SermonIndex Classics - A.W. Tozer

A. W. Tozer: But you can't help the neighborhood. You can help the neighborhood where you live and you can help this neighborhood. The neighborhood will be better because we're here. We don't need to apologize; they owe us money. They owe us a great debt. They can rob us, but we keep the crime rate down nevertheless. For where you have more God-filled, spirit-filled churches, you can have fewer cops on the street. Be sure that wherever there's more godliness, there's less crime.

A spirit-filled church is useful in the neighborhood, useful to the sons of men, even the ones that are not converted, and it will be influential among the churches. You know what I have an ambition for? I don't know how long I'll be around, but I know what I have an ambition for. I'd like to see this church become so godly, so spirit-filled, that it would have a spiritual influence on all churches in the whole city of Toronto.

I would like every church in this city to have to take off its hat and stand at attention and say, "There is a godly people." I am not unspiritual in this because Paul told some of his people that their godliness and faith were talked about through all Achaia and Asia Minor. It's entirely right that I could hope this of you, that we might become so spirit-filled, walk with God, learn to worship, and live so clean and so separated that everybody would know it and the other churches in the city would be blessed on account of it.

Did you know that when Luther had his Reformation, the Catholic Church was forced to clean up just because of Luther? The moral pressure from Luther and Lutheranism forced the Roman Church to clean up. When Wesley came and preached, the Anglican Church was forced to clean up some of the things that were wrong with them. That’s not to speak unkindly of my Anglican friends, for I have many of them. It’s only to say that in those times, they needed some help, and they didn't come into Methodism, but Methodism was a spiritual force that compelled them to do something about their own condition.

So there's no reason why we could not be a people here so filled with the Spirit, so joyfully singing His praises, and living so clean in our business and home and school that the people would know it and other churches would be forced to straighten up and clean up and begin to pray for something, too, because we’d set the standard for them. Whenever you have a spirit-filled people, you have a people that can live well and die well. "All these Christians die well," they said of the Methodists. "Behold how these Christians die," said a man as he looked at the martyrs in the Roman days.

If you live well, you'll die well. Old Balaam wanted to die the death of the righteous, but he wouldn't live the life of the righteous. If you're going to die the death of the righteous, you must live the life of the righteous. A Christian ought to be able to die well; he should be able to do that if nothing else. Now, there are some who won't feel at home in a church like that. If your hope is to have everybody and his brother on his mother's side just come and sit around and glow, just put that out of your head. It won't happen that way.

Not all men have faith, and there are just some people that don't want that kind of church. Let me go over and tell you who they are. They are people who put on religion as a Sunday garment, as a well-pressed Sunday garment. I suppose there aren't many here, but I'm afraid there might be some, so I'm going to point out that if we have a revival and the blessing of God comes to us here, as the board and many others of you are praying and writing me and talking it over the phone, we are together on this. If this comes and we do get the help we need from God, those who make religion merely a Sunday garment won't like it very well because we'll insist that they live right Monday morning, and they don't want to do that.

They that keep their religion disengaged from practical living won't like it either. Some people have a wonderful way of disengaging. Their religion is here, and their living is here. On Sundays, they polish off their religion, and about 11 o’clock, they put it on the shelf. Then Monday, they go out and live the way they want to live. Nobody like that ever likes to hear me preach. If you're like that, you won't like to hear me preach because I won't surrender to that kind of thing and I won't surrender to that kind of people.

I wouldn't care if it was the whole Senate of the United States and the Parliament of Canada and all the big doctors and scientists and all the great nabobs on the whole continent said they’d come and join my church; I’d still preach the same thing. We are to be a church of the living God, not a gathering of big shots necessarily, though the big shot can come if they get on their knees. A big shot on his knees isn't any taller than anybody else.

There are those also who refuse to let religion endanger them in any way. They refuse to let it interfere with their pleasures or their plans. They'll serve Jesus and go to heaven, get saved and can't lose their eternal life, so they'll make it through. But they're going to have fun on the way there. They lay their lives out just as a gardener lays out the garden, or a woman, my wife, sometimes cuts out a pattern and lays it on a table. It looks like a mess to me, but it turns out to be a dress for a granddaughter.

We lay out our lives, and we say, "It's nice to serve Thee, and we love Thee, Lord, and let's sing a chorus. But we won't change that pattern any." My friends, the cross of Jesus Christ always changes a man's pattern. It always gets in there and makes a man change his life. The cross of Christ is revolutionary. If we're not ready to let it be revolutionary in us, we're not going to like a church that takes the things of God seriously and let it cost us anything or control us in any way.

People want the benefit of the cross, but they don't want the control of the cross. They want all the cross can offer, but they don't want to be under the lordship of Jesus. Then, of course, there are those who expect religion to be fun. We've just gone through, and I hope we're through, though I'm not sure we are yet, a long period when Christianity was the funniest thing on the continent. We could have more fun serving Jesus than you could doing anything else in the whole world. It was clean too, and you didn't have a hangover, they said.

If you go down to the corner pub, you have a good time, but you'll have a hangover. They said if you serve Jesus, you can have all the fun you want and you won't have a hangover. That kind of Christianity for the sake of fun, Christianity as an entertaining medium, the whole thing is offensive and foul before God Almighty. My brother, the cross of Christ isn't fun and it never was fun. There is such a thing as the joy of the Lord, which is the strength of His people. There is such a thing as having joy unspeakable and full of glory.

But there is also such a thing as joying while we grieve. The idea that Christianity is another form of entertainment is perfectly ridiculous. I wrote one time something, and I said that Christianity was being made a form of entertainment. A fellow felt himself called to write an answer to me, an editor of a magazine. He wrote me up in his magazine. I said that we ought not to see things, but we ought to see the things that were invisible. He said, "Tozer believes in going to church and keeping your eyes shut."

Well, of course, he didn't understand what I was talking about, or perhaps he did understand but lied about it. But then I said that Christianity is not a form of entertainment, and he said, "Tozer's all wet; he ought to know better." He said every time you sing a hymn, you're being entertained. That's entertainment. Maybe he was, but brother, I'm not. When I sing "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound," I'm worshipping God Almighty.

If you want to call that which they do before the throne when they cry day and night without ceasing, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," and hide their face behind their wings, if that’s entertainment, then I'm an entertainer. But if it isn't, and it isn't, then I'm a worshipper. The church must worship. There's more healing joy in five minutes of worship than there is in five nights of revel.

The world ought to find that out. Nobody ever worshipped God and went out and committed suicide as a hangover. But many a man has killed himself because he'd just burnt himself out trying to have fun. Many a pretty young lady goes out, throws herself into having fun, and before she's 25 years old, she's an old hag and has to have a retread job done on her countenance before anybody can look at her without gagging. She has simply burnt herself out. She is effete and burnt out, and everywhere you go, you find it.

All these pretty actresses that you see and see their pictures and some of you have gone to see them, you ought to see them when they get up in the morning. They have to have a patch job done on their face before they dare even come down to breakfast. It's all burnt out. I love to see the grace of God in a face, don't you? I remember I mentioned this once before for another reason. I was among the Brethren, the Brethren in Christ, those plain people who all have these things.

The women have little black hats sitting up on top of their heads, and their hair's done up in a bun, and their ears stick out. I preached for them and I was blessed. I was just absolutely refreshed and wonderfully blessed. They didn't have a thing on but face. Not a thing on their head but hair and a little black thing for the angels, according to 1 Corinthians; they cover their head for the sake of the angels. They’re just sweet. You look at them, and it reminds you of your dear old aunt back in Pennsylvania, or your grandmother out in New Brunswick.

You think of all the nice people you ever knew and the sweet, good people you ever knew when you look at them. You don't have to apologize for them; just nice people, the Brethren in Christ. Now, I couldn't go among them, but I do admire them tremendously. That is, I couldn't join them, but I do admire them tremendously. I had a tie on, and I told them, I told the president of the college where I was, "You know, I'm a Gentile and I don't know whether they'll take me in or not." He said, "Preach to their hearts and they'll forget that you don't belong to them." And I did just that, and they did just that.

Of course, there are those who embrace religion for its cultural value. Did you ever meet those people? They don't know anything about the spirit-filled life or the spirit-filled church, but the cultural value of the church is good for them. They want their children brought up in the culture of the church. Anybody that does that, of course, is not going to be at home among God's dear people. They want book reviews and all that sort of thing, and they won't be at home.

But there will be some that are at home, and I'm going to name them and quit for tonight. I know we want to sing, and I am not going to press the length of my sermon unduly. But there'll be some people if we have a spirit-filled church that practices the beliefs of the New Testament and goes constantly to the grassroots and roots out everything that isn't of God and keeps the grain growing lush and beautiful, gears into the things heavenly and walks with God and obeys the truth and loves each other.

We'll rule out a few, but these will be in their glory. Who are they? Those who have a leading ambition to be rid of their sins. If you haven't got an over-burdening ambition to be rid of your sins, you won't like to hear me preach very often or long. You won't do it because I believe we ought to want to be rid of our sins. If I had a cancer growing on my neck, I'd want to be rid of that thing.

Nobody could come to me and say, "Now here, I've got a cowbell here. Let me shake it. Don't you like it?" And I'd say, "No, I don't like it. I'm interested in this cancer on my neck. Have you got a cure for it?" And they’d say, "Oh, forget the cancer. Let me jingle the bell." He’d jingle the bell. I've heard real cowbells on real cows when I was on the farm, and I don't want to hear them in church, so get them out of here and let's talk about getting rid of your sins.

Brother, there are some people that are overwhelmed with the desire to be free from their sins. "Refining fire, go through my heart and sanctify the whole." Those people will be happy among us. Those who long to know and walk with God, whose ambition is to walk with God and to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, we'll know each other. The Lord's people kind of know each other. They do. They know each other. You may get an occasional bad apple. Jesus had Judas Iscariot in His little flock.

But mostly, we know each other. When you shake hands and somebody says something to you about God, you sort of know you're talking to a brother in Christ, regardless of whether he's an Irishman, a Scotsman, an Englishman, an American, or what he may be. We all talk the same language and we're brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ our Lord. Those who have learned to recognize the voice of the Shepherd, they will be at home in a spirit-filled church.

Some people have never heard the voice of the Shepherd. But oh, that voice of the Shepherd is tender as a lullaby and as strong as the wind and as mighty as the sound of many waters. The voice of Jesus, that healing, musical, solemn, beautiful voice of Jesus in His church. The people who have learned to hear that voice and recognize it are always at home where everything centers around him.

Jesus is all in all. In the early days of the Alliance, we were a conglomeration of everything under the sun, and we still are. We really still are. That is, we have Calvinists and Arminians and Methodists and Baptists and all sorts of people. We're all together on one thing: Jesus Christ is wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. He's all in all.

You know the people of the Lord that have learned to hear the voice of the Shepherd, they sort of gravitate toward that sort of place. And then there are those who are sensitive to the invisible presence. They're not so sure who else is present, but they know the Lord is present and they're sensitive to that. Is your heart sensitive to that, the Lord's presence? Or are you a sampler and a nibbler?

God help you and bless you if you are. But the child of the King isn't a sampler and a nibbler. He's a sheep who loves his Shepherd and stays awfully close to his Shepherd. I told the preachers last week in our conference that the only safe place for a sheep is by the side of his Shepherd because the devil doesn't fear sheep; he just fears the Shepherd, that's all.

All the sheep in Ontario wouldn't be a match for one wolf. If you gave one wolf time, he could eat all the sheep in Canada. Give him time, and granted he could live long enough, he could do it because they can't fight back. They just run, put their heads together, and make funny, pleading, bleating sounds. The wolf doesn't mind that. That's all God's people can do. So our safety lies in being near to the Shepherd. Stay close to Jesus and all the wolves in the world can't get a tooth in you, thank God.

There are some who’ve tasted of the good word of God and felt the mysterious power of the world to come. Have you? Have you? If you haven't, maybe it's because you aren't doing anything about it. Maybe it's because you don't want this or don't want it enough. But if there are those in the church or in presence here tonight who’d rather hear the voice of Jesus than to hear the voice of the greatest speaker or the best singer in the world, would rather be conscious of the divine presence than to be conscious of the presence of the greatest man in the world, who’s sick of his own sin and longs to be holy, then I'm preaching to you.

I pray that your numbers may increase. I pray that you tell others, "This is what we stand for at Avenue Road. This is what we believe in: Jesus Christ, clean living, joyful, radiant, happy worship, good sweet fellowship, and kindliness and patience and endurance and honesty and the missionary outlook and good decency and separation from all things that are wrong." Above all things, to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and to learn to know the wondrous sound of the Shepherd's voice. That's what we stand for, that's what we believe in, that's what we're preaching.

Well, that's all now, I think. That's no way to close a sermon. I never learned to close sermons. When I get through, I just quit. Preachers who have studied the thing tell you there's a way to close it, but I've never bothered to find out how. I just quit when I'm done. I'm finished now, so there’s no use to go on. But let's have a little moment of prayer, just a little moment of prayer.

Narrator: On behalf of Christian Publications, God bless you, and thank you for listening.