A.W. Tozer, Bible studies and sermons

[Shammu]

GOD'S FAITHFUL VOICE
By A.W. Tozer

      In a day when judgments are soon to come upon the earth, we are often warned by doctors that we eat too much-and that we worry too much. More of us suffer from mental illness than suffer from major physical illnesses. In our self-centered lives, even those who are professing believers are prone to think they will hear the trumpets of woe in time to do something about all this. But at that time, it will be too late! The voice of God is a quiet voice. The voice of God's love and grace is constant-never strident, never compulsive. God has sent His messengers to every generation. He has spoken urgently and faithfully through His prophets; through the concerns of preachers and evangelists; even through the sweet voices of the gospel singers. Further, God has spoken through witnessing men and women: plain, sincere, loving men and women transformed by a spiritual birth which is from above. This is the voice of God we hear in this day of grace-the voice of the Savior calling wandering sinners home.

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

GUIDANCE IS BY THE SPIRIT
By A.W. Tozer

      We can always trust the moving and the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives and experiences, but we cannot always trust our human leanings and our fleshly and carnal desires. That calls for another word of balance. We know that the emotional life is a proper and noble part of our total personality. But by its very nature, it is of secondary importance, for religion lies in the will, and so does righteousness. God never intended that such a being as mankind should become the mere plaything of his or her feelings. The only good that God recognizes is the willed good. The only valid holiness is a willed holiness. That is why I am always a little suspicious of the overly bubbly Christian who talks too much about himself or herself-and not enough about Jesus. That is also why I am more than a little concerned about the professing Christian whose experience does not seem to have resulted in a true inner longing to be more like Jesus every day in thought, word and deed!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

MAJESTY-AND MEEKNESS
By A.W. Tozer

      When the prophets try to describe for me the attributes, the graces, the worthiness of the God who appeared to them and dealt with them, I feel that I can kneel down and follow their admonition: "He is thy Lord-worship thou Him!" They described Him as radiantly beautiful and fair. They said that He was royal and that He was gracious. They described Him as a mysterious being, and yet they noted His meekness. The meekness was His humanity. The majesty was His deity. You find them everlastingly united in Him. So meek that He nursed at His mother's breast, cried like any baby and needed all the human care that every child needs. But He was also God, and in His majesty He stood before Herod and before Pilate. When He returns, coming down from the sky, it will be in His majesty, the majesty of God; yet it will be in the majesty of the Man who is God! This is our Lord Jesus Christ. Before His foes He stands in majesty. Before His friends, He stands in meekness!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

BRINGING US TO GLORY
By A.W. Tozer

      As Christian believers (I am assuming you are a believer), you and I know how we have been changed and regenerated and assured of eternal life by faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning death. On the other hand, where this good news of salvation by faith is not known, religion becomes an actual bondage. If Christianity is known only as a religious institution, it may well become merely a legalistic system of religion, and the hope of eternal life becomes a delusion. I have said this much about reality and assurance to counter the shock you may feel when I add that God wants to fully prepare you in your daily Christian life so that you will be ready indeed for heaven! Many of us have been in God's household for a long time. Remember that God has been trying to do something special within our beings day after day, year after year. Why? Because His purpose is to bring many sons - and daughters too - unto glory!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

SPIRITUAL READINESS
By A.W. Tozer

      When the Bible says that God is calling a special people out of the nations to bear the name of His eternal Son, I believe it - and His name is Jesus! Our pious forefathers believed in spiritual preparation, and they said so. They saw themselves as a bride being prepared to meet the Bridegroom. They regarded this earth as the dressing room to outfit themselves for heaven. The evangelical church has come through a period when nearly everyone has believed that there is just one prerequisite to readiness: being born again. We have made being born again almost like receiving a pass to a special event-when Jesus returns we whip out the pass to prove our readiness. Frankly, I do not think it will be like that. I do not believe that all professed believers are automatically ready to meet the Lord. Our Savior Himself was joined by Peter and John and Paul in warning and pleading that we should live and watch and pray, so to be ready for Jesus' coming.

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

JOURNEY OF THE HEART
By A.W. Tozer

      I object to the charge that "Tozer preaches experience." I preach Christ, the Savior-that is my calling! But I am positive about the validity, the reality and the value of genuine Christian experience. We can talk to Jesus just as we talk to our other friends. As a boy, I was not a Christian. I did not have the privilege of growing up in a home where Christ was known and loved. God spoke to me through a street preacher who quoted the word of Jesus, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." That invitation let me know that Jesus is still calling "Come now!" I went home and up into the attic. There in earnest prayer I gave my heart and life to Jesus Christ. My feet had taken me home and into the attic. But it was my heart that went to Jesus! Within my heart I consented to go to Jesus. I have been a Christian ever since that moment.

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

WE GET AROUND IT
By A.W. Tozer

      The Lordship of Jesus is not quite forgotten among Christians, but it has been relegated to our hymn book, where all responsibility toward it may be comfortably discharged in a glow of pleasant religious emotion. The idea that the Man Christ Jesus has absolute and final authority over all its members in every detail of their lives is simply not accepted as true by the rank and file of evangelical Christians. To avoid the necessity of either obeying or rejecting the plain instruction of our Lord in the New Testament, we take refuge in a liberal interpretation of them. We find ways to avoid the sharp point of obedience, comfort carnality and make the words of Christ of none effect. And the essence of it all is that "Christ simply could not have meant what He said." Dare we admit that His teachings are accepted even theoretically only after they have been weakened by "interpretation"? Dare we confess that even in our public worship, the influence of the Lord is very small? We sing of Him and preach about Him, but He must not interfere!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH
By A.W. Tozer

      Not all of the pooled efforts of any church can make a Christian out of a lost man! The Christian life begins with the individual; a soul has a saving encounter with God and the new life is born. All else being equal, every individual. Christian will find in the communion of a local church the most perfect atmosphere for the fullest development of his spiritual life. There he will also find the best arena for the largest exercise of those gifts and powers with which God may have endowed him. Unfortunately, the word "church" has taken on meanings which it did not originally have. The meaning of the word for the true Christian was fixed by our Lord and His apostles, and no man and no angel has authority to change it! The universal Church is the Body of Christ, the Bride of the Lamb, the habitation of God through the Spirit, the pillar and the ground of the Truth. Without doubt, the most important body on earth is the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood!

[Shammu]

A BELIEVING REMNANT
By A.W. Tozer

      What is God trying to do with His believing people?-the Bible calls us a remnant according to grace, believers taken out of the great, teeming swarm of so-called religious people in today's world. I am inclined to join others in wondering if the Lord is postponing His coming because He is trying to get His Bride ready? For years it has been the popular idea in evangelical Christianity that the whole body of believers in Christ would rise like a flock of frightened birds when the Lord comes. But A.B. Simpson and William MacArthur and others in the past generation said, "Oh no! The Lord will take with Him those who are prepared and ready for His coming!" I do not presume to give an answer satisfying to everyone in our churches. But I know that many Christians are too smug about this, saying in effect: "I am converted to Christ through grace, so I can live as I please!" Of some things we cannot be dogmatic; but we know this for sure-God has no halfway house between heaven and hell where He takes us to fumigate us!

[Shammu]

CHRIST WILL RULE
By A.W. Tozer

      I am not surprised that I still meet people who do not believe that Jesus Christ is going to return to earth. In fact, some of them, armed with their own Bibles and interpretations, are insistent on setting me "straight." One gentleman has written saying that I have it all wrong, and that Paul did not mean what I had said he meant, as I applied Paul's statement to everyday life. I took time to write a reply: "When it comes to saying what he meant, Paul's batting average has been pretty good up to now. So, I will string along with what Paul plainly, clearly said." I did not figure I needed someone to straighten me out-particularly someone who had decided the Bible does not mean what it says. No one is going to argue me out of my faith in what God has revealed and what God has said. As far as I am concerned, it is a fact that Jesus is coming again! The question I do raise is this: Are we prepared spiritually for His coming? Are we tolerating conditions in our midst that will cause us embarrassment when He does come?

[Shammu]

A PRAYER OF CONCERN
By A.W. Tozer

      Gracious Father in heaven, I am a pastor in the flock of God and I confess that I am a troubled man. It is too late in my ministry for me to be engaged week after week with men and women who do not hear Thy pleading voice. O Lord, we often wonder if Thou wilt be forced to turn from those who have heard all of the Bible truths over and over again, in order to find willing and responsive listeners elsewhere? We recognize that Thou hast given us plain warnings in Thy Word. We remember all too well that the Jews of Jesus' day held stubbornly to their attitudes of presumption: "We are Abraham's descendents. We know who we are. If God is going to bless anyone, He is going to bless us." Yet at that very time those same self-serving men were planning to kill their promised Messiah, the eternal Son whom Thou hadst sent in the fullness of time. We pray earnestly, 0 God, that we may not be found among those with hardened hearts, no longer able to hear Thy voice.

[Shammu]

The Last Chapter
By A.W. Tozer

      The four Gospels tell the story of the life and ministry of Jesus, and in so doing, they follow accurately the ordinary course of biography, giving the facts of His birth, growth, work, death and burial. That is the way with biography: the very word itself suggests it, for it comes from bios, life, and graphein, to write, and means the written history of a person's life. So says Noah Webster. Now, when we look at the Gospels we note an odd--and wonderful--thing. An extra chapter is added. Why? Biography, by its own definition, must confine itself to the record of the life of an individual. That part of the book which deals with the family tree is not biography, but history, and that part which follows the record of the subject's death is not biography either. It may be appraisal, or eulogy, or criticism, but not biography, for the reason that the "bios" is gone: the subject is dead. The part that tells of his death is properly the last chapter. The only place in world literature where this order is broken is in the four Gospels. They record the story of the man Jesus from birth to death, and end like every other book of biography has ended since the art of writing was invented. . . . They all agree: Jesus was dead. The life about which they had been writing was gone. The biography was ended. Then, for the only time in this history of human thought, a biographer adds to his book a new section which is authentic biography and begins to write a chapter to follow the last chapter. . . .

[Shammu]

The Chapter after the Last
By A.W. Tozer

      Matthew says, "And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb." Mark says, "And he [Joseph] bought fine linen, and took him [Jesus] down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock." Luke writes, "And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid." John says, ". . . There was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, . . . There laid they Jesus." They all agree: Jesus was dead. The life about which they had been writing was gone, The biography was ended. Then for the only time in this history of human thought, a biographer adds to his book a new section which is authentic biography and begins to write a chapter to follow the last chapter. This time the story did not end with a funeral. The Subject, whose story should have ended at death, was once again back among men to challenge new writers to try to find enough paper and enough ink to write the rest of the story of the life that can never end. Whatever is written of Him now is written of a living man. He was dead, but He is alive forevermore.

[Shammu]

The Period Becomes a Comma
By A.W. Tozer

      He was dead, but He is alive forevermore. That such a thing could be was intimated by the miracles of restoration which our Lord performed during His earthly ministry. The widow's son was brought back to life for a brief time; at our Lord's gentle call Jairus's little daughter rose from her bed of death; and Lazarus, at Christ's command, came forth bound hand and foot. These were but vague disclosures of what was to come, and were at best only temporary suspensions of the inexorable law which demands that death shall always follow life--death complete and final. For these all died again, and the rule of biography was upheld. Each ended in a sepulcher at last. And that sepulcher was the period at the end of the last chapter. What a perpetual wonder it is, then, that the biography of Jesus had to be resumed. Luke added not merely another chapter, but a whole book. The book of Acts was a logical necessity. "He showed himself alive after his passion," writes Luke. The rest of the New Testament gives us some idea of what He is doing now, and prophecy reveals a little of what He will be doing through the ages to come.

[Shammu]

The Unending Chapter
By A.W. Tozer

      That next chapter after the last is the source of all the Christian's hope, for it assures us that our Lord has put death in its place and has delivered us from the ancient curse. Death did not end the activities of our Lord; it did not even interrupt them, for while His body lay in Joseph's new tomb, He was preaching to the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:18-20). And after three days, His spirit was reunited with His body and the new chapter began, the chapter which can have no ending. Had Christ not risen from the dead, His life, beautiful as it was, would have been a human tragedy. Since He did in fact rise, His life has been shown to be an unrelieved triumph. The blood, the pain, the rejection, the agony of dying, the cold, stiff body and the colder tomb--these belong to the former days. The days that are now are days of hope and life and everlasting freedom. What is true of Christ is true also of all who believe in Him. How many saints since New Testament times have lived and hoped and labored and worshiped, only to grow old and bent and to drop at last, weak and helpless, into the open grave. If that was for them the end, then we Christians would be of all men most miserable. But it was not the end. For all of God's true children there will be another chapter, a chapter that will begin with the resurrection and go on as long as eternity endures.