A.W. Tozer, Bible studies and sermons

[Shammu]

RESURRECTION: A FACT
By A.W. Tozer

       The resurrection of Christ and the fact of the empty tomb are not a part of this world's complex and continuing mythologies. This is not a Santa Claus tale-it is history and it is a reality! The true church of Jesus Christ is necessarily founded upon the belief and the truth that there was a real death, a real tomb and a real stone! But, thank God, there was a sovereign Father in heaven, an angel sent to roll the stone away and a living Savior in a resurrected and glorified body, able to proclaim to His disciples, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth!" Brethren, He died for us, but ever since the hour of the resurrection, He has been the mighty Jesus, the mighty Christ, the mighty Lord! Our business is to thank God with tearful reverence for the Cross, but to go on to a right understanding of what the resurrection meant both to God and to men. We understand and acknowledge that the Resurrection has placed a glorious crown upon all of Christ's sufferings!

[Shammu]

EASTER-AND MISSIONS
By A.W. Tozer

      Do we really believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is something more than making us the "happiest fellows in the Easter parade"? Are we just to listen to the bright cantata and join in singing, "Up from the Grave He Arose," smell the flowers and go home and forget it? No, certainly not! It is truth and a promise with a specific moral application. The resurrection certainly commands us with all the authority of sovereign obligation-the missionary obligation! I cannot give in to the devil's principal., deceitful tactic which makes so many Christians satisfied with an "Easter celebration" instead of experiencing the power of Christ's resurrection. It is the devil's business to keep Christians mourning and weeping with pity beside the cross instead of demonstrating that Jesus Christ is risen, indeed. When will the Christian church rise up, depending on His promise and power, and get on the offensive for the risen and ascended Savior?

[Shammu]

"I WILL NOT FORSAKE YOU!"
By A.W. Tozer

      Men without God suffer alone and die alone in times of war and in other circumstances of life. All alone! But it can never be said that any true soldier of the Cross of Jesus Christ, no man or woman as missionary or messenger of the Truth has ever gone out to a ministry alone! There have been many Christian martyrs, but not one of them was on that mission field all alone. Jesus Christ keeps His promise of taking them by the hand and leading them triumphantly through to the world beyond. We can sum it up by noting that Jesus Christ asks us only to surrender to His lordship and obey His commands. When the Spirit of God deals with our young people about their own missionary responsibility, Christ assures them of His presence and power as they prepare to go: "All power is given unto Me! I am no longer in the grave. I will protect you. I will support you. I will go ahead of you. I will give you effectiveness for your witness and ministry. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations "I will never leave you nor forsake you!"

[Shammu]

LEANING TOWARD HERESY
By A.W. Tozer

      When large numbers of adherents in the Christian churches come to believe that God is different from what He actually is, that concept becomes heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind! When the Christian church surrenders her once lofty concept of God and substitutes for it ideas so low, so ignoble as to be utterly unworthy, her situation is tragic indeed. Into the life and the practices of the church comes a whole new philosophy; and the sense of the divine Presence and the majesty of God is no longer known. Although "morality" is no longer a popular word in our world, it is apparent that such low and unworthy concepts of God's Person actually constitute a moral calamity for professed believers in great segments of Christianity. The records of both sacred and secular history show that low views of God will surely destroy the appeal of the Christian for all who hold them! To all sinners, Jesus said, "You must be born again-from above!" He knew that the gods begotten in the shadowy thoughts of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true and living God!

[Shammu]

TO SIN IS TO REBEL
By A.W. Tozer

      Some of you will object to my saying this, but it is my opinion that in Christianity we have over-emphasized the psychology of the lost sinner's condition. We spend time describing the sinner's woes and the great burden he carries until we almost forget the principal fact that the sinner is actually a rebel against properly constituted authority! That is what makes sin SIN! We are rebels, we are sons of disobedience. Sin is the breaking of the Law and we are fugitives from the just laws of God while we are sinners. We are fugitives from divine judgment. But thankfully, the plan of salvation reverses that, and restores the original relationship, so that the first thing the returning sinner does is confess: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in Thy sight and I am no more worthy to be called Thy son. Make me as one of Thy hired servants!" Thus, in repentance, we reverse that relationship and we fully submit to the Word of God and the will of God, as obedient children!

[Shammu]

THE TRANSFORMED LIFE
By A.W. Tozer

      Many of the great evangelists who have touched the world for God, including such men as Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney, have declared that the church is being betrayed by those who insist on Christianity being made "too easy." Jesus laid down the terms of Christian discipleship and there are some among us who criticize: "Those words of Jesus sound harsh and cruel." This is where we stand: receiving Jesus Christ into your life means that you have made an attachment to the Person of Christ that is revolutionary, in that it reverses the life and transforms it completely! It is complete in that it leaves no part of the life unaffected. It exempts no area of the life of the total man. By faith and through grace, you have now formed an exclusive relationship with your Savior, Jesus Christ. All of your other relationships are now conditioned and determined by your one relationship to your Savior. To receive Jesus Christ, then, is to attach ourselves in faith to His holy person, to live or die, forever! He must be first and last and all!

[Shammu]

RUNNING LIFE'S RACE
By A.W. Tozer

      The writer to the Hebrews gives us good New Testament counsel: "Let us run the race with patience." The Holy Spirit here describes Christian believers as runners on the track, participants in the race which is the Christian life. He provides both strong warning and loving encouragement, for there is always the danger of losing the race, but there is also the victor's reward awaiting those who run with patience and endurance. So, there are important things each of us should know and understand about our struggles as the faithful people of God. For instance, it is a fact that the Christian race is a contest. But in no sense is it a competition between believers or between churches! As we live the life of faith, we Christians are never to be in competition with other Christians. The Bible makes this very plain! Christian churches are never told to carry on their proclamation of the Savior in a spirit of competition with other Jesus-churches. The Holy Spirit tells us to keep our eyes on Jesus not on others who are also running the race!

[Shammu]

ARE WE MIRED DOWN?
By A.W. Tozer

      God will speak to us if we read and study and obey the Word of God! But when He does speak, we should speak back to Him in prayer and devotion. Otherwise, we are among the Christians who are mired down right where we are. Many in our congregations have grown older and yet are not one inch farther up the mountain than on that day when the sun first arose on them in conversion. In fact, some are not even as far advanced along the way with God as they were a few years ago. If these things are true, I can only conclude that there are "common" Christians, men and women who no longer hear the Lord speaking to them as they should. Can they really think that this half-way Christian life is the best that we can know? In the face of what Christ offers us, how can we settle for so little? It is a tragedy of our time that so many are settling for less than the Lord is willing to give!

[Shammu]

MEDIOCRE CHRISTIANITY
By A.W. Tozer

      Read your New Testament again and you will agree that mediocrity in the Christian life is not the highest that Jesus offers. Certainly God is not honored by our arrested spiritual development - our permanent half-way spiritual condition. We all know that the Bible tells us that we honor God by going on to full maturity in Christ! Why, then, do we settle for those little pleasures that tickle the saintlets and charm the fancy of the carnal? It is because we once heard a call to take up the cross and instead of following toward the heights, we bargained with the Lord like a street huckster! We felt an urge to be spent for Christ, but instead of going on, we started asking questions. We began to bicker and bargain with God about His standards for spiritual attainment. This is plain truth-not about unbelieving "liberals"-but about those who have been born again and who dare to ask, "Lord, what will it cost me?"

[Shammu]

INSTRUCT-THEN EXHORT
By A.W. Tozer

      The godly men of old through whom the Scriptures came to us were faithful in their exhortations to personal faith and godliness, characteristic of the early church. The apostolic method of teaching, instructing and encouraging was based on solid and fundamental Christian doctrine. This was Paul's method in his New Testament letters. First he gives his readers the scriptural reasons for certain Christian actions and attributes. He provides the basis and reason-then he exhorts the readers to respond appropriately. We do not know if Paul was the human writer to the Hebrews, but the method of exhortation is like Paul's. We are assured that Christ is greater than Moses and greater than the angels and that He purchased mankind's salvation. Then the exhortation: if all of these things are true, then we should keep on loving one another, keep on praying for one another. It is a good and gracious argument: because we have reasons for doing something, we ought to do it without delay and without reservation!

[Shammu]

KNOWING HIS PRESENCE
By A.W. Tozer

       Do not try to short-circuit God's plans for your discipleship. and spiritual maturity here. If you and I were already prepared for heaven in the moment of our conversion, God would have taken us home instantly! We must remember that God exists in Himself. His holy nature is such that we cannot comprehend Him with our minds. He is of a substance not shared by any other being. Hence, God can be known only as He reveals Himself! I have found this to be a fact: every redeemed human being needs the humility of spirit that can only be brought about by the manifest Presence of God. This mysterious yet gracious Presence is the air of life eternal. It is the music of existence, the poetry of the Christian life. It is the beauty and wonder of being one of Christ's own-a sinner born again, regenerated, created anew to bring glory to God! To live surrounded by this sense of God is not only beautiful and desirable, but it is imperative!

[Shammu]

COME AS YOU ARE
By A.W. Tozer

      Let me say this to any of you who are still trying to add up your human merits-look away in faith to the Lord of abundant mercy! Fixing yourself over and trying to straighten yourself out will never be sufficient-you must come to Jesus as you are! Our Lord told about two men who went up into the temple to pray. One said, "God, here I am-all fixed up. Every hair is in place!" The other said, "Oh God, I just crawled in off Skid Row. Have mercy on me!" God forgave the Skid Row bum, but sent the other man away, hardened and unrepentant and unforgiven. We come to Him just as we are but in humble repentance. When the human spirit comes to God knowing that anything it receives will be out of God's mercy, then repentance has done its proper work! God promises to forgive and forget and to take that man into His heart and teach him that all of God's kindnesses are due to His mercy. What more can a sinner ask?

[Shammu]

SEEKING AFTER TRUTH
By A.W. Tozer

      We live in a mixed-up kind of world in which many people are not at all sure of what they believe or what they ought to believe. Some churches advertise that way-you do not have to believe anything: "just be a seeker after truth." Some actually settle for poetry, siding with Edwin Markham who "saw his bright hand sending signals from the sun." I, for one, never had any such signals from God. We have Bibles everywhere and the gospel is preached faithfully. Yet men and women seek God in old altars and tombs-in dark and dusty places, and finally wind up believing that God is sending signals from the sun. Some folks get mad at me when I say that this kind of "seeking after truth" needs to be exposed. We need to double our efforts in telling the world that God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.It must be the Truth of God and the Spirit of God! Far from being an optional luxury in our Christian lives, the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit is a necessity!

[Shammu]

SPIRITUAL TESTING
By A.W. Tozer

      In the scriptural accounts, there are many examples of men and women being tested, and I think it is plain that the Holy Spirit rarely tells a believer that he is about to be tested. Abraham was being tested when the Lord asked him to take his only son up into the mountain. He thought he was being ordered. He did not know he was being tested. Peter was unconsciously tested. Paul was tested and tried. There does come a time when we have heard enough truth and the Holy Spirit says, "Today this disciple is going to be tested." The people of Israel in their time of testing came to Kadesh-Barnea and instead of crossing into the promised land, they said, "We will not go over!" God simply let them make their own test and they flunked it! Are there any among us who have an honest desire to be Christlike? We should all be aware that every day is a day of testing. Some come to their own Kadesh-Barnea and turn back. What a solemn thought: that many of the persons whom God is testing will flunk the test!

[Shammu]

GLORIOUS CONTRADICTIONS
By A.W. Tozer

      God has revealed so many glorious contradictions in the lives and conduct of genuine Christian believers that it is small wonder that we are such an amazement to this world. The Christian is dead and yet he lives forever. He died to himself and yet he lives in Christ. The Christian saves his own life by losing it and he is in danger of losing it by trying to save it. It is strange but true that the Christian is strongest when he is weakest and weakest when he is strongest. When he gets down on his knees thinking he is weak, he is always strong. The Christian is in least danger when he is fearful and trusting God and in the most danger when he feels the most self-confident. He is most sinless when he feels the most sinful and he is the most sinful when he feels the most sinless. The Christian actually has the most when he is giving away the most; and in all of these ways, the Christian is simply putting into daily practice the teachings and example of Jesus Christ, his Savior and Lord!