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“Halfway to Canaan-The Peril of Settling for Less“

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Halfway to Canaan: The Peril of Settling for Less

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

July 6, 1958

Over the past weeks, talking on the 23rd of Exodus, where the Lord told Moses, Israel, that he would lead them into the land. Behold, I send an angel before thee, and the series of sermons has been called, the angel before thee. And now we left that 23rd chapter and went to another passage where we dealt with the people of God at Paran, Kadesh Barnea, where they sent the spies over and came back with an unfavorable report, saying the spies were huge and the cities walled up to heaven. And they didn’t go over, they went back.

Now tonight, we skip ahead about 40 years, 39 years, I guess, anyway, and I read these words. Now, after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead.

Now, therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this people unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses, from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life.

As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee, be strong and of a good courage. For unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance, the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them.

Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayst observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded thee. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, thou shalt meditate therein day and night. Have not I commanded thee, be strong and of a good courage, and be not afraid? Neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

Now we have followed watchfully and reverently the teachings of God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel. Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee, lead thee, defend thee, and bring thee in. And we have seen how, while the church dwells in the spiritual realm and Israel more or less in the natural, yet the principles that underlie the teachings to Israel underlie the teachings to us in the New Testament.

And therefore, we have been reverently trying to learn the ways of God with men. And we have been more than trying to learn those ways. We have been trying to learn in order that we might believe and accept and receive the benefits of.

Now, for ourselves and for this church and for the church. Now it says here, after the death of Moses, the Lord spake unto Joshua and said to Joshua, arise and go over this Jordan and take with you the people on to the land which I promised that I would lead you by mine angel, by my cloud and fire by day and night. And it’s all yours, and every place the sole of your foot shall tread upon. That have I given unto you as I said unto Moses.

Now they could have been in the land 39 years before. They could have been enjoying milk and honey and pomegranates and the grapes of Eschol. The cities built for them, the fields plowed for them, the orchards pruned and trimmed for them. They could have been enjoying that 39 years. But during those 39 years, they were wandering in a semi-desert wilderness.

And it had been their fault altogether and alone. Yet I ask you to notice something here very wonderful and very beautiful. That even though they had at Paran rebelled against the leadership of the angel and had gone back, declaring petulantly that God was going to destroy their family. That’s what God’s trying to do. Forgetting that God is love and that the kind love of God had brought them out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt. Forgetting that, they petulantly, impudently whined and whimpered against God and refused to go in.

And then to give it a little bit of respectability, they said, for our children’s sake we’re not going in. The worst thing you can do, brother, is to disobey God. And if you disobey God, your children will suffer all the rest of their lives and yours. And the best thing you can do is to obey God regardless of what it may seem to do to your children. Your children will come out all right if you obey God.

But if you disobey God for any reason, you are not doing your family any good. If you refuse to give your tithe because you feel you can’t keep your family on what’s left, you’re not doing your family any good. If you refuse to get up and scrub them up and comb them up and get them off to Sunday school because you like to see the poor little fellow sleep in, you’re not doing them any good. If you let them do things which your conscience tells you you should not, you’re not doing them any good.

Remember that the will of God is the best for you and for your family. And these Jews nevertheless managed to twist out of faith and obedience by saying you brought us up here to kill our children, an insult to God Almighty. And yet, after 39 years now, after that episode, they had not been able to alienate God from them.

God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that He would lead them into the land. He had promised Israel that He would lead them into the land. And they had not been able to alienate God from them. His covenant still remained with them, and His purpose for them was the same.

You know, some of you who have been disobeying God and are very despondent now, it would be wonderful if you could straighten up and come out of your despair and find out that though you have been unfaithful to Him, He has never been unfaithful to you. For He abided faithful, He cannot deny himself.

Now remember, my friends, whether you’re on the Arminian or Calvinist side, I don’t care nor ask, but I just want you to get one thing clear, and that is, if it wasn’t that God was working to be true to Himself, we would all have been in hell long ago. Remember that if it wasn’t that God was working according to a covenant which He made in Christ Jesus before the world began, purposed in Christ before the world began, there wouldn’t be one of us remain a Christian 24 hours, talking about the perseverance of the saints. They used to call it the perseverance of the saints, the doctrine being that the saints will persevere if they’ve ever been true saints.

Somebody asked Torrey, Dr. Torrey, do you believe in the perseverance of the saints? He said, no, but I believe in the perseverance of the Savior. That’s quite another thing, and that I believe in too, in the perseverance of the Savior.

Now, if it had depended upon the perseverance of Israel, about 80 percent of Israel was lying sleeping out in the sands of the desert. But still, God hadn’t forgotten them, and His covenant and His purpose and His promise still stood.

And then suddenly, Moses dies. We’ll not go into this about Moses dying when he was still healthy. He was. He was the only man I know of in Bible or out that died with nothing wrong with him. His eye had not dimmed, and he was as healthy a fellow at 120 as he had been at 40 or 50, and suddenly now he dies at the command of God.

And this must have certainly been a tremendous shock to Israel, because a whole generation had not known anybody else except Moses as their leader, a whole generation. Those who had gotten acquainted with Moses when they were adults and older and had come across the Red Sea into the desert, they’d all left their bones in the desert because they wouldn’t go over, wouldn’t go on into the land. But this younger generation, the ones that were now grown up and had reached the ages of anywhere from children on up to, say, 50, 60 years of age, they had known Moses only, and he had been to them a symbol of God’s leadership.

Here’s something I want to warn you about, my friends. It is this. Never get attached to any of God’s ministers as a symbol of His leadership. When I was a young Christian fellow, my pastor, S. M. Gerow, had a great organ voice, and he used to preach so beautifully about the great things of God. The first sermon I heard him preach was, was that one on where Sanballat and his crowd of Communists had tried to get Nehemiah to come down and stop building the temple or building the walls. And Nehemiah had sent back a word, I cannot come down. I am doing a great work. I cannot come down. He preached on that.

Well, I fell in love with his preaching, joined his church. I was looking around for one that preached the gospel. I’d been converted after hearing a street preacher. And I got so that he was to me the sound of piety, and the echo of spirituality, the flavor and timber of his voice, I made, I associated with godliness. So that for years afterwards, even if he had just said, pass the butter, it would have sounded spiritual to me, because I had associated his voice and his leadership with godliness.

Now, there is something you’ve got to look out for, my friend. Remember one thing. You need everybody, but you don’t need anybody. We are a church. Churches trust each other, and lean on each other, and long love each other, and help each other. But remember one thing. You do not need any body. There are no indispensable ministers. God had no indispensable prophets, not even Moses. Moses, my servant, is dead.

That sounded like the thunderclap of doom to Israel. Now, Moses is dead. And yet, God speaks now clear and encouraging, and said to them, you have Me, you have the angel, you have the fiery pillar by night, you have the cloudy pillar by day, and you have My promise, you have My covenant, you have My known purpose, you have Me all around you, therefore go on into the land. And now I give you another leader. Moses, my servant, is dead, and you don’t need Moses anymore.

Now, remember this. You don’t lose God when you lose a man of God. There have been great Christian leaders, so great that when they died, the whole Christian church worried about it. They were deeply grieved and shocked when they died. But the church of God goes on, for the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. You don’t lose God when you lose a man of God.

You know, God is the God of today, just as he was the God of yesterday and will be the God of tomorrow, because God dwells in an everlasting now, and there is no time in God. Someday I’d like to preach on that again. I preached on the eternity of God many years ago and have referred to it. But I’d like to give a full sermon. It would take a series of them really to do it even a slight justice.

But you and I are creatures of time. When you see somebody, you haven’t seen for ten years, you say to yourself, how he has changed. It’s strange that my friends are all changing, and I alone remain unchanged with the passing of the years. You’ve gotten used to your balding dome, brother. That’s what’s the matter. And you don’t notice how you’re changing. And people stand and look me in the face and smile and tell me the nicest little lies. They say you never change.

Well, they must have poor memories, because I know what time does the people. Friends, time cuts you down. Time, the ever-rolling stone, grinds you down. We’re the victims of time. We’re the victims of the sunrise and the sunset and the changes of the moon and the weather. But God’s eternal thought moves on his undisturbed affairs.

The eternal, sovereign God is unchanged. God is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow. Who’s yesterday? God’s? No. God has no yesterday. Who’s tomorrow? God’s tomorrow, no. God has no tomorrow. God has already lived all of your tomorrows as He lived all yesterdays. He’s alive forevermore and holds time within His heart. And all of the little sputniks and all of the little calendars and anniversaries and events all take place in the mighty heart of God. For the Scripture says that the heaven of heavens cannot contain God, and that God holds in His hands the stars of the heavens.

I’ve been listening to lectures Saturday nights after I go to bed. I lie and listen to lectures on astronomy. Why, my brother, they tell us about light years, distances, galaxies, stars. They tell us of a sun out there that you could take three a million, I think it is, of our suns and plop them into it and then still have room for some more little suns here and there to fill up the extra space. And yet God almighty contains all of that.

And think of the time. They talk about years and light years because they can’t measure time by ordinary calendar years. They talk about light year. What’s a light year? It’s the time, it’s 186,000 miles a second light is traveling. And they measure, they measure therefore years or space, space by light years. How far it will take light, how far light can travel in a year traveling 186,000 miles. Oh, there’s no use. There’s no use. It’s all beyond us, my brother. It’s all beyond us. But God is the God of today because God contains today and yesterday, tomorrow in His great infinite heart.

Now to most Christians, God is the God of yesterday. I’ve come to the conclusion that orthodoxy is pretty much believing that God was. And what God was, if you believe that really well. You believe in the spatial creation, and I do. And you believe in the creation of Adam and Eve, and I do. And you believe in the fall, and I do. You believe in the flood, and we all do. And you believe in the call of Abraham and Israel, and you believe in all of that, and we all do. You believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and the bodily resurrection and His ascension to the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and His coming down, the Holy Ghost coming down. We believe all this.

But don’t forget, all of this was in the historic past for you and me. And so, it seems that it’s possible to be entirely orthodox and be accepted by the orthodox churches, the fundamentalist churches, if you’re ready to subscribe to a doctrine of a God that was. But do you know that the God that was, is? The God that was is the God that is, and the God that will be.

So I’d like to, I’d like to, I’d like to inspire you somehow to dare to rise and believe that the God who was, is, and the God who is, will be; and ask you to cease to be an historic Christian, a bee in amber, embalmed in all the niceties of doctrine, but embalmed nevertheless, wrapped like Lazarus in the winding sheet of orthodoxy, but wholly unwilling to believe that God will ever do anything now.

Oh, my friend, the Lord spoke to Joshua after Moses was dead and said, now therefore arise and go over this Jordan. Now, 39 years before, He had told them to go into the land at Paran and they had refused to go and they had wandered around. Paran was south of the land and all they had to do was to wind their way through some hills and low mountains into the land. That’s all there was to it.

Now they had wandered around and were on the east of the land with a turbulent, muddy river flowing between. In other words, they had left a better place for a worse place. Their long wandering around had not helped them as far as they were concerned. It would have been easier to go into the land from their geographical position south of the land than it was from their position east of the land. And you know what? I think that often, if not always, God takes us in from the least likely spot.

But you say, what do you mean by taking you in, Mr. Tozer? Well, I don’t think I need to tell this congregation that I believe that there’s a better place for us Christians, and most Christians are willing to accept, that there is a place where we can live closer to God in a place of sweeter communion and greater power and more consistent spiritual victory than most Christians know. And it’s rather sad that there are people writing books and making lectures proving that that isn’t so. That just isn’t so.

When somebody writes you a letter or sends you a tract showing that there isn’t any better place than the wilderness, that the wilderness is it. Where God said no, the wilderness is interim. It is that through which you must travel to get to the land which I will show you.

Now, what is this land? Well, I’ve told you over the last eight sermons that it is an improved spiritual position here in this life, a better spiritual state down here now. Oh, after all, it’s only New Testament Christianity. That which we see everywhere about us is substandard. We bear the same relation, we Christians in the United States of America, we fundamentalist gospel Christians, bear the same relation to the Christians of the New Testament that a scrub hen bears to a full-blooded Minorca.

Now, on the farm where there used to be blooded chickens, that is, the great old Rhode Island reds with the feathers clear down to their feet, heavy bodied and fat, and the white leghorn and slim and egg layers, and the Plymouth Rocks, great friendly old heavy chickens, they’d lay eggs awhile and they always seemed to be good and fleshed, the kind you wanted when company came.

Well, all you had to do was just let them alone, just let them alone for say five years. And you know what happened? They crossed and crisscrossed and inbred and crisscrossed, and pretty soon you had scrubs. And most farmers had scrubs. They were just half-sized scrubs laying half-sized eggs because they were scrubs compared with what they could have been.

And I believe that the average Christian now is a scrub compared with what we Christians could be. What is a revival, brethren? A revival, it isn’t really too much. It is simply where God succeeds in producing a strain of pure-blood Christians, good ones, the Christians that are not scrubby, but that are full up to what they ought to be, pedigree, real, real Christians.

But the average Christian today is a scrub. He’s learned to love scrub music. He reads scrubby Christian literature, cheap books of fiction written by old maids who are subluxating their sexual longings and writing books and having them published. And we read that cheap trash, that literary garbage, and fellas write junk that never should have been allowed to exist in order that they might get it into a book and get the royalties on it. And we poor dumb scrub sheep who have never known what it is to see or gaze upon a flock of pure-blood breads, we’re living in the shadows, scrubs compared with what we could be.

Now, I know that doesn’t sound very good and it doesn’t fill a church as a rule. People don’t want to be talked to that way. They want to have their backs scratched. I know how to scratch people’s backs. You scratch them, I know how to do it with our gray cat. Scratch her back and she’ll close her eyes with a look of absolute feline bliss on her face. And the average preacher just scratches the backs of scrub cats, and they pay the bills and so that’s all a man wants. God Almighty help us, brethren. There ought to be a pressing forward. Moses, my servant, is dead now. Therefore, arise and get thee into the land which I have given you.

Why, one denomination calls it the victorious life. Another one calls it the deeper life. Another one calls it by some other name. But I think we’re all trying to say the same thing, that there’s a better place than the average Christian has found, a place of light, a place of spiritual fullness, a place of rapturous worship, a place of power, a place where prayers are answered, a better place. And that’s the place.

Now figure it out the best you can, but that’s what I’m talking about. And I say that often the Lord takes us in from the least likely spot. After we’ve made everything difficult. See, they had wandered around for 39 years and had complicated the simple act of going into the land. They’d complicated it terribly. They were psychologically all unprepared for it. They’d come to expect only the wilderness with its wanderings.

And I am perfectly certain, just as Jesus said to a man that lay by the pool, wilt thou be made whole? Why did He ask him, do you want to get well? That’s what the word means in Chicago English. Do you want to get well? Why did He ask a man, do you want to get well? Because illness has a psychology. And when it becomes chronic illness, after a while you learn to live with it. And pretty soon you’ll even may learn to like it.

There are people that are so small in their experience that if they didn’t have a pain, they wouldn’t have a topic of conversation. Now I mean this, I’m not kidding. And Jesus knew it. And Jesus said, do you want to get well? And the man said he did, and the Lord delivered him.

Now here, you’ll find there are Christians they wouldn’t want. There are some of you Christians listening to me, you wouldn’t want a revival to come to this church. You wouldn’t want it. You’ve got your life all carefully laid out. You know just what you do. You know just how many meetings a week you go to church. You know just exactly how much you give. And you have managed to work out a comfortable pattern for your spiritual life.

And if a revival came, the first thing it would do would be to disturb your comfortable pattern. And you’ve learned to live with your scrub Christianity. And any accelerating of your spiritual pace, any elevation in your spiritual altitude, and for a while you’d be dizzy.

So you pray send revival, but you don’t mean it. Just as Israel, 39 years Israel had been in the wilderness, they went to sleep at night to the sound, or whatever sounds there were. They woke in the morning to the same sounds, so they did not have the psychology of advance. And I believe that’s one thing that’s wrong with our churches. That’s why soft preaching will never bring revival to the church of Christ. That’s why preaching that tries to please everybody never will be, never will bring revival.

Now let me raise my hand to heaven and tell you this. That if the church, the fundamentalist evangelical church of which I am a part until you’d have to amputate me to get me out of it. If that church ever recaptures the glory of New Testament Christianity, it will be on the preaching of men who do not try to stay in good with everybody but are perfectly willing to make some people mad. Do you hear me?

The idea that we can glorify God and bless His church and bring revival to the world while at the same time walking carefully on eggs so as never to offend anybody, that is heresy of the lousiest kind. There never has been a revival touched the world yet that wasn’t led by some rough man who didn’t care whether people liked it or not.

Well, don’t forget this one thing, however. It is this, the land is a gift, the land which I give unto thee. Draw a line under that word, “give.” I do give it to them. We can’t overemphasize this, that anything you get from God is a gift from God to you out of the goodness of His heart. You can’t earn it; you can’t merit it. It isn’t yours by any right, nor justice, nor logic. It’s yours as a gift to be received and not a reward to be earned. It’s still there waiting even after the long blundering.

Some of us Christians have blundered so terribly after we get converted, blundered so terribly after the long years. And yet God says, every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given you. There’s the tread of faith, as much as you will take, as far as you will go.

Now I’m nearly finished, and I want to talk a little about the judgment of all believers. It is that everybody is as far along as he wants to be. Hear me. You’re as far along in the spiritual life as you want to be. I’ve been saying that for quite a number of years. The other day I read a devotional book or read in a devotional book. You don’t read devotional books through, you read in them.

And I read in this devotional book by some old saint many, many centuries ago, and lo and behold, he said, everybody is as far along as he wants to be. And I’d never read it from him, I’d been saying it. Which says once more that the Holy Ghost always talks the same language, whether he is talking in the 20th century or in the 14th. Everyone has as much as he wants to have, everybody’s as holy as he wants to be, and everybody’s as full of the Spirit as he wants to be.

Now, do you hear that? This is the judgment of God on all believers. Israel was as far into the land as she wanted to be. And you are as far into the land as you want to be. And you are as near to God as you want to be. So don’t say, pray for me that I may be near to God. No, no, no, no, that’s a cliche, a religious cliche, don’t use it. You can be as near to God as you will be. You can be as full of God as you will be.

When Dr. Torrey was a very old man, I heard him preach when his voice was practically gone. He never preached many sermons, if any, after that, and then he died. But I heard him preach on being filled with the Spirit. And he said this, and I’ve never forgotten it. He said, we talk about getting more of the Spirit, forgetting that we’re approaching it from the wrong direction. We ought to see that the Spirit gets more of us, instead of seeking to have more of the Spirit. You have as much of the Spirit as you want. For as you give yourself to God, you will be filled.

Bring your empty earthen vessels. Bring your vessels, not a few. And when they brought the vessels and kept bringing the vessels, the oil kept flowing into the vessels. And it was only when they came and said, there is not another vessel, that the oil stayed.

So, my brother, you are as holy as you want to be. You are as full of God as you want to be. You’re as close to God as you want to be. And you’re as far into the spiritual land as you want to be.

But you say, Mr. Tozer, I don’t want to contradict, but I know better. My heart longs and yearns, and I cry to God that I might be a better Christian. You cry to God to be a better Christian, but you won’t let God make you a better Christian. You won’t follow the Lord into the land. You say, O God, give me the land, but you won’t enter the land. You say, Lord, I want to be holier, but you won’t let God make you holier. You’re as holy as you’ll let God make you.

It’s time we took the onus off of God Almighty and put it on our own souls where it belongs. The fact we have no revival and that we’re scrub Christians living infinitely below our spiritual privileges in Christ is not the fault of our Father which art in heaven. For after 39 years of wandering, Israel was told, I’m with you still. I didn’t desert you. You deserve to be deserted. But I remember my friend Abraham. I’m with you still. The covenant still holds.

Some of you that are listening to me now, you’ve gotten old and bald, and you’ve hardened up, and your habits have congealed, and a kind of premature rigor mortis has set into your spiritual life. And still, the God who gave His son to die in anguish hasn’t given you up, and He won’t. He won’t. He’s still on your side, still waiting for you to wake and come to yourself. Every place the soul of your foot treads, that’s yours if you’ll take it.

Now, this is the eighth message that I’ve given. And I have told you from this 23rd of Exodus and pointing out that this is history and that it had to do with a physical nation in a physical world, but that the spiritual principles which underlie it apply to us in the spiritual world.

And I’ve shown you how God says, I will go before you, I’ll be an enemy to your enemies, an adversary to your adversaries, and I will bring you into the land of your enemies, and I will drive them out, and I will bless you, and there shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil. And I’ll send my fear before you. I’ve told you that.

And now I tell you, I’ve had no advantage to gain. What could I gain if any of you suddenly decided you were going to stop fooling around and take your Christianity seriously? What could I gain by that? You tell me, any raise in salary from me on that? Any big car, nicer parsonage from me? No. No, we’ve learned to get along, half dead the way we are.

And if we continue that way, we’ll still get along all right, as Israel got along in the wilderness, wandering around in the desert. They got on, but they died one at a time, and we buried them out of here one at a time, and I don’t know whose turn it’ll be next. And I’ve prayed, and I’ve labored, and I think unselfishly, for I’ve had nothing to gain. And I believe the Holy Ghost has spoken.

And what have you done about it, dear Christian friends? I’m not finished. There’ll be some more sermons on the same subject. We’re going to talk next week about the actual crossing over at the Jordan. But what have you done about this? Oh, I don’t want to listen to the devil. I don’t like the devil. I don’t like the devil. I don’t like Communists, Communism, and I don’t like the devil.

But if I wanted to get blue, I think that I could make indigo look pink by comparison, because just think of the people that have listened to my preaching over these last months and years and have kept coming back indicating that for some reason, something brought them, and haven’t done one lowly thing about it. You have not made any spiritual progress at all. You haven’t gotten anywhere. You’re right where you were. And not only that, but you also don’t intend to do anything about it tonight. You’re casting quick looks at your watch and wondering if you’ll be, I’ll let you out in time for that program.

Moses, my servant is dead. Now, therefore, arise and get thee over this Jordan. And don’t forget that it’s all by the blood of the everlasting covenant, all by the blood of the covenant. Everywhere we look, every direction we turn, every word we utter, every prayer we make is by the blood of the everlasting covenant. That Great Shepherd of the sheep which God brought back from the dead, took to His own right hand to be our Advocate above, a Savior above the throne of love.

And I think that He is both more severe with you than I am, but I think also He’s infinitely more understanding than I could be. Moses tended to get irked with Israel, and I’m afraid sometimes that I get irked with people I don’t want to, you know, that kept Moses out of the land. But brethren, why do we fool around the way we do?

Now, some of you got a pattern. First thing you’ll do is duck out of here and hit for Melody Lane or someplace else. And you’re going to do that, or dash home for some TV program. You’re going to do that, and you’ll do that regardless of what I say. Who’s that old guy anyhow?

Well, I’ve said that, and the devil said it, and there’s only one person who thinks I’m out to anything, and He went out and died for me on the cross. He’s the only one who thinks it. And if you want to dismiss me with a carnal shrug, I’m dismissible, brother. But there’ll be a judgment when we’ll all stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give account of the deeds done in the body.

And this sixth day of July 1958, at seven o’clock in the evening, there was a service, and you attended it. And you heard an exhortation based upon the imagery and history of the Old Testament, a typology, if you like, and then you went out to follow your pattern, convenient, undisturbed, the same rut you’ve lived in for years. Dear Heavenly Father, are we going to continue like this in our circle, or are we going to break out of it and move on toward God? Let us pray.

O Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Christ and Lord and King and Prince and Advocate and Priest and High Priest and Lamb that was slain, someone pointed to Thee and said, Behold the Lamb of God, and we followed Thee, and we thank Thee Thou didst accept us and take away our sins. Then Thou didst say, now if you will follow Me, take up your cross, deny yourself, follow Me, and where I am there my servant will be. Then began our compromising. Then we learned to make compromise. And we’ve learned it, we’ve come as skillful as a scholastic theologian. We’ve made ourselves comfortable and convenient.

O Lord Jesus, what shall we say to Thee? What shall we say to Thee? We send sixty-two percent of our income to the foreign field to make converts in Africa, Indonesia, South America, and the islands of the sea. But some of those same converts would be shocked if they came back and saw how cold we are, how full of jokes, how engrossed with the size of our automobiles and our rugs and our picture windows.

My Lord Jesus, we are ashamed before Thee this day. We pray that Thou will help us to set our hearts like a flint, determinedly and like Daniel, refuse to partake of the world’s meats. Help us, we pray, to hear Thy cheerful, encouraging voice even after our disgraceful wanderings, saying, now rise, rise, get up, move in, I’ll be with you.

Gracious Lord, we pray Thee, touch every one of our hearts and tear away all of our little playhouses. Tear away, we pray Thee, our God, all of the little idols that we’ve made unconsciously. We don’t know have. We have all the little comfortable pillows for our heads. Take them all away and bring us back down as Jacob was to the rock. Grant, we pray Thee, that there might be some serious heart-searching during this week that lies ahead.

Dear Savior, Thou knowest with rebellions and revolutions and hydrogen bombs and leagues of nations, Arab leagues and the United Nations and the shaping up of things for the end times, and with man holding in his hand a weapon for suicide, Lord, we can’t afford to play. Yet we’re so well off, so moneyed, so comfortable, that we’re learning to play and we stretch ourselves on beds of ivory and invent instruments like David and drink out of bowls and care not, care not that the tread of the advancing enemy can be heard till it shakes the earth and the sound of the shout of the enemy is carried to us on every wind, and yet we go our way.

My Father, help America. Help us of the fundamentalist churches. Help us of the gospel churches. Help us, we beseech Thee. Help us. We have our Bibles, and we claim to believe, but, O Father, so did the Pharisees. We beseech Thee, help us to put our beliefs to practice. Let it cost us something, we beseech Thee. Now we’re trusting.

We pray for our people that are out and gone and away, many of them, and they’ll be back tomorrow. They’ll be back in time to work, but they didn’t get back in time for church today. But bless them anyway, Lord, and help them and let them not leave their bones on the highways. Have mercy upon these poor people who are traveling in bumper-to-bumper, long lanes of traffic coming into the city tonight. Let there be few or no accidents. Preserve lives. We don’t deserve it but have mercy on us for Jesus Christ’s sake.

Put into the hands of the right people, the right literature, we beseech Thee, that we may break out of this conventional shell of dead level of mediocrity and break through into courageous, daring, unusual, radical, if need be, kind of spiritual lives that our frightened friends will call us fanatics. But Thou wilt smile as thou dost see that we are pushing on into the land which Thou hast promised us in Christ Jesus, the spiritual places, the heavenly places with which we’ve been blessed but about which we do so little. We ask all this in Christ’s name.

Amen.

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“While it is Today II”

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While it is Today II

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

February 27, 1955

I wanted to talk about our day where it says, while it is called today. I pointed out last week that the word “day “and related words, occur 2500 times in the Bible. The Bible makes a great deal of the day. A very young man who would always find it easy to find that one great problem and name it. But, as we get older, we realize that life is not so simple as all that; it dovetails and blends. For instance, we never quite know when it’s day, because the night and the day have a period when they blend. We call it twilight. Usually in the evening, it’s called twilight, meaning two lights, the darkness coming on and the other light not yet gone.

So, it is with almost everything, they interlock, and they have their periods when we scarcely know whether it is morning or noon or evening. But let us think of the grown-up day now, of serious responsibility. The morning is the time when we make our start, and then comes on the day. The long serious day, I repeat, of grown-up responsibility. And the one great trouble with this, if I might thus call it one great trouble. The one great trouble is that the church is filled with retarded children. That is, children that have not developed. I think that to God, it easily could be and probably is as saddening to have a church full of retarded saints, as it would be for a man and a woman to have children that are retarded.

Many long years ago, and not a one of you will remember anything about this, but many long years ago in this city, this church touched a family. Nobody’s here now and so don’t please think I mean anybody present. But this church touched a family. And through one of our members and my own little ministry, we helped the family some that was composed almost all together of subnormal children. I think there was one out of a large family that was one wouldn’t have called subnormal if he was seen on the street. But the rest were retarded. They they didn’t grow. They didn’t develop. They were born into the world physically, and they grew physically, but they never grew mentally. That is, not much. There were some that were stopped when they were this age and some when they were that age, but the whole family, with the single exception of the one of which I knew of, were retarded.

Now, that must be a grief to parents. And it must be a grief to God Almighty to look at his church, his little household for which He has given everything and to which He gives Himself without measure and see that we just will not go on. We are retarded.

Now the difference is that a retarded child is not to blame. He is not to be blamed because he can’t help it. He did not retard himself. But the difference is that a Christian, if he’s retarded, is one who has retarded himself and he’s to be blamed for his condition.

And here we have in our churches these days, retarded children, who will not accept the long serious day. They will not accept spiritual adulthood. They will not accept grownup responsibility. They insist upon the drama of the morning. Now dramatic deeds are for the morning and the night. If you will look at your Bible, you will find that, say, Samson for instance. Samson had a very colorful life. But nothing is as colorful as his birth and his death. Take our Lord Himself. It was at His birth that the angels sang. And it was at His death, that the sun went down.

There was drama indeed at the beginning and at the close. And I will grant, that a young Christian starting out may be forgiven and understood, if not yet matured, and not yet up in the things of God. There may be not yet of the old man around that he expects and wants and insists upon something colorful and dramatic. And I will grant the man a right that once he’s gone through the heat and burden of the day and earned his spurs, earned his right to die, I grant that he has the right to call around him, as Jacob did, all his family, and bless them dramatically, and pull his feet into bed and sleep with his fathers. Every Christian ought to be born into the world with color.

And every Christian ought to go out of the world leaving something behind him that we could look back upon, as when a great oak tree goes down on the hillside with a crash and leaves a vacant spot against the sky. But between that dramatic beginning when we first see the light, and that last hour, when we go out of the world into the presence of God above, there’s an awful lot to be done that you just can’t pep up. That it just will not yield itself to colored lights and sound effects. It is the solid business of life; we carry on the hard, laborious work of the day.

Now that’s what God wants his Christian people to do and be, and that’s what we are not. The long day is for the heat and the burden. It is for the time of toiling and the time of traveling and the time of building and the time of cultivating, using four figures here to set forth the work of the Christian: toil like the laborer, travel like the pilgrim, build like the carpenter, and cultivate like the farmer. And whatever work you’re doing, Christian, you’re not going to be around to do it long.

And so, you’d better see that there are three qualities in the work you’re doing. You must see that your work is for God, with God and in God. Now I say for God, because there’s a great deal of religious work that isn’t being done for God at all. It’s being done for self or for the denomination. The loyalty of denomination holds some churches together. They are brought up from the time they’re little children to be loyal to a denomination, and they are loyal. But that’s not the quality that makes work eternal. That doesn’t put everlastingness in the fiber of my deeds, to be loyal to a dead man.

I heard once not so very long ago of an old fellow who had a very lovely and beautiful daughter. And the mother evidently was dead, and this daughter grew to her young teens and had developed into a fine and beautiful young woman, still a kid yet. And this old gentleman kept her, and they had a very poor kind of home, but he kept things together. And then one day, well, they missed her. She didn’t show up around. And some friends just casually asked about her, they could get nothing out of him. He wouldn’t tell anybody what had happened to her. And they finally went to investigate. And they found that she had died a natural death, but she had died. And something had broken in this old man’s head and heart. He had loved that young girl was such awful affection that he knew that if he said that she was gone, they would take her from me. So, every day he dressed her and every day he washed her face and her hands. And every day he talked to her and sat by her and talked.

And it was almost too much for tough policemen and social workers when they came in, and gently and carefully led the old man away weeping and protesting as they led him away. His love had bridged the gulf of death. And was true even in death, and his poor old mind couldn’t understand that the dead have to be as Abraham and Sarah said, buried out of my sight.

Well, that was one old man, loyal to the dead. But I wonder if it isn’t as grotesque and as horrible in the eyes of God when our loyalties go no further than some institution or denomination. Let that institution die, and let the spirit that once kept it alive, go from it and be there no more, and still retain our loyalty to a dead shell and sit and weep beside a corpse. I do not believe in it myself. And I believe that if, I, in my little brief day, I’m going to work in eternal work, I must work for God and not for my denomination or my society. I may work in it, but certainly when I work for it, it’s too late then, to hope to do any good. I must work for God that God might have my loyalty in God alone, not myself, not work for the promotion of myself. People almost kill themselves working for self.

We see a young man very devoted. His glasses get thicker and thicker, and the stoop in his shoulders gets more and more noticeable. And he walks more and more like an old man and he’s just a young fellow. He’s studying. He’s working hard. He’s half killing himself; getting scarcely any sleep. What’s he doing? He’s got an ambition before him. He’s going to be a civil engineer. He’s going to be a physician. He’s got an ambition before him there. And he drives himself and does extra work and studies long hours of the night, gets up half dead in the morning and goes, we say that fellow is sacrificing for an ambition. When we see that in the church, we want to paint a whole halo around the fellow’s head and say what a noble son of the Kingdom he is almost killing himself in the kingdom of God. But I’ve met Christians who have almost killed themselves in the kingdom of God for no higher goal than the exploitation of themselves.

It’s amazing what we will put up with and how much we’ll sacrifice, if at the end of the day, somebody claps his hands, and says, bravo. Verily, they have their reward. Watch out while you’re giving. Watch out while you’re praying. Watch out and take note that you may not be serving God with all your deeds. The long drag of the day when the sun’s hot and the dust is thick. And the freshness of morning is gone and the hope for evening yet lies long way out yonder, and there’s nothing to do, but as they used to say in the army, sweat it out.

You know, from the military comes sometimes, and from sports, comes from wonderful expressions that get adopted into the language. And if it wasn’t for the word “sweat,” I think that would soon be respectable English, and would get into the dictionaries. But what they meant was, there’s no hope, nothing to cheer it up, no salt to make it taste good, no music to march by, just sweat it out. And there’s a lot of that in the kingdom of God, brothers and sisters. Don’t think there isn’t.

If you are so carnal that you always want to march to a brass band, why, woe be to you. There are times when there won’t be a brass band within shouting distance, any direction, when you’ll have to go all by yourself with God, trusting and believing, rather than hearing the sound of the big drum. Well, we’ve got to be sure that we’re working for God.

And then, working with God. Oh, how wonderful it is to work with God. You know, working with some people is not work at all. Can’t you just now, while I’m talking, can’t you think of some people? Working with some people isn’t work. It is so delightful to be with them that it isn’t work at all. That if they’re around the burden of work all goes out of the work, and it’s a long hard drag, but isn’t so hard.

Take the young couple just recently married. They may not have much. Most young couples isn’t it odd, brothers and sisters, that when they’re young and can enjoy it, they don’t have much. And when they get so old, they can’t enjoy it and they’ve always got all they want. That’s the way life is anyhow. That isn’t part of the story. But, if you ever stopped to think how young couples, much in love with each other, can put up with almost anything at all, because being together is enough. They’re working together. That’s the way it should be anyway. And it is, I suppose, a great many times.

Now, working with God takes all of the drudgery out of work. If Paul had said to me, come along. I want you to go along with me. Do you suppose that I’d have complained to my wife that the trip was long and it was heavy and hard and the accommodations were too good? Just to get to go along with Paul would have been simply wonderful. Well, how much more wonderful to have God with us. Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. So, to get to go along with the Lord and work with God is a beautiful thing. And it takes all the drudgery out of the long burden of the day.

And then there’s work in God. Not only for God and with God, but in God. These are three requirements of the work. Now, I wonder, what about 90% or greater, what a high percent of religious activity, whether it is in God or not, we’ve invented so many things. God made the church upright, and men have sought out many inventions. And there are so many things we do nowadays. People can actually get old and die serving God and have no more relation to the kingdom of God. I mean, serving the church and have no more relation to the kingdom of God than a squirrel in a revolving squirrel cage has to the deep forest and the green branches and the sunshine. So, we must work in God, learn to work in God.

I read a little quotation from Dr. Simpson just recently where he said, that until we repudiate our own intelligence and take the mind of Christ, we won’t get very far. If the mind of Christ should suddenly descend upon the church of Christ today, there would be a scramble to rethink many of our activities. There would be a fleeing from some of the squirrel cage activities that we now engage in. And there would be a seeking of the few central, important strategic deeds that God is doing in the day in which we live. We must work with God, and we must work for God and we must work in God, otherwise, we lose it all at last.

So that’s the long, long day. And you know what, I’m not going to pity you at all. And I don’t want you to pity me. You’re going to have to get up when you don’t feel like it, go to church when you’d rather sleep another hour. Give when you’d rather have that money to pay for something you bought, or want to buy, and endure when you’d rather quit, and continue to be good and live with Christ, when your old Adam nature wants to do something else. And I’m not going to pity you at all.

Do you know what you’re doing? Oh, brother, pity the farmer. Pity the farmer that is out there with his corn. Pity that man in Iowa who has himself and maybe half a dozen hired men out there cultivating corn. Wait till the time when the great corn huskers go through and harvest it and the great ears of corn.

Do you know what a bang board is any of you men. Does anybody here know what a bang board is? Would you put your hand up?

Oh, you farmers, what a lot of you we got around here. Well, a bang board as I get it, is the board they put up on the other side of a wagon. You throw a big ear of corn that long, you know, and I don’t know how many, how much up against the bang board it hits and drops back down into the wagon again. When you see that farmer and his helpers, maybe a half a dozen or a half-grown boys, you see them out there working and perspiring. Through the heat and burden of the day, filling his big trucks or his big wagons full of golden corn. Do you pity him? Of course you don’t pity him. You say, I envy that fellow. Corn selling the way it is now, he can lay a nice nest egg up for the time to come.

I don’t pity the Christian that’s hard at work. Joseph Carroll, who was at Wheaton when you and I were there, Brother McAfee, and was our counselor. He took our choirs and dealt with them. Well, I think he’s an either an Australian or New Zealander, and I saw a letter he wrote the other day. What a letter. It was filled with joy and weariness. He said, I thought I would have time to come up for air and rested a little bit, but I just can’t rest and then he told why. Always more calls, more calls, more calls. He said, I can’t do it. So, he’s just too busy.

Now, there comes a time certainly in this physical body when we need to take a little time off. I proved that by taking a vacation once, but their does come such a time. But that’s a brief time and then it’s over. Even Jesus said, come and rest a while. That’s another matter and is not involved here now. I’m talking now about the long drag of the years. And we’d like to come up for air and say, Lord, isn’t it about time we quit? And the Lord says, I’ll blow the whistle when it’s quitting time. In the meantime, you go on and work, work in Me and work for Me and work with Me. And when it’s time to quit, I’ll tell you.

Paul wanted to quit, and wouldn’t, just wouldn’t and couldn’t, and said, I press onward for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And then one day, he heard a whistle. He listened and said, is that it? And finally, it came clear and sharp. He knew it was quitting time. He threw down his tools and he said, I have finished my course. I have fought a good fight. I have kept the faith. And now there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which God the Righteous Judge would give me in that day. But he didn’t watch the clock and he didn’t quit until he heard the whistle.

So, I don’t know when the whistle will blow for you, my brother. But in the meantime, don’t expect me to pity you because you’re hard at work. I’m hard at work too. And every Christian worth his salt is hard at work. And there isn’t much music in it, maybe and there isn’t much color in it and not much drama in it. But it’s productive work. It’s the work of rearing children. It’s the work of producing fruit. It’s the work of building houses. It’s the work of making a journey. All that is yours. It’s a high privilege. It’s not a burden for us to pity a man because he carries it. It is a privilege that we should envy a man that he has the joy of caring.

Now, there comes the evening, the evening. That’s labor ended at last. Now, understand these figures are drawn from the farm or drawn from the country, here in the Bible, and they don’t take into account that we’ve turned night into day and day into night in our civilization. But this is the evening now, and the carpenters have knocked off, and the farmer has brought in his team, and it is now evening. And then comes the supper and the rest and the sleep. Rest that has been earned, and sleep that is deep and refreshing, because the long drag and heat and burden of the day have exhausted the tough, but hard-working brother. So, he sleeps well at last.

Old Samuel Rutherford said, I shall cease sleep sound in Jesus and in His likeness, rise. He expected to go and he did go and expected sound sleep, no dreams to frighten a man, Shakespeare said, to dream, to sleep, to dream, ah, there’s the rub. He was afraid to sleep because of the awful dreams that would come. But the man who dreams or sleeps in God, sleeps a dreamless sleep. It’s the sleep of the blessed.

Well, for the individual, you never know when our sun is going to set. It was said of one in the Bible, her sun is set while it is yet day. Her sun has gone down while it is yet day, so that we don’t know when the sun is going to set for you. But if the morning has been all right and your choices have been wise and good. And during the long day you worked for God and in God and with God, it doesn’t make too much difference when the sun sets.

Oh, I wonder if we couldn’t invent a little illustration. Suppose there’s a family, a man and his wife and four half-grown children. And they’re all going to move to Florida and live down there. I use Florida because California is too far away. And so, they’ve got their house already for them down there. It’s a nice stucco house and they’re surrounded by palm trees and citrus fruit groves. And they’re going to live down there now and everybody’s excited. And then father says, I’ve got to go. He said, you know, I’ll have to go down there and get the furniture in and get the lights connected and utilities on, and besides, my job begins down there. And she says, well, I can’t leave here now. You see, the children aren’t out of school. Well, he says, I’ll go. And so, they all kiss him, and he goes.

Now do they pity him? Not a bit of it. They say, he’s just going a little ahead and we’ll be there. And then high school closes, and the 17-year-old says, well, listen, I get out a week ahead of grade school. Why can’t I go now? Well, she says, if you want to. There’s nothing to keep you up here. Go down and help your dad. So off he goes. And he kisses them all goodbye. And they say, oh, you get a whole week ahead of us. And so, after a week or 10 days, she finally gets everything, and she takes the smaller ones, and they all go. But they all meet down there at the station, and all go out to see the new place. Well, do we pity those who went ahead? No, we rather envy them and say you’re going to get a week’s more sunshine than we got?

Now here we are we Christians in this church, here we are a family in God. And there have been a few who have gone off, not to Florida, but to a better place where the spirits of just men are made perfect and where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary be at rest. Why pity them and say poor so and so? He had to go. Poor so and so had to go where the sun never sets. Poor so and so had to go where there’s no sin, no gamblers, no drunks, no bums, no policemen, no keys, no sickness, no hospitals, no jails, no insane asylums. Pity him? No, you ought to say, oh, I wonder what he did that God was so good to him to take him off before the rest of us. And then somebody else goes and we have another funeral. And we get a lot of flowers and go through the funeral. And people say, poor lady. She had to go. Well, why say, poor lady, I repeat.

Children of God, don’t all go at once, but they do go. And we have been upside down in our viewpoint. When they go, we say, too bad. Somebody said about John the Baptist, he made himself a little imagination. John the Baptist one day had his head cut off. It’s very final and effective. And John was the only man in the world that preached his own head off; and he literally did. He preached until they cut his head off because of what he preached. Well, John, one day, they came to him and cut his head off and that old head rolled over onto the cobblestones and somebody said, poor John. The man with his imagination said, one day up in heaven, suddenly there came sweeping through in royal robes. And somebody said, who’s that? They said, that’s John. They said, well, blessed be John.

Well, you see, it all depends upon your viewpoint. If you’re standing beside your man in the prison court and his head rolls off you say, poor John. But if you’re up there when he arrives, you say, happy John. It all depends on where you are looking at and how you see it.

Occasionally, I hear of somebody whose mother died and they almost had a nervous breakdown. Actually, I’ve heard of this. A dear old Christian goes, and they almost die, and they can’t get over it. And days and weeks and months and years go by and still they’re in the dumps and doldrums because they can’t get over the fact that their mother died. Well, I say, with old Polonius. Of course, your mother died. But so tis with all nature. And we must all die and enter the kingdom of God by means of death, at least until the Lord comes and for the moment, we are not thinking of that.

So, I say, oh, why let it get you down. They’re going a little sooner to the land of sunshine. Why envy them and grieve about them and bring them back to the snow and the slush and the mud. Thank God, they’re where they are. Get your chin up and go to work because you’re going to go one of these times. Now, for us all who’ve served him, it will be rest for the toilers. It’ll be a victory for the soldier, and it’ll be journey’s end for the traveler, and it’ll be a reward for all.

I went upstairs after the service began because I remembered something I wanted you to hear. There used to be a song that they used to sing in the Christian Missionary Alliance written by a Salvation Army man by the name of Captain R. Kelso Carter. And they used to sing it in olden days, but now since we’ve adopted this world and accepted it as our home, I never hear it sung anymore. It runs like this. It’s called, The Blood Washed Pilgrim.

I wonder how many of you have ever heard it. Its copyright is 1886, The Blood Washed Pilgrim. I saw a blood washed pilgrim, a sinner saved by grace, upon the King’s great highway with peaceful shining face. Temptation sore besetting but nothing could afright, He said the yoke is easy, the burden it is light. His helmet was salvation, a simple faith his shield, and righteousness his breastplate, the Spirit’s sword he would wield. All fiery darts arrested and quenched their blazing fight. He cried, His yoke is easy and His burden it is light. Mid storms, and clouds, and trials in prison at the stake he leaped for joy, rejoicing, it was all for Jesus’ sake. That God should count him worthy, was such supreme delight, He cried, “The yoke is easy, the burden is so light. I saw him overcoming through all this swelling strife, until he crossed the threshold of God’s eternal life, The Crown, the Throne, the Scepter, The Name, the Stone so White, were his, who found, in Jesus, The yoke and burden light.

We used to sing that in the old days when going to heaven meant something. They would rather go to California now, or Bermuda. Then they had a chorus on this: Oh! palms of victory, crowns of glory, Palms of victory I shall wear and then repeat.

Did you ever hear that? Oh, brother, those were the days, and these are the days too. These are the days These are the best days in the world if we know what to do about it. For God is within speaking distance, and within touch, yay, dwelling within us. Let us turn to God and ask Him for strength for the day. For if the day has been good, the night will be all right, and sundown will be at pleasure. Now let’s pray.