A.W. Tozer, Bible studies and sermons

[Shammu]

Savior But Not Lord?
By A.W. Tozer

      In the New Testament salvation and discipleship are so closely related as to be indivisible. They are not identical, but as with Siamese twins they are joined by a tie which can be severed only at the price of death.
      Yet they are being severed in evangelical circles today. In the working creed of the average Christian salvation is held to be immediate and automatic, while discipleship is thought to be something optional which the Christian may delay indefinitely or never accept at all.

      It is not uncommon to hear Christian workers urging seekers to accept Christ now and leave moral and social questions to be decided later. The notion is that obedience and discipleship are unrelated to salvation. We may be saved by believing a historic fact about Jesus Christ (that He died for our sins and rose again) and applying this to our personal situation. The whole biblical concept of Lordship and obedience is completely absent from the mind of the seeker. He needs help, and Christ is the very one, even the only one, who can furnish it, so he takes Him as his personal Savior. The idea of His Lordship is completely ignored.

[Shammu]

Saying Goodbye to the Rut
By A.W. Tozer

      Jesus gives the story of the man who was covetous and lost his soul. So do not be covetous--be generous. Do not be stingy, but be free with your money. Do not be afraid--thank the Lord, trust Him and put fear away. These are examples of the constituted means of faith and obedience. We sing this and do not know we are singing it: "Trust and obey, for there"s no other way/ To be happy in Jesus, But to trust and obey." We sing that, but we have sung it so long that we might as well sing Mother Goose rhymes, because we do not know what we are singing. Some of us are down in a spiritual rut, the old routine. Nothing has any taste to it. Some churches try to handle that by pandering to the situation, bringing in every kind of weird claptrap in order to get some of the poor half-dead people to get a little taste again. We have God. We have Christ. We have truth. We have a world needing help. We have the saints, and we have the power of prayer. We have the joy of obedience and we have the sweet wonder of His presence. We have the joy of Christian song. We have all this and we do not need garbage. We have God. All we have to do is trust in His Son Jesus Christ and obey the truth, and the Lord will manifest Himself, show Himself through the lattice.

[Shammu]

Seeing Ourselves in Peter
By A.W. Tozer

      For some queer reason, we seem to love people more when they are not too perfect.
      In the presence of a faultless saint, the average one of us feels ill at ease. We are likely to be discouraged rather than inspired by the sight of a character too impeccable to be human. We draw more help from a man if we know that he is going through the fire along with the rest of us, and we may even take courage from the fact that he does not enjoy it any more than we do.

      This may be the reason Christians have always felt a special affection for Simon Peter. We speak of Paul with solemn respect but of Peter with an understanding smile. When the doughty old fisherman is mentioned, the face of the ordinary struggling Christian lights up. Here is a man who is one of us, we say to ourselves. He had faults, but he conquered them and went on to become great in spite of them. He was no alabaster saint, faintly redolent of incense, gazing absently over our heads as we labor onward through the storm. He too knew the sting of the wind and the fury of the waves and, what is more to our comfort, he did not always acquit himself like a hero when he was in a tight spot. And that helps a lot when we are not doing too well ourselves.

[Shammu]

Seeing with Compassion
By A.W. Tozer

      "Excitement, perturbation, feeling." These are states of mind we are all familiar with. In a world as violent and full of conflict as this these come and go, blaze up and die down in the average man's bosom a hundred times a day. The normal man and woman will in the course of a few months experience every degree of emotion from near ecstasy to mild dejection without apparently being any the better or the worse for it. Of course I have in mind here only the normal man and woman. The psychopathic personality lies outside the field of this study. The emotions are neither to be feared nor despised, for they are a normal part of us as God made us in the first place. Indeed the full human life would be impossible without them. One recoils from the thought of the man who lacked all feeling. He would be either a cold, naked intellect such as inhabits the pages of the science-fiction novel, or a mere vegetable, such as is sometimes found in the incurable wards of our mental hospitals. The right relation of intellect to feeling and feeling to will is disclosed in Matthew 14:14. "And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick." Intellectual knowledge of the suffering of the people stirred His pity and His pity moved Him to heal them. This is how it was with the ideal Man whose total organism was perfectly adjusted to itself; and this is the way it is with us in a less perfect measure.

[Shammu]

Seeker, Pretender, or In-the-Rut Disciple
By A.W. Tozer

      . . . People in the rut never know when the last leaves are falling for them. Why are people in the rut? There are several possibilities. They may never have been truly converted at all, and this is one of our great problems now. We have a dozen ways of getting people into the kingdom of God, when the Lord said there was only one. They leak in, ooze in, come in by osmosis and get in by marriage--just get in by any kind of way. But there is only one true way. When people find that after being in the church for years they are not making much progress, they ought to examine themselves and wonder whether they have been truly converted. True conversion means radical repentance, a changed life, conscious forgiveness of sin and a spiritual rebirth. Genuinely converted people, as the old Methodists said, had a radical repentance, which eventuated in a changed life. Then there came a consciousness of forgiveness of sins and a spiritual rebirth. People in the rut may never have had that at all. . . . People in the circular grave, who are getting older without getting holier, may have been abandoned to the devil because of two things--some fleshly sins (1 Corinthians 5) or grave irreverence at the communion table (1 Corinthians 11). Protestants are altogether too much inclined to take things for granted. We laugh at those on the other side of the ecclesiastical fence because they bow and scrape and kowtow in the presence of the church. But we lack reverence--not because we are free in the gospel, but because God is absent, and we have no sense of His presence. We sometimes come to the communion table in a moral and spiritual state totally unfit for receiving communion, and yet we take it. Paul said, "We are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world."

[Shammu]

Seekers After God
By A.W. Tozer

      Seekers after God. Thanks be to God on high that these too are among us. They are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Their number is not large when counted against the millions who have forgotten their Maker, but taken together they are a goodly company and dear to the heart of God. Ah, those God-hungry souls! By nature they are no better than the rest of men, and by practice they have sometimes been worse. The one sign of their divine election is their insatiable thirst after the Source of their being. Deep calls unto deep and they hear and respond. These are almost always a disappointment to themselves, and sometimes they have for a while been a stumbling block to the world, as were Jacob and David and Peter. But many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it, and their questing hearts find what they seek at last. The grace of God meets them as they return and changes them from what they are sorry they have been, into what they have so fervently longed to become. Towe know what the wise Greek could not know, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses. Seekers after God there surely were even in those old Grecian times and their destiny lies in the hand of the One who gave His only-begotten Son to die for the life of the world. One word needs to be added. It will go better in the of reckoning for the seeker of pre-Christian days who stretched out pagan hands toward God in hope that he might find Him, than for the careless sinner of who is sated with hearing and who refuses to repent and believe.

[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]

Seeking God with ALL Our Heart
By A.W. Tozer

      I have previously shown that any Christian who desires to may at any time experience a radical spiritual renaissance, and this altogether independent of the attitude of his fellow Christians.
      The important question now is, How? Well, here are some suggestions which anyone can follow and which, I am convinced, will result in a wonderfully improved Christian life.

      1. Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself. Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul. When speaking of earthly goods Paul could say, "I have learned to be content" (Philippians 4:11); but when referring to his spiritual life he testified, "I press on toward the goal" (3:14). "So stir up the gift of God that is in thee" (2 Timothy 1:6, KJV).

      2. Set your face like a flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life. Timid experimenters are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God. "The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it" (Matthew 11:12).

[Shammu]

Selective Acceptance of the Teaching of Christ and the Apostles
By A.W. Tozer

       It may seem a bit odd that the religious teachers who exalted the teachings of Jesus to the seventh empyrean should in the same breath demote the person of Jesus to the level of a common man; yet they did just that. They lamented with many a crocodile tear the error of the Church in worshiping Jesus and failing to spread His ethics throughout the earth. The implication was that the man Jesus was important only because of the sterling quality of His ethics; though it was hard for some then and it is hard for others now to understand how a mans teaching can be greater than the man. The same persons who exalted His doctrine of love completely ignored His claim to deity and brushed aside His teachings on sin, judgment and hell, as well as His whole system of eschatology. This arrogant picking and choosing among the words of Christ gave some persons the impression that these teachers were far less sincere than they claimed to be, for a man need not be a genius to reach the conclusion that if Jesus was wrong about almost all of His teachings there could be no certainty that He was right about the rest. Well, it is not my intention to fight again the battle of Bunker Hill. If all this belonged only to the past we might be content to let the dead bury their dead and pass on to something else; but the ghosts of the old Modernists appear to have been reincarnated and many of the arguments raised by the liberals a generation ago are now being repeated by the orthodox.

[Shammu]

Selective Scripture Screening
By A.W. Tozer

       Heresy is not so much rejecting as selecting. The heretic simply selects the parts of the Scripture he wants to emphasize and lets the rest go.
      This is shown by the etymology of the word heresy and by the practice of the heretic. "Beware," an editorial scribe of the fourteenth century warned his readers in the preface to a book. "Beware thou take not one thing after thy affection and liking, and leave another: for that is the condition of an heretique. But take everything with other." The old scribe knew well how prone we are to take to ourselves those parts of the truth that please us and ignore the other parts. And that is heresy.

      Almost every cult with which we have any acquaintance practices this art of selecting and ignoring. The no-hell cults, for example, habitually stress everything in the Bible that seems to support their position and play down or explain away all the passages that deal with eternal punishment.

[Shammu]

Selective Scripture Screening
By A.W. Tozer

      Heresy is not so much rejecting as selecting. The heretic simply selects the parts of the Scripture he wants to emphasize and lets the rest go.
      This is shown by the etymology of the word heresy and by the practice of the heretic. "Beware," an editorial scribe of the fourteenth century warned his readers in the preface to a book. "Beware thou take not one thing after thy affection and liking, and leave another: for that is the condition of an heretique. But take everything with other." The old scribe knew well how prone we are to take to ourselves those parts of the truth that please us and ignore the other parts. And that is heresy.

      Almost every cult with which we have any acquaintance practices this art of selecting and ignoring. The no-hell cults, for example, habitually stress everything in the Bible that seems to support their position and play down or explain away all the passages that deal with eternal punishment.

[Shammu]

Self-deception and How to Avoid It
By A.W. Tozer

      OF ALL FORMS OF DECEPTION, self-deception is the most deadly, and of all deceived persons the self-deceived are the least likely to discover the fraud.

      The reason for this is simple. When a man is deceived by another he is deceived against his will. He is contending against an adversary and is temporarily the victim of the other's guile. Since he expects his foe to take advantage of him he is watchful and quick to suspect trickery. Under such circumstances it is possible to be deceived sometimes and for a short while, but because the victim is resisting he may break out of the trap and escape before too long.

      With the self-deceived it is quite different. He is his own enemy and is working a fraud upon himself. He wants to believe the lie and is psychologically conditioned to do so. He does not resist the deceit but collaborates with it against himself. There is no struggle, because the victim surrenders before the fight begins. He enjoys being deceived.

      It is altogether possible to practice fraud upon our own souls and go deceived to judgment. "If a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing," said Paul, "he deceiveth himself." With this agrees the inspired James: "If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain."

      The farther we push into the sanctuary the greater becomes the danger of self-deception. The deeply religious man is far more vulnerable than the easygoing fellow who takes his religion lightly. This latter may be deceived but he is not likely to be self-deceived.

      Under the pressure of deep spiritual concern, and before his heart has been wholly conquered by the Spirit of God, a man may be driven to try every dodge to save face and preserve a semblance of his old independence. This is always dangerous and if persisted in may prove calamitous.

      The fallen heart is by nature idolatrous. There appears to be no limit to which some of us will go to save our idol, while at the same time telling ourselves eagerly that we are trusting in Christ alone. It takes a violent act of renunciation to deliver us from the hidden idol, and since very few modern Christians understand that such an act is necessary, and only a small number of those who know are willing to do, it follows that relatively few professors of the Christian faith these days have ever experienced the painful act of renunciation that frees the heart from idolatry.

      Prayer is usually recommended as the panacea for all ills and the key to open every prison door, and it would indeed be difficult to overstate the advantages and privilege of Spirit-inspired prayer. But we must not forget that unless we are wise and watchful prayer itself may become a source of self-deception. There are as many kinds of prayer as there are problems and some kinds are not acceptable to God. The prophets of the Old Testament denounced Israel for trying to hide their iniquities behind their prayers. Christ flatly rejected the prayers of hypocrites and James declared that some religious persons ask and receive not because they ask amiss.

      To escape self-deception the praying man must come out clean and honest. He cannot hide in the cross while concealing in his bosom the golden wedge and the goodly Babylonish garment. Grace will save a man but it will not save him and his idol. The blood of Christ will shield the penitent sinner alone, but never the sinner and his idol. Faith will justify the sinner, but it will never justify the sinner and his sin.

      No amount of pleading will make evil good or wrong right. A man may engage in a great deal of humble talk before God and get no response because unknown to himself he is using prayer to disguise disobedience. He may lie for hours in sackcloth and ashes with no higher motive than to try to persuade God to come over on his side so he can have his own way. He may grovel before God in a welter of self-accusation, refuse to give up his secret sin and be rejected for his pains. It can happen.

      Dr. H. M. Shuman once said to me in private conversation that he believed the one quality God required a man to have before He would save him was honesty. With this I heartily agree. However dishonest the man may have been before, he must put away his duplicity if he is to be accepted before the Lord. Double dealing is unutterably offensive to God. The insincere man has no claim on mercy. For such a man the cross of Christ provides no remedy. Christ can and will save a man who has been dishonest, but He cannot save him while he is dishonest. Absolute candor is an indispensable requisite to salvation.

      How may we remain free from self-deception? The answer sounds old-fashioned and dull but here it is: Mean what you say and never say what you do not mean, either to God or man. Think candid thoughts and act forthrightly always, whatever the consequence. To do this will bring the cross into your life and keep you dead to self and to public opinion. And it may get you into trouble sometimes, too. But a guileless mind is a great treasure; it is worth any price.

31601

[Shammu]

Self-examaination
By A.W. Tozer

      . . . Well, here are some suggestions which anyone can follow and which, I am convinced, will result in a wonderfully improved Christian life. . . .
      6. Bring your life into accord with the Sermon on the Mount and such other New Testament Scriptures as are designed to instruct us in the way of righteousness. An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly. I recommend that the self-examination be made on our knees, rising to obey God's commandments as they are revealed to us from the Word. There is nothing romantic or colorful about this plain, downright way of dealing with ourselves, but it gets the work done. Isaac's workmen did not look like heroic figures as they digged in the valley, but they got the wells open, and that was what they had set out to do.

      7. Be serious-minded. You can well afford to see fewer comedy shows on TV. Unless you break away from the funny boys, every spiritual impression will continue to be lost to your heart, and that right in your own living room. The people of the world used to go to the movies to escape serious thinking about God and religion. You would not join them there, but you now enjoy spiritual communion with them in your own home. The devil's ideals, moral standards and mental attitudes are being accepted by you without your knowing it. And you wonder why you can make no progress in your Christian life. Your interior climate is not favorable to the growth of spiritual graces. There must be a radical change in your habits or there will not be any permanent improvement in your interior life.

[Shammu]

Self-Examination
By A.W. Tozer

      The philosopher Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living." If a common philosopher could think that, how much more we Christians ought to listen to the Holy Spirit when He says, "Examine yourself." An unexamined Christian lies like an unattended garden. Let your garden go unattended for a few months, and you will not have roses and tomatoes but weeds. An unexamined Christian life is like an unkempt house. Lock your house up as tight as you will and leave it long enough, and when you come back you will not believe the dirt that got in from somewhere. An unexamined Christian life is like an untaught child. A child that is not taught will be a little savage. It takes examination, teaching, instruction, discipline, caring, tending, weeding and cultivating to keep the life right. I do not want to leave you on a low note. I am trying to wake you, not discourage you. There is not a reason in the world for you to be discouraged. . . .

[Shammu]

Self-judging
By A.W. Tozer

      All things else being equal, a Christian will make spiritual progress exactly in proportion to his ability to criticize himself.
      Paul said, "But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment" (1 Corinthians 11:31). We escape the critical judgment of God by exercising critical self-judgment. It is as simple as that.

      We often hear the axiom "Practice makes perfect." The fact is that practice, far from making perfect, actually confirms us in our faults unless it is carried on in a humble, self-critical spirit. The whole philosophy of instruction rests upon the idea that the learner is wrong and is seeking to be made right. No teacher can correct his pupil unless the pupil comes to him in humility. The only proper attitude for the learner is one of humble self-distrust. "I am ignorant," he says, "and am willing to be taught. I am wrong and am willing to be corrected." In this childlike spirit, the mind is made capable of improvement.