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“Turning Back at the Border of Blessing“

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Turning Back at the Border of Blessing

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

June 29, 1958

Sermons are like fruit, some of them, more or less come ready, and they don’t require anything on the part of the audience. They’re like grapes or oranges, they’re practically there for you. Some of them are like coconuts, you have to work to get into them. And this one tonight is going to be of the latter variety. There are two reasons, one, that I have a little cold in my throat, and I tend to cough, and so I’m going to have to talk like an old man tonight, keep myself in hand. And then, the message itself is not of the kind that you would preach to uninstructed persons. You’re going to have to help me, that is, you’re going to have to respond and work at it a little yourself.

I have been giving a series of messages for the last few weeks, from the twenty-third of Exodus, where the Lord said, Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. If thou shalt obey his voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, an adversary to your adversaries, and I’ll bring you into the land of the enemy, and I’ll give it to you, and you shall serve Me, and I’ll bless your bread and your water, and I will keep you alive to as long as I want you alive, and I will make you fruitful.

Now, tonight, I want to talk a little about this from other passages of Scripture. And once more, I want it to be understood that the Bible teaches that Israel’s history is theology. That the workings of God with the nation of Israel, a selected, picked-out nation, not because they were better, for there weren’t, He said so Himself. They weren’t better, but they were chosen for a purpose.

And God so interwove Himself with Israel that the history of Israel is theology. The New Testament teaches this. For instance, 1 Corinthians 10 tells us about it, and the book of Galatians also tells us about it. And those of you who know the book of Hebrews know that it is based upon the Old Testament ways of God with man. And that what in the Old Testament was physical and earthly, becomes in the New Testament spiritual and heavenly. Now, so much for that.

Now we come to Numbers 13 and 14. If you want to turn to that, I’m going to read quite a little bit of Scripture tonight. Numbers 13 and 14. We find the people, afterward the people removed from Hazeroth, and pitched in the wilderness of Paran. Pitched means that they put their tents there where they were traveling, and they had their tents along to live in. They were a traveling tent city, and they came to Paran.

Now, Paran was halfway between where they had been to where God said they were going. That is, it was about halfway between the bondage of Egypt and the blessing of Canaan. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel. Every every tribe, send a man.

And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan. And he said, Get you up this way, and go ye into the mountain, and see the land, what it is, the people that dwell therein, whether they be strong, weak, few, or many. What the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad. What cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strongholds. What the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not. Be of good courage and bring of the fruit of the land.

And now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes. So, it gives us a list of the twelve tribes and the persons who went, representative of each tribe, being twelve of them. And they came unto the brook of Eschol. I think that’s one of the loveliest names. I wonder why nobody ever named their children Eschol.

They were at the brook of Eschol, and they cut down from the ends of branch with one cluster of grapes. And they buried between two upon a staff, and they brought of the pomegranates and the figs. The place is called the brook Eschol because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence. And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.

Now, it is critically important that we understand that Israel was on the march, on their way from a bondage that had lasted four hundred years, into the land of Palestine, a land flowing with milk and honey, and with grapes of Eschol, and pomegranates and fruit of every kind.

And it is critically important, I say, that we know two things. That we know they were out of Egypt. And that we know the second thing, that they were not yet in the land. That is, they had come out of the bondage of Egypt, but they hadn’t entered the land of Canaan.

Now, it’s very important that we find this out. If the history of Israel is theology, and the dealings of God with Israel become principles of truth, the revelation of principles of truth, then I say it’s important that we know they’re out of Egypt. These were redeemed people. They had come out of the land by blood and fire and were redeemed.

Now, there’s a new interest that has sprung up within the last, say, five, seven years, in what’s called the deeper life. And often, persons are interested in the deeper life that don’t have any life to deepen. They’re still in Egypt, but they want somebody to come and preach to them about the deeper life. And you cannot deepen what you don’t have. You cannot improve what isn’t there.

And many people are talking about mysticism, and spirituality, and the presence of God, and all this, who are still in Egypt. That is, they’re still in bondage. For Egypt is a picture, always in the Bible, of sin, with its bondage. And these people were out of Egypt when they stood at Paran, that historic moment when they stood there in the wilderness of Paran.

But while they were out of Egypt, they were not yet in Canaan. That is the place which I have prepared. God said, I prepared a place for you, my place which I have prepared. And I think that I can say with my heart, and mean it, that I want the will of God worse than I want to live. It is, living isn’t important. There’s lots of worse things than dying, as I’ve said many, many times. There are lots of worse things than dying. I think it is a proof of a very shallow Christian experience that we hang on to life so desperately. And I think it is a proof that we do not believe as deeply and certainly as we should in our resurrected living Savior, when we look forward to death with such terror, and cling every possible way we can to life right down until the last gasp.

People in their 80s and 90s come and want the preacher to pray for them if they get a pain in their neck. Well, I don’t know about you, but I always pray with a good deal of weak unbelief when I pray for people 90 years old, or even 80. They’re due over there, and I don’t want to keep them here. And even younger, even when we’re much younger than that, how long should we live?

Somebody says, how long should we live? Well, the answer is, God has a different will for different people. Now, don’t try to cram that down me, the days of our years are 3 score and 10, because it also says that if they be 4 score, yet the last 10 years are trouble and sorrow. The man that wrote that was 120 when he wrote it. So don’t try to tell me the Lord has set an automatic 70 years old.

A few years ago, I don’t remember now how many may be in their 20s, they came out with a doctrine that wasn’t very pleasant. I didn’t mind it that time, but it wasn’t very pleasant. It was a teaching some people were trying to get across and trying to get it into law in this country. What did they call that? I’ve forgotten for a moment, that when you reach the age of 65, everybody was to be put to death. That we in this country, everybody 65, nowadays they put them on retirement, but those people back there wanted to put them to death.

And I remember how it was bandied back and forth in the newspapers, and there were politicians and PhDs and doctors of this and that, batting it back and forth like a shuttlecock, wanting to know whether it was right or not right, or whether it was a good thing or not a good thing, and then it sort of died. And I didn’t mind it so much then, but I don’t think that I would be in favor of it at the present time, because I’d have still some time to be around, but I don’t want somebody to decide when I’m to go, because my life is in the hands of Somebody higher. The God that gave me my life is going to tell me how long I’m around.

You know, in the great theology of the Hindus, there are three gods. I never can remember their names, but one of them determines how long your thread of life shall be. The other one pulls the thread out, and the other one snips it off. Now, there’s truth in that, only it’s the same God. It is our God. He determines how long we’ll live, and He pulls the thread of our life out, and when He snips it off, that’s when He calls us over there.

So, I don’t want somebody else deciding that. I want to leave that in the hand of God. And it isn’t important how long you live, men and women, but what’s important is how you live and who you know, and whether or not you have come out of Egypt and whether you do have eternal life. Well, they were not yet in Canaan, the place which God had prepared. And that’s not heaven, understand, but that is a better and superior place right here in this world.

Now, there are millions of God’s children that are neither in Egypt nor in Canaan. They are partway in between. They’re in the wilderness of Paran, halfway between where they were and where they ought to be. And you know, I told you once in preaching on another topic that the word, mediocre, means halfway up the mountain. It means you start at the bottom of the mountain, and you start for the top. When you get halfway up, you bog down and finish there. You never go as high as you could go, but you’re a little higher than you would have been if you had never started. That’s mediocrity. The middle comes from the word medium, middle, medium, in the middle.

And I think that describes most of the children of God, I really do. I think it describes most Christians. They’re not as bad as they were, but they’re not as good as they ought to be. They know God a little bit, but they don’t know God as much as He wants them to. They are a little bit holy, but they’re not as holy as they could be. They have advanced a little beyond the Red Sea, but they haven’t advanced into the land. They’re not feasting on the grapes of Eschol. They’re waiting at Paran and spying out the land.

Now, that just about describes the Christians in our time. And one of these times, a lot of other fellows are going to start saying this, and they’re going to start saying it in good numbers. And when they do, then it will be heard all around, and there will be a looking to ourselves, and a searching of our hearts, and a seeking God, and there will be a putting away of a lot of the claptrap that now entertains Christians. And we will face up realistically, for you know, God wants His people to be realistic, for God is the great realist.

If you will look at this week’s Alliance Witness, you will see an editorial there called, Beware of the Romantic Spirit in Religion. That spirit of sentimentality that takes religion as a mood, it’s a mood, instead of a life. Well, God wants us to be realistic.

And so, now let’s see, Numbers 13, let’s turn over to that a little bit here. We already have read some of it. Now, let’s look at 17 to 25. He said, They cut down these grapes there at Eschol, so large that it took two of them to carry it. Then they returned from searching out the land.

Now, why did God send those men over there to investigate? He said, I am preparing a place for you, and I am leading you there. And I will be an enemy to your enemies, and an adversary to your adversaries, and I will take you there and lead you through, and they’ll turn their backs on you, and you don’t have to worry about them.

Then when they got near the place, God said, now here, send some leaders over in to look over the land and see how it is. Well, why? For the simple reason that God wanted Israel to know what they were facing. It is typical of popular evangelism that we overpaint the advantages of being a Christian, if you could overpaint them, and we underdevelop the disadvantages.

Now, Jesus, our Lord, never did that. Jesus, our Lord, never did what lawyers sometimes do, play down the evidence on one side and play it up on the other, so as to give a distorted picture. Never, never. He didn’t do what salesmen do. They tell you only the good points of their product, and they don’t tell you the rest.

They don’t tell you the disadvantages. But he wants to sell you a house, and says, I have just exactly what you want. Beautiful, secluded place, where the crickets sing all night, and it’s way back from the road, and the whippoorwills whistle and the owls hoot, and you can live there in quietness and peace, and you sign for it, and you find the reason that you can hear the crickets and the owls so clearly is because the roof has holes in it and there’s no windows in, and it’s so back so far from all main habitations that you’ve got no road leading in. That salesmanship is practiced here.

Maybe that’s a little extreme, but that’s done. Something like that is done. They tell you that you are to smoke cigarettes, but they don’t tell you a thing about what cigarettes do to you. They tell you that you are to drink their whiskey, but they don’t show you a picture of the poor bum that is the result of the whiskey they sell.

And so with everything else people are trying to sell, always playing up the advantages and shutting out the other side. Jesus our Lord never did it, never. He said to His people, if you follow me, you’re going to have to bear a cross. He said to His people, they’re going to persecute you, they’re going to misunderstand you, they’re going to hate you for My sake, and you won’t be popular, and even in under certain circumstances, My doctrine will divide families, and a stubborn old unbelieving father will leave his family, mother will refuse to live with her children, and there’s going to be division, and some of you will die for the sake of your faith, but be of good cheer, I’ve overcome the world, and it’ll be all right finally.

So God is a great realist, and so He didn’t want Israel going in there not knowing what they were up against, so He sent in 12 men. They went ahead, and Christ used this method constantly. I have told you before, and if any man will, let him come.

Now sentimentality is in control today, I say, and we’re accenting the positive, as they used to say. We’re accenting the positive, and everybody wants to go to hear a man talk about the happy positive side of things. Let me tell you, any view of life that takes in only the sunshiny days is a false view of life. Any view of life that tells you about happiness and fails to tell you about pain and suffering is a false view of life. Any philosophy of life that tells you that life is a bowl of cherries is a false philosophy. Jesus Christ never committed Himself to anything like that, neither did the God our Father of the Old Testament.

So, he said, now you go up and look it over. And they went up, and they came back, and there were only two men out of the twelve that saw God. The other two saw the giants. They said there are great big giants over there, reaching up, and their cities are walled up to heaven, and they’re huge fellas.

Now this is the story. They went and came to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel unto the wilderness of Paran. That is, they came back to a place called Kadesh, and they brought back word unto them, and to all the congregation, and they showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him and said, we came unto the land whither thou sendest us, and surely, surely it’s ripe, it flows with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. Nevertheless, the people, be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled and very great. Moreover, we saw the children of Anik there, and the Amalekites dwell in the land, and the Jebusites and the Hittites, and that was nothing new, because God said that, told them that dwelt there.

But Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and possess it, for we’re well able to overcome it. But the men that went up with him said, we be not able to go up against the people. And you see, they had a congregational meeting there. And that’s the difficulty when you have a congregational meeting.

I think it would have been much better if Moses had just stood up and said, Follow me. But instead of that, he got democratic on their hands, and he let them have a congregational meeting, and there was a debate. And only two men were on the side of God. The other two were on the side of going back. And they said, we be not able to go up against the people, for they’re stronger than we.

And they brought up what had God said to them now? Listen. God had said, I will be an enemy to your enemies, and an adversary to your adversaries. Mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee into the land of the Amorites and Hittites, and I will cut them off. Ye shall serve the Lord, and He will take sickness away from the midst of thee, and I will send My fear before thee, and destroy them, and so on.

Why then were they worried? But they were. The land through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof. They had great figures of speech in those days. They had eateth up the people that lived there. And all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. If it ate up the people, how could there be huge fellows building cities up to heaven and raising cattle and having beehives and pomegranates and grapes? But they said, It eateth up the inhabitants. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anik, which come of the giants. And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Now, that’s rather a half-comic story, really. It would be humorous if it wasn’t so terrible that God had sent them over to look it over. And here they came back, and only two of them had remembered what God said, and the others only remembered what they saw, Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes. And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel.

Now, I have learned this from sitting on boards and being at conferences and councils. When you’ve got a lot of unbelievers on your hand and you’re trying to make a speech to get them to do something, you might just as well save your Hart, Schaffner and Marx and not rent your clothes, because they won’t listen to you anyhow. And not only that, they won’t listen to your speeches, and they won’t listen to anything you say. They’ll smother you and vote you down and go back into their cave and peek out.

But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes. That is, they rent their own clothes. They didn’t rent the clothes of the other ten. And they spake unto all the company of the children, saying, The land which we pass through to search, it’s an exceeding good land, just as God said it was. And if the Lord delight in us, then He’ll bring us into this land and give it to us. The land which flows with milk and honey, only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land, for they are bred for us. Their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us, fear them not. But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.

And so now they turned their backs. They turned their backs at Paran, at Kadesh Barnea, with God’s promises ringing in their ears, with the angel of the Lord before them, with the fire and cloud to guide them, with the divinely chosen land already within sight, and the fruit of it in their hands. They turned their back, and they made this fateful decision. And there was a place and a time when that decision was made, and an act of their will. They might have gone in, but they did not.

Incidentally, do you know that Moody Colportage used to put out a book, I don’t know whether they still do, called “Turning Back at Kadesh Barnea?” I don’t think I read it all, but enough to know that this is the teaching that Moody had 40-50 years ago. It was written by one of their great evangelists of the time, and they printed it and kept printing it and passing it around, saying that there is a time in the life of a Christian when he isn’t where he used to be, and he isn’t where he ought to be, and he has to decide whether he is going on or not.

I don’t hear much about that now, but they did believe that, and they did teach it, and it is or was among their books, and was sold by the tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands. J. Wilbur Chapman was the man whose name I couldn’t remember until now. J. Wilbur Chapman, Turning Back at Kadesh Barnea. That was Turning Back at Peran here. They went back, and this was their decision.

Now, I said last week that tonight I would mention whether there is a place where we do make a decision, whether there is a specific place. A man has been writing me, trying to have a one-sided controversy, but it’s terribly hard to have a controversy for a man with a man who won’t talk back. But he’s been doing his best, and his idea is that there is no dividing line, there is no place where you make your decision, that this land which I give you is a vague, faraway, obscure thing, an ideal to keep us going.

The only illustration of that that I could ever think of was the college fellow down in Tennessee who had a lazy mule, and the only way he could keep the mule going was to take a fishing pole, strap it alongside the mule out past his head, and fasten a bag of oats on the end of the pole. And so all day long that poor mule, smelling the oats, went ahead. Always it just evaded him by a foot and a half. That’s the way he got a little activity out of the poor old mule.

And I don’t introduce anything humorous here, but I think that that perhaps would about cover it, that God says to his children, be filled with the Spirit. Now he says to Archangel Gabriel, now you’ll understand that I don’t actually mean that. I’m just putting that out ahead of them as a, right out on the end of a pole there. I’m painting a land of purity and spirituality and worship and power. I’m painting that for them.

Of course, they can’t get it in this life. We’ll all get it when the Lord comes back, but they can’t have it now. But I’m keeping it ahead of them there, so to keep them moving. I don’t believe that God would stoop to that kind of thing myself, and I do not want to believe that God is worse than people are. No father would do that with his children.

I heard when I was a boy, actually this happened, of a man so mean, he was so mean that he used to promise his children money for going to bed without their supper. And then after they’d promised to go to bed without eating, that was to save food, why he’d go steal the money out from under the pillow and do it the next night. Now that was one man I heard about, but I never heard of another, and I don’t think that another man that mean probably could live in the same generation.

Now there might have been one born since that mean, but that was back there, and I think that was all possible. I don’t believe that nature would have supported two men living at the same time. I think the atmosphere would have gone into revolt and refused to be breathed by two men that wicked, but they want me to believe that God’s like that. God says, I just want to keep you coming, that’s all, boy, just keep you coming, and always promising and never giving.

I don’t believe that at all. They could have gone straight into the land from Paran if they would have gone. God said, I am with you, I’ll turn the enemy’s backs to you, I’ll send hornets ahead of you, I’ll put my fear on the people, I’ll give you a land that is cultivated and rich and wonderful, it’s mine to give to whom I please, and I’ll give it to my people Israel, I’ll give it to you. Go ahead, go ahead, follow the cloud, I have an angel before thee. And they want me to believe God never meant that at all.

The only other thing I can think of as bad as that, perhaps not quite as bad, is for God to give a code of laws and threaten men with death for not keeping them, knowing all the time they couldn’t keep them. That’s where fundamental theology has sunk in the day in which we live. I was brought up on that, and I had to stand up and fight through it and get out of it. But the Lord gave us the law and said, Cursed is the man that continueth not in the law, and then said, but nobody can keep the law anyhow. This doctrine of moral inability has cursed the whole Church of Christ, cursed the Church of Christ, and we’re under a curse today because of it.

Well, now, let’s look at Numbers 32 a minute. Numbers 32. Wherefore, said God, discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land the Lord has given them. Thus did your fathers when I sent you from Kadesh Barnea to see the land. For when they went up unto the valley of Eschol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel that they should not go into the land which the Lord had given them.

And the Lord’s anger was kindled the same time, and He swore, saying, surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt from twenty years old and upward shall see the land which I swore unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because they have not wholly followed me. Then he put them in a bracket, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun. They wholly followed the Lord, and the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was consumed.

Haven’t you met Christians that have been around a long time, converted way back years ago, and they’ve been going to church, having family prayer, and they’re supposed to be making progress, but they’ve never made progress beyond Paran. There they are. They looked over into a better land, a land of cross-carrying and sacrifice and self-discipline and surrender, and it was too much for them.

And they would not go, so they’ve been wandering ever since. Now, they’re God’s people, all right, for God protected and kept His people all the time. But Je let them die before they ever reached the place of spiritual delight which He had for His children. I think that is pathetic. Next to being lost, that’s next worse. Next to perishing and going to hell in the end, the next worst thing is to get out of Egypt through the blood of the Lamb and the power of God, face up to a better Christian life, and then back out on it and be afraid to go forward.

Well, there are difficulties, there are difficulties. This businessman, he reads a book, or he reads the Bible or he hears a sermon and he’s all steamed up. Oh, he wants the best that God has for him. And then as he presses on, he finds his wife isn’t with him in this. She hangs back and drags her little feet. So, he says, I don’t know, I don’t know.

If I go on to do what I believe the Lord has asked me to do, carry the cross and allocate some of my funds to foreign missions in the amount I want to and keep my business honest, I’ll have trouble at home all the time. So, what I’ll do will be this. I will compromise it for the sake of peace.

So, he compromises for the sake of peace and they both get old together. He gets old and he hasn’t got victory over his temper. He hasn’t got victory over his lusts. He hasn’t got victory over his love of money. He hasn’t got personal victory at all, because at a period somewhere when he should have made his decision to push through and take the cross, no matter what the cost, he backed out and didn’t go.

And we’re swarming everywhere in the United States, swarming everywhere. And the Christians have to be pampered and cuddled and coddled and fed and fed on a bottle. And you can’t get anybody to go anywhere much anymore to seek the face of the Lord unless you promise them that it is a playground. You got to promise them it’s a playground.

The only way you can get Christians to go anywhere at all anymore, to a Bible conference or a retreat is to send folders with cartoons of people playing tennis and shuffleboard and swimming and riding horses. Now there’s nothing wrong with any of those four things. I’ve done all of them except playing tennis. But I never played tennis, but I’ve ridden horses, and what are the other things I’ve said?

Well, let me say, I don’t say there’s anything wrong with them. I only say that the Christians are such weaklings, such children, and they’re telling us you’ll never hold your young people if you’re too severe, if you set too high a standard. In the first place, I’m not setting a standard at all.

I have a book in my hand and that’s the standard. I am not setting the standard. God sets the standard. And He says, take up your cross, deny yourself, follow Me. And if your right eye offends you, pluck it out. And if you’re right, hand offends you, cut it off. And if your wife won’t go with you, go by yourself. And if your family refuses to go, go by yourself. If your neighbors won’t go with you to the celestial city, go alone. The Lord says these things. I didn’t write the Bible. He wrote it.

So, we have them by the thousands. And I refuse quietly, and with such charity as I may have, I refuse absolutely to contribute to the delinquency of retarded Christians. You hear me? You hear me? And I’ve been that way since I was a young fellow, so there’s no change in me on that. I refuse to contribute to the delinquency of these wilderness lovers.

Forty years they wandered in the hot sand when they might have been sitting under their vine and fig tree, milking fat cattle, and eating honey out of the rock, and having for breakfast the sweet pomegranate juice, and living in the holy land. But they wouldn’t go. They said no, they wouldn’t go. They said there are giants in the land. Of course there are. Of course there are.

You’re an office man. You work in an office. If you go on with God, you can’t attend their office parties. If you don’t attend their office parties, they’ll threaten to fire you. God says, I’ll make your enemies turn their backs on you. I’ll send hornets in front of you, and I’ll bless your bread and your water. You’re not ready to have God bless your bread and your water. You want Him to bless your big car. You want too much. And in order to have it, you’ve got to compromise your Christian faith. And compromising of our Christian faith has now become standard doctrine in evangelicalism. Not only that, it is part and parcel of our modern evangelism. And what we’re doing is simply extending an effete, burnt out, third-rate Christianity.

Our friend Mr. Case here and his good wife will not be offended. I was afraid I might have offended missionaries at Council, but they told me, people that I talked with, said that they deeply appreciated what I’d said instead of being offended. I said this, and I repeat it now, that what we need is not more missionaries, but better missionaries. What we need is not more preachers, but better preachers. Because if we do not have better missionaries and better preachers, all we’re doing in evangelism is extending a scrub Christianity at home. And all we’re doing in missions is extending a scrub Christianity abroad.

There must be a reformation. God must raise somebody, and I don’t know who or where he’s coming from, God must raise somebody. Not to have popular mobs following him, but to say to the church what the Wesleys said, to say to the church what Simpson said, to say to the church what Finney said. Better one real Christian than 100 scrub Christians.

What we need is a better grade Christianity. Everybody’s writing books these days, and what we’re doing is simply giving a literary format to a backslidden Christianity. Mediocrity, spiritual mediocrity. We won’t go on with God. God is calling us. He’s calling us out. He’s calling us through. He’s not calling us to fanaticism. He’s not calling us to gotcheries and strange weirdnesses. He’s calling us to holy living and deep power and spiritual wonders. He’s calling us to live in the presence of God until our lives are fragrant with that presence. He’s calling us to sacrifice and discipline and discipleship.

But we’re backing out on it, and we’re getting support everywhere we look. We’re getting support from modern teachers. They’re saying, oh, but we cannot, we cannot, we cannot whip them. They cannot do it. This is the land, that’s the land that eateth up inhabitants.

And God said, I’ll be with you and I’ll drive them out. Seven nations will go out, head over heels, and I’ll put you in there and give you their land already for you, because that’s My land anyhow, and I can give it to whom I please. There’s the sovereignty of God. There’s Joshua and Caleb. It doesn’t say so, but I imagine Joshua and Caleb were pretty unpopular fellows around there for a while.

And they later went in, all right, both of them got in. Joshua led a new generation in. And here was the solemn, awful thought, the solemn, awful thing, that everybody over 20 that had taken part in that rebellion died in the wilderness except Joshua and Caleb. Everybody over 20, only the younger ones that weren’t considered mature enough to have made a sound decision, they were forgiven. The rest died in the wilderness.

Yet, their shoes were kept and their clothing did not wear out, and God supported them all the time and led them, but he led them round and round and round. And there are God’s dear children right now, hundreds of them, hundreds of them, that are moving around in circles.

We wonder why communism can make such tremendous inroads into countries that were before Christian, because we Christians haven’t lived lives that scared them. I’ll put my fear on the enemy, and I believe it’s possible for the people of God to so live that the enemy lurks around the edge but doesn’t come in and bother you much. They’re not afraid of us.

Politicians aren’t afraid of us. They want to use us. Always they’re wanting to use you. If it’s Boy Scout week, they want you to preach about Boy Scouts. If it’s Poppy Week, about poppies. If it’s Mama’s Day, about mommy. And they want you to, that was pretty bad, that pun, but it’s a fact they always want to use you. We want the Protestant block of votes as the cynical old politician. We want the Protestant block of votes. We’ve always got a block of something they want.

But we haven’t got moral ascendancy. We haven’t got specific gravity enough in our spirit. We’re not tough and hard enough, in the name of Christ, as we should be. So, little by little, we’re going downhill. If Depression ever comes to America, it’ll kill evangelism overnight. It’ll kill popular evangelism overnight.

I saw it in the early 30s. Great campaigns, healing campaigns, and other kind of campaigns, thousands and thousands of people attending. Dun and Bradstreet said of one evangelist, he was now worth a quarter of a million dollars. He’d started with a shoestring. A few years, very few years, he had a quarter of a million. People gave him an offering. This thing went, and then the Depression came, and it killed it overnight. And if another Depression comes, evangelism in America will die as it died in the early 30s.

But you can’t kill a Christian with a Depression, brother. And that’s one of the enemies God will make turn its back. If I wanted to go into it, which I won’t tonight, I could tell you how God helped us in this church right in the middle of the Depression, right in the middle of it. How God Almighty answered prayer and gave us what wasn’t around and did wonders beyond wonders for us.

You can’t stop the work of God by having a decline in the economic situation. We go forward by prayer, not by money. We go forward by the mighty workings of God. Behold, I send an angel before thee. And no matter what it is, if it’s the will of God at home or abroad or anywhere, God will see to it that nothing will stop us.

Well, this kind of truth has consequences, my friends. I told you that it wasn’t going to be an easy sermon to preach, nor an easy one to hear, and it wasn’t and isn’t. But there’s truth here, and I want you to take your Bible and go home. Summer is coming, and you’re going to go on vacation.

The Fourth of July is coming, three whole days to kill each other on the highways, make work for undertakers. And I want you to remember you’re a Christian. I want you to remember your call after that holy name of that Man who carried that cross up that hillside, who left the riches of heaven for the poverty of a stable, and who went from a carpenter’s bench to a cross on a hillside, and who said, “‘foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head.’

Don’t curse yourself by hanging on to your money. Let it go. Don’t bring a blight on yourself by demanding the best of everything. Use the old thing longer. You’ll never look like Clark Gable anyhow. You women are trying to look like Lana Turner. You’re only succeeding by looking like Lana Turner’s grandmother. Be willing to get along on less, and turn it over to God. I don’t say turn it over to this church. I say turn it over to God’s work.

Somebody said today, and I listened on the radio, in some parts of the world they’re trying to live on a penny and a half a day. Our missionaries tell us of the prophetic efforts of some people to stay alive. Thomas came back from the Far East and told us that he walked down the sidewalk in the morning and had to step carefully between little arms and legs and necks and chins and stomachs to keep from tramping on little children sleeping on the sidewalk.

And we’ve got to have the best that John M. Smyth can provide, or Marshall Fields. Remember your call to sacrifice and cross-carrying and discipline and hard work and suffering. But your call is to victory and to win, I’ll make your enemies turn their backs on you. And the victory you’ll get and the blessing you’ll get will all be inside your heart. Wonderful. Amen? Thank the Lord.

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Tozer Talks

“If Any Man Sin”

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If Any Man Sin
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
November 1, 1953

Now, this being a communion morning, it has been in recent years my practice, not to intrude into the communion service a long sermon, but to try to lay the emphasis where I believe it properly belongs on a morning like this, on the communion service itself. So that, I want merely to bring a meditation from the Scriptures.

In the book of John, the first chapter, that is, the first epistle of John, the first chapter over into the second, these familiar words. If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Here are the words of the sin-hating John whose epistle bristles with condemnation of everything evil. And by no stretch of the imagination can it be said that John is excusing sin. But John, along with all other Bible writers, was a realist. And he took things as he found them and dealt with them as they were, rather than as he liked to have seen them. And his experience with human beings, even redeemed human beings, taught him that there would never be a time when there would not be at least a possibility of sin. So, in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, He here gives us the truth about this. And if there’s any time we ought to consider it, it is on a Communion Sunday when we partake together of the body and blood of our Lord.

He tells us here that if we walk in the light as our Lord is in the light, that we have fellowship one with another. And the translators do not know whether that “another” means with God or with people. I believe it means with people. The “we” is the antecedent, probably we, if we walk in the light, the pronoun “we.” And then we have fellowship, one with another, property the “we.” But we also have fellowship with God as he tells us earlier in his epistle, and says that if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth isn’t in us. But if we confess our sins, He’s faithful and He’s just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then says that he writes this epistle in order that His children, God’s children, may not sin, but that if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.

The great factories have clinics or hospitals. They do not put those hospitals in there as an encouragement to accidents or illness. But knowing humanity, they put them in there because experience has taught them that for so many 100 people working for them at a given time, there will be a certain percentage that will either get injured or need medical attention. So they have their hospitals for the sake of the accidents.

Now, in the kingdom of God, these verses are not here to encourage sin. But they’re here as a kind of spiritual clinic that says, watch out and do not sin. But if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the Righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sin. And then he adds more or less as in parentheses, not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Now, I read earlier in the meeting this morning, a passage from the fourth chapter of Leviticus. And I want to connect the Old and the New Testament together here and show how the same Holy Spirit inspired them all the same. Christ walks through their corridors, never knowing the difference between the Old and the New.

I’m sure that in the fourth chapter of Leviticus, there was provided for Israel this clinic were injured Christians Jews, in the case of the Old Testament, were where believers who got into an accident where congregations that became infected with wrong, might find an immediate and efficacious remedy. Notice what they did about sin in the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, as revealed in the Book of Leviticus. It says Moses said, and the Lord spoke to Moses and told him to say to the children of Israel, if a soul sin through ignorance against any of the commandments of the Lord. Now don’t allow that word “through ignorance” there to picture for you a starry-eyed, honest-hearted person who sinned, but sinned accidentally, or through ignorance, as it says here. Think rather, that here is a careless soul who has neglected the Scriptures and neglected to hear the Word of God and who has followed more or less his own heart and has sinned against the commandments of the Lord concerning anything that ought to be done, and shant do them, there’s a remedy for that man. It says later on, that when the thing becomes known, that is, when his conscience awakes to the fact that he has sinned.

Now, he divides up Israel into four or five categories here. He says, if the priests that is anointed do sin. Now I wish this wasn’t here. I wish it didn’t have to be here. I’m glad it is, but I wish it didn’t have to be here. I remember that it was St. Teresa who said that she felt that she was the least of them all because she remembered reading about the great saints of the past, that as soon as they were converted to God, that ended their sin. And they didn’t any more grieve God by sinning. And she said, I can’t say that. I can’t say it. I have to admit that I grieved God after I was converted, and that makes me less than they, she said. A very modest, very humble way to put it. But I think if the truth were known about any of the saints, St. Teresa’s confession, would be their confession too.

I wish it were possible to anoint the head of a preacher so that he would never sin again while the world stands. It would be a most convenient way to deal with the whole thing. But if it were, then you would not have a man before you. You would have an automaton run by pulleys, wheels, and push buttons, morally incapable of doing evil, and by the same token, morally incapable of doing good. For I have insisted here in my preaching, that if man’s will is not free to do evil, it is not free to do good. That freedom of will is necessary to the concept of morality. That if we are not free to do good, then we are not free to do evil. And if we are not free to do evil, then we cannot do good in the very definition of the term. That is why I have never accepted the doctrine that our Lord Jesus Christ could not have sinned. If he could not have sinned, then the temptation in the wilderness was a grand hoax, and God was a party to it. Certainly, as a human being, He could have sinned, but that He would not sin was what made him the holy Man that He was.

So that it is not the inability to sin, but it is the unwillingness to sin that makes a man holy. The holy man is not one who cannot sin. A holy man is one who will not sin. A truthful man is not the man who can’t talk. He is a man who can talk and could lie, but won’t. An honest man is not a man who is in jail where he can’t be dishonest. An honest man is the man who is free to be dishonest, but will not.

So, it says here that the priest that is anointed, if he do sin. And the priest that stands before you and ministers to you in any given church. If that man of God, I mean of course here, it’s the minister. We don’t use the word priests. We’re all priests of God in one sense. But this man was especially set aside to serve publicly. And if he could not have sin, then he could never have understood his people, never. He never could have known of their difficulties and troubles. A physician that never felt a pain could never sympathize with a patient. But if the priests do sin.

And what is that priest to do? Go into discouragement and gloom and lie down and say I am not like Wesley and Simpson and Augustine, therefore, I give up and quit? No, it says, then let him bring for his sin which he has sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering. And he shall bring the bullock into the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord and shall lay his hand upon the bollock’s head and kill the bullock before the Lord. And the priest that is anointed, shall take of the bullock’s blood and bring it to the tabernacle of the congregation. The preacher should dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle of the blood seven times before the Lord, before the veil of the sanctuary. The priest shall put some of the blood upon the horns of the altar and sweet incense before the Lord which is in the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall pour all the blood of the bullock at the bottom of the altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

Now, there you have atonement. There you have God dealing in a work-a-day, day by day, dealings and remedy. You have it here. Then it says in the 13th, And if the whole congregation of Israel sin through ignorance, and the thing be hid from the eyes of the assembly, if there is sin in the assembly someplace. And there never was a lovelier word invented than the word “assembly.” It’s been taken more or less by one or two small denominations. And we don’t use it much, but it’s a beautiful word. It is the assembly of the saints. And if the whole congregation of Israel sinned through ignorance, that is, they don’t know it’s there, and the thing be hidden from the eyes of the assembly. And they have done somewhat this assembly has, or someone in it, against the commandment of the Lord, concerning the things which should be done and are guilty, when the sin which they have sinned against it is known.

Then the congregation shall offer a young bullock and they go through the same process here as they did before. And the priest shoved up his finger in some of the blood and sprinkled it seven times before the Lord, even before the veil. And he should take all its fat and so on. It is an explanation I’ll not go into. And the priest shall make an atonement for them and it shall be forgiven them. In verse 22, it tells about the rulers and says, if any ruler has sinned and done somewhat against the Lord. Then in verse 27, it comes to the loveliest of them all. Priest and ruler, those words I don’t take too kindly to. Priest, because of its association with Romanism, and ruler because of its association with swords and crowns and dictatorial conduct.

But this I enjoy. And if any one of the common people sin through ignorance while he does somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done and be guilty. If his sin which he had sinned comes to his knowledge, like the man who went into the far country and at last came to himself. Before he had just as been as deep a sinner. But now he came to himself and recognizing, it came to his knowledge. And here we’re dealing with a common people. I love the common people. I don’t necessarily love ugliness or ignorance nor crudity nor vulgarity. And if when we say common people, we mean the vulgar people, the dirty people, and I certainly don’t say that I enjoy being among common people. But if when we say common people, we mean people like you and me that aren’t known very far abroad and aren’t having very great gifts. And we’ll never get probably in the halls of fame, or many of us in who’s who. Why that’s what I mean. The plain people who aspire, but will never be knighted and will not win the Pulitzer Prize, nor the Nobel Prize likely, just that great multitude of people that God made.

When we look at a chrysanthemum in a show window, or in a vase, were astonished at the beauty of it. But God had a lot of help in making a chrysanthemum. People helped out on that. And for simple, plain people, I recommend a field of daisies or a field of goldenrod, nodding in the balmy autumn sun. Those are common flowers, the plain, simple flowers. The flowers that cost so much and require nurses and attendants and teachers and somebody to be always working over them, jockeying them around, they’re not to my mind much worth the trouble.

But a goldenrod doesn’t require anything but God’s spacious heaven above and His bright sunshine and a little room. And it’ll nod there in all its beauty. And the daisies that bloom and the Black-Eyed Susans that nod, they will be there and they were there 500,000 years ago, and they will be there another 500 or 1000 years if the Lord tarries and things go on in the time to come. They don’t require much there. They’re the common flowers. And I believe there’s more joy in coming on to a common flower in the Spring when you’re scarcely expecting it, than there is in going and paying several good dollars for some flowers that have been carefully tended by horticulturalists. Now, that’s not to speak against nice flowers. I like them too. But sometimes I think that they cost more than they’re worth. But the common flower costs you nothing but an eye to see it, that’s all. It just costs you an eye to see it. God has His chrysanthemums, I guess.

We write the stories of the great saints, and I’m a great admirer and lover. And McAfee here is a perfect worshipper of the great of the past. But I don’t know. I think maybe in the long run, I’m more at home with God’s common daisies than I am with the great, carefully cultivated chrysanthemums that are showpieces for the centuries.

Wouldn’t it be tragic if we had to say, now God, we just have a few people in the world, just a few. We’ll give you Paul and Chrysostom and Augustine and Francis and we’ll give you Knox and Luther and Wesley. And that’s about all we can muster. God would smile and say, no, those are my chrysanthemums. They are the great fellows that had somehow more potential and they’re all right and I’m glad for them. But I’m not so poverty stricken for spiritual things that I’m going to have to tie myself up and say I have no others. Behold, gaze, look, an innumerable company that no man can number. The nodding, common flower of field and meadow that just somehow grew and nodded in the sunshine and looked heavenward and gathered the rain and the dew and loved God for His own sake. Their hands may have been grimy, and they might not have known all the learned allusions of the hyper-learned preacher. And maybe they have no degrees to their name, but there are a lot of them, and they’ve got upon them the marks of the family. The family resemblance is upon them. They belong to God. And maybe they didn’t grow up in an atmosphere where they could cultivate themselves as others, but they were true in their day; plain people about which Gray writes in his “Elegy,” the simple mute, unknown; and Milton and the plain people that shed their fragrance on the desert air.

That’s my crowd. All the time, that’s my crowd. I go around among the big preachers and I speak with them a little and sit down and talk with them if they want to, the big leaders and college presidents and the rest of them. And if we can talk about God or books, why, we’re at home for a while, but I wander off and end up with some butcher from Atlanta or some carpenter from Detroit or some rubber worker from Akron or machinists from Minneapolis or small time farmer from Ottumwa. I feel more at home among them, because they’re God’s plain people, God’s common people, and there’s so much more of them. If you want to cultivate quantity, cultivate the plain people, the common people. And if any one of the common people sin through ignorance says the Holy Ghost, while he doeth somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done, and be guilty.

Now, here we are this morning, and I don’t know but it could be that some of us common people have sinned. And I trust this morning that before we receive the Lord’s body and blood, that it’ll come to our knowledge, that we won’t be careless about this, that it’ll come to our knowledge. And if it comes to our knowledge and we know that we have sinned somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things that ought not to be done and be guilty, then what shall we do? Bow our head, like the bulrush and go to pieces and say, I can’t be a Christian. It isn’t possible. This is too tough. The world is too full of temptation. I am too weak. I’m too busy. I can’t get anywhere. It’s alright for you to talk about the great, but I can get anywhere.

Well, do you know what you’re to do Brother? It says, let him bring his offering. Let him bring his offering. That offering has already been made. It doesn’t mean bring your money? No, no, I wouldn’t trick you like that. God help you. I’d live on rolled oats the rest of my life before I would identify giving to the church with this. Keep your money, but bring your offering. And what is your offering? Your offering has already been made, the kid of the goats or a bullock or a lamb. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his sin offering and slay the sin offering in the place of the burnt offering. You’re not to quit. You’re not to give up and say it’s no use. I’m worse than other people. No, you’re not. We’re just God’s common people. We believe in His Son. But it’s just now maybe coming to your notice that you’ve sinned somewhat and are guilty.

Well, I repeat and I exhort. Don’t lie down and quit. When you fall on the ice, you don’t lie there. You scramble around, look a bit sheepish and get up and dust the snow off and go ahead And if you’re so badly hurt, you can get up if somebody helps you. And that’s what Paul meant in the sixth chapter of Galatians when he said that if there was anybody that was hurt out a joint. I have used the word out of joint, for that’s what it really is, so much that I forget what the King James version calls it. But if there’s anybody that’s sinned, you know, then bear one another’s burdens. And if any man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual restore such a one. It means out of joint like a bone. If you merely bruise yourself, you can get up and go away on your own power, but if the bone breaks or goes out of joint, you have to have help. That’s why the Scripture says let other people pray and help you.

But for yourself, don’t lie there. At least call for help. And then bring your lamb. Bring your offering. There’ll be none other than the offering that has already made forever, forever efficacious. Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altar slain could give the guilty conscience peace nor take away its stain. But Christ the Heavenly Lamb takes all our sins away. They sacrifice a richer blood and nobler Name than they. Instead, the old man of God, my faith would lay her hand on that dear head of thine, while like a penitent I stand and there confess my sin. My soul looks back to see the burden Thou didst bear while hanging on the accursed tree and knows her sins were there. So, it isn’t the Jew that must go out and find a lamb. The Lamb has already been offered. But the Old Testament Jew, he had to bring a lamb. To the New Testament Christian, the Lamb has already been offered.

But you only have to lay your hand upon the head of the sin offering. My faith would lay her hand on that dear head of Thine. Why? What does it mean? It means identification. In the New Testament, there is much said about the laying on of the hand. It was symbolic of identification and union. We lay our hands on the head of the young minister being ordained to identify ourselves with him and with those who laid their hands on our head on back to the apostles, apostolic succession, really apostolic succession. And when we lay our hands on the head of the offering there in the Old Testament, they did it to identify themselves with the offering.

And the common man who had sinned was saying, O God, I deserve to die. Through the mystery of atonement, I am going to live and this lamb is going to die. But I lay my hand on his head and confess my sin. My sins will go out of me into the lamb as it were. And then by slaying the lamb, God is saying, that’s the way I’m telling you that there’s a Lamb coming sometime that will not only symbolically take away sin, but actually take away sin, because His blood will be richer and His name will be nobler. So now we look back and lay our hands on that Head. All the sins of the world died that day when He died. And all the sins of the ruler and the priests and the common people, all were blotted from the face of God if we only will identify ourselves with Him by faith. Believe in Him this morning.

Let a man examined himself and if in self-examination it comes to you and is discovered that you have sinned somewhat, don’t get up and leave. Don’t softly pass the communion plate by and sit and stew in your sour juices. Don’t be like that. Dare to believe in the sacrifice. Dare to believe in the blood. Dare to believe in the identity of the returning sinner with the dying Savior. You can be cleanse this morning, completely cleansed. No matter how you came in, you can be completely cleansed. The common man who sinned came in with sin on his heart, but he laid his hand on the head of the lamb. They slew it and sprinkled its blood and he went out completely clean. You can do the same this morning. So don’t let discouragement and gloom and innate pessimism wear you out, beat you down, defeat you. He is the propitiation for our sins and for the sins of the whole world.

Sometimes when I am alone with my Bible, I get on my knees and go to the 53rd of Isaiah, and for every pronoun there are put my three names in. Sounds silly and if you were to hear me you would wonder if I were right in my mind, but I am. I know what I’m doing. Surely he has borne our griefs, there’s your pronoun, our, I put my three names in and read it aloud. And carried our sorrows and I put my names in. But He was wounded for “our” and I put my names in, transgressions. And He was bruised for our, and I put my name in. And that’s laying your hand on the head of the sacrifice and identifying yourself with the dying Lamb. You can do that this morning.

Not the holiest man in all this wide earth has anymore right to the cup and to the bread than you this morning if you will lay your hand on the Sacrifice and there confess your sin. For the worth of the Lamb will be your worth and the merits of the blood will be your merits and the rights of the Holy Savior will be your right. No man, however much he fasts and prays, however holy he lives, has any more right than you, God’s common people, you and me. Make no pretenses and ask for no big place in the sun, only the right to live and bloom among God’s in God’s meadow among others, like ourselves, always looking upward to the Lord.

Now, the communion service will be carried on from this point. And we want to tell you that if you’re visiting us, you may feel perfectly free to partake without any thought of where your membership is, we never ask any questions about that.

Let a man examined himself, that’s all. Only be sure that you do nothing carelessly. And be sure above all things, you do nothing cynically or in unbelief. Whatever you do, do it reverently and meekly. And your heart will give worth, by the grace of God, your act, and the precious blood will cover, and God will strengthen you in your spirit and your mind. Then, we’ll gather to the front. We’re going to sing this Isaac watt number, “Not all the Blood of Beasts.” We’re going to quietly wait while we sing that song after we’ve gathered here and while we’re gathering, we’ll sing. And then when we’ve gathered, we’re going to sit and quietly sing that whole song. Sing it with meaning and prayer before we proceed further with the service.