Tozer Talks

“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.