water or still water, and admired himself so he turned into a flower. That’s where we got the narcissus. Those old Greeks having gods and reasons for everything. But narcissism, looking in on yourself, that marrying yourself, that’s what would happen to you and me if God improved the own flesh, but he doesn’t. He just lets the old flesh lie around but inside the flesh, he puts a jewel.

You know, they used to have a saying back in the days, oh, even in the days of Shakespeare, that in the head of every toad there was a diamond. A jewel in the head of the toad. I don’t know why some sharp-eyed fellow didn’t run that down and gather a few toads and disprove it, but they believed it. They believed the toad carried a jewel in his forehead. Now, that isn’t true unless you first put the jewel there. But I do know it’s true that in every Christian there is a jewel and redemption doesn’t improve the old order, it creates a new order. And it incorporates the personality, the individuality, the soul, the spirit, of the old order into the new and thus completely displaces it. It’s supersedence of the old by the new. And all things become new; a new origin, we are born of the Spirit; a new Father, God is now our Father; a new heart, I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh; new thoughts, new values, new desires, new ambitions, new pleasures.

Every Christian ought to about every, say every six months, take a few hours off, go alone and say don’t bother me now unless it’s a matter of life and death. Get down before God with his open Bible and appraise himself and see whether he is indeed a new man, whether his old values are changing, whether his old desires are going and new ones are forming, whether old ambitions are passing away, whether their old pleasures are passing. You ought to do that. We ought to do that.

And if we find that we’ve slowed down, and looking ourselves over we find there’s no improvement in our spiritual lives over a year ago or six months ago, we ought to do something about it. Not the improvement, understand, of you, but the improvement of your spiritual life, of your desires, ambitions, love, faith. Forgiveness, patience, meekness, modesty, generosity, all these should improve. They’re the growth of the new creature in you.

So these are the new people. And God is getting ready for a new day. Behold He says in Revelation, God maketh all things new. And so, God is getting a new people ready for a new day, to inhabit a new kingdom, to inhabit new heavens and new earth. And we shall be in the new heaven and new earth and shall sing a new song before the throne, a new song, Worthy is the Lamb. A song that never has been composed yet. Palestrina, Handel, nobody has composed that song yet. We get a little trace of what it is going to be like and we know the theme. The theme is going to be the Worthy Lamb beside the throne. That’s the theme, but the song hasn’t been composed. And they sang a new song. A song that not even David with all his genius ever composed.

So, there’s new people on the earth. We ought to remember that more and more now as we see the day approaching and more and more, cause we’re all mixed up. Religion is now all mixed up. What I saw coming is now pretty much on us, that liberalism and tolerance and the broad religious latitude and Aryan spirit that takes in everything is pretty much on this now. And we’re going to have to grit our teeth and set our jaw and trust God and stand, and stand for New Testament Christianity in the midst of the whirling billows of mixed-up religion.

I heard a interview on the air the other day. A man was being interviewed. He is going to call together a conference of world religions, and they’re going to come from everywhere. Buddhists are going to send representatives, Muhamadins, Shintoists, Persians, Catholic, Jew, Protestant, and all the other minor religions of the world are going to send representatives. The National Council of Churches is having representatives there, I think, and the Jews and all. He’s calling them together. And they’re going to try to work something out where we can get together instead of being apart; we can be united instead of separated.

Well, I could have told them that long ago, if they would just let me read a chapter from the Book of Revelation to them. I knew that was coming. But now, hear it boldly declared, learned man, geniuses, religious geniuses, going to bring us all together. There to stand and say, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and I don’t believe in the god of the heathen. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and I don’t believe in any of your synthetic saviors. I do not believe in Adam’s flesh. I believe in a new creation. You’re going to be just about as popular at that convention as a communist would be at a tea party of the Daughters of the American Revolution. They won’t be in the world be welcome, but I don’t suppose any of them will be there. I know one that won’t be.

No, my brethren, we are, the religions getting together now. We’re stroking each other’s back. And here’s the man of God with his sword and he cut sharp down through the middle and says, on this side, after the flesh, on this side, the new creation created in Christ Jesus. They are as far apart as the gulf that separated the rich man and Lazarus. So, we want to be loving and charitable, and we don’t want to join the crowd of those who condemn.

Years ago, a brother wrote a tract, “Come to Jesus.” It was a beautiful, tender appeal to sinners to come to Jesus. Then, he got into a religious controversy, and he wrote a hot blistering attack on somebody. He had it all finished except the title. And, a friend of his, he showed the manuscript to a friend. He said, here’s the manuscript of my new attack on so and so. And he said, I have got everything finished but the title. I can’t think of a title. Could you help me? His friend read it. Yes, he said, I think I could tell you a good title, something that would cover the subject pretty well. He said, well, alright, what is it? He says, call it, “Go to Hell by the author of Come to Jesus.” Well, that’s been told, and I rather understand that. I never want to adopt a go to hell attitude. Who am I to send men off. Only the Lord God can send men there. But I do know my testimony. I know what I’m supposed to say. I know what I’m supposed to stand for, what I’m supposed to believe. And so, we take our stand, and we take it solidly. They’ll come our way, still we stand. They turn their backs on us, still we stand. They’ll praise us when they’re in the right mood, we stand. Then they’ll turn their backs and condemn, still we stand.

So, there’s a new people. And my friends, nothing else matters, but that you belong to that company of people. Nothing else matters. That you are a fundamentalists doesn’t mean a snap of your fingers. That you’re an evangelical, doesn’t mean that. That you belong to the Christian Missionary Alliance, doesn’t mean that, whether you’re a new creature or not. Whether you’ve been born of the Spirit and washed in the blood, or that you’ve entered that Kingdom, it’s everlasting whether God is indeed your Father, Jesus Christ, indeed your Savior. Whether the Holy Ghost does indeed abide in you, that’s all that matters. Nothing else matters.

There’s a new people and they don’t judge each other according to Adam standards. They’ve left Adam in his ways. And while the old tabernacle is still Adamic and they have still to dwell in it, it still has all the weaknesses of Adam’s lost fallen flesh. A new man in Christ Jesus had nothing to do with it. He stands aloof and dwells apart as a star in the firmament, new in Christ.

This is a new Savior, new kingdom, new people, new heaven, new earth, new race, new world. It’s all before us and our dear God only knows how near it is to us. We will not set dates. We’ll only say it can’t be too far off seeing the situation the world is in. And may God grant that it may come up soon and reveal itself soon and the two shall be sleeping in one bed, one shall be taken and the other left. Two shall be working in the field, one shall be taken and the other left.

In all of these passages about which, over which controversy now rages, shall fulfill themselves and prove themselves by fulfillment. Always remember, fulfillment is the last final interpretation. Men can interpret Scriptures differently on the Second Coming and prophetic themes, but fulfillment will be the last final answer. When our Lord returns and the dead rise and the living are changed, the book will become then wide open for everybody. It won’t be a question then of arguments. It will be a question of wide-eyed wonder in the presence of fulfilled promises. And that I’m looking for and hoping for.

I don’t know where else to turn, do you? Is there any place else to look? Do you know of anywhere else to go? Does modern education got it? Does modern politics got anything for you? Do you think they have? Does modern science got anything? I don’t know a place in all the wide world to look. Sociology, do they got anything, sociologists that got us in the mess we’re in now between races. Politicians have got us in the mess we’re in now between nations. And the liberals and the synthetic religions, they’ve got us in the mess we’re in now between religions. Only one direction my brother—UP! There is only one place to look and that’s up. Amen.

Tags God, New Creation, Obedience, Redemption, Tozer

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date January 2, 2022

“Repentance“

Complete Message in PDF Format DownloaD

“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.

Tags Circumspect, Contrition, God, Mercy, New Year, Obedience, Repentance, Tozer

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date December 26, 2021

“So Teach us to Number our Days 1“

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“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.

Tags Circumspect, God, New Year, Obedience, Tozer

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date December 19, 2021

“The Theology of Christmas“

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“The Theology of Christmas”

December 22, 1957

Now, I think it can be said without any successful contradiction that the holiday or event which has brought more song to the world than any other is Christmas. You have heard today, you’ve heard here tonight, you have been hearing over the years what we might call the melody of the Incarnation. But in this chapter, ten short verses, John gives us the theology of Christmas. And there is great danger that we build song on song, and song on song, and find that in the end that we have been singing about our singing. We must sing theology or be silent. And this is the theology of the Advent. I want to notice seven things and I’ll point them out to you. You may check them in your Bible if you wish or keep them in your head.

The first is the wonder of that Eternal Life: that which was from the beginning. I pointed out not too many Sunday nights ago that this does not begin with a personal pronoun at all. It begins with the word “that” because he’s not talking about a person first. He’s talking about Life. The Life was manifested. And that Eternal Life which was with the Father, was manifested unto us. We stand before this Wonder as before a great mountain. There it is. We can’t explain it. We can’t lift it. We can’t go under it. We can’t move it. There it stands the great mountain of facts, that Eternal Life. And this Life was in God, and this Life was God. And this Life is the first great wonder of this season. That there is somewhere something we call Life. We have a bit of it in our minds and a bit of it in our bodies, but somewhere there is a great mountain of Life from which the jewel of our lives was digged; somewhere, a great fountain of Life from which the tiny trickle of our life flows. That is the wonder, that Eternal Life.

Now, let’s pin that down. Let’s mark that. Let’s underscore that. And when the Christmas carols are laid aside for another year, and the tinsel is taken down, let’s stand and gaze with wandering eyes upon that Eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifest unto us. And that’s the second wonder, the wonder of Life manifested. For that is what Jesus did when He came to the world. He manifested That, not who, not a personal pronoun first, but an impersonal something that is beyond personality–That. That which is the key to all the world. That out of which all flowed. That out of which all has come, that Eternal Life. And that Eternal Life now manifests itself as a person. And that Life was manifested. And John said, John could say it, we have seen it he said, and we bear witness of it. And we show unto you that Eternal Life which was with the Father and which was manifest unto us. And our eyes have seen, and we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of that wonder called the Word of Life. Now the wonder is that Word of Life manifested.

Every time you think of the Incarnation you should bow your head for a moment. Every time it comes to your mind, you should utter a prayer. You should utter that inward prayer which the church has learned long, long ago. The old father named Molinas who went about in Spain saying that it’s all right to pray according to your beads; he was an old Catholic. He said, that’s all right, pray the way the church tells you to. But then in addition to that, I’ve got a better way to pray. He said, pray in your heart. They finally put him in prison for saying that. But I recommend it, prison or no prison, that you learn to pray out of your heart. And that you learn to remember that the best prayer is not the formal prayer somebody else’s has written. It is your prayer out of your heart.

If your child came to you and read the little word, Mama, I love you. I think you are very kind, and then you folded it back up and put it in her little coat pocket. And then the next day, came to you again and said, Mama, you are nice. I love you. That would get tiresome I think after a while, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t your heart hunger for a spontaneous grin that wasn’t in print? Wouldn’t it get hungry for a little pat that wasn’t in print that nobody else had thought out? Wouldn’t it get hungry for spontaneity? I think so. And so, while we pray prayers, I read an article just recently condemning printed prayers. How can you condemn printed prayers when the Psalms, 150 Psalms are their printed prayers? You can’t condemn them. But you can only say that they teach you how to pray, and you in the spirit of them you can have a spontaneous utterance of prayer.

Well, I got off on that when I said, every time you think about the wonder of the Incarnation, you ought to send up a little bit of prayer. You ought to wake in the night and pray. I suppose five out of seven mornings, I wake up and begin to talk to the Lord before I’m out of bed. The other two, I don’t feel well and I have to remind myself I ought to do it and do it. And maybe if I live a little longer, I’ll get all seven of them turned over to the Lord so that there’ll be seven times and I won’t have to remind myself.

Well now, the third thing is, and this mystery is here, this wonder. It is found in the fifth verse. This then is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Here is the wonder of the nature of God. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Light, this is the wonder of light. And the Scriptures mix up and don’t try to keep separated, light and light. Light and life to all He brings, risen with healing in His wings. When that was written, theology was written. For Life and Life are one. This is that Eternal Life, and it is also the Light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

And I suppose that there’s something deeper than morals here. A great German theologian a generation ago wrote a book, has written a book which has become very famous in learned circles. And in that book, he declares that the idea of holiness goes back of personality. That you think of the holiness of God as a strange thing before you think of the person of God. I think he’s right; I think I’m quite sure he’s right. And he says, that the idea of purity is not the first idea of holiness. The first idea that comes to the mind or that came to the mind when the word “holy” was suggested, was not the word of being pure, not the thought of being pure, but the idea of being greater than, higher than, beyond, other than, different from, lonely in its self-sufficiency, uncreated substance of like “That” without a pronoun. That, without a personal pronoun, That.

And then later on we attribute purity and holiness to God. So, when God says, be holy for I am holy, He’s talking about moral purity. He’s talking about spiritual cleanness. But beyond that, in back of that, and prior to that, is the solemn, indescribable something, which cannot be put into words. That there exists a nature, a substance in the universe which is Life and Light, and it is a Thing, and it is That, but It also has personality. And that Personality is God. And the wonder of this, this chapter here, the third wonder is the nature of God. God is Light. God is Light and in Him is no darkness at all.

Now, church history shows us that nobody, this could be said of nobody, except that Eternal Life which was manifested and become flesh. But apart from Him, nobody from Adam on down, including David and Joseph and all the rest of the great Old Testament patriarchs and the New Testament saints. Of not one of them could it be said in him was light and no darkness was in him at all. But it can be said of God.

Does this mean anything to you that in this hour of espionage and of ambassadors going about hiding facts this day, of slanted news and hidden truths and top-secret conferences. In this day when you can scarcely trust anybody. Does it mean anything to you that somewhere, accessible to us now, there is That which never, never, never sinned? That which could not, cannot sin. That which is Light and in It there is no darkness at all.

I listen sometimes to a program called Night Desk. It’s just news, only its fresh news phoned in or talked in and on the radio. And the other night that is, I think Friday night, they had a story about a Goldblatts store in the city six stories high I think it was, or five. And that suddenly at 8:30 in the evening when the customers were all in, their lights went out. Went out clear from top to bottom. And it took them a long time to get the customers out. And the reporter said to one of the girls, a clerk there, tell us about it. Well, she excitedly told about it. And he said, was there anything stolen? She broke out laughing and she said they’re shopping bags started to get full as soon as the lights went out. She said that they tumbled this and they tumbled that, whatever they could get they tumbled into their shopping bags. And she said they all went out with their shopping bags full.

Now, those people aren’t low-down, the dregs of Chicago. They’re citizens of our fair city, an average cross-section. That’s the way people are. For that reason, I say you can scarcely trust anybody unless he is converted, and then you wait a while. But you can trust God. If that means anything to you, you can trust God. God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. God will never betray you. He’ll never let you down. He will never lie to you. He’ll never shade a meaning. You can begin with, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and end in Revelation with, even so come Lord Jesus, come quickly, amen. And you will not find one shaded sentence, not one covered paragraph, not one slanted word. Not one effort to deceive. Nothing in salesmanship. That’s why I can’t take this modern idea that we’re to go sell the gospel. Go sell the gospel. Get the convert’s name on the dotted line. Away with you, you children of the marketplace. If Jesus were to come, he’d take a rope and drive all such salesmen out of the church and start over.

No, no, there’s no salesmanship in the gospel, my brother, none in the Bible here. No effort to persuade. No hiding one fact in order to accent another one. Everything in this book is as open as the sky, as pure as the waters that flowed down from the melting snows yonder, by the waters that flow from the mountaintop, so that there is pure, clean light and no darkness at all. God, you have God, my friends. You have God. Somebody said, the Russians have the Sputnik and we have the Salk vaccine. Very, very, very good. But we Christians can add one more thing. We have God. And in God, there is no darkness at all.

Then the fourth wonder here is, the terrible mystery of sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth isn’t in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and His Word is not in us. This awful thing we call sin. Sin, this terrible thing that’s been renamed and reshuffled and is now understood otherwise. But it’s still sin. You can call cancer by a beautiful name, but it’s still sin. Maude Smith goes to Hollywood and they rename her Lamour something or other, but she is still Maude Smith. And you can’t make her any better by changing her name. They called, what was her name Smith, Mary Pickford, but she was still Miss Smith. Well, Mary Pickford and all that crowd, they are what they are, and a pretty name doesn’t make them any better.

And when you call sin by some other name, it’s still what it was before. Call a cancer something else and it kills its victim. Call infantile paralysis by the name of poliomyelitis and you have a big word but you still have a killer and a crippler. And call sin by some other name, a complex or something and it’s still sin. And if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And if we say we have not sinned, we’re calling God, in Whom is light and in Whom there is no darkness. We’re calling that holy Thing, that holy One, that world-filling mountain of eternal life and light and purity, we’re calling That a liar.

So, this terrible mystery of sin. It’s here. It’s all about us. It flows around us like the, like the bilge water, like an overflowing sewer, slimy and smelly and filled with silt. And it will leach in everywhere, and soaks through, and you scrub and come back the next day and it’s there again. Sin is everywhere about us. That awful mystery, the mystery of iniquity Jesus called it, or one of the apostles, the mystery of iniquity. That’s the fourth thing in this theology of Christmas.

All these things we have my friends. Don’t let’s get off on a tangent and be carried away with the sound of pretty bells. There’s theology here, something sound and hard. You can come up to it and pound it and it doesn’t ring hollow. The world will take any kind of a crazy thing and put a wreath in front of it and a ribbon around it and they turn it into a Christmas gift, but it’s all hollow. Everything the world has is hollow. But you can take this sound doctrine of that Eternal Life and the manifestation of that the Eternal Life, and the fact of God in His everlasting, impeccable purity and the awful fact of sin. These are hard, sound bullets, as hard as cannon balls. And you can’t beat them down. You can’t get rid of them if you tried. And you needn’t fear them. They’re there. They’re as solid as the Rock of Ages.

And then there’s the fifth one. And that follows normally the fourth. And that is the wonder of sin forgiven when confessed. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. There is the wonder of deliverance from sin. The church is not yet mature and so we’re sometimes shocked by seeing Christians lose their temper. Or, we’re shocked by seeing a Christian do something that we feel he shouldn’t have done, and that reflects on his Christian character. Well, that ought not to get us down brethren. You don’t expect of your children, your growing children, the same degree of maturity that you expect of them when they get into their mid-20s. And I think that God does possibly not expect of us quite the degree of perfection that he would expect of us later, so that we may forgive the church and certainly forgive each other. And Jesus said to do that, seventy times a day. And Paul said that if thy brother sins against you, forgive him. Forgive as God for Christ’s sake forgave us. So that there is, there’s a margin there.

But here we have it, If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive. Now there’s forgiveness with God that He may be feared, the Psalmist said, and there’s forgiveness. Now that’s a wonder. That’s a wonder that this Holy God, in Whom is life and light, and in Whom is no darkness, this One who is immaculate and impeccable, in Whom no shadow of darkness is found, this One can forgive sin in His own creatures. Yes, He can do that and He does do that. And don’t ask me to explain how or why. I don’t know. I know that He does.

The sixth is, the wonder of cleansing from unrighteousness. Now it isn’t enough to be forgiven. There must be cleansing, or the work God is not complete. There must be cleansing. Jesus Christ came not to forgive us only, but to cleanse us as well as forgive us. The best illustration I know is that of a man condemned to die. He has been condemned by society as unfit to live because he took a human life say, or betrayed his government say, and was guilty of treason. So, he is sentenced to die. And then some president or governor, or one able to do it, pardons him, pardons him.

And he goes out into society like these poor boys, brainwashed kids that came home from Korea. I haven’t a hard word to say about them. Mostly they were ignorant boys who have been brought up in poverty. They had no education. They’d never been taught what a wonderful country America was. They didn’t know what democracy was. They didn’t know the distinction between democracy and totalitarianism. And when they went over there as kids going out of the woods, they couldn’t take the pressure of the subtle damnably diabolical brainwashing techniques of these satanically clever communists. And so, they said we’ll stay will be communists. Now they’re filtering home one at a time. And apparently, the government is going to let them do it and say a little to them, and forgive them.

But oh, my friends, there’s one thing that no president, no judge, no governor can do. He can’t cleanse them. He can’t wash them from their brain washing. He can’t take out of their hearts the knowledge that they once did that terrible thing. Nobody can cleanse anybody else. You can’t reach in and sponge out of their poor minds the fact that once they sinned against that starry, spangled flag. These move around among us the poor follow that in a burst of boyish nonsense killed a Japanese woman over there. He’s back home they say. Nobody’s noticing him. We made a great international business out of it and now he’s home and scarcely anybody knows he’s around. They as good as exonerated him over there.

To save oriental face, they sentenced him and then suspended the sentence. That was to save face. But they let him go, and he’s gone. He’s home. And he’s either been or will be soon discharged from the Army. They can’t take that out of his heart. It’s still there. If he was guilty, even guilty of a foolish burst of boyish carelessness, he is still guilty. And he knows it. He will remember it when he sleeps at night. He will remember it when he stands by a graveside, every time he stands by one.

You can’t take out of a man what he’s done even though he’s pardoned for doing it. But the Scripture says, He’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us, and wonder of wonders, that cleansing takes out the psychology of having sinned. It changes the psychology of having sinned. Heaven will not be filled with a lot of ex-sinners who can’t get over it and who are still walking about looking down afraid to speak. He not only forgives the act, but he cleanses the mind so that there is not a psychology of sin anymore. If I had been ever guilty of treason against my country and had sold say, information to the enemy, and I’d been pardoned by a president, I still could not look at my fellow citizens, on you. We gathered together and people were gathered around and tried to act natural and relaxed and couldn’t. And they couldn’t look at me and I couldn’t look at them. I never could feel right, because I would have the psychology of a traitor. And I would feel that I wasn’t fit to be there and didn’t deserve to be among them. And when anybody mentioned Washington or Lincoln, I’d suffer inside.

But the wonder, the sixth wonder here, and mystery is how God can take a sinner who knows he’s a sinner and knows he’s sinned, and so cleanse him that he loses the sense of having sinned. And he can be as though he had not. I’ve often used another man’s phrase here that I borrowed somewhere from the Middle Ages. But they used to call it restored moral innocence. And that is what we have here, restored moral innocence. How is that?

Well, it is verse seven, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. Never forget it, my friend. The Babe in the manger never saved anybody. Let us not allow ourselves to be fooled by sentimentality and love a baby. Or even of appreciation to the Eternal Word made flesh. The Babe in the manger, cleansed nobody. But the Man on the cross did. And it was the blood of Jesus Christ.

One of the great cults, one of the major cults, I’ll tell you which one, Christian Science. One of the great cults. Now, if anybody here is in that church, don’t come to me and start arguing afterwards. There’s no use, I know about them. But they have said in one of their great teachers, that is, great to them has said, the blood of Jesus Christ has no more power to deliver from sin now than it had when it flowed in his veins, which is to say that the lamb of Abel had no more power to open heaven and bring the hand of God in benediction upon Abel’s head when it was shed than when the lamb gambled among the other lambs in meadow.

No, no, my brethren, the life is in the blood. And the mystery is, how that the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross can now come to the heart of a returning sinner and cleanse him so that he is freed from sin. Theologians sit down and try to figure how it cleanses. How do I care how he cleanses. If someone were to come with a bottle of something, or a ray or something else and say, here, I can cure your cancer and someone who withered away to 90 pounds and was ready to die, and take a spoonful of that and in five days be up and back at work. I wouldn’t protest that I didn’t know how it worked. I would say, I saw it work!

So, I don’t know how the blood can cleanse. I only know it cleanses. And I only know that it will populate heaven yet with a company of happy people who have forgot they sinned. And yet, in their memory they know they have and they will sing together about their worthy being the Lamb that was slain to redeem us and wash us, from all kindreds and tongues and tribes and they’ll remember it, but They won’t remember it with a sneaking feeling. They can look on the face of God, the Scriptures said. They shall look on His face and His name shall be on their forehead. The sinner can’t look on God’s face because he has the psychology of the traitor. He knows, he knows he can’t look on God. Adam couldn’t look and ran and hid among the trees of the garden. Peter couldn’t look and ran and cried, depart from me, O Lord. I’m an unclean man. Isaiah couldn’t look and fell and said I’m undone. But the ransom sinner can look, for there’s a wonder of cleansing here. The blood of Jesus Christ takes away the sense of sinning.

And then in the third verse is the seventh, and that is that you may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. This is the wonder of communion. Communion is more than the Lord’s Supper. It’s more than a name given to a church. Communion is union or it couldn’t be commune. There must be union and there is a union, a union of people from everywhere. If I were to take a poll tonight in this relatively small congregation of your nationality. I suppose I’d have fifteen nationalities right here. And if I were to take a poll of your educational background, I suppose it scarcely be half a dozen of you, that had the same. But yet, in Christ Jesus, we as Christians have a fellowship. A fellowship that isn’t forced, it isn’t strained. It doesn’t depend on our beating the drum, nor wearing badges, or hating anybody.

You know, some people have a fellowship, a fellowship of hate. They’re joined together by their mutual hatred for something. But you and I are joined together by our mutual love for somebody. And so there is a fellowship, and you don’t have to ask, what’s your background, the fellowship that’s as wide as the world. It’s the fellowship of saints. It’s the communion of the redeemed. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. You know, we stand rather awed in the presence of angels. If we get among angels, we’ll be rather awe-strickened and we say, we’ll say how wonderful angels are. And that’s right. They are and they’re so much ahead of us now. They’re way ahead of us now. And they, they really, I suppose there’s a reason we should think about them with the good deal of awe. But you know, there’s going to be a time when they’re going to stand at attention and look at us. Because no angel, no angel was ever redeemed.

God did not redeem angels. He took not upon him the nature of angels. He took upon him, the Seed of Abraham, the nature of Abraham, a man. And how God, that Eternal Life, and that Light, and that Holy One in Whom is no darkness, how He can walk arm in arm with men who’ve walked knee-deep in the slime of sin, whose mouths have been filled with cursing all the day long, whose throats have been an open sepulcher, whose thoughts have only been evil continually, now transformed and forgiven, and renewed and reinstated and cleansed. God convened a fellowship with them. I think the angels are going to stand around in respectful attention and say, we don’t understand it. I wonder if that’s not what Peter meant when he said, of such things, angels desire to look into. We may be a mystery to them. They are a mystery to us, but perhaps we’ll be a deeper mystery to them.

So here we have the theology of Christmas. You can take this with you. And when you take the tree down and run the vacuum over the needles that spilled on the floor. And you put the decorations away for another year and settled down to just living in the United States, you’re still have this: hard and solid and big. You can build on it and you can live on it. It will be bread, mountain high to eat. It will be a rock, mountain high to build on. It will be a fountain of light, to light you through all this world and the world to come. Thank God for the melody of Christmas. But thank God more for the theology out of which that melody sprang. For all the melody in the world and all the lovely dreams of beauty would be nothing if they had no foundation. Here’s the foundation. They rest as solid as the holy throne of God. You and I can believe them and we dare believe them; stand on them and live on them and when the time comes die on them!

Tags Character, Christmas, God, Incarnation, Obedience, Tozer

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Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date December 12, 2021

“The Character of Zacharias“

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August 12, 1956

In the first chapter of Luke, please. But I think I ought to say before I read my texts and give the talk that this is the low day for us here in that it is the closing day of the convention. Just within a forty-five-minute drive of here, and a good many of our people are here. Quite a number of our choir people are out there. I mean, are there, and we will probably notice it tonight. There’s only one day in the year which our choir doesn’t have a message for us. And we do allow that to get by on that Sunday. That’s convention Sunday out at Des Plaines. Our people go and come and some will be out there, and some will not get home tonight. But we want you here and we plan a good service tonight and we look for you. But if you should want to help them out there and stay, we’ll understand and it will be all right.

Now in Luke the first chapter beginning with verse five. There was in the days of Herod the king, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child because Elizabeth was barren. And they both were now well stricken in years. It came to pass that while he executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course according to the custom of the priest’s office. His lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense. And there appeared under him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled and fear fell upon him. But the angel said unto him, fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard. And thy wife, Elizabeth, shall bear thee a son. And thou shalt call his name John.

I will not read further because there we see the picture of the old man and the angel. And I don’t know whether I can as they say, now project this, or make you see it at all, or feel it. And if I cannot, it will be my fault, not yours. But to me there is about this scene something wonderfully wholesome, something strong and reassuring and healing to the soul. But we’ll have to read it and hear it in the right mood though. We can’t rush into this. We must walk reverently up there and with hushed voices gaze, and we must be submissive to the will of God and we must bring our hearts into tune with the New Testament and with the religion of the New Testament and with God Himself. We must be trustful and expectant. If we rush here from a ball game, of course we won’t see anything here. But I hope that you came in the right mood. I hope that you have recollected yourself and are, and we’ll be prepared to think with me about this.

Now, it says there was a certain priest by the name of Zacharias. And he was of the course of Abia. And he had married a wife many years before who was of the priestly line too. That is, she was of the tribes, she was a daughter of Aaron. And her name was Elizabeth. And they, both of them, were righteous before God. And they walked in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless. And he, the old man, executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course according to the custom of the priest’s office. And at the right time, he went and burnt incense, and then into the temple of the Lord while the multitude of the people stood outside praying at the time of the burning of the incense.

Now here, if we see nothing else, we see character, that beautiful word character. It was a sad day for the church of Jesus Christ when the word character went out, and the word personality came in. Because now in the average gospel church, character is just a little bit of a dirty word, because the liberals have talked so long about building character when they didn’t have any foundation to build on; that we’ve decided, even if we have the foundation, we won’t build anything on it. So that in place of talking about character now, we talk about personality. We borrowed that scintillating praise or word from elsewhere, and you know where, and so now it’s personality. But God doesn’t care very much about personality. He cares everything about character. Character is what we are under pressure. Character is the total of you added up at the bottom of the column. Totaled is the well-integrated qualities that make a Christian. And here we see if nothing else, we see character.

But we see more. We see strength here. Here’s not surface tension. That’s a word we use a lot now, that this thing will hold so much because it’s been proved to hold so much. And there is a paint company that says, if you save the surface, you’ve saved all. And everything is surface now. Nobody cares very much what’s underneath. It’s all surface. Our architecture has gone surface from the 1933-34, what did they call it, World Fair held down here. Our architecture now looks like a fish fin piece of machinery and we don’t care what’s underneath it, just so it looks good on the surface.

This is the day of the surface. And the Scripture says that God doesn’t look on the surface of a man. God looks underneath the surface at the character of the man. And here we have strength and we have depth of strength. Here we have it, but the gold became dim in religious circles when character went out and personality came in. Because personality is what people think you are because you can project yourself. That character is what you are when the squeeze is on. And you’re only what you are when you’re being squeezed. You’re not what you are when everything is all right and there’s no pressure. You are when the pressures on.

You are what you are when the nether millstone starts to grind one way and the upper millstone starts to grind another, and you’re in between. Then what you are comes out; and all that is eternal of you and all of it that God will notice about you. And all little matters what you are when you’re in the squeeze. When you’re being ground there between the upper and the nether millstone, and that’s character. Now, character isn’t always under the grindstone and the character isn’t always being squeezed. But, personality dissolves like the dew on the grass when it gets under the squeeze. But when the pressure is on, character stands up just the same as it was before.

And here’s another word. It says they were both righteous before God. Here’s another word that has gotten in bad; and the word righteous is now out. We don’t like to use the word righteous because we’ve gotten our fingers burned. Because some people teach salvation by personal righteousness, we’ve gotten so we teach salvation without personal righteousness. And one’s just as bad as the other. For the church to teach that I can be saved by my personal righteousness, is a falsehood. For the church to teach that I can be saved and not be personally righteous is also a falsehood. For, the purpose of God in salvation is to make men good forever, and he starts right down here now. And the idea that if the word righteous is applied to a man, that he’s a self-righteous hypocrite, came from the devil and it never came from God or the Scriptures at all. It’s a misunderstanding of grace, and it’s a misapplication and misuse of the word.

But here was a righteous old man. God bless him, he hadn’t been to the right Bible schools, and so he didn’t know that he shouldn’t be a righteous man. He didn’t know that he should be obeying the commandments of God and keeping the order of his course and living prayerfully before his God, and living with one wife and walking decently in the world. He didn’t know that because he hadn’t been to the right schools and hadn’t been taught that that’s legalism, and that Jesus paid it all and that all you have to do is to believe, and that salvation hasn’t anything to do whatsoever with righteousness. That’s what we’ve been hearing over the last years and the result has been, it has dragged the moral level of the church down into the gutter until, in some circles now, you can’t tell a Christian from a sinner except by the button he wears and the fact that he has a tract in his hip pocket.

Now, it says here that there was a certain priest named Zacharias. Thank God for him. I’m looking at this old man. It’s like standing on a lofty mountain peak and gazing out miles and scores of miles away at the lofty chains of mountains there and at the blue sky above and the white clouds that come down like flux of whipped cream. It’s like seeing the sky and the clouds and the hills and the vale that stretched far away there. And smelling the clean, fresh piney air that comes up from the vales below. And knowing that down below, there’s smoke and dust and dirt and noise and tulmult and seesaw rivalry and cutthroat competition, and cheating and deceiving and ambition and lying and at the same time standing above it all and gazing out over the mountains.

Now, in the world all around about us brother and sister, here is exactly what we’ve gotten. I’ve named it. There is all the smoke and dust and dirt and noise and moral tumults and seesaw rivalry and cutthroat competition and all the rest. It’s out there in the world. And all the color and the glamour and the publicity and the pride and the self-love and the deceit and the pretense and the physical transiency of it all and the stage props and the painted, hollowed death, and the Danse Macabre and the march of dead zanies morally and spiritually dead, walking up and down. Brethren, that’s what’s out there. And the poor church hasn’t had brains enough, God help us, to pull away from that. We haven’t had brains enough to pull away from that. We’re busy now getting integrated into it. We’re busy now, showing that you don’t have to leave that. That that’s an old-fashioned view of things, and that there isn’t any Bible for it.

And so, youth has taken over. It’s said in the Bible, to tarry in Jerusalem until your beard be grown. But proud and vain, beardless youths have now taken over and have become founders and experimenters and the getters of quick effects regardless of stability or character or righteousness or solidity or permanence. Well, I’m on the other side. But you know brethren, it isn’t age that did it. I’ve all I always been on the other side. When my hair was as black as a raven’s wing, or the feathers on the wing, I was, still believed and believe then what to believe now about this whole business. And it isn’t senility. It is inside. And I’d had it from the time God filled me with the Holy Ghost thirty-some years ago.

O Zachariah, hold still a little. We want to look at you. We want to look at you and your quiet, smiling old wife Elizabeth. The rat race of Adam has all passed you by. And the brass band and the noise in the parade, it’s all passed you by, and there’s a faraway look in your own eyes, and a kind of a preoccupied set to your features. Because there isn’t anything out there in the smoke and dirt and noise that you want. You don’t want publicity, and you don’t want a better job and you don’t want a bigger house and you don’t want more money and you don’t want to be known in the gates and you don’t want your picture in the paper and you don’t want to get on Times cover. There isn’t anything you want dear old man of God, only character and you’ve got it. Only strength and you’ve got it. Only eternity and you’ve found it.

Oh yes, there’s one thing you do want too, one thing, one thing. You’ve told God about it over the years often, and often you’ve told God about it. And it didn’t come. And over the years, and it’s been a long time since you’ve asked for it now, because you thought there isn’t any use anymore. He wanted a son. He wanted a boy that he could name after him that could stand and offering incense when he was gone. He wanted a boy, but he didn’t get any boy. And so, he kind of quit and gave up and became reconciled. And he thought that he wasn’t worthy of such an honor. But he wasn’t bitter about it. He was just sad. And the sadness sort of mixed with the sweetness to make his old countenance kind and it furnished the low notes in the song of adoration that he sent up every day. The bright notes were formed out of the things God did for him. But the low notes were the ones that God hadn’t, and that one was, he hadn’t given him a son.

But now, suddenly there appeared unto him an angel. Suddenly standing by the right hand of the altar, there was an angel. Not while he was idling his hours away. Not while he was listening to the ballgame. But not while he was just sitting. You know, they do that. We came through the south a couple of weeks ago, and we smiled and talked about it down there in some parts they just sit, even young fellows are in training for it. We saw them only maybe 13-14 years old sitting with the old gray hairs.

But the old man had something better to do than just sit. Not while he was gossiping and waiting for the end, but while he was busy in the work of God doing what he was told to do. Not always knowing exactly how it was going to come out. And there was a little grave of prayer that hadn’t been answered, but he wasn’t going to bother God about it. He had a little prayer that was there and he had a little headstone up, sacred to the memory of a boy that I never got; that I wished I might have had for carrying on the name. But he didn’t. And the old man just waited there and did his work. And while he was waiting there by the right hand of the altar, stood an angel.

I wonder about the old empties that we have in the church of God, brethren. I wonder about these old empties. They’ve grown up now and they’ve married and had their children. The children have grown up and they’ve got some grandchildren. And they walk slow now and are careful not to twist. They move at right angles you know. When you get old, you move at right angles. When you’re young, you just twist and turn like a rubber band. But when you get old, you face around, very military fashion and go straight ahead. Not because you’re military, because you’re stiff.

And so many old Christians are like that. I know so many of them. I meet them everywhere up and down the land. They’re the old empties. They haven’t seen an angel and they haven’t anything particular to do. They’re just sitting. And I wonder if they couldn’t do like the old man did while He was praying, while he was living the life, while he was worshipping, an angel appeared unto him. If he’d been somewhere else, the angel wouldn’t have appeared. But he was at the right place at the right time. And God said, your prayer is heard Zacharias. And Zacharias thought real fast, what prayer? What, I hadn’t been praying anything lately. I haven’t wanted anything. What is it? Oh, that, that I buried that. I thought God hadn’t heard me for that. His old face brightened. Yeah, you’re going to have a son, Zacharias, and Elizabeth thy wife will conceive and bear a son. And then he described him. He said, he’s going to name him John, that’s first. And you shall have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth, for he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. He shall go before Him in the Spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and to make ready of people prepared for the Lord. God waited a long time. But when he answered, He poured it on, shaken down and running over.

That was the Annunciation, the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist, that mightiest New Testament figure beside Christ, and Paul. Christ is never compared with anybody else. But next to Paul the mighty New Testament figure. And your prayer is heard, he said. So, the old man could lay the reef off that grave and tear it to pieces and throw it to the wind, kicked down the head board or whatever you call it and plant a peony there now, or a bit of garden vegetable. No use for it anymore. God had heard his prayer.

Now, he hadn’t been a colorful figure. And he never wrote a tract about that. And he never was interviewed, I suppose by anybody. But God had heard his prayer. And he said that prayer you made. Oh, yes, I quit that about 15 years ago, when I gave up hope that I would ever have a son. But God hadn’t forgotten it. And he had that prayer in His bottle up there. He was about to pour it down. Your prayer is heard, Zacharias. You haven’t had much personality, but you’ve had tremendous character. You’ve been good under pressure. You’ve kept sweet when I said no to a son. And you didn’t let it embitter you when the age passed when you thought you could, you and your wife, could have had a son. And you’ve lived your life and your prayer has been you. You’ve been your prayer, Zacharias. Your prayer and you would have been one. You haven’t gone one way and your prayer another, but you and your prayer have been on. You’ve gone the same way your prayer went. And so now I am ready to do a miracle here. Nobody ever heard of it, but it’s going to be a miracle. That old lady over there with the gray hair with a modest smile, she’s going to have a boy. And he’s going to be named great and he’ll turn the hearts of Israel to God.

Oh, brethren, where are the Zacharias in our day? Where are the Zacharias? We are all out to be like Stuart Hamblin instead of like Zacharias. We’re all out to be personality boys instead of like Zacharias. And we scold our young people, some of the older people do. But where are the gray-haired saints? Where are those who have left the parade long, long ago and let it go by, and look at it with a tired benign smile? There are those that are preoccupied with the things of God and live for the hour of their release? Where are they? Everybody over fifty ought to be one of them. Everybody here today over 50, you ought to be in that category. You ought to be one that a young man could look at and say, there’s character. There’s no personality. He’s a little bald, and he sticks out places, but there is character, there is character. There is gold instead of brass. There’s pure, pure silver instead of tin.

There’s a man brethren. That’s what’s the matter with the church and that’s why that ill-advised young people came up and took over and led us over a cliff. It was because there weren’t enough old Zacharias to set the pace. And they had nobody to imitate and they had no heroes to follow. All their heroes were dead. They had to read about George Mueller and David Livingston, and that was pretty dry reading for a young fellow with red blood. So, they got up and jazzed up our Christianity because we had an old Zacharias. Listen old man, you blame the young fellow and you blame that young girl who’s got a lot of zing and a wicked look in her eye. She has no Zachariah to look at, that’s the trouble. She’s got nobody to imitate, no character out there.

Oh, the old empties, help them. They get old and cold and dull and retire, and retire from the work of the Lord too, and move into a comfortable home. All right, old fellow, you think that big picture window is going to keep cancer out? Do you think that beautiful lawn is going to keep a heart attack away? You think that charming door with a brass knocker will be shut so the undertaker won’t come and lug you out? You think that all this fresh country air is going to do you any good in the day when God looks into the hearts of men and judges as according to the deeds done in the body? No, you old empty. You were just an old empty and you’ve come back hollow because you’ve always been hollow, but you were too busy and we didn’t find it out until you got along in years.

Brethren, don’t think for a second that we can get away with it. The old man shouldn’t be seeing angels and dreaming dreams. And the young man should be having visions and there should be alertness and growth. And I should be able any moment to stop and call on any man here to lead in prayer and expect a prayer that would be a blessing to everybody. I should be able to do that. A pastor should be able to stop here and say, now we’ll stand and have brother so and so lead us and point to any man. I should be able to toss a marble out there or a rubber ball, and anybody it hits and say, you pray. That’s the way we should be. But instead of that, every church has a tight little nucleus of a half dozen that have seen the angel, that have heard the voice of God, that have developed character, that have been filled with the Spirit, that have lived the life whose faraway look and preoccupation with heavenly things, mark them out as being different. Every church has its half dozen, or dozen at most and the rest are hangers on. Getting old, it won’t be long until they’re old empties and won’t have a thing. Tap them and they’re as hollow as a drum

Brethren, we blame our young people. Are young people aren’t to blame at all. I don’t think I would ever have served God or ever have gone on if I hadn’t had examples to follow when I was a young fellow. I wouldn’t have had brains enough to do it. I wouldn’t have known how to go about it. But I happen to get into a church when I had only been converted a few months. I happened to get into a church where they stood like pillars, stood like pillars, Brother Colgrove or Brother Hall, and could name them one after the other and there they stood, the pillars. And when they prayed, heaven came down our souls to greet and glory crowned the mercy seat. And I had examples. I had a pastor who was an example. And I had a district superintendent who was an example. And I walked among people who are examples. And God sent a teacher from another missionary society for a year or so to me as an example. And I got my eyes on Zacharias. And I got them off of the personality boys.

I have lived down a whole parade of good-looking rascals that have come up and like a comet have stirred the heavens and gone down into darkness. They’ve gone up like a rocket and come down like a stick, and still I’ve have gone along. I may pop out any one of these days. I don’t know and I don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference. But I do want to leave my testimony behind that it’s better to have character than to have personality. Better to have a life that prays than to pray and go another direction from your prayers. Better to be known well in heaven than to be known well on Earth. Better to be popular with the angels and a multitude of holy beings than to be popular down here below. To be popular down here you’ve got to sell out to a certain degree.

Emerson said, young man, you want to be president? Do you know how much manhood a man has to sell out to be president? If you did, you wouldn’t want the job. Emerson said that, I didn’t. And I am not striking at Stevenson or Eisenhower. It’s not political. I’m just saying that to get popular enough to get elected to anything you have to be pretty slick and a smoothy. And if there’s one thing that people of God oughten to be, it’s smooth. God’s people out to be as salty as sowbelly brine. And they ought to be as sharp as honed steel, but as kind as the heart of God. And they never ought to say anything they didn’t mean.

A man wrote me a seven or eight page, closely typewritten letter. It was a rhapsody, a rhapsody, just a rhapsody. He was a commercial artist out in Jamestown, New York. And in one paragraph he admitted that he had met me at Keswick out in the East, that I had just looked at him. Oh, he said, that it was a hard one to take. He said, I went away saying, who does he think? Does he just think I don’t amount to much, is that it? I just don’t amount to much? Do you think I don’t rate? Am I not an important person? Is that the reason he hadn’t made over me? No, I was just acting natural. There wasn’t any particular reason why I should effervesce, so I didn’t effervesce. But I meet people and effervesce sometimes, really. But it just happened that no bell rang, so I didn’t effervesce. I didn’t turn my back on him. I just didn’t effervesce and that worried him, but he got victory over that. If I effervesced and slapped his back, his teeth would have fallen out and chances are he had thought he was somebody and that rhapsody wouldn’t have been written. But I just acted natural.

Oh, brethren, by the grace of God, that’s what you’re for. But remember this one thing. When you act natural, you ought to be spiritual, so what’s natural is spiritual. The old man Zachariah just acted natural. But the way he acted was spiritual. He made a mistake. I’ll preach about that in another coming Sunday. He made a mistake. He had a little doubt there in his mind, and he got rebuked for that doubt. It wasn’t, you know, he wasn’t an angel yet, but he just talks to angels. So, he made the mistake, but we’ll talked about that later.

So, what about it now? Now this is addressed to everybody that’s a little receding. You say, I’m not getting bald. My hair is just receding a little. Sure, that’s all. That’s all. That’s all, and those gray ones that you pick out and pick out and pick out. I used to pick the gray ones out and now I’m picking the black ones out. They’re out of place now.

Well, Zachariah, just hold still. We just want to kind of let something rub off on us a little this morning. We just want to be like him. We’re living in a different dispensation but his God is our God, and His Christ is our Christ, and his Bible is our Bible. His David is our David and his Moses is our Moses, and his Isaiah is our Isaiah. His knees can be our knees and his voice our voice. He was a good old man. He’d walked with his God. And he made a prayer that had boiled so long up in the yonder in a bottle that God couldn’t hold it in any longer. So we just poured it down, and the result was John the Baptist.

Have you seen an angel lately, brother, or are you just one more of the old empties of the church. You’ve just decided to quit. No zeal, no fire, no sacrifice, relaxing you say. You’re going to relax yourself right into a hole and everybody’s going to walk away saying, he was a dear old man. You’re going to relax yourself right into a hole. And you’re so afraid your poor old heart won’t stand up under it. Come to church and die of a heart attack by the grace of God.

Better to die of a heart attack in the house of God than to lie somewhere out of the prayer meeting and live to be 100. Go to the house of God. Get out and visit. Do something. Wake up. Shake yourself. Pray and ask God what He wants you to do. And if you don’t live to be 100, you’re insured. Your wife will get along. Don’t think, don’t think she won’t get along. Mama needs me. Mama doesn’t need you at all. Mama needs a holy man at the head of the household. Are you one? Mama needs a self-sacrificing man at the house of God. Mama needs to be a prayer meeting widow. Do you know what they are. They’re the women that stay home. They won’t go to prayer meeting and their husband goes every week for a meeting, widows. Better make your wife a prayer meeting widow than to go ahead and get old, and be an old empty, dear God.

I don’t want to quit. I’ve got more zeal now that I had when I was 17. And I don’t want to quit, and I don’t want to die mean, and I don’t want to live my life out so when I go people won’t know who they’re talking about when they praise me.

I want to live for God. Zachariah, thank God for you. You’re a good old man. Your old bones have been resting in the dust for a long, long time. But one of these days, there will be a trumpet. There will be a trumpet and it won’t be Harry James. There’ll be a trumpet and he’ll get up and shake himself ,and all the character he ever had will rise with him. All the character will rise with him. Personality will be left behind. His character will rise with him to the right hand of God. Amen.

Brother, that’s the kind of religion we believe in here, the kind of Christianity we believe in. And if you don’t believe in it, you’re in the wrong place. For we’ll never compromise by the grace of God. Well, I have quit now a long time ago and I’m just running on so I better stop. God bless you this morning. It’s hot and it’s vacation time. But this ought to be the time that you put your two knees down on the floor and pray through until your heart is warm. Pray through until your heart’s warm. And when it gets cold, worry about it. And pray through again until it’s warm and keep your heart warm. For these are the days of cold Christianity brethren and we need warm hearts and sacrificial lives. May God give us both.

Tags Belief, Character, God, Obedience, Righteous, Tozer, Will

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date December 4, 2021

“Whosover Will May Come“

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January 27, 1957

You will notice in the foyer on your way out that the Bible Memory Association has a desk there, and this will be the last Sunday for registration. You will kindly inquire at the desk and see what this is all about. It has to do with memorizing the Scriptures, systematically and toward an end. And it is well worth your investigating. So, see the desk please at the door you go out. Don’t forget tonight and for some weeks ahead, I plan to speak on the Four Stages in the Christian’s Path Towards Spiritual Perfection. Tonight, I want to talk about the Special Christian.

Today will be one of two talks on the same text. Revelation 22:16, 17. I Jesus, have sent Mine angel to testify unto you those things in the churches. I am the Root and the offspring of David, and the Bright and Morning Star. And the Spirit and the Bride say, come. And let him that heareth say, come. And let him that is athirst, come. And whosoever will, let him take of the Water of Life freely.

I want to sum up a truth which is not new to you certainly and which no doubt I’ve preached many times before along with the other preachers. But that I want to set in a new light, and lay before you this morning and next Sunday morning I want to express the teachings of the Word that if we are saved it is because we will to be. And then how we can know that we will to be, to a point where we know we are saved.

Now, in the text we find here the full-hearted, joyous and final call of God to men and women who wander in the hot, sandy deserts of sin. The Bible rarely shows the sinner’s way to be a pleasant way. It may look pleasant for the moment, but mostly, it is a heavy way if for no other reason that it ends finally in death. But the writer here, among the very last words of the Bible itself, shows a clear, cool spring within reach.

And then he invites everyone to come and drink freely of that Living Water. Jesus says, I am the Root and the offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star. And the Spirit says, come and the Bride says, come. And so, so exciting and wonderful is it that everybody that hears should start saying, come and let him that is athirst, let him come. And whosoever will, that’s why he comes, let him take of the Water of Life freely. The Water of Life and Living Water meaning the same things, simply a change in wording, is found throughout the Bible, particularly in the New Testament.

Now, you will notice that our Lord makes this invitation to be conditioned. Everything is conditioned in the Bible. I have a question now waiting to be answered. Somebody writes and says, if I pray and add the words, “Thy will be done,” does not that cancel out my prayer? Hasn’t God committed Himself so fully that He must answer every prayer? And therefore, why should I say, Thy will be done?

Well, all that error arises and from, and is part of the modern idea that God is to be used rather than to be obeyed. The simple truth is, God never makes anything unconditional. He conditions even His call to the Living Water. Even when he sees that procession of straggling, weary, discouraged persons, dehydrated and in various stages of death, as the result of dehydration, and He knows that there is water within reach, He still makes His invitation conditional. He says, it is universal, whosoever, and that means anyone and anywhere.

But then, He says that it is particular, him that will, and that makes it particular. A specific choice must be made. And that’s the point that I want to make this morning. That the Christian is one who has made a specific choice sometime, somewhere back down the years, maybe five minutes ago, maybe five days ago, maybe five years ago. But, he has made a specific choice, whosoever will, let him. Whosoever will, then let him.

So, this whosoever broadens it to the wide world, long before the modern bandwagon started to roll for social equality and integration. Long before any of these moderns ever had been born, the Church of Jesus Christ believed that all men on the face of the earth were within the call of God, and that they were atoned for by the blood of the Son of God. And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. Go ye therefore, and preach the gospel to every creature and make disciples among all nations, teaching them. Now that’s been the belief of the church all down the years. And yet to hear the big boom, boom drum today, you would think that it had just been found out the day before yesterday and Mrs. Roosevelt had found it out. When the simple fact is, and I don’t mean to be insulting and certainly I don’t mean to enter into politics. I just know she’s one who has talked loudly about it and there are plenty of others, and it’s the big band that rolling now.

But brethren, the Bible tells us that we were made of one blood. And the Bible tells us that we are all strung from the loins of a fallen man named Adam, and that we are all descendants of a famous old admiral that once sailed the sea in a little boat with windows at the top looking up to God. His name was Admiral Noah. And we’re taught this. We’ve known this all the time. And I was sitting up here in my study this morning thinking it over, and I thought isn’t it funny that for 80 years, the Christian and Missionary Alliance has sent its missionaries out and we are spending in the neighborhood of, and this year, more than $3 million a year to carry the gospel to the Aborigines, to the pygmies, to the naked stone-agers, to the Black and the slant-eyed and the yellow and all colored.

And we have missionaries now walking around, ready to drop over, who’ve spent the better part of their lives living in little, plain homes among people different from themselves who didn’t know their language at first, whose language they didn’t know and have given up all the privileges of civilization and all the pleasures of living among people of their own kind, and have gone and have gotten old and gray and bald. And some of them have dropped over quietly by their desks and died there. And yet they’re making us feel that we haven’t got the race question settled.

Brethren, we settled it the right way. We send men to all races of the world and call them our brothers and offer them the gospel of Jesus Christ, and say whosoever will, whosoever will come, let him come and all that hear, say, come and the Bride says, come, and the missionary says, come, and the church says, come and the bell rings in the steeple all around the world. So, don’t feel bad my brother, you’ve been giving to a cause that has done something practical about this race business all down these last years. And you’re a part of the great universal church that has done something practical about this business all down the years. Not offer them a job at a desk beside you necessarily, but offer them that everlasting life which makes us one round the world.

I am not as easily shamed out as some people. Some people get red-faced awful quickly. Once that’s begun and they beat the drum and they get red-faced and walk away and say, that’s true, we poor Christians. We poor Christians, nothing! The church of Christ has been awake all these centuries and years and knowing what she was doing. And we’ve been telling the world that He is the Root and the Offspring of David and the Bright and Morning Star, and the Spirit and the Bride say, come, and let him that heareth and say, come, and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely and they’ve come. They’ve come from the North and the South and the East and the West.

When the letter came about that cannibal feast in the Baliem Valley to which Ed Maxey and the other minister. What was his name, Bozeman? Why, when I heard it, I said, can these people, can such beasts ever become Christians. And then I remembered the story. I think it was from the China Inland Mission, not from our society of, there couldn’t have been China Inland because there never were cannibals in China. But it must have been in African. Anyway, one of the great and recognized missionary societies, the man went in and was killed and eaten. And a generation later, the son of the missionary that had been eaten by the cannibals, baptized the man who had killed his own father. And when led out into the water, he said, do you know that I was the chief and caused your father to die. And he said, I know it. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost I know baptize you. Rise to walk in newness of life.

Brother and sister, that’s Christianity. That’s Christianity. Sure, there’s hope for them. You can eat human flesh today and be in the kingdom of God the day after tomorrow. That’s the wonder and the glory of the gospel of Christ. It has in it more power than all the hydrogen bonds ever stockpiled anywhere by the nations of the world. It has the creative power that made the stars. The gospel of Christ and the call of God have in them the power that made angels and seraphim and created Adam and Eve, and blew into them the breath of life. So, this is the call of God, saying, come, it’s a universal invitation. It’s to whosoever, but it’s also to whosoever will, and that is a limit, a particular invitation. Only those that will may come.

Now, I have said this 100 times, I repeated now, that true religion lies in the will. A man’s total destiny depends upon his act of will. Peace or misery depends upon what a man wills concerning a certain question. Saved or lost, depends upon a decision a man makes on a certain question. Heaven or Hell, is not going to be an accident. No one is going to accidentally fall through the floorboard somewhere in the world and land in hell. Nobody’s going to happily get in the wrong crowd in the elevator and find that he’s in heaven and can’t do anything about it? There are going to be no accidents in heaven, and no accidents in hell.

Man’s total destiny depends upon his act of will. The Bible everywhere makes this plain. The Bible repeats it, declares it, assumes it, repeats it, assumes it, and declares it again all the way through the Scriptures. That the benefits of Christ’s redeeming work, whose benefits wait on our act of decision and faith; Christ’s redeeming work waits on nothing. It is done, the great transactions done, He died, He rose, He lives, He pleads, and the blood is there on the altar, or on the mercy seat. And nothing can be added to the totality and perfection of that work of redeeming grace. It is done. It is done.

That’s why I love to sing the Easter songs better than I love the Christmas songs. For lots could have happened between Christmas and Easter. But after Easter nothing can happen but what is good. For Christ the Lord is risen today, let all men and angels say. His redeeming work is done, fought the fight, the battle won. And Christ is at the right hand of God the Father, there to appear in the presence of God for us. So, that His redeeming work is finished and there’s nothing that can be added. No supernumerary merits on the part of anybody. No angels, no cherubim with little wings and heads at the bottom of pictures. No men with illuminated hoops, men with illuminated hoops round their heads; and no gaunt-looking, half-starved fellows dressed in black, running up and down their beats. They can’t add anything, anything, it’s done.

And when He said it’s finished, it was finished. And when He died, the sun was blackened and then the earth shook and the graves were opened and men walked into Jerusalem out of their graves; as though three worlds were concerned with its astonishment, that a work of redemption had taken place, and was finished and settled and done.

But, this benefit. the benefits of this work weighed on the voluntary choice of men. And no one can be coerced into being a Christian. You can catch a man and squirt him with water and make a Catholic out of him. They used to take a sword and hold it up to a fellow’s solar plexus and said, do you believe in Mohammed. Well, sure he was a believer, why, certainly. And so, he became a believer. You could become a believer that way. You can coerce a man into being this or that. Pressure can come so you vote Democratic or Republican.

One of our Alliance preachers was down in a little town in the South here a couple, two or three elections ago. And when he went to register, they found that he was the only Republican in the whole town. He was the only one. But, if he’d been a weakling, he would have gone Democratic, but he was Republican. So, he registered Republican. They didn’t want to believe it, but it was so. So, just before election, they call him up and said, Reverend, the law requires that we have one person of each party present at the polls and watch the polls. And you’re the only Republican in town. Would you come down and watch the polls? He said sure, and they paid him for it.

But you can get under pressure, you know, and join a party under pressure; that can happen. And you can you can join a union you don’t want to join, or get out of one you don’t want to get out of, or move from a piece of property you want to stay in. You can be forced to do a thousand things. You can even marry a man you don’t want to marry; or live in a house you don’t like to live in; or have a job you don’t like. But nobody ever became a Christian that way. You can’t be coerced into becoming a Christian. You may be coerced into saying that you are. Many a man got off by saying he was a Christian, as many a man has gotten off by denying that he was one. But that doesn’t make a Christian.

No one can coerce a man into being a Christian and no one can cancel his choice. No matter what you do with a man, take his Bible away, put him in jail, refuse to let him go to church. Beat him if he gets on his knees to pray, shut him away from every religious influence imaginable. And if he’s a Christian, he’s still a Christian. There’s nothing you can do about it. He’s a Christian. He is one because he made a choice. And if he is a Christian, that act was voluntary. And if he is a Christian, that act will be exclusive. That is, it will exclude all opposing factors, and everything that would hinder him will be excluded by that one act of his will, when he says, when he comes and drinks of the Water of Life freely. The Spirit and the Bride, the church, I would assume say, come. And let him that heareth say, come. And whoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely.

And then, that act also will be inclusive. It will embrace God, or Christ, and God’s good pleasure. You know, if you’re interested in insurance, say, just as an illustration, you can get all sorts of insurance. You can get insurance that will cover you if you bump somebody, and if somebody bumps you. But, if you have another kind of accident, it may not, may not cover you. You can get insurance that if you’re sick in a certain way, you will get help. But, if you’re sick in a certain other way, you won’t.

I have a miserable little policy on hospitalization with a little rider that says, this is not effective if he dies of so and so. The only thing that is wrong with me is one they won’t work, won’t give me anything for. So, you can get all sorts of insurance policies. You can, you can take part of a thing and not take the rest of the thing. But you can’t take part of Christ and not take all of Christ. For the choice, the will to life, the choice that takes salvation, is a choice that is exclusive of everything that God refuses and inclusive of everything that God gives.

So, it is also a final act. There’s no alternative, no possible alternative. They say there’s an old proverb that says that he’s a wise rabbit that has two holes. He gets into one and he can get out of the other. And, as a boy on the farm I knew that there never was a groundhog, never a groundhog that ever got into a blind alley. He always had another way out. And when you were a dog and you were digging and barking, that is, the dog was barking, and you were digging and helping the dog dig at one place, your groundhog would be half a mile away sitting up on a log looking down at you. He’d had another way out.

And a lot of Christians are like that. They are never quite willing to be final about it. They’re tentative and experimental. And like the woman that was baptized by three different modes, so that if one didn’t work, the other one would. They’re never sure of anything. They’re experimenting, and the whole thing is tentative, and I can back out if it doesn’t work.

Like the Irishman that feuded with his neighbor. And the time came that he thought he was going to die and he called his neighbor over and asked him to forgive him and said, I’m a dying man. I can’t afford to die with enmity in my heart. He said, would you forgive me? I’m sorry. And so they hugged each other and shook hands. And as the fellow was leaving the Irishman called him back and said, now, if I get well, this business is all off, remember that. It’s a question of a tentative and experimental religious act. It’s not told for fun, but many a man who has a deathbed repentance, if it wasn’t his death bed repentance, he’d be back to his knees in the wallow in twenty-four hours.

They used to have a rather cynical saying down where I used to preach in the South, that the only way you could be sure some people ever got to heaven was to get them to the altar and then knock him in the head. Because, sure enough, if you gave them three weeks, they’d backslide. People like that never were converted, they simply never knew what it was to make a decision that was a final decision. It was neither exclusive nor inclusive nor final. It was a tentative nibbling at the bait of salvation. A lot of people are like that; they nibble at the bait.

But our Lord Jesus Christ addresses Himself to the will all through the Bible, all through the New Testament and here of course at the close, the Bright and Morning Star addresses Himself to the will of mankind. And the whole work of the Spirit is to get people to be willing or, that’s not it. No, willing is passive. It’s not that I mean at all. I mean, to get people to will to follow Christ. A person might be willing to follow Christ and yet do nothing about it. But to will to follow Christ puts teeth and activity in it, and takes it out of the passive into the active.

And the hard job of the Spirit all down the years is to get people to be willing to follow Christ. The ethics of Christ, lots of people talk about that. And the hardest work of the church and of the Christian worker and the preachers always has been to get people to make a complete, inclusive, exclusive and final decision to be a Christian. And get them to do religious work, that’s not hard. It’s never difficult to get people to have religious interest.

Religious interest may be found almost anywhere, and where it isn’t found it can be created. I don’t want to be silly, but I’m sure that I can think up forty different, crazy notions that I could get people interested in. I am convinced that if I had a little money and a little time, that I could get a lot of tender-faced, loving people in Chicago interested in providing knit sweaters for squirrels. And sure enough, an old folks home for starlings that didn’t fly south in the Fall. I’m sure of it, because they’ll do anything.

Do you remember the dear old lady that went down to Springfield and worried the lawmakers to death until they finally passed the law to put bells on all cats. And Adlai Stevenson vetoed it and said you can’t change the nature of a cat by law. But you can get people interested in almost anything, just almost anything. Anything at all, there’ll be somebody sit around and knit and sip soda, or tea and talk about it and get all thrilled about it. You can even get people interested in good things. The Gray Ladies and the Boy Scouts and all, doing excellent work and don’t think that I’m knocking, all doing excellent work.

If it wasn’t for people who are willing to go all out and do good things in a bad world, what kind of a hell would the world be in a short time? If it wasn’t for good-hearted, honest sinners who go out and roll bandages and do good and why, I don’t say all of them certainly are sinners. And I know a lot of Christians that do it. But the point is, it’s religious activity and it’s no problem to get people interested in religious activity. How long did it take them to raise the money to pay off the Grime’s home? No time. They burnt the mortgage the day before yesterday.

How long did it take to get homes for the Hungarian refugees? No time at all. American people are the most generous people in the world because we’ve got it. And we pity people that don’t. And so, anything at all, we’ve got money back of it, that’s easy. To get people to become interested in religious projects. That’s easy. But to get people to make that all-inclusive, all-exclusive, final decision from which there is no retreat, that’s absolutely impossible. And only the Holy Ghost, who majors in impossibilities can do it. And that’s why soul winning can’t be learned in a book.

Some fellow is selling a book called, Now, Soul Winning is Easy. He’d better be selling insurance. Soul winning is not easy. It never was easy, never was easy. Easy to get people to say yes, I accept Christ. Easy to get people to say, sure, I’ll join your church. Easy to get people to say, certainly, I’ll join your club for the betterment of tulips. You can get people to do that. But to get them to exclude everything that God hates, and include everything that God loves, and commit themselves to Jesus Christ forever with no bridges to go back, that takes the Holy Ghost who specializes in impossibilities. And it isn’t done by reading a seventeen-cent book.

And yet, without this act, without this act of will, this sudden, all-embracing decision for Jesus Christ, I hate to use the word decision because it’s used so much. People can stand up with no more emotion than a wooden Indian and make their decision. But they’ve not made their decision, really. Because the decision that is made for Christ, this will, whosoever will and when that will actually gears in and engages the cross of Jesus, there is a change in the life more radical than when we come out of jail into freedom; more radical than when we go from the single state to marriage; more radical than when we come from sickness to abounding health; more radical than when we come from poverty to abounding riches; more radical than when we go from ignorance to a good education. It is a change that is radical and exclusive and revolutionary. And yet, until we’ve made that decision, we’re not Christians at all, because religion lies in the will.

A dear little lady, I have a daughter old enough now that I like high school kids, and I get letters, slangy little letters from them. I enjoy them. I got a letter from someone named Judy somebody in a university out in the East. And, dear Mr. Tozer, and it was all slangy and funny and she said, I’m a Christian, and I love Jesus, but I am afraid I don’t love Him as much as I should. What shall I do? And I wrote back and said, you love him some or you wouldn’t be writing me to know what the trouble is. And I said again, Judy, remember, the love of God is not the love of feeling, but the love of willing. We love him because we will to love Him, not because we feel as if we love Him. Willing is a byproduct of obedience, and obedience is a direct result of willing to obey.

The man who was willing to obey Christ, and who will still love Christ, he loves Christ. And it’s so recorded in the high annals yonder, here’s another soul that loves Christ. But that he or she may grieve that they don’t love more, that’s another matter. And I say, let’s go on to love Him until our love becomes a burning fire. But remember that you’re not a Christian because you feel like one. And you’re not a sinner, because you don’t feel as if you’re a Christian. You either are or you are not. And it’s a matter of your will, whether you have willed to follow Jesus or whether you have not.

And now how about you? All the grace of God can never reach you until you’ve made that final decision. Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, I take Thee blessed Lord, I give myself to Thee and Thou according to Thy Word does give Thyself to me. So, if you have made that decision forever and forever, and there’s no bridges back of you that you can retreat, no second hiding place, nowhere to look, but at Jesus Christ or blackness forever and you know, and you’ve set your will to love God and be obedient, you love God alright. And don’t you let a bad liver or jumpy nerves make you think otherwise. Love is of the will, not of the feeling. But as the little girl said in her testimony I once heard, she knew that salvation wasn’t by feeling, but she thanks God for the feeling. It’s a kind of a dessert to go along with her salvation and it’s true.

So, if we will be obedient Christians, and will to love God, why, there will be some happy emotions come along with it too, many happy emotions. Moody, had such a sunburst of happy emotion fall on him as he walked down the street in Philadelphia or New York, whichever it was, he crawled up an alley and prayed that God would stay His hand lest he die under the joy of it.

So, there’s joy in serving Jesus. But you don’t start there. You start with willing to serve Jesus. Lord, this day I will be a Christian. Let it cost me what it will. I will to believe in Thee. I do believe in Thee Lord Jesus. This is the prayer to make. I do believe in Thee Lord Jesus. And Thou hath said, whoever loves Me, he will keep My commandments. And therefore, I now dedicate myself to obeying Thy Word as I understand it. Teach me O God and I will be obedient. And then, following hard upon that, there will come the joy of the Christian. But it’s the willing and the obeying first. What about you? Have you made your decision?

Tags Belief, God, Obedience, Salvation, Tozer, Will, Word of God