We have been going along with the Apostle
Peter, listening to what he would say to
us in the Spirit, not trying to add
anything to what he says, trying by every
way we know to make what he says
clear.
And you'll remember that in that first chapter,
Peter saluted God, gave a eulogy to the
Father who has begotten us again unto a
living hope.
This he did through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead.
And this begetting is unto an inheritance which
has the three qualities of being undefiled, unfading,
and incorruptible.
And that those for whom this inheritance is
kept are also kept by the power of
God through faith.
Unto the salvation that's ready to be revealed
in the last time.
Then verse 6 is the one that will
occupy our thought for the day.
Wherein, he says, ye greatly rejoice, though now
for a season it may be, ye are
in heaviness through manifold temptation.
Now he says here that salvation is ready
to be revealed.
These Christians, to whom Peter wrote, looked for
a state of things immeasurably better than any
present state of things.
There are two mistakes which Christians habitually make.
That is, it's a mistake of emphasis more
than anything else.
Some Christians emphasize the, what they call, sweet
now and now, you hear it.
They emphasize so they're not satisfied with the
sweet by and by.
They want something in the sweet now and
now.
And then there are those who seem to
be altogether taking up the little boy whose
mother says, Johnny, here's a piece of bread
and butter.
It'll be an hour yet before we eat.
So Johnny is forced with a piece of
bread and butter to piece out his ravenous
appetite until the great feast comes.
He seems satisfied to make it not only
a slice, but a bare crumb, putting all
the emphasis upon the sweet by and by.
Others, again I say, make the mistake of
making it altogether the sweet now, thinking very
little about the world to come.
Of course, the right thing to do is
to put the emphasis where God puts it.
Some things you can have now and some
you can't have now.
Some things you have now fully and other
things you have now only in part.
And we ought to be good Bible students
so that we would not be surrendering anything
that is for us now or demanding anything
that is for us then.
We'd take away a lot of tension and
a lot of nervous pressure and a lot
of misunderstanding if we studied our Bible with
that thought in mind.
The Christians look for a state of things,
I say, immeasurably better than anything that they
then enjoy.
And that state of things ought to be
perfect and complete.
There is no such thing as absolute perfection
now, as only relative perfection.
And there is no such thing as completion
now.
God hasn't completed a thing with you yet.
And there isn't any perfection found in you
yet unless you want to have it understood
that when we use the word perfect, we
mean relatively perfect, not absolutely perfect.
Absolute perfection is for the time when the
sons of God shall be revealed.
And completeness is for the time when we
shall look upon the Son and shall become
indeed grown-up sons.
Now, this state of completion and perfection, perfect
completeness and complete perfection, will affect four things
that relate to us.
It will affect the body.
It's good to keep this in mind.
I don't often read, but I want to
read a little.
Not from a book, but from the book.
And this is from the book of 1
Corinthians, the 15th chapter.
And the man of God is telling us
the best he can tell us.
He knew the best he could know by
divine inspiration.
But when you're trying to get to somebody,
an idea that's in your heart, you are
limited by the imperfection of language.
So the man of God was, but he
did the best he could.
And so we have it here in Holy
Writ, these words.
I'm reading from another translation, not the RSV.
In order that you may understand it a
bit better.
The man of God says, perhaps someone will
ask, how can the dead rise up?
Well, they'll say, what kind of body will
they be wearing when they appear?
Paul wasn't as patient as he could then.
He said, poor fool, when thou sawest seed
in the ground, it must die before it
can be brought to life.
And what thou sawest is not the full
body that is one day to be.
It is only bare grain, a wheat it
may be, or some other crop.
It is for God to embody it according
to his will.
Each grain is a body that belongs to
it.
Nature is not all one.
Men have one nature, the beasts another, the
birds another, the fish is another.
So too there are bodies that belong on
earth and bodies that belong to heaven.
And heavenly bodies have one kind of beauty,
earthly bodies another.
The sun has its own beauty, the moon
has hers, and the stars have theirs.
One star even differs from another star in
its beauty.
So it is with the resurrection of the
dead.
What is sown corruptible rises incorruptible.
What is sown unhonored rises in glory.
What is sown in weakness is raised in
power.
What is sown in natural body rises a
spiritual body.
If there is such a thing as a
natural body, there must be a spiritual body
too.
Mankind begins with Adam, who became, the scripture
tells us, a living soul.
But mankind is fulfilled in that Adam who
has become a life-giving spirit, that is
Christ.
It was not the principle of spiritual life
that came first.
Natural life came first, then spiritual life.
The man who came first came from earth,
fashioned of dust.
The man who came afterward came from heaven,
and his fashion is heavenly.
The nature of that earth-born man is
shared by his earthly sons.
And the nature of the heaven-born man,
by his heavenly sons.
So it remains for us who once bore
the stamp of the earth, to bear this
stamp of the heaven.
Now that's what the man of God said,
trying the best he could to tell us
what he meant, what Peter meant, when he
said that we were looking for a salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time,
that should introduce us into a state of
perfect completeness and complete perfection, affecting our bodies.
But it not only affects our body, it
affects our mind and soul.
1 John 3, 2, Beloved, now are we
the sons of God, and it doth not
yet appear what we shall be.
But we know that when we shall appear,
we shall be like him, and shall see
him as he is.
And then it affects this state of completeness
which we're waiting for.
It affects not only the mind and the
soul, but it affects also the earth and
all nature and the surroundings about us.
Now here is what the man of God
says in trying to tell us what nature
is going to be like when we come,
reading this time from Romans.
Not that I count these present sufferings as
the nature of that joy which is to
be revealed in us.
If creation is full of expectancy, that is,
because it is waiting for the sons of
God to be made known, created nature has
been condemned to frustration, not for some deliberate
fault of its own, but for the sake
of him who so condemned it.
Namely, that nature in its turn will be
set free from the tyranny of corruption, to
share in the glorious freedom of God's sons.
The whole of nature, as we know, groans
in a common travail all the while.
Not only do we see that, but we
ourselves do the same.
We ourselves, although we have already begun to
reap our spiritual harvest, yet groan in our
hearts, waiting for that adoption which is the
ransoming of our bodies from their slavery.
Now, what he teaches there, and I'm through
reading, what he teaches there is that mankind
is so related to the earth that when
the Lord comes in triumph and glorifies mankind,
he will also glorify the earth and nature,
so that the earth and nature will share
in the glorification with the sons of Adam,
or the sons of God, who were once
sons of Adam, but are now children of
the King.
The old earth, as we know it now,
went down in a collapse with the sons
of Adam when we all went down together.
And so floods, and typhoons, and earthquakes, and
tornadoes, and all the rest, are a result
of the distorted state of affairs, fallen nature,
illnesses, insanity, and all that gets wrong with
us is the result of a fallen state
of affairs, for we are still pretty much
a part of the earth and of nature.
There are those who even claim we are
affected by the sunspots, though I am not
going to oppress that because they'll probably change
their mind after tomorrow.
But man and his home, the earth, are
very much alike.
And so God redeems the earth by redeeming
people.
And when he comes to glorify mankind, that
is, redeem mankind, he will also let that
redemption overflow and glorification overflow to touch the
whole earth.
We stand on a mountain peak, as I
did at Ben Lippin last week, and look
out over miles and miles of the old,
smoky mountain, and it's always beautiful.
Somebody said, Mr. Tozer, this is beautiful because
it changes so often.
I said, I suppose it changes every week.
Naive I was.
They said, every hour, Mr. Tozer.
This changes, and I saw what they meant.
Blue smoke now clears the bell again, great
clouds coming the next time, clear sunshine.
Constantly changing, and it's a beautiful people.
Simply stand on the porch and watch it.
It's all lovely.
But there's death out there over those hills,
there are bones buried there in those mountains,
and danger walks everywhere there as it does
all over the earth.
But when our Lord comes and redeems or
glorifies mankind, he will also take all the
bones out and remove all the dangers and
glorify the earth.
Now that's what these Christians were waiting for.
Unto a salvation ready to be revealed in
the last time, wherein we greatly rejoice.
And not only the earth, but society.
I said there were four, body, mind, and
soul.
The earth and society.
And I could read for the next hour
and a half from the Old Testament, showing
how the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover
the sea.
And there will be no problem of labor
and unions, because no man will build and
another inhabit.
There'll be no landlords then, and no rent
ceilings or absence of them.
No living in rat holes and being charged
high prices for it.
Because everybody will live in his own house.
Everybody will be a landowner.
It'll all belong to God.
And there'll be no labor troubles, because one
will not plant another wreath, but the man
will reap what he plants.
God will take care of that.
Because the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover
the sea.
So I have an optimistic outlook toward this
earth upon which we live.
All kinds of pessimistic and horrible predictions of
a comet sweeping the earth away and destroying
it, or wind falling into the sun and
being burned up.
Don't you worry about that.
Don't you worry about it a bit.
Because this earth is yet to be the
home of a redeemed people.
Now, Christians, these Christians you will notice, were,
as a result of this outlook, optimistic and
cheerful and alert, wherein you greatly rejoice, waiting
for the salvation which shall be revealed in
the last time.
And you greatly rejoice.
You will notice that rejoicing, the note of
rejoicing, is very clear throughout the entire Bible.
In the New Testament, the note of rejoicing
rings like a silver bell.
And in the historic Church, it has always
been so.
There have been some Christians, and there will
be in every age, whose conception of Christianity
is a kind of a gloomy resignation to
the inevitable.
But they're born that way, and they can't
help it.
But the average and normal Christian is not
gloomy.
He is serious, and he can weep.
But he is alert and optimistic, and has
a cheerful hope, because he's looking for a
state of affairs immeasurably improved, over even the
best that this world has to offer.
And so the Holy Ghost says, wherein ye
greatly rejoice.
And that rejoicing has overflowed into Christian hymns.
I wish they'd elect me editor of all
the hymn books in Christendom, and give me
full authority to go into the hymn books
and make such changes as I desire.
I would go in and take all the
gloomy ones out.
The heavy-hearted, lumbering, heavy-footed, tear-stained
hymns that make the kingdom of God out
to be a morgue.
And the only music to be found would
be the bell-tolling, the bell of parting
days.
And I would remove all such hymns.
At least I'd put them in the footnotes
for the temperamentally gloomy to cry over occasionally.
But I'd have my hymn books full of
joyous expectation, for that is the spirit of
the New Testament.
God's people know that things aren't all they
ought to be, but they haven't time to
worry too much about it, for they are
looking forward to something vastly improved.
And they're expecting it, and in the meantime
they're rejoicing in it.
And then, Peter, you know these writers can't
go five minutes until they start to contradict
themselves.
And yet it's a glorious contradiction, and it's
that which makes the Christian the funny fellow
he is in the earth.
I'll explain later.
He says, He greatly rejoiced, though now he
are in great heaviness.
Now you ask me, how's that?
He greatly rejoiced, but he are in great
heaviness.
You're rejoicing in heaviness.
Now that's an odd situation.
The Williams, that is the British Williams translation,
says, Even though for a little time, if
it is necessary, you are pained by troubles
of many kinds.
There is no one of you here above
the age of thirteen that don't know what
I'm talking about, dear Christian.
Even now, for a little time, we are
pained by troubles of many kinds.
So we have this odd thing, rejoicing, though
pained and in trouble.
Strange beings, these Christians.
I won't be long now.
But I want to bring this short talk
to a close by pointing out what a
strange person the true Christian is.
Now I use the adjective true here to
indicate not only a born-again Christian, but
one who is living according to his new
birth.
He's a strange person.
And if you want to become a Christian,
let me remind you, sir, that you must
agree to be very much different, so different
that you will be considered somewhat disturbed mentally.
Because I notice the true Christian has these
qualifications.
Now I'm sure this will only be a
tenth of what could be said.
Somebody can work it out at his leisure.
But I thought of these things about the
true Christian.
He is dead, and yet he lives forever.
He died, and yet he lives in Christ,
and he lives by the death of another.
And if another hadn't died, he couldn't live.
And he saves his life by losing it.
And he's in danger of losing it by
trying to save it.
Now that's in the Bible, too.
You say, this Christian, he saves his life
by losing it, and in trying to save
it, he will lose it.
That's exactly what Jesus said in the 16th
of Matthew.
And this strange fellow, the true Christian, when
he wants to get up, he always starts
down.
For God's way up is always down.
Now that's contrary to common sense, and it's
contrary to the finest wisdom of the earth.
But the foolish things of God are wiser
than anything on this earth.
Another thing about the true Christian is that
when he wants to win, he always surrenders.
That instead of standing up, slugging it out,
he surrenders to a third party, and then
wins without firing a shot or brooding his
fists.
He surrenders to God and wins over everybody
else.
And another strange thing about this true Christian
is that he's strongest when he is weakest,
and weakest when he is strongest.
And that his strength lies in his weakness,
and his weakness lies in his strength.
And when he gets up thinking he's strong,
he's always weak, and when he gets down
on his knees thinking he's weak, then he's
always strong.
Again, he is poor, and if he's a
real Christian, he usually is, and yet he
makes others rich.
Paul was a poor man in prison, but
he immeasurably enriched the entire Christian world.
John Bunyan was a poor man in Bedford
jail, but he gave us a pilgrim's progress.
So you could go on down this scale,
following through history, and find out where the
rich Christian was poor, and the poor Christian
made everybody rich.
And this strange fellow, the true Christian, is
highest when he feels lowest, and lowest when
he feels highest.
And he's in the least danger when he
is fearful and trusting God, and in the
most danger when he gets self-confident.
And he is most sinless when he feels
the most sinful, and he is the most
sinful when he feels the most sinless.
And that this strange fellow, the Christian, he
has most when he's giving most away, and
he has less when he's keeping more.
Now that's contrary to all common sense.
That's why we're such a bunch of people.
They don't know us.
They say, well, it's all right now to
believe in the Lord and go to church
on, basically, Mother's Day and Christmas.
But this fanaticism, yes, that's strange, this fanaticism,
because this religious fanatic, he has the most
when he's giving the most.
And God multiplies his nine tenths more than
he would his ten tenths.
And this strange fellow sometimes does the most
when he isn't doing anything at all.
Sometimes to get the most done, God calls
him aside and says, sit down there.
And sometimes he goes the fastest when he's
standing still.
Stand still and see the salvation of the
Lord.
And I want you to notice, too, that
this strange fellow, the true Christian, is saved
now, and he's ready to declare it with
shining face, I'm saved.
And yet he expects to be saved later,
for he is looking for a salvation ready
to be revealed unto the last time.
Now you say, make up your mind, make
up your mind.
Is he saved now?
Or is he anticipating salvation?
The answer is both.
He is saved now, but he's also looking
to be saved.
And he has life now, and he's also
looking for life.
And somebody says, now that's what I mean,
these fanatical Christians that go to the Alliance,
down there at Seventh-Day Communion, in some
ways they're nice people, and they must be
prosperous, there are big cars out in front,
and no jalopies.
They seem to be all right, but there's
something weird about them.
They say, I'm saved, and the fact is
nobody can know that he's saved in this
life.
And those fanatics say, I'm saved.
Yes, sir.
And another one says, yeah, not only say
I'm saved, but I actually heard him say
that they're expecting to be saved.
You can't understand people like that.
They're true Christians.
I notice another thing is that this true
Christian was born on earth, and has never
been anywhere else.
And yet he's a citizen of another country,
which he never visited.
He is born on earth, and he's a
citizen of heaven.
Now, that isn't dangling out.
Why, remember that he's walking on earth, and
yet seated in heaven.
For the Bible tells us that we're walking
down here, but it also tells us that
we are seated in the heavenly places in
Christ Jesus, our Lord, and it doesn't mean
firmly.
It means that we're seated in the heavenly
places.
Now, that's strange.
Then another thing is that he is nothing.
And he's telling God he's nothing, and yet
at the same time, he knows he's the
apple of God's eye.
One of the faults they blame us for
is, they say, you talk about yourself as
if you were God's very pets, and nobody
else matters.
Well, the very Christian that believes that he's
the apple of God's eye is the same
Christian that'll give up his money, send his
sons and daughters, or go himself to preach
the gospel to the least thought of.
So while he knows he's nothing, yet at
the same time, he's willing to believe that
he's the apple of God's eye.
Now, isn't that strange?
That's what it means here when it says
that you are in great heaviness, and yet
you are rejoicing greatly.
Rejoicing in heaviness, there's the contradiction.
Again, I note that this good Christian loves
one that he's never seen, and he fears
God, and yet isn't afraid of God.
They say, oh, don't be afraid of God.
He's a good fellow and will all be
well.
That was the way the poor carnal poet
put it.
But the Christian fears God with trembling reverence,
and yet isn't afraid of God at all.
He draws nigh to God with full assurance
of faith, yet at the same time is
trembling with holy fear.
To not be afraid, and yet fear.
To fear, and yet draw near, and makes
him a fanatic too.
And so now in heaviness, yet greatly rejoicing.
I just thought you'd like to see what
kind of person you are.
You know, that's so much different from just
church membership.
What church membership doesn't make too much difference.
I asked somebody the other day, are you
a member of our church?
Yes, I am.
And I felt bad about it, and apologized
for asking it, because I suppose But what
is the difference, anyhow, what local church I
am a member of?
I've got to at least say something about
where I've been last week.
I wouldn't be a good preacher.
And down at Ben-Levitt and out of
Asheville, where our good friend Jim Derren will
come from, I had a wonderful week there,
a wonderful week.
And mostly there were Presbyterians and Baptists.
And unless I asked them, I didn't know.
A man would come down and start to
sit off beside me and start to talk
about God.
And people we'd heard and songs we knew
and spiritual things.
Then maybe after a long conversation I'd say,
are you a Baptist preacher?
No, I'm a Presbyterian preacher.
And maybe next I'd talk to somebody and
say, are you a Presbyterian?
No, no, I'm Baptist.
Or else occasionally one would say, I'm an
Alliance.
But I never, I got so I didn't
care.
No, everybody looked alike and everybody sounded alike.
And believe this or not, the hungriest person
that I met on the ground was a
Plymouth Brethren woman, Mrs. Smith.
Anonymous that would be, more or less.
You will never know who I mean, but
she just followed me around.
Mr. Tozer, I'd like to ask you this.
And just hungry, because she'd met God.
So it doesn't make much difference what denomination
you belong to, or whether you're proud of
the fact that you don't belong to any.
If we're true Christians, we're an enigma to
the world, a thorn in the flesh of
Adam, a pebble to angels, the delight of
God and the habitation of the Holy Ghost.
So that's better than joining a church, isn't
it?
Better than getting baptized the way of your
choice.
I told the Presbyterian preacher, and he almost
fell over me with delight.
I said, in the Alliance, we practice immersion,
but we take in members who've been sprinkled.
He grabbed me.
He said, that's it, brother.
That was fine.
Well, what's the difference about your mode of
baptism?
Now, you baptize, of course, in the Christian
church, you'll say, there goes poor Brother Tozer.
He's not a woman.
Brother, if you turn a flashlight on, and
if the time ever comes that I see
that any mode of baptism will save you,
I'll preach it all up and down the
country.
You can pay my expenses.
If you pray for me, that God will
illuminate me, I'll preach it, and you'll pay
his bills, and we'll convert the church.
But in the meantime, my fellowship takes in
the children of God, regardless of who and
where and what.
If they're washed in the blood, born of
the Spirit, walked with God the Father, begotten
unto a living hope through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, rejoicing in a salvation ready to
be revealed, and yet in great heaviness, sometimes
through the many pains and temptations that take
them while they live here below.
So, regardless.
Well, God's good to us.
We run into people we didn't know existed.
A couple came to me down there and
said, We're some delinquent members of your church.
And I said, That's so?
I didn't recognize them.
I regret to say.
But they had joined here some years back
when they were attending Northern Baptist Seminary in
Moody's.
Now what do you suppose they're doing?
Teaching in a college, Columbia Bible College.
So we have our members all scattered around.
And you know what I hope?
I hope that we have infected them sufficiently
with this broad, ecumenical, Catholic, charitable, godly outlook,
so that every one of them will have
the same idea.
Nominational lines mean nothing but the Holy Ghost
means everything.
And wherever the Holy Ghost dwells, there is
his temple.
And all those temples are, so to speak,
stones in the great temple.
And so we're all one.
And we're all alive.
But if you can't take it, and you
can't take this contradiction, and you're not ready
to be considered foolish, for Christ's sake, then
the only thing you can do is to
become a once-a-week Christian, go into
church enough to satisfy your conscience and your
ancestors' conscience, but don't make too much of
it.
But if you want to follow on to
know the Lord, you'll find yourself in the
middle of this strange, contradictory, wonderful world of
the Trinity.
You won't be able to understand yourself, and
you won't try it.
And the world won't understand you, and they'll
think you're a fanatic.
And dead church members won't be able to
understand you, but you and the Lord will
understand each other.
And you'll know the Lord better than you
know yourself, because you'll spend more time thinking
about him than you do yourself.
Well, the text again.
Salvation, ready to be revealed in the last
time, wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for
a season it need be.
Ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.