The Relevant Authority of the Word of God

Part II

Photo of solar flares taken from the solar observatory; each plume reaching millions of miles outward into space

Photo of the sunrise at a serene location on God’s created earth

by A. W. Tozer

From his book “Reclaiming Christianity: A Call to Authentic Faith”

Life and Death in the Word

God’s Word is both our terror and our hope. God’s Word both kills and makes alive. If we engage it in faith, humility and obedience, it gives life and it cleanses, feeds and defends. If we will close it in unbelief, ignore it or resist it, it will accuse us before the God who gave it, for it is the living Word of God. We dare not resist it nor argue it down.

Some people believe part of the Word but do not believe the other part. They say, “If it inspires me, it is inspired; and if it does not inspire me, it is simply old history and tradition.” I believe this is God’s unique thing – the uttered Word of the living God – and when we get into the meaning of it and know what God is uttering forth, it has power to kill those who resist and it has power to make alive those who believe. “The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations… Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” (Isaiah 52:10; 53:1). Unbelief will paralyze the arm of the man who is filled with unbelief. While that same arm, long from being paralyzed, is working for the salvation of men.

Where can we see this awesome power of the Word of God? Years ago, missionaries went to some pyramid mountain or some other location of a Stone-age  culture in Irian Jaya (New Guinea – Indonesia). For a long time they thought these people would not be converted at all; they thought that nobody there even knew the Word of God or ever knew there was a God.

When the missionaries first went there they said, “We come to you preaching God, your Creator.” And the natives said, “We’re not created, we came up out of the river.” According to their tradition, they came up out of the river. Yet they were too busy killing each other to sit down and ask who made the river.

The missionary went to work on a language never before reduced to writing. They had no grammar and no lexicon, dictionary or list of words. Patiently the missionary sat around by the hour, cupping his ear while getting them to talk. He listened carefully to the diversity of sound and then put the word down. that is how they got the word “money” and the word for “God” – by listening.

Then they begin preaching the gospel of Jesus at last. After all these thousands of years, they uttered forth God’s sovereign Word in the guttural langauge of the all-but-subhuman Dani tribe. Because of the Word of God being preached, the Dani have believed in Jesus Christ, are being converted and are walking in the light the best they know. Instead of the filthy sex songs of the days gone by, they are now singing the best they can. They know nothing about music. They sang simply by imitating what they heard and they are now singing the songs of Zion and getting the mighty Word of God. God’s Word is a strong word, a unique thing; there is power in it. And when I believe it and engage it, and it engages me, something happens: the eternal God does an eternal act.

God’s authoritative Word sounds in warning and invitation.

A Word of Warning

Go to your Bible and you will hear God give such warnings as, “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). And, “the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17). And, “that soul shall be cut off from among his people” (Exodus 31:14). And, “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). And, “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). And, “not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but that he doeth the will of my Father” (Matthew 7:21). And, “no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of God” (Ephesians 5:5). Those are the awful words of God. He is speaking forth this unique thing in this authoritative utterance.

Nobody dares rise and say, “Let us explain this in the light of what Plato said,” I do not care what Plato said. I have read Plato off and on, but I do not care what Plato says when God says, “the soul that sinneth shall die.” Let Plato kneel before the authoritative Word of God. God has spoken His authority through His Word; let no Pope rise and say, “We’ll explain that in the light of what father So-and-so said.” Let father So-and-so be still. His mouth will soon be stuffed with dust. And let everybody keep still while God Almighty speaks. “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord” (Jeremiah 22:29). “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken” (Isaiah 1:2).

A Word of Invitation

There is also beautiful invitation in the Word of God. This is not the result of a group of religious people meeting together, having a board meeting and deciding that they are to say it. No, God Almighty said it. He spoke it out of heaven; it leaped down as a strong man in the night and filled the earth with a sound of His voice.

And God says, “If you will turn unto Me, then I will have mercy upon you.” And the Word of the Lord says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). And the Word of the Lord says, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9). And it says, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves” (Ephesians 2:8) and, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Here is the authoritative voice that needs no editing, no interrupting, no explaining; it only needs to be released.

Charles H. Spurgeon, the preacher from London, was invited once to come and give a series of 10 lectures in defense of the Bible. He wired back, “I will not come, the bible needs no defense.” Turn it loose, and like a lion, it will defend itself. I believe that, and I believe the Word of God needs no defense. We only need to preach it.

We are on our haunches now, fighting a rearguard action before the Neo-Orthodoxy and Liberals and the World Council of Churches and the new idea of a monolithic church with Poppa at the top. We are on our haunches now, but I pay no attention to any of them. The great God Almighty has spoken, and when He has spoken, let the world be silent and listen, for God has said it and God will fulfill all His warnings and His invitations.

In the book of Luke there is that terrible passage, “the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom” (Luke 16:22-23). The rich man who had fared sumptuously had suddenly stopped faring sumptuously and was now in hell begging for a drop of water for his parched tongue. He became an evangelist, and he said, “Abraham, if you will not help me, please help my five brothers; for I have five brothers back home who are not believers, and if you will send Lazarus maybe he can save them…maybe they’ll repent.”

Abraham answered, “No, he can’t cross over.”

The rich man pleaded like an evangelist and said, “Please Abraham, wont’ you send him to my five brothers? I neglected them while I lived; now I want to help them. Send him please, for if somebody rises from the dead, they’ll hear him.”

“If they will not hear the Word,” Abraham answered, “they will not believe through one rose from the dead” (see Luke 16:26-31).

If you have it in your heart to resist this unique thing, this uttered voice of the Almighty God, this authority that commands and invites, then if we had a graveyard rise and everybody in it rose – all the way back to the founding fathers – and began to preach, your heart would still be hard. For the Scripture says, “If they will not hear the word they will not hear the dead when they rise.”

Some people ask me wha they should read. Most of the Bible is written in the masculine gender, and many women just say that it means mankind, and that means men. But I have a text for women in the fifty-fourth chapter of Isaiah: “For thy Maker is thine husband; for the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called. For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee” (Isaiah 54:5-7).

In all the parliaments of the world, with all their wisdom, they cannot say anything that has meant so much to the human race as these words. All of the congresses down in Washington D.C., in the course of one whole century, cannot add up to as much as what is in these words. “For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.  In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer” (Isaiah 54:7-8). There it is. There is your hope, there is your hiding place, there is your rock, there is your future, there is your glory.

God is speaking authoritatively. nobody has any right to come in and say, “I do not believe that.”

God’s Redeeming Covenant

The Word of the living God still sounds through the world, destroying what it does not redeem. And in that awful day when God shakes all that can be shaken, that living, vibrant, awesome, awful, powerful eternal Word will destroy all that it cannot redeem. I, for my part, want to be on the side of the redeemed.

Many times I get down on my knees here in the fifty-fourth chapter of Isaiah and let this unique thing speak to my heart. I hear that Word saying – a voice that goes clear to the depths of my being – “For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee” (verse 9). The great God who did not need to swear anything swore by Himself that He would not be wroth with me nor rebuke me. And in my own room, I put my name in there and repeat it with all my three names: Aiden Wilson Tozer. “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed” (verse 10).

nobody can take away the kindness of God from the people that are seeking; they cannot remove the covenant of God’s saving grace from the man that trusts in Him when the mountain moves. The mountains are no more and then it cannot be for God said He will not move that mercy, for the mercy of God remains eternal and forever and forever. These are the words of God.

I believe this authority is relevant for me today. I do not go to priests, pastors, bishops or doctors. I go to God and to His Son, Jesus Christ.

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O Word of God Incarnate

By William W. How (1823-1897)

O Word of god incarnate,

O wisdom from on high,

O truth unchanged, unchanging,

O light of our dark sky;

We praise Thee for the radiance

That from the hallowed page,

A lantern to our footsteps,

Shines on from age to age.

The church from her dear Master

Received the gift divine,

And still that light she lifteth

O’er all the earth to shine.

It is the golden casket

Where gems of truth are stored;

it is the heav’ n-drawn picture

Of Christ, the living Word.

It floateth like a banner

Before God’s host unfurled;

It shineth like a beacon

Above the darkling world.

It is the chart and compass

That o’er life’s surging sea,

‘Mid mists and rocks and quicksands,

Still guides, O Christ, to Thee.

O make Thy church, dear Savior,

A lamp of purest gold,

To bear before the nations

Thy true light as of old.

O teach Thy wand’ring pilgrims

By this their path to trace,

Till, clouds and darkness ended,

They see Thee face to face. Amen.