In This Edition:
BELIEVING IS OBEYING – By Vance Havner
END AND BEGINNING – By Vance Havner
The Mightiest Thought the Mind Can Entertain – by A.W. Tozer
Good Works – By Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
A Right Belief about God – By A. W. Tozer
MARVEL NOT…IF THE WORLD HATE YOU. – By Vance Havner
The Essence of Idolatry – By A. W. Tozer
“Have you considered the almost violent language of the Book of Acts? “the place was shaken”; “Ananias fell down and gave up the ghost”; “they were cut to the heart”; “they gnashed on him with their teeth…and stoned him”; Herod “killed James with the sword”; “O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil”; “having stoned Paul they drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead”; “And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison” – so it goes. This was no sham battle.”
~ Vance Havner
BELIEVING IS OBEYING
By Vance Havner
And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.
I John 3:23
It is often overlooked that God commands us to believe. He does not merely invite or urge, He commands it. Living in unbelief or uncertainty is outright disobedience. We do not honor God by indecision and doubt. It is faith that pleases Him. We ought to come to Christ immediately and trust Him and never waver, because He has bidden us come and believe and we can do anything we ought to do. He inclines us to come by His Spirit, for certainly neither the flesh nor the devil ever impelled a man toward Christ. You may be sure that He is working in you to will and do of His good pleasure, and if you will to obey Him by believing as best you know how, you may be certain He will not cast you out.
It is simple obedience to believe. Therefore “repent ye and believe the gospel.” “God commandeth all men everywhere to repent.” “And this is his commandment, that we should believe.”
“The first discovery a Christian needs to make is that he cannot of himself live the Christian life. “Christ liveth in me…” (Galatians 2:20). It has been said that living the Christian life is not so much our responsibility but our response to His ability. Paul did not say, “To me to live is Christ first.” It was Christ – period! Christ was first, last, and everything between. Christ is not a way to live, He is our life!”
~Vance Havner
END AND BEGINNING
By Vance Havner
Woe is me! For I am undone.
Isaiah 6:5
Isaiah was come to the end of himself. Like Moses in Midian, like Job when he saw God, like Daniel with his comeliness turned to corruption and Habakkuk with rottenness entering his bones; like Peter at Tiberias and Paul with his thorn, he has come to the end of all feeling and trying and praying, the end of all he is and has, to where God begins.
Blessed is that hour of holy desperation when a man reaches that extremity which is God’s opportunity and moves out of the wreck of himself into Christ. Nothing in his hand he brings, but just as he is without one plea he takes up residence with Christ in God. He puts no value on anything he has or is, attaches no importance to his feelings or faith or prayers. Christ is everything. We waste many years trying to construct some sort of refuge out of the rubbish of ourselves, until we abandon it all and dwell in Another. From then on we have no confidence in the flesh but humbly look unto Him for salvation and the “all things” that go with it, His sufficient grace for the whole man, for every day, for any need, that we, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.
The Mightiest Thought the Mind Can Entertain
By A.W. Tozer
Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, “What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know exactly what our most influential leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow.
Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God. Thought and speech are God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; there are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him. It is highly significant that the first word was the Word: “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We may speak because God spoke. In Him word and idea are indivisible.
That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.
A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.
Verse
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1
Thought
Our failure in believing rightly about God and in applying His ideals in our lives comes from our imperfect thoughts about Him.
Prayer
Lord, sweep aside our false conceptions of You and replace them with true thoughts of who You are.
Good Works
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
Millions of people are striving to make themselves acceptable to God by good works. Such people can never be sure of salvation, for the simple reason that they can never be sure whether they have done enough good works or whether they have done them in the right way. Some suppose that heaven can be won if our good works outweigh our evil works, but this does not make sense either, for good works are what all of us ought to do and even one evil deed would prevent a just and holy God from justifying us or admitting us into His presence.
Let’s not put the cart before the horse. God does expect good works from His children but not as payment for salvation, for eternal life and glory could not possibly be bought at any price. “Christ Jesus came into the world,” says the Apostle Paul, “to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). Then, having saved them by grace, He expects them to do good works out of gratitude.
It is interesting to compare Titus 3:5 with Titus 3:8:
Titus 3:5:”NOT BY WORKS of righteousness which we have done, but ACCORDING TO HIS MERCY HE SAVED US.”
Titus 3:8:” …these things I will that thou affirm constantly, THAT THEY WHICH HAVE BELIEVED IN GOD MIGHT BE CAREFUL TO MAINTAIN GOOD WORKS. …”
Faith is the root; good works the fruit. Thus we read in Ephesians 2:8-10:
“For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: NOT OF WORKS, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus UNTO GOOD WORKS, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
A Right Belief About God
By A.W. Tozer
It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the 20th century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.
All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral being must do about Him.
The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of 10,000 temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with matters that at the most cannot concern him for very long; but even if the multiple burdens of time may be lifted from him, the one mighty single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, and to worship Him acceptably. And when the man’s laboring conscience tells him that he has done none of these things, but has from childhood been guilty of foul revolts against the Majesty in the heavens, the inner pressure of self-accusation may become too heavy to bear.
The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind, give beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But unless the weight of the burden is felt, the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.
Verse
I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Isaiah 6:1
Thought
Until we see a vision of God high and lifted up, we will not sense the burden of our obligation to God.
Prayer
Is our view of You, Father, too low? Then show us a glimpse of Yourself, seated on Your throne in Heaven.
MARVEL NOT…IF THE WORLD HATE YOU.
By Vance Havner
The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.
John 7:7
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
John 15:19
The world cannot hate you, said Jesus to His unconverted brethren. They were of the world and the world loves its own.
Me it hateth, said our Lord of Himself. And why does it hate Him? “Because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil.” Light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. This world resents the Light that shows it up.
The world hateth you, said our Lord to His disciples. And why does the world hate us? “Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” As we testify of the world that its deeds are evil and as we let our light shine and expose the unfruitful works of darkness, we share the hatred this age feels toward our Lord.
“The world knoweth us not, because it knew him not” (I John. 3:1).
The Essence of Idolatry
By A.W. Tozer
Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes God is other than He is—in itself a monstrous sin—and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness. Always this god will conform to the image of the one who created it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges.
A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God. “Thou thoughtest,” said the Lord to the wicked man in the psalm, “that I was altogether such an one as thyself.” Surely this must be a serious affront to the Most High God before whom cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”
Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. It beings in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place. “When they knew God,” wrote Paul, “they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”
Then followed the worship of idols fashioned after the likeness of men and birds and beasts and creeping things. But this series of degrading acts began in the mind. Wrong ideas about God are only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.
Verse
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Romans 1:21
Thought
The essence of idolatry is thinking thoughts about God that are completely unworthy of Him.
Prayer
Lord, cleanse our minds, so that our thoughts of You will be pure and right and free from the polluted waters of idolatry.
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