“Appearance versus Reality-The Inconsistency of Jesus”
Appearance versus Reality-The Inconsistency of Jesus
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
December 12, 1954
Jesus answered them, I have done one thing, and you are all amazed at it. Moses gave you circumcision, not that it came from Moses originally, but from your forefathers. And you will circumcise a man even on the Sabbath. If a man receives a cutting of circumcision on the Sabbath to avoid breaking the law of Moses, why should you be angry with me because I have made a man’s body perfectly whole on the Sabbath? You must not judge by the appearance of things, but by the reality.
Some of the people of Jerusalem, hearing him talk like this, remarked, sn’t this the man they are trying to kill? It’s amazing. He talks quite openly, and they haven’t a word to say to him. Surely our rulers haven’t decided that this really is Christ, but we know this man, where he comes from.
Now when Christ comes, no one will know where he comes from. Then Jesus, in the middle of his teaching, called out in the temple, so you know me and where I have come from, but I have not come of my own accord. I am sent by One who is true, and you do not know Him, I know Him, because I come from Him, and He has sent Me here. Then they attempted to arrest him, but actually no one laid a finger on him, because the right moment had not yet arrived.
Now, this morning was more or less of an evangelistic sermon, and twenty-five or thirty people requested we pray for them. And we’re going to continue to pray, and you will prove that you meant business by being at prayer meeting Wednesday night, and by living a life different this week from last.
Tonight I’m going to talk out of the Scripture with no particular intention of pressing an evangelistic sermon. There are some great shining truths found here in this seventh chapter, and I don’t know that they’re related sermonically. But they are related like mountain peaks. They’re related at their base. A great range of mountains point up into the sky, one beside the other, you see them out to our west, and they don’t seem to be related particularly. They get different names, Old Baldy and some other names they give them. But they are related. They’re related at their base.
As my fingers jut up, but they’re related in my hand. So, these truths that our Lord gave us are organically related below the surface, though they don’t lend themselves too easily through sermonic treatment. But I don’t want to skip anything here.
I think the Gospel of John is one of the greatest books of the Bible, and any word of that book is good. So tonight, I want to talk about three things. The folly of judging according to appearances, and the blinding effect of sin, and that no one can harm a man of God.
Now we’ll take them in that order, for that’s the order in which they occur. The folly of judging according to appearances. Jesus our Lord cried out and said, Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. And it was not so much a rebuke as an exclamation pressed out of His heart, for He saw what they were doing.
These Jewish people of Jerusalem were unable to see or feel or sense the heart of God in religion. The man to please them must conform to the ceremonial law, and to conform to that law they would. They forced that, even if it meant the mutilation of the body on the Sabbath day, in order that the law of Moses might not be broken. And that was done to uphold the letter of the law.
My brethren and sisters, could I say this to you tonight and not have you think that it’s only an echo of some other echo of something I said before? But there are two great schools of danger in America. There is the liberal school that says this Bible contains the Word of God. And we believe that it is a good book, and we think it contains the Word of God. It’s not to be taken literally when the circumstances indicate that it’s only myth and symbol. But there’s good truth in it, and it tells us of this wonderful Man that walked through. And we recommend it, and we think we ought to study it. It’s a good book, and we believe it’s the greatest book in the world, and we believe it’s an inspired book. That is, inspired in the sense that it is the high moments of great souls.
Now that’s liberalism. And you and I have no difficulty with liberalism at all. Liberals don’t bother us. They never come around this corner. I haven’t seen a liberal here in years. The atmosphere around here, just, they can’t breathe it. They don’t bother us at all. Some men are having an awful time fighting liberals. And I’m a little easier on liberals because I’ve never had a run-in with them. They never bother me. They just ignore me and figure there’s no use to shoot at a dead lion, I guess. And I figure the same thing. We get along all right by never getting along at all.
So, we’re having no trouble with liberals, but there’s another at another school, and that is that the letter of the law must be upheld regardless. God’s Bible is here, and letter for letter, it’s true, and I stand for that too. And regardless of who it hurts, or regardless of anything, the letter of the law must be upheld.
Now that’s what the people of Jerusalem said. They said what the Bible says, practice circumcision. And if they caught a kid that wasn’t circumcised, they circumcised him on the Sabbath day, regardless. They said it’s all right to break the law of the Sabbath because we’re upholding another law, and thus the law of God is not broken.
And here was the great tragedy and sorrow of this kind of thing. They made the man to be the servant of the law, and they made the law to be first and man second. Whereas Jesus taught that the law was given for man, and that everything God did was for man. God made man in His image. He redeemed man. It’s man He loves, not law, not ceremony, not ritual, but it’s man He loves.
And the Law was given that it might lead us to Christ. And the law was not given to cut our throats and crush us, but to lead us to Christ. That was the teaching of the Savior, and we have very much of that today. Uphold the law if you crush the man. Whereas the Bible was written for man. It’s men that God loves. It’s men that God thinks about. Jesus came to die. He said He would fulfill the law, and He did, every gotten tittle of the law. But in doing it, notice how He did it, He did it dying to redeem man, and rising again from the dead.
So, I say that on the other end of the scale from the liberal that says, it’s a good book and you ought to read it, clear to the other end is the hard-faced man with his lips drawn tight who says, regardless, the law must be upheld. And so, he would take the very club of the law and beat the brains out of a brother on the Sabbath day, and not mind at all.
Oh, Jesus was a master of debate and polemic. Our Lord wielded simple, two-syllabled words, as we have them in our English, with such frightful effect. He almost punned on the language here when he said, you Jews, “how strange.” You mutilate on the Sabbath day, and I heal; and you excuse yourself and condemn me and want to kill me. He said, do you think that all God’s concerned with is circumcision? Do you think that God is not concerned with the healing of bodies as well as the cutting of bodies? Do you think that God, in order to uphold the law of the Sabbath, would let a man die? No, no, it’s the man that matters, not the Sabbath day. The sun rises on the Sabbath and sets there in the evening thereof, just the same whether it’s Wednesday, Tuesday, or Sabbath day.
So, He said, it’s people I came to die for. The law never would have brought Jesus from the glory above. No text ever would have brought Him from the glory above. Love brought Him from the glory above, according to the Scriptures. Love brought Him down. So, He came out of love for people, and was people that He loved.
And whenever you find any church or any interpretation of Scripture or any book of minutes or manual of church discipline that sacrifices the man to the text, you know you’ve got a Pharisee on your hands. But whenever you find the man that will sacrifice everything to the man, to save the man for whom Jesus died, then you know that’s the Spirit of Christ, for that’s exactly what Christ did.
Now, the trouble with these people is they just could not catch the heart of God in religion. So, our Lord cried out an outburst of exclamation rather than a calm teaching. He said, Judge not according to appearances.
Now, there’s no faith in appearances, and I pray that we might be delivered. The great curse is on us, of judging by appearances. And modern evangelicalism is judging by appearances.
I suppose I shouldn’t bring this up, I know as I shouldn’t. But I bring so many things up that I shouldn’t, because that’s the reason I preach to few people. But in all truth years ago I saw an ad that was sent out to all young people that were going to have a banquet. And they explained that they were going to have it in a great ballroom in the city of Chicago in a great hotel, and it was going to cost five dollars a head, empty or full. And they said that they were to come even if they had to borrow the money or jeopardize their allowances for six months to come. I think it was three months, to be honest. Come anyway, and they said, we’re going to have tails and ties and black ties, and we’re going to really put on the dog, and we’re going to show the world that Christians also know something about gracious living.
Well, I tell you now, I had a good stomach, or I’d have been in trouble. Because when I read that, I all but gagged. I did gag. And I’ve been gagging ever since, every time I’ve thought of it. That we Christians who know what grace means, and know what grace in a human heart means, that we’re so charmed and hypnotized by appearances that we drag in that phony, long-tailed coat, formal affair, and claim that’s gracious living. Brother, I never felt like climbing on a pulpit before in my whole life, but I do right now. I’d like to climb up here and shout it, that that’s carnality with a capital K!
I like to see kids in formal, and I don’t mind long-tailed coats. I don’t mind the string ties. It’s all right. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the frightful mistake of teaching young people that gracious living meant doing it the way they do it in high society. High society happens to be the lowest society in the world, and yet we judge according to appearances. We judge according to appearances. That’s judging according to appearances.
Jesus said, don’t judge according to appearances. Get at the heart of God. Find out the heart of things. Go to the roots of things. Judge not according to what you see. Your eyes will fool you all the time.
Emerson pointed out that if you looked at the landscape standing up, then you bent down this way and looked at the landscape, it would look like a different landscape. Wise old man that he was, it’s true.
I got down on my hands and knees today, or yesterday, and was looking at the cat. Kitty, we got a new kitty at our house. And what a world it is down when you’re down with a kitty. It looks like a different world altogether. Appearances change depending upon where you look at them from. Jesus said, don’t judge according to appearances. Don’t pay any attention to it.
That’s why I believe that it’s always a carnal thing to introduce beauty contests in the Christian young people’s groups. Beauty contests indeed. Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and the wrinkled-est old granny with her old-fashioned clothes limping down the street may have more of the beauty of Jesus than all of the buxom youth that we can strut out and put a phony crown on an empty head.
My God, when are we going to wake up and begin to judge according to truth, not according to appearances? Don’t trust your eyes, brothers and sisters. They lie like the devil. Don’t trust your ears, they’ll fool you. Don’t trust the touch of your fingers, it’ll fool you. Don’t trust the taste of your tongue or the smell of your nose. Don’t trust your senses. Trust not according to your senses, but trust Truth. Get to the heart of religion. Find out what things are at the heart of it. Christianity is a religion of not only the heart of the man, but the heart of God, and the heart of Truth.
Now, there’s no faith in appearances because they trust the testimony of the senses. And there’s no truth in it because it gives false impressions.
When I was a young fellow, oh, very, very, very young. I don’t know, I wasn’t saved yet. I was saved when I was seventeen, I must have been sixteen. I still remember this. I went to a little old theater called the Casino. And one of the, it was the old-fashioned vaudeville, remember? You don’t remember it, do you? Old vaudeville. Radio killed vaudeville, but the old vaudeville show.
And here was one of the tricks, here was one of the things they did. They raised the curtain and let the audience see the actress making up. She was decently clothed when the curtain went up, but she was sitting there in her dressing room fixing herself up. And they let us see her before she started. Oh, brother, I’ve seen better looking things than that being dragged in.
But she was just very ordinary, and nobody would look twice. But she went to work on herself, and they allowed us to see that. I don’t know, it was just one of the features. And I actually saw the lady making her up. And when she was finished, she danced out onto that stage of vision that would have caused the blood pressure of any young fellow to mount. I don’t remember that mine did, but the average young fellow would have. And she was beautiful to see, and she was homely as a devil. But they’d made her up.
Don’t trust your eyes, brother, and don’t trust your ears, and don’t trust your senses. Judge not according to appearances, said Jesus, and it isn’t funny, for that’s what’s wrong with us. The poor blind church can only see with its carnal eyes. It sees the way the world does, tries to follow the world. And the result is we’re seeing appearances. We’re seeing the external play of shadows. We’re never seeing through to the heart of things.
Always Jesus saw with two pairs of eyes. Always He saw with the eyes of human sympathy that could see people, poor people, sick people, tired people, birds and flowers and mountains and rivers and lakes and hungry people, and streets and cobblestones and buildings. He could see, but He also saw with another pair of eyes.
And with that other pair of eyes, He saw the truth. And with that first pair of eyes, He saw appearances. But He never let appearances fool Him. And if we Christians could get saved from appearances, we’d grow in grace much more rapidly than we do. Judge not according to appearances, said Jesus. It’s a foolish thing.
And if you want to pray for yourself now, I want to give you a subject. Write it down and pray often and much. Oh, God, deliver me from the sight of my eyes. Deliver me from appearances, Lord, and help me, give me penetration that I can see through to reality.
The second thing, the blinding effect of sin, verses 26-29. Now, the Jews made a great blunder here, and the blunder was this. It was put in the form of a syllogism, or I put it in the form of a syllogism, actually quoting it from the Bible and putting it in the form of a syllogism. When Messiah comes, we will not know where He comes from–major premise. We know where Jesus came from–minor premise. Therefore, Jesus is not the Messiah–conclusion.
Remember when you studied logic? Oh, simple syllogism–major premise, when the Messiah comes, we won’t know where He came from. We know where this man came from, therefore he’s not the Messiah. Logic. The doctors of the temple and the lawyers and the Pharisees, they condemned him with logic, and they said, you can’t qualify. We know where you came from. When Messiah comes, we won’t know.
Now, the trouble there was, they were dead wrong, dead wrong. Because even when the three wise men, or the wise men, came to Jerusalem and they inquired and they said, where is the Christ to be born? They hurried and had a little huddle and came up with a scroll of the law, and they said, why he’s to be born in Bethlehem of Judah. Because it says that, O Bethlehem of Judah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall come One who shall rule thy people. Israel, who is going forth, has been from everlasting. And they immediately went in that region and found Him.
Now, they did know where He was to come from. If they had known their Scriptures, they’d have known about when He was coming, and they’d have known by what line He was coming. They’d have known what country He was to be born in. They’d have known what town He was to be born in. They’d have known all that, and they would have known where He came from.
But you know what was the matter with them? Prejudice was blinding their hearts. They were hostile toward Jesus by a kind of an instinctive hostility, and that instinctive hostility prejudiced them. Prejudice is a blinding thing, a sinfully blinding thing.
And so, they allowed the very Scriptures to destroy them, the Scriptures they were devoted to expounding, They said, we know this one isn’t the Messiah because we’ve got a syllogism that proves it. We’ve got logic that shows it. The Old Testament Scriptures were very clear and detailed, and they were scholars of the Old Testament Scriptures, or they could have been. But they didn’t like this Man.
So, because they didn’t like that Man and sin had prejudiced them, they became blind in their own imaginings. Their hearts were alien and hostile toward God. And Jesus Christ, our Lord, burst out again. For these are outbursts here, rather than calm teachings. They’re outbursts of His great heart.
And He said, in effect, and actually the question mark is actually in this version. He said, you know where I come from? You say you know where I come from? You don’t know where I come from. You only think you do. You don’t know where I come from. You say that the Messiah, nobody will know where he comes from, and actually the truth is the Bible says they will know. And you claim you know where I come from. You don’t know where I come from at all, because My Father sent Me and you don’t know My Father.
Don’t think He was abusing them, brethren. There was no abuse there, no harsh note in that voice. It was the great, hard, full, tender voice of Jesus as He saw those who didn’t know His Father, these poor blind aliens, these people hostile and enmity against God and could not subscribe to the law of God nor submit to it.
He said, you’re all wrong, you think you know where I came from. You know the geography, but oh, you don’t know My Father. You don’t know God, you don’t know the Truth, you’re blind men. These were a prejudiced people here, a people whose hearts were alien. They didn’t know the One who had sent Him.
You know why they didn’t know God, and you know why they didn’t know Christ? I’ll tell you why. Because to know Christ would have required a visitation of complete humility. Only the poor in spirit can know God. Only the meek can inherit the earth. Only those who have humbled themselves can ever know Christ. The light won’t shine on an impenitent heart. The gleam of God’s sunshine will never touch a man who has pulled the curtains of self-love down around himself. It would have meant for these Jews a turning against themselves in repentance, and they wouldn’t turn against themselves. They chose rather to turn against God.
Everyone listening to me, let me tell you this. The time either came, is now, or will come, when it was, is now, or will be necessary, that a choice has been or will be made. Either I turn against myself, or I turn against God. They turned against God. They would not turn against themselves.
We either turn against ourselves or we turn against Jesus Christ. We can’t be on both sides of that fence. And they would not turn against themselves. A few did, thank God, a few did. A few threw themselves down at His feet in a heap of contrition and turned against themselves.
A man went up into the temple and beat on his breast and turned against himself and said, Have mercy on me, a sinner. He turned against himself. The other man went up and refused to turn against himself. He said, I am a good man, and he turned against God. And Jesus said, he went down to his house lost, and the other went down to his house justified.
You may love yourself tonight, sir or lady. Let me point out, the day will be either now or sometime when you must make your decision. Turn against yourself or turn against Jesus Christ. They had made theirs. They turned against Him and stood for themselves and went blind, and blindly misunderstood the Scripture. Blindly created syllogisms that ruled out the Son of God. They blindly made Him to be a man full of the devil. And in their blindness, they said, this man has a devil. Who? What language? This man has a devil.
I remember when I was a little kid, we had a great picture on the wall. It had no print, but it had no glass on it. It was just without a glass, without a covering. And it was Christ before Pilate, that great picture of our wonderful Jesus with His hands cupped, standing before Pilate’s judgment. And it hung there on the wall, and I knew a little about what it meant.
And I threw something, as kid’s will, a ball or something else, and it went through the heart, the body of Jesus, and left a ding there in that print. And I confess, I almost died. I thought I had committed the unpardonable sin. I was a frightened, scared, terrified boy, and afraid to tell anybody. I must have been eight or nine. But I was frightened. I thought, oh, I’ve done it. I have done it. This is the unpardonable sin. I’ve damaged the picture of the Savior.
And I remember going out walking down the street of the little road, and I thought, is this the unpardonable sin? I think God in His heaven smiled. If I’d been good enough in my hearing, I’d have heard Him say, no, no, boy, don’t worry about the picture. I don’t mind if kids play. And that was play to a picture of My Son, which is no picture of My Son at all, but imagination. No, I hadn’t committed the unpardonable sin. But when those self-loving egotists, those logicians and theologians stood and looked Him square in the eye and said, thou hast a devil, they had. And the difference was that a frightened country boy was afraid to go to sleep because he thought he had. And these logicians lay down and slept like babies because they thought they hadn’t.
To commit the unpardonable sin and not know it. And nobody ever committed the unpardonable sin, yet who did know it. For it’s part of the very psychological structure that permits the unpardonable sin to be committed. It’s part of it that it can’t be detected by the person who commits it.
And these people who said, thou hast a devil, they didn’t know they’d committed it. The bell was tolling in the distance, and they didn’t hear it. The blind went down somewhere, and they didn’t see it. And the sun went out and they didn’t notice it; blindness that came from prejudice and self-love. They had turned against God because they wouldn’t turn against themselves.
The third point. That’s that last verse. I think I should read it to you again. And they sought to take it. But no man laid hands on Him because His hour was not yet come. It says here they sought to take it. Here they were, and here was all the concentrated fury of hell. Here was jealousy and hate and blind prejudice. And here most of all was the animating, indwelling presence of the devil himself, that ancient serpent who was the enemy of God. And here was the fury and zeal of hell turned against this Man.
And yet no man laid hands on Him. Why? Who injured them? He had no army. His disciples weren’t armed. There were only a few and they were timid and easily frightened. Who hindered them from laying hands on Him? The Roman authorities? Those bloody Romans, they didn’t care. It was the Iron Kingdom, and they were proud of it. Did they care? No. They’d have been glad they got rid of Him. He was a nuisance to them. He was causing trouble among that already troublesome people, the Jews.
Who hindered them from laying hands on Jesus? Not a Roman soldier, not an emperor nor a king. Who hindered them? Jewish authorities, priests, rabbis? No. They wanted to kill Him. And they would have been glad if it could have been so arranged that a mob scene would have been, a mob suddenly would have risen, and they’d have mobbed Him and torn Him apart. They’d have been glad because He was causing them trouble too.
No, Jewish authorities didn’t hinder them. The disciples didn’t hinder them, the Roman authorities didn’t hinder them, yet no man laid hands on him. Why? They wanted to; they burned with jealousy. They boiled like a hot kettle. They fumed like madmen to get their hands on Him, yet no man laid hands on Him. Who hindered them?
Oh, my brother, His hour had not yet come. God had set in His high heaven above, centuries before, God had set His watch and said, when that hour comes, He’ll die. But until that hour comes, hell can’t touch Him. Roman authorities can’t touch Him.
And He wound it up and set His prophetic clock. His hour had not yet come. The buzzer hadn’t rung in high heaven, and all the Roman soldiers couldn’t get to Him, and all the angry fury of the Jews couldn’t get to Him. Nobody could get to Him because the bell hadn’t rung. God Almighty had set His prophetic clock, and it was ticking away in perfect time. But it wasn’t quite time yet for Jesus to die. Not a man could lay their hands on Him. God had an appointed time for Jesus to die.
My brethren, if you wonder about my faith in the Scriptures, let me tell you, I believe that Jesus not only died the year He should have died, the month He should have died, the day He should have died, I believe He died the hour He should have died. And I believe that when He said, it’s finished, and gave up the ghost, it was the very minute He should have died.
God Almighty runs His universe, His church, and His kingdom as He runs the starry heavens above. And astronomers can predict the motions of stars a thousand years, ten thousand years in advance. They know exactly where they’ll be in any given moment ten thousand years from now. And God runs His kingdom no less precise than He does His natural world.
No, they couldn’t touch Jesus. He walked calmly among them. That’s why He could be so relaxed, you see. Fear comes because you don’t know when you’re going to get hit. That’s the trouble. We walk around and we don’t know when we’re going to get it.
You go down the street, you women, on a dark evening when you’re coming home from work and you never quite know where, danger may strike and you don’t know when. Jesus knew when and knew where, knew the source, and knew when, and He knew He was perfectly safe.
I think our Lord might have indicated a sense of humor here, a sarcastic sense of humor, when the Herod sent to take Him. He looked around and half smiled and said, Herod, did you say? He said, you go tell that old fox, I’ve got three days. Tell that old fox, he said, just three days. He wasn’t worried. Why? He knew His Father had set the clock. He hadn’t heard it ring. He knew He was perfectly safe, surrounded by the furies of hell. He knew He was perfectly safe.
Now what does that mean to you and me, brethren? As He is, so are we in this world. Now I’m not a fatalist. I’m not a fatalist in any sense of the word. You know, during the war, they used to say, the fellows would fly, and they would say, I’m all right till my time comes. That was a kind of fatalism.
But the boy got it right when he said, he spoke to the pilot who was flying the ship, and he said something about the fact that he was a bit uneasy. And the pilot laughed and said, don’t worry, boy. I have got it figured out that I can’t go till my time comes. And the boy said, yeah, but how about me? He said, oh, your time come now. He figured that if his time hadn’t come, he’d plunge down anyhow. He had something there all right. There was a bit of logic in that. That if the pilot’s time comes, and there were thirty or fifty men in the plane with him, it’d mean their time had come too.
Well, I’m not a fatalist, and I don’t hide behind any such phony faith as that. That’s pagan faith. That’s the faith of the chimney-corner and the old wives’ tales. But I have another kind of faith. It is faith in God, and faith in God’s plans, God’s purposes, God’s prophetic pattern. Faith in the safety of the soul that’s in Christ, the security of the soul that’s in God. And as He is, so are we in this world.
And they couldn’t touch Him until His time came. And when His time came, they laid hands on Him, took Him out and crucified Him, but not one minute before His time came. And as He is, so are we in this world.
And the child of God, if he’s obedient, may be sure of this, that no accident can happen to him. And if it seems to be an accident, it isn’t. A man in God’s will is a partaker of the eternal plan. And if he’s a good man, his goodness is a shield and a buckler. I believe in the prophylactic power of goodness. I believe in the preservative power of goodness.
There’s a strong Old Testament doctrine that good men were well preserved, that a good man would live a long time. That a good man, everything else being equal, if he didn’t get killed for his faith’s sake, God always put that bracket in there, it’s perfectly possible that he might die a martyr. But apart from that, the good man lived longer and be better off and be healthier.
Because goodness has a prophylactic value, it has a healing quality about it. And everything else being equal, the man in whom God’s goodness dwells in full measure is a pretty safe man. He’ll be protected, you can’t get to him. There’s an invisible wall around him.
Job was a good man, and he eschewed evil. As the old holiness preacher said, he didn’t eschew tobacco, he eschewed evil. And he loved righteousness. And the result was, the devil had to come and stand, hat in hand, to get a chance to get to him; couldn’t get to him.
Hedge about him? And we think of the hedge as being one of these privet hedges somebody clips. The devil could slide through a privet hedge, brother, don’t be so carnal and worldly mental, physical in our viewpoint. The hedge that Job had around him wasn’t made of foliage, it was a goodness of a good man, a good man in God.
There are some creatures that carry with them their own safety. A toad, for instance. Did you know that a dog can’t kill a toad? I don’t know whether you care for a lesson in natural history, but it’s true. A dog can’t kill a toad, because the toad has, in every one of those little warts, he has some kind of a strong acid. And a careless puppy rushes up and grabs him, tosses him around, and then goes away sick as a dog. I said it on purpose, I didn’t get caught.
No, it’s a fact. He can’t, because the toad, poor little old toad, he doesn’t give you warts, and he doesn’t hurt anybody, he eats insects, and every gardener knows that four or five toads are the best protection he’s got in his garden against insects. Poor little old toad, harmless, he’s got a bad reputation, but he’s harmless. But he carries his own safety in himself.
So, a good man, if I might elevate that illustration a little, so a good man, if the God dwells in him and the goodness of the Holy Ghost is in him, he’s preserved. And they seeked to lay hands on Him, but no man can lay hands on Him till the time comes.
God lifts His hand and says, all right, son. Then they rush in and tear him apart, and the Lord gathers up the pieces and says, come march in me. Thank God.
So, as He is, so are we in this world. The man in whom the Holy Ghost dwells is safe as if he were in heaven. He may get kicked, but he won’t get killed. He may get killed, but if he gets killed, he won’t be destroyed. He will be all right in his Father’s house.
Now, I just close, and I recommend as a result of these three mountain peaks that I have talked about, I recommend we make a prayer. I recommend that we pray, O Lord God, save me from the sight of my eyes. Save me from the hearing of my ears. Save me from carnal Christianity. Save me from appearances. Save me from the surface of things. Save me from my ears and my taste. Save me, my God, from my fallen senses. And give me inner ability to know when it’s God and when it isn’t.
Oh, if you knew how serious this was, I think you’d not go to bed tonight till you’ve had some time with Him, praying, O God, save me from my senses.
Second, O God, save me from the moral blunders resulting from prejudice and inner hostility. Save me, God, from making frightful moral blunders, from misunderstanding the Scriptures, from misinterpreting the text of the Bible, for using the Word of God sometimes as a fort in which I hide rather than repent and come out in the open.
As a coony goes to the rocks, I go to some misunderstood text to hide my sin, instead of going to the Fountain to wash it. Save me, God, save me. And teach me how safe I am until my time comes, until I’m ready and I’m finished, and I’ve done my work.
If I’m a good man and full of the Holy Ghost, I need fear nobody. And save me from hearing these terrible words I said the other night when I was speaking earlier on in the chapter, I said I’d rather have been born a cocker spaniel and die one than to be born a man in America and have Jesus Christ look me in the eyes and say to me, boy, Him who sent Me you do not know. You don’t know Him.
You know the terrible thing it is this, that sometimes when you go to someone and say I don’t think you know Him, they turn white with anger and become furious. And they’re almost prepared to say, thou hast a devil, than thou say, I don’t know God.
Brethren, if I walk up to this man and say I’ve lived with you a good many years and I’m sorry to have to tell you, it bothers me and I’m worried, I see traits in you that indicate that you’ve not been born again, and he turns white and flies into fury and stalks out. I know my prophetic soul has been right.
But if I say to a man, you bother me, I don’t think you’re saved, and he grabs his head and drops to his knees and says, my God, is it I, is it I, could it be that I am deceived? Could it be? I think he’s saved. I believe he’s at least near to the kingdom. But when we in our fury get angry with a man who cuts close and shaves close and challenges our faith, when we get furious and say thou hast a devil, who are you to say I’m not a Christian? Brethren, I’m worried about that.
Oh, I want somebody, I pray that somebody will be honest with me and will let me know, for I want to know. If you know a little while ahead, you may do something about it, but if you don’t know till you die, then how tragic and how terrible. To think I’m saved and not be saved. That was the condition of the Jews. Let’s pray.