A.W. Tozer, Bible studies and sermons

[Shammu]

I CHOOSE TO WORSHIP
By A.W. Tozer

      Strange things are happening all around us in Christian circles because we are not truly worshipers. For instance, any untrained, unprepared, unspiritual empty rattletrap of a person can start something "religious" and find plenty of followers who will listen and promote it! Beyond that, it may become very evident that he or she had never heard from God in the first place. All of the examples we have in the Bible illustrate that glad and devoted and reverent worship is the normal employment of human beings. Every glimpse that is given us of heaven and of God's created beings is always a glimpse of worship and rejoicing and praise-because God is who He is! Because we are not truly worshipers, we spend a lot of time in the churches just spinning our wheels; making a noise but not getting anywhere. What are we going to do about this awesome, beautiful worship that God calls for? I would rather worship God than do any other thing I know of in all this wide world!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

A MORAL PRONOUNCEMENT
By A.W. Tozer

      What is God saying to His human creation in our day and time?In brief, He is saying, "Jesus Christ is My beloved Son. Hear Him!"Why is there rejection? Why do men and women fail to listen?Because God's message in Jesus is a moral pronouncement. Men and women do not wish to be under the authority of the moral Word of God!For centuries, God spoke in many ways. He inspired holy men to write portions of the message in a book. People do not like it so they try their best to avoid it because God has made it the final test of all morality, the final test of all Christian ethics.God, being one in His nature, is always able to say the same thing to everyone who hears Him. Christian believers must know that any understanding of the Word of God must come from the same Spirit who provided the inspiration!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

MYSTICISM PLUS THEOLOGY
By A.W. Tozer

      Christian preachers and ministers ought to acknowledge, publicly and with humility, their great indebtedness to the apostles John and Paul. Study the Gospel of John and you will concur with me that John is surely the mystic of the New Testament! Explore the epistles of the Apostle Paul and you will also concur with the assessment that Paul is surely the theologian of the New Testament! John and Paul were completely immersed in love and adoration for Jesus, the Christ, the eternal Son and the Savior of the world. So we may say that Paul is the instrument and John is the music! God Himself was able to pour into the great mind and spirit of Paul the basic doctrines of the New Testament. But in John, God found harp-like qualities to sound forth devotion and praise. Paul, then, is the theologian who lays foundations. John does not really soar any higher than Paul-but he sings just a bit more sweetly! It is not amazing, really, that there is much mysticism in Paul's theology, and much theology in John's mysticism!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

PRAYERS: TOO LATE
By A.W. Tozer

      John, in the sixth of Revelation, describes the most tragic, unavailing prayer meeting in the world's history! Cries and groans, shouts and demands, moans and whisper - all will be heard in that coming Day of the Lord when the forces of judgment are released. Even the mountains and the islands will be removed from their places. But by then, the prayers and cries of sinful men and women will be too little and too late! All of the great men of the earth, all the important people, all who have mistakenly put their trust and hope in purely human abilities will join those crying out in guilt. They will call on the crumbling rocks and mountains to fall on them to hide them from the wrath of God. I am among those who believe that the judgments of God are certain. We do not know the day nor the hour. But God is indeed going to shake the earth as it has never been shaken before, and He will turn it over to the Worthy One to whom it belongs - Jesus Christ!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

MORAL DETERMINATION
By A.W. Tozer

      Though we do not have much of it in this age of spineless religion, there is nevertheless much in the Bible about the place of moral determination in the service of the Lord. The Old Testament tells us that "Jacob vowed a vow," and Daniel "purposed in his heart." Paul determined "not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." Above all, we have the example of the Lord Jesus "setting His face like a flint" and walking straight toward the Cross. These and many others have left us a record of spiritual greatness born out of a will firmly set to do the will of God! They did not try to float to heaven on a perfumed cloud, but cheerfully accepted the fact that "with purpose of heart they must cleave to the Lord." We must surrender-and in that terrible, wonderful moment we may feel that our will has been forever broken, but such is not the case. In His conquest of the soul, God purges the will and brings it into union with His own, but He never breaks it!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

GOD'S PLACE AS CREATOR
By A.W. Tozer

      We make a mistake if we do not learn to admire God in all things, great and small; for a new rich mine would be opened in our consciousness if we could learn to recognize God in nature as well as in grace! We do acknowledge that the God of nature is also the God of grace; and it is true that we glorify God's redeeming grace no less when we glorify His creating and sustaining power. When Christ came to redeem us, He stepped into the framework of an afready existent nature. If we will obey and believe, we can go on pushing back the narrow borders of our spiritual world until it takes in the whole creation of God! At one time, the English merchant and renowned poet, William Blake, stood watching the sun come up out of the sea. The bright yellow disk of the sun emerged, gliding the water and painting the sky with a thousand colors. "Ah! I see gold!" the merchant said. Blake answered, "I see the glory of God! And I hear a multitude of the heavenly host crying, 'The whole earth is full of His glory.'"

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

WHAT REALLY MATTERS?
By A.W. Tozer

      It is all but impossible these days to get people to pay any attention to things that really matter. The broad cynic in our modern civilization is likely to ask: "What really matters, after all?" It is our personal relationship to God that really matters! That takes priority over everything else; for no man can afford to live or die under the frowning displeasure of God. Yet, name one modern device that can save him from it. Where can a man find security? Can philosophy help him? or psychology? or science? or atoms or wonder drugs or vitamins? Only Christ can help him, and His aid is as old as man's sin and man's need. A few other things matter to be sure. We must trust Christ completely. We must carry our cross daily. We must love God and our fellow men. We must fulfill our commission as ambassadors of Christ among men. We must grow in grace and in the knowledge of God and come at last to our end like a ripe shock of corn at harvest time. These are the things that really matter!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

FAITH MUST BE RESTORED
By A.W. Tozer

      The Bible tells about man's being alienated from and an enemy to God. Should this sound harsh or extreme you have only to imagine your closest friend coming to you and stating in cold seriousness that he no longer has any confidence in you. "I do not trust you. I have lost confidence in your character. I am forced to suspect every move you make" - such a declaration would instantly alienate friends by destroying the foundation upon which every friendship is built. Until your former friend's opinion of you had been reversed there could be no further communion. People do not go boldly to God and profess that they have no confidence in Him and they usually do not witness publicly to their low view of God. The frightful thing, however, is that people everywhere act out their unbelief with a consistency that is more convincing than words. Christianity provides a way back from this place of unbelief and alienation: "He that cometh to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." God took the wrong upon Himself in order that the one who committed the wrong might be saved!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

TOO MUCH "AT HOME"
By A.W. Tozer

      One of the most telling indictments against many of us who compose our Christian churches is the almost complete acceptance of the contemporary scene as our permanent home! We have been working and earning, getting and spending, and now we are enjoying the creature comforts known to human beings in this land. You may bristle a bit and ask: "Is there anything wrong with being comfortable?" Let me answer in this way: if you are a Christian and you are comfortably "at home" in Chicago or Toronto, in Iowa or Alberta - or any other address on planet earth, the signs are evident that you are in spiritual trouble. The spiritual equation reads like this: the greater your contentment with your daily circumstances in this world, the greater your defection from the ranks of God's pilgrims enroute to a city whose architect and builder is God Himself! If we can feel that we have put down our roots in this present world, then our Lord still has much to teach us about faith and attachment to our Savior!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

ANSWERING GOD'S CALL
By A.W. Tozer

      When will men and women realize that when God calls us out He is completely faithful to call us into something better? In his faith, Abraham was against idolatry and idol-making, but that was not his crusade. Because of his faith, God led him into a promised land, into possessions and into the lineage that brought forth the Messiah. The call of God is always to something better-keep that in mind! God calls us into the joys and reality of eternal life. He calls us into purity of life and spirit, so that we may acceptably walk with Him. He calls us into a life of service and usefulness that brings glory to Himself as God. He calls us into the sweetest fellowship possible on this earth - the fellowship of the family of God! If God takes away from us the old, wrinkled, beat-up dollar bill we clutch so desperately, it is only because He wants to exchange it for the whole federal mint, the entire treasury! He is saying, "I have in store for you all the resources of heaven. Help yourself!"

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

AUTHORITY IN PREACHING
By A.W. Tozer

       Because we are Christians who believe the inspired Word of God and because we believe that the Holy Spirit is the abiding third person of the Trinity, there should be more divine authority in our preaching ministries. A preacher of this gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ should have the authority of God upon him, so that he makes the people responsible to listen to him. When they will not listen to him, they are accountable to God for turning away from the divine Word. A preacher under God's unction should reign from his pulpit as a king from his throne. He should not reign by law or by regulation or by man's authority. He ought to reign by moral ascendancy! The divine authority is missing from many pulpits. We have "tabby cats" with their claws carefully trimmed in the seminary, so they can paw over the congregations and never scratch them at all! The Holy Spirit will sharpen the arrows of the man of God who preaches the whole counsel of God!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

THE UNITY OF ALL THINGS
By A.W. Tozer

      If we are humble and sincere Christians, this should be one of the most welcome thoughts we have ever considered: the work of Christ in redemption will achieve ultimately the expulsion of sin, the only divisive agent in the universe! When that is accomplished, God's creation will once more realize the unification of all things. We who are men and women, though redeemed and regenerated, are submerged in time; therefore we properly say that prophecy is history foretold and history is prophecy fulfilled. But in God there is no "was" or "will be" but a continuous and unbroken "is." In Him, history and prophecy are one and the same. God contains past and future in His own Being. It is sin that has brought diversity, separation, dissimilarity. Sin has introduced divisions into a universe essentially one. We do not understand this, but we must let our faith rest on the character of God. The concept of the unity of all things is seen in the Scriptures. Paul said that God will reconcile all things unto Himself, whether they be things in earth or in heaven!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

CROSSING OVER JORDAN
By A.W. Tozer

      The prophets and the psalmists of the Old Testament wrestled as we do with the problem of evil in a divine universe but their approach to God and nature was much more direct than ours. They did not interpose between God and His world that opaque web we moderns call the "laws of nature." They could see God in a whirlwind and hear Him in a storm and they did not hesitate to say so! There was about their lives an immediate apprehension of the divine. Everything in heaven and on earth assured them that this is God's world and that He rules over all. I heard a Methodist bishop tell of being called to the bedside of an elderly dying woman in his early ministry. He said he was frightened; but the old saint was radiantly happy. When he tried to express the sorrow he felt about her illness, she would not hear it. "Why, God bless you young man," she said cheerfully, "there is nothing to be scared about. I am just going to cross over Jordan, where my Father owns the land on both sides of the river!" She understood about the unity of all things in God's creation.

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

GOD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
By A.W. Tozer

      When the eternal Son of God became the Son of Man and walked on this earth, He always called individuals to His side. Jesus did not come into the world to deal with statistics! He deals with individuals and that is why the Christian message is and always has been: "God loves the world! He loves the masses and throngs only because they are made up of individuals. He loves every individual person in the world!" In the great humanistic tide of our day, the individual is no longer the concern. We are pressed to think of the human race in a lump. We are schooled to think of the human race in terms of statistics. In many nations, the state is made to be everything and the individual means nothing at all. Into the very face and strength of this kind of humanism comes the Christian evangel, the good news of salvation, wondrously alight with the assurance for all who will listen: "You are an individual and you matter to God! His concern is not for genes and species but for the individuals He has created!"

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

Sound Conversion
By A.W. Tozer

      I am convinced that many evangelicals are not truly and soundly converted. Among the evangelicals it is entirely possible to come into membership, to ooze in by osmosis, to leak through the cells of the church and never know what it means to be born of the Spirit and washed in the blood. A great deal that passes for the deeper life is nothing more or less than basic Christianity. There is nothing deeper about it, and it is where we should have been from the start. We should have been happy, joyous, victorious Christians walking in the Holy Spirit and not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh. Instead we have been chasing each other around the perpetual mountain.

      What we need is what the old Methodists called a sound conversion. There is a difference between conversion and a sound conversion. People who have never been soundly converted do not have the Spirit to enlighten them. When they read the Sermon on the Mount or the teaching passages of the epistles that tell them how to live or the doctrinal passages that tell how they can live, they are unaffected. The Spirit who wrote them is not witnessing in their hearts because they have not been born of the Spirit. That often happens.

A.W. Tozer