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The Enabling Power Of The Holy Spirit In Our Lives”

The Enabling Power of the Holy Spirit in our Lives

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 1, 1956

Summary

A.W. Tozer’s sermon, “The Enabling Power of the Holy Spirit in Our Lives,” emphasizes the essential role of the Holy Spirit in empowering believers and the church to live effective, spiritually vibrant lives. Mr. Tozer outlines three distinct periods in the lives of Jesus’s disciples: before the cross, after the resurrection but before Pentecost, and after Pentecost. He parallels these periods with the current state of the church, arguing that many are stuck in a phase of instruction without power, characterized by aimless activity, intermittent fellowship with Christ, and a lack of spiritual vitality. He urges believers to seek personal and collective repentance, purity, and the fullness of the Spirit to move beyond mere religious activity and into a life of true spiritual power and purpose.

Message

After these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. And on this wise showed he himself. There were together Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael of Cana and Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.

And Simon Peter saith unto them, I go fishing. They say unto him, well, we’ll go with you. So they went forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night they caught nothing.

But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, Children, have you any meat? And they answered him, no, no, we haven’t. So, He said, cast your net over on the other side, and they did, and they got fish.

Now, I want to talk tonight about these opening verses here, and with this we’ll bring the talks on John to an end. The seventeenth chapter of John was considered some two years ago, quite at length in a series of sermons, so naturally we’ll not repeat that. And the story found in John 18, 19, 20, and 21 have occupied our thoughts over the last weeks, the arrest of Jesus and the death and the resurrection, so that there scarcely it would not be proper to continue through these chapters, having been dealt with quite extensively. So, with this tonight, we will leave this blessed book of John, often, often to come back to it, but not to preach any longer in this series.

Now, this has to do tonight with the forty days in Tyrium, which is covered in Acts 1:1-8. The former treatise, said Luke, the former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up after He had, through the Holy Ghost, given commandments unto the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom also He showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and being assembled together with them, commanded them they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith He, ye have heard of Me.

For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

That is Luke’s story that parallels John’s story here in the twenty-first chapter of his book, the closing chapter of his book. Now, this forty-day interim period after Jesus had been raised from the dead, but before He had sent the Holy Ghost, it was a time of instruction without power.

Now, there was power in the Instructor, but there was not power in the one instructed. And it is an axiom, I think, of theology that it takes the same degree of power to understand truth as it does to preach truth. So that Jesus was instructing the minds of His disciples, but they had not the power to grasp it fully. And it was a time of intermittent fellowship with Jesus our Lord. He had risen from the grave, but they were with Him only part of the time. At one place, Thomas was not present at all. And at another time, there would only be one. At another time, there would be two or three. In another case, five hundred. And James at one time saw Him, and Peter saw Him. And the fellowship with Jesus was real, but it was intermittent. And it was a period of considerable uncertainty for these disciples.

They were uncertain about exactly what they should do. They reached a period that was something of a vacuum. It was quite empty, because it was between the death and resurrection of Jesus and the coming down of the Holy Spirit. And it was a time of fruitless activity. You will notice in 21:2 that they were together aimlessly. It says here almost nonchalantly, aimlessly.

They were together, Simon Peter and Thomas called Didymus, Nathaniel of Canaan in Galilee and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Now, they were not together by the Lord’s appointment. They were just together. They were there rather aimlessly. And being aimlessly together, naturally they had to do something, so the strongest one of them suggested they do something. He said, I’m going fishing.

He had forgotten that he had left his fishing boat to follow his Lord three years before. But now his Lord was coming and going. He was there, and then He was gone. He was present, and then He was absent. He was visible, and then He disappeared. And Peter, being an active, strong, aggressive type of man, couldn’t take this inactivity and particularly this uncertainty.

So, he said, I’m going fishing. And naturally what he suggested doing was patterned after the old life. And the strongest one, having suggested something for them to do, the ones not so strong followed their leader. So, they went along with him. And of course, it was a waste of effort and time. Verse 3, they caught nothing. And when He asked them if they had anything, they said no.

Now, I want to talk to you a little about three periods in the lives of these disciples, and three corresponding periods in churches and in individuals. There was the period before the cross and the resurrection, after they had become disciples, but before Jesus had died. That was a period of our Lord’s flesh. They went about with Him. They heard Him teach, and He was preparing them, mentally at least, for His passion, as they call it, His death and resurrection, and for the coming of the Spirit. But He was the Lord after the flesh to them. That period, after they had become disciples, but before Christ had died and risen again, we call the first period.

Then there was a second period after the cross and the resurrection, but before Pentecost. That’s the period we’re dealing with tonight, Acts 1:1-8, and John 21:1-8, or for that matter, to the end of the chapter. Then there was a third period after Pentecost, when there came to them a power and a radiance and an enthusiasm and a success that they had never known before. Now those three periods, any church or individual may be in any one of these three periods.

The first one, knowing Christ after the flesh as those disciples did. They never quite understood Jesus. They knew Him after the flesh, but they never quite understood Him. He was telling them things always that they couldn’t grasp, and He said they couldn’t grasp it. He said these things that I’m telling you, you don’t understand now, but you’ll understand when the Holy Spirit has come. We can have this same kind of situation today as individuals and as churches. Know Christ after the flesh. Know about the rest, historically, of course. But put the emphasis on the manger and on good deeds and on moral teaching, but not experiencing the cross, not experiencing the resurrection or the triumph of our Savior.

Now there are churches that are in that condition. They know Christ after the flesh. I wish I never had to rebuke or protest. I wish that always that I could avoid that, but how can you avoid it? How can you possibly avoid it, when it’s perfectly obvious that churches know Christ after the flesh, but never seem to be able to grasp the Christ, the risen Christ, the Christ who had risen and been glorified and who had sent the Holy Ghost down, never grasp that Savior at all, never experience his cross, talk about it, put it on top of the steeple, wear it around the neck, but never experience that cross in their lives at all, and never experience the power of the resurrection, then smell the Easter lily, and go through all that we do to celebrate the resurrection, but still the only Christ we know is the Christ after the flesh.

Now that can be true of a church, I say. It can also be true of an individual. Then there’s that second period, which the disciples went through back there, and which we may go through now as churches or as individuals, to know Christ and know the cross and the resurrection, and believe in the finished atonement, and know the peace of sins forgiven, and believe in the bodily resurrection, and believe His promise to return, but never experience Pentecost.

Then there’s the third period that any church can go through, or any individual can go through, when they pass on through to the other period, when the promise of the Father is fulfilled in the hearts of individuals, and they are filled with the Spirit of God. A congregation of Christian believers can also know this.

Now I want to ask the question, where are we? Which period do we find ourselves in as individuals and as a church? I would first eliminate one period and say that the situation that the average fundamentalist church finds itself in does not accord with what we call that period between Christ’s death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Ghost.

It accords not with that first period before Christ died, but with that second period after the resurrection. Let me explain it like this now. I said that that period, that interim period, before the Holy Spirit came, but after our Lord had risen from the dead, was a time of instruction without a power.

And we have that almost everywhere these days, theological instruction without power. In the case of Jesus, there was power in the Instructor, but no power in the listener. But in the case of many churches today, and I would say the majority of them, there’s neither power in the instructor nor in the hearer, but there is an effort to rationalize the gospel of Christ and to teach it.

I hear it sometimes on the radio, and I listen here and there where I go, instructing, but no power in the instruction. Nobody’s angry, nobody’s glad, nobody’s mad, nobody’s helped, nobody’s transformed, but it’s simply instruction without power and of intermittent fellowship with Christ.

Now I want to ask you if that does not describe the present situation–intermittent fellowship with Christ. The average Christian in our time does not have an unbroken fellowship with the Savior, but an intermittent fellowship. They’re with Him today and tomorrow they’re not, and tonight it’s very sweet and wonderful, tomorrow morning it’s gone, and two days later there is some sort of an experience, and then three days later that has evaporated. So, the experience, the fellowship, is intermittent. And then in the church of Christ today there’s considerable personal uncertainty.

I find this astonishing thing, that there are hundreds of people, hundreds, I suppose it runs into the hundreds of thousands if the truth were known, but my experience doesn’t cover that many, of persons who have had theological training but don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to do with themselves. They have gone to this or that Bible school, they hold a diploma from this or that theological institution, but they don’t know what to do with themselves. They’re in a state of personal uncertainty. They’re where the disciples were after Christ had risen from the dead, but before the Holy Ghost had come at Pentecost, and therefore they are running with other Christians, and much of their meeting together is aimless.

Now there were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of His disciples. There was a little meeting going on. I suppose strong Peter called that meeting together, and there they were anyway. I hear the announcements, let’s come and have a good time in the Lord.

We’re all going to meet at such and such a time, and such and such a place, and a good deal of our religious activity today consists of gathering all the sheep in one place, and then later, next week or next month, gathering all the sheep somewhere else. But never anybody quite knowing what it’s all about, personal uncertainty and fruitless activity.

Coming together aimlessly is the weakness of a lot of us Protestant Christians. We don’t know why we come together. We’re here, and we like it in a way, but just what’s it all about? And so the strongest one suggested they do something, but he hadn’t any orders from the Lord about what to do, so he scratched his fisherman’s head and said, now let me see.

The Lord’s here today and gone tomorrow. He appears now, and then He’s gone, and we’re not certain of anything, and we’re in this vacuum. We ought to be active, Christians ought to be active. We’re followers of the Lord. Let’s do something. But what was there to do? Well, naturally, he drew upon his experience of the time before he knew the Lord and said, let’s go fishing. And these weaker ones gathered around him.

Brethren, I’m describing fundamentalism today. I’m describing evangelicalism. It is where we’re unsure of ourselves. We have no afflatus. No voice has spoken. Nobody’s hearing anything. And so, the strong-willed ones are saying, let’s do so-and-so.

So, we gather over here, and we do that. And then a strong-willed one over here will say, well, I think we ought to do this. But the whole thing is uncertain. There’s no prophet to say this is the way we should go. This is what we should be doing. This is why we come together. This is the meaning of it all.

But we subscribe to magazines. We read books, and we go about here and there to conventions and Bible conferences. And usually some strong-willed fellow has said, let’s start this, or let’s do that. What do you say that we begin this?

And so, fundamentalism is a world of wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels. Ezekiel saw a wheel in the middle of a wheel. But Protestantism has not only one wheel in the middle of a big wheel, but has wheels within wheels within wheels, world without end.

But there seems to be a lack of specific direction in the thing. We turn out students from our schools, give them their diploma. They don’t know. Most of them don’t know what they went there for. A lot of them go to escape. Some parents send them there because they want to have them somewhere where they’re safe. And some of them go because their friends have gone. And some go because it’s romantic to do it. And some go to get out of the army. And some go because they’re lazy.

I heard Dr. Mosley say one time to a group of the students, if we learn, if we learn of one man who has come to this school to get out of the army, we’ll throw him out on his ear. But nevertheless, that does happen, and it’s because of the period we’re in spiritually.

We’re in a period after Christ has risen from the dead, but before the Holy Ghost has come. And we know He’s alive. We know He’s risen. We talk about Him on His throne. We expound Romans and Colossians and Ephesians. We know the truth all right. Historically, we know He’s at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and we repeat the creed and believe it, but our fellowship is uncertain. And today we see Him and tomorrow He’s gone. And we are not sure what we’re to do.

And so, we’re looking around, waiting for some strong-voiced fisherman who doesn’t know either, but who has a strong personality to say, I think we ought to do this. So, we form an organization and get a letterhead and a magazine and an office and a secretary, and we do this. I go fishing, said Peter, I go fishing.

The Lord had delivered Peter from the fisherman’s boat three years before, but there wasn’t anything to do. So, Peter normally did what there was to do. He did what he knew how to do. He went back to fishing. When the Lord God Almighty had called him to catch men, but there was a pocket there. They had reached a vacuum, and nothing was happening, and that kills some people. If they’re not busy at something, they’re not spiritual.

Brother Maxey told me about a dear woman down here somewhere. He preached about their tarrying and waiting and being filled with the Spirit. And a woman said afterward, Mr. Maxey, I have never heard this before. She said, I thought that the more active you are, the more spiritual you are. She said, honestly, that was my belief, that the more active you are, the more spiritual you are. She was perfectly willing to accept a change of viewpoint, but she was honest enough to say, that’s what I believed up to now.

Well, that seems to be the general belief, that inactivity, it’s unspeakable, it’s awful, it’s like those ten seconds with nothing going on the radio that Peter Joshua told us about, that awful dead ten seconds with nobody yelling and nobody running and nobody selling. And Peter, being a fisherman, couldn’t stand that. Well, he said, I go fishing.

Now, there wasn’t any sin in that. It was simply uninspired, undirected, and it turned out to be fruitless activity. Now, does that describe us or not, brethren? Does that describe us or not? Do we know why we’re saved? Do we know why we’re here? Do we know what it’s all about? Why is it necessary to hold all these discussions? Why is it necessary to put five ignorant people around a table and each pump the other one?

Why is it necessary for ten people to gather around a board, none of which knows anything about the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and then pool their ignorance in order to find out what to do? And of course, naturally, when they pool their ignorance, not having any divine gleam, not any divine call or upward tug or direction of the Spirit, they will pattern what they do religiously after what they have done out in the secular world.

And so we have a multitude of wheels within wheels, all patterned after the secular world, because Christ has risen, but the Holy Ghost has not come, because they know He’s alive, but they’re not able to keep contact with Him, and they’re afraid not to be active.

So, we have the religious jitters, and this is where we seem to be today, I’m afraid. We certainly don’t fit into that first period, when they knew Christ after the flesh and knew Him no other way. Certainly, we know Him in some other way. Surely, we don’t make the mistake in this church of putting the emphasis upon the manger. Surely, we don’t make the mistake in this church of laying the emphasis upon the moral teachings of Jesus or the good deeds of Jesus or the example of Jesus. Certainly, our Jesus is more than a human being, more than a man in the flesh. We’re not there. And surely, we are over into the Book of Acts, where they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and got up and went out to speak the word of God with power.

But we’re in an interim, and there’s a pocket in there, and there’s where most of the people are today. And brethren, much of the evangelism today does not lead people out of that uncertainty in a period of activity without leadership. It only creates more activity but doesn’t lead people into the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

And that’s why I can’t get all steamed up about making more converts to an effete Christianity. That’s why I can’t get all steamed up about going all around the world making converts to something that is only halfway in, and not all the way in. Jaffray and Glover and others went to South China, established their work in Wuzhou. They had this strange experience. They made converts, but they couldn’t get anybody to go on beyond that first initial conversion. And they multiplied their converts. Many people believed in Christ and accepted the Lord, as we say. And they became converts. They were baptized, and they joined the little churches there in China.

But Dr. Jaffray was not satisfied. He said, this won’t do. This won’t do. There’s something wrong here. Our Christians are carnal. They’re fleshly. They live after the flesh. Their fellowship with Christ is intermittent and spotty. They live aimlessly. They need something more from God.

And so those men of God got on their knees and prayed. And in those little churches, one church after the other, there came a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost upon those Chinese Christians, and took them from this period, this interim period, this halfway-in period, took them on into the mighty fullness of the Spirit of God.

And I’m perfectly prepared to say, and base my conclusions upon the Scriptures, and believe that there is historic proof of it, that there would not be one shred nor trace of Christianity left in China today if they had not done that thing. There would not be one trace of Christianity left in China if Dr. Sung and the rest of them had not preached the word of God and had gone on to teach them that they ought to be filled with the mighty Spirit of God. But here we are.

What about you? What about your personal relation to the Lord? Now, I don’t think you’d be in this church if you only believed in Christ after the flesh. The newspapers only know Christ after the flesh. They publish the story of Jesus on the front page around Easter or Christmas, and they’re very sympathetic, and we’re glad they are, and it does help a little, but it’s Jesus after the flesh.

And Paul scornfully said, once I knew Christ after the flesh, but hence I know Him no more. Jesus that walked in Galilee is not the Christ that we have to do with now. That Jesus died on a cross. That Christ died and rose, and He’s the same Jesus, of course, but He’s a Jesus now in an altogether different position. That in Him which could die, died, And God raised Him from the dead, and He sits now at the right hand of the Father. And from there He sends down the blessed Holy Ghost.

I’m glad there are some people listening—not too many in this church, I suppose, but there are those listening—and we’re disturbed, greatly disturbed.

Somebody handed me this morning a magazine, a tear sheet from a magazine. I think the magazine’s a liberal magazine. But in it there was an article. What’s the matter with religion in our time? What’s the matter with this thing? And this young man, whose name happened to be Stanley Lowell—two of my boys’ names—Stanley Lowell, pastor of the Methodist Church. And this fellow with trenching analysis, says the trouble with religion now, the trouble with all this wave of religion that we’ve got is that there is no protest, that God sent the churches to stand as a fiery protest against wickedness and iniquity. But the churches have lost their power to protest. There’s no protest anymore.

But the great leaders are busy trying to be as smooth and suave as they can and stand against nobody and try to get along with everybody. And have friends among the big and the great and the very important persons.

This Methodist preacher, God bless the memory of John and Charles and Fletcher and Taylor and the rest of them. He’s got enough fire left in him, this young preacher, to cry and say, when is our prophet coming and from whence is he coming to teach the church not to get along with the world but to contest with the world and protest against the world; and to stand as followers of Jesus Christ the Lord and take the consequences.

The Methodist church would wake up and listen to this young man. They won’t. But if they’d listen to this young man, brothers and sisters, how wonderful it would be to go out not to try to find a common ground of agreement, not to prove that we’re just like the world, only a little bit better because we believe in Jesus, but to go boldly out declaring what we’ve seen and heard and take the consequences. And if they didn’t like it, let them persecute us.

The best thing that could happen to the church would be fiery persecution. If there had been a penalty attached to going to church, the churches in Chicago would not have been crowded to the doors this Easter morning with people with new hats. If there had been a penalty attached to going to church, they’d have stayed away in vast numbers.

I am not praying for persecution, but I’m not going for one second to pray that there shall not be persecution. For whenever the church dares to take the cross of Jesus, always remember this, brethren, that the cross is an instrument of death and negation. The cross is a denunciatory, accusative thing. And when we follow Christ and take up His cross, we can’t possibly go along with the rest. They can’t possibly ride along on the popularity of presidents and kings and the great of the world.

Not one of the world’s great would walk down the street with Jesus while he lived. And as soon as Paul was converted to Jesus, not one of the world’s great would dare to line up with him. And when Luther nailed his theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, scarcely one of the great would dare to line up with him at first. They did later, but scarcely at first.

But because we’re afraid to protest, we’re afraid to be different, we’re busy trying to—I go fishing, we say. We don’t know what to do because the Holy Ghost has not come to our hearts, and all we have is the text of the Scripture and tradition. And so, there’s fruitless activity, personal uncertainty, intermittent fellowship, a gathering together without knowing why. And the strong leader says, well, let’s do it this way. And then the weak ones all say, all right, let’s do it that way.

And so, they go fishing. Children, have you any meat? No, we have numbers and names and offices and literature and printing presses and mimeograph machines and talk, but we don’t have any meat. Well, he said, they haven’t had any leadership, that’s why. You’re gathering together aimlessly. And this is the condition that we’re in today. I tell you this now, this is the situation that we’re in, and we’re waiting.

What is the further step? Well, let me read it to you. He shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. You shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the outermost part of the earth. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as a fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And they were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven.

And from there a fiery church went forth, filled with fire. She was like a flamethrower. She burst forth in a blaze of light. Nothing could stand before her. She stood in sharp contrast to the world in which she was. She was as separated from the world as Noah’s Ark was separated from the floodwaters upon which it rose.

She had two messages. She had a message of denunciation and protest, or protest, and she had a message of salvation and forgiveness through the blood of the Lamb. And for the first, they put her in jail. And for the second, after a while, with tears and sorrow, they turned in numbers and were converted to Jesus, Christ the Lord.

What is the greatest need in this church? That we should have a $45,000 missionary offering this year? No, I hope we get that. But that isn’t the greatest need. The greatest need in this church is that we as individuals and as members of a spiritual, social unit become so right individually and so right harmoniously toward each other that God can, without violating his nature, trust us with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Brethren, that’s what we need.

I talked to Brother Parris Reidhead. I don’t know any man in the modern day that has a more penetrating, prophetic insight than Parris Reidhead. We sat and talked. I told him about the 102 missionaries the Alliance was going to send out this year. And this man himself, a missionary blazing with missionary fire, said, in a way, Brother Tozer, I’m sorry about that. And I said, why, Brother Paris, why are you sorry? We’re going to send out 102 new missionaries. He said, If we succeed in sending out 102 new missionaries and boost our personnel well over 800, it will set back for years any repentance, any rethinking, any reexamination of our position, and we will travel on our numerical success.

He said, that isn’t what we need the most right now. What we need the most right now is a heart-searching repentance and penitence, a revival within the individuals, a getting right and getting straightened out, and opening our hearts to the mighty down coming of the Holy Ghost. And he said, if we succeed in our present state of sending out 102 new missionaries without a corresponding spiritual rise of the tide, he said, I’m afraid that it’s going to do us harm and not good.

That was not said by a man who doesn’t believe in missions. That was said by a missionary who preaches missions in a way that I scarcely ever heard anybody preach missions. But he’s too wise to be taken in by numbers.

And brethren, what we need in this Church is not greater numbers. What we need in this Church is individual house cleanings, the gossiping, the criticizing, the carnality, the flesh, the selfishness, the extravagance, the cruel waste of life and money and time, the hardness toward each other, the flippancy, I’ll go fishing, I’ll go with you–the aimlessness. What we need is to get that all straightened out.

Don’t say, When the Holy Ghost comes, that’ll straighten out. No, no. The Holy Ghost will never come until it is straightened out. It’s a great mistake to believe that the Spirit of God came to make the people one. They had to be one before He came, being of one accord in one place. Brother McAfee, you know from the Greek that that oneness of accord is a musical term. It comes from music. It means a piano in tune.

Last week the piano was out of tune, and everybody said, What raucous sounds. And then a master came here last Thursday and crawled over the painting things and put it back in tune. Did you notice the difference Friday night? Harmony, harmony, the tune, the things in tune. And it says that they were all together in tune and then suddenly they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

Don’t pray, oh, send the Holy Ghost to take the gossip out of us. Send the Holy Ghost to take away the bitterness. Send the Holy Ghost to make us one. Never waste your prayers until we get straightened out, the Holy Ghost can never come in any measure upon us.

The greatest evangelist whose feet ever touched the shores of America was Charles Grandison Finney. And Charles G. Finney said bluntly, don’t try to love each other. Don’t try to love each other. The Bible says love everybody. He said, don’t try to love everybody. You can’t love that which is unlovable. He said, get people right with God so they can be loved, and then we’ll love each other normally and naturally. He said, how can you love carnal men, gossips? How can you love critics and bitter fault finders? How can we love without hypocrisy? This great evangelist said, Let’s get straightened out. Come on, confess your sins. Get so people can love you, and you’ll be loved.

Now, that’s exactly backwards from all of this soft, old-maidish palaver that we hear these days. But that man proved that he was right by the fact that he had hundreds of thousands of converts, and the largest percentage of them stood with any man that’s preached since that time—more than Moody, more than any other man.

So, brethren, what we need is revival. What we need is a personal housekeeping. What we need is to use Easter as a ramp to take off from, something to bump us a bit, maybe, and get us started, and then go to our rooms with our Bible and with God. I have this to say to you, that I have read for more than forty years with great avidity.

There is hardly any field except higher mathematics in which I have not read and into which I am a stranger. But everything that God has ever used in me to help others, he has given me on my knees with my open Bible. God has been pleased to use the book, The Pursuit of God, far beyond the borders of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, selling now at the same rate it sold eight years ago when it came out. It is now translated into Chinese. I’ve seen it, some of it.

In almost every chapter, I got on my knees with God alone, seeking cleansing and power and purity and righteousness in my own spirit. Then with a notebook, taking down notes from that writing. Brethren, that’s what we need, more than we need anything else in the wide world. I hope we get forty-five thousand for missions this year, but if we get it at the cost of repentance and housecleaning and righteousness and the fullness of the Holy Ghost. If we get it only by the techniques of men, pressure methods, we’re better off without it.

I want God to give us spiritual ability to sustain anything He does for us, any increase in Sunday school, any increase in giving, anything. I want Him to give us spiritual power and ability to sustain it, stand up under it. Gifts without grace can be deadly, but for every gift I want grace to sustain that gift. That’s what I want for this church. That’s why I often preach to empty seats, as you know, because I will not fool. One of these times, nobody knows when it’ll be, I may fool you.

I talked to some fellow over the radio, and he said, oh, Brother Tozer said, we don’t want you to overdo, we want to keep you. Some preachers from the northwest side, oh, I said, I’ll probably be pallbearer for some of you fellows that are praying for me so hard. I don’t expect to die right away, but I don’t know, but I may. And you don’t know, but you may. Virus can hit you like that, and you’re gone. Brethren, we can’t afford to fool around.

Where are we in our spiritual lives? We’re not back there with the liberal friends talking about a Jesus after the flesh, or back there with our Catholic friends, talking about a Jesus baby in a manger. But surely, we’re not out with our Moravian friends, filled with power and the Holy Ghost, going forth as the greatest missionary impetus since Paul. Remember it, that what gave the impulse to modern missions was not a lot of fellows getting together and saying, I think we ought to go to the heathen, not telling touching stories about the heathen. Not looking at maps or consulting statistics.

What gave the impetus to modern missions and caused such societies like ours to be born were seventy-five Moravians present in a church at once, when they had confessed to each other and gotten right and gotten straightened out, and everybody was expectant, and suddenly there fell upon them a loving nearness of the Savior, instantaneously bestowed.

And they went out of that church hardly knowing whether they were on earth or had already died and gone to heaven. And under the leadership of that great Zinzendorf, they did more in twenty years than the whole church had done in two hundred. And out of it was born the Methodism, Salvation Army, Christian Missionary Alliance, China Inland Mission, you can name all the missionary activities, date their spiritual lineage back to that mighty hour, when only seventy-five people met God.

And they went out from there a happy people. Zinzendorf said, the happiest people in the world are these Moravians. He said, I don’t know anybody, there so happy that it’s wonderful. And they blazed forth. They didn’t do it after the technique of Peter, let’s go fishing. They didn’t meet together a half a dozen of them, and some fellow looked at a map and said, I think we ought to go over here.

But the mighty Holy Ghost came on them, and they went because they couldn’t stay in any place. They went because they had to go. They went led by the fire and the cloud by day and by night. They went all around the world. And they made converts of John Wesley and Charles Wesley. And out of that was born the great movements that have made America Christian.

Brethren, where are we? Where are you? Think about it, will you? Don’t get mad at me. Don’t say he’s getting gloomier as he gets older. I’m not. But I’m just wanting to be honest and wanting God to do something for us. Would you bow your heads in prayer?

O Lord, our Lord, thou knowest we are thy sheep in the mountain. We are thy little band of soldiers surrounded by the enemy. And we don’t want to waste our lives. We don’t want to waste our money. We don’t want to waste our time.

We don’t want to waste our gifts. Oh, we don’t want to be as Peter and Didymus and the rest of them were there, sympathetic, friendly, believing in Thee, believing that Thou art risen, but not knowing what to do, because the Holy Ghost had not yet come. We don’t want to simply follow some tall fellow who doesn’t know what to do either, but because he’s got a strong personality and good leadership, he said, let’s go do this.

We don’t want to waste our time and money and give up our precious, precious days following a man who’s doing something he hasn’t been sent to do. Lord, we’d rather join some little band of unheard-of strange people somewhere and live right and follow thee and be filled and be right, to ride in on the crest of popular religion. Bless these friends, Lord, who listen tonight. They’re here. They must want something. They wouldn’t have come. God bless them. Jesus, take each one by the hand and lead us knee deep, we pray, knee deep into succulent, juicy pastures. Lead us, we pray thee, to the still waters. Lead us, we pray thee, on to the fulfillment of thy promise, the promise of the Father.

Now, Lord, search us, search us. What we were, what we were yesterday or last year, that isn’t anything, Lord. We’ll start now. We’ll start clean now. We’ll confess to thee now. We’ll ask thee to pardon us now. Lord, thou hast heard today, criticism. Thou hast heard today, whispered things. Thou hast seen today, tight mouths and set jaws as people pass each other. Thou hast heard today and seen and beheld the pride and the carnality. O Lord Jesus, we don’t hide behind anything, and we don’t deny anything. We confess it. As a people, as a church, we would confess. We would ask thee to forgive.

We would ask thee to wash us whiter than the snow. And oh, that cleansing stream our sister sang about. That, that cleansing, that fountain, that overwhelming flood of cleansing power. Let it come to one after another of us.

Save us, we pray, from the suave, smooth get-along-with-everybody spirit. And help us to stand, we pray, with shiny eyes and with full understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Bless thy people, O Lord, in this great city. Bless every good man of God who stands to declare the truth. Bless him up to the light he has. Bless all the churches up to the light they have. And for everyone, we thank Thee. For every poor sheep, we thank Thee. For every struggling, lame little lamb, we thank Thee. For everybody, Lord, that has looked longingly in Thy direction, we thank Thee, O Lord Jesus. But O Christ, thou knowest the endless rat race, the constant wheel in the middle of a wheel, the buzzing, everlasting squirrel cage of empty activity.

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove. Come with all Thy quickening power. Come, shed abroad a Savior’s love, that it may quicken ours.

If we are not lovable, forgive us, help us to become lovable. Help us to become so people can love us without straining. Help us, Lord, so they won’t have to be hypocrites to say they love us. Bring us into a place where meekness and humility and tenderness and kindness and long-suffering shall prevail. Bring us into the thirteenth of First Corinthians, Lord. It may cost us a lot. It’s hard on the flesh. It’s humbling. But there we know the mighty Holy Ghost will come. There we know he’ll fall and keep falling and keep flowing down and in and out.

Gracious Lord, send us out of here tonight. Don’t let anybody crack a joke at the door. Don’t let anybody be so full of levity that they’ll forget anything’s been said. Send us out, we pray thee, to wonder about our responsibility to this very critical week that lies ahead of us. Mighty Lord, Mighty Lord, the end of the ages are upon us.

The world has grown old, and the judgment draws near, and kingdoms rising against kingdom and nation against nation, and evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, and the love of many waxes cold. And thousands say, Lord, Lord, but do not the things that thou sayest. Save this people, we pray thee, from that quagmire.

Save us, we pray thee, from that hole in the swamp. And float us above it like Noah in the ark, riding above the storm. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Tozer Talks

The Word of God is Quick, Powerful and Sharp

The Word of God is Quick, Powerful and Sharp

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 26, 1959

Summary

In this message, Pastor A.W. Tozer emphasizes the transformative power of God’s Word in exposing and convicting individuals of their sinful nature, and the omniscience and omnipotence of God. Mr. Tozer shares personal experiences and biblical references to illustrate how God has protected and cared for him and his family, encouraging us to trust in God’s sovereignty and believe that He is always working for their good. Throughout the sermon, Mr. Tozer emphasizes the significance of God’s care and protection in our lives.

Message

Now, in the fourth chapter of Hebrews, verses twelve and thirteen: For the word of God is quick, that is, living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. It takes the Holy Ghost to pack powerful words into short sentences. Notice, quick, that is, living, powerful, sharp, piercing, dividing asunder discerner, naked and open unto God’s eyes. These are the words of the text, and I want to talk a little bit about the Word.

Now one of the great realities, there aren’t very many, but one of the great realities with Whom and with which we have to do is God’s Word. I have been a great advocate of realities. I suppose I have kept myself back a little, in some ways before the eyes of men, by my stubborn refusal to fool with things that are not real, or to spend any time with them before a congregation. I have asked my congregations to confront reality. And I asked you this morning to confront one of the great realities, the living Word of God.

Now, the word of God is real. It doesn’t seem to be. There are lots of things that seem real, but actually they are not real at all. And there are things that are relatively important. They are important all right, but they’re not so important that if you lose them, the world will cave in on you. They’re relatively important. But the Word of God is a thing that is, and when I say the word of God, of course I mean the Scriptures, but I mean that which is a little more than the Scriptures. I mean the breath of God in the Scriptures. And when we read of the Word, we’re reading not only a written text, we’re reading of written texts, pulsating and vibrating with the life of God in them.

And here is a reality that we can’t escape. Men run away from things that they should take care of; and they run away for a lifetime, but there’s no escaping here, there’s no evading here. There is no possibility of compromise and there’s no bargaining, but God will reckon with this. The Word of God is. And we’ve got to reckon with this either now or later or at last.

Always, there are those three tenses for anyone who faces up to and confronts reality, or who is confronted by reality. They’ve got to reckon with it either now, not yesterday, that’s impossible, you can’t go back. They’ve got to reckon with it now or a little later, or at last. God in His patience allows us to insult Him and reckon later instead of now. But there will be a time when later will be last. And then we’ll find that it’s too late.

Now, the reality of which I speak, I repeat, is the Word of God plus the Living Word of God, the One who is called the Word in capital letters and that which is called the word in lowercase letters. Not a black book or a red book, not letters, not texts, not ink and paper, but the expression of the mind of God in revelation, the breath of God, the mighty breath of God, filling the world and taking shape in the sacred Scriptures, written by men who were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now, that’s the sacred Scriptures, and it’s God’s living thoughts.

Jesus Christ is God’s Living Word, but the Scriptures are God’s living voice. John 6:63, Jesus said, the words I speak unto you they are Spirit, and they are life. And they are addressed to fallen man for a judgment or salvation, or judgment and salvation, I’d better say, because there can be no salvation until there has been judgment. We stand before the bar of God.

I tremble when I read books written by men who have brought the Word of God before them for judgment. They bring what they call historical, critical techniques to the Word of God. And thus, they sit on the Word of God as though the sacred scriptures were judged by them. No, they are judged by the sacred Scriptures. And God brings every man, all men, fallen men, before the Word for judgment and or for salvation.

There is in the old apocryphal books that some people never read but that I get a lot of blessing out of, it’s called, the Wisdom of Solomon. When Solomon was there, or whoever wrote that book, I presume Solomon, was describing the children of Israel in Egypt and God Almighty leading them through, you come to these two verses. And I think they’re so beautiful and so wonderful, that I want to read them to you, though I do not claim them to be inspired in the sense that the Scriptures are inspired. Here’s what the old man said in telling another generation the story of Israel in Egypt. He said, while things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her swift course, thine almighty Word leaped down from heaven out of the royal throne as a fierce man of war into the midst of the land of destruction. Thine almighty Word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne as a fierce man of war.

This is the power of the Word of God. The most powerful force in nature, without any doubt, is the Word of God. If you will look back through the Scriptures, the Old and the New Testament, you will see how God had but to speak and things came to pass. He spoke to nothing and there came something. For it’s written in Hebrews 11 that the things that we are made, were brought out by the Word of God and were not made by the things which do appear. The things didn’t come from themselves, but they came from a living Voice.

And in Genesis one and two, God spoke to this order, and order came into darkness and the light came. He said, let there be light and there was light. He said, let the waters be gathered into one place, and it was so, and the dry land appeared. He spoke to the barren earth and fields became fruitful. In Exodus 14, He spoke to the sea, and it opened. And He spoke in Joshua to the river, and it opened, and to dry bones in Ezekiel and they lived, and then to death and Lazarus came forth bound hand and foot.

God has but to speak the living Word. I wish that you might see that you never ought to pick the Bible up without realizing, that while it’s only paper and ink, that God Almighty has breathed into the words there His own living breath. And those words can become like the release of atomic particles, tremendous either for destruction or for construction, either for judgment or salvation. And God has spoken and is speaking.

I could not, I couldn’t bring myself mentally to think of the Bible as God’s last letter to mankind; to think that God wrote the book and then died, or at least went away beyond into some far imperium, and now we have God’s letter. God did write the Book. He did breathe into man, and they did write the book. And He did end the Canon. And He did say that nobody add anything to this Book. But what I mean is that God did not only speak in the Bible, He is speaking in the Bible. It is a now voice. It is a present voice. It is as real as the voice that you might hear over the radio that you are tuned in now.

God spoke and is speaking and He’s speaking to human life. And when He speaks to human life, we know our mortality. We know that we’ve got to die. The living man knows he’s got to die. The voice of God there speaks to him and speaks to human conscience, and the conscience starts awaking. And the blind, insensible death conscience that lay for half a lifetime, full of self-pride and confidence and assurance, now suddenly sees and hears and feels and knows, because the living voice of God has waked that conscience up. And the voice of God is speaking to human sin, and it knows itself and it is naked.

You only have to listen to people praying at an altar and you will know that they have not been reasoned into their sin, you know that. You know that a Word has been spoken, that they’ve been confronted by the mighty Word of God, and that the Living Word has stripped their conscience bare, and they know that they are sinners, and they know that they are personally, individually guilty before God.

Now, I want you to notice that God’s Word in judgment brings not a charge; it brings a demonstration. The man is charged with a crime and taken up before a court that charge, that indictment they call it, is not synonymous with a guilty verdict. It’s only a charge. You are charged with .  .  . How do you plead? So, a man stands charged, but the Word of God is not a charge; Paul said, we have before proved both Jew and Gentile to be under condemnation. The Word of the living God is not a charge, it’s a verdict and a demonstration on lust and hate and lies and greed and pride and envy, and all other sins. And it distills like a living mist of vital essence wherever the Word of God is heard, wherever the human conscience confronts the Living Word. And the Living Word brings the human conscience before it as though suddenly there had come upon the man a living mist, a vital essence had descended, and the heart knows its own guilt.

Now, men may deny, because we’re very smooth reasoners, and they may cover, and they may resist. They may resent that the Word of God has given the mortal wound. And until the end, there will never be any deliverance, completely. There might be a temporary healing over and hiding, but there will never be full deliverance until He who is the Living Word pulls out the sword. Because the Word of God is quick and powerful, piercing even to the dividing asunder. And when the heart has been pierced by the Word of God, not the cold steel mind you, but the Living Blade alive and terrible.

And I, for my part, don’t want it any other way. I want the living Word of God to be just what it is. I want it to confront me, and I want to face up to it and I want it to do to me what has to be done. And I want to do what It has ordered me to do and believe what It charges me to believe in order that there may be no resistance and no struggle there but complete rest in God. The Word of God reveals, I say, it’s a great revealer. It strips the life bare before the eyes of God, this wonderful, this terrible thought. Man always thinks he can hide.

There are those Bible teachers who believe that the words of God to Cain, thy brother’s blood cries from the ground, indicated that Abel had been buried after he was murdered. At least the earth had been thrown over him hoping against hope this mad murderer Cain, this jealous man, that his guilt would not find him out. But God said that the blood of Abel cried out of the ground. And they found him and pinned it on him and marked him with a mark of the murderer.

So, the eyes of God see everything. You and I can hide from each other. We can do a lot of little tricks. Men who have only a little hair can let it grow long on one side and smooth it across. They imagine that that tells people that they are not bald, but it doesn’t. Everybody knows they’re bald, but they’ve got to try to cover it up. And women have a way of covering up. Drugstores prosper on women’s duplicity and man’s pride. We try to cover up. But we’re open before the eyes of God. God sees and there’s no fooling at all. There’s no secrecy. There’s no dissembling and there’s no distance that can make any difference for the man David said, if we should go to the uttermost parts of the sea, wherever that is, God would still see us there. And there isn’t any deed that isn’t known.

And that Word persists, persists. The words of God do not relax at death, but they are persistent out there where the dead live again and where heaven and hell waits. The words that I speak unto you, they shall judge you in the last day. We read in Revelation where the books are opened and the book of words and the book of deeds and the book of life, all these are open. And God’s Living Word is there. But that is only the negative side of it, my friends, only the negative side.

There’s no door that is closed. All doors stand ajar before the Word of God. All hearts are wide open before the Word of God and there isn’t a closed book anywhere. But all books are open, all before the eyes of God. And not a thought, not a thought that wears a garment, but all our thoughts are naked, naked and open before the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do. When men invented clothing he invented secrecy. And it’s right and proper up to a measure that he should, but he’s carried that secrecy to his thoughts, to his heart, to his mind, to his plans, to his intentions, to his guilt. The Scripture says no human thought wears a garment. Nobody can cloth his thoughts so God can’t see them.

There’s another side and I want briefly now to mention that and that is the Saving Word. I say that the sacred Scriptures, God’s living Voice are addressed to fallen men for judgment or for salvation, for judgment and for salvation. They must judge you first before they can save you. God never saved a man nor pronounced him innocent who came with a not guilty plea before the bar of the Scriptures. It’s only when we bring our, guilty, Your Honor, before the great God and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court for Jesus’ sake, that the Advocate above, the Savior by the throne of love rises and speaks for us and says, Jesus paid it all, all the debt I owe. Sin had left a guilty stain, but He washed it white as snow.

Here’s the saving Word, Psalm 71 says, thou has given commandment to save me. I’m glad that I get in trouble. That is, my heart gets in trouble. I am never really very much trouble. God knew that I being a sensitive person, am inclined to be more vulnerable than the average person. But I could get my troubles mainly from the inside. So, he didn’t send me all the miseries that he sent some people on the outside. Some fellows are always in trouble for getting kicked out of one place and into another. But I have never had that experience up to now.

But the Lord knew I didn’t need it from the outside, because I was so sensitive and vulnerable that He could trust me to get in lots of trouble inside my own heart and I have. And some of the times that I’ve been in trouble, God said to me, or I found these words, thou has given commandment to save me. And I like to think that the mighty Living Word of God has gone forth.

And the Christian man, the born man, the man who’s born of the Living Word, for it’s written that the Word of God is the seed out of which men are born. And that Word can never die, that it’s jot or tittle can never pass away, that the living man, the living woman who’s been born out of the life of God and is called a Christian, that person has been marked out by God. Just as God sent His fear into all the land of Canaan, and His fear went ahead and He marked out these strange people of another tongue coming out of Egypt, the Israelites, and the fear fell on them wherever they went. Some allowed the fear to make them arm and fight Israel and some surrendered. And some let them respectfully pass. But God said these are my peculiar, special people. Everybody that’s been born of the Living Word of the Spirit is a special object of God’s care.

And God tells all of His world, I’m saving this man. You keep your hands off of him. Do my prophet no harm. Lay not your hand on my child. Don’t imagine you can harm any child of mine. Old Job back there in the Old Testament, he didn’t know it, but he’d been living behind an iron curtain. God Almighty’s curtain had been all the way around him. A hedge is a better word, for that’s the word the Bible used. He was hedged in, and God Almighty had that hedge electrified and the devil couldn’t pass over until God allowed him, for a little while, to bless and benefit his man, Job. Then he sent him away again. Thou has given commandment to save me.

I haven’t a doubt in all the world but that there isn’t an atom of matter in this world, but what has been charged by great God Almighty to look after me and you and all of his children. We lay them away. We bury them out of our sight with grief and tears. But the Earth can no more hold them than the earth could hold the body of Jesus or of Lazarus. Thou has given commandment to save me. If you knew all that disease germs around you. And if you knew all the demons that were set to destroy you. But they can’t get to you. Because God has given commandment to save me. And He’s charged everything. He has charged the stars in their courses.

That’s why I smile at the Space Age and laugh at their Sputniks and their Explorers. Long before man invented the thrust that would cause a missile to escape the gravitational pull and fall into free space, long centuries before that, God Almighty had spoken to every star that shines and every planet that revolves, every angel before the throne, save these people. These are my people. My people marked by the blood of My Son, saved by my life, redeemed by the death of My Son. Save these people.

Physically I don’t like floating around in space. I flew out to Vancouver and down to Portland and back to Chicago, and you can have it. You can have it. I don’t like it. I never did like it. I thought maybe if it took that long, roundabout flight, I’d get to liking it. And I liked it less when I landed here in the airport than I did when I started. I don’t like it, but I do know this, that all space and all creation and the stars in their courses and the moon in its phases and the sun in its strength and the lovely earth and all the rivers and seas our mine. Thou has given commandment to save me. God’s Word, like a mighty armed man leaped out from the royal throne and commanded, no man can pluck you out of My hand.

I grieve that men have turned this doctrine into a hard-case, hardened shell of doctrine that divides the church. Do you believe in eternal security? Do you not believe in eternal security? All that believe, get over here and all that don’t believe get over there and glare at each other. I grieve at this because it’s making a doctrine out of what is a wonderful truth and not a doctrine at all. But God has spoken for His children, all of His children, my children, and they are dear to Him. They’re dear to Him because they belong to His Son because His Son gave His life.

In the war, the boys say, at least one of my boys told me, the hardest thing they had to do in the Navy Air Wing where he was for three years, a flyer. He said, the hardest thing we have to do is to come back home after when one of the boys have been killed and gather up his things and send them to his widow or to his mother. He said, they die, they die all around us, but it isn’t so bad until you have to gather up their things, an old wristwatch and a picture and extra clothing and an old watch chain, maybe that belonged to his dad and an old penknife with one blade broken. The few things that he couldn’t take with him out there but headed back and go get that and wrap it all up. Send it and then write a letter. He said, that’s hard. Don’t you think that when that package arrived. Thank God, this church, though we had during the Second World War about 75 of our boys in uniform, not one of them was killed, not one.

We had, my wife and I, five, and not one of them was killed. So, we never had to do, but don’t you think that when that package came back, that that would have been laid aside and cherished as long as memory kept verdant. I sometimes look up on, my wife has pictures everywhere, she doesn’t have flowers. And here, pictures all around there and I sometimes look at the picture of our boy Bud who was a Marine. All but lost his life. He’s still hobbling around, but he is able to make it alright. In the picture, a good-looking young fellow in his early 20s, grinning with that uniform, that marine uniform. And I said, if he died over there instead of coming home, wouldn’t this be a sacred thing? A sacred thing, for the sake of another, for the love of another, some things become infinitely precious.

And God looked down and saw the children that God had given to Jesus, saw that for the Christ’s blood had run, Christ had died. Christ had cried, Father, forgive them. Christ had said, why hast Thou forsaken me? And God said, whatever He sends Me. Whatever He sends Me will be dearer to Me than the apple of mine eye, dearer than the jewels that are on my throne, dearer than the unredeemed seraphim and cherubim, the burners that cry, holy, holy, holy before the Majesty on High. You are a blood-bought treasure, bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, and the Father loved His Son in death and loved Him in life. And for His sake, He loves you beyond all the Scripture.

Nobody knows how intensely, how deeply, how persistently, how perpetually, how everlastingly, God loves you. He loves you with an angry love. A love that’s angry with anything that would hurt you. He loves you with a tender love, if you belong to Him. The Living Word leaps down, leaped out of the throne of God like a man armed for a war, and God says, I will be with you, and I will go before you and I will keep you, and fear thou not, I am with thee. And no man can pluck thee out of my hand, and the foundation of God standeth sure. Ye are My sheep and know my voice. Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The Word of God is quick and powerful, quick for judgment and salvation, judgment first, salvation second. Judgment for all those whose conscience start awaking before the Living Voice and who cry, my God, my God, I have sinned. Have mercy upon me. And for salvation for all such, the Voice goes forth. Save these people. They’re My people, precious to Me more precious than the apple of my eye.

Ah, yes, the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sin. The Son of Man has power on earth to bestow life. The Son of Man has power on earth to raise the dead. The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall come forth.

Well, I want you to hear the Word. I want you to go to this Book reverently. Open its pages and read it and remember that while you’re not a bibliolater and you’re not worshiping a text, you recognize here, not the last words of a dead man, but the living voice of the Living God; the persistent, vibrant sounding Voice that’s still alive. And everything that God says, He is still saying.

You know, when you go anyplace to speak, they come and want your autograph. Now, not because it’s me, but just because it’s anybody. No matter who you are if you’re the speaker, they think that they’d like to have your autograph. So, I don’t know how many I signed while I was at Canby Camp, and I, just to save myself I think a little bit of mental exercise as much as anything else, I signed one Scripture verse on practically all of them I hope they didn’t compare notes. The same Scripture verse nearly on all I signed, a few I have varied to Galatians 2:20. But most all of them I signed, Jeremiah 29:11, God’s speaking. And God says, I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord. Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an end and an expectation. I know the thoughts I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace.

God’s peaceful thoughts are coming down to us, peaceful thoughts. Not occultism, not spiritism, not Pealeism, but God speaking in the Word and in His Son, speaking thoughts of kindness and peace and good intention. And God is pleased when you are pleased, if you’re pleased with what He’s pleased with. Why can’t we be better Christians? Why must we drag on and drag on in an old bumpy wagon when God Almighty has the angels and spirits at our disposal and the Holy Ghost within us and the Word of God before our eyes.

Yes, the Word is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Let us believe it. Let us love it. Let us read it. Let us trust it. Let us live by it and let us die by it and all will be well. Amen.

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Tozer Talks

“All Things are Possible With God”

All Things Are Possible With God
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
September 2, 1956

There are two verses, two parts of verses, just words, the words of Jesus. One is found in Mark 10:27, these words, six of them. With God, all things are possible. With God, all things are possible. And then in the ninth chapter, the 23rd verse, all things are possible to him that believeth.

Now, there is the same thing said about God and about the believing man: all things are possible. I see no poetry here, no figure here. This is not figurative language. It is blunt statement of truth. The whole passage is without figure or metaphor. We need not discount this in any wise. It stands just as it is bluntly, all things are possible to him that believeth, and all things are possible with God.

Now, the text, all things are possible with God, is one that we can take standing up and without a problem, as I have pointed out on a previous occasion some, I think, years back now, that nobody ever feels when he hears the text, with God all things are possible, that he’s been jarred in it. He does not stagger at that statement through unbelief. With God all things are possible. The eternal God, the omnipotent God, the God who is plenipotent, who has all the potency that there is, all the power that exists is in God. And nobody feels jarred or disturbed. Nobody runs to a pastor and says, what does this mean? Nobody writes to an editor and says, will you please give your opinion of verse so and so, all things are possible with God? Everybody knows that’s true, and nobody questions it. That is, anybody who’s ever read the Bible at all or been brought up in the Christian tradition.

But the other verse, all things are possible to him that hath faith. Now, we might just as well say that we’re in trouble here. There isn’t any use to look pious and impassive and pretend that this also is easy for us and it’s old stuff. It’s nothing of the sort. It is very difficult for the human mind to grasp, even the Christian, human mind, because it says the same thing about a believing man that it says about God. It states that the God of heaven can do everything. And then it states that the man who believes can do everything.

Now, God declares His total ability to do, His total ability to do. I’ve been praying over and wondering what I should be talking to the people in Canada about as they’re gathered, will be gathered there from all over. And there will be men there, very greatly my superior in every possible way that I know. Such men as Dr. Jones and this Hashi, a very famous theologian from Switzerland. And I can’t go there and hope to be able to stand up along with those very great and learned and gifted men. And I have wondered whether maybe I shouldn’t just go there and talk about God. I wonder if that might not be, just go there and talk about God. Because they usually don’t do that. They find God in everything, but they don’t talk about God too much. Maybe that will be my contribution, just go there and talk about the Triune God. And among the things that I want to say, will be that God declares His total ability to do. God can do every thing. That is, He can do everything that He desires to do.

Believing in the omnipotence of Deity does not require us to believe that God can do what He does not will to do. God cannot, for instance, tell a lie. God cannot, for instance, break a promise. But anything God wills to do, God has total ability to do. And no thing and no matter and no body and no circumstance or no law and no enemy and no opposition from anywhere can stop God from doing exactly what He wills to do. Now, we want to get that settled. The great God whose we are and whom we call Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, can do whatever He wills to do and all that He wills to do.

But now the same thing is true of him that believeth. God shares His omnipotence with that person He calls, him that believeth. With whom does God share His omnipotence with? About whom does God say, he’s equal to me, in a relative way and by My grace and permission and promise, he can do what I can do. Or because I do what I do through him, about whom does He thus speak? Is it a genius? Is it some religious genius more brilliant? No, he could be a genius, but it’s not with geniuses that God shares his total ability to do. Not with some powerful personality.

I’ve said I suppose too often already here, that the cult of personality has become a deadly and dangerous thing in our time. That this cult of personality that magnifies Apollos and puts a leay around his neck, of the fragrant flowers and offers sacrifice to him, this has become a dangerous thing. And God did not say that man of powerful personality can do whatsoever he wills. He said, that the man who believeth has the power to do whatsoever he will.

Now, this person may not be a superior one. And he may be no wiser and no more influential and no more powerful than the rank and file, because the power is not his. The power belongs to God. You see, if I know that the power belongs to God, this takes all the strain off so there isn’t any effort A man walks in with a subconscious feeling, partly conscious that he’s got to do it, he attempts to do it either by forcing his voice or by gesticulations or by some other method. He tries to do, by his own power, that which only God can do.

Now, gestures and gesticulations are normal. You and I have that much Jew in us that when we make a point we like to do it with our hands. And we talk with our hands and that’s perfectly normal and all right. But there is such a thing as going into a pulpit or before a class or wherever, and trying by putting what they call, body english into it. Do you know what body english is? It’s to hit it and then turn and hope and help the thing to go where it ought to go by sheer physical, by overpowering the thing. But after it’s left the club, you can’t do a thing with it then. But people try that, as I try on an airplane to keep the thing balanced. I always lean the other way from the way it turns. If they bank to the left, I lean hard to the right so it won’t turn over. But that’s strictly and purely a fallacy of the mind.

And we can try in our prayers to strain and wrestle with God and get things done by our power. My brethren, the Bible didn’t say, all things are possible with God, and all things are possible with the man or woman who can wrestle enough. He said, All things are possible to him that believeth. We ought again to release wonderful, marvelous faith into the church of Christ and see what faith can do. That is, not the faith you hear about over the radio: somebody upstairs likes me. Not that kind of pagan faith, but the faith in God. Now, this takes, I say, all the strain off so that you’re not trying to do it. And it takes all the glory away from you. I wonder how many people there are who serve God sheerly for God Almighty’s own glory without wanting a little cut on their own. Now, I seriously do.

I wonder how many men write a Christian book and commit it to God so completely that they’re willing for it to fail? I wonder how many people teach and commit it to God so completing that they’re willing to fail if God orders it. Mostly we want to serve God by winning and keeping up a good front ourselves. But it should not be because the power belongs to God and to Him alone, and all the glory must be taken away from you or me. Remember this, I am Jehovah and there is no other and My glory will I not share with another. And the work that is being done in the world, the truly eternal work that is being done, is being done only by those who don’t want any share in God’s glory, but give all the glory to the Godhead, to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Now, our Lord Jesus Christ is absolute Master. I wish you’d read your Bible with that in mind. I wish you’d read your New Testament more. Read Acts and read Colossians and learn how God has elevated His Son to the right hand of power. And even while He walked on the earth, He manifested His absolute mastery over everything. Over the realm of nature, the wind and the sea obeyed Him. And over human flesh, He healed the sick. And over the soul, He forgave sins. And over the spirit, He cast out devils. And in the realm of the dead, for He spoke and the dead walked out of their graves alive. So, our Lord had all power. He manifested it while he walked on Earth. And when He went to the right hand of God, if there was such a thing as any realm where God had for the moment in His plan, restrained Him, He took those restraints off. Then Jesus said, all authority is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. And then He said, as my Father sent me, so send I you. And in Mark 16:20, these disciples believed this and they went forth, says the Scripture, and preached everywhere. And the Lord went with them, confirming the word with signs following.

Now, it says that in the Book of Mark, but somebody would want to tell us that that was for the Apostles and belonged to another day. Isn’t it strange? I pointed out one time, just at the conclusion of a sermon, how unbelief works. Unbelief says somewhere else, but not here. Some other time, but not now. Some other people but not us. And I had the pleasure of hearing that sermon preached back to me by a young preacher who’d heard that and develop them into a beautiful sermon. I heard it. He had to point. And it was a good sermon, all right, because that’s the way unbelief does. Unbelief is willing to believe anything provided it isn’t now. Anything, provided it isn’t here. Anything, provided it isn’t us.

And there are those of you listening to me right now that pray for the Danis and the unpronounceables up there in the Philippines. And you wouldn’t be even a little surprised if the message came that God had done wonders there. But you can’t bring yourself to believe God will do wonders here. Do you know that? If it’s far enough away, you’ll believe it. But if it comes close enough, you begin to stagger. No doubt if Abraham had heard a story back in antediluvian days, an old man, 100, with a wife, 90, had had a child. He’d have taken it in stride. But it was something else when God said to the old man, your wife, Sarah shall have a son.

Now brethren, let’s get away from this thing. And let’s remember that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of the Reformers and the God of the Revivalists and the God of the great pioneer missionaries. That is our God. He is our God. But you say, yes, but they deserve it. You see, brethren, we still have the Roman Catholic idea that the saints are much more beloved than we are. That if you were virtuous enough to be a saint, God loved you more and would do more for you. But that is a subtle suggestion that God gives us things because we’re saintly.

But the Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible teaches that God gives us things because God is good and we’re in need and grace operates. And Saint Augustine, could not get a thing that you can get from God. St. Augustine never had one-inch closer entrée to God Almighty than you have right now. The well need not a physician. The healthy man doesn’t need a doctor. It’s the sick man. And I believe we have a right, and I have written it into my little prayer book, and I take it before God. I believe we have a right to believe that God will bless us in inverse proportion to how bad we’ve been. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

What do I mean by that strange expression, in inverse proportion? I mean that I have a right to go to God and say, O God, You boasted about your grace and your mercy and your willingness out of your own good heart to bless people that didn’t deserve it. Well, I’m a candidate. I’m the worst and therefore God give me the most. I believe we have a right to go, and I think God would smile and listen if we went to Him and say I’m bringing Thee no soft odors. I’m bringing Thee no garments redolent of sainthood. I am bringing Thee no past that can be written in a book. I am bringing Thee a past that I don’t want written in a book. And I am bringing Thee not the smell of heaven but the savor of earth. I’m bringing Thee raggedness and scattered, staggered and unworthiness. And now God, make good on your promise and bless me most because I’m worse. And give me greater help because I need it the most.

I believe that God smiles at that kind of praying to go slithering into the presence of God with a waxy smile and say, God, I’m not as other men. This harlot over here, this publican over there, that politician over yonder, I’ve always been a good boy and stayed in church. And I have five Bibles at home that I earned in Sunday school. And you know, Father, that I never did anything worse than drink a bottle of Coke. And I’m a pretty good boy, Lord, I think God will turn His back on that kind of self-righteousness, but knowing what I am and knowing what we are. But because Jesus Christ’s blood is of infinite capacity to purchase merits for us, we go straight into the presence of God paying no attention to the merits of the saints.

Don’t allow yourself to be hooked by that old error that the saints piled up merits. If the saints got their merits, they would all be in hell now, every last one of them. If they got only what they deserved from Augustine and St. Teresa, and all down to this present hour, they’d all be in hell and they all knew it and all said so. And they were the first ones to say so. I’ve got their lives and devotional works and I read them. I know what they believed. And this idea that there is a what they call it, a superarrogationist idea that you pile up merits.

But I and Brother Thomas and Brother Chase and Brother McAfee were four good boys and when we die, we’ll leave behind us a little merit. Which if you can get it, it will help you. Paganism, my brethren. There’s not a line in the Scripture about it. Its paganism. I will not leave any merits behind me. I’ll leave demerits, 100% solid. But I have all the merits of a risen Jesus, all the merits of a risen Jesus. Not superarrogation, but vicarious death and resurrection. It gives me everything that I need, everything, everything.

Jesus Christ is made to me all I need. All I need, He alone is all my plea. Here’s all I need, wisdom, righteousness and power, holiness forevermore. My redemption, full and sure, He is all I need. And the only plea we have and the only one we need before our Father’s face, because I was a guilty sinner, but Jesus died for me. And the Father hears my prayer and answers it as if I had been an unfallen angel in heaven above and had never known the pollution of iniquity. He restores moral innocency through His forgiving love and establishes us so that we can talk to Him. And we can get things from Him if you want to put it on that low level.

Well, he says, they went everywhere and the Lord went with them. And the Lord confirmed everything and proved to them that He meant what He said when He said that everything they needed they could have just as He could do anything He wanted to do. Now where may we expect that power in the next seven minutes? Where may we expect it in personal salvation and life? No sin, no habit, no weakness, nothing, can stop the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing can stop the Lord Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine a gnat flying around trying to escape a nighthawk? A nighthawk sails and bank and turn and curve and make their beeping sound all over Chicago. You’re not naturalist enough to know when a nighthawk is flying. He’s hunting gnats. He eats them, lives off of them. That’s where he gets his food. He doesn’t sit down on the dirty earth and pecks. He goes up there and flies around takes it on the wing.

Well suppose that this gnat has escaped a night hawk and he sees a DC-7 roaring in and says I’m going to bring that one down and he flies into the propeller. You know what happens to him. He’s history from that moment on. And when anything says, well God Almighty, He can’t do it. You say, God can’t do it brother. God in His pity may close His eyes and wait so as not to crush you, but God can do anything He wants to do. Don’t think he can’t. And there isn’t an enemy anywhere that can stop Him.

Have you notice the communists have begun to talk like the Nazis now, boastfully, boasting. Hitler used to say I’m about run out of patience now. You, your country over there, I’m about run out of patience. He ran out of patience and then he ran out of time. And the day that he said, we know how to deal with you Bible-carrying Christians. I said, God thank you. He said it. He said it God. I knew he was finished. I knew he was done the day that he said, we know how to deal with you Bible-carrying Christians. And they’re still carrying Bibles in Germany. Hitler has been in hell, oh, these twelve years, eleven.

Brethren, there isn’t anything that can stop God. And don’t you ever for a moment think a thing is too big for God to do–nothing. All things are possible to him that believeth. And in our common needs, do you believe God is willing to help you in your common needs? I don’t want to stir you up to start praying about your little household affairs all the time. Put those in the hands of God and trust His providence. That’s the best way to handle that. But when the crisis comes, God is just as willing to help you with your household work as He is to help a missionary on the field or an angel at His right hand. I believe that God is perfectly willing to help.

We had a red-headed treasurer in this church in Indianapolis many years ago. I don’t know whether brother Thomas would know him. What was his name? I could think of it, Mr. Keller. And he was a Christian, a happy Christian brother. And you know how he got converted? He went to an Alliance meeting. And there was testimony meeting, and a dear old housewife, dear old lady got up and gave a testimony. And she said, I’d like to say to the glory of God, that I put my wash on my front porch for the laundry man and somebody stole it. And she said, I got on my knees and I said, God, I can’t afford to lose that. Please return it to me. And she said it was returned and placed back on my porch. Thank God, and she sat down. And this redhead sat there saying to himself, what infinite crust this is that God Almighty, the great God Almighty should be interested in a bag of wet wash. What does God care about that? But it got ahold of his hide nevertheless and it wasn’t very long until he gave himself to the Lord and was converted. I believe in these things, brethren, with all of my heart.

Why, don’t you remember that passage in the 12th of Acts when the Lord said to the angel, my boy Peter is in prison. Go down. And the angel started off, and just a minute He said, take a cloak with you. He said, take a cloak. So he took a cloak down. And he waked Peter and said, here, put this cloak on you. And then let him out through the gates. Who thought about the cloak? The angel? No. God thought about it.

And then think of that poor old prophet out there. Forty days journey from nowhere, in the woods. He had said he had run out of food and ran so far there wasn’t no food, and he’d been driven to dig for roots. But God said to an angel, here, go down and bake some pancakes for my boy Elijah. And down came the angel on broad white wings. And what did it do? Play a pipe organ or paint a picture or write a poem? No, it baked cakes for a prophet. There isn’t anything too small for God to be concerned with.

Dear old little old Julian; Ray calls her, my girlfriend. She’s been dead 600 years and I carry her little book around with me and read what she said about the Lord. She said, O Lord, Thou wilt never refuse to humble Thyself and serve in the least particular of our humble nature. And there isn’t anything in our poor nature, that the Lord won’t serve us in. She said, though He be so high, yet does He meek Himself to be so homely with poor sinners like us. Homely of course means familiar at home life. Well, she’s right. And there isn’t a thing, there isn’t a thing that God isn’t interested in, your common needs.

Now, I don’t mean that I want you to get your eyes on this world’s goods and begin to belabor God with requests for all things. The time was when a man came to Jesus and said, will you tell my brother that he divide? And the Lord knew He had a bad man on His hands. So, He said, who made me a divider over you and he turned His back and walked away, perfectly willing to help a woman find her wet wash. Perfectly willing to humble Himself to the lowest needs of our human nature, but unwilling to divide with a covetous man, and unwilling to become a lawyer to try to get a man, a wicked man who wanted money. No, God isn’t interested in that.

So don’t take advantage of what I’ve said and start any of this asking God to get your hair back. I know there’s one cult that promises that if you write them, I mean it. They say, write in and send us something and we’ll send you something and then you can get your hair back. And thank God, he counts every hair when it falls. He knows where they are, doesn’t he? I’m not worried about that. And I don’t want my hair back. I’ll go redhead one of these days.

And then in our services, our services. I think I ought to repent of something. Brother McAfee ribs me about it, and kids me. When I have a very important, what I consider to be a very important engagement coming up like the one in Canada soon, I sweat under it. And I say, oh, why did I promised to go. Brother McAfee said, now it’s starting. He knows that I have a little worrying to do. But I think that’s sinful. I think I ought to ask God to forgive me and I have for that matter. And I think I ought to quit it, because why should I worry when the Lord is going with me? And if I’ve got to do it, I’ll buy a ticket to San Francisco. But if I don’t have to do it, why should I worry? It just goes to prove Adam isn’t as dead as I wish he was. But I pray that God will give me faith to know that in my God-appointed work, I don’t have to do it. God does it. And when God does it why should I worry?

I preached before a bishop one time. That is, I thought I was going to preach before him, but he couldn’t make it. And I tell you, I sweat under that. And I have preached a few times in my life before some people so important that I felt that I couldn’t make it. But all that’s flesh. Who are they anyhow? No matter how many miters they have on their heads, they have still got breath in their nostrils. And no matter how many grandiose titles they’ve earned for themselves, they still have breath in their nostrils. And why should one man with breath in his nostrils be afraid of another man with breath in his nostril?

So, when your God-appointed task, remember with me, nothing is impossible to him that believeth. Nothing is impossible. But why do so few take advantage of it? In our church, God, let me live as I trust you will. I have no plans otherwise for the next while. When I come back, I want to preach some sermons. And I believe we’ve got a future. And I believe we’re going to see a great Fall and Winter. But if we do, it won’t be because anybody winds himself up tight. It’ll be because we learned that with God all things are possible and all things are possible to them that believe. Whether we’re known abroad or whether we’re not known round the corner of our own street, God isn’t worrying about popularity or fame. Any of His children can go to Him for anything and He will answer in his will.

So, we serve God, and while God owes us nothing yet God in His kind grace puts Himself under obligation to us where he has to listen. He in His infinite grace puts Himself under obligation so that He must hear us. Shall we not then pray these days just ahead of us? And let’s believe God all up and down these streets. They’ve come in over the last year, hundreds and hundreds of them. Children half-grown, little ones, hundreds, and they swarmed the streets. And there’s nobody reaching them and nobody helping them.

Why can this church take it on ourselves instead of our looking like a bird about to fly and say, we’ve got to go south. Why can’t we rather say, God sent them for us to evangelize? I believe, if we’ll believe, we’d see God do wonders yet in this church. I have that confidence that God will do wonders. I do not expect God, I do not expect God, ever expect that this shall be a popular church where the multitudes will flock. I’m no Johnny Ray nor Elvis Presley. Neither is McAfee. And so they’re not going to come in and faint and scream. We don’t carry on like that. I’m not thinking about size. I’m thinking about depth and intensity and permanence of service at home and unto the ends of the world. And all things are possible to God. And everything is possible to what? Him that believeth. Let’s do some believing and release the infinite powers of God into our life and into our church.

Now, Father, we pray thy blessing upon us. Oh, we scatter from this little building to so many places, so many responsibilities, obligations, and callings. Back to school for many. Oh, we pray that we’ll go with confidence that we’re not orphans of the storm. That we’re not bits of matter animated for a period, floating in space. That we’re sons and daughters of a God who has got His eye on every one of us and knows our name and number and face. And our High Priest carries our name on His shoulder and on His breast and on His forehead before the presence of God. Before the face of the Father stands our great High Priest, and we need no merit of saints. We need nothing but the merit of the great High Priest.

We thank Thee we can enter boldly into the throne of grace and receive mercy and grace to help in time of need. For He knoweth our infirmities, feels all the pinch and pressure of our weaknesses, for He is Himself, man and walked among us. Send us out with great hope and encouragement. Send these young people back to school, chins up and knees bent and eyes bright, knowing that the Lord is on their side and grace, infinite matchless grace, is greater than all their sins. And send us back to service and out to our labors confidently expecting we shall see the gifts of the Spirit restored to this church and that we shall see the mighty power of a risen Christ operating in this church. We ask these things in His name. Let us stand please.

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Tozer Talks

The Power of the Word

The Power of the Word

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 28, 1956

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tozer Talks

” Dangers of Prosperity and Adversity “

“Message #2 in Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them

March 27, 1955

David says, The Lord is his Rock, and his Fortress, and his Deliver, and his Strength, and his Buckler, and his High Tower. Verse two. The inference we draw from this is, that the man David must have needed a rock, a place to hide, a fortress, a deliver, and a horn of salvation and a high tower. There must have been dangers from which David had to hide, and weaknesses which, for which he needed strength, and arrows aimed at him for which he needed the shield of a buckler.

So, I am dealing these few Sunday mornings up to missionary convention time, and maybe I’ll resume it after that for a couple of Sundays; on the dangers that are in the Christian way. And this Psalm, I have said is a mirror of life. And it indicates that there are dangers in the way. That the way to heaven is hedged-in by perils to our souls. Now, to ignore these perils, is to reject the Bible. The Bible is not only rejected when a man stands and boldly declares, I do not believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is a saga full of myths. I do not believe the Bible. That’s a rejection of the Bible, but at least it’s an honest rejection of the Bible.

The Bible is more insidiously rejected when a man rises and says, I believe the Bible and then ignores the teachings of the Bible on his own pet subjects. We’re all likely to do that. I’m likely to do it. I want you to pray that I may never do it, that I might be wise not to do it. But well-intentioned men, without meaning to ignore the Scriptures or to deny them, have ignored the dangers in the Christian way and so they have taken away the markers on the highways.

Can you imagine if it were possible, to sabotage this country all over on one night, say, and take down all highway markers from Maine to California, from the Gulf to the Canadian border, not one left? Can you imagine how many thousands of people would be killed the next evening? Thousands would die the next evening, because our Department of Highways have carefully marked dangerous places, warned to slow down, warned even in some places to put in second gear, and so on. The idea is, there are dangers, you don’t have to stop and go back, and you don’t have to drive all jittery and afraid, because the dangerous places are marked. And if we pay attention to the markers and drive with some degree of relaxed care, the possibility of an accident will be cut down to an infinitesimal minimum. But if we pay no attention to the markers, or if the markers are removed, then comes the danger and then multiplies the dead. So, to ignore or remove their markers on the highway is of course to do a great disservice, a dangerous disservice to the people of God. I mean to show these dangers in pairs.

Today, I want to talk about the danger of prosperity and the danger of adversity. We’ll talk about the danger of prosperity first, and we might as well call it financial prosperity to begin with. Now, it is a solemn thought to me that the history of mankind and of nations and of churches shows that we trust in God as a rule when there is nothing else in which there is nothing else to trust. Do I wish it were possible to be realistic and honest and still tell a different story? I’d love to do it. But a Christian, I have insisted, ought to be a realist. That is, he ought to stay by the facts as they are, not invent them and not twist them, but stay by them as they are. The simple fact is, that the history of men, Israel and the church and of nations and individual churches as well as individual men; the history shows that we trust in God last, and we tend to trust in God when we have nothing else in which they trust. And as other trusts appear, we turn from God to them, and excuse ourselves eloquently by saying that we are not trusting them. We are really trusting God. But we do trust them nevertheless.

Now, I thought that to support this, I had better give you some Bible. So, I have selected an Old Testament passage and the New Testament passage. The Old Testament passage is found in Deuteronomy 32:9 and following. Here’s the story of Jacob, that is, Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him, that is, he found Jacob and from Jacob came Israel, the nation of Israel. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. And Jacob himself testified that all he had then was a staff with a little bandana hankerchief on the end of it over his shoulder. That’s all he had. With my staff I came over this brook and lo, I am become two bands. That was Jacob’s testimony. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So, the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.

Then verse 15, but Jeshurun, that’s still Jacob. It’s God’s pet name for Israel, but Jeshurun waxed fat. It was God that made him fat. God gave him butter and milk and honey. You can’t eat butter and milk and honey and not get fat. He says here, I gave him butter and milk and honey and lots of it, and gave him the increase of the fields and gave him the fat of wheat and the pure blood of the grape. But the result was Jeshurun waxed fat. And when he waxed fat, he got independent and sassy, and he kicked. Thou art waxen fat. Thou art grown thick. Thou art covered with fatness. Then he forsook God which made him and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation.

Now when he was wandering in the desert place in the waist howling wilderness because all he remembered wasn’t the wind was howling, it was like tigers, wolves and bears, not tigers in that land, but wolves and bears. And these wolves and bears were dangerous and so Jacob had to hide in God or else get eaten up. And as long as he was hiding in God, he was all right. But as soon as he got fat, and grew thick and forsook God which made him and lightly esteemed the Rock in his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy was strange Gods. With abominations provoked him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils and not unto God. The gods whom they knew not. The new gods that came newly up whom their fathers feared not. And the remark, remember this, that there would have been eloquent defense of these gods made by men; magazine, articles written and books, and when committees meet strong defense in favor of wisdom and the fact that we mustn’t miss the boat, and that after all, we got to give them something to do.

And so, they will sacrifice unto devils and not under gods, the gods whom they knew not, the new gods that came newly up whom your fathers feared not. But of the Rock that begat them they were unmindful. And thou has forgotten God that formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them because of the provoking that his sons did. And his daughters and He said I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end shall be. For they are a very froward generation. Froward you know, means bold with a hard forehead, brassy, children in whom is no faith. Now, they used the very prosperity that God gave them as a stumbling block.

Now we come to the New Testament. You think humanity would have changed over the hundreds of years. See, when was that back there about 1450 B.C. and this is about 50 or so, A.D.? So, there we have about 1500 years and in that 1500 years now Christ has come and died and ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Ghost and the church has been formed, and now an apostle writes to a church in Laodicea. Third chapter of Revelation. and unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things, saith the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou art cold or hot, so because thou art neither lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I’ll spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou saith, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing. And knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. In case you think he’s severe, notice he says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous therefore and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. This pitiful condition of the church in the latter days. Rich increased with goods and endowed, beautiful buildings, and the Savior standing outside trying to get in.

Now, there’s the New Testament example. And then we find in Luke 20:12, and 13, and on, the rich fool, who said, I will tear down these barns. They are not adequate. And I will build larger barns in order that I might house my increase crops. And God said bluntly, you fool, you’ve got to die. And you can’t take these barns to the other world with you. Then, whose will these things be?

Now, there we have plenty of Bible and I only quote these verses, because I can’t read the Bible all morning here. The whole Bible teaches this, that plenty, however justly it may be acquired, constitute a great danger, constitutes a great danger. John Wesley admitted this frankly, I’ve told you this before but it fits into perfectly here and illustrates from a classic source. So, I’ll repeat that John Wesley, after his Methodist society got going, and they had circled the world, and they were growing in number, Wesley admitted one time in print, this. He said, we are in a peculiar paradox in our Methodist societies. He said, I have noticed something. I have noticed that as soon as a group of people meet together and form a society, and subscribe to the New Testament doctrines, and bring their lives into line with the truth, they immediately get honest, frugal, saving, hardworking, and upright and industrious. And the result is, they lay up money. Then he said, as soon as they get some money, they begin to trust it. And as soon as they begin to trust their money, they cease to be holy and spiritual and frugal and hardworking and honest and good. And so, they backslide.

And so, he says, here is the vicious circle. Get right with God and you’ll become frugal, saving, honest, hardworking, serious. That makes you tend to get rich. When you tend to get rich, you tend to backslide. So, he said, here’s the vicious circle. What are we going to do? Well, leave it to John Wesley. He wasn’t going to be licked by a vicious circle. He said I have the answer. He said, be honest, holy, hardworking, frugal, saving. Get all you can and then give it all away. And he said, you’ll never backslide because you’ll never have anything there to backslide with. He said, get all you can in order that you may give all you can and continue to trust God and work hard and get more and give that away. He said, and that way, you’ll never backslide.

Now, I thought that was a classic, brethren. And that’s exactly what John Wesley did. They would have laid the wealth of England at his feet. At least the common people would have. But when he died, he died with twenty-eight pounds. Five times twenty-eight, what’s that, over 100 to 125 or so dollars he took with him. I don’t mean he took with him, but he could have taken it with him and taken with him was in order. But he left it, about $130. Now that after a lifetime. He lived eighty-three years and died with $130 to leave behind. He didn’t have to make out a will. It took more than that to bury him.

Now, that was John Wesley. Brethren, unaccustomed with plenty is pretty deadly if you don’t know what to do with it. No boy gets so arrogant and so reckless as a boy who is newly rich. And no girl gets so extravagant and so wild as the girl into the big city making good money. I don’t say that always happens, but I say the temptation is there. Anybody brought up, they say, that men brought up in money, they can wear the old clothes. I said about one old fellow who was going around in an old suit that even I wouldn’t have worn. He said, he can afford to do it. Everybody knows he’s rich. But the fellow that has just come into the money, he wants to prove it by the way he dresses and what he drives and what kind of a house he lives in. But the man who’s has money and inherited money, he doesn’t tend that way because it’s nothing to him. He’s bored with it.

So, unaccustomed plenty is especially deadly to a Christian. Oh, what mine eyes have seen over the years. I have seen young men who while they were in high school and college, struggled and fought and prayed and loved God and got along on little. And then they met a girl and she had had the same experience fighting her way through and working after hours to get, not to continue and help with a home and she had little and he had little and then they met each other and they got married and then they got out of school and settled down and got good jobs, and used his sanctified Christian intelligence to get a good position. And pretty soon the money was coming his way hand over fist and they moved into a finer home, got a bigger car and a bigger television set, and finer of everything. And they began to come to choir less often and prayer meeting rarely and the church less frequently and they take long holiday excursions and then longer ones. And pretty soon, they backslid. I’ve seen it happen over the years. I’ve seen it happen. Brethren, it’s always dangerous. Prosperity is dangerous for a Christian.

Now, what can you do? Is this, is this, am I saying I wish all my people were poor people? If all the people were poor, poverty-stricken people, how would we ever manage to keep missionaries on the field? How would we ever promote publishing societies? How would we ever get books out to the public? How would we ever keep schools going? How would we finance God’s work so as to keep our missionaries going, our radio programs alive, our books flowing out? How do we do it? No, it is not God’s will that His people should all be poor. It’s God’s will that his people should prosper, but know what to do with prosperity.

Now, I’ll give you three rules and if you care enough about it to take this down, I think it may help you. I give you three rules what to do with prosperity. First of all, thank God reverently. You never ought to receive anything, never ought to receive a raise, never ought to receive anything, but that we do not go to God and reverently thank Him and acknowledge the source of it. And know that it cometh from the Father of Lights, from whence every good gift comes. Thank God reverently. Second, share it generously. If you do not share it generously, it will begin to canker and rust on your spirit and soul. And the bigger the bank account, the smaller the heart, unless you share it so generously that your conscience feels good about it and God is satisfied. And then, walk circumspectly, those three things. If you have plenty, thank God reverently. Share it generously and walk circumspectly.

Now, if you want some Bible on this walking circumspectly, I don’t feel it necessary to quote scripture on the other two, because it’s just an essence of Scripture. But I do want to give you a passage or two here, a verse or two here from Luke 21. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. Now, here of course it means prosperity. Your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting. And of course, that is overeating and drunkenness. And of course, that’s drinking. The cares of this life. The poorer a man is, the fewer cares he has; and the more he gets, the more cares he has. And if he allows his heart to be overcharged, numb, overwhelmed with these earthly things, the day of Christ shall come upon him unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, watch ye therefore and pray always, that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.

Now, there’s an urgent exhortation that we might watch carefully, lest prosperity with its surfeiting, it’s over eating, it’s careless drinking and the cares of this life, unfit us for that day, and we should be caught like a little animal in a snare, when our Lord comes. Rather we ought to pray that we might be worthy to escape these things, and stand before the Son of Man.

Now, it’s an odd thing, but not only is prosperity dangerous, but adversity is dangerous. Brother Van Kepple who incidentally is in the hospital, and need your prayers, getting on all right after surgery. He often quotes when he arrives to testify, give me neither poverty nor riches, lest if I’d be rich I forget God, and lest if I be poor, I’d be tempted to steal. That was a wise practical little verse of the man of God in the Old Testament,

Now, adversity, that is financial reverses or physical afflictions. We’ll deal with them in turn. Financial reverses, that is, that’s the exact opposite of prosperity. And yet it is dangerous too, especially if it follows prosperity. Some people are so habitually in a state of financial reverses. I think they call that monetary impecuniosity. That is the name for it. But a lot of people are in that state so much that that there is nothing to react from. But if you’ve been reasonably prosperous and then you have reverses, it’s especially dangerous because prosperity tends to make us soft. We’re soft compared with our fathers. Now, don’t imagine we’re not.

I rather am glad we are. I’m glad we are. Our sons are getting taller, and our women stay younger looking longer. Down in the hills where a child goes to work in the cornfield at five, and plows at eight, and women milk half a dozen cows and churn the butter and hoe in the garden and help their husband in the field, they are old ladies at thirty. I know, I’ve been around a little. And at thirty, they’re old ladies, wrinkled and weary-looking with a thick, fuzzy voice and a drooping, disgusted attitude toward the world. Too much work and poverty can beat you. And it’s never good. The poets and the philosophers have all sung the praise of poverty. And about the only literary man I ever knew that had honesty enough to come right out and say he didn’t believe in poverty was Dr. Sam Johnson. He said, you can talk about it all you want to, it’s a, it’s a horribly, debilitating and discouraging thing and I don’t believe in it.

Well, too much poverty will beat you down and sicken you and weaken you and make you old before your time. But, if you’ve had prosperity, and then you’re plunged into reverses, you are likely to blow up because you’ve been made soft. Too much prosperity will make you soft. Too much poverty will do what I’ve described a moment ago. So, what do we do about it all? Well, to have prosperity suddenly removed from us means that it’s likely to take away the rock of our trust and plunged us into panic.

Now about physical afflictions. It’s an odd thing, how people react to physical illness, two opposite ways. Some react by using it as a means of grace. David said, before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I’ve kept Thy word. David got ill and while he was was ill, he had time to think it over and pray and wait on God. And he used his affliction as a means of grace. But there are others, who as soon as they’re touched with physical affliction, they throw in the towel. And I suppose, I ought to be ashamed to admit it, but I am in second category. People say, oh, I have been ill two weeks and what a time I’ve had waiting on God and getting caught up on my prayer and all the rest. And if I get a cold in my head, I’m finished until the cold gets out of my head again. If others don’t pray for me, I admit I don’t get very far. I can’t get a hold of myself.

My father was a strong man, a wirery, strong, tough man, and so far as I knew, I don’t think he was ever afraid of anything on four legs or two. I never knew anything my father was afraid of. He was completely fearless almost to the point of psychopathically fearless. But when he got a cold in his head, he became a whimpering baby. And everybody had to run after him and look after him. And he would moan, sigh and look around for sympathy. And it didn’t do him any good to get sick. That’s just as sure as you live. And his son follows in his footsteps.

But some people know how to use physical affliction. David did I say. Before I was inflicted, I went astray. He said, I got careless. But when I got sick, I had time to think it over, and I got right with God. Now, in any case, these are dangers, financial reverses or physical afflictions. But this little verse has comforted me, if thou faintest in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. I don’t know why that verse comforts me, but it does. It doesn’t promise anything. It just makes a rather uncomplimentary statement about a man. And yet, I get help out of that verse. If thou faintest in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. It’s in one of the Proverbs.

Now, I have a conclusion here, and of course, the conclusion ought to be the best part of what I’m telling you. So, listen to it, and if you want to, take down a few notes. How to avoid these dangers, the dangers of having too much and the danger of suddenly having not enough. The danger of a big bank roll, and the danger of debt. Opposite ends, related to each other. One is the seamy side of the other. But they’re here and they are dangers. And we need a Rock and a Shelter and a Hiding Place and a Fortress and a Buckler and a Shield and strength. We need help, because these are two dangers, a fat lion and a skinny, scrawny lion. The fat lion is prosperity, and the scrawny, hungry lion is adversity. But they’re both lions and they’re both sources of danger.

Now, how do we have we avoid it? I will give you about four rules. First of all, get thoroughly detached from earthly possessions. If you are not detached from earthly possessions, your every dollar you accumulate will be a blight on your spirit. But if you have an understanding with God that goes clear down in deep into tears and emotions and moves you, your increasing riches will not hurt you at all, because they’re not yours. You will hold them for the Giver as we sing. You will hold them for the Giver. God gave them and you’ll hold them for Him.

A man is a treasurer of General Motors. I don’t know who he is, but the man who is treasurer of General Motors. Well, for General Motors to prosper, it doesn’t hurt him any, because it isn’t his money. He just works for General Motors. And while he can sign checks, I suppose running into the hundreds of thousands and maybe a million dollars, he never signs them except he signs them for the company. He doesn’t say, look how much money I’ve got. He says the company has so much money and I’m the treasurer.

Now, as treasurer, it was called a steward back in the days of Jesus’ time. And Jesus talked about stewards looking after other people’s money. And if you consider your possessions, everything from the garment on your back, to your factory, or office or store or whatever you have, everything, if you consider it as being God’s and you being God’s steward, it won’t hurt you at all. And no matter how much it multiplies, it still won’t hurt you because it’s outside of you. Money never hurt any man as long as it stayed outside of him. It’s when it gets inside of him that the curse begins.

The monks of old times thought that the way to wit at prosperity was to choose poverty, and they took a vow of chastity in poverty. But a man can take a vow of poverty and go into a monastery and be just as proud and can own the very book and the very table in the very cell and can say, this is my cell. You stay out of it. This is my book, let it alone. This is my bunk, don’t you sleep on it, and he can still possess things even if he’s barefooted. He can be a possessor of something.

On the other hand, a man like, well, a man can own lots and still not possess a thing, and be completely cut away from it. For you see, getting rid of the curse of prosperity is not a physical thing. It’s a spiritual thing. A man is not free from prosperity, if you were to give everything away, and live on bread and water. He’d still have self and pride in his heart. But get rid of your possessions. Blessed is the man who possesses nothing, that’s a sermon I preached once, and wrote it later into a chapter in a book, The blessedness of the man who possesses nothing. And if we possess nothing, God will allow us to have lots. But, if we possess anything, we’re cursed by it.

So, get it outside of you. Get thoroughly detached from earthly possessions. Look out for a thrill, if you get a raise. Look out for a thrill if you get more money. Look out for a thrill that comes from possessions. A man had them one time. He built a great, big beautiful city. And he walked around it. And he said, behold this great Babylon which I have built, and God loved him too much to let him be an idolator. So, he struck me. And when he came back into the throne room, he was shaking his head and muttering, and somebody said, what’s the matter with His Majesty? Well, His Majesty went plain off his head, and had to go out into the field and eat with the beef. Seven years until his fingernails were as long as eagle claws, and his hair like eagle feathers. At the end of seven years, he said, my reason came back to me and I knew that the Lord God on high reined over the affairs of men. He had to take seven years in the pasture field to find out what you can know now, if you will. We’re no better than Nebuchadnezzar was by nature. So, let’s get thoroughly detached from earthly possessions.

Two, let’s break the grip of the world’s philosophies, the magazine ads, the radio, television, newspapers, conversation, social groups. That subtle philosophy underlies it all. I’ve got to keep up with the ads. I’ve got to keep up with the ads. I just must keep up with Life magazine. I must. All right, you’re not a very good Christian if that’s got you. A Christian is one who has said good bye to the philosophies of the world. Keeping up with the Joneses, good bye. They make us ashamed to wear a suit if it isn’t the latest cut. Ashamed to drive a car that isn’t the latest. Ashamed to live in a house that isn’t the latest grotesque monstrosity, like a lot of this stuff they’re building now. They make us ashamed to be a little behind the time. But a man who is big enough to know that he’s above all times, is big enough to dare to live boldly where he pleases, in style or out of style. It’s no act of righteousness to be out of style Mama. Maybe you just are slow. And it’s no sin to be in style. The glory lies in giving not one care to either, saying I will live decently and respectively and strike a happy medium and go my way and I don’t care what the world says.

But they feed it into us from the time we’re in kindergarten. They feed it into us and make us ashamed to wear clothing a little too long. Ashamed to not have, if we have a bicycle, it’s got to be the best one. If we have a car, it’s got to be the best one. Whatever we have has got to be the best. If you don’t get free from that, prosperity and adversity will grind you to pieces. Prosperity, if you have it, will kill you and adversity, if you have it will grind you. But, if you will get free from the world’s philosophies and dare to be a Christian standing on your own feet, thanking God for what you’re have and being an independent Christian, neither one of them will grind you. God will take you out from between the nether and the upper millstone.

These are the days when we’re even ashamed not to have traveled. Have you been to Europe? No, poor fellow. Emerson said best thing about travel is to show you didn’t have to travel. He said to travel around the world and come back and find what you’re looking for in your backyard. No, I think traveling is a good thing. But I’m not running around here with a permanent inferiority complex because I’ve not been to London. I’ve been invited often enough, but I’ve been too lazy to go or else fell I had too much to do and didn’t go. But watch it brethren. This using other people as examples and then trying to keep up psychologically so you don’t feel inferior. What a shame, God’s people.

Jesus was never out of Palestine. Jesus never wore a garment somebody didn’t make for Him. Jesus never owned anything that would have sold at auction probably for more than a dollar and a half. Yet, Jesus was the Lord of Glory and the riches of the world were His. He could have spoken to those stones and they’d been gold. He could have spoken to the trees and they’d have turned to rich wheat bread. He could have spoken to the very air and it would have blown riches to Him. And he walked calmly, quietly through the world and left one garment behind me. Not that he despised possessions, No. And if God gave you possessions, thank God for them.

While I was having breakfast this morning, I got up a little ahead of the rest. And when I was having breakfast, I was reading in dear old Thomas Traherne. Thomas Traherne said this, my sermon notes are already made, so I didn’t get anything from him for you particularly and didn’t get my message certainly from him. But he said this, he said God made a wonderful, beautiful world. And he said, some people think you oughten to enjoy it. He said, I don’t agree with them. I think we ought to enjoy all things that God has made, because God made them to be enjoyed. For instance, if somebody gives me a tie and I don’t wear it, it tells the fellow that I didn’t appreciate the tie. And if God gives you a blue sky or a flowing river or a singing bird or a lovely mountain and you say I don’t believe in enjoying earthly things, you’re saying to God, take it back, I don’t like it. So said Thomas Traherne in my language. I believe with him.

Jessie Penn-Lewis, who worked with Evan Roberts in the revival, and some people said, did him no good, teaches that we’ve got to condemn our enjoyment. All of our enjoyments our soul, she said. Soul and spirit are divided. The spirit is the redeemed part and the soul only can be redeemed if we if we deny it. So she says, we are not to enjoy anything in this world, music, art, literature, poetry, beauty, anything. She says sacrifice all of that enjoyment. Keep it unto life eternal.

I heard the mockingbird sing down in Virginia. Funny, those people down there, I said, oh, a mockingbird! Some of them said, yeah, I had’t noticed them. They said, I never hear them. You never hear a mockingbird? And here they were, up on TV antennas and on telephone poles and on trees, and on church steeples, singing like an angel. Now, somebody tells me, Tozer, if you like to hear that, you’re unspiritual. Who made that mockingbird? Did the devil put that harp together and throw a bunch of feathers around it, give it a tail and a pair of wings? Did the devil make the mockingbird? No, God made the mockingbird and he said, here’s a little present to you. He let it go out of his hand and it went fluttering around began to sing. Now, I’m not to enjoy it? I am to enjoy it. Sure, enjoy all God’s lovely world, but keep it all out of you. Keep everything out of you. Keep your heart clean, and keep God in your heart and keep everything outside.

The missionary in the South, that is the missionary who’s lived in the South and loved the mockingbird, if he’s called to go to Tibet, or Timbuktu where there’s not a bird, it’s his business to get up say, goodbye to the mockingbird. Thank God for the little delight he’s taken in it and go where never a mockingbird is heard. But the idea that when God gives it to you and it’s where you are, you can’t enjoy it, seems to me to be the height of fanaticism. And I still love to see the moon at night. And when I’m outside Chicago, I love to see the stars at night. So, break the grip of the world’s philosophies and make God everything. God is everything. You can have anything and still it won’t hurt you. If God is very little or nothing, anything will hurt you.

And then lastly, accept your status as a pilgrim. You’re a pilgrim dear friend. You’re not a resident here. You’re passing through, if you’re a Christian. We build no nest here for our hearts. We’re migrating to a permanent home. We’re migratory birds. Some of you that live out a little where such things take place. In another three weeks or four, three, maybe, you will see a brown bird with spotted breast and a white ring around its perfectly round eyes. And it will be down on the ground among the bushes scratching about all by itself. And it’ll be singing the gentlest, softest little song you’ve ever heard in all your life. Now, that’s an oven bird, a migratory bird.

The flight song of the ovenbird is one of the great things to hear on the North American continent, but there are no oven birds in Chicago. The ones that come here are migratory. They’re passing through from where they were, to where they’re going to go. And they just stop around your house long enough to give you a little taste of what their beautiful song is. They’re shy and you can’t get near them. But if you just be patient, you’ll hear them sing. Oven birds on their way from the South to the North to hatch and raise their little brood. Then, next fall, they will be back to scratch under your window again, they’re migrating. God’s children are not resident birds. They’re migratory birds. They’re passing through from where they were to where they’re going. And where they’re going of course is God Almighty’s heaven.

William Cullen Bryant when he was a young fellow just out of law school had passed his bar examination and hadn’t established himself yet as a lawyer. He left home to go to, I believe to Boston if I remember. One of the New England cities to hang out his shingle and being a home-loving boy, he was rather lonely and homesick. And sick at heart as he walked one night. One evening, and as he walked as the sun was going down, he looked up and saw a wild duck migrating. Mostly they travel in flocks, but this old duck must have gotten lost. And he was all by himself. And from seeing this wild duck flying all along, beating its way steadily toward the south, he wrote the famous poem To a Water Fowl. There are several verses, two of them being, Whither, ‘midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? He concludes by saying this, He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright alright.

I heard William Jennings Bryan quote that in that organ voice of his one time. And Bryan, the young Bryan picked himself up and accumulated himself, as they say, and went away with a big smile on his face and wrote this point. He said, I’m a lonely boy here, on the New England shores, but I know God and Christ and that bird tells me that the God who holds him up there safe as he migrates, will help me a migratory man. It will guide me all the way. And the old man of God said, brief life is here our portion, brief sorrow, short life care, but the life that knows no ending, the tearless life is there. We’re migratory birds. We’re pilgrims passing through. This is not our home.

So, let’s get saved from things and people’s opinions and ourselves and our money and our clothing and our possessions. And you’ll have these things, but use them reverently, thankfully wisely, and give them generously. And remember, we’re pilgrims, and that he who guides through the boundless air, the certain flight of the bird, will also guide us until we arrive at last on those shores that are washed by the water that flows from the throne of God. It’s worth waiting for brethren, it’s worth one little sacrifice it costs. Amen.

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” Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them Introduction “

“Sources of Danger”

March 20, 1955

Now, over the next few Sundays, I want to talk to you about dangers in the way and how we can avoid them. I read the other day these words, I will love Thee O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my Rock and my Fortress, my Deliverer, my God, my Strength, my Buckler, the Horn of my Salvation and my High Tower. And I said, How is this? What does a man want and what does he need of a rock or a fortress or deliverer? A rock is a place for a man of course to hide from his enemies. A fortress is a place for a soldier to go in. And a deliverer is somebody that delivers another from his troubles and dangers. A buckler is something you wear on as armor. The horn of salvation was, It was a figure drawn from the animals who won with their horns and he said God was his Horn, and my High Tower, a place where a man got up and looked out over the terrain, watched for approaching enemies and warned the fortress below.

Now, I said why are these words necessary here in a psalm and the answer came, because the Psalms are a reflected image of the Christian life. All life’s experiences are found in the Psalms. You will find here, life’s dangers, life’s joy, life’s sadness, life’s victories, life’s work and labor and defeat; you will find life’s night and life’s day, or shadows under sunshine, and life and even death itself, you will find here in the Psalms.

The Psalms are a mirror of this spiritual life. And in this Psalm we find words which indicate, that obviously, there are dangers in the Christian way, dangers from which we must escape, or know how to meet and conquer. And this is not my personal conclusion, but the whole Bible says the same thing. I conclude therefore, that since real dangers to the spiritual life do exist, it is proper that God’s people should be alerted to them, and that any Shepherd desiring to be a faithful Shepherd should point them out to the people. And then, not only point them out, but point a way of escape from them. It’s no good examining the patient if you don’t have a cure. It’s no good warning of the danger of attack if you don’t have a bomb shelter. It’s no good knowing that your enemy is coming if you don’t know how to meet your enemy.

So, over the next weeks, I’m going to speak in the mornings on “Dangers in the Way” and how we can avoid them. Now this morning, I’m not going to talk about any dangers, that is, I am not going to mention them specifically, but I want to mention the directions from which they come. There are only three directions from which danger comes to the Christian life. These are not in themselves dangers, but they are the cardinal directions from whence the dangers come. They are, the world through which we journey, and the god of this world, and our own unmortified flesh. Now, those are the three directions from whence dangers come that make it necessary that we have a rock, a fortress, deliverer, a buckler and a high tower and so on.

Now, I want to mention these briefly and explain them so that as we go on we will have  them as a background against which we can do our religious and spiritual thinking. There’s first of all the world. Now when I say that the world is a source of danger to the Christian. I don’t mean the wind and the storm and the lightning and the sea and the desert, all of which are very beautiful and very wonderful. I do not mean these dangers. Now, I know that there is danger. How long ago was it that the storm came through Southern Illinois and I think there were 800 killed and a couple of thousand injured and a hundred million dollars worth of damage done, if my figures are correct.

Now, I know that the wind is a source of danger, but it’s not a source of danger to the soul. It’s only a source of danger to the body and I have not that before me. And then the lightning, I know. I saw a man helped carry a man in who was struck down by lightning. He was standing in a new building that was being put up. And the porch was put up and the bricklayers had laid the chimney. And he was standing by that chimney when a storm came up. And the lightning struck the old gentlemen and killed him instantly. Now, there is danger from the lightning, but it’s not a real danger. David was thinking, as David was a spiritual man. And David might have been thinking as the external shell of proof of his physical enemies. But always David saw the spiritual side of things. And the Holy Ghost didn’t put this Psalm here to remind us that there was danger from lightning and storm and soldiers. Neither is the sea a source of danger, neither is the desert. There are certainly many bones lying in the desert, and how many bodies are floating around in the deep tomb that we call the oceans of the world. All that I well know, but you can destroy a human body and not injure a man at all.

We Christians ought to get hold of that as a basic philosophy of the Christian life, that you can destroy a man’s body and not injure the man at all. You can tear down the temple and not hurt the Spirit that dwells within. You can cause a man’s bones to lie in the desert and the man’s spirit can be unharmed in the presence of its Father and its God, so that the dangers that I say that are in the world are not the ordinary dangers, not even the A-bomb. I think it’s time that we Christians call a moratorium on A-bomb and H-bomb scares. I think that we ought to remember that that’s not our source of danger. You can polarize a man with an H bomb, but not all the H-bombs in no world can touch his immortal spirit. Real dangers are dangers that get through to the soul and get through to the spirit of a man.

Now, these threats I say are only to the body. There was John the Baptist; soldiers cut his head off, but they didn’t hurt John at all. When our Savior died on the cross, His body was destroyed, that is, it was broken for me as He put it, broken for you. But the man Christ Jesus was preserved in the bosom of God. And so with Paul, when they cut off his head. Why, he said, I know that there is prepared for me, and that there’s laid up for me a crown of glory. So, he went to that crown, rather than to defeat when they cut his head off. No real harm can come through the physical body to a man, but only through the soul. 

What then do we mean by the world when we say that real dangers come to the Christian through the world? Well, it is through human society. A gentleman out in front of this church the other day, gave me a little booklet about the size of the average Gospel of John. He said he was an Episcopalian. He comes here sometimes Sunday night. He lives down the block. A very wonderful, friendly Christian brother. And they they put out, the Episcopal Church puts out a little booklet for Lent, and my wife and I have been looking that over and reading it Sunday mornings, I mean on mornings for prayer. And yesterday, quite to my delight and surprise there was a message on the world, and a warning, a sharp warning that we should avoid the world and escape it and get away from it; that it was dangerous to us. And it said, what do we mean by the world?  It said, society organized outside the will of God.

Now, you couldn’t find a better definition for the world than that, society outside the will of God. And that’s human society. As long as sin remains, human society will be a threat to the Christian soul. Its sin, its unbelief, its diversions, its ambitions, and its spirit. However, skillfully disguised, the world is still the world. And that is why the Bible is so very stern and so very insistent. You will find lots of Christian leaders who will apologize and compromise and smooth things over, but you’ll find nothing but stern insistence in the Bible that we are to forsake the world. And that we ought not to in anywise be influenced by its sin, nor its unbelief, nor its diversions, nor its ambitions, nor its spirit. In any sense of the word, the dangers that come to the Christian, come through the world party. That’s one of the directions from whence they come.

Now, blessed are you if you know what I’m speaking about. And blessed are you if you know how to put it in practice. Blessed are you if God has opened your eyes to know what I mean. If He has not, I don’t know very much that I can do. I sometimes feel as Jesus must have felt when He said, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. And verily I say unto you, ye shall not see me until the time come when you shall say, blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.

I would like to prophesied a little. I would like to stand here to tell you something. I foresee it, that the man that God’s eyes, whose eyes God has opened, I see the time coming, I see the time coming when worldly evangelicalism will be deserted one by one, by all the holy men whose eyes are open, and their house will be left desolate, and they’ll not have a man of God, nor a man in whom the Holy Ghost dwells, left among them. We have become so worldly. And I say, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I, but she you would not listen. 

Then so, the man who sees it is put on the shelf and written off as being somewhat of a decent chap, but somewhat fanatical. And watch it my brethren, when the day is going to come, I’d like to live a hundred years yet. I don’t want to die, but I’m willing to die tonight. But I would like to live a hundred years yet to watch its developments and see how things are going. And I’d like to see that which I foresee come to pass. And I would like to live to see the time when the holy and the separated and the envisioned walk out of worldly fundamentalism and form a group of their own. And get off the sinking ship and let her go down in the brackish cruel waters of worldliness while we form a new ark and ride out the storm. Because the world is upon us and the Bible has no compromise to make with it. The Bible has a message for it. And the Bible calls it back home and the Bible sends us to it, but never to compromise with it. And never to walk its way, and only and rather to save it if possible, or save as many as we can. That’s one direction.

So my Christian friend, you’re settling back snugly into your foam rubber chair, and resting in your faith and John 3:16 and the fact that you accepted Christ. You had better watch yourself. Take heed to thyself, lest thou also be found wanting. Take heed and search your own heart lest, and all has been said and done, it is found that you have been tied up with the world. A stock illustration which you can’t refrain from giving. I don’t use many, except the ones I make up myself. But, I heard this and I think it’s true. They said when it was still snowing and cold up at Niagara Falls, when there were great blocks and chunks of ice going over the falls and sheep had died; I’ve seen the same thing happen. I could see how it would be. When sheep had died and had been thrown, or had fallen into the waters. They said that they were floating down, these great bloated sheep, floating down and over the falls, and some great American eagles were swooping down on the sheep and riding along and tearing at their flesh, and eating and gorging until they started over the falls. And then they screamed and waved their wings and circled and soared into the sun and back up the river again to find another carcass. And then getting down onto it, and tearing it, and eating until it started over the falls, and then pulling loose and circling away.

But it was very cold weather and it was those times when you freeze and don’t know you’re freezing. And they said, one great Eagle was tearing away with its great talon buried in the wool of the sheep, and unknown to it, its talons had frozen into the wool. And when it felt the sheep give away under it and ready for the plunge, it screamed once more and waved its wings, but it was frozen into the wool. And with one last screem, it went over the falls to its death on the rocks below.

Now, we have been living off the world and floating around on the world and then gracefully pulling away when it went into the gutter. But still, we’ve been riding the carcass of the world, and then just guess, getting away in time. How far can I go and not go over? How far can I go and still not go over? Would you please answer in your magazine and tell me what I can do and still not be lost? Just how far can I go? Well, we’ve been doing that and doing that, and one of these days, we’re going to freeze our claws into the world’s wool and go over with the world. There’s only one thing today to do, spread your broad wings and soar into the sun and let the floating carcasses of the world alone to the god of this world, Satan. That’s another source. That’s a direction from whence all these dangers come; any danger may come.

Now, the devil is called by four names in the Bible. He’s called the Dragon, the Serpent, the devil and Satan. He’s called the Dragon in such places as Revelation 12. That is, it’s the devil when he’s in government. When the devil in the Roman Empire was busy destroying the church, they named him the Dragon. And they said, he is like the dragon. And I can see how the Romans; they say that thirteen million Christians alone perished around the city of Rome in the first two centuries. And I can see as they saw their loved ones led away and beheaded one after the other. I can see how they said this is the Dragon. This is the devil in government. And I think of the six million Jews that died in gas chambers and other means and methods of execution under Hitler. I can see how they might say, Satan is in this man Hitler, and he’s threshing his dirty destructive tail around and killing people. Whenever the devil gets into government and starts persecuting, he’s called the dragon in the Bible.

Communism today is killing them over there. We have hope and optimism, but we don’t know how many are dying, but we do know it must be many. That’s the devil in government. Now, I don’t say the devil is in every government. It would be pretty hard for me to believe that the devil could ever get into as kindly a man as our President, or as fine a young man as our Vice President, or as fine a man as our Governor, or as fine an old gentleman as our mayor. I’m not saying the devil is in these men. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that politicians are devil-possessed men. I’m only saying that there are times when this dragon can so wind himself into government that he takes it over and starts his destructiveness, then it’s the dragon. He’s the Dragon when he’s destroying it.

And then, there he’s called the Serpent also. The same one only he’s got a different mask on this time. In here, he wouldn’t hurt you for the world. He wouldn’t kill you. He wouldn’t put you in jail. He wouldn’t cut your head off. He’s a wily, smiling, slick tempter working by cunning and deception, and winning by compromise and tolerance and patience, and getting your confidence and then selling you the Brooklyn Bridge. The confidence man of Hell with his tricks and his cunning and his deceitfulness. That’s the serpent; the smooth slick serpent. He didn’t go to the desert to destroy Jesus with a blow on the head. He went and said, speak to these stones that they be made bread. He knew that if Jesus the Son of God had listened to the devil and turned and spoke to a stone and and done a miracle out of the will of God, that he would have destroyed Him more easily than if he had put a spear through His heart. But he didn’t tell Him that. He was a compromiser. He said, poor you, you’re hungry aren’t you. Patted his shoulder and said, poor you. Why don’t you get some bread here? You’ve got the power, you know you have. And Jesus said, a man shall not live by bread alone. He said, I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the world, and Jesus said something to the effect that He was not to fall down and worship anybody, but worship God alone. But he was also smooth and slick. Ah my brother, the devil is an orator, and he’s a smooth as a salesman, the wrong kind. He’ll sell you anything. So that’s a direction.

Now I don’t want you to become devil-conscious. Even though I’m talking about the god of this world at the same time, I don’t want you to be devil-conscious, because I have met Christians who are jumpy because of the devil. The best thing to do is keep your eyes on Jesus and let him take care of the devil. But always remember, he is a source of danger. And then, he, this god of the world is called the devil. I’ve called him the Dragon,  the Serpent, and now he is called the devil. That he is diabolus. He is the opposer. He is what you call a counter puncher.

I’ve always been interested in boxing. Just the wind off a good blow would knock me out. But I’ve always been interested in it anyhow. And I listen to them sometimes on the radio, the counter puncher and not much anymore. But I used to be much interested. I used to box when I was a kid, a very, very lot. And I could at least lift the gloves. But there’s such a thing as a punch and there’s a counter puncher. and the counter puncher is this, he never leads, but he waits for the other fellow to lead, and then he ducks and counter punches. Always, for every blow that is aimed at him, he has a defense and then and a quick counter punch. And there have been great fighters who are not punchers, but counter punchers. And the devil is a perfect counter puncher. No matter what a Christian tries to do, the devil blocks him and hits him a blow. Not a bad one, just enough to stun him a bit. And wherever you find the work of God going on, you’ll find the devil there counterpunching, hitting back, hitting back, always hitting back, always hitting back. He’s not omnipresent, but he’s ubiquitous. There’s a difference. God is omnipresent, present everywhere at once, but the devil gets you around so fast that it adds up to almost the same thing.

So, no matter where the work of God is going forward, you will find the devil there blocking and countering and hindering. I told you when I preached some years ago about how the devil got his name, the devil. There used to be in the Greek Olympic races, they had some fellow who they didn’t want to win, and some scoundrel would hide with a long javelin, a long, lance affair, like a clothesline pole. You wouldn’t know what I mean by that. And as a racer would go racing down on his way to win, this fellow would hide behind a hedge somewhere, and as the racer raced by, he would just throw that lance between the fellow’s legs. But you know what would happen? He’d be rolling yet, because he was doing time pretty fast, and when that lance went in between, it didn’t hurt him much, but it just tumbled him over, and by the time he got untangled, the other fellow is five miles down the road. And that’s the way the devil works. That follow was called Diabolus. And they just put that name right on to the devil. They said, that’s the way he works. And a child of God is running the holy race. Satan is either blocking him, always blocking him and and tripping him so that he falls. Now that’s a danger.

Then another. Another name for the devil is Satan. And as Satan, he is the accuser of the brethren. He tries to destroy a reputation before God and before men. Whenever a man’s reputation is torn down, you may be sure who did it. Whatever agent he may have used, or whatever old gossip he may have gotten into, he’s the author of it. So, we have this god of the world; the Serpent, the Dragon, the devil and Satan.

Then, the third source of danger is the unmodified self. That’s the direction from which great dangers come to the Christian. Now, I’m going to bring this to a close, but this is only really an introduction. But, I point out the dangers I’m to preach about, and these sources of danger are very, very real. They’re not imaginary. They are real and only the very reckless will ignore them. Only a reckless driver will ignore a red light. Only a very reckless driver will ignore a sign says, “S Curve” or “Slippery when Wet.” It takes a fool of some kind to ignore danger signals. And no Christian who is serious, I’m preaching, I want to at least preach to serious-minded Christians. And if you’re a serious-minded Christian, then you will not take this as just one more sermon to fill up time. But you will take this series in a very serious way. The serious and the wise want to know where the dangers are. And they want to know what they are. And they want to know how they can recognize them, and how they can overcome.

Now, I’m going to name some for instance, I won’t name all now, but I’m going to preach on the dangers of prosperity. I believe there’s real danger to the souls of men in prosperity. I’m going to mention the dangers of adversity. I think there’s a real danger to the sons of God in adversity. I’m going to talk about the dangers of idleness, with nothing to do, and I’m going to talk about the dangers of busyness, with too much to do, and dangers of victory and dangers of defeat. There are dangers that come from one of these three directions, but they come.

Now, what are you going to do? Just name dangers over the next weeks, Ah, my brethren, we’re going to name them and show you how to escape them. And then we’re going to show you what God said here to this man David. Notice, he said the Lord is my Rock and Fortress and Deliverer.  He had to have help. So he said, I will call upon the Lord who was worthy to be praised. So shall I be saved from mine enemies. And he said, God sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy and from them which hated me, for they were too strong for me. He brought me forth also into a large place. He delivered me because He delighted in me. I believe that deliverance is is not only possible, but normal for the child of God, if we have our eyes open.

God doesn’t want us to walk around with our eyes closed nor careless. But if our eyes are open, we don’t need to be struck down. If our eyes are open, we don’t need to fall, for our eyes are open. No matter what direction, no matter what the enemies are, we have David’s God for our help. And if we will call upon the Lord and cry unto Him, He will hear from His holy temple and He will send from above and take us and deliver us out of many waters. And He will deliver us because He delights in us.

And never was a time when I felt that God’s people should be more optimistic than now. Never a time when I felt that they should be more encouraged in God than right now. We’re living in wild, turbulent, dangerous, dramatic days. The four winds are striving on the great sea. And the moon is mourning the time when it shall be turned to blood. You and I need not fear. God is on our side. And God’s on His holy throne and in His holy temple. And all is right with the man or woman who dares to believe. Do you believe it? Amen.

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Tozer Talks

” Take Heed How Ye Hear “

June 16, 1957

Now, in the book of Luke, the book of Luke, verses 16-18 of the eighth chapter. Luke 8:16-18. No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covered it with a vessel or putteth it under a bed, but setted it upon a candlestick that they which enter in may see the light. For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. Neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad. Take heed therefore how you hear. For whosoever hath to him shall be given, and whosoever hath not from him shall be taken even that which he seems to have. Now, verse 18, the first sentence, Take heed, Take heed how you hear. I want to talk a little word about that. Now, the text says, take heed how ye hear.

Now, when the great God would bring salvation to us, He let it ride on a voice. He let it ride on a sound. And salvation was to begin now, where we are, and continue through successive stages of progression until we are glorified. For always remember, that you don’t have full salvation till you’re glorified.

I’m a little shy. I just learned the other day that a president of a well-known Bible Institute or seminary said I was a legalistic, that is Tozer was a legalistic sanctificationist.  I thought that was nice. And I appreciate that. If I were keeping a diary, I’d write that in for my grandchildren. But, I may in some people’s eyes be a legalistic sanctificationist, but I shy away from a lot of the terms that are used even in our own society. I shy away from the term “fourfold gospel.” The God I know isn’t satisfied with four-foldness or five-foldness nor ten-foldness nor twelve-foldness or one hundred-foldness, but He multiplies Himself and magnifies His glory, and surprises us with new and wondrous revelations of Himself that far exceed our little fourfold.

And then I don’t like the word Full Gospel. I suppose I should, but I don’t. I like it when you mean it in it’s great, emotional flow, full salvation, full salvation. Yes, I like that. But to put a word before the gospel, a word of man’s choosing, I don’t quite like it–Full Gospel. You see my brethren, you don’t have full salvation really, until you’re glorified.

Now, it is the will of God that we should be saved by hearing it. And that we should begin to hear now and that we should obey and follow and go on, until we pass through, stage after stage and finally, be glorified at last. And God, in doing all this, proceeds after a known law of life. It is, that man can change. Change and decay in all around I see. And that’s one of the saddest things in the world, that we change so. We change, change and decay, but it’s also one of the most comforting things that I know.

I want to ask a question, now just ask a question and trust to your humility and realism to answer it. Would you like to have a visitation from an angel? Or would you like to have a messenger from heaven, or the messenger of the Annunciation, an angel of the Annunciation, to come to you and say, Mr. McAfee and others, and I could name all of you. I have a message from the Most High God. It is that you remain, and it is so decreed by the Everlasting Father, that as you are at this moment, you shall be eternally, period. You have been, this is the judgment of God, and the decision of the Most High. There’ll be no change from here on. It seems to me, that that alone would be cause enough for one hundred days mourning and thirty days fasting to be told you’ll never change. You’ll remain as you are.

I say, this would be an annunciation so terrible, a declaration so frightening, that I think that instead of it’s bringing happiness to us, it would drive us into despair. For it is the hope of every man who has named the holy name of Jesus, that he’s going to be better tomorrow than he was today. That if he lives through fifty-seven, it will add up to something better than fifty-six. And if he lives through fifty-eight, it will be better than fifty-seven. Not more money, not more prosperity, not better weather, not more health, not that, but that it’ll be a better man in God.

That I say is our hope brethren, that we can change; that we are not fixed, that God Almighty hasn’t cast us in and fixed us by an eternal changeless fire. It’s predicated, this message that we hear from God, this message through the Word, it’s predicated upon our ability to change. If you’ve got a temper tonight like the very devil, it’s possible for you to be so delivered, that the change will be noticed by everybody that knows you near and afar. And no matter what habits you have, or what mental habits or what vices you may have, there is power in the gospel of Jesus Christ to change you so completely, that it’s like changing a beast into an angel.

There is power, there is potential in man to change. You don’t have to continue to be what you are. And it seems to me that’s the first message the world ought to know. You can be different. That’s the first message the world ought to know. And the Gospel should follow that message, for preaching any gospel without that basic knowledge, that I can change, that God can change me. That I am not fixed like concrete, but pliable like clay. And this is a known law of life, and God takes advantage of it. I don’t know, but what the angels that sinned and kept not their first estate may have been fixed eternally, unable to change. At least there’s no hope for them, but for you and me there’s hope. Man can change.

And not only change, but learn. And so there’s the sounding of a voice through the Word, the Living Voice when you open this book. When you open this book, don’t read it as you would read a newspaper or a classic. Expect to hear something in it. Expect it to speak to you, and expect the Voice to vibrate. Expect it to be alive. For the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life. And this book is a live book. It’s only dead to the dead and to the hopelessly, dead. To all others, it’s a live book.

You see my brethren there’s a difference between redemption and salvation. Jesus Christ died on the cross and provided redemption there. And there isn’t anything that can be added to redemption. Redemption is the finished work of Christ on the tree. The finished work that is, He finished that part, of the dying on the cross. That part was done. When Christ said it is finished, He didn’t mean redemption was finished. He meant that part of redemption was finished. The rest of redemption was, that He had to rise again and go to the right hand of the Father. For He saved us by his death, but justifies us by His resurrection. Let’s not bear down too hard on that single phrase, “it is finished.” For when He said, it is finished, He meant the giving out of His life, the pouring out of His life, the atonement, the the sacrifice was made, the Lamb was dying. But if God had not received the Lamb, salvation would never have been, redemption would never have been accomplished.

But God accepted the Lamb, raised Him from the dead, sealed Him and put it on high, and made him Lord and Christ, and thus affected redemption; so, the redemption is all Jesus Christ did for us. From the time He picked up His cross until the time He sat down at the Father’s right hand, that’s redemption. And that’s done and there’s nothing we can add to it. Not the keeping of the Sabbath, not the eating of certain meats, not the long periods of fasting, not even prayer can add anything to that. Long before you existed, when you were only a forethought in the mind of God, it was all done, it was all done and there’s nothing to be added; nothing, nothing to be added.

There are cults, adventism, and others. They are cults that say that there’s something we must add, that it was not finished, not done. There’s something we must add. I believe that to be blasphemy, that there’s anything we must add. Nothing more is to be added. This Man, when he had made one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of God. From henceforth expecting until His enemies be made His footstool. Nothing can be added and any attempt to add is to insult the Savior, who gave His all. That’s redemption. Salvation is something else.

Salvation is redemption applied to the individual life. Redemption is objective. It’s that which is done. It is that which was done before you were born, before America was a nation, before the Crusades, before the fall of Rome. It was that which was done, in that relatively short period of time, redemption, the Lamb was led out to die. He died, rose and sat down, in what the old theologians call, His session, His seating for God. Now that’s redemption.

But, the application of that objective truth to me subjectively, that’s salvation. And so, salvation is both a human and the divine thing. Salvation is divine, in that God did that which man could not do, and redemption is 100% divine. And there’s nothing that any man can do, or angel can do. That’s divine. But salvation has a human element and a human side to it. It means that I’ve got to make a response to that redemptive message. That I have to make a response to it, otherwise it does not become saving to me.

Christ died for Englewood, and redemption was provided for Englewood. But Englewood is not saved. Why? Because Englewood made no response. And the sinners that we know that die every day, are sinners and die in sin, not because they were not redeemed by the blood of Christ, but because they do not respond, they do not hear. Now, it is our part to understand and to hear, to hear and to understand and to respond. Remember that we can sit and hear truth and be none the better for it. Remember that it is the response to truth.

Suppose that you’re ill with a certain kind of disease for which there has been a specific cure discovered. And say, the yaws, is that the name of that disease in the Valley, the yaws. It’s a disease that eats the fingers off and eats the nose off and eats the ears. It’s a terrible thing. And what I can learn, one or two injections of penicillin will cure it. And they are having difficulty over there making the heathen understand they’re not gods. And that this is not a Jesus needle, and it’s not a miraculous thing.

But suppose we had a terrible disease here and suppose you had it. And there was a specific that was discovered that would cure it in twenty-four hours. And suppose that a man got up before you and for forty-five minutes, lectured on that medicine, and told what it would do, the cure it would affect, and then suppose that he threw the meeting open and twenty-five people got up and said, I want to testify that what that man said is true. I had that disease, I took that medicine, and look at me now. I can do a day’s work and feel good and sleep, as my father used to say, like a top. Well, has anything been done for you yet? No, you’re sitting down there. You’re hearing a man tell of the merits of a certain medicine. You’re hearing people testify that that medicine cured them, but nothing’s happened to you. You still have your disease.

What are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to hear it, believe in it, and do something about it. That’s exactly what it is in salvation. The blood of Jesus Christ is the medicine of immortality. And the dying and rising and living and pleading of the Savior is redemption without anything man can add. It is God Almighty’s universal panacea. But you’ve heard that talked about until it’s old stuff to you. And until you have heard with faith, and then risen to do something about it, and apply it to your own self by obedient faith, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s all objective, all outside of you. It must become subjective and get inside of you. No confirmatory work has to be done. We need to look for nobody, to nobody for confirmation. It’s all been done.

In the beginning was the Word, and there’s a speaking word. And because in the beginning was the Word and you were created in the image of the Word, you can understand the Word. And even though fallen like the man, the young man far from home in that fire country among the swine, it’s still because you were made in the image of God, and in the beginning was the Word and all things were made by the Word and without Him was not anything made that was made. You have in you the ability to hear the Word. Take heed, how ye hear, for redemption is yonder. Salvation is when redemption that is yonder becomes present and within us by obedience and faith. So, there is a Voice, and it sounds living and vibrant all through the Word. But you know, there are different kinds of hearers. I’ve looked through the Scriptures to notice the different kinds of hearers. Don’t get braced for long sermon, I’m going to be brief.

There are a number of a number of hearers, perhaps there are six or seven of them here and enough for each one for a sermon. But I’m going to condense them and point out what what kind of hearers we may be. For instance, here’s a faithless hearer, a hearer without faith. Israel had the gospel preached unto them, said Paul, but it did not help them because it was not mixed with faith. There was no faith in the hearts of the people that heard it. So, it’s possible to be a hearer without any faith at all.

And then, here’s a dull hearer. A dull hearer is a bored hearer. Do you know that if you could take all the dullness that there is in Protestant religion and bottle it, and if you could burn it, you could heat the whole United States all the winter of 1957, and if it was like gasoline, you could run all the trucks on the highways for the next five years with it. Because boredom is one thing that is pretty present in the church of Christ.

And somebody will say immediately, well, you preachers make it so and there’s a lot of truth in that, a lot of truth in that. We do. We do. We talk about things the most important in a tone of voice that has no interest whatever, no vibrancy. We give the impression of, so what. I know that boredom is partly the result of the pulpit. But also, boredom is partly the result of people trying to feed people who aren’t hungry, and trying to get people to seek God, who don’t want God. And trying to get people to get their life insured, who don’t think they’re going to die. And trying to get people to get ready for our second world when they don’t believe there’s any more than one, or they live as if they believed in only one world. A lot of that boredom, that dullness, is a result of hearing and hearing and not doing anything about it.

Then, there’s the critical hearer. I find him in the Bible, too. He’s the fellow that wants to know about the grammar and if it isn’t quite what it should be. He won’t listen, and he wants to know about the delivery, and is it, is it forceful? When I go anywhere and I’m advertised as a forceful preacher. I always remember what they said about the egg that’s fairly fresh. Is there anybody that wants to eat a fairly fresh egg? It’s what you call damning with faint praise. But there’s the critical hearer. Is the preacher forceful? And how are his illustrations? Do you know what? If you knew that at 12 o’clock tonight, the sound of the trumpet should echo through the land. And all the old forgotten graveyards of our Puritan fathers should be visited by the Holy Ghost, and the dead should rise and the living changed, the poorest preacher in Chicago would be an orator in your ears, and you’d be glad to hear any little thing, critical hearers.

Then, there’s the forgetful hearer; and Satan steals the seed. And there’s the neglectful hearer, who has good intentions and his good intentions are always put for his deeds. He never, he’s always intending to do it. Did you ever stop to think how much you’d have done if you had done what you had intended to do? Did you ever think how far you’d be out along on the highway toward heaven if you had done all that you intended to do? If you had sought God as you intended to seek Him? No. Hell is paved with good intentions, our Fathers said.

Then, I read in my Bible of the trembling hearers, when that jailer trembled and fell down and said, what shall we do? Oh, what shall we do? He said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. And there’s a submissive hearer as we read about matters in Cornelius’s household. There’s a congregation that anybody could have preached to.  It wouldn’t have cost you one dollar; do you know it? It would have cost you a dollar,

Now, the price of souls is going up these days. Peter preached and 3,000 were converted, and the overhead was exactly nothing. It didn’t cost anybody a dime, not a dime. But it’s been going up now in recent times. And so, it takes thousands and thousands of dollars to rescue one sinner, because we’re not submissive. Cornelius’s household didn’t cost anything to get them converted, because they said, here we are Lord, ready to hear whatever Thou has to say to us. So, Peter preached the gospel and while he was speaking to them, the Holy Ghost fell on them. That’s because they were ready for it. They were a people submissive and prepared and ready to hear what God the Lord will speak.

Ah, how precious is the little time that we’ve got left, how precious is the little time.  And how vital is this little time, to the long, long future that lies before us. Take heed how you hear. Some of you have had the good fortune, and the misfortune, to be brought up in Christian homes where you heard the Word from the time you were born. They say that preacher’s children are sometimes the very hardest to reach and the ones that go the farthest astray.

That isn’t always true and history will show that it isn’t true. I once saw a chart of how many of the presidents of the United States and vice presidents and the leaders everywhere who were preacher’s children; and great leaders, college presidents, great missionary statesman, preacher’s children. So, they’re not as bad as they’re said to be, but I think I know why they sometimes hear in a bored way because they’ve just have it from the time they can remember, just from the time they can remember and sometimes not much life in them, they’re dull, routine, routine religion is like a routine kiss–who wants that? I ask you now, who wants that? And who wants routine religion? If it isn’t involuntary and impulsive, it isn’t religion at all.

And we grind it out sometimes, and make the poor little fellows sit. Mrs. Dietz used to say, God says to the little children squirm and we say to the little children, now sit still. That’s in Sunday school class, God says squirm, and we say, now sit still. And we make them sit still and listen to that which they don’t understand and wonder why they’re bored. And yet my friend, if we only knew it, we only knew it, that boy, that Word, that dual message, for it is a dual message. It’s a message of reproof and a declaration of intention. The reproof is, repent ye, and the intention is to save you through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, if you will hear that message, now dig at your heart and dig up your fallow ground, and get free from the dull boredom of it all. And shake yourself and say, am I a faithful is hearer, or do I believe what I’m hearing? Am I hearing interestedly, or am I a dull, bored hearer? Am I a critical hearer? Am I a humble, submissive hearer, ready to hear what God the Lord will speak. It’s going to mean a tremendous lot to you in that great Day, which can’t be very far away.

It’s going to mean everything in that great Day. You can change. You’re not frozen, fixed by fiat of God, to be what you are now, but you can be changed. The power of the gospel is a transforming, recreating in power. And it can change characters. It can change dispositions. Somebody says, Mr. Tozer, my disposition is so bad that I would poison heaven if I went there; and wouldn’t we all. But there’s deliverance, there’s change, there’s possibility lying here. The Book tells us, hear the voice, come unto me. Hear the voice. It says lo, I stand at the door and knock. Any man who hears and opens, I will come in. And all such passages, both in Old and New Testaments, they ring with invitation and warn and console and plead, hear the Voice. Take heed to how you hear!

Some of you young people have been reared on the Sunday school. You’ve been brought-up, you were brought here when you’re still in your first year and dedicated. You can likely to become dull; I want to warn you. You had better ask God Almighty to put life and the nerve inside your soul and don’t let it die, by the grace of God. What about it tonight? What about you young fellow? What about it?

Somebody wrote me about a young child, Tommy their son, I guess maybe five years old, a son of one of the teachers at Nyack. And they said, let’s go down to the Alliance church in Nyack and hear Mr. Tozer. And Tommy said, oh, I heard that man once. And I wonder how many little Tommy’s there are who feel the same way about it? I heard him.

Well, I admit that sometimes it’s pretty the same and some time it’s pretty dull. But, it’s a thrilling, thrilling wondrous life-giving fact that however poor the preacher, God is calling men to Himself. And if we will but listen. What about you?

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” The Kingdom Lies Not in Words “

June 16, 1957

I want to read a section from the book of 1 Corinthians, fourth chapter. Let a man says Paul, let a man, so count of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. But with me it is very small thing that I should be judged of you. Yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. He said, these charges you bring against me, I don’t know any of them that are true, but he said, I’m not hiding behind that. He that judges me is the Lord. Therefore, judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and we’ll make manifest the counsels of the heart. And then shall every man have praise of God. In verse 15, he says, for though he has 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers, for in Christ Jesus, I have begotten you. Since you believe, said Paul, through my preaching, 10,000 people have instructed you, but don’t forget, I preached the gospel that won you, Wherever I beseech you be ye followers of me. For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church. Now some are puffed up, as though I would have not come to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will. And then I will know not the speech of them, which are puffed up with the power. For the kingdom of God is not in Word, but in power. What will ye? Shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness? Or are you going to accept the truth and begin to obey it so that I can come in love and in the spirit of meekness? Now, that’s what Paul said in partly in that fourth chapter of First Corinthians epistle.

Now Paul, had authority, there’s no getting around that. He had the authority of the chief apostle. He was appointed by the Lord for several things, one of them being to receive and shape church truth. The man Paul received the revelation from God which was behind. Jesus said, I have many things to say to you, but you can’t receive them yet. But when the Spirit of God comes, He will reveal these things, and He will take of Mine and will show them unto you. And that Spirit that came entered to Paul when Ananias prayed for him. He was filled with that same Holy Spirit. And he received that which was behind. And he was the mold in which God poured it. And then he was also appointed by the Lord to set up a system and polity for the church, for there was system and there was polity. And he was appointed by the Lord to embody all authority that there was in the meantime. And then, perhaps most important of all, to show by example, the Christian way. He said, I sent to you Timothy, my beloved son and faithful in the Lord, and He will bring to your remembrance my ways, which be in Christ.

See the man of God here was having his authority under cut by schismatic men who came in and taught that Paul was not a real apostle. They said the reason Paul isn’t a real apostle, he never saw the Lord. The other apostles walked with Jesus while he walked among men, but this man Paul was not, is not an apostle. And we can prove it by the fact that he never walked, he came after Jesus died and had risen. That was their argument. They overlooked the vision Paul had of Jesus of one born out of due time.

And these schismatic and dividers of the church had to repudiate Paul’s authority in order to establish their own. And they attacked Paul and as far as Paul was personally concerned, he said, it didn’t matter. He said, it’s a very small thing with me that I should be judged by you. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t care. He said, I don’t even judge my own self, I’m in the hand of God. But he knew that if he was going to have any authority, he was going to have to establish that authority. And so, we sent Timothy, to tell them about Paul and straighten them out. And then finally, he warns them this, he said, now I’m coming in the will of God one of these times to you. And it’s alright for you while I’m not there, to listen to these schismatics and these puffed-up fellows. Isn’t it strange that there isn’t anything new under the sun?

I remember years ago, there used to be a writer for The Daily News. What was his name? He died finally, but a very wonderful writer up on the literary level. And he once went to see the old Greek play Lysistrata. And he came back after seeing it and he reported it in his column. He said, I went to see the old Greek play by Aristophanes. And he said, I came away deeply discouraged. And he said, here’s what discouraged me. Not that it wasn’t well written, not that it wasn’t well done. But he said, I came away convinced that nobody had been able to think of a new joke in 2400 years, that everything old Aristophanes wrote into his funny play, he said, is floating all around here.

Now, that was a worldly man talking about a worldly thing. But the same thing is true in the spiritual life. So many of us imagine that we’re original. There’s nobody original except Adam. And if you find puffer-uppers and men who are puffed up now, Paul wrote in the eighteenth verse, now some are puffed up, and some are puffed up thinking that I won’t come. But when I come, he said, and I’ll do it shortly, I’ll make a test. And I’ll not test the words of these men, but I’ll test their power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

Now, here’s what I want particularly to emphasize. The kingdom of God doesn’t lie in words. I am among a few who are trying to tell the church that in this day. I was encouraged Thursday, as you know, I spoke and Brother McAfee sang and we kind of took Wheaton over Thursday. And after the last talk, Dr. Redmond came over and said, well, God bless A.W., keep telling them. There are a few that see it, but not very many yet. But re-see, or see over again, see again what they saw back there, that the kingdom of God is not in words but in power.

You see, the words are the form of truth. They’re the outward image of truth only. And they can never be the inward essence. And words are incidental. They’re incidental. If I were to say, now everybody here that can speak Swedish, bring your New Testament next Sunday. And everybody that speaks German bring yours, Norwegian yours. And so, we have a half a dozen different languages. And I would say now read that fourth of Revelation. It would be quite a revelation or First Corinthians. It would be quite a revelation to us to hear that the words were only incidental. It was the meaning that matters.

Somewhere in the middle of this all there is a meaning, a spiritual meaning. And the six different people embody that meaning in six different set of words. And those words were not alike, or only occasionally alike. We ought to remember that. We ought to know it. The kingdom of God is not in words. They’re only incidental and they never can be fundamental. When fundamentalism ceased to emphasize fundamental meanings and began to emphasize fundamental words, and we shifted from meanings to words and from power to words, we began to go downhill.

Now, there’s an essence of truth. And it may follow the form of words, as the kernel in an English walnut follows the configuration of the shell. But the shell is not the kernel and the kernel is not the shell. And so, while the truth follows the form of words, it sometimes deserts it. A great error is in holding the form to be essence, and putting the kingdom of God in words, so that if you’ve got the words right, you’ve got the whole thing. And if you can get a better set of words, you have more truth. Not necessarily at all.

Now, words deceive even good, honest Christian people. They deceive because we feel that if we mumble words, there’s certain safety in mumbling words, and that there’s a power to frighten off Satan if you mumble certain words. Now, my brethren, if a man is as just as plainly ordinary as I am, and not afraid of words, would you ask me please why the devil should be afraid of words? The devil, who is the very essence, was of ancient created wisdom back there, and had the perfection of beauty and the fullness of wisdom, and whose power lies in his shrewdness and in his intellectual brilliance, can you tell me how that devil should suddenly become so foolish as to be afraid of a word, or afraid of a motion, or afraid of a symbol? To keep the devil away, I put a chain around my neck, or to keep the devil away, I make a motion with my fingers in front of my face. I wonder what a man without any arms would do, an amputee, if the devil came after him, and he couldn’t make the sign of the cross. I hadn’t thought of that till now, but it’s worth considering anyhow.

But the devil isn’t afraid of words and he isn’t afraid of symbols. You can surround yourself with symbols, religious symbols, Protestant or Catholic or Jewish, and you haven’t helped yourself in the slightest, because the devil isn’t afraid of a symbol. He knows better. Do you ever see the little child it’s afraid of a false face? Put a false face on and the little runs and yells. But if the child did that when he’s sixteen, you’d be ashamed of him. We assume as we grow up, we know that false faces don’t mean anything. And words don’t mean anything as words. But if we imagine if we say certain words, we will have power, they have power to bring good. If we say certain other words, they have power to fend off the devil.

And there is safety in mumbling words. And if we fail to mumble the words, we’re in for it. And if we remembered to mumble the words, we’re all right. That’s just paganism under another form. And Paul told them plainly, for these were pagans, recently but only lately converted. And he said, you’ve got a lot of you Greeks, you’re Greek and the Greeks love oratory, and they love fine language and they produce a lot of fine literature. And he said, you Greeks, you love fine words, but he said, I don’t come to you with fine words. I come to you, in this second chapter, I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but instead a demonstration of Spirit and of power, that your faith should stand in the wisdom, not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So, we ought to throw this off. You may feel a little bit mentally naked when you throw all this off. You know, it’s one thing that we do when you strip superstition away from a man, he feels terribly naked for a moment. But until we strip off our superstition, the Lord can’t put on us a cloak of truth.

Now, the Kingdom lies in power. Its essence is in power. The gospel is not the statement that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. The gospel is the statement that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures plus the Holy Ghost in that statement to give it meaning and power. And just the statement itself, never will do it. Have you wondered at times as I have, why those churches, some of them, who drill their young people from their childhood in the Catechism, and teach them the doctrines so that they’re positively instructed in the word of the Truth, yet somehow strangely failed to get them through to the new birth. Have you noticed that? And we’re not referring by name to any denomination. And I have nothing against the Catechism. I think it’s a fine thing for young people.

But have you noticed that there are whole generations of so called Christians who are drilled in the Catechism, and who know the doctrine, and can recite the gospel as well as the law, and still never manage to break through to the new birth. They never come through to that shining wonder of inward renewal. The reason is, they are taught that the power lies in the words. And if you get the words, you’re all right. Whereas Paul says, the kingdom of God doesn’t lie in words at all. The kingdom of God lies in the power that indwells those words. And you can’t have the power without the words, but you can have the words without the power, and a lot of people do. So that the power of the Spirit operating through the Word, that’s the gospel. It’s the statement of the fact that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. That He rose again, and that He was seen of many and that He’s at the right hand of God and will forgive those who believe on Him. That’s the gospel in its shell, that’s the shell of the gospel, but the power must lie in there, or there’ll be no life in it.

So Paul appealed away from man given authority. And he appealed away from talk, however eloquent. And he appealed away from even his own position, and appealed direct to the power of the risen Lord who manifest true the Spirit. And he said, I want you to know, and I sent Timothy to try and straighten you out and remind you, that it’s the power of God that talks, not a man’s mouth.

Now, the appeal, I say was to the power of the risen Christ. And my brethren, if this church and the people who compose it, are not living in a constant miracle, they’re not Christians at all, because the Christian life is a miracle. It is what the ark of Noah was in the day of the flood. It is completely separated from that flood and yet floating upon it, completely separated from it. It was what Jesus was when he walked among men, right in the middle of them and yet separate from sinners and higher than the highest heavens. There operates within the true Body of Christ a continual energizing by the Spirit that makes a continual miracle. A Christian is not somebody who’s believed only. A Christian is somebody who has believed in power. And the working of the power is a moral power. It has power to expose sin to the sinner’s heart.

Nobody will ever be truly saved until he knows he’s a sinner. And nobody will ever know he’s a sinner, truly know he’s a sinner by simply threatening him or warning him or telling him. You can go to a man and say you’re a sinner. You swear and lie and you’re wrong. You’re evil. He’ll grin and shake his head and say, I know, I know I shouldn’t do those things. But I guess we’re all human. You haven’t convinced him. You can read Plutarch and Aristotle, and Herbert Spencer and all the rest of the books of ethics, and showing him he’s dead wrong, and he still will never know what it is to be a lost sinner. You can threaten him that if he doesn’t look out and doesn’t straighten out his ways, the atom bomb will get him or Khrushchev will be over. And you’re still haven’t convinced them. You haven’t told him anything he didn’t know.

But when the Holy Ghost is come said Jesus, He will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. When Peter preached at Pentecost, the Scripture says, being pricked in their hearts, they cried out and said, what shall we do to be saved? And that word pricked they say, Wayman says, is a word stronger and deeper than the word pierced, where they pierced the heart of Jesus with a spear. The words of Peter in the Holy Ghost, the new, baptized prophet and apostle, the words of Peter penetrated like, like a Donee spear, so deep, deeper than the spear had gone into the heart of Jesus on the cross, when forthwith came water and blood.

So my brethren, the Holy Spirit isn’t something that we can argue about. Or somebody that we can say, well, you believe your way and I believe my way. The Holy Spirit is an absolute necessity in the church, an ungrieved Holy Spirit. Because there’s a power in the Spirit to expose sin and revolutionize and convert and create holy men and women, and nothing else can do it. Words won’t do it. Instructions won’t do it. Line upon line, precept upon precept won’t do it. It takes the power to do it.

And then it’s a persuasive power, convince and persuade and break down resistance. And it’s a worship power, to create reverence and excite ecstasy. If we were to put statues all around this place, and have candles burning here, and have beautiful Italian made glass, colored windows, pictures of shepherds and altars and all that, and I were to come in here in a long black robe, you’d have a sense of, well, I think you, probably you being you, you’d probably have difficulty restraining your mirth. But if you’ve been brought up to it, you wouldn’t. You’d think that reverence.

No Brethren, reverence is not created by beautiful windows, although I like to see them, nor by symbols. Reverence is the astonished awe that comes to the human heart when God is seen. And that, the Holy Ghost can do through the Word, and that nobody else can do. I can imitate holy tones, all I will, and we can try to be just as religious and ecclesiastical as we can and still want when it’s all over, the feeling we get is psychological or aesthetic at best. But when the Holy Ghost came upon the early church, they darest not join themselves to them. And in 1 Corinthians, the sinners fell on their faces and said, God’s in this place of a truth.

So, there’s a power to bring reverence to excite ecstasy, to bring worship. It lies in the Word when it’s given in power. And the power of the Holy Spirit brings a magnetic, is a magnetic power to draw us to Christ. And will exalt Him above all else and above all others. And in this church, we must demand more than correct doctrine, though we dare not have less than correct doctrine. More than right living though, we do not have less than right living. More than a friendly atmosphere, though we dare not have less than a friendly atmosphere. We must demand that the Word of God be preached in power, and that we hear it in power. For in First Thessalonians, you remember, Paul wrote and said to them there that the gospel came not unto you, I know a little better, he said, that you’re the elect of God, and here’s how I know it. Our gospel came not under you in Word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance. That is, not only Paul had the power, but the gospel could run in power, because it was heard by them in power.

And so, when the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God through the Word, preaches in power and it’s heard in power, then the objectives of God are wrought out, and men are made holy, and sins forgiven, and the work of redemption is done.

And briefly now, the way to attain it, is through prayer and faith and surrender, the old-fashioned ways, and I know of none other. Prayer and faith and surrender, pray and as you pray, surrender, and as you surrender, believe, and that’s for all of us. It’s for all of us. You as God’s people have every right in the Scriptures, every scriptural right to demand to hear the Word in power, and if you do not hear the Word and power, you have a right to rise up and ask why. If you’re hearing nothing but teaching, nothing but instruction, if there is no evidence of God in it, then the preacher can’t say I appeal to God, to say whether this is true or not. If this can’t be, then you have a right to demand somebody come that can.

On the other hand, any man who stands here to preach has a right to expect that you believe in power. And that we’re so close to God and so surrendered and so full of faith, and so prayerful that the word of God can work in power. Shall we not believe God for that kind of church here? For the kingdom of God is not in words. The kingdom of God is in power. And you can take the little Alliance manual and read it and sign your name under the bottom of every page. It won’t mean one lonely thing to you. But, if the word of God is in power, it means everything to you.

So, let us trust God for correct doctrine. We dare not have less, but we must have more. Right living, we dare not have less, but we must have more. Let’s be a friendly church, but beware lest it be simply a friendly church. It’s amazing how socio-religious or religio-social atmospheres can permeate a church so that it’s hard to tell which is of the Holy Ghost and which is simply nice social contacts. I believe that both ought to be there, and I believe they can both be there. And I believe that when the early church met and broke bread, they fulfilled both their spiritual communion and their social fellowship. So, there’s no reason why they can’t be fused. There isn’t any reason why the warm, cordiality of social fellowship can’t be made and can exist with the indwelling Holy Ghost, so that when we meet and shake hands and sing and pray and talk together, we’re doing both these things. We’re having social fellowship, plus, the mighty union and communion of the Holy Ghost. Let’s be very careful that it’s both. Not one only, to try to destroy or prevent social contact and social fellowship is to grieve the Spirit for the Spirit made us for each other. And He meant that there should be social fellowship and friendliness together. He meant that we should break bread, not only formally in a church, but be times when we meet. And He meant that we should know each other by our first names and have our social fellowships. He meant it, and the churches that try to destroy that, succeed only in getting a lopsided and fanatical type of church. But be very careful my friends, lest that we don’t mistake the one for the other.

So, let’s have a friendly church, and let’s have a morally right church, and let’s have a church where correct doctrine is taught. But let’s also have a church of which any man can come here, and say when he goes away, I know the entrance I had unto you, that I could preach unto you not in Word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, because you are the kind of people that could take it. I say this is most important. For the kingdom of God lies not in words, but in power.

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