SermonIndex Classics - A.W. Tozer

A. W. Tozer: It still has as much meaning for us all today as it had when it was written. It's found in the 10th chapter of the book of Proverbs, verse 22. The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.

Now, you can understand this without any strain or any great heroic effort of the mind. The blessing of the Lord, whoever has it is rich. And here is one man who is rich without having any sorrow added to his riches. That's what it says there.

And as I said this morning, the text is from God's word and then the commentary on the text is what the preacher says about it. Brother Reid says that the text is what God said and the sermon is what the preacher thinks God meant. A little bit cynical maybe, but I think there's some truth in it.

So, I want to talk tonight about the blessing of the Lord and what it is and what it means to us and how it leaves no bad aftertaste. And the man who wrote this text was an old man and he was rich or had been rich, one of the richest men in the world and one of the wisest.

And yet, when he comes to leave behind him something for the ages, he doesn't clothe it in language that you have to have two lexicons and the dictionary to get the meaning of. He says very simply that a man who has God's blessing on him is a rich man and that he'll never have any regrets nor any sorrows as a result of that kind of riches.

A man who was dying, an old man, that is he was along toward the end and he had been a very learned man and somewhat of a genius and was known widely around the world as such a genius, great thinker, great writer. And a young pastor was asked to go to see him. And the young pastor girded up his loins and decided that if he wanted to talk to that man, he was going to have to really climb the heights of intellectual accomplishment.

So, they sat down and he said to the old man, "Read to me." So, he began somewhere, I've forgotten where, and he started to read something heavy. The old gentleman interrupted him and he said, "No, no, no. Don't read that." He said, "Read this. Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me." He said, "Read that." So, the young pastor, quite astonished, went on and read the 14th of John to him.

Now, that's how I feel about this. Here was an old man, Solomon, and he had lived it up in his day, as you know. He had plenty of everything. And time was running out on him and he was writing up his proverbs. And you can read those proverbs without ever having gone beyond the seventh grade or sixth grade, the fifth grade maybe.

You will find wonderful truth here, though. And I'll tell you a nice thing about this text is the man who wrote it wasn't putting sour grapes into print. So many of us who have never been anywhere or seen anything or had anything, we condemn it because we're jealous of it. You know the old story of the sour grapes. The fox jumped and jumped and couldn't get the grapes and walked away saying, "Well, they were sour anyway." And when we want something and don't have it, we condemn it.

But this man wasn't like that because he'd had it. He said he'd had it and he'd had it in more than one way. He'd had it in the literal, proper way and he'd had it in the slang way. He'd had it. And he'd watched the drama of humanity, for he had taken time out from his eating and drinking and listening to the music and watching the dancing maidens. He'd taken time out to do a little heavy thinking, too.

And particularly he'd observed a lot. He'd observed the long parade of humanity marching. And he'd observed the drama that no poet ever wrote, but the drama that man writes himself, the drama of history and humanity. He'd observed it. And he'd seen his friends come up and go down and he looked in his own heart and noticed how empty it was. And so, he said, "The blessing of the Lord, that maketh rich."

Now, what is this blessing of the Lord? Well, the blessing of the Lord, now I suppose that if I were reading this without the benefit of the rest of the Bible, I wouldn't know exactly what the man of God had meant. But when you allow the rest of the Bible to be a commentary on this, then I well know what it means.

It began back there when God said to Abraham, "Abraham, come out of that country and thy kingdom and come into a new place that I will show thee and I will bless thee and make thy name great," and so on. It began there and it's gone all down the years.

The blessing of the Lord is simply to stand in the right relationship to God, in full covenant relationship to God. It is to be an heir of the Almighty. It is to be an heir of the Almighty. Every once in a while you will see a picture of a young fellow or a girl in the newspaper and they will say that he or she is an heir. This is an heiress. She is the heir to the thus and the thus fortune. She's an heir to the great onion fortune or she's an heir to the great Woolworth fortune. Somebody's made a lot of money and this is the little chick that's going to get it after they're gone.

Now, that's what it means to be an heir. It means to stand in covenant relationship to somebody in such a way that everything they have is yours. Everything they have finally comes down to you and you possess it.

And that seems to be the teaching of the Bible. "Children of the Heavenly Father," says the little Swedish song. "Children of the Heavenly Father," they own it at all. They have the care of the Father over them and they're heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. That's what it means. It means to stand in right relationship to God through Jesus Christ the Lord. It means to be named in the will of God in the New Testament through the work of Christ on the cross. That's what it means. The blessing of the Lord.

And then this blessing of the Lord, let's look at it for a little bit. This standing in right relationship to God through Christ is the greatest possession that anyone can have because it's eternal and because nobody can take it away from you. If all you have and what you trust in can be taken away from you again, you'll never quite be restful because it might easily be taken away from you.

Then the blessing of the Lord, nobody can take it away from anybody because the riches of God can't decay. Peter said, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance eternal, immortal, incorruptible." And these incorruptible riches of God, they're eternal and they're incorruptible.

And nobody can take them away. Everything can decay, you know. There isn't anything that tells me that smells quite as bad as a decayed lily. And there isn't anything that's quite so pathetic as an old house that families have lived in and now it is all gone down and the roof's blown partway off and you'll go inside and the dust of ages or centuries arises and you look about you and you see I was in one of them over in the state of Pennsylvania where I was born and brought up.

My old friends there, they're long gone. The man I knew had been found dead at the edge of the woods and the woman had long gone and the only boy had moved away to the city. And there was the old house and I went in. It was standing empty. And I went upstairs and downstairs, looked it all over. And there's nothing there but memories. Nothing. They had been there, but they were gone. And everything about there was evidence of decay.

And that pungent smell that is in an old house that's been lived in and hasn't been lived in for a long time and that the various rodents and birds and various little things that creep and crawl have made themselves at home. There it is, decay. Well, there's a riches that cannot be. There are riches, now I'll mix that all up because I'm thinking of it in the singular really, riches, and I'll probably not be able to unsort it as I talk. But you'll understand, I know better, even if I do make the mistake.

But the riches of God here, they don't get old on you and you can't burn them. When I was a boy of 10 years old, our house caught on fire and burned to the ground. There wasn't anything left at all of it, not anything left but a smoking bit of chimney standing there. And I was quite a little hero, you know. I took my little brothers and sisters and took them down safety and held them, kept them there like a mother over her chicks until finally my mother and father had got home and things had gotten under control. I remember that part about it, you know, a kid would.

But everything was burned down there, wasn't anything left. We didn't have anything, not anything except the clothes we had on. Burned. And whatever you have and whatever you have that can burn, you're not sure you have it at all. I don't disturb anybody, but you don't even know your house is there now because things burn, you know, and it doesn't take very long.

Then there are two words I want you to hear. One is depreciate and the other is devaluate. Those two words and they wreck everything we have, you know. There's that word depreciate. I think of the woman who went and said that she had understood that there was a high depreciation on X brand of automobile and she said, "That's good enough for me," and she bought it. But the poor woman didn't know that depreciation was nothing she wanted. Depreciation was what she didn't want. The thing depreciates, that is, it goes downhill and loses its value. It's worth $3,400 today and two years from now it's worth $2,200 and on down. That's depreciation.

Then there's devaluation. You know what that means. Remember back in the days of Herbert Hoover right after the first world war, when the German mark went so low that you would take a whole basket of it to get a loaf of bread? And actually, literally did it. They came to the stores with baskets of German marks because they'd been devalued to a point where they were not worth anything.

And that's what happens to everything. And the glory of man and everything that we have, it just goes like that, you know. Sic transit, they say. So it passes. And it amounts to nothing. But the blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich. And there isn't anything there to decay, nor to burn, nor to deteriorate, nor depreciate, nor devaluate. And there's no sic transit around there because it doesn't pass. It stays.

And then another thing is that Satan can't rob a Christian of anything that's really riches. Satan can't take away. The devil goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And if he can't devour you, he'll devour everything of yours that he can. But if you're standing in full relationship to God, the devil can't rob you of that because that's yours.

And what God wants to know is how much you have after all of the exterior trimmings have all been taken away. I was a young fellow about 18 or 19 or 17 or 18 years old, another chap and I went for a long trip by canoe down the waterways of the state of Ohio. And we had our rifles with us and all sorts of things.

And I remember that one day we didn't pay attention to game laws at all. And we decided that we'd like to have some meat. So, I drew a bead on or one of us did, I don't remember which one now, doesn't make any difference, we were all shooting around. But somebody drew a bead on a duck and shot, and the duck turned over as he properly should have done under the circumstances.

We went and retrieved him, brought him in. And he was a pretty big-looking duck. Now, I say he, I don't know exactly whether it was a he or a mama duck, but it was a duck. And we went to work on it, my friend and I. And I'd remembered how my mother did it. She heated some water and dipped the birds and then the feathers came off. And you know what happened? We dipped the bird and the feathers came off, and there wasn't anything much but feathers.

It was what they called the mud hen. Now, if any of you know what a mud hen is, you know what I mean. The bird wasn't much bigger, if any bigger, than a pigeon. But sitting out there in the water, it looked as big as a mallard. It was a huge thing. We thought, "Oh, what a hunk of meat we'll have now." And we didn't have enough. As I recall, we threw it away. But what I mean is, it was a hypocrite and it ought to have been shot because it was telling everybody, "Look what I have." All right, all you got's feathers. You haven't got duck enough to write home about. You're just full of feathers or rather feathers all around you.

Now, if you could know how little we are, how small the average fellow is. Look at this fellow down here, lives in a big house, you know, with four entrances and nine bathrooms and people to push around. But if you'd know what, when God trims him down and takes the feathers off, he isn't a very big duck, I tell you, mostly. Pretty small potatoes, if you'll excuse the metaphor, when the feathers are off.

But God wants to know how much you've got left and how big you are after all you've been all plucked. He did that with Job, you know. Job was a great fellow. Have you ever noticed in the book of Job, particularly in the 29th chapter of the book of Job, what a proud fellow he was?

He said, "Why, I used to be in them back in the days of my glory before the depression." He said, "I used to be that any that I, I," said, "my candle shined upon my head, and when by God's light I walked through the darkness, as I was in the days of my youth when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle," and said, "I washed my steps with butter and rock poured out rivers of oil. When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street, the young men saw me and hid themselves and the aged rose and stood at attention. The princes refrained from talking and laid their hand on their mouth." That's what you call a VIP. "And the nobles held their peace and their tongues cleaved to the roof of their mouth." They said, "Everybody shh, here comes Job."

Well, when God was through with Job, wasn't anything left. Even his family left him and his wife left him. She never came back, thank God for that, I don't know. She said, "Yeah, why don't you commit suicide?" She said, "You're no good anyhow, now I've always told you that and there you are. There you are scraping himself with all," you know. And his wife said, "Curse God and die and get it over." He said, "You foolish woman." He said, "Did I come into the world, naked came I into the world and naked I'm going out the same way. Blessed be the name of the Lord." He lost his pride and got back. God wanted Job to know how much there was left. And I tell you, there was quite a bit of Job left after the feathers were off. And God wants to know how much of us is left after they've taken everything away.

Well, now look at some of the false riches that people have. Popularity, that is one. People are, I say in the United States because, you see, I wouldn't say this about my friends here, you've been too nice to me. But down there popularity's a goddess. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." And everybody dreams about being popular. Some people commit suicide literally if their rating slips a little bit on television. They can't stand it, they want to be popular.

Well, then we have our beauty queens, beauty queens. I don't know what you think about beauty queens, ladies and gentlemen, but now don't think because I'm older, because I've always thought this about beauty queens. You can take all the beauty queens from Dan to Beersheba and from Vancouver to Miami, Florida, and put them on one side of the scale and put one nice old farm lady who loved God and knows her Bible on the other side of the scale, and she'll go down and they'll go up. All of them put together with cellophane wrapping around them and a bow wouldn't be worth as much as one dear old lady.

We had a visitor, I won't say who they were, but they were friends from here out to the house the other day. Passed by, you know, to say hello at Christmas time and they brought along the mother-in-law. And the mother-in-law was a little Scotch lady. She told me her age. Said she'd been in this country, in Canada, 52 years and I said, "Oh, you must have come when you were just a girl." And she was 21. She told me how old she was. But my wife and I have talked about it ever since she went. What a character here. What a woman. Quiet, but you could talk to her about real things and she knew what it meant. And I got my braid Scotch New Testament and, you know, I can read it but I can't pronounce it. And I brought it down and she sat there with shining face and read out of my braid Scotch with the Scottish burr.

Well now, brothers and sisters, you take that little lady, 73-year-old Scottish saint, and put her in one end of the scale and put all your painted beauty queens in the other and she's worth more than all of them. Popularity, some people give their souls for it.

There's the pugilists and the star. Oh, how we use that word star. "They that win many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever." And we've taken the word star, that beautiful word, and applied it to people that have the morals of alley cats. Popularity, that's right. That's right off. And say, "God, we don't want it, we don't care anything about it really."

Then there's friends. If all you have are your summer friends of the world, remember they don't stay with you when you're in trouble. Jesus was forsaken and Paul was forsaken. And I remember was it in King Henry VIII? Shakespeare's King Henry VIII, when Cardinal Wolsey, he had kissed the hands of old King for a lifetime and sold out his soul and his church and everything else.

And then the king got mad at him and, as I recall, threw him in prison and he was dying. And they said, well, and he had died and they said, "How did he do? How did he die?" And he said, "He died better than he lived." He said, "If he had lived as well as he died, he'd have been a better man," somebody said. Of course, they said it in Shakespeare's cadences, not in my plain blunt language.

But they quoted Wolsey as saying this, "If I had served my God as faithfully as I served my king, he would not desert me now that I am an old man." Now you can say that again. He'd served his king and the old unpredictable king turned his back on him when he didn't need him anymore. If I'd served my God as faithfully as my king, he'd never have deserted me and he never would have. So be careful who your friends are. I'm going to talk to a little later on about friends, but kinds you ought to have. But watch out because your friends easily can run away from you.

And then possessions. The heathen have their possessions, you know. Eagle feather or two around their head or some monkey teeth that they wear and use or cowrie shells. A little child has treasures too. Everybody knows that if you pick a little boy 10 years old up in the summertime, pick him up by the feet and shake him, what drops out? His treasures. He's got them in his pockets, all his pockets filled with some of the weirdest things. My kids used to go out and bring home snakes of all things. Boy, they give me the shivers, but they seemed to like them. They'd come in carrying them by the tail and they'd be wiggling and wiggling and wiggling and I couldn't even stay around.

But they were treasures to those boys. They'd bring in salamanders, you know what they are. Salamanders, a kind of a weird-looking lizard, red. They'd bring them in and you'd go down the basement and there'd be a salamander in the washtub. And you never knew when a snake was going to come slithering out from some. They were harmless, but no snake's harmless when I'm around because I'd get ulcers from just knowing they're in the same area with me.

But they were treasures. And they keep them around. And they notice when they get at a certain age they get a magpie complex and begin to collect things. They collect old matchboxes, you know, or stamps. Or whatever it is, it doesn't amount to much but it satisfies the instinct of acquisitiveness and it's treasures.

And then when they get a little bit older, their treasures get four wheels under them as a rule and a marvelous engine. "Boy, what I'd get out of that car." And a house, you know. We get our possessions around us. And I'm glad everybody can have anything even from the boy who plays with snakes up to the man who plays with cars. I'm glad for it all. But if that's all you got, I'm sorry for you. Because the blessings of the Lord, they make a man rich. And they don't add any sorrow. No depreciation, nobody steals the blessing of the Lord.

I knew a family in Chicago they had a big Buick and they let it out outside of all places, Moody Bible Institute. When they came down, it was gone, men never did find it. But here was a kind of a poetic justice: the whole backseat of the car was filled with gospel tracts. I imagine those thieves wherever they were certainly got a stomach full of those gospel tracts. But anyway, the big Buick had gone. So possessions go like that.

And then there's fame. We all want to be famous and if we're not famous, we wish we were. Remember what Napoleon said to his secretary out on where'd they banish him to? Elba? Alba? He said to his secretary, "You ought to thank me. I've made you famous." He said, "Made me famous? What do you mean, sire?" Always called him sire for some reason, I never figured out. Said, "What do you mean, sire? You made me famous? Why," he said, "you're famous because you're my secretary." And he said, "Sire, will you please tell me who Alexander's secretary was?" Nobody knows, of course.

But fame is a marvelous thing. And Gray said, "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, and all the beauty, all the wealth e'er gave, awaits alike the inevitable hour, and the paths of glory lead but to the grave." They all go the same way. But you say, "All right, I know, but they'll make a bust of them and put it up on a shelf." With you lying out in the graveyard dead and they make a statue of you and put it on a shelf, what do you get out of it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

I've often wondered how Shakespeare enjoys his statues that he's got around all these libraries. Go anywhere, and there's a statue of Shakespeare, a bust of the Bard of Avon. And what's he getting out of it? I think of the artist that died and put on his tombstone, "What I was as an artist meant an awful lot to me while I lived, but what I was as a Christian is all that matters to me now." So fame doesn't mean anything. It's great, but it isn't worth your trouble.

The Christian is rich. The blessing of the Lord makes a man rich. And why? Well, he's rich in faith. He has his unseen glories and he's rich in relationship. I've mentioned that already. "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." I've been reading old Meister Eckhart. I read him a lot and he says that God loves people so much that when he sees a good man doing a good act, he's absolutely delighted. Now that old German scholar, you can't brush him off, say he was a mystic. He was, but he was a lot more than a mystic. He was a profound theologian and a great saint.

And he said that God loved people so that he just loved everything they did. Have you ever seen doting parents sit and look at their little baby, maybe a year old, anywhere from nine months to 14 months, as I recall they walk. And here he's standing balancing himself around on his little feet, or her little feet, whichever it is, and the parents with shining faces watch this marvelous act, never performed since Abel. This wonderful act.

Well, there they love the little fellows and because they love them so, walking or any little act they do is wonderful to them. I believe that's true. I believe one of our riches is that God loves Christians and his people so much that he loves everything they do. Everything except of course if they fail him and do wrong, he doesn't love that. But he loves everything they do. God loves us and is pleased with us.

And I think God smiles. We don't think he does but I always, usually, theologians wouldn't grant it. Isn't learned enough. But I kind of think God smiles because I read that passage in the Old Testament that he, that he, he bears his people on his shoulders. I used to call that riding piggyback when I was a boy. And many times my father carried me that way and I carried my boys that way. And I believe God carries us that way. And you can't think of a father taking his little boy up piggyback that didn't smile while he was doing it. And you can't think of God that isn't, he isn't pleased with us when he takes us up like that and bears us.

Then I think of contentment. The Christian is contented. That is, actually, honestly doesn't want something. It's not sour grapes with him. He just doesn't want it. Can you think of a lot of things you don't want? For instance, oh say money or a big estate or a yacht. I hope nobody gives me a yacht. Now really, I hope you'll pray that nobody will give me a yacht. What would I do with a yacht? And then I hope nobody'll give me a big estate somewhere. What would I do with a big estate? The taxes would have me in the poorhouse alone. Either there's so many things that I just don't want, you know. And so don't give them to me. I don't want them. Because I love God and I have a little and that's about it.

"The Miller of the Dee," he said, "I envy nobody and nobody envies me." And the king rode by and heard it and got off his horse and went in and said, "Don't sing that anymore. I order it." Said, "This is a command. Don't sing it." He said, "Why, your majesty?" He said, "Because I envy you." Said, "I wish that I could say, I envy nobody and nobody envies me. So don't sing it anymore, it isn't true." Old Miller had to think up a revised version to keep from breaking the royal commandment. But I don't know how he did it, but he was just as contented as ever.

And there's companionship. I saw a picture one time advertising the classics, the great books, and it showed a man sitting on a streetcar, the old-fashioned kind with the side with the seats, you know, running lengthwise of the car. And here he sat and he had a book in his hand and beside him sat Shakespeare and next to him sat Beethoven and on over here sat Plato and over there sat somebody else. And here they were all lined up there. And it said, "When you have these books, you fellowship with the great of the ages." I've always remembered that ad, that was a good one.

Well, you do all right. "My days among the dead are spent. Around me I behold where'er my roving eyes are cast, the mighty minds of old." I have books in my library that are so valuable to me that the brother said I wouldn't give, I wouldn't take a kingdom for them because you can have fellowship with the great and the mighty.

Ever think of having fellowship with Moses? Here's a book, didn't cost me a dime, somebody gave it to me but it would be, I suppose, a $12 Bible. Well, here I have this Bible and if I make good use of it, I can have fellowship with the greatest moralist that ever lived in the world. His name was Moses. I can have close, warm fellowship with one of the greatest hymnists that ever lived in the world. His name was David. And I can listen to the voice of one of the most eloquent poets that ever lived in the world. His name was Isaiah. And I can listen to the deep, beautiful speech of the greatest mystic that ever lived in the world. His name was John. And I can sit at the feet of the greatest theologian that ever lived in the world. His name was Paul.

Now, you tell me that I have to go to nightclubs. Incidentally, have you heard it? Somebody wrote me and sent me a clipping. You know what we got now? Some new thing under the sun, we got a Christian nightclub. Yeah, we got it all right. We got it in a certain town in the United States. I knew these things were on the way. I saw this coming, but I didn't know it'd be so soon. One of these times we're all going to get sick to our stomach and we're going out back and be sick. And then we're coming back and start over.

And then we're going to have something from God. But as it stands now, we have this Christian nightclub. And some fellow wrote sarcastically in the New York Journal, Wall Street Journal, and said they supposed that they would be selling candy cigarettes there and drinking water on the rocks. Because they said that one thing about that, about that Christian nightclub was that they weren't to smoke nor drink. But they had their entertainers, but they were Christian entertainers, of course, you know.

Well, amen. If you like it, amen, take it, brother. But I don't. I'd rather fellowship with Moses, the great moralist, or David, the great hymnist, or Isaiah, the great orator, Paul, the great theologian, or even just simple plain Christian people such as we have lots of around here. For companionship, do you ever get bored? I don't think I've ever been bored in my life except when somebody bores me. But just leave me to myself and I'm never bored. You can always think of something worthwhile, you know, always. Bless God. Right along, I've sat way into the night at railroad stations, but as I recall, I've never been bored because I can either write or I can read or I can get still and think.

The companionship is a beautiful thing. Ever read that passage in the 16th chapter of Luke where Jesus said what we were to do with our money? He said, "Make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness," and that was his use, that was his word for money. "Make friends with your money," he said, "so that when you die, the friends you made will receive you into eternal tabernacles."

Some of you have given your money to missions or given your money to help the poor. And in that great day when our Lord shall come, you'll meet people you never knew and they will say, "I want to thank you." And they'll welcome you into the eternal tabernacles. Now, that's the meaning of it all right. I've looked it up very carefully. Dr. R.A. Torrey said that was the meaning of it and Dr. Robertson, the great Greek teacher, said that was the meaning of it. So I'm accepting it that we help people down here and they die and go and we forget them almost, but one day we go up there and then they meet us and say, "I want to greet you and thank God for you." Turn your money into blessing. Think of it.

And then think of the riches of prayer and communion and think at last of the riches of heaven and its rewards. Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you." And I don't know whether this is good theology or not, but it's harmless, it won't hurt you if it isn't altogether sound. But I think of the man that grew up in a carpenter shop. He knew how to bevel and get all the nice things I used to hear when I was a kid. I never could bevel, I never could get one bevel to fit into another one, you know. But those who know how, the skilled cabinet makers, I think he was that kind of a carpenter. And the hands that used to make the fine cabinets are working on our mansions. "I go to prepare a place for you and I will come again," he said.

Well, then it addeth no sorrow. I say the test is how rich are you at the last? If you make this world, any of its riches, any of its false riches, any of them, if you make them to be your final riches, you'll have grief at the last. But there's no sorrow, no regret for those who have made God all in all. Nobody was ever sorry that he had served his Lord and you'll never be.

There are two kinds of wealth, you know: the general wealth that God gives to everybody. Emerson said, "The best part of a field's a part you don't have title to." Said, "My friends all around me grubbing and buy great pieces of property and improve them, and I walk down the road and I get all the blessing and benefit of their fields without paying a dime." Said, "The sweet smell floats in from the buckwheat fields and I go down and I get all the benefit and they pay the taxes." Well, you can do that. Those are the general benefits God gives to everybody.

But there are particular benefits he gives only to his people, God's own few. I've mentioned them: eternal life, forgiveness, fellowship with God, the privileges of prayer, communion with the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, and heaven at last with all its rewards. These can be yours. And I'd hate to see you go out into a new year trusting in the riches that decay and perish.

These can be yours. The blessing of the Lord maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrows nor regrets. You can be a rich man this year, my dear friends. You can be a rich woman, rich man, rich in the things that don't pass away. And the way, and as you well know, too well know maybe, is through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's the way it is.

"This is my beloved son," said the Father about Jesus, "in whom I am well pleased." And Jesus said to his people that loved him and followed him, "That thou hast loved them even as thou hast loved me." And the Father loves the members of Christ's body with the same love he loves Christ himself. So those are the riches.

I think this would be a great night for you to make up your mind to follow Jesus, if you're not now following him. It'd be a great night for you to make up your mind that if you're a nominal Christian, that you're going to do something about it that'll change the nominal Christian to a real Christian and have riches that perish not. So in that great day, if it comes soon or later, that you'll be rich and die rich and be rich forever and ever.

Our dear missionaries, God bless them. We send them out with such buoyancy and so much prayer. And then they live a lifetime and the people that sent them out die and are forgotten. And they get old and they're retired and they can't work anymore. They come back and we send them out to California or Beulah Beach or somewhere and retire them and put them in old folks homes or do pretty well by them, I'll say that. But we don't even know the names of some of them.

But they've won Chinese or Formosans or Congolese or somebody else to Christ, and they're over there waiting for them now. They're rich. When they die, they haven't got anything except a few missionary letters and a few books and the Bible or two and memories. And we hustle about because we've got the health and the money and we hustle about and they sit around and dream of the days when they served God in the far fields.

We go and pity them. I've walked through the great colony in California where missionaries and old broken-down preachers go just before they go to heaven. I've walked through those little cottages and seen down those little winding ways and looked them over and pitied them because I said, "Their friends are all gone, all, all are gone, the old familiar faces." But I don't think they deserve my pity. I mean to say I don't think I should pity them. They should pity me. For they have earned riches that can't perish, riches that cannot decay. They've got it.

Yeah, it's great to be a Christian, friends. I wouldn't be anything else for all the wide world as a Christian. Let's pray.