A.W. Tozer, Bible studies and sermons

[Shammu]

DO YOU LOVE BEAUTY?
By A.W. Tozer

      When we look closely at this world system and society, we see the terrible and ugly scars of sin. Sin has obscenely scarred and defaced this world, taking away its harmony and symmetry and beauty. That is the negative picture. Thank God for the positive promise and prospect that heaven is the place of all loveliness, all harmony and beauty. These are not idle words. If you love beautiful things, you had better stay out of hell, for hell will be the quintessence of all that is morally ugly and obscene. Hell will be the ugliest place in all of creation! It is a fact that earth lies between all that is ugly in hell and all that is beautiful in heaven. As long as we are living here, we will have to consider the extreme-much that is good and much that is bad! As believers, we are held firm in the knowledge that the eternal Son came to save us and deliver us to a beautiful heaven and everlasting fellowship with God!

[Shammu]

IF JESUS CAME TODAY
By A.W. Tozer

      People have asked me if our present generation would gladly accept Jesus if He came at this time, instead of 2,000 years ago. I have to believe that history does repeat itself! In our own day, many who want to follow the Christian traditions still balk and reject a thorough-going spiritual housecleaning within their own lives. When Jesus came, many realized that it would mean probable financial loss for them to step out and follow Christ. Also, many of those men and women who considered the claims of Christ in His day knew that following Him would call for abrupt and drastic changes in their patterns of living. The proud and selfish aspects of their lives would have been disturbed. Beyond that, there was an almost complete disdain for the inward spiritual life which Jesus taught as a necessity for mankind; that it is the pure in heart who will see God! I am afraid that humanity's choice would still be the same today. People are still more in love with money and pride and pleasure than they are with God and His salvation!

[Shammu]

THE WORD MADE FLESH
By A.W. Tozer

      I have given much thought and contemplation to the sweetest and tenderest of all of the mysteries in God's revelation to man-the Incarnation! Jesus, the Christ, is the Eternal One, for in the fullness of time He humbles Himself John's description is plain: the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. I confess that I would have liked to have seen the baby Jesus. But the glorified Jesus yonder at the right hand of the Majesty on high, was the baby Jesus once cradled in the manger straw. Taking a body of humiliation, He was still the Creator who made the wood of that manger, made the straw, and was Creator of all the beasts that were there. In truth, He made the little town of Bethlehem and all that it was. He also made the star that lingered over the scene that night. He had come into His own world, His Father's world. Everything we touch and handle belongs to Him. So we have come to love Him and adore Him and honor Him!

[Shammu]

CHRISTMAS IS REAL
By A.W. Tozer

      The birth of Christ was a divine declaration, an eternal statement to a race of fallen men and women. The Advent of Christ clearly established: First, that God is real. The heavens were opened and another world than this came into view. Second, that human life is essentially spiritual. With the emergence into human flesh of the Eternal Word of the Father, the fact of man's divine origin is confirmed. Third, that God indeed had spoken by the prophets. The coming of the Messiah-Savior into the world confirmed the veracity of the Old Testament Scripture. Fourth, that man is lost but not abandoned. Had men not been lost no Savior would have been required. Had they been abandoned no Savior would have come. Finally, that this world is not the end. We are made for two worlds and as surely as we now inhabit the one we shall also inhabit the other!

[Shammu]

JOY AND WONDER
By A.W. Tozer

       It is tragic that men and women everywhere are losing the sense of wonder, confessing now only one interest in life-and that is utility! Even Christmas Day has been degraded. We ignore the beautiful and the majestic, asking only "How can I use it? How much profit will it bring?" The believing children of God once upon a time saw God in everything. They were enraptured with everything before them. There was no common hill-they were all the hills of God! There was no common cloud-they were the chariots of God! They saw God in everything: in our day we never look up in happy surprise! But let me tell you that it has been a never-failing delight throughout my years to watch little children on Christmas morning. The gifts may be humble, but the child's burst of spontaneous delight and wonder is genuine and rewarding. That incredulous look in the child's face - everything is full of wonder and beauty! Sad, indeed, for adults to lose the wonder in worship - for worship is wonder and wonder is worship!

[Shammu]

THE HAPPY MORN
By A.W. Tozer

      When we sing, "The Light of the world is Jesus," there should be a glow on our faces that would make the world believe indeed that we really mean it! The Incarnation meant something vast and beautiful for John Milton-and he celebrated the coming of Jesus into the world with one of the most beautiful and moving expressions ever written by a man: This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King, Of wedded maid, and Virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring. That glorious form, that Light insufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, He laid aside, and here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting Day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. Oh! run; prevent them with thy humble ode, And lay it lowly at His blessed feet, Have thou the honor first thy Lord to greet And join thy voices with the Angel quire, From out His secret altar touched with hallowed fire!

[Shammu]

CHRIST'S WORLD OF NATURE
By A.W. Tozer

      Jesus Christ came into our world in the fullness of time, and His own world, the world of nature, received Him, even though His own people received Him not! It is my own feeling that when Jesus came, all of nature went out to greet Him. The star led the wise men from the East. The cattle in the stable stall in Bethlehem did not bother Him. His own things in created nature received Him. Dr. G. Campbell Morgan believed that when Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, He was there with the wild beasts for 40 days and nights. Dr. Morgan held that there had been a wrong conception, as if Jesus needed angelic protection from the animals. Jesus was perfectly safe there. He was nature's Creator and Lord. Jesus was in total harmony with nature and I am of the opinion that the deeper our Christian commitment becomes, the more likely we will find ourselves in tune and in harmony with the natural world around us!

[Shammu]

BETTER THAN GOLD
By A.W. Tozer

      Every Christian believer should be aware that our God has given us definite promises of an amazing inheritance to be realized in the eternal! The blessings and riches of our divine inheritance are not riches that will come to us for anything that is worthy or superior in ourselves; but will come because of our relationship in faith to the One who is the fount of every blessing. We must remember that an inheritance has not actually been earned. Such bequests come from One who owns everything and gives to another whom He delights to honor and who can establish his rightful claim. Inheritance is a right resulting from a relationship. In this case, the right belongs to the children of God by virtue of the fact that their identification as children of God by faith in the eternal Son of God has been established and is in the heavenly records! The apostle said of us: "Men and women cannot imagine or even dream of all the things which God has prepared for those who love Him!"

[Shammu]

CHRIST'S PICTURE EVERYWHERE
By A.W. Tozer

      We try to sympathize with the writer John as he attempts to describe heavenly creatures in human terms in the book of Revelation. He knew and we know that it was impossible for God to fully reveal Himself and the heavenly glories to a man. John tries to describe for us the four "living creatures" in Revelation 4. The first was like a lion; the second was like an ox; the third had the face of a man; the fourth was like a soaring eagle. Did you know that for centuries Christians have seen those same "faces" in the four gospels of the New Testament? God has put Jesus Christ's picture everywhere! Matthew's is the gospel of the King. Mark's, the gospel of the suffering Servant. Luke's, the gospel of the Son of Man. John's, the gospel of the Son of God. Four loving, adoring, worshiping beings, faithfully and forever devoted to praising God! Make no mistake about it: the imagery is plainly the gospel of Christ. He is what Christianity is all about!

[Shammu]

THE LORD OF ALL BEAUTY
By A.W. Tozer

      Think with me about beauty-and about this matchless One who is the Lord of all beauty, our Savior! God has surely deposited something within our human beings that is capable of understanding and appreciating beauty - the love of harmonious forms, appreciation of colors and beautiful sounds. Brother, these are only the external counterparts of a deeper and more enduring beauty-that which we call moral beauty. It has been the uniqueness and the perfection of Christ's moral beauty that have charmed even those who claimed to be His enemies throughout the centuries of history. We do not have any record of Hitler saying anything against the moral perfection of Jesus. One of the great philosophers, Nietzsche, objected to Paul's theology of justification by faith, but he was strangely moved within himself by the perfection of moral beauty found in the life and character of Jesus, the Christ. We should thank God for the promise of heaven being the place of supreme beauty-and the One who is all-beautiful is there!

[Shammu]

GOD'S SOVEREIGN PLAN
By A.W. Tozer

      Many people continue to live in daily fear that the world "is coming to an end." Only in the Scriptures do we have the description and prediction of the age-ending heavenly and earthly events when our Lord and Savior will be universally acknowledged as King of kings and Lord of lords. God's revelation makes it plain that in "that day" all will acclaim Him "victor!" Human society, generally, refuses to recognize God's sovereignty or His plan for His redeemed people. But no human being or world government will have any control in that fiery day of judgement yet to come. John's vision of things to come tells us clearly and openly that at the appropriate time this world will be taken away from men and placed in the hands of the only Man who has the wisdom and authority to rightly govern. That Man is the eternal Son of God, the worthy Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ!

[Shammu]

THE PERFECTIONS OF GOD
By A.W. Tozer

      I hope that if I am remembered at all it will be for this reason: I have spent my efforts and my energies trying to turn the direction of the people away from the external elements of religion to those that are internal and spiritual. I have tried to take away some of the clouds in the hope that men and women would be able to view God in His glory. I would like to see this sense of glory recaptured throughout the church-too many Christians do not expect to experience any of the glory until they see Him face to face! Within our Christian fellowship and worship, we must recapture the Bible concepts of the perfection of our God Most High! We have lost the sense and the wonder of His awe-fullness, His perfection, His beauty. Oh, I feel that we should preach it, sing it, write about it, talk about it and tell it until we have recaptured the concept of the Majesty of God! Only that can be beautiful ultimately which is holy-and we who belong to Jesus Christ should know the true delight of worshiping God in the beauty of His holiness!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

YES, EVERYTHING IS WRONG... UNTIL JESUS MAKES IT RIGHT
By A.W. Tozer

       Men and women without God are helpless and hopeless human beings. We do well to remember that sin is to the human nature what cancer is to the human body! Who can argue with the fact that sin has ruined us? Our feverish activity is only one sign of what is wrong with us - sin has plunged us into the depths and so marked us with mortality that we have become brother to the clay-but God never meant it to be so. I recall being invited to speak at a summer conference where much of the emphasis is upon fun and amusement and jokes, something like Hollywood, I suppose. After my sessions there, the pastor-director told me frankly of his wife's reaction: "Honey, after listening to Dr. Tozer, can it be true that there isn't anything good in this world?" Well, I know she had a Bible in her house and I consider her query one of the foolish questions of our times. Of course the world makes its own argument that there are things that can be considered good on the human level-but they belong to us only for a brief day. Nothing is divinely good until it bears the imprint of our Lord Jesus Christ! Men and women may argue and make excuses, but it does not change the fact that in our human society we are completely surrounded by three marks of the ancient curse: everything is recent, temporal and transient! That is why the Holy Spirit whispers faithfully, reminding us of the Christ of God, eternity walking in flesh, God Almighty come to live among us and to save-actually to give us eternity!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

IN THE BEGINNING
By A.W. Tozer

      None of us can approach a consideration of the eternal nature and Person of Jesus Christ without sensing and confessing our human inadequacy in the face of the divine revelation. John, in his gospel, provides a beautiful portrait of the eternal Christ, starting with those stark, incredible words: "In the beginning!', My brethren, that is where we start with the understanding and the revelation of Christianity! Many others have made a variety of claims but only our Christ is the Christ of God. Certainly it was not Buddha and not Mohammed; not Joseph Smith, not Mrs. Eddy and not Father Divine! All of these and countless others like them had beginnings-but they all had their endings, too. What an incredible difference! Our Christian life commences with the eternal Son of God. This is our Lord Jesus Christ: the Word who was with the Father in the beginning; the Word who was God; and the Word who is God! This is the only one who can assure us: "No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me!"

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

MAN HAS LOST GOD
By A.W. Tozer

      The average person in the world today, without faith and without God and without hope, is engaged in a desperate personal search and struggle throughout his lifetime. He does not really know what he is doing here. He does not know where he is going. The sad commentary is that everything he is doing is being done on borrowed time, borrowed money and borrowed strength-and he already knows that in the end he will surely die! It boils down to the bewildered confession of many humans that they have lost God somewhere along the way. Man, made more like God than any other creature, has become less like God than any other creature. Created to reflect the glory of God, he has retreated sullenly into his cave-reflecting only his own sinfulness. Certainly it is a tragedy above all tragedies in this world that love has gone from man's heart. Beyond that, light has gone from his mind. Having lost God, he blindly stumbled on through this dark world to find only a grave at the end!

A.W. Tozer