Tag: Sin

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Tozer Talks

“Things Permitted by God for Growth in Grace“

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Things Permitted by God for Growth in Grace

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 28, 1958

Outline

The Bible and the nature of the world.

Disciples appoint leaders to manage daily ministry, prioritizing prayer and preaching.
Tozer desires to be a liberal preacher, imagining headlines like “Khrushchev converted to Russian Baptist Church” or “Walter Reuther apologizes to General Motors.”
Tozer laments the absence of biblical preaching in modern Christianity.

Church conflicts and sin in early Christianity.

Tozer argues that conflicts often have deeper causes than apparent.
Tozer: Early church faced sin despite Pentecost, miracles, and redemption.

The Presence of Sin in Religious Settings.

Tozer argues that holiness cannot be assumed based on outward appearances, even in a church setting.
Satan targets those closest to God, not those far away.
Tozer argues that Satan hates prayerful people and tries to trouble them, but God loves them and delivers them.
Tozer advises against praying and instead suggests living a lukewarm life to avoid trouble but acknowledges that this approach may lead to hell.

Sin and its presence in the church.

Tozer emphasizes the importance of standing up for freedom and truth, even if it means facing opposition.
Tozer argues that sin will always act like sin and can only be dealt with through redemption or hell.
God uses evil to polish the good, as seen in the Bible and in the life of Paul.

God’s use of suffering to perfect believers.

Tozer: God uses suffering to polish and perfect those in His bosom.
Tozer argues that God uses difficult situations to perfect and cleanse believers, citing examples from the Bible.
Tozer describes a community where men would physically punish a wife beater, breaking his spirit and shaming him.

Facing and dealing with sin in the church.

Tozer: Shame can be a means of spiritual growth, as God allows us to be publicly corrected and humbled.
Tozer warns of unconfessed sin in the church, urging separation and spiritual maturity.
A.W. Tozer emphasizes the importance of being oriented towards the spiritual life, facing the right direction, and being prepared to jump into action when trouble comes.
Tozer uses the metaphor of a church being like a battlefield, with wounds and weaknesses, but also with forgiveness and growth towards maturity.

Message

In the Book of Acts, in the sixth chapter of the book of Acts, in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplied. there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them and said, it is not reason that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you, seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, who we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: And these they set before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. And the Word of God increased, and the number of disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. And the great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. And Stephen, full of faith and power did great wonders and miracles among the people.

I want to make a confession this morning. I wish I could be a liberal preacher. I wish that I didn’t have to tell the truth. Oh, just for a little while, maybe, not long. I’d probably get tired of too much sweetness and light. But I’ve thought about what I’d like to do if I could write my own headlines. If I could write my own headlines, I’d have one of the most wonderful newspapers ever published since man scratched on a rock and left it for some other man to figure out.

For instance, if I were editing that paper that I’d like to edit tomorrow morning. I had to have a headline saying, Khrushchev has been converted and has applied for admission to the Russian Baptist Church. Now that would be a headline, and blood pressure would go down all over the world. And then I’d have another headline, say, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, went fishing together and kissed on each cheek when they parted. Then I’d quit worrying about the Formosa Straights. Then I’d have another headline saying Walter Reuther apologizes to General Motors for bitter things he said about them. And then I’d have another headline saying, 48 hours since a crime has been committed in the United States. Nobody has been killed on the highway since last Wednesday.

I can fix myself up a newspaper that would be something, now I tell you, and it would sell if I could follow it with anything. But of course, I’d have to, on the last line down below in red ink, I would have to write “April Fool’s.” Because that isn’t the kind of world we live in brothers and sisters. We live in a miserable, fallen, upset, hate-filled, God-defying world. A world where the spirit of wickedness works in the children of disobedience. And so that isn’t the kind of headline we get. Look tomorrow morning and see, find any of those headlines or anything approaching them.

Then I’d like to be able to preach for a while, announce a series of sermons and never have to acknowledge the presence of anything wrong with anybody. Start out with everybody 100% sanctified and cleansed and indwelt by the Holy Ghost, loving each other and in great fellowship; and great grace was upon everybody. And the devil was chained, and we were surrounded by the presence of beautiful angels. I’d like to preach like that for a while to be released.

But you know, you can’t find Scripture to support that kind of preaching. Some are trying it. And I don’t know how long they’re going to be able to keep it up. Some of them manage to find something to talk about and still keep it up for a long time. But you know, whenever you open your Bible, you run into two things, the grace of God and the sin of man. And no matter where, just close your eyes and flip it like this and see what you find, 2 Chronicles. Well, there you find trouble. And Solomon did thus and thus. And flip it over again. You find in the Psalms; God be merciful unto us and bless us. Well, why did you have to pray God be merciful? Because we’re a bunch of sinners. Find your Bible, open your Bible, wherever you will, and you will find trouble and grace, grace and sin, mercy and judgment, goodness and severity. You’ll find it throughout the entire Bible.

Now, all this is preliminary to saying a few words which I trust will be helpful. About this passage I just read to you here in Acts the sixth chapter. It says there arose a murmuring among the disciples about the Grecians against the Hebrews.

Now, the occasion was simply this, that certain people believed that the widows, certain widows were being neglected. They said, there is segregation being practiced here. And these Grecian Jews, who were Hellenistic Jews, Jews who had been brought up and trained in Greek schools in contradiction to those who had been trained and brought up in Hebrew schools. And when they got to Jerusalem and got converted, they naturally, the ones that were Hellenists and had been brought up in Greek schools and had been taught Greek, spoke with an accent. And the ones who had been brought up in Palestine, spoke the language of Palestine and had no accent. And the result was that the ones with the accent, said that their widows had been neglected. They said, you are showing partiality towards the ones that don’t have the accent. You’re practicing segregation here.

Now, the apostles, of course, were Palestinian Jews, and they were accused of favoring the Palestinian widows, very, very normal for the Hellenistic Jews, the Grecian Jews to imagine. Now, the cause of it was much deeper than that. Always remember one thing, when there’s a fight, the reason for the fight is never what you thought it was. Two men meet and start calling each other names, and then finally end up in a bloody brawl. And when they get dragged into court, the judge says, what caused this? And then one says he called me a name. And the other one says, Yes, but he called me a name first. That wasn’t the cause of it. That was the occasion for it. But the cause of it was deeper than that. And so it is with every trouble everywhere all the time. The real source of the trouble is always deeper than we think.

So, the cause laid deeper, the hidden presence of uncleansed sin was here. You know, we’re romanticists, you and I, and extremely inclined to be romantic. And we like to look back upon the church and talk in glowing terms about the church that was. There never has been a period in history when the church was all it should have been. And there never has been a church that was all that it should have been. I have quoted here before the little proverb that says he lies well who comes from a far country. And if you can find somebody that can come far enough that he knows that nobody can check on him. He’s likely to describe the spiritual conditions where he came from in glowing terms. But the simple truth is, if you went there, you probably would find that there were troubles there too.

Well, the cause lies in sin. And in the sixth chapter of Acts only a little while removed from Pentecost, what does it say here in the margin. It leaves it the same year. According to this, I don’t know how far you can trust these marginal dates. But according to the marginal dates here, it was the same year. And not yet one year removed from Pentecost, they were having troubles and accusing each other of partiality. So, you see, even that early church was human and the sin was there. And right in the presence of the apostles, here was the sour spirit expressing itself, expressing itself in dark looks and complaining and concealed whisperings and discontent.

And see the seriousness now of all this. God had become flesh to dwell among them. And they called Him Emanuel, Jesus the Savior and He was made Lord and Christ, and the Holy Ghost had come. After He had been slain and raised from the dead, the Holy Ghost had come. Redemption was an accomplished fact. And the Spirit had come as fire and sat upon them, and many were converted, and miracles were being done all around them. And yet, right in the very presence of it, there were murmurings and complaining. You see, this points up a well-known fact that sin is such a rash and unreasonable and rebellious thing by nature, that it will include itself even into the sanctuary.

I’d like to believe that when the Father puts on his black robe and gets his clerical collar on, and the little bright, freshly scrubbed altar boys get their robes, and everybody comes in still and quiet and the incense is smelt and the organ is heard and the bells jingle, I’d like to believe that that means everybody there is holy. And I’d like to believe that in an Alliance Church when everybody comes stumbling up the stairs and talking out loud, down to the front, and all the noise and ugliness that attend our services. Sometimes when we’ve all gotten together, I like to think that means simplicity, artlessness childlikeness, and that when we stand to sing and preach that that meant absolute holiness.

But you know, you can’t be realistic and believe any of those things. You can’t believe they would take a fellow that smokes and drinks and gamble’s and loafs and put a black robe on him and have him stand up and jingle bells. That doesn’t make him holy. And it doesn’t make a man holy who loves money and loves to eat a five-pound steak and go to bed at night and tell jokes until one o’clock. It doesn’t mean that when he gets up and preaches an evangelistic sermon that you’re hearing a holy man. As sin intrudes into the sanctuary, brethren, and it follows right to the prayer meeting. There are those that imagine that a banquet, or say, religious ballgame, that that’s where the devil; the devil never attended a religious ballgame yet. He didn’t need to. The devil attends the prayer meeting. He works where the people of God are trying to be a holy. A doctor doesn’t work on a man who had just been pronounced 100% healthy. He works on the fellow that’s likely to die.

And so, Satan doesn’t work on the man or the woman that isn’t close to God. He’s works on the ones that are so close he’s afraid he’s going to lose them. So, he follows around into the sanctuary. It was when the angels of God appeared before the presence of the Most High, as it was there that satan appeared. Satan appeared among the angels. You’ll look for Satan in a saloon.

The cartoonists have all showed Satan in a saloon, or in a halfway house somewhere, sitting on the front porch with half dressed women. He never attends any such places. Satan never attends a theater. Satan’s never found in a gambling den. Satan never goes to a saloon. Satan isn’t anywhere near Skid Row. If he sees a fella start for a mission and thinks he’s going to get converted, of course, he will send a demon to work on him. But as long as the fellow just lies around Skid Row, he doesn’t bother him. He knows he’s got him. The chicken raiser doesn’t bother when the chickens are inside the pen. But when one flies over the fence that he goes out and gets worried.

Now it’s right in the presence of the Holy One, right in the presence of God, sin comes. It’s so brazen and rash, that it follows right up to Pentecost and right in among the apostles and right where the saints of God are in prayer. My friends, we want to remember that. Some of you go to prayer and you say, I have a hard time in prayer. Well, if you don’t want to have a hard time, quit praying. If you don’t want a hard time, stop praying. You won’t have nearly as hard a time if you stopped praying as you will if you do.

But you say Mr. Tozer, I’ve always been taught the opposite. Well, then you’ve been taught wrong. Because it’s the praying man that gets himself in trouble. It’s the praying man that satan hates. It’s the right living man, satan hates. God loves, but Satan hates the praying man, the good man, the man who’s escaping, the man who wants to be right. The man who gets on his knees, He’s the One God loves, but satan hates. And so, Satan is going to trouble the man. It was one of the problems of the book of Psalms, one of the problems of the book of Job, why did the good people have such a tough time of it? It’s because Satan hates them.

God loves them, and Satan hates them. And they are in trouble because they’re prayerful people. So if you don’t want trouble, don’t pray. If you want to go to hell, why then, don’t pray. But if you want to have a relatively easy time and get along with your neighbors, don’t pray. Try to get along with everybody and go the way they go. And if they want you to drink, drink a little, but don’t drink too much. If they want you to dance, dance a little, but don’t dance too much. They tell dirty stories that makes your wife blush, laugh, guffaw and then apologize to your wife and say, that was kind of raw, but I had to laugh. Live like that and you stay out of trouble. Get on your knees and you invite trouble. Go to God and ask God to delivery you and set you free and make a holy man out of you, and you invite trouble. But it’s a wonderful kind of trouble, wonderful kinds of trouble.

I don’t quote Franklin D. Roosevelt very often. But he made a speech one time in which he said something that every American molecule inside of my body from my balding head to the bottom of my feet responded with an amen. He said we Americans love freedom and we’d rather die on our feet than live on our knees, meaning by that, we’d rather die fighting for freedom than to kowtow to a totalitarian big wig. And I, for my part, any day of the world at my age would rather give my life and die and have it over, to be a free American and to walk around looking over my shoulder for fear of Khrushchev or Mao Zedong was going to hear something I said. I’d rather die fighting than live a slave.

It’s the same way in things of the Spirit. Long ago I had to make up my mind. Are you going to be an easy, smooth preacher and get along and having everybody love you and celebrate your birthdays and bring you flowers and just carry around on a chip as we would say on the farm? Or are you going to be a prophet? And I said, God you can have the flowers and the other boys can have the gifts and memorials and I’ll take the power and the insight and the prophetic discernment and truth and the warfare in the fight. After a while you will likely smell the smoke. But I confess this morning that I’ve had on just about enough smoke. And I’d like to preach something nice and smooth and sweet. And I’ll do the best I can tonight.

But this morning, I’ve got to talk to you about this. And it isn’t sweet at all. It shows sin right in the presence of praying people, rationed rebellious. And now until it’s been destroyed, it will always act like itself. You can always be sure of that. It will act like itself. And sin can never learn good, and it must always be itself, even at the gate of heaven. Sin must always act like itself. God always acts like God and He can never act any other way. Satan sometimes tries to act like an angel of light, but that in itself is sin. So, the devil always acts like the devil. And God being holy, can’t possibly act any other way but like God. Satan, being unholy, can try to act like an angel but only succeeds in acting like a devil infinitely more devilish.

So, sin will always act like sin. And it can be dealt with only in two ways: by redemption or by hell. Either by confession and deliverance from it or by the certainty of hell after a while for it will go. And sin will be the fuel to keep the fires burning.

Now, why does God allow this? Why does He allow it among his children? Why? Well, He allows it for a number of reasons. Because He’s merciful, and a lot of people that were making trouble here in the book of Acts, the Bible just passed over them. They were making trouble, but later on, they saw their mistake and they went on to know God better, and they were ashamed of the way they had lived.

Haven’t you? Can’t you remember back, maybe some years back when you were sharp, and maybe you gossiped about somebody or said something hateful to somebody, and now you’re deeply sorry? And if God had judged you right then, sharply and harshly, he would have lost you. But He was patient and now you’re sorry, and you’re living a better life than you did. So, God in His mercy allows sin even to enter into the sanctuary.

And then it acts as an abrasive to polish God’s saints. God wants His saints to be shining saints. And God uses acids to make them shine, and to determine which ones are real and which ones aren’t which is gold and which is only imitation gold. The presence of evil in the world, and even crowding itself brazenly into the sanctuary, it’s the sharp switch God uses to chasten His children. And later, they’re to be thrown into the fire. Don’t forget it. He says, let the wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest. And then He will garner the wheat into His harvest. But He will throw the the tares into the fire.

Now those should be terrifying thoughts. They’re terrifying thoughts. It’s a terrifying thought to me that God uses the rejected to perfect the accepted. That’s a terrifying thought, that God uses a man He’s rejected to polish the man He’s accepted. He uses the woman He’s rejected, to punish and polish the woman He’s accepted. He uses the evil to help polish the good. If you don’t believe it, read your Bible. All the way through it was like that, tribulations and troubles and woes and jail sentences and lashings and all that Paul had to endure. They were that he might be a better man.

And Jesus learned obedience, how? By the things He enjoyed, no. He had learned obedience by the things He suffered. And the Pharisees and the scribes and Herodians and the lawyers and the rest of them that made life miserable for Christ, they were the abrasives polishing Him to make Him, even though He were God made flesh. They still taught Him something. He learned obedience by the things that He suffered.

Now, He never sinned. Let’s keep that straight. It’s necessary that we should. If He ever sinned, then sin had a claim on Him. He never sinned, so sin had no claim on Him. And when He died, He died not for Himself, but for us. And there lies the glory of atonement. But something He had to learn as a man, and that thing He learned as we are learning it in the same way.

Well, how the apostles met this. Do you notice how the apostles met it? I don’t know whether I’d ought to go on and talk about how the apostles met it or whether I’d better close here. I think maybe I’ll just close here and point out that God is using things and people that He is never going to receive to His bosom, to polish and perfect those whom He has in His bosom.

In the olden days, a man who loved his children very well, used to hire school masters and governesses. And they turned over to those school masters and governesses, the care of their children. And they were permitted to punish them; corporal punishment was permitted. And while the parents were greatly careful to get the right person, they did allow them to punish their children.

Now, God allows us to be punished. And it’s something we don’t like. We don’t want it. We wish it didn’t have to be so. We wish that everything could be sweetness and light. We wish that we could just live on syrup and lie down deep in green pastures, all day long beside the green pastures. We wish that, but it doesn’t work that way, my friends, God uses a tough, brutal husband to perfect and cleanse and sanctify a wife who’s obedient. And sometimes he lets her turn and say things back. And then he punishes her for saying it, even though the ugly husband to whom she said it, deserved that 20 times compounded. But that she dared to say it, God punishes her and makes her sorry, and she has to repent. And the good woman has to go to a bad man and say, I’m sorry. I’m to blame when it’s just the other way around. And so, it is God is using the troubles we have in this world as polishers and abrasives to wear away and take off the rust and to remove the impurities.

And this is one of the ways that God works. In the book of Hebrews, you know, it is so plain, that I don’t know why we escape it. It says in that 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews, that we must remember that the author, Jesus, is the author and finisher of our faith. And that for the joy set before Him, He endured. For the joy set before Him He endured.

And what did He do in the shame? You know, that’s one thing we can’t stand. We can stand pain, but we can’t stand shame. That’s one thing. That’s why I believe if corporal punishment were reintroduced. No, I’m not bloodthirsty, but I think that in the day, you know, when a big rough brute of a man beats his wife and beats up everybody he meets in a drunken brawl. Nowadays, they give him a suspended sentence.

But there was a day when men around the neighborhood, after a fellow out in our country, after a fellow had done this a few times, he’d beaten his wife a few times, or beaten his children until they come to school with black eyes.

He got a little note from the farmers around the neighborhood, signed by fellas around the neighborhood. And they said, now, we’ve had enough of this. Then the next time he got a little too much liquor and beat up his wife, several fellows appeared, too many for him to handle and said, come on, you might as well go quietly. And he knew what was coming.

So, they took him out, stripped him to the waist, and switched him like a kid. Switched him. And after a fellow had had a good licking, he never could lift his eyes again. If they’d come and tried to fight him; if they’d simply come and given him punishment for the body, he could have taken it.

But after he’d been taken out and whipped, it broke his spirit. He lost face. After that he had no face left at all, just a head. And every place he went, the people would smile. After that, he was a pariah, an outcast. Shame, often drove men like that out of the neighborhood. They just couldn’t stand it. They’d been licked like a kid. And they were so proud of the fact when they flex their muscle, a great big watermelon came up here, proud of their muscles. But after they got licked, they hadn’t anything left to be proud of. Shame is a terrible thing, brethren.

And the Scripture says here that he despised the shame. The shame He endured. He despised it and is now sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. And so now, you remember, that the Scripture says, my son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord. The very chastening we sometimes get from God, that very chastening is itself shameful. He allows us to be publicly put down a notch. And with shame, we hang around wondering if we will be received by the company.

I have never forgotten the missionaries telling about the Congo. A church member there who has been received into full fellowship, backslides, and commits any act he shouldn’t commit, and makes him sit in the penitential form for six months. There are special select box seats over here to the left of the pulpit. And if two or three fellas appear there with the shame of face and sheepdog look, they’ve been caught doing something good Christians shouldn’t do. And the old elder sentences them to sit in that box for six months, every Sunday twice until they have proved they’ve lived right, and then they can get out. It’s a tough way, a tough way, but it works. People are happy to keep right and live right in order that they might not get put out there on display. And Paul, in one of his terrible self-disclosures said, we have been made as the off scouring. We’ve been made a spectacle, the shame of it.

Well, it’s too bad, but it has to come, and it’s always brought upon us because somewhere there’s unconfessed sin, not necessarily ours, not necessarily yours or mine, not necessarily in among the people of God at all, except it has come in among them, and it’s not part of them. So instead of our seeing the headline, Khrushchev converted, Mao Zedong spends all night in prayer, we’re going to read Khrushchev insults Ike, Mao Zedong threatens to take Formosa. We’re going to hear, so and so dragged in an alley and murdered on the north side.

We’re going to hear that sin is present in the world. Sin is here and we’ve got to face it. And we’ve got to learn how to live with it but learn to live apart from it. And we’ve got to learn to live in a religious community, which we call the church, that isn’t perfect. And after all, suppose somewhere, there were to spring up in Chicago, a perfect church. A church where they had no carnal people at all. There wasn’t any flesh left, it was all crucified. Everybody was saintly. They were all Tom Hares. Everybody was as sweet and as pure as a dear old lady in Pittsburgh where I was last week. Ninety-nine years, nine months and 18 days she was, one of their old saints, she slept away and went to heaven.

Well, you fill a church full of people like that. Do you think you’d feel at home there? I don’t know whether I would or not. But you’ll never find one like that. You find one, two, or three or five or ten, but you won’t find a church full.

We’re growing up. We’re maturing. We’re fighting. And always where there’s a battle, there’ll be some people wounded. The only army that has no wounds is an army that has never smelled the smoke. And the only church that has no flaws and no weaknesses is a church who lives on Shakespeare and book reviews. They have no reason to have any troubles. They just come and go. But all of us who are seeking to know God better, we’ll have our troubles.

Now somebody says, trying to think this out and says, is Mr. Tozer slyly trying to get at some trouble in the church? No, there’s no trouble in our church. If there is, I haven’t heard of it. Everybody’s happy as far as I know. And we know and forgive each other and realize we’re not all we ought to be and not all we’re going to be. But there’s no trouble that I know of. This, simply, I preach it because it’s here, it’s in the book.

And it’s well for us to be informed. They call that oriented now, that is, orientated. It’s the same word. It means facing around in the right direction, so you’re squared off to where you’re going. Unless we know these things we’ll never be oriented to the spiritual life. You’ve got to get you squared off and face right.

I read somewhere a fellow said, never park with your wheels twisted. He said never back in, then leave your wheels turned left. If you do when you start. you’ll forget and you’ll leap out into the traffic. He said, always square them straight ahead so when you start, you won’t suddenly find yourself out in traffic.

Well, that squaring away. That’s what I like. I like to preach the Word of God so His people can, if they will be squared away facing the right direction. And from whatever direction trouble comes, and if they’re suddenly forced to jump, they’ll jump in the right direction, because they have been instructed and informed and orientated. Now, I think that’s all for this morning. And we’ll sing a closing hymn.

Tags Grace, Growth, Sin

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Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date February 25, 2024

“The Forgiveness of Sin”

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The Forgiveness of Sins

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

February 17, 1957

Now in the book of Psalms 86, verse five: for Thou Lord are good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon Thee. Then in the book of Acts, there is a statement made by Paul: be it known under you, that’s 13:38,39, be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And by Him, all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.

Now, I want to talk about one of the bluntest, most simple things, the forgiveness of sin. And while religion is in itself, naturally beautiful. Incidentally, I’d like to say that I don’t think in all of my Christian experience, I saw a more dignified, touching, and beautiful baby dedication in this one this morning, have you? There’s something about the simplicity of the direct approach that’s always beautiful.

And so, religion ought to be beautiful, not by ornate decoration, but by this that we saw, a direct, simple, unaffected approach to the things of God. But we like to fancify it and pretty it up and give it favor by identifying it with popular causes and give it a certain kind of beauty by identifying it with art and music and every kind of symbolism and give it respectability by relating it to learning. This we tried to do. And I think the reason for it is that simplicity isn’t present. We were not simple about it, because we’re frightened. There’s a deep shame of heart. We have known a painful, humiliating thing–that is sin. And this deeply disgraceful thing that we call sin, shocks and embarrasses and humiliates. And so, we tried to cover it up and make religion to be simply a seeking after God or a seeking after truth. And thus, we cover the fact that we’re sinners, that we need to be forgiven, just plain forgiven and cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

Now, the presence of our sin is one of the most shameful and embarrassing things in the world. And to save face, we have stigmatized certain sins and generally agree upon them. We agree to place the hand of infamy, or point the finger of infamy, upon certain great gross sins. And that makes us of course feel righteous by comparison. But all sin before God is a serious thing. God, being who He is and what He is, and we being what we are, and sin, being the filth of the human spirit as it is, we are able to endure our own consciences only by refusing to admit the infamy of our sins by excusing or blaming on others, or cultivating a brazen face like a tavern hostess, and so destroying our sense of shame.

But you will find a great deal in the Bible. In fact, if we wouldn’t take it out of the Bible, this thought that God forgives people, that God forgives people. People must be forgiven, and God forgives people. If you take that out of the Bible, you really don’t have much Bible left. It would be so thin that you would think that you had nothing but the covers left. The whole basis of the Bible, or the whole reason for its existence, is that there was a race that has fallen into sin. And that that sin is an injurious, harmful, degrading and destructive and alienating thing. And that it’s got to be dealt with.

Now, that’s the Bible. The Bible is full of it, the whole book of Psalms is full of it. And the prophecies of the Old Testament speak of it. And our Lord refers to it and the apostles. It’s throughout all the Scriptures. So, we must deal with this vital problem, or somebody must deal with this vital problem for us, the disposition of our sins. What am I going to do with my sin?

Now, this is so huge and so overwhelming–a disaster–this sin thing, that it demands a solution. Somebody is going to have to deal with this, this polio. They’re talking about polio. Only one in hundreds of 1000s are touched with polio; cancer, only one in many 1000s, perhaps, and other diseases, heart failure. They scared most man above 40 to death last week. It was heart week, and you couldn’t flip a radio or look at a paper but what somebody was yelling at you, look out for your heart.

And I’ve got all the symptoms, myself, listening to the to the fellows tell about it. And they tell us, look out for our hearts. Well, heart trouble is a serious thing. But friends, you can add up polio and cancer and heart failure, and you still have nothing compared with this one serious thing. This overwhelming disaster, which is come upon the human race, this thing we call sin, that is so huge and so vast and so crushing that it adds up too or is greater than all of the other disasters added together.

And so, I say it demands a satisfactory solution. We dare not, my Christian people, we dare not deal with it as some have tried to do. We dare not deal with it by renaming it. You can rename cancer, but it still kills. You can refuse to believe that it’s a heart, but the heart may still kill. You can call a gun by some other name, but if it goes off when pointed at you, it will still destroy you. And yet some have tried to do it. Rename it, rethink it, and buy a new nomenclature, that is, a set of names for things related to sin, we’ll hoped that we might have gotten away with it. But no, we haven’t. We haven’t disposed of it. It’s got to be satisfactorily disposed of. And either it must be removed from the soul, or it will remove the soul from the presence of God forever.

Now, this is true. This is true of you. It’s true of me. It’s true of my family. It’s true of those I love the most. It is true of all the good people, and it’s true of all the bad people. And it’s true of all the white people and of all the dark-skinned peoples. It’s true of the great men and it’s true of the forgotten, faceless multitudes who mill the streets. It is true of every individual. Either we must find a satisfactory solution for this sin problem, and it must be removed from our soul, or it will remove our soul from the presence of God.

Now, to the sincere man nothing else matters, I think. And yet, it’s evident that there are various ways of trying to get rid of it. There are those, as you know, in foreign lands who try every means of getting rid of sin, every effort. I saw a picture on The Daily News of a man who had stood up all his life. He won’t lie down. You saw it maybe. He wouldn’t lie down. He was a man I would judge to be 55 years old or older. And he’s never lain down since he entered the religious order. He stands up even to sleep.

Now that’s a touching thing, that that man knows what a lot of Christians don’t know. That the most crushing, destructive thing in the world is sin. The most lethal disease ever to visit the human heart is sin, and He knows he has it. And he thinks that if he stands up all his life, somewhere, a good God will say, well, we can’t punish that fellow, because he has stood up and tried to atone for his sin. How tragic that a man can stand up all his life, and yet not remove sin from his soul.

Now, I’m glad for David’s wonderful text. It’s so good to hear David say in that 86th Psalm, that Thou, O God, art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all of them that calleth on Thee. And I’m glad for the word in the New Testament, be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man Jesus is preached unto you, the forgiveness of sin; to the most sinful age in the history of the world, that has succeeded in euthanizing its sin, so they don’t believe it is sin.

This doesn’t have the joyous meaning that it might have to those who first heard it, might have had. Let’s put it like this. Suppose that a man came down here in uniform and respectfully asked permission to speak a word. And he had the credentials of the government, and he arose and said, I am asked by the government to make the announcement that you are free. That you will not any longer be restrained by the government. You can vote as you please, go to church as you please, do as you please, work where you please. I am set to tell you that you are now free. We would look at each other and thank him courteously and wonder what had happened to him, whether he was real or not.

My friends, that’s because you’ve enjoyed freedom from the time you can remember. That’s because you have the freedom to criticize the very government that’s given you that freedom. The very country that has made you free, you are free to condemn. And so therefore, it can’t hit you. It couldn’t hit you as it would, say, in Budapest. Imagine now, in Budapest. Suppose that in some church there somebody were to arise and make such an announcement. Why there’d be an explosion that would rattle the windows. There would be tears of joy. They would turn and hug each other and cry and perhaps break into their national anthem. And thank God for that freedom which we have enjoyed ungratefully so long.

Now it’s exactly the same here. When we who have known about forgiveness so long and have heard of the grace of God preached about so much that it doesn’t reach us as it did, and must have, these early persons who first heard it. Be it known unto you therefore men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.

Men and women who had born the long yoke and had worn their phylacteries and had performed everything told them by the rabbi’s. Now, they hear the joyous news that they can be forgiven through Jesus Christ so that all things which they could not be delivered from by the law of Moses, they are now freed from by this Man whom God hath made both Lord and Christ. Is it any wonder that that early church was a joyous church? Is it any wonder that there was an up springing of emotion that they could hardly contain.

Now, I know also that it was the presence of the Holy Spirit that made them joyful. But I believe that even that kind of joy can be psychologically analyzed, at least, in a measure. And so, the contrast, the wondrous contrast between the great heavy yoke that couldn’t do anything but make their neck sore and their hearts heavy was now tossed away, and the good news of Christ, the message that God was ready to forgive; a message that no pronouncement of science can equal. The most valuable message probably that this sin-ruined world can ever know. That’s what the Bible means by the gospel. That’s what it means. That’s the message of the gospel. And all the Bible adds up to this. And there certainly is much more, but this is basic.

Now, you say, how is this applied, and what can we do about it, and how do I make it real to me? Well, the Bible has been very, very explicit here, very explicit. First John 1:9. You know what it says. If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I think that this is one of the most wonderful, and yet the most awful verses in the entire Bible. And I have never heard it really talked about. I have not even myself, though I have this conviction about it, have never said enough about it. If we confess our sins, He is merciful and gracious to forgive. If it said that, I would understand it. If it said that, I would say, well, that’s true, and that’s in line with the rest of the teaching of the Bible, because God is merciful and gracious, and therefore, when we confess, He mercifully and graciously forgives. But it doesn’t say that.

If it had said, If we confess our sins, God in His pity, will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, I would say that accords with the rest of the teaching of the Bible about the great pity which God has for suffering men. But he doesn’t say either, merciful, pitiful, gracious, kind. It doesn’t use any of those words. It says faithful and just did you ever think of that? Did you ever stop to wonder why those words faithful and just start there? If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just.

Now why when it looks to me as if faithfulness and justice would mean just the opposite. It would mean that we should be punished without mercy from the presence of God forever. A just and holy God could not receive sinners into heaven. No man can see God who is unholy. And the soul that sinneth it shall die. And all the nations that forget God shall be cast into hell. That’s the justice of God. That’s the faithfulness and justice of God. And it looks as if it should have said that the faithfulness and justice of God will refuse to forgive sin and will drive us from His presence forever.

But why did it say faithful and just to forgive? It is because one of our own race, one of our own people, Who was once held in the arms, as this little girl was held this morning, by an old man and prayed over. One of our race, who once walked on baby legs and grew long legged and bony and awkward when He was 12 or 13, and then grew on to a fine, symmetrical manhood, and grew in wisdom and in favor with God and men.

There was One of our race, completely responsible for us, and taking upon Himself all our iniquities. And He went and, in the darkness, did something which now places forgiveness of sin out of the hands of mere mercy, as we might say, and makes it a necessary thing for God to do. Jesus Christ, by His atonement made a covenant so that, God, to be just, has to forgive when sins have been confessed. God, to be faithful, has to forgive when sins have been confessed. I say this is one of the most astonishing texts in the entire Bible, that God forgives sin justly and faithfully. Why justly and faithfully? Because there sits at His right hand, One who went through the unspeakable hard agony on the cross, and in darkness, fixed things so God could not only show mercy, but even justice is on the side of the returning sinner. Even justice is on the side of the man who comes to God. Even God’s faithfulness is on our side.

If there had been no darkness, no cry in the night, no wound in the side, no nails in the hands. There never could have been anything for you and me and justice and faithfulness except damnation. But because the cry was heard in the night, Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. And because the sun refused to shine, and because a Man went in there into the darkness, and gave His all for people that hated him, and were his enemies. Now, God has it turned around so that God must forgive sin. He can’t do anything else, but that.

So, if you will confess your sin, we have covenant on our side, and we have justice then on our side. Isn’t it wonderful, my friends? I don’t often say that in sermons, isn’t it wonderful? I know that’s a rather cheap way to put it. But don’t you see the deep value and wonder of all this? That because there is an atonement made through this Man, through this Man, said the apostle: Be it known unto you therefore men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you forgiveness of sins. And by Him all that believe are justified.

And now justice is even on our side, not mercy, not only mercy, but also justice. And the faithful God can fulfill the text of the Old Testament that says: Thou God, art a God who forgives iniquity and sin. To me, that’s worth taking everywhere throughout the whole world. People often wonder why I don’t deal in baptism, and they write and ask me whether I believe in the pre-tribulation, or post-tribulation rapture. And they write and ask me what I think of this man or that man as though I wanted to tell them. And people are always wanting to get out on a limb, and I do it myself sometimes.

But brethren, at the beating heart of our message and of our Christian Fellowship is this. That the terrible calamity hit us, and not only did it hit us, but we brought it by our own sin. And we have no excuse in the wide world to offer. We did it, as David said, it’s our fault. We did it. And yet God in His great mercy has sent a Man. And that Man being God and man, has fixed it now so even justice is on our side.

So, I want to close by saying this to you friends. Don’t think of God being divided up in His attitude toward you. Never think of God’s mercy being for you and His kindness being for you and His pity being for you. And then His justice and His faithfulness and His Holiness being against you. Never think of it that way. It used to be maybe that way before the atonement was made. But it’s that way no more. All of God is for you. And all the attributes of God are over on your side. And everything God is, is yours. And there isn’t an attribute or a characteristic of the Holy God but is over on your side, because Jesus died and rose and lives and pleads. Now there’s the simple gospel. And yet it has been the throbbing heart of the gospel message during all these long years. So tell it friends, and keep telling it and tell it to everybody and tell it abroad.

Roy, go back and tell it. I know you will. And we Christians paid and prayed to help them to go and tell it, this wonderful message. To us, who are so used to things, I say, we have sort of lost the beauty of it. But, oh, to those that know it for the first time, how wonderful, how wonderful it must be. How wonderful.

Now, I think that tonight, I have reason to believe, tonight, will be one of the greatest meetings we’ve ever had in this church. And I want you to be here tonight.

We thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst not overlook us rebels, here in a dark, forlorn world. But Thou didst send us Thyself, Thy Son. We thank thee for the fountain which is opened in the house of David and is now open for all of us. We pray, that we may not through morbid humility or fear or self-hatred, fail to enter and be washed, but that we might enter, and be clean. And now, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, forever. Amen.

Tags Forgiveness, Sin, Tozer

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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.

Tags Sacrifice, Sin

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date July 31, 2022

“The Book of Jude“

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“The Book of Jude”

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

July 3, 1955

I want to talk on that book of Jude this morning. Bringing again after the passing of some years a bit of attention to this little, but powerful book. Now the man Jude, a brother of Christ, had planned to write an encouraging letter just as you might sit down to write your friends a letter of encouragement. He had planned it dealing with what he called our common salvation. But he said it became necessary rather as he was moved, impressed by the Holy Ghost to write something else altogether. An unpleasant circumstance had risen which forced him to write quite another kind of letter from the good encouraging letter that he had planned. Certain men had crept in unnoticed. Now those men were personally men of evil lives. They were and had been foreseen and condemned by the Lord Himself when He was with them. And they taught doctrine that was contrary to the Christian faith. Now he writes to arouse the victims of these teachers to contend for the truth.

Now, I want to talk just a little because I want my emphasis to fall elsewhere, but a little about this false teaching. Not naming any false teaching specifically, and I do not use this because I think there’s any false teaching here. We have had amazing success under God in the last years in keeping from our fellowship, those who would subvert us. They just don’t feel healthy around here. The atmosphere is not wholesome and they don’t stay very long. So, this is general rather than specific, but because it is for the whole church of Christ, it certainly is also for us.

Now, what do we mean by false teaching? Well, it means teaching that things are otherwise than they are. Now, things are, both physical things and spiritual things are. They are and you can put a period after that. And when we have discovered or had revealed to us the facts about them, either things material or things spiritual, then we are morally required to acknowledge those facts, and to make our teaching conform to them. That’s also very simple that I almost apologize for saying it. But it is the broad framework upon which everything else must hang, that things are as they are whether we like them or not, that’s the way they are. God made things and things are. Physical material things are and Spiritual things are.

Now, it is our business to find out how they are. Accept them as they are and then make our teaching conform to them as they are. Now that’s rather simple, isn’t it? Now, correct doctrine then is of vital importance, because it is simply the teaching of things as they are. There are five there and I say that’s five, ten over there and I say that’s ten. It is July, what’s today? The third, and I say it’s July 3. That doesn’t take genius, that’s just stating things as they are. This is Chicago, Illinois, not Memphis, Tennessee. This is Chicago, Illinois. This is July, not August, this is the third not the ninth. This is 1955, not 1957. This, these are this country is the United States of America. Not some other country, not England not any of the Scandinavian countries.

And so, telling the truth about things is simply finding out what they are and then conforming my statement to their facts. Now it’s so as spiritual truths. When a truth has been revealed in the book of God, our business is to find out what that truth is. And then in all of our teaching, conform to that truth. Not edited, not change it, but let it stand just as it is. It is the truth of

God declared as it is and don’t try to change it. It would be ridiculous of me to try, by some twist of logic or sophistry to make this to be August when it’s July; to make it to be the ninth when it’s the third; to make this to be winter when it’s summer; to make this country to be Canada when it’s the United States. Truth is just as it is. God Almighty has made the world to be a mathematical universe. And He runs all things according to mathematical laws. And He has a moral world which runs according to moral laws as exact and as unchanging as mathematical laws. So non-conformity to the truth anywhere brings disaster. Let an engineer be wrong about a position, and let him build according to that wrong concept and his building will collapse around him. Let a navigator be wrong about something and he will run on a rock and his old ship will shudder as it runs onto a sandbar or a rock and will settle in the water and sink out of sight because a mistake has been made. The man has not gone according to truth. Non-conformity always brings disaster wherever it may be. And the vastness and hugeness of the disaster depends upon the high-level or low-level of the facts we have before us.

If I started with a compass that was backwards–we were driving the other day in Mr. McAfee’s car, and we went west all the time. No matter which way we turned the compass said west. There was something wrong with the compass. Now, that didn’t do us a great harm, because there were markers and we didn’t go according to that. But if there had been something serious and we’d had to know when our lives depended upon it, we might have left our bones someplace, because a compass went wrong. And so, non-conformity, failure to stay by facts as they are, will bring disaster if we depend upon it.

Now, false teaching is the falsifying of data. It’s falsifying of data about God, ourselves, sin, and Christ. First of all, any false teaching must begin with the wrong concept of God. You can put that down in the back of your Bible or the back of your memory, that any false teaching of any sort, must begin with a wrong concept of God. It can’t be otherwise. Nobody who holds a right concept of God can go very far wrong in anything else. And all the basic, great mistakes that have been made, the great fundamental errors have all rested down around the concept of God. Men are not willing to let God be what He says He is. They’re always trying to change God and trying to make him to be other than what He is. God is, and we better accept Him as He is. God is, and the angels want Him to be what He is. God is, and the elders and saints and heavenly creatures want Him to be what He is. We’d better want Him to be what He is too, and conform to what he is. Any structure that is crooked, or any foundation that is crooked, will bring the structure down in time. It will either sink or it will collapse or lean or fall over, but it will not stand long. Or if it does, it will lean as the leaning tower there in Italy.

Now God–of all the foundations–God is the most important, because God is God and made the heaven and earth and all the things that are therein. And it is a great error, it would be a great error for a man or a woman to go a lifetime thinking they were talking to the God of heaven and earth and find that they were talking to a god which they had confounded out of their own imagination. It would be a tragic calamity to the human spirit for me to pray a lifetime and preach a lifetime about a God that wasn’t the true God at all, but some other god which was a composite of ideas drawn from philosophy and psychology and other religions and superstitions. No, God is what He is. And we had better learn what God is and then conform our teachings to God. If we take away any of the attributes of God, we weaken our concept of God. We do not weaken God, but we weaken our concept of God.

Christian scientists have taken all the justice and judgment and hatred of sin out of the nature of God and they have nothing but a soft God left. There are those who have taken love and grace out and have nothing but a God of judgment left. There are those who have taken away the personality of God and have nothing but a mathematical God. That’s the God of the scientists. All these are false, inadequate conceptions of God.

While God is a God of justice, He’s a God of grace, and while He’s a God of righteousness, He’s a God of mercy. While he is a God of mathematical exactness, He is also a God that could take babies in His arms and pat their heads and smile. He is a God that could forgive and a God that does forgive. So we had better make the study of this Bible of ours, the business of our lives, to find out what God is.

And then conform our views to God, and then ourselves. That’s this second thing where we make a mistake in any kind of false teaching, because any wrong idea of God is bound to give us a wrong idea of ourselves. Some people approach God through science, through the study of anthropology. But anthropology without theology is bound to arrive at an error at last, bound to arrive at the dead end street. You and I can only explain ourselves in the light of the doctrine that God made us out of the dust of the ground and blew into our nostrils the breath of life. And so, man became a living soul.

Science has discovered many things about God, but they have not discovered it in context. They have not begun with God and reasoned down to His world; they have begun with the world and tried to reason up with God and stop short of finding God, and the result is only tragic to everybody. If a man is wrong about God, he’s bound to be wrong about himself. If He’s wrong about the artist, he’ll be wrong about the picture. If he’s wrong about the potter, he’ll be wrong about the vessel. If he’s wrong about God, he’ll be wrong about the creature. So, while multiplying scientific facts all around about us, men are wrong because they have left God out and say in their heart, there is no God. Or if there is a God, He’s a god of mathematics and laws, but not the God as the Bible makes Him out to be. That is all wrong.

If you believe you’re any better than God says you are, you’re in error. If you believe you’re any different from what God says you are, you’re in error. You have falsified the data or somebody has falsified the data and made you a victim. No, no, my brother, believe about yourself what God says about you. Believe you’re as bad as God says you are and believe you’re as far from him as God says you are. And then believe in Christ who can come as near to Him as he says you can. And accept what He says about you as being true.

My friend, you cannot know truth about yourself unless you first know truth about God. You came from the hand of God, and back to God you must go for better, for worse, for judgment, or for blessing. And until we take God in and understand God, and let God be what He claims to be, and believe about ourselves what God says about us, we’re believing false doctrine.

Then there’s sin. Now sin cannot be understood until we believe in God and believe what God has said about ourselves. Sin is that intrusive phenomenon, that ever present, ubiquitous phenomenon. There it is, hate and lying and dishonesty and murder and crime and injustice, necessitating law and police and jails and galluses and locks and graves. There are those who would deny it, and of course that’s falsifying the data. There are those who would rename it and they’re falsifying data. There are those who would treat it as a disease and they’re falsifying data.

God says that it’s a breaking of the law. God says it’s a rebellion against His will. God says that it’s a nature inherited from our fathers and mothers. God says that it’s an act against the faith and love and mercy of God. God says it’s rebellion against the constituted authority of the Majesty on high. God says it’s iniquity and personally chargeable to the one who commits it. God says the soul that sinneth it shall die. And we had better believe about sin what God says about sin or we will be falsifying the data. And falsified data in spiritual things is more terribly wrong and will bring more terrible consequences and falsifying data in material things.

The doctor who miscounts a number of, or the amount of that which he gives a patient may kill the patient. That would be only to destroy a body. The preacher who misjudges or miscounts the truth concerning sin and man and God will damn his hearers which is infinitely more terrible. Truth concerning God means that I must accept God’s sovereignty, God’s holiness, God’s justice, God’s grace, God’s love and all that the Bible says about God. Concerning myself, it requires that I must believe in myself as a fallen image of God, one who once bore His image, but fell.

Now, the fourth is Christ Himself. For if I do not have the right concept of God and of myself and of sin, then I will have a twisted and imperfect concept of Christ. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my honest and charitable conviction, that the Christ of the average religionist today is not the Christ of the Bible at all, but a manufactured Christ, a Christ painted on canvas, a Christ drawn from cheap poetry, a Christ of the liberal and the soft and timid person, a Christ that has not in Him the iron and the fury and the anger, as well as the love of grace and mercy, He had who walked in Galilee. If I have a low conception of God, I have a low conception of myself and if I have a low conception of myself, I have a dangerous conception of sin. And if I have a dangerous conception of sin, I have a degraded conception of Christ.

So, here’s the way it works. God is reduced and man is degraded and sin is underestimated, and Christ is disparaged. No wonder Jude said the terrible things that he said. And I recommend, that some of you that are so nice you’re no good, I recommend you read the book of Jude once. I recommend you read that book of Jude. Get your teeth filed to a sharp, eating edge. Get your teeth into something. Dare to believe something, and dare to stand for God. This awful day of so called tolerance. This awful day when men are ready to believe anything.

No, my brethren, you and I are not called to smile and smile and smile. We are called sometimes to frown and rebuke with all longsuffering in doctrine. We must contend, but not be contentious. And we must preserve truth, but injure no man. We must destroy error, but not harm people. Where men were wrong in other days, they contended and in contending became contentious. They tried to preserve truth, and so to do it they destroyed those who held error. All this is wrong. Let us preserved truth, but injured no man. Faith of our fathers we will love, both friend and foe in all our strife and love Thee too; to preach Thee too as love knows how, to kindly deed and virtuous life.

Now in closing, here is what he says to us. He says in verse nineteen, these be they. Let’s pity them. Let’s be sorry. let’s pray for them. Let’s weep over them. Let’s turn away from them, these be they. Verse twenty, but ye beloved. Now he’s come to his own, the true believers in God and Christ, but ye beloved. Then He gives them four or five things to do. I will pass swiftly over them. Building up yourselves in your most holy faith. Are you these days building up yourselves? Have you read a book of the Bible through recently? Have you done any memorization of Scripture texts or Scripture these days? Have you sought to know God or are you looking to the radio for your religion? Or have you a Bible and do your study it? Build up yourselves in your most holy faith? That’s one.

Praying in the Holy Ghost. I do not hesitate to say that most praying is not in the Holy Ghost. The reason we do not pray in the Holy Ghost is because we do not have the Holy Ghost in us. No man can pray in the Spirit, except his heart is a habitation for the Spirit. It’s only as the Holy Ghost has unlimited sway within us that we’re able to pray in the Holy Ghost, and I do not hesitate to say that five minutes of prayer in the Holy Ghost will be worth more than one year of hit and miss praying that isn’t in the Holy Ghost. Pray in the Holy Ghost.

Third, Keep yourselves in the love of God. Be true to the faith, but be charitable to those who are in error. Never feel any contempt for anybody. No Christian has any right to feel contempt, for contempt is an emotion that can only come out of pride. So, let’s feel no contempt. Let’s be charitable and loving toward all while we keep ourselves in the love of God.

And then looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of course, that is the second coming of Jesus. Looking for Jesus Christ’s coming. The mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ that is coming. Wonderful isn’t it that His mercy will show itself at His coming? Even His mercy will show itself then as it did on the cross as it does in receiving sinners, as it does impatiently looking after us Christians and it will show itself at the coming of Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

And then, verse 22, some have compassion making a difference, and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments spotted by the flesh. There’s a charge that we should win others, that we should do everything in our power to bring others to Christ, saving them with fear, pulling them out of the fire. Wesley all his life referred to himself as a brand plucked from the burning. He never called himself anything else than a brand plucked from the burning. He knew that he was on fire already with the hot flames of hell when Jesus Christ grabbed him out of the fiery pit and extinguished the fire by His own blood. And Wesley became Wesley. And he never dared to rise and think of himself as a great Oxford man or a great genius. Always He thought of himself as a brand plucked from the burner.

So now we look forward to Jesus Christ’s coming, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here was what the old silk weaver said about it. He says, a few short lines from Terstegen. There is a balm for every pain in medicine for all sorrow, the eye turned backward to the cross and forward to the morrow. That’s what Paul said, that ye do show forth the Lord’s death till what? Till He come. There’s a balm for every pain, medicine for all sorrow. Some of the old saints in days gone by called the communion service, the medicine of immortality. And we couldn’t follow them in every one of their beliefs, but that I think they were right. The medicine for all sorrow, and I turned backward to the cross and forward to the morrow, the morrow of the glory and the song, when he shall come. The morrow of the harping and the palm and the welcome home.

Meantime, in His beloved hands are our ways. Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to Thee? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the liberal? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the dead church? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to those who have chosen to walk in the low shadows of Christianity? Never! Dare to contend without being contentious. They are to preserve truth without hurting people. Dare to love and be charitable and there, meantime in His beloved hands are our ways and, on His heart, the wandering heart at rest, and comfort for the weary one who lays his head upon His breast.

Thank God for the old silk weaver who walked with his Savior and was not, for God took him. So let us think of the medicine of immortality today. Let us by the grace of God, with charity for all and hatred toward none, but determination to be loyal to truth if it kills us. Let us put our chin a little higher and our knees a little lower. Let’s look a little further in to the throne of God where Jesus Christ sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Let us be courageous, but tender; severe, but kind. Let us pray in the Holy Ghost and keep ourselves in the love of God and build ourselves up in the most holy faith and win all we can until the day of the glory and the song. Amen.

Tags Error, False Teaching, Jude, Sin