“Making Our Enemies Work for Us“
Making Our Enemies Work for Us
Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer
June 8, 1958
I will be an enemy unto thine enemies and an adversary unto thine adversaries, for mine angel shall go before thee and bring thee in unto the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Jebusites. And I will cut them off, nor shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works. For thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.
And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and ye shall bless thy bread and thy water, and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. Well, we’ll not go on there, because I want to stop with 23. One of these nights, maybe next Sunday night, I guess it would be next Sunday night, I want to talk about our attitude toward abuses within the Church, liberalism and false doctrines.
And then I also want to talk about how preachers can be sure they won’t starve to death. That’s in verse 25. But tonight, I want to talk about the enemies, the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, Jebusites, and elsewhere in the Scriptures the Amalekites are included. Those are the seven nations, but there are only six mentioned here, so I’ll stop with the six.
Now, the theme of these talks has been that God has a place for us, better than we know, just ahead for us, in spiritual things, within the framework of New Testament Christianity. And that He is leading us into it if we only would let Him and walk with Him.
And here now are the encouraging facts, that God is not sending us in, but leading us in. There’s a difference between driving and leading. The Lord God rarely drives anybody. I don’t know that He does ever drive anybody, but He always, or almost always, leads them. When He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice. John 10.4. He is a leader and not a driver. You drive cattle, but you lead sheep.
Now, another encouraging thing is that He has already been in the land. This land of Canaan, this land into which He’s leading Israel and the spiritual counterpart into which He’s leading us, is a land already prepared for us.
I said that America was conquered by men with axes and saws going into a practically uninhabited continent and conquering it, building and planting and making bridges and highways and building cities and building houses and schools and churches and homes. We had to wrest civilization out of a wilderness here on this continent. But it is not so with Israel. They were led into a place already prepared.
And you know, there wouldn’t be anything quite so pleasing to the carnal heart as to have the joy and the pride of knowing that he himself was helping God work out things for him. There wouldn’t be anything that would please the average Adamic man, the son of Adam anymore, even the Christian man, than to have God get very serious and say, I’d like to have a conference. Could you be present Tuesday night at 7:30? We want to discuss what we’re going to do about the land. That would, of course, please every proud son of Adam and Eve, and daughter too.
But God never does it that way. God has done it and worked it out and wrought it, and everything’s a gift from God to us. So this land was a gift to Israel and not something that Israel had to themselves build.
And a third encouraging thing is that we will never be alone for the Presence is there. The United States sends a man somewhere. They can’t help him. They say, you go do this, and then he’s on his own. He has to do it alone. They often send men where nobody else is. God never sent anybody yet where nobody was, because He is wherever He sends people, I mean, leads people really now.
I’m going back on my little pronoun or my little verb there, send. But God never says, go or come. He’s there first. Remember that always, that nobody’s ever alone. The presence is there. And as I’ve said, we won’t have to figure out a way. It is already figured out. God has already prepared it.
Now where do you think He prepared it? Here, here is where My thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are My ways your ways, for as the heavens are high above the earth, so high are the ways of God above man and the thoughts of God above man’s thoughts.
A man would have done it like this. A man would have gone in and taken out all of the enemy, exterminated them, and said, now you go in. It’s all fixed for you. There’s nothing in there. We’ve taken out everything that belonged to the enemy, and you can start over. But He didn’t do it that way. He said, I bring you in unto the Amorites and the rest of them.
Now these were the enemies of Israel, and they had been working for Israel unknown to Israel. Back before some of the Israelites were born, they had been irrigating the land. They’d been fertilizing fields. They had been building walls and walling up streams. They had been building cities. They had been planting fruit orchards and grape or vine vineyards. They had been working and preparing a beautiful land. And Israel had been out wandering in the wilderness or down in Egypt while their enemies were working to prepare the way for them. Such are the ways of God.
If you don’t believe in the sovereignty of God, you will never be a full-bloomed Christian. You never can come full out like one of these peonies. You’ll stay half open and sort of turn brown. If you want to come out into full bloom, you’re going to have to rise and believe in the sovereignty of God, God’s freedom, God’s transcendence, God’s infinitude, God’s power, God’s ability to think ahead and be ahead and work ahead. You’re going to have to learn that the God we serve is not the little soft God of the modern Christian, but He’s a mighty awful and awesome God.
So, God was making enemies work for Israel even when they didn’t know it. And wonderfully enough, the enemies didn’t know it. Now look at these enemies. They were the Amorites who inhabited, I’ve looked this up very carefully. You can go into history and find these, you know. This is not myth, but reality. They’re identifiable. You can pinpoint them in history.
The Amorites, that was a nation, and they inhabited Hebron and Jarmath and Lachish and Eaglin and some other places. Then there were the Hittites, and they were the hillbillies. They lived in the mountains and the hill country. Then there were the Perizzites, and they were the dwellers in the valley. In Scotland, they call them the lowlanders. They lived down in the lowland in distinction from those who lived in the high countries.
Then there were the Canaanites, and they had two cities particularly, though they certainly had more. That was Jericho and Ai. Then there were the Hivites, and they had Hermon and Mount Lebanon and the land of Mizpah. Then there were the Jebusites, and they had a little city which later was conquered and was changed, its name was changed to Jerusalem.
Now those are the enemies, and God says, I bring you in unto them. He named it. He did not say unto their land right here in verse 23. He said, for mine angel shall go before thee and bring thee in unto the Amorites. Oh God, no. Yes, in unto the Amorites. You mean in where the Amorites used to be? No, where they are now. In where the Hittites used to be? No, where they are now. I bring you in unto your enemies.
Now these were deeply entrenched. Don’t underestimate them. They were deeply entrenched, and what they had was extremely valuable. I told them in New York City one time preaching there that some of them there thought that anything west of the Hudson River was camping out, that it was just the woods. And we can get like that.
We can sit here in Chicago and think that certainly back there, way back there before Christ, there couldn’t have been any civilization, but the fact is there was. And they were a rather highly civilized people, and they did have a fine civilization. It wasn’t an industrial civilization. It was agricultural, but it was a good civilization, and they were well to do, and they had plenty. And they were deeply entrenched, and they were not going to give that up if they could help it. But God had decided to dispossess them because of their sins.
In the first place, that wasn’t their land. That was Abraham’s land. God had said to old Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham, get thee up out of this land wherein you are and get into a land which I do give unto thee. So that the land that God was now taking them into had been theirs by covenant for hundreds of years.
But Israel failed God and went down into Egypt and was there 400 years. And while Israel was down in Egypt, the Amorites and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Hivites had taken over the land that God had given to Abraham and had built a civilization there and had cities and orchards and vineyards and cattle and sheep and all that was fine and rich. They had it all, but it belonged to Abraham and therefore it belonged to Israel. It wasn’t that God wrested from them that which was theirs and gave it to Israel. He took away from them that which was Abraham’s and Israel’s by covenant and gave it back to them.
And besides that, they had been so sinful, become so sinful, that they were not fit to live. Syphilitic and worshipped every kind of idol and did everything that would put them in a position where they were a cancer on the body of the human race. So, God said, I’ll give it to Israel. And now God is giving this possession back to Israel by driving these people out. God himself did it by his angel and actually Israel didn’t do it. Joshua went down there and stirred up some dust, but it was God who was out the Amorites and all the rest for the Israelites to take possession.
Now these things were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the worlds have come. And wise will we be if we can learn spiritual lessons from Old Testament history. Wise indeed will we be if we can read the story of the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites and know how to translate those Old Testament stories into New Testament spiritual principles. Wise will we be indeed if we know how to make the past work for us and to make yesterday speak intelligently and eloquently to our today, so we’ll know what to do with our tomorrow.
So, God says, I will take you in unto the Amorites, and our worst enemies can be our best helpers. And now we’re to the meat of the talk. That our worst enemies can be our best helpers. And the spiritual riches that God is giving us, they lie not in the green field with the beautiful flowery hedge around it and with shade trees there. The spiritual riches lie where the enemy is.
And God says, I bring you right straight into the teeth of the enemy and I’ll handle the enemy. All you have to do is do what I tell you. You’ll go in and I’ll do the driving out. I’ll use the hornet to drive them out. My angel shall go. I’ll put the fear of man and God on these people, and I’ll take care of them. And all you have to do is to dare to go in and realize that I’m taking you into the land of the enemy. So the enemies were enriching Israel. He led them right into the land among the enemies.
Now I want to talk a little bit about some of the enemies which have discouraged some of us and have led us to believe there isn’t any use. I think I’m likely talking to some people tonight that have given up ever trying to be saintly. They’ve just said there’s no use. You don’t know how I’m put together, Brother Tozer. I was thrown together in a windstorm. And my nerves and my disposition and my temperament are such I can’t be good very long.
I’m a Christian. I hope to get to heaven. I’ve got eternal life, and I can’t lose it. And I think I’ll make it through by the sheer grace of God. But as far as having victory or getting on top of things and that, I’ll never make it. It’s all right for some of these dear old people, maybe. All right for Rutherford or somebody, but not me. I’ll go limping along some way and get in by the skin of my teeth. You pray for me and I’ll hold out faithful.
But don’t preach to me about any deeper life or any advanced life or any advance beyond what I have because I know you don’t know me. I’ve got things wrong with me. And if you look at it from Adam’s standpoint, it’s true. And I suppose we might just as well turn the lights out and go home.
But if you remember, there was, as I pointed out this morning, an epiphany, a shining of a person. The grace of God appeared unto us. If you take that into consideration and look at your problem from the Lord’s side, there isn’t any enemy that can stop you.
Now, suppose that they were looking for a man, say, to play, say, let’s play shortstop for the Yankees. And they found a fellow, but he was 59 years old. He’d lost his teeth and his hair. He had to wear glasses, real thick glasses, and he’d had an accident. He had one foot taken off and he had bursitis in one arm and rheumatism in the other. And you’d say, now, we want you to want you to play shortstop for the Yankees. Would it be any wonder if he’d laugh in your face like Sarah and say, what’s the use? Me, play shortstop? If I got the ball, I couldn’t straighten up until everybody else had gone home. And he’s right. He’s right.
But suppose that we lift this onto a spiritual level and suppose God finds a man all distraught, born down by iniquity, all wrinkled and leathery from the passing of time and the beating of the weather, all sick inside and crippled and maimed and haught. And God says, I want you to straighten up and be a strong man, an athlete, one of my soldiers.
Oh, nature says, now, God, please don’t joke with a man in my shape. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t be sarcastic with me, God, you know better. You know how I’m built. You know what’s wrong with me. You know what I inherited. You know, I inherited a temper from my father, and I inherited laziness from my mother. And I inherited a gluttony from my uncle.
And I’ve just inherited everything, everything wrong with me, God. How can you expect me to be a soldier of the cross and a follower of the Lamb? I’ll do well if I get into heaven at all but justification by faith without works. But don’t talk to me about the spiritual life or the spirit-filled life or deep life, because I’ll never make it.
Now, if we look at it, I say from Adam’s standpoint, that fellow’s right. He’s right about that. He’s just got too many strikes on him, and he’ll never make it. But if we look at it from God’s standpoint and see that salvation is a new creation, that God starts with nothing or worse than nothing, he starts with what I’ve described, and by the mighty workings of God transforms it, why, those very things that are wrong with you can be your best friends.
I don’t quote psychology much because I’m miffed with a lot of psychology and psychiatry, as you are and we all are. They know too much. Nobody can know as much as they do and still stay alive. But it doesn’t work. It’s the only thing. But the psychologists talk about overcompensation.
Now, one time was a runner by the name of Cunningham, Glenn Cunningham, tall, lean, leathery fellow. And at that time, he was for a long time the fastest miler of his generation. He was the top man. When they ran, he was the top man.
What most people didn’t know was this, that when Glenn Cunningham was a little boy, he had been caught in a fire and had been burnt from his hips down to his ankles. Had been burnt with, oh, I don’t know what they call it, third degree burn, clear in, burnt so deeply muscles were burned and burned until they said to him, Glenn, we’re, God bless you, but you’ll never walk again. You’ll never walk. And the whole back of his legs was scarred with the burns that he’d had in that accident.
Glenn Cunningham said, they tell me I’ll never walk. Watch me. So, he started to exercise those poor burned legs and pretty soon he got so he could walk. Then they said, well, you’ve managed to walk, but you’ll never run. He said, that’s what you say. Watch me. And he started to exercise those burned legs and got so he could run. And he worked so hard against his enemy, the burns, that he became the fastest miler of his generation. That’s the standard illustration of overcompensation.
Napoleon was a little sawed-off fellow. He would, I’d look big beside Napoleon, believe that or not. He always stood here like this. Said he had the indigestion. I don’t know whether that’s it or not, but he always had that hand there. And he’s a little fellow, a little fellow, not that little, but a little fellow. And you know what he did? He was so angry with God and man and himself and his parents and everybody else, because he was born little, that he decided to lick the round world. And he pretty near did it. It was overcompensation that made him the man he was. I don’t plead for him, I know I don’t want to be a man like that.
Now that’s the illustration drawn from nature, overcompensation. And do you know, my friends, that this same thing is true in the spiritual life? That’s why Jesus said, I didn’t come into the world to save healthy people. I came into the world to save the very people that need me, the sick people. I didn’t come into the world to make conquerors out of men who are already conquerors.
I came into the world to give victory to the men who never had victory. I come into the world to make men run who never walked. I come into the world to make men walk spiritually who never could stand. I came into the world by grace to compensate and overcompensate and go beyond and take your very enemy and make it work for you.
Now let me name some of these enemies. I promised you I would. One of them is temper. Personally, I think that one of the nastiest and least lovely and most completely reprehensible characteristics of a man is temper. A fellow who is always on the alert, always bubbling over, always filled with resentfulness and a bad disposition, temper. Well, that’s a sinful dispositional trait.
Now somebody says, but Mr. Tozer, I have one of those things, and it blows on me when I am least expecting it. It blows, I try to pray, and I try to testify and witness, and maybe before a day is over, that thing has blown up on me and I’ve ruined my testimony. I’ll never get anywhere as long as you talk to me. Well, that’s an Amorite, brother.
And God says, now I bring you in unto the land of the Amorite. What are you going to do with it? Well, I’ll tell you. A temper is the sword in the hands of sin. And as long as sin has it, it’s a destructive thing. But in the hands of the Holy Ghost, the same fine nervous state, the same dispositional tuning that makes a carnal man blow up; when the Holy Ghost gets a hold of that in a man.
I heard a fellow say it like this one time, it’s better said this way, he said, when God filled me with the Holy Ghost, he didn’t take out my temper, but he took the devil out of my temper. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that this thing in you that is now your enemy, God will dispossess the evil out of that, and it will make you into a person who is alert and filled with zeal.
Some people are just so relaxed, it’s a wonder they don’t fall apart really. They’re just too relaxed. You ought to relax sometimes, or you’d break. But some people are so relaxed, they never do anything bad. Take this man Paul. You know what it said about him when he was Saul? It said, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, fire coming out of his nostrils as he went on the road to Damascus, fire there, breathing out threatenings and slaughter.
And when the mob was working on Stephen, who held the coat for the throwing the biggest rock? Who was the man, Saul? Saul, a man of temper. Do you think that Saul was one of those dull, phlegmatic, you could prick him with an ice pick, and he’d never say, ouch? You think he was that type of fellow? He was not. He was exactly the other type of fellow. He was not easy to get along with. He was a cultured man and knew how to say the right thing and push the chair under the lady when she sits down to the table and all that. You know how you’re cultured when you do that, and you’ve had an education.
And Saul knew all about that. But Saul was a man that if you opposed him in religion, he’d go out and throw you in prison and vote for you to die. He was a terrible man, that man Saul. He was a terrible man. But on Damascus Road, he met his match. And there on that road, he saw a vision.
And Jesus transformed him there, took him for three days into another city and worked on him there. Then took him down into Arabia for three years. I don’t know whether it took all that time, but I do know this, that when he was through, he said, it’s the grace of God working in me and not I myself.
And this man became one. He became a blazing comet who blazed with the gospel of Christ all through that old section of the old world and became one of the greatest Christians that ever lived, perhaps the greatest Christian of all time. But God literally took him in unto the Amorites and the Hittites.
If he’d had it to say, he’d have said, now, but wait, Father, I’m glad I met thy Son, Jesus, and I’m glad I’m converted. I’m glad I’m saved, but O God, I’m never going to amount to much. I’ll blow up on you. I’ll blow up. The Lord said, that’s what you think. I will get in there and I will take the sin out of that so it’s no longer sinful. And instead of you being resentful and hard to live with, I’ll take that out. And that which drove you to sin will now drive you to righteousness. That’s exactly what happened to the man Saul. He went into reverse, and God made his very temper work for him.
I talked to a psychiatrist one time. That is, I met him in a meeting. I never went to one. Anybody to go to one ought to have his head examined. But I talked to him and this fellow was there and we got to chatting afterward and he teaches in a college. And I said to him, brother, I said, you know, mentally I’ve never had any trouble. I never imagined anything, and I don’t have any complexes or anything wrong with me. I’m, I’m normal mentally.
But I said, physically I am so nervous, it’s tremendous. I said, I suffer from nerves. I thought maybe he’d tell me what to do, you know, what pill to take or what to do. Instead of that, here’s what he said. He said, if you hadn’t been built like that, nobody had ever heard of you. He said, it is that disposition that drives you on.
And I’ve been leaning back on that, excusing my nervousness ever since. Because you see, now I have scientific approval for it. If I’d been a lazy fellow who would sit around in the sun, you know, and when you sit in the chair, just as the dear colored lady said, just fall apart, you know, and sit easy.
Well, I can’t do it. And it’s that, I suppose. And I illustrate what I’m trying to say, that that thing which in the hands of the flesh and the devil we call temper, in the hands of the Holy Ghost purged and cleansed is zeal and fire. And it’ll take you somewhere. The leaders of the world have all had to be that kind of persons. All right, that’s an Amorite. It’s all fixed up for you. God fixed it for you. All you have to do is drive out the devil. Drive out the enemy, and God says he’ll do that. He said, you just go in.
Now, then here’s what we call the inferiority feeling. Or they say inferiority complex. Oh, I like to avoid that ugly word as much as I can. The feeling of inferiority. Isn’t it strange how we can be so proud that we’re sinful in our pride at the same time that we have an inferiority feeling that’s terrible? What a mixed-up bunch we are. How many Amorites and Perusites and Canaanites we’ve got.
Well, here’s the inferiority feeling. And some allow this enemy to retain them, so they never go forward. We’ll call these, let’s call these the Hittites. There’s really no order in it. But the inferiority feeling. A lot of people are never going to go on. As far as they ever get in prayer is to remind God how bad they’ve been. They get down on their knees and tell God how bad they’ve been. It never occurs to them that the very fact they’re bad by grace can make them good. The very fact they’re weak by grace can make them powerful.
For when I am weak, then am I what? Strong. They forget that. They forget the fact that because they don’t amount to anything, and no, they don’t amount to anything, that can, if they will work on it and dare to believe it, that can itself be the source of tremendous power to them. God can come into the heart of a man who knows he doesn’t amount to anything. That feeling of inferiority can keep you thrown back on God all the time.
There lived a preacher by the name of Christmas Evans, a great Welsh preacher. And Christmas Evans said this, said Paul talked about fear and trembling. And he said, Brethren, if a preacher ever gets into the habit of coming into the pulpit without fear and trembling, he loses power. He said it’s the fear and trembling that throws the man back on God.
And I’ve gone before audiences so badly scared, you wouldn’t think I was scared because I sound bold, but I’ve gone before audiences so badly scared that if God hadn’t helped me, I’d have fainted, I think. Maybe that’s an overstatement, but at least I couldn’t have made it.
My son named after me, who was a flyer for three years in the Navy, dive bomber in the Navy, said he used to be so scared before they’d take off that he’d have to go back into his little cubby where he was, he was a navigator and gunner. He said, I’d kneel down and pray, O God, give me courage once more for this trip.
I’ve gone before on platforms like that. So, so badly scared my mouth was dry.nAnd faced up to things that I knew I couldn’t do, a sense of inferiority. But you don’t have to let that lick you, it can make it work for you. You can say to God, O God, look at me. I’m as weak as a sick kitten. And I have no more power than an anemic mouse. My Lord, God, I’m nowhere. I’ve got nothing. God says, when you’re weak, you’re strong. And if you lean back on Me now, I’ll compensate, I’ll make good.
This is a Jebusite. Take that feeling of inferiority. And people think that this feeling, this crawling in all the time. I’ve met Christians that were just crawlers. They were just Spaniels. And they crawled and you could hear the beat, beat, beat of their poor little tails on the floors. They crawled along, you know, afraid to face anything or anybody.
If you’d only realize young fellow, that that fear is your best friend. If you know what to do with it, it’s an enemy. And if you’ll turn it over to God, God says, I’ll send a hornet after it. And out it’ll go. And I’ve never been scared more than five minutes of my life in the pulpit. And I’ve preached in some pretty important places and before some pretty important people and in three minutes forgot they were there. Not because I was bold, because I’m not. I’m a born coward. But I learned how to turn cowardice into courage. God says, you go on in, I’ll lead you in unto the Hittites.
Then there’s carnal ambition. I have met people who are filled with carnal ambition. And they’re Christians, too. They’re God’s people, but they’re carnally ambitious. And of course, that’s a sin. But Saul was carnally ambitious, but he was turned into Saul. And David was carnally ambitious, but when the mighty Holy Ghost got ahold of him and he was anointed, he was turned into King David, the psalm writer.
And you can come down the years and find how God has taken men and turned them around. This man Zinzendorf, a count and a rich man, a German nobleman. There was a man that stood high among his peers and was a man of ambition. But when he looked into the face of Jesus, gave himself up, all of that fiery ambition turned into zeal for God Almighty. And instead of being ambition to shine in his own light, he became jealous that men might know God. He became zealous that the gospel might go abroad, and people might worship the Lord, our God.
The man who has no ambition finally degenerates and gravitates, and you’ll find him down on Skid Row. He’s probably down at the Pacific Garden tonight waiting for the meeting to get over so he can have a sandwich. That’s the man without ambition.
But you say, I’m so ambitious, Mr. Tozer, it’s terrible. I read the biographies of the great men and I want to be like them. I remember when I was a young preacher, I read the biography of Luther. And I read how he rose up against the Roman Church and how he challenged the Pope. And I wanted to be a Luther. And I wanted to rise up against something, and I couldn’t find anything around to rise up against. He had his enemy already made for him, and I couldn’t find any. He talked back to the Pope, and the Pope didn’t know I was here.
So I had nobody to fight. I remember that well. But God soon got me over that, very soon got me over that ambition. Brethren, when your carnal ambition dies, that’s the driving out of the Jebusite. But if you’ve got an ambition, don’t think that that’s bad 100 percent. It, if it’s controlled by the devil, is bad. But if it gets into the hands of the Holy Ghost, it can be purified and made to glow with incandescent light. And then God will take you on and your very ambition will drive you not to glorify yourself, but to glorify your Father which art in heaven.
And the Church of Christ is being led today, not by lazy, relaxed fellows who sit around and twiddle their thumbs waiting for the second coming, but by ambitious men who knew what to do with their ambitions. Men of high temper who knew how to get it sanctified and in the hands of the Holy Ghost.
Then there is timidity. I guess we’ve already covered that really. But this also can be an enemy which you can turn into a friend.
And then there’s rebellion, rebellion. God says rebellion is an awful sin. And rebellion is a sin. Adam sinned and he rebelled against God. And all down the years God talked about the rebels. Rebellion against the will of God is a great sin. But do you know that that same dispositional setup, that same mental and temperamental constitution that makes you a congenital rebel, can turn you into a reformer, can turn you into a prophet if the Holy Ghost comes on you. And you can make that enemy work against you, or work for you. He’s now working against you.
The spirit of the mouse, the spirit of the lamb that led, always led, always led. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Even to his wife. Yes, dear. Yes, dear. Yes, dear. Yes, dear. Well, he’ll never amount to anything because you know his spring is broken. He hasn’t got anything in there that can rebel. He ought to have something in there that could rise up and say, You and who else?
Listen to me. That can make a juvenile delinquent, or it can make a saint. That can make a John Dillinger, or it can make a St. Paul. That can make an outlaw, or it can make a Luther, depending upon who’s got it. As long as the Canaanite had it, it was in the hands of the devil. It was there, it was a good thing, but it was in the hands of the devil.
But God said, now I’ll take you in under that. I’ll lead you right in there, and I’ll drive out the devil out of it. I’ll drive sin out of that rebellion. This doctrine that God wants to break our will is not, absolutely not, a biblical doctrine at all. To break your will, it has the same effect as to strip your backbone out of your body. You go down in a heap. But whose will are you out to do now?
If you’re a rebel and you’re a rebellious by disposition and an individualist and you’re ready to refuse; you sass back and the cop calls you to stop and you fight back and you’re angry. If any politician tries to lay an extra burden on you and you’re out to get somebody all the time, you say, well, I never going to be a Christian. I read about Saint Francis preaching to the birds and calling the moon his sister and the rain his brother. I hadn’t got that. I’m a rebel.
Oh, my brother, if you had known Saint Francis before God got a hold of him, maybe you’d have found a little rebellion there, too. But that same spirit of individualism, that man on the hillside there up in the mountains of Tishbe that came walking down with his unshaven chin, the hairs on his chin protruding, that man who came down wearing camel’s hair and girt with a homemade leather girdle, he became a gadfly to kings. He became the enemy to wicked kings and evil queens and had Israel crying, Jehovah, He is God, before it was all over.
Do you think he’d have been an easy fellow? Would you like to be married to him, ladies? Huh? Would you like to be married to Elijah? Empty the garbage, Elijah. Elijah, eat that pancake there. Nothing goes to waste around here. Elijah, pick your shoes up there, Elijah. You think any lady could have bossed Elijah around? Oh, you don’t know Elijah.
Elijah had his head high in the clouds and he was hearing a voice. He wouldn’t stop for anybody or anything. He knew it was God. And that spirit of rebellion, now blessed and cleansed and purged, took him down to stand before a king and he said, I am Elijah. A man that would talk like that is either a saint or a fool. And he was no fool. I am Elijah. Well, he was a mountaineer, a hillbilly from Tishbe, from the mountains of Gilead. He walks in and says, I am Elijah.
Sure, he was Elijah. I say, a saint or a fool can talk like that, but nobody in between. For if he hadn’t been a saint and couldn’t have made good on it, he’d have been a fool and would have gone back to the mountains, and lost face. But he made good. God has to have the rebels. He has to have the dissenters. He has to have them.
And the Church of Jesus Christ is languishing for her dissenters, for her nonconformists, for her prophets and reformers who have sanctified rebellion in their spirit. And when they see some popular figure bringing a sow into the temple to offer it on the altar, they grab a whip and drive the sow and the popular figure out onto the street. They’ve got to have men like that.
You can make that very spirit of rebellion in you to be a friend. It’s an enemy now, but it can be turned into a sanctified friend. And you can move in there after God has driven the sin out of it, and He’s made you courageous and strong. God wants people without fear.
The poor fundamentalists are running around full of fear all the time. A Scofield Bible under their arm and fear in their hearts. Afraid if they don’t interpret this verse the way it should, some big boogie will get them. Some theological pope will call them a legalist or something else. I’ve made a career laughing at those self-appointed popes.
And I was a rebel when I was a boy. I wanted to join the Navy when I was about 17. My mother wouldn’t sign my papers. And it made me so mad I got so mad it made me sick I had to go to bed. Literally. I’m not exaggerating, that’s true. I went to bed. I was just, I was so angry. Well, the blessed Holy Ghost came into my life.
Well, now, how about people? How about other enemies in addition to the ones I’ve named? Well, there’s people and Satan and circumstances which are against you. They’re all here, people. Their criticism and their abuse. Do you know what? The very criticism and abuse can become a source of the riches of humility to you. And then there’s the devil himself. Ezekiel 36.
It’s too late, I won’t read it. I was going to read a few passages from Ezekiel 36 where God said, where God said that the enemy says, ah-ha, ah-ha, I like that passage. Thus said the Lord God, I will read, because the enemy hath said against you, ah-ha, even the ancient high places are ours, they say. Thus said the Lord God, because they have made you desolate and swallowed you on every side that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen. You’re taken up in the lips of talkers and are an infamy of the people. Therefore, hear ye mountains. Thus said the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills and to the rivers and to the cities that are forsaken, which became a prey. Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen. That was God talking to Israel.
He said the very enemy that says, ah-ha, I’ve got him, God says, that stirs God’s anger. God says, and he’ll not talk like that to my boy, he’ll not talk like that to the apple of mine eye. Circumstances, I will be an enemy unto thine enemy.
The sovereign God can and will beat him down, and He’ll lead you straight into the presence of your enemies, the things that are against you, the very hindrances, the very obstacles, the very things that block your progress, the very weaknesses in your character, the very things that you weep over and wish you didn’t have. When you get a little further on in, you’ll thank God you ever had. At first you wish there’d be no Amorite right there, but when they get going, God says that they’ll turn their backs.
And when you see him go and see what riches he left you, you’ll thank God he ever existed. And every enemy you’ve got, if you’ll trust God’s working for you right now, everybody that thinks you are off in your upper story, everybody that hates you, everybody that blocks your progress, that person’s working for you if you know what to do about it. God says, I’ll take you right into the land of the Amorites and all the rest. And you say, what about these enemies?
A fellow asked me today, he said, Brother Tozer, what he should do about his enemies. Well, here’s a verse I want to read to you now, and we’re about finished. No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. And every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. How? By talking? No, by just living. Every enemy that rises against you thou shalt condemn.
You say, that’s for the great saints. No, this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. That’s an inheritance from God. And their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.
Shall we tonight decide to turn our enemies into friends and to make them work for us unknown to us? And every bad dispositional flaw, get its sanctified, cleansed, and filled with the Holy Ghost and become our friend? And the very weaknesses throw us back on God and our very strength be turned into a sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Shall we? Shall we go out to face a hostile world, not mad at anybody? If you get mad, then you have done wrong.
And if you go out with your chin up, determined what you’re going to do, the Lord will let you fall flat on your face. Then he’ll pick you up and say, now you get your chin down. I didn’t say you were to go out and yell them out. I told you I’d run them out. I’ll take care of it. Your enemies will have nothing to say. Nobody can get in your way. Nobody can stop you. And nobody can stop a good man. And nobody can harm a good woman. The grace of God will prevent it.
Well, amen. That’s what to do with your enemies, and that’s how to turn them into friends and make them work for you. Believe it? Believe it? Amen?