...continuing in 1 Peter, the 1st chapter.
As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to
the former lusts in your ignorance, but as
he which hath called you is holy, so
be ye holy in all manner of conversation.
Because it is written, Be ye holy, for
I am holy.
And we let the Holy Spirit tell us
what to do here from verse 14.
Not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts
in your ignorance.
That is a truth negatively stated, but carrying
with it a positive truth.
We all know, and have studied it sometime
in our lives, I suppose, how everything carries
its opposite along with it in its concept.
If you say short, in the back of
your mind there is its opposite, long, or
else there would be no reason to call
it short.
If you say high, you have in the
back of your mind the opposite, not so
high, or there would be no reason for
you to say high, soft, large, small, cold,
warm, supple.
So here, the apostolic injunction carries its own
opposite.
He does not say, Do not fashion yourselves.
That would be contrary to scripture and contrary
to human nature.
He says, Fashion not yourselves after the old
pattern, the pattern of your former lusts in
your ignorance, but fashion yourselves nevertheless, but not
according to the old pattern.
That's the positive element.
So it is the positive element that I
want to accent here.
Fashion yourselves, but do not fashion yourselves after
the old pattern.
Now that's what the Holy Spirit says here
to us, and as Christians there is no
argument here.
You and I have no reason, no excuse
in the wide world to sit in a
church service and find fault with what the
Holy Spirit says.
You might find fault with interpretations that the
preacher did, that's another matter.
But when once we know what the Holy
Spirit has said, you and I as believers
are committed to carry out that injunction without
one word of demerit.
We must obey.
So the word fashion here means to conform
to a pattern, or to become like a
pattern, or to shape ourselves according to a
pattern.
Now that's actually what it means in the
language Peter used when he wrote this.
Fashion yourselves, that is, conform yourselves to a
pattern, become like that pattern, and shape yourselves
according to that pattern.
Now human nature, we therefore conclude, is not
fixed.
Human nature is fluid.
Clay is the happiest illustration of it to
be found, I think, in the entire Bible.
The clay is not fixed.
It is fluid, or at least it is
malleable, and in a figurative sense fluid, so
that it can be shaped.
But after it has been shaped, and the
potter says, Now that's what I want.
And then he bakes it, and then burns
it, and then perhaps glazes it.
That's fixed.
Then it is no longer fluid, it is
no longer subject to any changes.
The only way it can be changed is
by being destroyed.
It can be crushed and ruined, but it
can never be changed into anything useful, because
it has passed its fluid state and has
become fixed.
Now the very fact that the Holy Spirit
would say, Fashion yourselves, or do not fashion
yourselves after a wrong pattern, indicates that that
burning and glazing has not yet happened to
human nature.
We are in a state of fluidity as
regards normal or as regards moral character.
Now there are two things that may be
said about any man, I don't care who
that man is, whether it's little John Mark,
just born a few days ago, or whether
it is the man who sits waiting to
die in the death cell in Missouri for
the kidnapping and murder of a child.
Two things that can be said about any
human being, you can be changed.
We talk about men being hardened, but always
remember, friends, that we need modifiers if we
are going to get at the truth.
And when we say that that man is
hard, he is beyond help, we are saying
that as far as any powers that we
know are concerned, the man is probably in
a state where he can't be changed.
But actually, nobody is beyond changing as long
as he is alive and conscious.
Two things may be said about him, one
is that he can be changed.
And this is the dim hope that every
man has, the dim hope of the drunkard.
When once he allows himself to get sober
just long enough to give it, a moment's
serious thought, he is saved from complete despair
by the knowledge that he can change.
For the dope addict who must have so
many shots a day, or he is in
frightful misery and will sell his own soul
to get dope, the only reason he doesn't
commit suicide is that there is a dim
hope burning there yet that he can be
changed.
He knows that he is not yet fixed.
He is still in a fluid state.
So for the drunkard and the dope addict,
there would not seem to be much hope,
but that there can be hope, and there
is, and that a man can be changed,
even when he is an alcoholic.
History has fully and completely confirmed.
Now, that is not only the hope of
every addict and drunkard, but it is the
hope of every average sinner everywhere in the
world, that he does not have to remain
what he is, that he may be deeply
in sin, so deep that he is ashamed
of himself.
But the very fact that he is ashamed
of himself indicates that there is a model,
a pattern after which he could shape himself,
and he hopes that there can be change
come.
And the hope of change is what keeps
men alive in the earth.
And the second thing that can be said
is that you are not finished yet.
That wherever you may be, old or young
or in between, you are not a finished
product.
You are only in process.
You know, you and I tend to fix
terminal points.
I heard Dr. Alan Redpath on Thanksgiving Day,
and I noticed that he spoke about terminals.
He called them termini.
I take it that's a British expression.
But I'll not use the Latin plural, but
the English, and say that we tend to
fix terminal points, terminals.
And beyond that, you don't go.
For instance, birth.
Looked at one way, the obstetrician, when the
baby is born and examined and found healthy,
the obstetrician says, this is fixed.
Now, as far as I'm concerned, my part's
over, and a child is born into the
world, and so he goes somewhere else about
his business.
That, as far as he's concerned, is done.
And he fixes a terminal point there.
Through the long months preceding, he'd been very
anxious.
Now, the terminal point.
A healthy, normal child has been born into
the world.
The mother knows that's not terminal.
He's not fixed yet.
Basically, if she's had any before, she knows
the trouble has just started and the fun.
And she knows that education must now take
place.
She knows it from the time she teaches
him to play patty cake until he walks
out of a college hall with his degree.
She can see that there's a process of
education.
He's not fixed.
He wasn't fixed and finished.
When the doctor was through with him, he
had to have all the influences of education.
And then when he gets his degree, we
call basic degree, we say, ah, we're glad
we got our boy through college.
And we tend to fix a terminal point
there and put a period and say, now
he's done.
He wasn't done before, but now he's done.
No, he isn't done yet.
He's still on cooking.
And he's still being changed, and he's still
being shaped and being fashioned.
And then we come to another terminal point,
and that's marriage.
Many a mother has breathed a sigh of
relief when her son suddenly became serious, settled
down, got married, got home.
And she says, now my worries about him
is over.
He's settled down, we call that.
But not everything that's settled down is finished.
Keep that in mind.
Then when success comes, and he becomes first
vice president of his company at 15,000
a year, and gets his big car and
his lovely home, we say, now he's fixed
now.
Now he has arrived.
He is an American businessman.
No, he's still moving along.
And then when we come to middle age,
when, as the poet said, gray hairs appear
here and there upon him.
I always thought that was a nice expression.
Gray hairs appear here and there upon him.
And the first couple or three, he says,
they make him look distinguished.
And after that, he pulls them out, then
finally gives up.
And we say, well, he has arrived now.
He is certainly somewhere.
He's now a portly, well-proportioned businessman.
And he hunts in the fall and fishes
in the spring and goes to baseball in
the summer.
And does the things that professional, middle-aged
businessmen do.
Don't worry about him.
He's fixed.
No, he's not fixed yet.
And he'll never be fixed until the soul
leaves the body.
Even the old man in his joe-age
is still changing somewhat.
Certainly the proportion, the speed and rapidity and
scope of change is not so great.
That's sloped down from maybe our 30th year.
But there is change nevertheless.
So remember, you're not finished.
And remember again, you can be changed.
Now somebody else would say, yes, but I
do know a terminal point, Mr. Tozer.
You've been talking in terms of humanity, unregenerate
humanity, and I have.
Now I know a fixed point, a terminal
point, and that is when we are converted.
Then we are fixed.
That we can say, now rest my long
-divided heart fixed on this blissful center.
Rest.
Surely that means that the fluidity in our
nature is over with and we're fixed now.
And the answer is no, my friend.
You are still fluid.
You are still subject to being fashioned, to
being changed, to being shaped.
You can grow and develop and change and
be fashioned still as a Christian.
And so Peter writes and says, don't fashion
yourselves after the old pattern, but fashion yourselves
after a new, holy pattern.
You recognize that we're still in process.
Christians don't seem to realize that.
Nowadays if we just get them converted, we
put a period and say, now it's all
over.
Rest my long-divided heart.
And there's a sense in which that song
is brilliantly, beautifully true and I love it
and sing it often, so don't think I'm
reflecting on it.
I'm only pointing out that he did not
mean that you are now no longer fluid,
no longer malleable, can no longer be shaped.
It means as far as your being fixed
in Christ is concerned, that's settled.
Thank God for that.
That's what he meant and that's what we
mean.
But when it comes to the shaping and
development and growth and enlargement and exploitation and
artistic shaping and fashioning of our characters, that
doesn't stop when we're converted, it just takes
a new direction is all.
And I'll talk about for a minute how
men fashion themselves.
Some people would say, we Christians don't fashion
ourselves Mr. Tozer, God fashions us.
We are clay and God is the potter
and God does the fashioning.
Now that's the way it should be ideally.
And if we were to be completely surrendered
from the moment we're saved to the time
we die to the influences of God and
to the powers that work in us from
heaven, that would be true.
But there are powers that shape men even
in the kingdom of God that are not
divine powers and then there are times when
God uses powers to shape us, providential powers,
secondary powers, to shape us and to bring
us.
Let's put it like this.
I think I can illustrate it.
Usually, you can't explain, you can illustrate.
Take such a thing as getting a suntan.
This is not exactly an appropriate or happy
time of year to talk about it after
the snow we had last night.
But suppose that a young fellow decides he
wants to get a suntan.
Personally, I was always glad that I was
light as I was.
I never cared much for suntans.
But suppose that the fellow says, I'm going
to get a suntan.
So he strips to his trunks, goes out
and sits in his backyard or goes to
the beach and exposes himself to the sun.
Now, whose tanning is high, anyhow?
Where is it coming from?
Is he doing it?
There's a sense in which he is doing
it where if he'd kept his shirt on,
it wouldn't have happened.
But there is a sense in which the
sun is doing it.
The sun is tanning him, but he had
to go and expose himself to the sun,
cooperate with the sun, in order that the
sun might do its work upon him.
Now, that's exactly what we mean when we
say that we fashion ourselves.
Just as a man tans himself by exposing
himself to the powers of the sun, so
a Christian fashions himself by exposing himself to
the divine powers that shape him.
Just as a man can keep his jacket
on and not get a suntan, even though
the sun is there trying to tan him,
so a Christian can keep himself wrapped in
the cloak of his own stubbornness and never
receive any of the beneficial graces that leap
down from the throne of God to where
Jesus sits as mediator.
So that Christians can go through life without
very much change having taken place.
They're converted, yes.
They believe in Christ, yes.
They have this root of the matter in
them, yes.
The seed of God's in them, yes.
But they're embryonic, at least infantile, and the
growth and development and beautifying and enlarging and
shaping has not taken place because they would
not expose themselves to the powers that shape
them.
Then there is another way in which even
a Christian may shape himself, and that is
to expose himself to the wrong kind of
influences.
And I believe that this is done to
an extent that grieves God.
Now, there are powers that fashion us.
We know what the old powers were.
We know those old powers were the powers
of the former lusts in our ignorance.
It tells us in the 2nd chapter of
Ephesians about those powers, wherein in time past
ye walked according to the course of this
world, according to the prince of the power
of the air, the spirit that now worketh
in the children of disobedience, among whom also
we all had our intercourse, our conversation or
conduct or fellowship.
In time past, in the lusts of our
eyes, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and were by nature children
of wrath even as others.
Now, those are the forces that were shaping
us once.
But we came to Jesus as we were,
weary and worn and sad.
We found in him a resting place and
he has made us glad.
Now we are supposed to put away those
old forces, not expose ourselves to them anymore.
But you say, how can I, how can
I keep, hold myself from being shaped when
I am thrown now among men?
I work in an office where men are
wicked and vulgar and obscene.
You can keep yourself from being shaped by
them, just as a man out on the
beach can keep himself by being tanned with
the sun, keep a robe around him.
You can draw your heart up tight and
say, stay out, you devilish influences, and let
my soul alone, it belongs to God.
If you are in school where there is
dirty talk and irreverence, you can keep it
from shaping you, or having any influence in
your life at all, by shutting it out
of your heart.
You can even make it a blessing to
you.
When you hear an obscene mouth, you can
say to God, oh God, I hate that
so bad, make my mouth ten times cleaner
than it was before.
When you see a wicked and injurious habit,
you can use it to account.
You can turn and say, oh God, help
me that I may keep clean from this
thing.
You know how when you walk down the
street and you see a man walking along,
bent over, I don't mean a crippled man
who can't help himself, I mean just some
lazy fellow who's allowed himself to turn over
like a perpetual question mark.
For the next block, you straighten up and
walk better, don't you?
About the only time I remember to do
it is when I see some poor old
fellow all bent over, I straighten my shoulders
back and say, I don't look like that.
You can turn that man to account by
straightening up yourself.
And so in the world where we are,
the sensuousness and obscenity and violence, we can
use those very things and react from them
with the violence and do what they call
in psychology overcompensate.
There once lived a man, I think I
wrote this up for Power, I'm not sure,
some other publication was.
There lived a young fellow one time, maybe
he was fourteen years old, thirteen or fourteen,
and he got into a fire, I don't
remember, his house burned, somehow he was thrown
into a fire, and he was burned from
his heels, I think way up his legs
and up his back.
Particularly his legs were terribly, tragically burned.
And that young man, after he got healed
up so he could walk around again, they
said, you'll never be able to run again,
you'll never be able to get around very
well, but thank God everything will be all
right, you'll be able to walk and you
can get around.
He said, I'm not only going to walk,
I'm going to run.
And this young man set out deliberately to
overcompensate, to use those very burned legs, and
the very burns on those legs to spur
him on.
And he went out without anybody knowing it,
and he learned to run.
And he ran and ran, and tall and
lean and thin he grew to be.
While the scars weren't pretty on his legs,
he learned to use them.
And the very scars themselves drove him forward.
His hard, bright mind said, I'm not going
to be licked by scarred legs.
And the day came when that young fellow
could go out on the track anywhere and
win the mile run, Glenn Cunningham.
Glenn Cunningham has been replaced by Gil Dodds
and some of the other boys that have
come up later.
Glenn now must be in his late thirties
maybe.
But when he was a lad, he overcompensated.
He went so far in one direction to
get away from the thing that pulled him
in the other direction.
So in the kingdom of God, I don't
have to give up to the devil.
And I don't have to yield my weak
soul to the influences that pull and drag
me.
When I see something wrong, I can react
from it with violence and say, if God
will help me, I'll be different from that.
And make the very sight of evil to
drive me further into the kingdom of God.
Now let's just notice some of the things
that shape us.
Whether we're Christians or whether we're sinners, we're
shaped by these things.
And we fashion ourselves by them.
I'd like to give you eight things that
will fashion you.
Any of you young people who want to
take these down?
Get out a pencil and put these down.
I'd like to give them to you.
I want to tell you eight things that
will fashion and shape you.
I won't be long at it.
Put it down.
Older people, too, but in a reduced proportion.
But particularly for young Christians, take this down.
These are the things that will fashion you
whether you know it or not and whether
you believe it or not or whether you
like it or not.
These things will fashion you.
The literature you read.
Set down one.
The literature you read is going to fashion
you.
It's going to slowly condition your mind, little
by little, even though you'll fight it.
If you read it and like it, it's
going to shape you.
Slowly you're going to take on the shape
of the mind of the man who wrote
that book.
You're going to put your emphases where he
put his.
You're going to put your values where he
put his.
You're going by liking what he liked and
thinking as he thought.
You're going to be shaped into what he
was.
And then, too, the songs you sing and
the music you enjoy, that is going to
shape you.
I can take you to parts of this
country if they still do as they did
when I was a lad.
And I can let you hear songs so
obscene and vile.
For I've heard them, farmers and woodmen and
drivers singing vicious, vile gutter songs and enjoying
them.
If you never heard them, I trust not.
But there are other songs just as dangerous
and as damaging to the human spirit.
Other music just as harmful to the soul.
And that song you sing and that music
you enjoy will determine what you're like inside.
You say it doesn't amount to very much.
It's nothing really.
Don't you fool yourself.
It's nothing really.
It is something indeed.
For it stirs your emotions.
It moves you out.
It's like the fingers of a potter to
shape that clay and push it into the
crevices and get a form there.
And if you're a Christian that comes and
sings Isaac Watts hymns of a Sunday morning
and then through the week listen to Boogie
and all the rest and enjoy it, then
you wouldn't listen if you didn't unless you're
forced to listen, as I sometimes am in
restaurants.
Ray and I have a place we go
to eat in a hurry to keep from
spending time.
Bless my heart, some stuff you hear coming
over that loudspeaker there, you'd think the devil
had collaborated with Judas Iscariot in writing it.
But there it is, and that doesn't affect
you because you'll react against it.
It drives you the other way.
And you love to sing a good hymn
after hearing that dirt better than you did
before because you say, thank God, it's something
better.
But if you like music that's low, that
touches the days or emotions, it'll shape you
whether you like it or not.
And somebody here says, oh, listen to that
old man, what business is it of yours
what I listen to?
None.
You can drink a strict nine if you
want to, brother, but I'm still friend enough
of yours to warn you if you do,
they'll carry you out in the box.
I can't stop you, but I can just
warn you.
So I haven't the authority to tell you
what you can listen to, but I have
the divine commission to tell you that if
you love and listen to the wrong kind
of music, that music will do something to
your inner life.
Three.
Pleasures we indulge in, whatever kind they may
be.
They shape us.
Say, what's wrong with this and what's wrong
with that?
And there's no answer, maybe.
But the answer is, give him ten years
in that kind of pleasure and then look
at his spiritual life.
That's the answer now.
What's wrong with that, we say?
A kid who insists on fourteen, smoking and
drinking and living poorly, what's wrong with that?
You can't argue with him, but give him
ten years.
Give him fifteen years.
Before he's thirty years old, look him over
and you'll know what's wrong with that.
What argument won't do?
No plain evidence will do fine.
It'll convince him that wasn't the way to
live.
No, the pleasures we indulge in are shaping
us just as sure as we live.
For whatever gives us pleasure changes.
And then the ambitions we entertain.
Think of the ambitions people entertain.
Whatever's eating at you there, whatever you'd like
to be, whatever you dream over, that's shaping
you.
And fifth, the places we go.
Again, somebody says, you can't tell me where
to go.
No, sir, I don't want to.
I hope you'll end in heaven at last.
But on your way there, be careful where
you visit along the road because that'll shape
you and me.
And then the words we speak.
The American people, I think of all people,
are careless with language.
Typical American joke is an exaggeration.
Mark Twain, in his exaggeration, and our tall
tail clubs and all exaggerations, you've got to
watch them.
Watch the language you use.
And seventh, the friends we cherish.
This has always seemed to me the hardest
thing I've ever had to do because I
value friendships and I know how people love
each other.
Even in this wicked old world, friendships are
very beautiful things.
I've always felt something like a churlish heat
in standing before audiences and saying you'd better
break with certain friendships if you're going to
serve God.
It seemed like such a rude, churlish, uncivilized
thing to say.
But my Savior said it more plainly than
I could ever say it, and more bluntly
than I could ever say it, when he
told us that we must take up our
cross and follow him, and we must turn
our backs on everybody that was necessary to
turn them on, even if it came to
our own relatives and friends, yes, our own
husband or wife.
Because Jesus Christ was first in saving of
our soul of prime importance.
Better to have no friends and be in
the light alone than to be like Lot
in Sodom, surrounded by friends that all but
damned him.
If it hadn't been for Abraham on the
side hills of Mamre praying, Lot would have
been damned by his friendships.
And he very nearly was, and his family
was ruined by his friendships.
So your friends, he sitteth not in the
seat of the scornful.
Watch that.
For both in the way of sinners walketh
not in the counsels of the ungodly.
Watch the ungodly counsel.
Watch the scorner.
Watch out for the opposer.
You make a friend of him, you have
given the enemy the key to your heart.
You have opened the gate, the city will
be stormed and taken.
And last, the thoughts we brood over.
There never was a murder committed yet.
Somebody hadn't brooded over that murder.
There never was a robbery committed, but somebody
brooded over it, maybe half the night long.
There never was an evil deed, unless we
might for the moment make an exception of
those sudden deeds of passion, anger, or temper,
or jealousy that sudden blinding rage brings a
man, leads a man to do something.
But even at that, I'm inclined to think
that if he had disciplined his emotions by
right thoughts and right living, he could control
himself in the crisis.
So there never was a crime committed that
wasn't preceded by a conditioning as a result
of brooding thoughts.
Whatever thoughts you brood over in the night
season will make you.
Whatever thoughts you entertain as you ride or
walk along will shape you.
Whatever thoughts you give place to will change
you from what you are into something else,
and it won't be for the better unless
your thoughts are good thoughts.
So if your friends are sweet friends, Christian
friends, godly friends, then they will bless you.
You'll keep them forever.
If the literature you read is good literature,
and it doesn't all have to be Christian
literature, there's lots of good literature that isn't
Christian.
So I don't say you're confined yourself to
Grace Livingston Hill and Paul Hutchins and A
.W. Tolbert.
I say read what you please, but let
it be the kind that won't hurt you
and will help you.
Classics, for instance, are good literature.
I've had to shake people off my neck
who didn't like it that I read the
classics.
I've read them all my life and I've
never been hurt by one yet.
And when I see they hurt me, I
throw them aside.
I picked up one once, a book years
ago, a very famous classic.
I tore it into shreds and threw it
away.
I'm not a book burner, but that particular
book, I liked it too well, and it
was harming me, so I threw the thing
away and I've never owned a copy since.
Somebody says, you mean to say there's a
classic you don't own?
You're not educated.
Well, but I'm a lot better off than
if I'd have wallowed through that guy.
I'm thinking of Samuel Pepys, incidentally.
So Samuel Pepys can keep his diary.
I'd rather read Paul.
Now, be not conformed, but be transformed and
finished.
You have a soul and you have opportunities.
God gives to the potter the clay and
says, now shape it.
God gives to the builder the material and
says, now build it into a worthy temple.
And then says at last, now, how did
you shape it?
How did you fashion it?
What have you got to bring me out
of the material I gave you, the forces
that I turned loose like lathes and saws
and hammers and buffers to shape and change
you?
I gave you those things.
What have you done?
To what have you exposed yourself?
I trust in that last great day we
won't have to take our rich material before
the blazing eyes of God and there before
the judgment seat of Christ, shamefacedly admit that
we allowed ignoble or unworthy things to have
a place in shaping our lives.
Let us rather be transformed by the renewing
of our minds that we may know what
is that good and perfect and acceptable will
of God.
Amen.