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“This I Believe,” a Sermon by A.W. Tozer This is a sermon that A.W. Tozer preached in 1962 at a Youth For Christ leadership meeting in Chicago, Illinois in which he give his basic spiritual philosophy. Listen and you will understand A.W. Tozer as never before. One of Tozer’s most famous books is: The Pursuit of God. Many have said that this book marked a turning point in the their spiritual pilgrimage and created a spiritual thirst that drove them to the things of God. I think that Mr. Redpath (??Name) should say the opinions to be expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the convictions of the station. Because, I uh, think that I have something to say; I think God has something to say and I want you to know that I consider this an honor to speak to the Lord’s under-shepherds and I have been very, almost distressed that I might have his mind for the occasion. Some years back I received a phone call from a woman in the city of Chicago when I was still here, some years back. She said, Mr. Tozer I just heard your sermon over the air. Now she said I am the President of the Chicago Beautiful Woman’s Society; she said we are composed of the society of woman of the Chicago area and around and we are having a meeting in honor the dean of the American Artist. She said the mayor will be there and there will be artist and newspaper men and representatives of the radio; a rabbi from Germany and a Catholic priest. She said I am personally Catholic, but I want you to come and give that sermon that you gave on the air. Well I was scared stiff. I said, by Madame you don’t know who I am? I said I am a fundamentalist preacher; I am an evangelical. I said I preach the Bible, I am a protestant. She said I know that but I want you to give that sermon that you gave on that day. Well I wasn’t going to do it; I was determined….in my heart I was not going to that place. And everybody was to be there that was anybody and in the social……that is not my field; I don’t move in those circles. And I was just plain scared. I wasn’t going to do it, so I said, I’ll call you back. So I got on my knees. Now I don’t know whether you know what I mean? I am not a visionary and I don’t go by voices; I stick by the word, but once in a while God speaks to your heart and hell couldn’t shake it and you know God’s spoken. And something in my heart said (I believe it was the voice of God, He didn’t give me time to pray), something said in my heart; these are the words: “if you want Me to bless you when you want to preach; you’ll have to preach when I want you to preach.” That was all, I jumped to my feet from on my knees and I phoned her and said I’ll come. I did and it was as bad as I thought it would be. But the message that I gave was from the text, the counsel of the Lord that shall stand. There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the counsel of the LORD, that shall stand (Prov. 19:21). And it made the representative of the National Broadcast Company howling mad and a few others, I guess around there. And I have never been invited back, but I gave my witness. I hope God will never make me do a thing like that again, but I’ll do it because I wanted to purchase the right to stand up and know that God was going to be with us. Now I am a somewhat in a fix like that today; certainly not as dramatic and I am in the hands of friends, but I know what I should say. If I followed the emphasizes of this outline, I know what I should say and I even know what might be expected of me to say. But I am not going to say it. I am going to clear my heart of something that is honest before you my fellow ministers. And this that I am saying unto you…of course I have woven into my preaching, but I never gave this particular talk except to a bunch of Baptist preachers in conference in New York, The Youth For Christ of all places, their convention and to some missionaries. So this is not an old worn out talk; this what I am going to say represents the deep convictions of my spirit; this is what I believe. Now I begin with a conclusion; I begin with this conclusion – it is not an assumption; not a guess, but it is a consequence of prayer and study and first hand observation and I believe also some measure of walking with the Holy Spirit. And in consultation, like Paul who had his revelation from God, but he checked with the brethren in Jerusalem to be sure that he wasn’t off. Remember that it was such a beautiful inconsistent thing; very sweet ant very human. He said I just checked to see if that was alright but he would have preached it anyhow regardless of what they said, but he wanted to know that he was in with the brethren who were God’s children; God’s servants. And I have done this and do you know what I have found; I have found that the Holiest; the most radiant; the most worshipful; the most sacrificial; the most devoted agree with me on this. Now my conclusion is that evangelical Christianity has left the land of promise and is in Babylonian captivity. Now when Israel was in Babylon she was not cut off from God’s covenant or even from his favor; He still called her His and He still protected her and finally brought her back to the land, but she was out of the land of where she should have been and the covenant while it held; its full provisions were partly suspended because they weren’t where they should have been and while they were not deserted and not rejected of God they nevertheless were in Babylon and they hung their hearts on the willows and they couldn’t sing the songs of Zion. They were there together, but they weren’t what they should have been or where they should have been. They were God’s people, but they weren’t in the land; they were in Babylon. Now, I believe that we the gospel Church…now I am not going to throw rocks at the liberals; I am not going to throw rocks at the Roman Catholics; we leave them with the mercy of God. I am talking about us that believe the Bible to be the Word of God and who stand by all the tenants of the sake of our fathers. Now about 450 years ago a similar situation –I think worse perhaps, but a situation like this came and a man arose whose name was Martin Luther and he diagnosed the disease that they had and he discovered the trouble with the church and then he published his findings. He published in the famous 95th thesis, nailed on the Castle Church in Wittenberg, October 31, 1517. He published his diagnosis; this is what is wrong with Christianity; in other words, he said, and here is where we are going to have to make our corrections and shift our emphasis back to the Bible if we are going to be right with God. Now we are in the critical need today of a reformer; we are in critical need of someone or ones who can come along and diagnosis, analyze and discover; rouse and challenge and call and lead. Now just in case you, any of you might say, Tozer thinks he is a reformer – I want to hasten to tell you that I am realistic enough to know that I am not that man. First I am too old. Second, I have sinned too much and like Moses I have hit too many rocks on impulse and the Lord is with me, but the Lord is saying that some young fellow will do that, you go on home. And one of these times, I hope twenty years from now the Lord will release me from my ministry and take me home, no sooner, but He is not going to let me do this – this is all settled. So this is not a manifesto from a man who thinks he is a reformer, a major or minor he is neither one, but if the echo of my hammer blows could cause some sleeping giant, some young fellow sitting listening to me or that you’ll speak to somewhere and get to hear about this and he’ll be the man and I’ll say Lord, let thy servant depart in peace – that is all that I want to do is to put some thesis before you which are a pronouncement about what is wrong with us and why we are where we are and why we have to have to have an emphasis like this for if we were where we should be – it would be carrying clothes to New Castle to have convention. The very fact that such a convention is held is an indication that the level of the church is down and we are trying to bring it up. Now you take these thesis down – they are pronouncements which I will stand by and incidentally I will easily lose some friends this morning and go out of here with fewer friends than I had when I came in. Friends are very precious and I don’t speak lightly of them but they are not to be kept at the expense of your conscious and of what you believe to be true. You notice, I say, what I believe to be true. I may be wrong; I may be wrong on some points; I may be wrong on all points. And I would quote Luther again, anything here that I am saying; (he was saying, anything that I have written), anything that I am saying doesn’t check with the Word of God write that off, that I wouldn’t stand for, but whatever accords with the Word of God you are conscious bound to listen to that.
1. Now let me take two of Luther’s thesis….strangely after 450 years these two are still valid for us: he said this (this is number one), he said, “Our Lord and Master when he said repent ye meant the whole life of the faithful should be an act of repentance.” Now I believe that, just put that down. Today we are producing Christians without repentance or with inadequate repentance or with superficial repentance. And when Satan (my God help me not brag to much about being influenced by Satan) but when some wrong brethren got the idea abroad that repentance is for Israel, but it is not for the church we suffered a loss that was like a Pearl Harbor in the church of Christ. The fact is that repentance runs throughout the entire Bible, through the last book and that the great Saints have invariably been the great repenters. And when the devil in his shrewd wisdom achieved in brain washing the Bible teachers and ruling out repentance in the church of Christ and ruling out repentance as a condition of getting into the Kingdom of God, I say that he did us immeasurable harm. The whole life of the believer should be a continual act of contrition and we should never be up to a place in our lives where we feel that we have arrived; we have pulled the lever down; we’ve taken out the automatic thing and said now we have got it. We should be in a state of contrition and repentance of heart; for though we may have degrees and have been through school and prepared to use cultured language and be called doctor, reverend and looked up to – we are still pretty human and we are still pretty bad. And we need to again bring to the church of Christ the biblical doctrine of repentance and emphasize it until it works. 2. Yet Christ does not mean interior repentance only; repentance is void if it does not produce a modification of the flesh. Now it is entirely possible to go through some kind of experience of internal spirituality to suck the sweetness out of the gospel and not have got your full life under the lordship of Jesus. Today we accept Christ without self denial; without Cross carrying and the result of course is that we are where we are. We need in this hour lean muscular discipline Christianity but we don’t have it, we have the other kind and it is because we have either thought that repentance was not for us or we thought it was a mental thing. It is a mental thing but it is a spiritual thing too, but all those are within our personality and repentance is not valid in fact it is void unless it gets into my relation to my wife; my relation to my church; gets into my use of money; gets into my use of language; gets into my ethics; gets into every detail of my life; my relationship to the government; our relationship to organized society; my relationship to my people, my family. We have got to be have repented so thoroughly that in every area of our total life that hasn’t been affected by radical, but painful, but blessed repentance.
3. We have got to begin to preach again no salvation without discipleship. You know that over the past fifty years we have divorced salvation from discipleship and men are actually so spiritually stupid that they will get up in nice guys; not mean but nice guys and they will get up before audiences and teach them that they are to accept Jesus and be saved and then later on settle the matter of discipleship. I don’t believe that it is possible for anybody to come to the Lord and be saved unless he is ready to be a disciple. Our Lord taught that; it is in the Book, it is there; it is assumed and taken for grand it; underscored by the apostles, but this division of the work or our relationship to the Lord is divided into two sections: 1) Our relationship to him with as the one who saved us and 2) our relationship to him as our Lord. This is all wrong my brethren – we need to begin again to tell sinners they are to become disciples of Jesus Christ and accepting Christ means to become a disciple of Christ then, not twenty years later or some other time, but now.
4. And then we have got to start telling them that to be forgiven sin must be forsaken. We have learned now to live with sin and we take forgiveness by grace and we don’t do anything about our lives. To be forgiven sin must be forsaken. Now we have to be bold enough to tell people that. You say, you’ll keep people out of the church; then keep them out alright. The Lord turned people away from him by teaching the truth and He turned to them and said will ye also go away? (He wasn’t going to change the truth), but He was sorry that they were leaving and Peter said, Lord, to whom shall we go? The feeling that we have got to make converts at any cost has gravely wounded the church of Christ. We must present the truth at as we are told to present it and to let the Holy Spirit and the individual man decide as to whether he will accept it not. This soft pussy idea that in order to keep people coming and giving and filling the seats we don’t dare in any wise offend them; we have got to make everything smooth and soft and attractive, it is not New Testament and this is one of the theses that I would mail out there. We have got to tell the people that to be forgiven sin must be forsaken and we want you but we only want you when you come by the labor and are washed in the blood of the Lamb – we don’t want you any other way.
5. There is no Savior without Lordship. That is very similar to number three. There is not Savior without Lordship. Do you know what we do now we tell people that you take him as Savior and then later on you trust the matter of having him as your Lord? If He can’t be your Lord, He won’t be your Savior. You might as well settle that. You may not agree with this and I could wrong but I don’t think I am. When we have divided the Saviorship and the Lordship of Christ – we have divided the substance of the language of the old creed and we should never do it. The offices of Christ are one and they all belong in the person of Jesus. When I take him as my Lord and Savior; I have taken him for all of He is. Now it doesn’t mean that I will go all that He is; it means that all the rest of my normal life I will be learning the glories that shine around his head, but it means that I have got to take him as my Lord if I am going to have him as my Savior. Now I stick to this brethren; you might not believe it, but I believe it.
6. The way of the Cross is hard. Now we have been falsely representing it as ridiculously easy and so we have disappointed millions of people who have to accept Christ on the false assumption because we have unintentionally so represented it – that serving the Lord was a jolly business and it was very clean and nice and joyful and the Lord would help us to do things is business and help us to undercut our competitor and get the jobs and if you were a baseball pitcher you would get a good curve ball and to know out our opponent. We’ve written nice little books about how to the dear Lord just comes and just helps me to have my way. Brother you can’t be “wronger.” There wasn’t any such word up to now, but you couldn’t be further off the base than that. Jesus Christ never compromises with anybody. He sees them go away as he saw the rich young ruler go away and he grieves in His heart. But truth is truth and our Lord is the embodiment of Truth and He will not compromise for anybody. The way of the Cross is not an easy way – we have made the Cross into a beautiful symbol of Christianity; we put it on Easter cards; on steeples and around our necks and all of that. The Cross has become a jolly lovely thing. The fact is the Cross is rejection; the Cross is ostracism; the Cross is death and we have got to tell people this. And if we don’t tell people this we sell goods under false representation. Now this is a serious life, this Christian life. You and I brethren are in a serious fix and you and I might just well admit it; in spite of every guest we are in serious fix; we are bad off. Sin has done terrible things to us; sin has ruined us. And to get out of this mess we are going to have to go through some hard places. You will say, but the Lord did it all; now don’t fool yourself – the Lord died on the Cross and said, it is finished and redemption was objectively purchased I believe for each and every man in the world; if you believe in (what I believed him to say is) predestination, but I believe that He died for all men in the world. But my brethren when He saved the Christian down here, by grace through faith without works that Christian isn’t in heaven yet; he is down here and the fact that he is a Christian puts him out of joint with all society and he is in trouble and he is likely to be in trouble and that is why the Lord said if you are foot gets in the way cut it off and throw it away; if your eye offends you pull it out and throw it away; if your loved ones get in your way leave them and follow me. But now a days we don’t dare say that to the church – that is why the church is so weak; we don’t dare say it. Uncle Sam will say it; he sends a letter to a young man and he say, “Greetings fellow citizen,” and you know what that means – and you know what that means; come get the uniform on and go out and get shot at. And Uncle Sam doesn’t say, now do you think you would like to do this. Well Uncle Sam doesn’t reconsider. He says greetings and meet me at a certain place and if you have got anything between here and there they take you (meaning health issues). But we are afraid of that but that was the spirit of the early church; it was a militant spirit; it was the spirit of give up and die, but the spirit now is get and have and stay fat. The result is of course we are now in Babylon. So we are going to have to start telling the truth to people again the way of the Cross leads home but leads down hills and up through valleys and across thorny ways and past lions and bears and it is not an easy way like the way it is being portrayed, “it’s wonderful, come and follow the Lord.”
7. The methods of the Spirit and the methods of men are diametrically opposed to each other and you cannot run the church of God after the methods of men. Now the method of the church today, the evangelical church….maybe not yours, you may be an oasis in the desert and certainly I would be the first one to be happy for you. But I know the evangelical church pretty well; all the denominations within the fold of the gospel beliefs and these churches are run on the methods of big business; the methods of show business and the methods of the Madison Avenue advertising business. Now hear me say this thing – there are churches by the hundreds that the Holy Ghost would leave as the shakina glory left the temple in the day of Ezekiel and the church would never find it out; they would go on preaching the gospel; they would go right on preaching the word; they would go right on sending out missionaries and never know that the Holy Ghost had left. Now I don’t personally believe the Holy Ghost leaves in that sense – He abides with you forever; so I am not saying that He will leave, but I am saying that he retreats into silence and for a generation he won’t be heard from. Yet the church will run on its momentum. They used to say about the big old steam engines on the Pennsylvania and New York Central – they could run seventy five miles on momentum on a level track after they were doing a normal speed; turn off the steam and they could run seventy five miles on momentum. Inertia will carry you seventy five years without a new pulse of the Holy Ghost. This is a terrible, terrible thing to me.
I began preaching on the street corner; I got on a soap box and told the story of the prodigal son; I began there and I would rather end my last feeble years preaching on a soap box and telling the truth then to be caught in institutionalized Christianity and paralyzed because I don’t dare tell the truth. I want the prophetic spirit on me or I want to die. |
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