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“The Great Double-Cross”

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The Great Double Cross

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 25, 1956

And when they had bound him and led Him away and delivered into Pontius Pilate the governor. Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, when he saw that He was condemned, that is the Jesus was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood. And they said, what is that to us? See thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field to bury strangers in. For that field was called the Field of Blood unto this day.

Now, in this text, we have described one of the most deeply emotional and significant moments in the history of the world. The most important nation in the world, for many reasons, was Israel. And if you would challenge that, then I would read to you these words of Paul, what advantage then hath the Jew or what profit is there in circumcision much every way? Chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. And then he also says over here, that who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

Paul believed as all the Old Testament indicates and his Bible teachers admit that the most important nation in the world was Israel. And now at this moment of her greatest trial, when the one for whom she had been called into existence, was standing on trial. And now this great and important nation, blind to the presence of the Messiah, alienated from her God by sin and unbelief, and allied with the greatest pagan empire in the world, allied for a purpose. She hated that empire. But she was allied with that empire for a purpose to destroy a man. A man who had done no evil, no harm, and had done only good all the days of his life.

Now this quiet, meek, harmless Man, this pure, clean, harmless Man stands before them, and they join dirty hands with the pagan empire to destroy this Man. And back of it all now, inciting and arousing and inflaming and provoking and instigating and urging on, there was the cunning, sinister and incredibly wicked being we call the devil. Unbelievably cruel, I say he is, and with restrained cold ferocity. He played nation against nation and man against man as a master on the chessboard, that old serpent, the devil, with his unbelievable cruelty, that one we call a serpent and the dragon. He was out to destroy this Man, but he was unseen and unsuspected and he was working to destroy the Man, but along with the Man, the very nation who was also trying to destroy the Man and unknown to them, the very empire itself. That was the work of the devil. And in order to do it, he had to have a man that he could use. His cruel work of destruction required that he had a man.

And so, he searched for a tool, a vehicle, a victim that he could use and he usually manages to find one. There is the frightening thing about human history, when this wicked one, this shrewd, cunning and all but infinitely wise and infinitely wicked being, sets out to destroy something or someone good. He can’t come directly to it. So, he has to work through a tool and he usually finds a tool.

If Judas had only known that his treachery against Jesus was the suggestion of the devil, he would have recoil in horror. He had been brought up in the church. He had been brought up among the Jews, He had heard the Torah read from his youth. And they had sung, he had heard the songs of David sung as they mounted and sung the songs of ascent on Passover days. Judas was a religious man. But he had no idea that his treachery was not his own suggestion, but was by the instigation of the devil, and that he was being used as a utensil by that devil to do something else, and then that he would be thrown cynically aside, when his usefulness was ended. I say if he had known that, the history of Judas and part of the New Testament might have been different, but he didn’t know that. That was part of the deception and the treachery that he never found it out. It is part of the shrewd wisdom of that sinister, dark spirit, that while we’re being betrayed, we don’t know we’re being betrayed. So, Judas betrays Christ with a kiss.

Now here, it seems to me adds something to all this, that Judas didn’t hate Jesus. Nobody could have lived with Jesus three years and hated Jesus. And something of the way they lived in those days was indicated by the fact that when he told this empire with whom he was allied in black conspiracy to destroy Jesus, when he told them about the sign, he said, the one whom I shall kiss.

Now kissing Jesus certainly was not an unpleasant thing. Nor do I think it was an unusual thing. Jesus was 33 years old. He was the most perfect example of manhood since Adam. His lips were clean. There was no smell of a foul habit upon him. And he never had uttered an unclean word in his life. And his beautiful lips had spoken only kind words of forgiveness and healing and pardon and deliverance. And there he stood in his beautiful manhood. I do not think that kissing Jesus would have been unpleasant. Rather, I think that it would have been a most pleasant thing. And surely it was not unusual because John, many times rested his head affectionately on Jesus’ bosom. And there was nothing especially unusual about this kiss of Judas. He simply said, the one I shall go up and kiss. Obviously, it was not an unusual thing, I repeat.

So, Judas was not mad at our Lord and he didn’t hate him. He betrayed him for two ulterior reasons. He did not betray Him because he said to himself, I want this Jesus to get what’s coming to Him. No, he betrayed him because he wanted to get financial gain and he wanted to secure public favor. And my friends, those who betray Jesus today, I don’t think there are many of them in civilized society that betray Jesus because they hate him. I do not think that. I think they betray Him because there is an ulterior motive. They want something that the treacherous betrayal will bring them. That’s all Judas wants. If Judas could have gotten the public favor of the Empire and the money, he never would have betrayed Jesus. He probably would have run. He was a coward. He would have slunk away like the rest of them did. But he had nothing against Jesus, that proved by his subsequent conduct.

When after he had seen them lead Jesus away, the wave of self-condemnation and warm affection for Jesus came over him and he rushed boldly into the presence of the Pharisees and scribes and priests and said, here take this money back. I’ve been a fool. I’ve been a wicked man. I’ve betrayed this innocent blood. That’s the way it says, this innocent blood. I’ve betrayed this innocent man. Why, there came over him in a wave of memory, all the healings that he’d seen and the deliverances and all the kind, pure words and the deep friendly smiles and the pleasantnesses that they’d had together and the moments that they had stopped to eat some simple meal beneath a tree, or laying down on the moss to sleep, and wait the morning when they could go on their journey. So that Judas had nothing against Jesus. He wasn’t betraying Him for that reason. He had two ulterior reasons, I repeat, he wanted money and he wanted to be popular, and it is so today.

People are betraying Jesus who have nothing against Jesus, who even will speak kindly about Jesus. There are people singing about Jesus on the radio now who have sold out and walked out at church choirs. Walked out of church choirs, who have been leading sopranos or tenor solos or basses. And they’ve walked out of church choirs and sold themselves to the beer interests and are singing beer anthems now to sell beer to the public. They have nothing against Jesus. And in tender moments, they speak and think kindly of Jesus. And their reason for betraying Him is not that they hated him. They wanted money. And there are people who have betrayed Jesus because they wanted to be popular with their high school crowd. And they have nothing against him. And if anybody said anything against Jesus, they’d fight for him, they’d stand up and say, well, now, I’m not a Christian. I’m not very good. But I know better than that. They defend Jesus, if it ever came to that. They have a kindly feeling toward Him. But they want to be popular with their crowd. They want to stand well with the kids, or they want to stand well with the business people with whom they work or in the office force where they work or the little group in their social circle.

So they betray Jesus for popularity and to keep friends and keep from making enemies. It looks like a pretty good motive. It looked like a pretty good motive to please the priests and the elders and the rest of them. It looked like a pretty good thing for Judas to be tolerant and want to get on the side of the religious people. But it led Judas to betray Jesus with a treacherous kiss, an evil kiss, the evilest kiss that ever was given or received from the day that Cain kissed his brother and murdered him, it was the kiss Judas gave to Jesus. And yet it was not because he hated Jesus. It was because there was something he wanted that was ulterior and not directly related, something outside of Jesus that betraying Jesus would get him.

And there is our problem in the world today, and that’s what’s wrong today. People who become Christians and then slip away and go back to the world don’t do it because they hate Jesus or found in Him He wasn’t what they thought He was. They apologize to their own hearts and pray and say these who go on to the air and sing for the devil. They want the money and they want the popularity. But they’re very happy if somebody, knowing the weakness of Christians and the weakness of the religious public generally, will sing a song about Jesus. They’re glad to do it. And they solve their own conscience a little bit and say, well, I’m getting a little chance to witness. Witnessing nothing. They’re getting a chance to throw a little kiss to Jesus, while they sell Him out and treacherously betray Him. If they had followed Him and wanted to continue to follow Him, they’d be back singing in that church choir and teaching a Sunday school class and attending missionary conventions, or they would be out on the field or they’d be in school or they’d be supporting somebody that is. But they couldn’t stand it. And so they’re out there and they’ve betrayed Jesus with a kiss

My brother and sister, this is the cruel double-cross. For when the man Judas had been overcome with self-accusation and felt so deeply condemned, he raced back with that money and said, here, take it. I’ve betrayed innocent blood. And they said to him, what is that to us? See thou to that. And they tempted Judas to betray Christ and then they turned around and betrayed Judas. I say there was the cruelest double-cross in history.

Out in the state of Ohio many years ago, I guess twenty-five. I haven’t seen anything like it traveling through there since. But a few years back when automobiles were not as plentiful and the problems not as great as they are now, they had a practice there. Obviously, the Ohio Highway Commission had arranged it, that when anyone was killed on the highway at a crossing or on a curve or at a crossroads, they would put up a white cross to mark, no markings, just a white cross. And everybody knew I have to slow down here. There’s a cross. A man was killed here.

I once saw a place where five crosses stood beside the highway. Five people had died there. I guess they gave it up later as a bad job and quit. But the theory was that if a man driving along a little too fast, or a little carelessly, saw a white cross, or two white crosses, or three white crosses on the highway, he would say to himself suddenly, oh, this is terrible. This is placed where men die and he would take his foot off the accelerator and would slow down and thus save lives. I suppose it did work for I know it always sobered me when I saw white crosses on the way

Well, I tell you that on the high road of history, my brethren, there stand two black crosses where an apostle fell to mark the place where an apostle in a weak hour sold and betrayed his own highest interests and betrayed His Savior with a kiss. It is the double cross, the two black crosses. And you can come down history from the day Cain murdered Abel, I say, to this present our and you will not find anything as cynically, cruelly frighteningly terrible as the double-cross that the Jews pulled on poor, dumb Judas, who had listened to his heart which had listened to the devil. And he had made himself a utensil, a vehicle; a cheap, weak agent for stronger ones. And he had pulled their chestnuts out of the fire, and then when they no longer could use him, they said, what is that to us? See thou to that, and turn their backs upon him.

And I tell you, I have read considerable in my time, considerable amounts of literature. I think I’m fairly familiar with the writings of Geake and Schiller in German. And I have read Escola and Sophocles in Greek, and I have read all of it. And I have read Plutarch and I have read Dickens and I have read Dostoevsky the Russian and Zola and Victor Hugo the Frenchman, and I have read Shakespeare and the rest of the English, those dramatists and novelists who know how to make things wonderful and terrible and present dramatically and colorfully the deeds of man on earth. But I think I can say without any fear that I shall be successfully contradicted, that nowhere in all the literature of all the geniuses of the world, is there anything so drably unqualifiedly, frighteningly terrible as these words, what is that to us? See thou to that.

And we have the picture here of a little frightened man who for love of money and popularity, had betrayed his Savior and treacherously sold his Redeemer to the murderers. Now this little frightened man, fated to exist forever, and can never cease to be, will always have a memory and always will be able to recall his deed of shame. And always, always he’ll remember the double-cross, always and yet this little man can’t escape. Earth and heaven are against him, and even his friends with whom he had whispered and laughed before time. For don’t think they managed to get Judas just by walking up in the business like proposition and asking him. They cultivated him. They cultivated him behind Jesus’ back.

And these Jews, they stroked their silky beard and flung their phylacteries out to show how religious they were. And they cultivated Judas behind the back of the Savior. And they laughed with him and no doubt invited him to lunch and we’re kind to him and patted his back and whispered to him and they were friends, this little frightened man. And now they turned against him and say, what is that to us? Who are you anyhow? See thou to that. And the stars in their courses, he cursed upon his frightened head. And he rushes out, puts a rope around his neck and hangs himself.

And the Scripture tells us, that poor, foolish, fool that he was, he couldn’t even commit suicide with dignity. His rope broke and he fell on the rocks on the precipice below and tore open abdomen and disemboweled himself. As though the grade wide to heaven above were to say, the blackest double-cross in history has got to have the messiest, most undignified, cheapest death in history. So, there was a man who couldn’t even commit suicide and make it stick. And there was a vehicle, a utensil, a tool, an agent and didn’t know it till the last minute. He didn’t know it, my brother.

And so, he went out, this man Judas, used by that, that incredibly wicked devil, that unbelievably, cynical, cruel dragon. In order to destroy a man would ruin another man. And that picture of a little dark man; why doesn’t some artists paint it? I don’t believe in painting pictures of Jesus. For nobody knows what Jesus looked like. But I could see how a man could paint a picture, and if I had the skill in my right hand to do it, I’d paint the picture of a little, frightened man with the stars above looking down darkly upon him and with the earth frightened as he ran. And with the very rope, refusing to cooperate and the sharp, jagged rock below, telling the story on the highway of the black double-cross, where he betrayed his Savior and was betrayed in turn, a fool of his own lusts and a victim of his own desires. That was Judas and I think I could make a picture out of it.

Now, my friend, Judas has long gone to his own place which is perdition, but the world and sin and the devil are still today betraying men. That was not once for all, that was but a sample dramatized for us, so to speak. But it’s going on all the time. And the world will take a Christian, remember, egged on, instigated by that, that cunning devil, incited and inflamed by the devil, the world will treat a Christian. They will use him. They will stand in his way. They will tear him down. They’ll lead him astray with the professions of friendship and laughter and bravado and hospitality and back-slapping in jokes and flattery. They’ll tear the young Christian down. They’ll steer him away. They’ll shut up his testimony. They will make him ashamed to pray when they eat in the restaurant. They will make him ashamed to carry his New Testament.

And he sneaks to church Sundays and hopes nobody will know that all week he was a coward who was betraying Jesus because he wanted to stand well with the people in the school. The businessman will come to church and try to look pious on Sunday morning. He’ll try to forget that all week long he kept as quiet as a mouse lest his testimony offend somebody. Or that he went along with a shady deal, because he was a member of a partnership that was busy doing shady deals within the law. And so, he kept his mouth shut and said it wasn’t his fault and tried to soothe his conscience. But he’s a vehicle. He’s being used as a utensil. And when he’s old and arrested and battered, and the devil can’t use him anymore, he’ll throw him cynically aside and say, what’s that to me? You see to that. And in that black and awful hour when there appears the black double-cross over the man’s life who said he was a Christian, who gave to missions and gave to the church and brought his family to Sunday school. But he’s a coward and fearful in his daily living.

A young fellow who on the high school football team is ashamed not to do what the rest of them do. And ashamed to let them know that he’s a clean man. The girl with her crowd, shamed to testify and witness, betraying Jesus to stay popular with the crowd.

Oh, W.H. Meyer, that great English poet, in his great piece called St. Paul, he prays, God forbid that I should fall into the treason, the seeking and honor which they gave not Thee. And yet there are those who today, even in Alliance churches, seek honor from the world that they never gave Jesus. And so they betray him and the devil has the black double-cross over their heads waiting for the end. And after they fall into a pit, the world turns its back and says what do we got to do with that? See thou to that.

I say that not in all the literature. Shakespeare never thought of anything as tragic, as terrible, as cynically, bestially cruel as this, that after they’d pulled a man into a pit they could walk away rubbing their hands and say we’ll take this money and buy a potter’s field. We’ll give it to the poor. We’ll cut the corners on this deal and cheat a little, but we’ll give two tenths of it to the Lord. The Lord doesn’t want your dirty two tenths. The Lord will take a whole lot less and bless you for it. But He doesn’t want a dirty two tenths. And he doesn’t want anything that comes anyway but a clean and a holy way. And yet businessmen and professional men and even preachers are willing to be used by Satan. What is that to us? See thou to that.

Let may say to you and particularly you young people. No one is ever your friend who speaks lightly of your Savior. Nobody is ever your friend, no matter how warm and flattering and affectionately that he or she may seem to be. They’re not your friend if they speak lightly of your Savior. They got their attitude and philosophy somewhere else. They got it from this cynically cruel old dragon who with his restrained, cold hatred, he’s out to destroy you and everyone that follows Jesus. No one is ever your friend who criticizes your church. No one is ever your friend who invites you to sin. No one is ever your friend who laughs when you pray. Nobody is your friend who tells you off-colored jokes. No buddy is your friend. No one is your friend, they’re utensils, they’re tools, they’re vehicles, they’re instruments of Satan for your destruction.

And the same Satan that used a weak Judas and then betrayed him and left him to suicide and hell, that same Satan is out to get you. He knows your name and your number. He knows more about you than you know about yourself. He knows where we live. He knows you and he’s going to destroy you as he tried to destroy that good Man, Whose kind, kind words had raised the dead and healed the sick and forgiven harlots. He was out to destroy Him and he did, and he did.

But I see another cross. And over the highway where Judas traveled and where Judas died, I see standing the great double-cross. But I see another cross, not black, not white, but red. And on that cross, I see your Friend, your real Friend. Judas was nobody’s friend. And the world was not Judas’ friend. And Rome was not Israel’s friend. And Israel was not Judas’ friend. But the Friend was the One who was betrayed, the Man, the kind Man that would be so easy to kiss. That kind Man, 33 years old in perfect health. No anemia, no hardening of the arteries, no prostate difficulties, no fallen arches, no baldness, nothing that men get, even good men get. For He was in perfect health. He was God’s Lamb. And according to the Old Testament, the lamb had to be examined four days for defects, and if there were any defects found in it, it wasn’t used. A perfectly healthy lamb, so He was a perfectly healthy Lamb. And they took that healthy, robust Lamb to the cross and nail Him up there. Not an anemic, bloodless creature to die easily, but a full-blooded Man in the fullness of His young manhood whose veins ran hot and full with purest blood.

There is a fountain wrote Cooper, filled with blood drawn from Emanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. I say, beside the black crosses that marked the infamy of history I see the red cross and the Lamb dying. A Lamb who isn’t there on that cross now, but who did His work and said, it’s finished and went to the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. And Who when He had by Himself purged our sin, sat down at the right hand of God, from hence waiting till His enemies be made His footstool, there is your Friend.

And there’s the only real friend. The person who tempts you to sin is your enemy, a tool of the devil and not your friend. Your friend is yonder in the glory. Will you turn to your Friend this morning? The only real friend. I’ll be your friend, but I can’t help you see. McAfee would be your friend. We have board members. We have godly people, women and men, they’d help you, but they can’t help, you see. What you need is a Friend that goes beyond, and we can’t go beyond with you. We can only sing when you die and follow you out/ And the undertaker can take three flowers and I can stand with my little book and say, to earth we drop. That’s all we can do with you friend. We’ll be your friend, but we can’t really be your friend because we haven’t the power. But there is a friend. And there He was on that red cross. The black crosses stood alongside of the red cross. One marked the tragic eternal downfall of an apostle, and the other marked the glorious propitiation for the world. Turn to Jesus while you may.

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“How to Think as a Christian“

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“How to Think as a Christian”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 17, 1957

Now, in the 16th chapter of the book of Matthew, the second of two talks on that, where Jesus began to show His disciples how He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. And Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him saying, be it far from thee Lord. You’ll notice the margin says, pity thyself, Lord. This shall not be unto thee. But He turned and said unto Peter, get thee behind me satan. Thou art an offence unto Me, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

My almost invariable method is to consult anywhere from five to a dozen or more translations in order that I may be sure I know just what the man said, or what Christ said, or the prophet said, or the apostle. And what Jesus said here was this, you’re not thinking like God, you’re thinking like a man. Last week, I talked about that and showed that human sympathies and affections can get in and make us think like human beings down on the earth instead of spiritual beings born from another world. And I closed with the question, how shall we escape the world’s influences, and think the thoughts of God, we Christians?

For you see, the world has all of the techniques of brainwashing. The world has all the techniques. They have literature, schools, the general-accepted mores of society; they have history and tradition. They have every kind of sort of communication now, the two new methods of communication, radio and television. And they have all this.

And so, the world creates a mentality, but it is not the mentality of heaven. It is the mentality of earth. And the work of the Holy Ghost is to create on earth a mentality of heaven in the hearts of people who are on earth, but whose interests are in heaven.

Now, how shall we escape the debauchery of our minds by the world? And how shall we gain the mind of Christ so that we shall think like God? Well, briefly, there are I said, three, I said four last week, but I want to give you a fourth one. The first is revelation, the Scriptures of truth. You see, there are two kinds of theology abroad. There are three kinds. There’s a theology of the world, which is simply paganism. That’s all, nothing else, just paganism. They may name the name Jesus or God or the Bible or have some Biblical words, but their theology is that of the world. It’s been influenced by Christianity, but not controlled by it. So that while it is not Greek or oriental, it’s pagan. Nevertheless, it’s American paganism and we must, then there’s a second, we must correct that, there’s a second. We’ll never be able to correct the world’s theology, but there is a second, and that is, the church’s theology.

And the church’s theology is a compound of badly, infrequently read and badly understood Scriptures, along with what has been called, chimney corner Scripture, and what Paul called old wives tales. And when you shake this all up together, you have a strange and corrupt mixture which is neither one nor the other. It is neither Christian nor totally heathen, but it’s a mixture in between.

Well, how are we going to get to the truth, the Word of God? This book that I hold in my hand is the Word of God. And we correct misconceptions and cleanse our minds and deliver ourselves from wrong thoughts about God and ourselves and the world and sin and the future by reading the Scriptures themselves. There never was a time when so many Bibles were printed. It’s the world’s best seller, everybody knows it. And I read just this week, this last week, that the librarian down at the main library down in the city said that the Bible was the most asked for and the most read book that they have down there. That is true and that’s good. But it’s not good enough. In going to the Scriptures, we are not to go to them to criticize them nor to bring anything to them, but to find out what they teach about all these things, and what they teach about God and Christ and creation and man’s relation to Himself, and man’s relation to God and man’s relation to the future. And all of these things that we must know, we’ll have to go to the Bible to find it out.

There is a sentence used by, I think the Baptists, which ought to be true of everybody, that it is the, what do they call it, the source book of faith and practice, the only alone source of faith and practice. What we are to believe and how we are to live is given to us by revelation. And the Spirit breathes upon the Word and brings the Truth to sight. And we must go to the Scriptures themselves, the Word of God and read the Word of God.

How much Bible reading do we do? That’s an important question. Because I well know how much newspaper reading we do. I well know how much reading is done of other things. And remember, whether you know it or not, if you do not constantly correct your thinking and purify your mentality by the Word of God, you will be thinking like a man and not like God just as sure as you live, and nothing will change it but that. There’s revelation. That’s first.

Then there’s inspiration. And what do we mean by inspiration? We mean the Spirit’s impulses within the mind to correct any wild notions that we might have. Job talked about the wild ass’ colt, the untamed wild creature given over to its impulses and whimsies, that puts its nostrils in the air and snorts and bays and races across the fields untamed and uncorrected. And so with the impulses of the human heart, even Christian impulses, unless we have what the old men used to say, the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit, you know, when we came under the domination of the imagination-less, inspiration-less, beauty-less culture, we got afraid to talk about the influences of Spirit because they said while the Spirit is not a thing, the Spirit is a person.

Well, of course we know it’s a person. We can quote the creed’s. We know what the Bible says about it. We know the Holy Spirit is a person and not an it, though even the King James version uses it once or twice. But the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. But, shall we say, that because He’s a person, He can’t have influence? They talked about the influences of the Spirit. And they believed that there was a divine inspiration that came on men, and came through the Scriptures and by means of the Scriptures. But that it put within the hearts of Christian men, impulses to righteousness, the influences of the Spirit, they called it. We will rule that all out. Nobody will talk about that now. But that’s one of the things we ought or bring back into the church again, and, and dust it off, and polish it up, and make it mean what it used to mean, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the heart to correct the wild notions that we have; the impulsive, Adamic notions and ideas, and bring them into line with revelation.

Then there is a third word and that is illumination. It’s not quite the same as inspiration, for inspiration has to do with impulse and influence, while illumination has to do with Divine Light that falls upon the Scriptures. The Spirit breathes upon the Word and brings the Truth to sight. And it was our father’s belief that the word of God could not be understood unless the Spirit breathed upon it. The Methodist believed that. The early Baptists believed that. The Salvation Army believed it, and the Lutherans used to teach it. And it was true taught in the Presbyterians. All Protestantism once believed it, that it took an illumination of the Holy Ghost to make us see Truth. And the German said, the heart is always the best theologian, always better than the head, because it’s there the illumination falls.

So, illumination is the third word. And we must have the illumination of the Spirit on the Scriptures. Saw through the Word of God. Saw through it and read it through, and yet never have any illumination on it. It’s like walking in the night. But when we have the illumination of the Spirit, breathing on us, then we know we know. And it saves us from the darkness of reason, for reason is dark, don’t forget it. In the world they tell us, and this is part of the world error; they say reason is a lamp. And there is a sense in which that is true. Reason is a lamp.

When I was a boy, I went fishing with an old fellow named Billy Q as I recall, an old man. And we fished along a creek, or run, we called them there. It was very dark, very dark. We had no lights of course, of any sort, and it was very dark. But he had a fire going. And I said, Billy, how are we going to get home? How are we going to get out of here. We were really in the bushes. And he smiled in front of the fire there. He was an old woodsmen and an old fisherman and he knew. So, he picked up a firebrand. And you know, a burning firebrand gives off very, very little light. But Billy knew what to do with it, so he just began to swing it. And swinging it around his head, he walked ahead of me. And as he swung it around his head, the flame went out, but the glow came on, and Billy enlightened our pathway. Illumination took us clear up the path and back onto the road so we knew where we were out of the bushes. He did it by swinging around this brand that glowed by the wind, in the wind.

Now, that is one kind of illumination. But there’s a better kind, and you know what it is. We have now the electrical lights, various sorts of electric lights. And we have artificial lights which aren’t really artificial. They’re actually, they go back to the sun, but they’re caught and funneled in another way and we call them artificial. And that kind of illumination is infinitely better than swinging a firebrand round your head.

Well, now about all the light that you and I can have by nature is the light of the firebrand we swing around our head. But there is a better light than that, and it is the illumination. Reason is a firebrand, and it’s better to have it than not to have it. And if we do have it, it’ll help us to walk right and stay out of jail and look after our families and be decent. Reason will do that. And we can by vigorously swinging a little stick we call reason. We can get enough light to walk right, but we can’t get enough to save us from the torch itself. We can’t get enough to save us from the world itself. It takes revelation plus illumination that our minds might be illuminated by that which is above reason. If you think that Paul ever fell on his knees before reason, and Paul was Greek-taught, don’t forget it. Paul knew the Greek and was taught by the Greeks under the Greek philosophers and knew about them and could quote them. And yet, if you think that Paul was on his knees before reason, read 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. That’s all you have to do. Just read 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, and you’ll know better from that time on. For He said, where’s the wise man? Where’s the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world and the reasoners, that God made them all foolish, and He has by the Holy Ghost through the gospel given us the real light. And then I mentioned a fourth, and that is the presence of the Holy Spirit Himself to create the mind of Christ in us.

But I want to issue a little warning right here, and it is that no single act of grace will do for us alone, and we with finality, what we want. I picked up a hymnal here, my old 108-year-old hymnal. I go to it sometimes as a source of inspiration. Here was a man of God and they used to sing this in the Methodist Church and other churches. Jesus, plant the root in me; all the mind that was in Thee. Settled peace I then shall find, for Jesus is a quiet mind. Anger no more shall feel, always even, always still. Meekly on my God recline, Jesus is a gentle mind. I shall nothing know besides Jesus and Him crucified. Perfectly to Him be joined, Jesus is a loving mind, I shall triumph evermore, gratefully my God adore. God so good, so true, so kind; Jesus is a thankful mind. Lowly, loving, meek and pure, I shall to the end endure. Be no more to sin inclined, Jesus is a constant mind. I shall fully be restored to the image of my Lord, witnessing to all mankind, Jesus is a perfect mind.

Now they used to long for that, and when a young preacher came to be ordained, they said, have you succeeded in entering into the experience of this perfect mind, perfect love? And he said, no sir, I haven’t yet. And they said, are you seeking? And if he could say, yes sir, vigorously; earnestly seeking they would ordain him. They wanted to know that he either had had some kind of an experience or was earnestly seeking.

Well now, I want to warn that no single act of grace, and it’s never meant to teach it, no single act of grace will do this alone. The mightiest, overwhelming anointing of the Holy Ghost that ever came on a man, will not do this work finally and alone. We can undo the work of God and do it in our own hearts. God wants to baptize us with a spiritual mind and He will do it, but it requires that we live by the Word, that we study the Word, that we fill our minds with the Word, that we look to Him every moment for illumination.

And then there comes our fifth word, cultivation. There is something for us to do. We must cultivate the Spirit’s mind, the mind of Christ. Let this mind be in you, said the man of God. Bent is really what He meant rather than intellect. But let this mind be in you. We’ve got to cultivate. It’s a great mistake to think that we can get converted and then because we have it in Christ, we have everything and from there on we can give little attention to it. It’s a great mistake to think that if we go on and are filled with the Spirit of God, that’s the end of it, and that there’s nothing nowhere from there.

My brethren, when Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, anointed is the word that was used by Peter, anointed with the Holy Spirit. Do you know the next thing He did? What was it? He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. That was the next thing. So, don’t think for a second that the anointing of the Holy Ghost in any degree or measure that God may give or may have given it to you is sufficient. There must be cultivation. And by steeping our minds in the wrong things, we can undo the work of God in making the mind of Christ.

I wonder if I could dig up kind of a grotesque illustration. Suppose that there is a very fine interior decorator. He has consulted the finest, most artistic minds that he can could locate, and he is busy decorating a room. And he has his various colored paints there, and he’s doing it slowly. And this room is evidently going to be a beautiful room, beautifully designed and beautifully done. And then quitting time comes and he goes home and in the middle of the night, some scoundrelly little vandal-ish boys come in and to have themselves a good time, and I wouldn’t have been above it when I was a kid. They pick up brushes and go to work, and undo everything up to that moment. And it’s repeated the next night and the next night. That’s exactly what you and I can do my brother. The mighty Holy Ghost can bring a thankful mind, a noble mind, a pure mind, and begin to teach us to think the thoughts of God. And we can walk right out and fall into the hands of influences like bad boys that will paint weird pictures and make our ugly faces all over the walls of our hearts. And instead of the walls of Zion, standing in their beauty, they will be defaced by the mischief of the devil.

So, you and I have to cultivate the mind of Christ. You cannot without the Scriptures have the mind of Christ, and you cannot know the Scriptures without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost. But even these will not keep your mind heavenly unless you cultivate a heavenly mind, by prayer, by meditation, by dreaming over the Scriptures, by deliberately thinking God’s thoughts about things, and by deliberately eliminating the influences that make your mind either impure or worldly.

I sometimes don’t care whether I’m with some certain Christians or not. They don’t do me any good and I can’t do them much good. For everything from the time, you get with them until you leave is the world. It’s the world, it’s a nice part of the world, but it’s the world nevertheless. But there are some thank God that when you talk to them, the conversation swings around as a needle in the compass swings around to the north magnetic pole. And pretty soon, you’re talking about wonderful things. They that loved the Lord met and talked often one with another. And the Lord heard it and wrote it down in a book. And they shall be mine, saith God in that day.

We can be too jocular. We can be too worldly. We can know too many things, and we can be interested in too many things, and thus scatter our mind. Jesus talked about a single eye, and Paul said, this one thing I do. So there must be a unifying of the forces of our minds and a settling of our minds on the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we’ll think like Jesus. Would you say that narrows our minds, narrows them terribly? Oh, my friends, just what little experience in a small, imperfect way that my own heart has had, I want to tell you that it doesn’t narrow them at all, but it releases them into a vast world of freedom, our minds I mean, into a vast world of freedom that we never knew before.

He is not a caged-bird, who looks heavenward and moves toward God. He’s released. He’s in the cage who thinks as man thinks. Peter was in a cage. His mind was in a prison when he said, Lord, that isn’t the way we do it here. Don’t go get yourself killed. You don’t need to. Pity yourself, Lord. He was in a cage, and it was the Lord who was free when He turned on him and said, you’re thinking like a man instead of like God. That’s not good grammar, but that’s the way we say it now. We’re thinking as a man thinks instead of as God thinks.

Now,  my brethren, may we not these days, don’t go home from church this morning, or wherever you’re going, and by remembering the latest Reader’s Digest quip, or the funny thing somebody said, or some worldly thing, dissipate the influences of the Holy Ghost. But, rather go and live in line with them. And then you move upward into freedom. And it’s the centered mind that is the free mind. It is the scattered mind that is an imprisoned mind. And the mind of the world is imprisoned, but the mind of the Christian is released upward into God, upward into infinitude, upward into the vast sea of being we call the Godhead.

So, that is how we escape the evil influences of the world and get a mind like Christ: revelation, inspiration, illumination, the indwelling Holy Ghost, and cultivation.

I hope you’ll be back tonight. There will be a lot more here. If things go as they have been, I think they will. Some are coming that I know from out of town. And I want to talk tonight and give the 10th in a series which I’ve been following Sunday nights and we’ll have one of those gracious, wonderful song services. I don’t ever hear anything like it anyplace to go. And I could come and sit and listen and join in with my cracked baritone and when time comes to preach, I could go home and say, well, I’ve been to church. So you come tonight. Breathe deep before you get here. Get your lungs ready. We’re going to have a great evening by the grace of God. All right.

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Tozer Talks

“Peter and the Lord“

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“Peter and the Lord”

Author and Pastor A.W. Tozer

March 10, 1957

In the 16th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, the Gospel as written by Matthew under the inspiration of the Spirit, beginning with verse 13. When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, whom do men say that I the Son of Man am? And they said, some say that Thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, others, Jeremias or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And charged He that his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time forth, began Jesus to show unto His disciples how He must go up unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him saying, be it far from thee Lord. This shall not be unto thee. But Jesus turned and said unto Peter, get thee behind me, satan. Thou art an offense unto me for thou savoreth not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Now, I want you to notice the illogic that is here. First, Jesus blesses Peter because Peter is illuminated and has a testimony that our Lord approves. And then following immediately upon that, Jesus, because there’s more light there, gives still more light and says, I must go up and suffer and be killed and rise again. And the same Peter, whose name had been changed and who was said to be the rock, and thou art Peter, and the same Peter that had had the words blessed art thou for the Father has revealed this to thee, takes Jesus aside. Took Him I assume, took Him aside and rebuked Him and said, be this far from thee Lord. This shall not be unto thee. What you’ve said, isn’t so. It can’t happen to you. But He turned and said under Peter, get thee behind me satan. The same one that He had said, blessed art thou, Simon Barjona. Get thee behind Me satan. Thou art a stumbling block to me, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Now, if these two stories, or the two situations that are revealed here, had been backwards to each other, I could have understood it. In verse 21-22, and three where Jesus says that He has to be crucified, and Peter rebukes him for it, and Peter says, get behind Me, Satan, if that had come earlier. And then the great confession had come later, I’d have done what everybody is forced to do. I’d have concluded that there had been a conversion take place in between. But it was a backward conversion. Jesus had predicted that He should be taken and arrested and crucified, and finally He should rise again from the dead. And Peter had protested this. And Christ then rebuked Peter. Now that’s the situation. And the fact that Peter had been illuminated by the Heavenly Father, according to Jesus own words previously, that he had faith in Christ Jesus and nobody else had, and that he was willing to give that as a testimony. This, though it brought the approval of the Savior, and the pronouncement of blessing upon Peters head, it didn’t guarantee Peter against mistakes.

Now, with that thought as a background, I want to go on and point to you simply, that human sympathy can impair spiritual judgment. Peter loved the Lord Jesus. And when Jesus said, I’m going up to Jerusalem now; and you’re thinking of me as the great Jesus that can heal the sick and raise the dead and still the waves and do wonders. But I’m going up to Jerusalem and in a measure, I’m going to disappoint you. I am going to be taken by the Gentiles. And at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, I’m going to be killed. And then He added, I’ll rise again the third day.

Now, if it had been today, they’d have suggested a vacation to our Lord. They’d have said, now the pressure is too heavy, Master. And we love you and we believe in you, but the pressure is too heavy. Evidently, you’re not in a very good mental state. And therefore, we suggest, we will pay your way to Florida. And we will give you a month just to loll around in the sun. But there was nothing wrong with our Lord’s mind. Nothing at all, no exhaustion here, no need of a vacation. He rested when he needed to and told them to do the same. But that wasn’t the trouble here. The trouble was, as He said to Peter, thou savorist not the things that be of God, but the things that be of man. Peter’s mistake was natural enough, and that was just why it was a mistake. It was a natural conclusion.

And Jesus said, you think not, though I’ve looked up about a dozen versions and read about a dozen versions, the most scholarly and accurate, to see what He really said, and they vary. And what Jesus said seemed to be about this. He said, your point of view is earthly instead of heavenly. Your viewpoint is man’s and not God’s. You’re thinking like man, instead of thinking like God. That’s what he said, in effect, thou savorist not is rather old English and we don’t say that anymore. You don’t walk up to a man and say thou savorist wrong. You go up to him and say, I think you’ve got a wrong opinion. It’s just a different way of talking. But that’s what Peter said. And it was Peter’s sympathy. That’s what Jesus said, and He said it because Peter’s sympathy had led him to deny truth, rebuke the Lord and called down self-pity on the Savior. The margin says, pity thyself, Lord. Another version says, why, God have mercy on you Master. This can’t happen to you.

Now, human sympathy then can impair spiritual judgment. Now, we can hardly exaggerate the injurious effect of the fall. When the devil began to deny the fall, about the time of higher criticism and what we now call modernism; when he began to deny the fall and say that humanity has not fallen from a better place, but climbed up to its present position from a worse one. One of the major tenets, one of the keys to unlock all Christian understanding was taken away from us. But we can hardly exaggerate the injurious effects of the fall. And we are made to see, by the words of our Lord and by the Bible generally, that even our good is bad. Or if that’s too strong to say that even our good is bad, then we may say that if it is not bad, it is at least, it at least may blind us and mislead us.

Now, it’s pretty hard to walk up to Peter and say, Peter, your human sympathy is bad. And yet our Lord seemed to do it, for He said, you’re satan; that’s satan talking through you. And this viewpoint of yours, that I’m to be protected and not allowed to suffer, it’s not right. It’s a human thing and a fallen thing, and it’s not God thinking in you. It’s you thinking yourself, or the devil thinking through you. Get behind me satan. So that human affection, one of the most beautiful and tender things left in the world, yet places us on the other side from God, for that’s exactly what happened here. Peter was placed on the other side from God because his affection for the Lord Jesus forbade that Jesus should go and suffer, and said, God, have mercy on you. Don’t you pity yourself Master? Don’t you see, this can’t be. We won’t allow this. And his human sympathies were talking, and his affection was eloquent. And it was this beautiful thing as we say. Human sympathy untouched by Divine Love that placed Peter over on the other side, even though I hesitate to say it, on the side of the devil temporarily and away from Jesus Christ.

Now, the human reason is fallen. And being fallen, it’s not trustworthy. It is like a false compass that is just a little bit off, not much, but enough off so that if a ship or a plane trusts it, there’ll be tragedy and break. It is like a watch that varies, first running ahead and then falling behind. And it may do for a farmer maybe who doesn’t care whether it’s seven or nine to him. It doesn’t make too much difference, but to someone who depends upon a watch, such as a railroad man, it can mean wreck and death. If it’s a varying watch, the human reason is like a colorblind eye in traffic that doesn’t know when the lights have changed.

Now, that’s human reason. And that’s what Jesus meant when he said, Thou thinkest as man thinkest and that’s why you’re so mistaken. And because the human reason is fallen, the religious judgments are warped. They’re warped by passion and by fear and by desire and by prejudice and by pride, all these warped human judgments, just as a watch may have something wrong with it, and its hands may thus be deceiving the owner. Or, just as a compass may deceive the sailor, so human judgments are deceiving to the human who has to trust them, because they’re twisted by the magnetic attraction of passion. They are driven by the dynamic force of fear, desire and prejudice and pride and many other things, twist our judgments. And yet, we are dependent upon our religious judgments to a great degree, because we’re bound to approve and disapprove every day, we’re alive. The Bible says, test the spirits and see whether they be of God.

And the Bible also says, prove all things and hold fast that which is good. And the Bible says, by your fruits, you shall know them. And it says that in one place where it’s possible to be where our senses are sharpened, and our inner life able to tell what is good and what is bad. Hebrews and Paul talks about that now, yet be even though we have a warped, religious judgment, and even though some of those things that are best to us, our sympathies and our affections, will help to warp our judgments. Yet we are forced to use those judgments I say and make decisions that involve life and death and heaven and hell. A carpenter or a farmer or a coal miner or a man who deals in great rough chunks of things, a little mistake might not be so harmful to him, but let us surgeon make a mistake. Let a surgeon make a mistake and how tragic it is. Let a pilot in the air there make a serious mistake, and how tragic it may be and sometimes is for everybody on board.

And you and I are compelled to make decisions, not great chunks of decisions that don’t matter; don’t matter whether it’s seven or nine o’clock, whether we’re on this latitude or longitude or another one or what, but that involves life and death and heaven and hell and peace, a woe forever. And yet, the Lord said to this man, Peter, your thoughts are not God’s thoughts, but the thoughts of man and you think like a worldling.

Now my brethren, up to now it might be discouraging, but I have this to tell you, that the Bible, the Christian dynamic, engages to redeem and save the human mind. The Christian dynamic engages to purify the emotions and to deliver us from the things that warp our judgment: fear and hate and prejudice and pride in these things, and warp our judgment. And the Christian message and the dynamic engage to save us from the carnal human sympathies and from inordinate, carnal affections.

Do you want me to give you an example of what a carnal, human sympathy will do? Here is a pastor, and while he may be himself a saved man and believe in the new birth and the gospel, his human sympathies, such as Peter showed here, often lead him to do, to say this. He goes to visit a man who has been and is known to be a sinful man, a very sinful man. And he’s always been sinful and he’s never lived any other kind of life but a sinful life. And they tell him at the door of the hospital room, the nurse whispers this man has only a few hours. And he checks with the doctor, yes, he has only a few hours. And the weeping wife outside trying to keep back her tears and says, John’s gone in only a few hours. And then she says, but Pastor, I want to ask you one thing. He’s a very sensitive man. He has been all his life, easily hurt, and he’s an affectionate, warm-hearted man and his ideas of religion have all been very broad, and please don’t talk to him about Jesus. Please don’t talk to him about the Savior at all. Because if you do, you will stir him up and he may even have fewer hours to be with us. So when you go in, console him and comfort him.

Well, this pastor stands there in the door, looking at the sad, eager face of the wife, and then looking in at the set face of his old sinner friend whom he knew, and he’s caught in the middle. Is he going to think like God, or is he going to think like a man? Is he going to have divine love or human sympathy? Is it going to be God’s way or man’s; but he’s too weak. He has his children think of, a nice job, and he’s too weak. So, he allows sympathy to get the better of him.

So, he goes in and chats a bit about the weather and he saw a robin this morning, and you’ll be ought of here soon, John. You’ll be back on the golf links and I’ll see you again. He knows he’s lying. And so, after a little perfunctory prayer in which nothing is mentioned about sin or repentance, or the new birth, or hell or death, he goes. He’s made his pastoral call. Three days later, he has the funeral. Again, human sympathy comes and dictates, and human affection says you don’t dare tell the truth about this man. So, he gets up and reminds the public what an outstanding citizen John was. And the shadow falls over everything. The coffin is screwed shut. The man is put down in the grave to await the judgment of the wicked dead. And there has been a falsification of divine truths. Human sympathy has conquered over God’s love. And human affection and pity have taken the place of the tender mercies of the Holy Ghost. Truth dictated that he go in and say to the man, friend, please don’t feel bad, but I must tell you that you’ve been a sinner and except you be born again, you shall surely perish. You may not have long and I’m here as your best friend you ever had. You don’t know it, but I am the best friend you ever had, because I’m telling you, you don’t dare face judgment the way you are. That would be the kindest thing, but it wouldn’t be the most sympathetic thing. It would be the truest thing, but it wouldn’t be the most affectionate thing. And that happens all the time. Afraid to talk to them when they’re dying, for it will hurt their feelings and then preach them into heaven after they’re in hell.

Jesus turned on his old friend Peter and said, and I can hear sadness in that voice, but I can also hear sharpness there. He said, Peter, satan has taken control of your thinking. Get behind me. You are an offense unto me. That is, you’re stumbling block in my road. Get behind me. He was trying to get Jesus to pity himself and miss Calvary.

I think there has not been a time since I’ve been a preacher and been connected with the Missionary Alliance, which has been most of my all, of my adult life that I ever felt this until the Maxeys. Somehow or other I fell in love with those, Shirley and Ed and their lovely children. And they seem, as my wife and I often say, like our children and grandchildren. And for once, human sympathy rose up in me. And I felt like saying, you can’t take these darlings, to that awful Valley. You can’t, this refined, gracious, smiling little woman, you can take her in there Ed. I didn’t say it. But my human sympathies were at war with my, the divine love in my heart. For if ever there was a rose in a dirty junk heap, it is to send the Maxey’s into the Baliem Valley. Human sympathy would have said, no.

And our Lord would have said, get thee behind me. This isn’t the way my church is run. My church isn’t run on human sympathies. My church is run on sacrifice and giving up and cross-carrying and dying, and it means martyrdom or death or cannibalism. My church is run that way, not run by human sympathy. Well, thank God, the Christian dynamic, the power of God in the human life, I say, engages us to deliver us from carnal human sympathies which may be very dangerous. And other cases of sympathies get in the way.

A couple pray and they believe God and finally, years go by and there’s no children, at last, thank God, they’ve got a little girl. Well, now she’s, their delight. And they offer her to the Lord in dedication and they pray over her, and their faces shine as they tell how God answered their prayer and when they had given up hope of ever having children, had this lovely girl. Now, she’s 20 years old and she’s at a missionary convention somewhere. And she’s a Christian and she hears the call and she goes forward with the rest and says I am putting myself in the hands of God. I’ll go anyplace. And she comes home, delighted to tell her parents, I am going to be a missionary.

And that beautiful thing, human love rises and strikes and says we brought you up, we’ve educated you, we’ve prayed over you. You can’t treat us like this. And many such a young woman or man, young man has been beaten down and defeated and forced to take a path God never called him to take, and the foreign field lost a missionary because human sympathy said, no, you can’t go and waste your culture and your education and your intelligence somewhere in some hole in a foreign land among half naked pagans. Sympathy, won over consecration, and human affection over divine love. That’s happening all the time.

And so, the carnal mind is present. It’s present even after we say, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And even after Christ repeats, blessed art thou, you’re my child. The Father has revealed who I am in your mind. Even after that, the carnal mind is present, and the world influences, and it has its educational media, tradition, and history and society; in schools and literature and all the rest. And these capture and charm even Christian minds. And so, we say, we’re Christians, but we think like men, we’re going to heaven, but we’re thinking like the earth. We say God has our heart, but our mentality is a carnal thing. How shall we then escape the world influences?

It would be time for another sermon, and I wonder, if right here, I shouldn’t break off, and next week, give you a four-point sermon on how we can escape the carnal mind and the earth and the world’s thinking and think like Christians. I’ve got a little four-point conclusion here. But I think I’m going to hold it. It’s five minutes to twelve and I’ve talked about long enough.

But I’ll conclude anyhow by saying this. That we don’t dare trust our human sympathies, and we don’t dare trust our human affections. And yet, we can’t eliminate our human affection. How can you? Already I’ve loved that little boy that I held in my arms this morning. I’ve never seen him before, but already, he grinned at me with that broad, toothless grin. Already I love him. How can you keep from it? What can you do? Is it wrong to love your babies? Is it wrong for me to grin every time I think of my little grandson Paul? No.

Human sympathy is a valid thing. Human affection is a valid thing. But when we project it upward into the spiritual realm and try to understand the strange, self-contradictory mystery of a cross, by means of it, we always fail. And that’s what’s the matter with liberalism and modernism and half of these so-called churches that have no life in them. They have glorified the tender virtues, sympathy and kindness and friendship and tolerance. They’ve glorified the human virtues, and they’ve pushed them upward into the kingdom of God, or tried to do it. And their religion is simply a composite of human virtues.

My brethren, salvation is not a human thing, though it was done for human beings. It’s a divine thing. And My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are My ways your ways said God. And when we try to understand Christianity with our human heads and evaluated it with our human sympathies, we’ll miss it every time. Now thinkest not as God thinkest. Thou thinkest as man thinkest. Get behind me.

Now, those are pretty stern words. And I’m sure, Christ would have been called unChristlike for doing it. But he did it and boldly put Peter behind him. In one version says He turned His back on Peter it’s told, dramatically saying, get out, I can’t listen to that kind of talk. And just three to four verses above, He’d said, blessed art thou. No, my friend, the fact that you’ve been converted, won’t save you from thinking like a worldling unless you do something about it; unless you let God save you from it.

Next week, I want to talk about four escapes: revelation, inspiration, illumination and the power of the Holy Ghost. That’ll be next Sunday morning’s sermon. In the meantime, let us thank God we don’t have to be carnal men and think like carnal men. That God has given us His book and He’s given us His Spirit. And if we dare to be cross-caring Christians, we can get deliverance from the sentimentality of the world and rise into the love of God and see clearly. Amen.