Tozer Talks

“While it is Today II”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

February 27, 1955

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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