Behold the voice of the tribe, the daughter
of my people, because of them that dwell
in a far country.
Is not the Lord in Zion?
Is not her king in her?
Why have they provoked me to anger with
their graven images and with strange vanity?
The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.
For the hurt of the daughter of my
people am I hurt.
I am black.
Astonishment has taken hold on me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why, then, is not the health of the
daughter of my people recovered?
The voice of the cry of the daughter
of Jeremiah's people.
Behold, the harvest is past, the summer is
ended, and we are not saved.
Now, Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.
And he was heart-sick over his people,
because the threat of judgment was upon them
from God.
The threat of judgment.
Jeremiah saw not only what was there, and
heard not only what he could hear, but
he heard prophetically in the Spirit.
So that not only all that had happened
to Israel, but all that was happening and
was to happen, was grieving the heart of
the man of God.
There was going to come an invasion into
Israel.
Alien troops were to come, and they were
to enter and conquer and make captives of
Israel and lead them into a far country
and break up their lives and break up
their nation.
This they were to do.
And this was not a political accident.
It was a direct result of their evil
living.
Jeremiah, being a man full of the Holy
Ghost, was very frank with the people of
Israel.
I will say this, that I have heard
men preach and that I did not feel
at any right to tell the people of
their sins.
They seemed to do it too eagerly.
They seemed to do it without sufficient tenderness.
But Jeremiah said, I am hurt by the
hurt of the daughter of my people.
Jeremiah was a wounded man, and he was
wounded not by anything that hit him directly.
He was wounded as a mother might be
wounded whose child lay dying in her arms.
She physically was uninjured.
The child has been struck and she picks
it up, and in the paroxysm of grief
holds it to her heart while it expires.
She is wounded by the wound of her
child.
Jeremiah was hurt with the hurt of his
people.
So Jeremiah can speak to me, and he
can be as rough on me as he
needs to be.
He can be as candid and frank as
the circumstances require.
And I won't resent it, because a man
who is wounded by my wounds and hurt
by my hurt and grieved by my grief
loves me.
And a man who loves me can preach
to me.
And I won't require that he solve me
or speak friendly to me or kindly to
me.
I will only ask that he tell me
the truth.
Jeremiah knew that it was the iniquity of
the people of Israel that was causing this,
that was coming, the invasion, captivity, the defeat,
the breakup, the deportation.
He knew it, and he had named their
sins.
He said there was injustice.
He said there was idolatry.
Jehovah had been among them.
But in their deceptive hearts they turned from
the God they knew to the idols of
the heathen.
They were dishonest among themselves.
They were liars.
They didn't hesitate to lie, even though they
knew it was wrong.
They were thieves, some of them were.
They even committed murder.
There was various kinds of uncleanness among them.
There was arrogant disobedience to the voice of
God.
There was stubbornness when they heard the voice
of God and refusal to be corrected.
Now, Jeremiah prophetically heard a cry.
And the cry was, Opportunity is past.
The harvest is gone.
The summer of our opportunity is ended.
And instead of our being saved, we are
far out in the heathen land with our
harps on the willow.
Now, in the far country they chose death
rather than life, the men of God said.
And they are in captivity in the far
country.
No sacrifice, no priest, no altar, no prayer,
no protection.
No anything.
In Babylon they had only bitter memories and
self-accusation and fruitless regrets.
And all of the great sorrow of the
lost soul is in that cry, the harvest
is past, the summer is ended, and we
are not saved.
Here is the cry for help without hope.
They were experiencing, these people in the far
country, they were experiencing the bitter consequences of
a course of life which they might have
foreseen.
See, my friends, if a man knows that
a bridge is out, if there is sign
after sign saying, turn back, a bridge is
out, if there are policemen all down the
highway waving red flags and holding up their
hands and shouting, the bridge is out, and
a man deliberately drives on with a waxy
smile on his face and plunges over to
his death, he could have foreseen that because
everything was there to tell him about it.
You see, my friends, nobody is in hell
by accident.
Nobody is in hell by accident.
And nobody is in heaven by accident.
There is no such thing as an accidental
Christian.
There is no such thing as somebody who
woke up one morning and found himself famous.
There is no such thing as a man
who wakes up one morning and finds that
he is a Christian.
We choose, we foresee, we can tell by
the word of God.
We can tell two plus two makes four.
So we can foresee four if we have
the two and the two together.
So Israel in their terrible cry, their cry
of self accusation and regret, remorse, they could
have foreseen this.
They are not to be excused, they could
have foreseen it.
And this course that they took was plainly
pointed out to them, and they could have
avoided it if they would.
I want you to get this.
There is an ambit family, effeminate kind of
Christianity nowadays, that is telling the sinning world
that they are not to be blamed, that
it is a disease.
They say nowadays that alcoholism is a disease.
The fellow who has got the delirium disease
is a poor fellow who has got a
disease.
The only disease that I know of in
the world that you pay for with good
hard money.
You buy it and swallow it purposely and
intentionally.
But they say, don't tell the drunkard that
he is guilty.
He has got a disease, a disease that
he purposely and deliberately drank out of a
bottle, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, knowing what it would
do to him.
He could have foreseen this, I said, and
they could have avoided it.
The man who is in hell will have
this added to the weight of his eternal
grief, that he could have avoided it.
He could have been somewhere else if their
love of sin had not prevented them from
wanting to be somewhere else.
Here is the cynical irony of a sinful
life.
See, we don't know how bad sin is
these days.
Modern gospel doesn't say too much about sin.
It makes an awful lot about a whimpering
Savior who whimpers over people, and paws over
them, and excuses them, and tells them, not
mine, hush, hush, don't mention your sin.
I died for you upon the tree, I
died for you upon the tree.
And this is not the religion of the
New Testament, it's not the religion of the
prophets, it's not the religion of the church
fathers, it's not the religion of the reformers,
it's not the religion of the great missionaries,
it's not the religion of the great evangelists.
It is an effeminate, watered-down, perfumed kind
of Christianity that parades a pathetic, bent-over,
bewhiskered Christ up and down in front of
people who scorn him.
One man said in my hearing that we're
busy all the time trying to make people
eat food they don't want.
If we would tell the people, as we
ought to tell the people and as you
ought to know tonight, sin is your own
fault, and it's my own fault if I
sin.
It's not an excuse that I can say,
well, it was an accident or a disease,
or I got it from my grandfather Adam.
I can't help myself, I'm a poor, weak
man.
The cynical irony of the sinful life is
that the ones who get us into our
difficulties can't get us out, and the ones
who stand around to help us sin can't
deliver us from the consequences of sin.
They prevent us from seeing the punishment.
They act as a blinder on our eyes
so we cannot see the executioner on the
way.
We cannot see the black hole in the
side of the hill that leads into the
hell below.
The wrong kinds of friends and lusts and
earth hunger and evil pleasures stand in our
way, and they lure us away.
But when we get away, they can't prevent
us from suffering the consequences, and they can't
help us when we're there.
This is a cruel malice that smacks of
the dragon himself, a heartless betrayer of the
sinner's trust.
Judas' carriage was cajoled and flattered and pawed
over by the Jews until he had sold
Christ.
And when they had their hands on Christ
and had ropes around him and handcuffs on
him, then a broken-hearted Judas came back
and offered them the money back.
And the same smiling, grinning, beard-stroking Pharisees
that had begged him to sell Jesus and
offered him gold or silver, those same Jews
said, What is that to us?
We never cared for your soul.
What is that to us?
Remember, young lady, what is that to me
will be your answer to your sin.
Remember, young man, the ones that lead you
into sin can never lead you out, and
the ones that lead you in when you're
in will say, What do I care?
That's the cynical malice of hell, and I
detect in it the breath of the dragon.
Now, what's the application?
That's the way it was back there.
Well, this is an accurate description of a
great many people today, and I suppose some
that are right here now.
Last Sunday night I said to Brother Gray
out in this side room, there should have
been fifty people, some of them singing in
the choir, maybe some teaching Sunday school.
They should have been right out there on
their knees if we'd obeyed God last Sunday
night, for the Holy Ghost was here.
This is not to reflect on the choir,
no, the Sunday school teachers.
It's only to say that in any company
of people under fire from hell, there will
be wounded men and women, and there will
be those who are overcome by the flesh
and the world and the devil.
This, I say, is an accurate description.
Some there are who certainly know the course
they're taking leads to tragedy, and certainly they
have been warned and entreated, and certainly they
have been willfully blind until the end that
was before them.
I don't want to hear that cry.
I don't want to hear it, particularly I
don't want.
God help me ever, God, to have to
say to me, I gave you your opportunity
to tell the people and you didn't tell
them.
You wanted to be a nice boy and
you wanted to be liked by the people
and you wouldn't tell them.
I don't want to hear that awful thing
in that day.
I'd lose every friend in Toronto rather than
here.
I'd have you all turn your backs and
walk away in cold anger from me rather
than face up to that awful moment when
the cry of men is heard and women,
the summer's ended, the harvest is past, and
I know that I didn't do my part
to try to stop that, to try to
win men, to try to bring them to
God.
It isn't important that you like me, but
it's tremendously important that you are washed in
the blood of the Lamb before it's too
late.
It isn't important that I be a nice
fellow, but it's tremendously important that you meet
God in saving encounter before the terrible day
when you'll have to cry, opportunity is over.
I want to speak briefly about the four
seasons.
The summer has ended.
Now there are four seasons of our life
before God.
There is the springtime, the springtime of our
childhood and youth.
What a lovely and beautiful thing it is.
How charming is spring.
After the long winter, after the snow has
covered the fields and the meadows and the
yards and the highways and the woods, then
the sun comes slowly up and the snow
beginning to retreat.
As the poet said, the snow doth fare
ill on the top of the bare hill.
I always like that little expression.
Snow is having a tough time keeping together.
Then that crocus that sticks its little smiling
investigative face up to see whether winter is
gone.
The cattle shed the old coat and get
a new coat.
There's nothing slicker in the world than the
hide of a young horse in the spring.
I've seen them dash out, lie down and
just roll and roll.
Somebody said, what are they doing?
Don't you know what they're doing?
They're getting rid of the old winter hair.
Good curry comb and a brush will shine
them up.
I grew up with them, pretty literally, and
on them.
And that's the springtime.
The bird sings in the fall, you're saying
to yourself, I know you, you're on your
way south, you're going to Florida for the
winter.
But when he sings in the springtime, you
say, hello boy, I'm glad you're back.
There's something fresh about the spring song, the
bird.
Something wonderful about the sunshine in the spring.
Far more wonderful than the sunshine in the
fall when it shines through murk and haze
and has a sadness about it.
And it's so in the life, in our
lives.
You can forgive a young person anything just
because they're young.
Youth, the early days, the time of freshness.
The dear Swedish preacher over in Minneapolis preached
a sermon on the acrostic.
He said, I'm going to preach today on
youth.
Y-O-U-T-H.
He said, I'll take it point by point.
First letter is Y.
He said, that stands for joy.
Well, joy is one of the marks of
youth.
To be joyful.
A child can be happy over absolutely nothing
at all.
I think it's only fair, though, in order
to be realistic, to say they can get
unhappy over the least thing, too.
But they can get very happy over nothing.
I used to rush out when I was
a lad.
I well remember it in the springtime of
my life.
I used to run to the edge of
a hill and look down.
And what I saw down there, no woman
should be looking at.
I saw a lot of little boys in
there all together, ready to plunge into the
old swimming hole.
And I remember very well that when I
saw them and I knew that they were
there ahead of me and we were ready
to have a good time.
And I would swim in that good, cool,
quick run, we called it then.
Wilson Run.
I would scream with delight.
Literally scream with delight.
Scream with delight.
And all my clothes.
Talk about stripping.
By the time I got there, I was
ready for a swim.
Youth.
Beautiful, my brother.
It's the time of opportunity.
It's the time you make up your mind.
And so in the human life, there is
a period, it isn't always equated with the
youth of our physical selves.
But there is the springtime of our opportunity,
springtime of our desire when God looks good
to us and the blood of Christ looks
wonderful and we want to know God.
And particularly if we're young in years, we
don't have so many questions to answer.
We're not so cynical.
We haven't been beaten down and betrayed until
we've lost faith.
It's wonderful to be saved when you're young.
And statistics show that most people have, that
are saved, were saved when they were young.
I was 17 years old when I was
converted, as I've told you before.
Then slowly spring gives way to summer.
We're never quite sure when spring is gone
and summer has come.
Summer comes finally.
That is the mature life.
I tell you, a man in his twenties
or his thirties, we call that the summer
of his life.
Surely this is his opportunity.
He's got enough wisdom to know that he
can't make it on his own.
Experience has taught him that he's got to
have help from another world than this.
And it all points to Christ, our opportunity.
The sad part about it is that most
people, when they reach the summertime of their
lives of marriage, they have business or job
obligations.
They have a car and income tax and
insurance and a home and two or three
children.
Maybe a wife that's pushing them for a
raise in their salary.
Often happens that way.
Sometimes it doesn't.
I would say often it doesn't, but sometimes
it does.
Maybe it would be a fairer way to
put it.
But summer is on and the fellow is
too busy.
He's too busy.
I know I should be saved.
I know I should be right with God.
But look, I can't even be at church
on Sunday.
Look, the pressure is on.
I know if I become a Christian I
ought to tithe and give of my tenth.
But by the time the Canadian government gets
22 percent of my income and the company
I work for gets this and this and
this and my take-home pays pretty thin,
how can I tithe it again?
So they allow it to go by.
How many there are, men that are beginning
to show a little gray in their temples.
They're not saved.
They've never given themselves to God in full
surrender.
They're not His.
They go to church sometimes, but they're not
His.
That's mature, mature life.
Mature gets saved then.
Then there comes the autumn.
That's the later and middle life, or later
middle life.
There are very few people who reach that
age.
They've quit fighting it.
When you reach the autumn of your life
you've quit fighting it.
As long as you pull out the gray
hairs hoping that that will be the end
of it, you're still reasonably young.
But when you quit fighting it, throw up
your hands and say there's no use, that's
middle life.
And there are very few people that have
reached that time in their lives that haven't
been betrayed by their friends, disappointed by those
they love.
Very few that haven't had somebody to time
them.
Very few.
So it's a time of sadness.
Unless, of course, we give ourselves over to
card play and betting and drinking.
Playing around is nothing quite so pathetic as
a playful old man.
Nothing quite so pathetic.
I'll forgive a kid anything.
They can tumble over me, knock me down.
I'll get my glasses off the pavement and
get back up and won't even speak unkindly
to them.
You can forgive children anything.
I get on buses here.
And school kids pile on.
And they're nice kids, all of them nice,
but boy such energy.
You run all over you, you know, run
all over you.
Kid in a lap and push.
They don't mean anything in the world.
They're just young.
But when I see an old man like
that, I'm ashamed for him.
When I see a cackling old man whose
only hold on life is ability to tell
stories, an off-colored one particularly, hanging on
to the shred of his manhood, which he'd
like to think still is valid.
But it isn't.
Weariness and discouragement in approaching winter.
I wonder how many I'm talking to tonight.
As I am in the autumn of your
life, and you haven't done anything for God
in all these years.
Sure you've tossed in a quarter.
Sure you've made a missionary pledge.
Certainly.
But in your deep heart there's discouragement with
life, and sometimes in quiet moments you wonder
if it was worthwhile being born at all.
And then comes that last tragic season called
winter.
And that's old age.
Everything has been said about old age.
I've read what the classical writers have said
about old age.
And I guess if you're a David or
a Samuel or an Elijah or a Paul
or a Wesley at 83 or a T
.J. Bach, I suppose that being old is
only an inconvenience.
But out of Christ it's stark tragedy.
In Christ it's a ripe shock of corn
waiting for the harvester.
Out of Christ it's cold tragedy.
Very few people come to Christ in the
snow.
Very few.
I preached one time over in the state
of Indiana.
And a woman came down to the altar
afterward and claimed to give her heart to
the Lord.
I have no reason to think that it
wasn't an honest conversion.
And I said to her, Are you Christian?
Have you been a Christian?
She said, No.
I said, Have you ever come to an
altar of prayer before?
She said, Never in my life.
She was 69.
69 years old.
And I don't know.
I didn't follow it up because it was
another town.
And I had to go back to my
own city, Indianapolis, and I couldn't follow it
up.
But I like to think maybe God helped
me that night to reach out into the
snow and get a hold of a woman
frozen stiff and bring her out by the
warmth of the love of God in Christ
and save her out of the snow.
But there are not many.
Not many.
Very, very few that turn to God when
they are old.
Those are the four seasons.
And they cry out their harvests this past.
They have run through the seasons of their
lives by sin.
And sin has brought upon them precipitous winter.
I have met people who were young in
years but had run through all four seasons
already.
Have you?
I have seen them.
They were young yet in years.
And on the calendar they still were young,
but in heart the snow had fallen upon
them.
That's what I grieve over these times.
Our youth, so beautiful to start with, gets
out into the world and is soon run
through.
It isn't very long before they go through
all the emotional and nervous experiences.
Experiences that should take a lifetime.
They go through it in no time at
all.
I see them walking about bedraggled, nervous, moral
beatniks.
Winter is upon them when they are still
young.
Not a gray hair in their temple, but
old age in their heart.
Not a wrinkle on their face, but snow
in their souls.
This is a terrible thing, my brother.
I don't mind telling you that I blame
it, first of course on the devil and
sin, but as far as its expression into
human society goes, I blame it on our
money-mad, money-grabbing, sin-loving entertainers.
In Canada they are fighting the influence of
the United States.
I don't blame them.
I'm an American, and I would be ashamed
to speak against my country.
But I would be ashamed to approve her
filthy propaganda.
I would be ashamed to approve or speak
with excuse of the Sodom they call Hollywood,
but that every girl on the continent is
imitating.
The harlots of Hollywood are imitated by our
girls.
Radio and the television and the theater and
the movies and the filthy literature.
Filthy, vile men with maggots in their minds
and serpents in their hearts sit down in
a hotel room and write a filthy story.
And it becomes a bestseller.
And if you condemn it, they rush out
and buy it.
And if the police ban it or any
censor tries to prevent it from being shown,
it only means a sellout in the bookstores.
Such is human nature.
All this has come and the harvest is
past.
And our young people, young in years, flesh
-faced and beautiful to look at, are burning
themselves out, burning themselves out.
And their highest dream of human possibility is
to be a celebrity.
I'm glad John Wesley's mother wasn't a celebrity.
I'm glad she didn't have poodle dogs in
place of babies.
And I'm glad she didn't turn the one
she had over to babysitters and run the
town.
She had 17 or was it 19?
And John Wesley was number 17.
John Wesley and Charles was back there about
14.
Those two angels of God spread their wings
and blessed two continents.
Susanna Wesley only wanted to be an obedient
wife and a loving mother to her brood.
She used to bring them in and set
them down and teach them the Word.
She didn't have any high opinions of what
it might be to have a career.
If she had a career in place of
having John Wesley, the whole world would have
been poor.
Not all the careers in Hollywood and New
York and Toronto, not all the careers all
the women on the continent have today can
make up for one man, John Wesley, number
17.
Number 17.
He said, we'll name him John.
They didn't know what they were naming when
they named him John.
They didn't know what they were naming.
There goes little Johnny.
Look at him, little Johnny around here.
Little test, you know, all over the place,
but that's Johnny.
When he grows up, they'll stop calling him
Johnny and start calling him John.
And he'll learn Greek when he's a kid
and Hebrew.
And when he hears of Ter Stegen, he'll
learn German that he can translate him into
English.
And he'll run the world over riding up
on an old horse never heard of a
jet airplane.
When he arose in England, they stoned him
and threw eggs on him and old fruit
and dead cats and anything they didn't want,
they threw at John Wesley.
He went on smiling and preaching.
And when he was an old man with
frost on his noble old head, he arode
into the towns in England, they turned out
with bands to greet him.
God and he had worms.
John Wesley, 17.
Nowadays we slick them up and polish them
up and give them a career.
You take them, I don't want them.
They breed their kind and they get old
before they get old and die inside before
they die outside.
Long before the undertaker comes, they're dead inside.
Terrible, terrible situation.
Summer's ended, the harvest is over, and we're
not saved.
Dear God, how terrible.
How terrible.
So I say now to you, watch out
that you don't let slip the summer of
your desire.
If you desire God, I plead, don't let
it slip.
The opportunity's yours, the light is on your
path.
Perhaps you have people praying for you, and
certainly the power of God is present.
Don't let a sudden, presympatous winter settle down
upon the summer of your desire.
Come, come, don't let the word depart.
Turn your back to the light.
Come while you can't come.
This goes for those who are unsaved, know
they're unsaved, out and out unsaved, this goes
for half-saved people who are living in
the light of other Christians and we don't
know the difference.
This goes for all.
May God help you tonight to seek his
face.
End of sermon.
Sermon, Turning Back at the Border by A.
W.
Tozer begins here.
Turning Back at the Border, a sermon by
Dr. A.
W.
Tozer.
So tonight, I want to read a long
passage of scripture.
There's a good logic back to this, because
if the sermon that follows turns out to
be no good or mediocre, the word of
God is always good.
In the thirteenth chapter of Numbers and the
fourteenth, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Send
thou men that they may search the land
of Canaan, which I give unto the children
of Israel.
Of every tribe of their father shall ye
send a man, every one a ruler among
them.
Moses sent them to spy out the land
of Canaan, and said unto them, Get you
up this way southward, and go up into
the mountain, and see the land, what it
is, and the people that dwelleth therein, whether
they be strong or weak, few or many,
and what the land is that they dwell
in, whether it be good or bad, what
cities they be that they dwell in, whether
in tents or in strongholds, and what the
land is, whether it be fat or lean,
whether there be wood therein or not, and
be of good courage, and bring of the
fruit of the land.
Now the time was the time of the
first fruit, grapes.
So they went up and searched the land
from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehoboth.
And they came unto the brook of Eschol,
and cut down from thence a branch with
one cluster of grapes.
And they buried between two upon a staff.
And they brought of the pomegranates and of
the figs.
The place was called the brook Eschol because
of the cluster of grapes which the children
of Israel cut down from thence.
And they returned from searching of the land
after forty days.
And they went and came to Moses, and
to Aaron, and to all the congregation of
the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of
Padan-Kedesh, and brought back word unto them,
unto all the congregation.
And they told him and said, We came
unto the land where thou sentest us.
And surely it floweth with milk and honey,
and this is the fruit of it.
Nevertheless, the people be strong that dwell in
the land, and the cities are walled, and
very great.
Moreover, we saw the children of Ammok there.
And the Amalekites dwell in the land of
the south, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites,
and the Amorites.
They dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites
dwell by the sea and by the coast
of Jordan.
They had only remembered it.
The Lord had given them that list before
and told them they would be there, and
he would drive them out.
They had forgotten that.
But Caleb stilled the people before Moses and
said, Let us go up at once, possess
it, for we are well able to overcome
it.
But the men that went up with him
said, We be not able to go up
against the people, for they are stronger than
we.
And they brought up an evil report of
the land which they had searched unto the
children of Israel, saying, The land through which
we have gone to search it is a
land that heated up the inhabitants thereof, and
all the people that we saw in it
are men of great stature.
And there were giants, the sons of Anak,
which came of the giants, and we are
in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so
we were in their sight.
If you think you are a grasshopper, your
enemy will think you are one.
And all the congregation lifted up their voice
and cried, and the people wept that night.
And all the children of Israel murmured against
Moses and against Aaron, and the people and
the whole congregation said unto them, We are
the sons of Anak, and we are the
sons of Anak, and we are the sons
of Anak, and we are the sons of
Anak, and we are the sons of Anak,
and we are the sons of Anak, and
we are the sons of Anak, and we
are the sons of Anak, and we are
the sons of Anak, and we are the
sons of Anak, and we are the sons
of Anak, and we are the sons of
Anak, and we are the sons of Anak,
and we are the sons of Anak, and
we are the sons of Anak, and we
are the sons of Anak, and we are
the sons of that either.