On the fullness of Biblical inspiration and the
inadequacy of the average preacher, that one verse
written by an apostle can provide a whole
sermon for the preacher.
So we take one verse out of Peter's
first epistle, the second chapter, and we'll try
to bring some helpful thoughts from it, as
God may enable.
2.12 These words, having your conversation honest
among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak evil
against you as evildoers, they may by your
good works, which they shall behold, glorify God
in the day of visitation.
Of course, you will understand the construction here.
We break right into the middle of it,
following a semicolon, having.
So what he says is, have your conversation
honest among the Gentiles, or live honestly among
the Gentiles.
For conversation doesn't mean talk as it did
then, it means life, living.
Now, one of the big questions that any
earnest Christian must settle is, what should be
my attitude toward the Gentiles?
And by Gentiles, we simply mean the unsaved
among whom we live.
What should be my attitude toward the unsaved
with whom I am forced most of my
lifetime to live?
And when I say most of my lifetime,
I am not speaking lightly, but accurately.
Because though Christians tend to flock together, still
the greater part of a Christian's time on
earth is likely to be spent among the
Gentiles.
First, let's notice that Christians do tend to
flock together.
They come together at times like this, they
come together in various meetings here and there,
anything from the lowly Sunday school picnic to
the High Mass or something else.
People who claim to be Christians, at any
rate, flock together, and real Christians flock together.
The reasons are many and very full, I
believe.
In the first place, we Christians belong to
another racial group.
You will pardon my repeating that, for I
said it twice before.
Ye are a chosen generation, another, a different
breed.
You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a peculiar people.
And thus we form a sort of other
racial group within the race into which we
were originally born.
We are strangers, but not strangers to each
other.
And therefore, it is perfectly natural that the
human beings should want to go with their
own group, because we understand each other's language.
I can understand why Polish people and Swedish
people and Lithuanian people and even German people
tend to be clannish.
We say they are clannish and smile, but
it isn't clannishness so much as they like
to hear somebody talk that doesn't talk with
an accent.
They want to get among the people who
can bless their ears with that first sound
they heard when they were born there across
the water, or when they were old to
hear sounds and know what they meant.
So they bless their ears with good speech.
If you want to please a Scotsman, if
you can do it, I can't, Macbeth tries
it, break out into brave Scots, and he'll
break out his face and get inches wider,
because he is blessing his ears with something
he grew up with.
The first time he remembers his mother or
father, they spoke that language.
So groups tend to get together because they
love the sound of it.
And Christians love to get together because they
understand each other's language.
A minister of the gospel called me here
in the city this last week, I think,
or week before, and he said, Mr. Tozer,
he talked about something else a while, and
then said, Before I hang up, I'd like
to say that I listen every Saturday morning
to your broadcasts, and I enjoy hearing them.
And then I heard a female voice in
the background, and he stopped a minute and
said, Just a minute.
He said, My wife tells me to tell
you that she understands the language.
Now, I don't know whether you get that
or not, but that's the old camp meeting
holiness expression.
I understand the language, brother.
They used to say that and smile, some
little old lady with a black hat to
know and black clothing and a serious but
happy face would say, I understand the language.
Maybe raise a modest hand to heaven while
they sang, she understood the language.
And that's why Christians like to get together,
because they understand each other's language, all the
little accents that belong to Christians.
Then not only are we thus another racial
group, but we are also another family, and
families always like to get together.
The Tozers are the only family I know
that don't.
I have relatives I haven't seen for years
and years.
I was within 200 miles of a brother
I hadn't seen for five or six years
last winter and didn't go to see him.
I'm not mad at him, we're the best
of friends, only we just don't, I don't
know, it's car fare I guess or something.
But mostly, we, mostly families like to get
together, and out in country regions where they're
less sophisticated, family reunions are great times.
When all those who are even remotely related
to that crowd will come together, and they'll
sit around, some will never have met the
other ones, new ones have been born the
last year.
Families like to get together, they have a
lot in common.
There's a tie that belongs to the family
that belongs nowhere else on earth.
So Christians belong to the same family, we're
the household of God.
And God is our Father, after whom every
family in heaven and earth is named.
That's why Christians love to get together.
And then they love to get together because
of similar interests.
You know how it is if you're out
with a crowd and one of them begins
to talk about a camera, another one begins
to talk about a camera, you might just
as well keep still.
Because if you get two camera bugs together,
they'll know all about shutters and speed and
things that I don't even know what they
mean.
I owned one once when I was a
boy and gave it up.
But the camera fiends, you know how they
are.
And golf the same, and baseball, and hunters,
a few old hunters around the potbelly stove
in the country store.
That's good for at least five hours, and
several plugs of tobacco.
As they sit around there and chew tobacco
and talk about hunting, now they have a
common interest there.
And wherever you find people who are deeply
interested, they like to get together.
They'll pull out of the crowd and come
together, literary interests and philosophical interests.
Christians have an interest, and it is one,
not varied but single, and that's why Christians
love to get together.
And then they like to get together because
there's a moral encouragement that comes to a
minority group by having the presence of other
members of that minority group around them.
So for all those reasons, we love to
get together.
But having said all this, it still remains
true that the average Christian spends the greater
part of his life on earth among the
Gentiles.
He spends the greater number of hours, the
average Christian, greater number of hours and days
and months and years, if it's added, among
people that are not sympathetic with him, do
not believe as he believes, and are not
saved.
Take in work, for instance.
Some of you never see a Christian from
the time you leave your house in the
morning until you return at night.
Or if you do, you don't know they're
Christian.
You see someone walking down the street who
may be a Christian, you don't know it,
and it means nothing to you for the
moment.
So you literally live among the Gentiles from
the time you say good-bye in the
morning until you come back at night.
And worse than that, some of you never
see a Christian from the time you say
good-bye to your friends at the church
door Sunday evening until Wednesday or the next
Sunday, because even in your home there are
not Christians there.
So you spend literally the biggest part of
your time, vastly greater part of your time,
among people that are not Christians at all.
When you come to traveling, I was combing
over in my memory how many Christians I
have met on the trains.
I've traveled quite a little over the United
States, and I think I only remember one
Christian that I thought, well, there's a man
of God, and he was a colored porter.
He talked to me when he saw me
reading my Bible.
But I always have my Bible, always have
notebooks and pens, and always have a desk.
And they all know it, but have never
had a porter but once ever comment smilingly
and with appreciation about having my Bible there.
You don't find them when you travel as
a rule.
And how many Christians did you buy from
this week?
And if you were selling, how many Christians
did you sell to?
Now, if you happen to work for Dietz,
Scripture Press, or Moody Press, or some of
the Christian groups, you probably did sell to
some Christians.
But for the most part, your buying and
selling is not with Christians.
And in school, I want to ask you
now, in school, you have a class room,
maybe 40, 30, 40, and how many are
Christians in that group?
How many of you have Christians living next
door to them, on the east, or next
door on the west?
How many Christians are in your block there
where you live?
Think now, not very many are there.
Occasionally you'll find a couple of houses where
both are Christians, but very rarely, mostly God
salts us down as we shake salt in
the earth.
Salt every place, and we don't touch each
other, but we're scattered for most of the
time.
And therefore, because we spend a few hours
a week with Christians, and spend many, many,
many hours a week with the unsaved, it
is vitally important that we have the answer
to the question, What should my attitude be
toward the unsaved?
Now, as usual, God lays it down here
in a broad precept.
He doesn't give the details, he lays it
down as a broad precept.
He says, Have your life honest among the
Gentiles.
Other translations have it, Seemly, good and right,
beyond reproach and upright.
Let your conduct be seemly, let it be
honest, let it be good and right, let
it be beyond reproach, let it be upright.
All those words are used by various translators
in an attempt to get the meaning of
the Greek word which Peter used.
Let your conversation be good and honest and
upright and beyond reproach among the Gentiles.
Now, those or that is a broad precept,
and the application of that precept is left
to the circumstance, the time, and the individual.
Right here, I want to make a little
note and tell you something that will be
well worth your remembering.
Remember, please, that God never tells us anything
that will enable us to get along without
him.
Write that down in your hatband, that God
never tells us anything to enable us to
get along without him.
God lays down what we read in our
scripture lesson precepts.
He lays down broad principles of right, and
then he allows the moment, the situation, the
circumstances, the individual, and the context to determine
how those principles shall be applied.
Therefore, it is never right to take the
attitude that many do, well, I have my
Bible, I know what to do.
Here it is, it's found in verse 9,
I know what to do, I've got the
answer.
That's the attitude of unspiritual orthodoxy that is
always sure it knows because it can quote
the text.
But remember, brethren, the text is only the
broad precept.
The application of it takes the living presence
of the Holy Ghost, takes humility and faith
and earnest prayer and often painful cross-carrying
in order to bring that precept into life
and make it apply.
Orthodoxy says, I know the answer.
Here it is in seven tenets.
But the humble Christian knows better.
He knows he's got the tenets there all
right, and he subscribes to them as ardently
as any man, but how to make them
apply at a given time in a given
context, that takes the Holy Ghost and prayer
and humility and sometimes fasting and prayer and
sacrifice.
So always remember, being sound in the faith
doesn't mean that God has tossed the Bible
to you and said, Here is the rulebook,
goodbye.
Follow the rules and you'll make it through
the gates of latch.
Never, never.
God says, My boy, here is the rulebook.
Here are the precepts for righteousness.
Don't get puffed up now because you're a
weak person and situations change in like the
dancer's circumstance, so you'll never quite know how
to orientate yourself.
You lean on me hard.
You trust me constantly.
You pray all the time because otherwise you
won't know how to make that precept apply
in the hour when you need it.
Always remember, I repeat, God never tells you
anything to enable you to get along without
him.
And if you were to memorize the whole
Bible by heart, you'd still need the presence
of God and the living influences of the
Holy Ghost within you to enable you to
live even the tiniest verse of that Bible.
So always God suspends us in space.
We always like to get everything nailed down,
get a marker there and put up a
plaque.
And when friends come, be able to point
them and say, There is my religion, look
at that.
Isn't that solid, four legs solid on the
floor?
Solid, there it is!
We like it that way.
And we like to get a hold of
our verses and then say, Now I know
how to run my life.
And God says, No, my brother, my child,
you only know the broad outline.
The details must be filled in by prayer
and faith and humility.
Now, the broad precept he lays down here,
the attitude of the Christian, he says, Be
honest among the Gentiles, be seemly and good
and right and beyond reproach and upright.
Now, you see, those are all broad.
There are no details given.
But this is at the beating heart of
it, this is first, because it is indispensable
to know all the rules in the book.
But unless you live a life that is
honest and seemly and beyond reproach, it will
mean nothing to the Gentiles.
Then he says, Though they may slander you,
I have a notion that I am reading
from some other version, I guess I am.
Though they may slander you, as it says
here, though they may speak against you as
evil do.
Now, one version has a cute little phrase
thrown in here that he claims, I believe
it's Phillips, that he puts in that I
rather like.
He says, Though they slander you in the
usual way.
Isn't there something sort of sadly humorous about
that?
Though they slander you in the usual way,
he says, sort of in parenthesis.
In other words, you understand the language, you
know what I mean.
They slander you in the usual way.
Nevertheless, they are going to have to glorify
God on the day of visitation.
However we live now, those Christians in Peter's
day, they expected to get slandered.
It was standard procedure.
And when somebody says, I've been slandered, somebody
else had it as usual.
In the usual way.
Now, why do the unsaved Gentiles want to
slander Christians?
I believe there are a number of reasons.
One is that the once born react instinctively
against the twice born.
This is the doctrine that people don't understand
now, and not very many people are talking
about it.
But it's true, and if God ever sends
a revival to the world, we will all
see it then, that the once born react
in hostility by instinct toward the twice born.
There were Cain and Abel, and Cain reacted
hostily against Abel.
Cain, the once born, reacted in enmity toward
Abel, the twice born.
There were the two brothers, Isaac and Ishmael.
And Ishmael persecuted Isaac, the seed of the
free woman was persecuted by the seed of
the bound woman, by a natural hostility.
I don't know what scientists call it now,
but there used to be a phrase they
used, they called it natural enmity.
And they said there were certain beasts that
were natural enemies.
I do know that there are certain creatures
that instinctively fear other creatures, though they have
been reared in a zoo or brought up
around a house and have never seen those
creatures, they instinctively fear them.
Every hunter will tell you that if he
rides a horse and the horse begins to
tremble and rear and snort and whinny, that
he can be pretty sure that it's one
of the horse's natural enemies, usually the bear.
And the hunter, I suppose none of you
here ever hunted for anything except collar buttons
much, or your glasses, but hunters know that
a horse in the presence of a bear,
just the smell of a bear over the
next hill, he doesn't have to see him.
And even though he's a young colt that's
never been out hunting before and has never
been within smelling distance of a bear, he
goes all to pieces when he smells that
bear.
Every hunter knows that.
Well, that's a natural enemy.
There's something in that horse that fears and
hates that bear.
And it's not experience, it's a natural reaction.
So the world may never have seen a
Christian.
When we first went to China, you'll remember,
back in the days of Geoffrey and Glover,
when our missionaries first went to China and
they walked in there, born again, men and
women, they were called foreign devils.
And they lived at the peril of their
lives continually.
The first instinctive reaction of Buddhistic Confucianist China
was to react with hostility against the Christian
because he was born again.
The Christian wasn't doing him any harm, he
was just there.
It's because the Christian has in him one
spirit and the Gentiles have in him another,
and those spirits will never get together.
They can never compromise.
Christ had in him one spirit, and all
the world around him had another.
And so no matter what simple, innocent thing
Christ did, they were on him in a
minute, because not of what he did, not
even of what he said, but because of
what he was.
So you can count on it.
I mentioned this some time ago in a
gathering, and there was no criticism of it,
but there were questions.
One fellow was very much worried, it seems,
preaching like this would discourage young people from
becoming Christians.
So you tell them that if they become
Christians and the world will be against them,
you'll discourage them.
Truth never stopped God's work, and to tell
the truth never prevented anybody from being a
Christian.
But it's a terrible deception to present a
Christianity that is only half Christianity to a
young person, and then when the pressure comes
and the spitballs begin to fly in his
direction, he loses heart and quits.
Then we call him a backslider.
No, he's not a backslider, he's somebody that
never knew what he had hold of, or
what had hold of him.
Tell them the truth, brethren, always remember it.
The world will slander you as in the
usual way, and then jealousy.
Christians put the unsaved people to shame, and
they are jealous of them, as Cain was
jealous of Abel.
And in their hostile attitude, I notice a
bit of bravado and bluster, really, and simulated
enmity.
But also underneath there is a secret longing
to be like the Christian.
As a young fellow of seventeen, I was
saved.
Some people that knew me, a young fellow
that knew me, I used to walk by
the crowds, on my way maybe to church,
and didn't mingle too much with that group
of unsaved persons of whom I was thrown.
And one of them was afterwards converted, a
number of them converted, but one of them
afterwards said to me, Do you know the
thing that moved my heart and put me
under this conviction?
Just your going and coming amongst.
You didn't mingle, you just went and came.
And it put me under conviction.
It could say funny things and make cracks,
but underneath was a gnawing uncertainty.
The presence of an honest Christian living an
upright life in the midst of the Gentiles
is God Almighty's most powerful instrument to condition
men for the gospel of his Son, Jesus
Christ.
So a lot of this hostility is bravado,
and a lot of good talk is just
bluster.
Really, in their secret hearts, God put eternity
in even the sinner's heart, and he is
not satisfied when he thinks somebody else has
met the summoned woman and gotten hold of
that which for which he was born, and
he hasn't got it yet.
He'll be mad, he'll say unpleasant things, he'll
slander, maybe.
But the scripture says, they see your good
works.
Remember, friends, moral beings cannot very long argue
against righteousness.
A moral being cannot argue against righteousness successfully
very long.
Hitler tried it.
He defied all moral laws and turned righteousness
into sin and sin into righteousness.
He roared louder over the airwaves, probably, than
any other man has roared since the day
of the bulls at Beshan.
And his great armies went out.
But where is Hitler today?
Poor, staggering, tired, heart-sick Germany, who is
trying to find again the righteousness of her
Reformers.
Trying where she can is free to do
it, to find again the thing she threw
recklessly away under the needling of that great
roaring bull.
No, a nation can't argue very long against
righteousness.
And in Russia, I think that there isn't
anybody on earth, not even Joe McCarthy, that
hates Communism any more completely and bitterly and
unequivocally than I do.
I can't think of one long thing in
its favor, as we know it in Russia,
and I can't think of ten thousand reasons
why it ought to be exterminated like rabid
dogs.
But I haven't anything against the Russian people.
There are some of those old boot-wearing,
stodgy, solid, high-cheeked, boned Slavs that are
still believing in righteousness over there.
They're whispering it, but they're still believing it.
And if they can ever overthrow the devils
and the criminals, you'll find church fires pointing
toward heaven all over the steps and tundra
of Russia.
You can't successfully argue the validity of evil
to a moral people, I mean even an
unsaved people who have a certain morality within
them, so that when they see your good
works, you've pretty near taken away their weapon.
You've taken their gun out of their hand
and thrown it in the ditch.
They'll argue, they'll bluster, they'll shrut, they'll condemn
and slander as usual.
But they're not convinced by their own loud
talk.
You're convincing them by your good life.
Now, at last it says, they'll be forced
to glorify God in the day of visitation.
Now, translators don't know which of two things
is meant here, and I don't know either.
I'll give you both.
Whether he means by the day of visitation,
the time of trouble on earth, or whether
he means the day of judgment when the
Lord visits the men sinned upon themselves, I
don't know, I don't claim to know, I
don't think it can be discovered.
What Peter had in his mind, I don't
know, but he may have had both or
either.
So the very person that's against you in
the day of his trouble will be forced
to glorify God for you.
I don't know whether that could mean the
day of judgment or not.
I rather think it may mean the day
of trouble, as when poor Job was visited
with his tribulation, and others have been visited
with tribulation.
Now, I want to ask you this strange
inconsistency of a well-worn Christian brother living
down the block here, and everybody around about
smiles and shrugs and, well, he's a fanatic,
he goes to the Alliance Church and spends
his time in prayer, and he's a good
fellow, but there's something cracked, surely there, he's
a fanatic.
And all up and down the block there
are church people, but no Christians, just church
people, just church people.
One fellow comes out of his place in
the morning and starts off to church, he
looks like a Stanley Steamer, because he is
giving off flumes as he goes, he's off
to church.
And another fellow goes off to another church,
but nobody living right.
One fellow in the block, everybody knows how
he lives, he gets kitted, but everybody knows
how he lives.
Now, let somebody suddenly get into a great
crisis.
Let a critical something happen to somebody in
that block.
Who does it send for?
Always send for the man of God, always.
Always send for the man of God.
They glorify God in the day of visitation.
You know, brothers and sisters, I've said before,
there's a whole lot to be said in
favor of just living things down.
Just stay around and don't get impatient.
And if you just live right long enough
in your block, you'll get slandered a little,
but when trouble comes, you'll get called in.
It's always so.
They say, Oh, we love Father so-and
-so, he plays cards with us, he drinks
with us, he smokes with us, he can
even tell a, you know, occasionally he's a
funny fellow.
I don't know where he gets all those
jokes.
All right, let some critical thing happen in
the home.
And if they know where there's somebody that
can pray, they'll send for him.
They'll not send for the man who can
tell them a dirty joke.
So if you just keep right on living,
friend, I admit this kind of preaching doesn't
make a man popular, and people don't come
from all over to hear that kind of
preaching.
They'll want something right quick.
People go to a doctor and say, Doctor,
I feel all run down.
What do you recommend?
One doctor says, Well, straighten up, live right,
eat the right proper diet, get enough sleep,
and in six months' time you won't know
yourself.
We shrug him off.
Oh, Doctor, that sounds like an old country
doctor.
Don't you have something I can take?
I don't want to feel better tomorrow.
So he patiently gives us some pills which
we take, and psychologically we think we're better,
and we aren't.
We're impatient, we Americans, and the same with
Christianity.
People now want a Christianity in the form
of a pill, something that'll work real quick.
No, God says, don't get so anxious, you've
got eternity to live in.
Just live it out, just word it out,
just sweat it out.
Stay around, live right.
Let week follow week, and month follow month,
and keep writing, keep praying, and you'll win.
But God, I want to win today!
Well, but how about the 11th chapter of
Hebrews?
Some of those old Saints who believed God
and died without seeing anything happen much, but
they all died in faith.
So God wants you to live in faith,
and if you need to, die in faith.
You'll win at last, and when you go,
you'll leave a sweet fragrance behind you, for
they can break, they can shatter the vase
if they will, but the scent of the
roses will hang round it still.
In your family, you wonder about your family,
I wonder about mine, my brother, my sister,
my relatives, in-laws, I wonder about them.
I don't know much that I can do,
but I know one thing, if I live
right and walk before them as I should,
I'm putting up an argument they can't successfully
confuse.
And perhaps, if I just live it through,
they'll glorify God in the day of visitation.
Now, that's what Peter said.
All I've done is illustrate it, that's all.
I just stayed by what Peter said.
May God bless you too, your good and
mine.