A.W. Tozer, Bible studies and sermons

[Shammu]

Tension Between the Old Nature and the New
By A.W. Tozer

      Christ in a believer's heart will act the same as He acted in Galilee and Judea. His disposition is the same now as then. He was holy, righteous, compassionate, meek and humble then, and He has not changed. He is the same wherever He is found, whether it be at the right hand of God or in the nature of a true disciple. He was friendly, loving, prayerful, kindly, worshipful, self-sacrificing while walking among men; is it not reasonable to expect Him to be the same when walking in men? Why then do true Christians sometimes act in an un-Christlike manner? Some would assume that when a professed Christian fails to show forth the moral beauty of Christ in his life it is a proof that he has been deceived and is actually not a real Christian at all. But the explanation is not so simple as that. The truth is that while Christ dwells in the believer's new nature, He has strong competition from the believer's old nature. The warfare between the old and the new goes on continually in most believers. This is accepted as inevitable, but the New Testament does not so teach. A prayerful study of Romans 6 to 8 points the way to victory. If Christ is allowed complete sway He will live in us as He lived in Galilee.

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[Shammu]

Testing Leaders
By A.W. Tozer

      There is a common debt that every Christian owes to his fellow Christians; but there is a heavier debt that he owes to particular Christians: to Bible scholars, to translators, to reformers, missionaries, evangelists, revivalists, hymn writers, composers, pastors, teachers and praying saints. For these we should keep the incense of our grateful prayers rising day and night to the Father of light who is the source and fountain of all our blessings.

      If it is a sin of omission to be ungrateful toward our God-ordained leaders and benefactors it is as surely a sin to be too dependent upon them. Those men who were honored of God to write down the words of the inspired Scriptures hold a unique position in the providence of God and we except them from what follows. We are completely dependent upon the Scriptures for divine truth and in that sense we must follow the words of the inspired writers without question. But no other man holds such a power over us.

[Shammu]

Testing the Spirits
By A.W. Tozer

      Many tender-minded Christians fear to sin against love by daring to inquire into anything that comes wearing the cloak of Christianity and breathing the name of Jesus. They dare not examine the credentials of the latest prophet to hit their town lest they be guilty of rejecting something which may be of God. They timidly remember how the Pharisees refused to accept Christ when He came, and they do not want to be caught in the same snare, so they either reserve judgment or shut their eyes and accept everything without question. This is supposed to indicate a high degree of spirituality. But in sober fact it indicates no such thing. It may indeed be evidence of the absence of the Holy Spirit. Gullibility is not synonymous with spirituality. Faith is not a mental habit leading its possessor to open his mouth and swallow everything that has about it the color of the supernatural. Faith keeps its heart open to whatever is of God, and rejects everything that is not of God, however wonderful it may be. Try the spirits is a command of the Holy Spirit to the Church. We may sin as certainly by approving the spurious as by rejecting the genuine. And the current habit of refusing to take sides is not the way to avoid the question. To appraise things with a heart of love and then to act on the results is an obligation resting upon every Christian in the world. And the more as we see the day approaching.

[Shammu]

Tests for Genuineness
By A.W. Tozer

       How can we tell whether or not a man or a religious demonstration is of God? The answer is easy to find, but it will take courage to follow the facts as God reveals them to us. The tests for spiritual genuineness are two: First, the leader must be a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. Christianity is nothing if not moral. No tricks of theology, no demonstrations of supernatural wonders, no evidences of blind devotion on the part of the public can decide whether or not God is in the man or the movement. Every servant of Christ must be pure of heart and holy of life. While sinless perfection is not likely to be found among even the best of men, still the leader to be trusted is the one who lives as near like Christ as possible and who knows how to repent in sorrow of heart when he sins against his Lord by any act or word. The man God honors will be humble, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, modest, clean living, free from the love of money, eager to promote the honor of God and just as eager to disclaim any credit or praise on his own part. His financial accounts will bear inspection, his ethical standards will be high and his personal life above reproach.

[Shammu]

Tests of Love
By A.W. Tozer

      The Christian cannot be certain of the reality and depth of his love until he comes face-to-face with the commandments of Christ and is forced to decide what to do about them. Then he will know. ?He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings? (John 14:24), said our Lord. ?He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me" (John 14:21). So the final test of love is obedience. Not sweet emotions, not willingness to sacrifice, not zeal, but obedience to the commandments of Christ. Our Lord drew a line plain and tight for everyone to see. On one side He placed those who keep His commandments and said, ?These love Me.? On the other side He put those who keep not His sayings, and said, ?These love Me not.?

[Shammu]

That Baby in the Manger
By A.W. Tozer

      One of the most beautiful descriptions of our Savior to be found anywhere is that given by Isaiah in the 53rd chapter of his prophecy: ?He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground? (verse 2).
      Those who have at any time been close to the soil will see at once a young shoot just pushing through the ground and will feel the exquisite precision of the word ?tender? when applied to it. The delicate sprout appears to be mostly water, held together one scarcely knows how, and so brittle that it will snap asunder at the slightest touch. Only after the passing of several days does it toughen up enough to endure external pressure without damage.

      While a newborn babe is not as fragile as the tender plant just emerged from the soil, the likeness is too plain to miss, and the prophet spoke well when he compared the one to the other. The helpless, crying human thing is vulnerable from a thousand directions and is wholly dependent for its very life upon parents, neighbors and friends. No one can pick up a day-old baby and not sense the pathetic frailty of it--a barely conscious blob of sweet, perishable life only now arrived from the ancient void of nonexistence.

      So our Lord came to the manger in Bethlehem that first Christmas morning, not out of nonexistence, but from eternal pre-existence; not as a son of man only but as Son of Man and Son of God in the fullest sense of both terms; a tender plant and a root out of a dry ground.

[Shammu]

That Magnificent Gift of Thought
By A.W. Tozer

      Though human nature as we know it now is fallen and morally degenerate, it yet stands at the top in the order of Gods creation. Of no other being was it said, In the image of God created he him. Mans nature indicates that he was created for three things: To think, to worship and to work. Under think may be included everything that the intellect can do, from the simplest act to the creation of an oratorio or the founding of an empire. In his ability to observe, to inquire, to collect data and to reason from it to causes, laws and principles, man stands easily supreme above all other creatures. The domestication of the wild forces of nature, the conquest of disease, the amelioration of the pains and woes of our physical organism-all has been done by the thinking man riding on the wings of his imagination out into the unknown and daring to entertain notions no one had entertained before. To make out of the raw material that is a man a thinking man, an imaginative, dreaming man, is one of the most urgent tasks of society. This task begins in the nursery and goes on through to the university. Whatever institution, large or small, famous or obscure, dedicates itself to the necessary and heavy job of teaching men to think deserves the gratitude of the whole human race.

[Shammu]

That Narrow Gate
By A.W. Tozer

      Positive beliefs are not popular these days. A mistaken desire to maintain a spirit of tolerance among all races and religions has produced a breed of Januslike Christians with built-in swivels, remarkable only for their ability to turn in any direction gracefully. The philosophy behind this whole thing is that religious beliefs are matters of personal choice, and that the Lord adapts His saving truth to the individual, varying it according to the cultural background, educational level and social situation of each one. Whatever this is, it is not Christianity.

      A number of popular religious books have appeared of late quite literally filled with swivel-words of uncertain meaning; and because these were written by persons ostensibly evangelical they have been accepted and promoted by the evangelicals. And they are having a real influence on Christian thin king; or more to the point, they are making sound Christian thinking impossible for those who read and admire them. We had better take a good hard look at these books. If the authors will not stand still to let their meanings be examined, there is probably a good reason. Great ideas have a habit of inhabiting the same great words generation after generation. To ignore or reject the word is to reject the idea.

      The hope of the church yet lies in the purity of her theology, that is, her beliefs about God and man and their relation to each other. These beliefs have been revealed to her by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the sacred Scriptures. Everything there is clear-cut and accurate. We dare not be less than accurate in our treatment of anything so precious.

[Shammu]

That Questionable Suffering
By A.W. Tozer

       We delude ourselves when we try to turn our just punishments into a cross and rejoice over that for which we should rather repent. ?For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God? (1 Pet. 2:20) . The cross is always in the way of righteousness. We feel the pain of the cross only when we suffer for Christ?s sake by our own willing choice. I think that there is also another kind of suffering, one that does not fall into either of the categories considered above. It comes neither from the rod nor from the cross, not being imposed as a moral corrective nor suffered as a result of our Christian life and testimony. It comes in the course of nature and arises from the many ills flesh is heir to. It visits all alike in a greater or lesser degree and would appear to have no clear spiritual significance. Its source may be fire, flood, bereavement, injuries, accidents, illness, old age, weariness or the upset conditions of the world generally. What are we to do about this? Well, some great souls have managed to turn even these neutral afflictions to good. By prayer and self-abasement they wooed adversity to become their friend and made rough distress a teacher to instruct them in the heavenly arts. May we not emulate them?

[Shammu]

The Advent Convergence of Two Worlds
By A.W. Tozer

      The birth of Christ told the world something. . . . His coming, I repeat, told the world something; it declared something, established something. What was it?

      That something was several things, and as Christ broke the loaves into pieces for greater convenience in eating, let me divide the message into parts the easier to understand it. The Advent established:

      First, that God is real. The heavens were opened and another world than this came into view. A message came from beyond the familiar world of nature. ''Glory to God in the highest,'' chanted the celestial host, ''and on earth peace, good will.'' Earth the shepherds know too well; now they hear from God and heaven above. Our earthly world and the world above blend into one scene and in their joyous excitement the shepherds can but imperfectly distinguish the one from the other.

      It is little wonder that they went in haste to see Him who had come from above. To them God was no longer a hope, a desire that He might be. He was real. Second, 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. God could not incarnate Himself in a being wholly flesh or even essentially flesh. For God and man to unite they must be to some degree like each other. It had to be so.

      The Incarnation may indeed raise some questions, but it answers many more. The ones it raises are speculative; the ones it settles are deeply moral and vastly important to the souls of men. Man's creation in the image and likeness of God is one question it settles by affirming it positively. The Advent proves it to be a literal fact.

[Shammu]

The Ark Analogy
By A.W. Tozer

      Third, the church is depicted as an ark on the flood waters. As the ark of Noah floated on the waters and contained all who would be salvaged, so the church of Jesus Christ is an ark on the flood waters and contains all who will be salvaged. Remember that! All in the ark are saved, and all outside the ark perish. All around us is a perishing world, and we float on top of it in a little ark called the church. All that are not in the church--the ark--will perish. You say, "Now hold on a minute. Do you mean to say that if you don't join the Avenue Road Church, you will be lost?" No, but what I do say is that the church is the ark containing the ransomed, and inside the ark is life. Outside the living church of Christ are the lost. Inside are the saved. You are not saved by joining a church, which is a mistake local churches make. The animals all came into Noah's ark by the door. Christ is the door to the church, and whoever will be saved must come in by the door. There is no other ark on the flood. Suppose someone said, "Well, hold on a minute. Don't be so narrow-minded. Let's be tolerant. We do not want to get in Noah's ark; we want an ark of our own." Well, there weren't any other arks on the flood. It was either get into Noah's ark or perish. A few got into Noah's ark, and God preserved the race. In the church of Christ, God is salvaging a small number from the flood. A fatal error is the independent life--to say that you are a Christian, but you don't associate with any churches. You are a Christian, but you don't feel the necessity to join a church. It is true that there are hypocrites in the church--not in the true church, but in the local assembly. Even Jesus had His Judas. The local assembly and the true church of Christ are sometimes not synonymous.

[Shammu]

The Bane of "Religious Talk"
By A.W. Tozer

      Now, while we cannot project ourselves backward through time and walk again in Galilee with Christ and His disciples, we can by faith actually experience "the substance of things hoped for"; we can have every sufficient "evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, KJV); we can taste "the powers of the coming age" (6:5); we can "know" and "comprehend"; we can have the inner witness, the spiritual illumination that brings out the typography of the kingdom of God as clearly as any earthly landscape is revealed by the rising sun. Then every word will be like a sharp, clear shadow thrown by the objects on the terrain, not to stand in place of reality, but to outline it and set it in relief.
      A word is valid only when it refers to some reality in the mind of the user. It must submit to definition as used by the speaker. Its dictionary meaning cannot save it from semantic fraud. It must have a real meaning in its limited context at a given time. By this test an alarmingly great amount of our religious talk is phonetic breath, no more.

[Shammu]

The Barrenness of Busyness
By A.W. Tozer

       Satan's distracting words often come from the most unexpected quarters. Martha would call Mary away from sitting at the feet of the Master. Sometimes, if we are not careful, our best friend may distract us. Or it might be some very legitimate activity. This day's bustle and hurly-burly would too often and too soon call us away from Jesus' feet. These distractions must be immediately dismissed, or we shall know only the "barrenness of busyness."
      The multiplying agencies and the extraneous activities of much of the current gospel "programming" may distract us if we are not wary and lead us into some meandering by-path that comes to a dead end. Our genius is preserved by sticking at the task of worldwide evangelization that God has called us to by the tried and proven methods that God has blessed, thereby avoiding the slough of an effete denominationalism on the one hand and unproductive, fevered activity on the other.

      In a world like ours, we need to master the art and keep at the business of dismissing distractions.
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The Brooding Spirit of God
By A.W. Tozer

       Because the inner lostness is the same in all human beings the work of God to reclaim them must be the same in all. And the Spirit broods over all, illuminating, revealing, convicting, enabling them to hear and see and understand. It is one of the wonders and delights of preaching that the same message will often affect people differently, producing in one repentance, in another hope, in still others courage, humility or faith, according as the particular soul has need. Without this mighty, skillful working of the Spirit, preaching would be futile; with it the ministry of the Word can be easy and delightful as well as marvelously effective.

[Shammu]

The Believer and Worlds
By A.W. Tozer

      The New Testament teaches that to be a follower of Christ it is necessary that a man turn his back upon the world and have no fellowship with it. Our Lord drew a sharp line between the kingdom of God and the world and said that no one could be at the same time a lover of both. This was also the teaching of Paul, James and John (2 Corinthians 6:14-18; James 4:4; 1 John 2:15-17). It is therefore of critical importance that we who claim to be disciples of Christ should check our relation to the world. The question of the Christian and the world is not, however, as simple as it might seem. There is much difference of opinion among Christians as to what constitutes the world. Before we can be sure of our relation to something we must first know what it is. The fact is that two worlds coexist around us. One God made out of nothing; the other man made by taking the materials that originally came from God and fashioning them into a moral caricature of the original.

[Shammu]

The Bible's Purpose
By A.W. Tozer

      In recent years the Bible has been recommended for many other purposes than the one for which it was written. The peace of mind cults, for instance, manage to find in it oil for the troubled waters of the soul; but to make it work they must pick, choose, misunderstand and misapply quite literally to their heart's content. Now, the Bible when read honestly and responsibly does bring peace of mind, but only after it has first brought the heart to a repentance that is often anything but peaceful. When the entire life has been morally transformed and the heart purified from sin, then the seeker can know real and legitimate peace. Any manipulation of the Scriptures to make them speak peace to the natural man is evil and can only lead to ruin.

      A few years ago it was fairly popular practice for Bible teachers to claim to find in the Scriptures confirmation of almost every new discovery made by science. Apparently no one noticed that the scientist had to find it before the Bible teacher could, and it never seemed to occur to anyone to wonder why, if it was there in the Bible in such plain sight, it took several thousand years and the help of science before anyone saw it.

      Now, I believe that everything in the Bible is true, but to attempt to make it a textbook for science is to misunderstand it completely and tragically. The purpose of the Bible is to bring men to Christ, to make them holy and prepare them for heaven. In this it is unique among books, and it always fulfills its purpose when it is read in faith and obedience.