I suppose the first thing that we see
here is the true humility of Jesus.
Jesus knowing that, and then following that, there
are three things that Jesus is said of.
He knew that the Father had put all
things into his hands.
He knew that he had come from God,
and he knew that he was going back
to God's end, just knowing these things.
Obviously, he knew that he had been in
the bosom of the Father and had come
out.
He knew that he was very shortly now
to return again to the bosom of the
Father, where he had in undisturbed tranquility from
the beginning of the beginning, before the beginning
was dwelt with the Father.
And he knew that because of his death
on the cross and resurrection, which were shortly
to take place, that all things were to
be forever delivered into his hands.
Now, knowing this, he laid aside his garment
and took a towel and washed the disciples'
feet and wiped them with that towel.
Now that Jesus Christ our Lord could do
one in the light of the other, accent
his humility.
If he had not known that all things
were delivered into his hands, if he had
not known that he had come from the
Father, if he had not known that he
was soon to return to the Father again,
he might easily have washed the disciples' feet
on his own level without stooping, and there
would have been no humility there.
But knowing his high and exalted position, both
by his being and by his work, he
laid aside his garments and washed the disciples'
feet.
You see, what I'm trying to show you
here is that to be low and to
act low is not humility.
For a native of New Guinea, to act
like a native of New Guinea is not
humility.
A fellow simply acting in keeping with his
character.
He's doing what comes naturally.
He is playing his character with himself.
But for a Dutchman raised in Chicago and
educated in good schools, to go there and
be forced to come down onto the level
of a native and to live like a
native at least for periods of time, and
to come down, that's humility.
Humility is not acting low if you are
low.
It is coming down from conscious heights to
a low position.
Now, to be high and to stoop low,
that is humility.
To think little of ourselves is not humility.
You see, brethren, it is unbelief to think
little of ourselves.
To think well of ourselves and then to
stoop low for Jesus' sake and for the
sake of humanity, that is true humility.
There isn't any other kind of humility than
this.
It was said of our Lord Jesus Christ
in Milton's great poem, that glorious form, that
light unsufferable, and that far-beaming blaze of
majesty, wherewith he was wont to sit at
heaven's high council table.
All things he laid aside and here with
us to be, forsook the courts of everlasting
day to take and find with us a
house of mortal clay.
Now, that was humility.
To come down from that far-beaming blaze
of majesty, to come down from the final
unity of the Godhead, to come down from
the insufferable light that no man can approach
unto, and to take with us a darksome
house of human clay, that is humility.
Now, I wish that we might see this,
my brethren, and understand it, that humility is
not thinking little of yourself.
To think little of yourself is to doubt
and to be filled with unbelief, because God
made you in his image, and outside of
sin you have nothing to be ashamed of.
And God even said, I have made the
hymn a little while lower than the angel.
And he was talking about the Son of
Man, but he was also talking about the
sons of men.
And in that day, when the last soul
is in, and the last tear is shed,
and the last pain is felt, and the
last woe is suffered, and the last journey
is made, you will find that the redeemed
church of God is above the angels, and
that the angels of God shall worship him
and the angels of God shall be servants
of his church.
For a Christian, not to know who he
is is no indication of humility, it is
an indication of ignorance, or unbelief, or both.
You and I ought to think well of
ourselves.
And then, for Christ's sake and humanity's sake,
we ought to come down as low as
we need to go in order that we
might help everybody.
The man who thinks he is no good
and acts no good is no good.
But the person who knows that he is
dear to God, and knows that in Jesus
Christ he has been exalted to heavenly places
and made to sit down with him in
those heavenly places, and yet will watch disciples
speak, and yet will go to the Capuletans,
or that's the correct pronunciation, brother, and will
go to the plain people and will serve
and take a bowl of soup or a
glass of milk to the poor widow who
scrubs the floor of the man who is
ill and will do that all the time,
knowing that he belongs to God, knowing that
he is, both by first creation and by
the new creation, higher than any being there
is, because of that original imprint of the
image of God.
That's humility.
And it's the only kind of humility there
is.
Go into the certain ghetto sections or certain
sections, even in the United States, and you
will find conditions about as primitive as it's
possible to imagine them.
You will find that.
And then we talk about them being humble.
No, they're not humble.
They're dirty.
They're not humble.
They're simply low down because they have never
been inspired to rise.
The woman who goes about all day in
her bad, dirty feet and with her hair
uncombed, as I've seen them, and with streams
of deuce, you know, Swedes know what that
is, snuff down her chin, she's not a
humble soul.
And don't you say, oh, she's a poor,
humble soul.
No, she's nothing of the sort.
She's dirty.
She thinks little of herself.
She doesn't know who she is.
She doesn't know she's made in God's image.
So that's not an evidence of humility.
That is an evidence of lack of common
aspiration.
But for that woman educated in the school
and taught the finer things of life, and
then to get converted and to become a
mountain worker and to put on an old
pair of grimy overalls and ride an old
Jeep up the mountain trail and go into
that dirty home filled with dogs and lice
and mice and children, sit down in the
dirt and talk to that woman about her
soul, sit down and swallow her gleamish feelings
and eat, in that home there is humility.
That was conscious descent from where you know
you are to where God sends you for
the sake of suffering humanity.
That's humility.
It's time we got over this idea that
if a person is cultured and has an
education and has lived a better kind of
life, that he's high and proud and that
she's walked around in her bare feet until
they're twice too big and she's dirty and
out of shape and disheveled, she's humble.
It's all wrong, my brethren.
It's bad thinking, bad philosophy, unscriptural.
Jesus Christ did not wash the disciples' feet
because he didn't know any better.
He didn't wash the disciples' feet because he
had been a servant and was acting like
a servant.
He washed the disciples' feet knowing that he
had been with God and was going back
to God and that the whole universe was
in the palm of his hand.
Then he deliberately got out his towel and
his basin, poured the water, washed the feet
and said, I hope you know what I
did.
Ah, my brethren, that's humility.
And I wonder when Milton said that glorious
form he laid aside and here with us
to be, I wonder if he didn't have
in mind John 13 and after supper he
laid aside his garments.
I think he did.
Old John was a great lover of the
scriptures, you know.
So I think that's where he got it.
Now, about Jesus washing the disciples' feet.
Now what I plan to say from here
on, I'll be as brief as I can
and as long as I must.
What I plan to say from here on,
I want it understood, I want several things
understood.
I want it understood that what I'm saying
is what I believe the Bible teaches, not
what I have been taught by the Alliance.
What I shall say now is not fed
any controversial spirits, because there would be no
reason in the world why I should gratuitously
raise the question of foot-washing in church.
And third, that what I'm going to say
now is said with the deepest respect for
and appreciation of those churches that teach literal
foot-washing.
I have been among the Mennonites who practice
literal foot-washing, that is, that at a
certain service they bear one foot, men on
one side of the church and women on
the other, and the people go through and
they wash each other's feet, or wash each
other's foot.
Now, the Mennonites do that, and I have
preached for the Mennonites, and I have seen
them weep at the altar, and I have
heard them shout the praise of God while
I preach, and I know these Mennonites are
good people.
And if I were in a city where
there was a strong Mennonite church and there
wasn't an Alliance church, I'd be most happy
to attend a Mennonite church if they'd have
me.
And I also have the utmost respect for
the Dumpers, the German Baptists, who also practice
foot-washing.
I have utmost respect for the Church of
the Brethren, whose hymnbook, incidentally, we use here.
I have preached for the Church of the
Brethren.
My good friend Carlton down here a few
blocks, I forget the name of his place,
is a sweet, warm Christian brother, and his
people sometimes come here to church.
And if any of them are here tonight,
I want you to understand that I have
the utmost respect for and the deepest appreciation
of you and the kind of thing you
stand for.
About a year ago I was out in
Pennsylvania and preached there three times in Messiah
College at what was called their, I don't
know what they called it, we would have
called it our council.
Nine hundred of them were gathered there, and
I preached three times.
I told you that before.
And the night that I arrived, I was
to speak three times the next day.
They had their foot-washing service that evening,
and they very courteously invited me to sit
in on it.
But I had been traveling all day and
was desperately tired and wanted to be at
my best, so I excused myself and said,
Brother Hostetter, if you will excuse me and
forgive me, I'll go and go to bed.
So I'll be at my best.
I'll not go to your service.
It's quite all right.
But if I had been there and they
had wanted me to do it, I'd have
no hesitation in joining in.
So I say this in order to clear
myself of striking a sermonic blow at the
humblest and loveliest people that I think I
have met, the Church of the Brethren and
some of the Mennonite folks and some of
the Church of God people.
Now, having said that, I want to tell
you what I believe this teaches here.
In the first place, the disciples' feet needed
to be washed.
They had bathed.
The Jews were very clean people, like the
Japanese, and they had already bathed, Jesus said
so afterward.
But they had traveled to the place where
the meeting was being held, where they were
eating, and there were no paved streets.
And the cattle and the goats and the
rest traveled around over the little narrow streets
with the results that we all might imagine,
a dirty, littered street.
And it was a dry part of the
country, and there were things dried up, mud
dried up, and pretty soon they had ground
it to pulp.
And they had dust there.
And they wore sandals, not shoes like we
men, but sandals like some of you women.
And toeless, soulless, topless, and all the rest.
Simply a good excuse, a gesture in the
general direction of a shoe, and you'll pay
$14 for it, and it doesn't fit you.
But that's the kind of thing they wore,
sandals.
Naturally, when a man had traveled and had
wandered his way, as the Evangelist always says,
between goats and asses and cows and what
have you and people over the dusty road,
no matter how he might have bathed before
he started, when he arrived, there was a
quarter of an inch of dust on his
feet.
And so when they came to eat, it
was common courtesy that a servant came around
and washed their feet.
Their feet needed to be washed.
Now, my brethren, humility never does anything unnecessary,
never practices on anybody.
And never does anything merely formally and perfunctorily
for the sake of getting in your good
homework.
A lot of humility and a lot of
so-called spirituality in the day in which
I live, we are simply piling up merit.
You say, that's Catholic doctrine.
Ah, but we Protestants have it too and
don't think we don't.
We have so many tracts to give out
every day and so many souls to speak
about every day and so many everything to
do every day, and so we pile up
merit.
And many an old sinner has had a
red-faced, busy, fat, talking personal worker go
to work on him for no higher motive
than the personal worker had to get his
homework in.
Now, that's not service and that's not humility
and that's not godliness and that's not what
Jesus did here.
Foot-washing that cleans a foot is a
practical service and that could be done anywhere.
Foot-washing that does no service is futile
and it's simply a waste of time, though
it's perfectly harmless.
And if they're in everything else, they love
God and each other.
What's the idea?
We wouldn't raise any trouble over that.
I'd never split a church over foot-washing.
I'd go through with it all right.
But the point is, anything that is not
done out of necessity and doesn't perform a
service is empty gesture.
Now, let's look at Jesus and Peter.
Peter knew his Master and he knew that
his Master was stooping down to be a
servant and naturally he objected strenuously.
He wasn't an unbeliever objecting to the ordinance
of foot-washing, as some of our brethren
might have it.
Peter had never heard of it except as
a common social practice over those dusty, dirty
streets, and all he objected to was that
Jesus Christ, his Lord and Master, should ever
stoop to take the place of a servant.
To his objection, our Lord Jesus Christ turned
this common thing into a spiritual one, just
the way he often did.
Remember that in John 4, a woman said
to him, he said to a woman, give
me the drink, and she said, why do
you ask me for water, seeing that you
are a Jew and I am a Samaritan
woman and the two of them are fused
with each other?
The McCoys and the Hatfields don't get along
and why should you ask me for water?
And then the Lord began with a glass
of water and he went on from that
to the water of life and the deep
well that was flowing up unto eternal life.
And he taught the spirituality of religion and
the fact that wells and cities and mountains
didn't matter, but he that worshipeth God must
worship him in spirit and in truth.
Then in the 6th chapter of John, he
fed the multitude and when they came around
and started talking about it, he turned it
around and elevated it and used the common
matter of raising bread as an object lesson
and raised and elevated their thinking to the
high heights of spirituality and said that he
that eateth my bread and drinketh my blood
and so on, and some left him.
They couldn't take the sheer spirituality of it,
but he had taken an ordinary thing, water
and bread, two things, and had showed them
to have inner content.
Now in the 13th chapter, we come to
the common social custom of washing the feet,
having a servant to wash the feet before
the meal.
And Jesus Christ, our Lord, does the same
thing there.
He makes the application and he raises it
up from the level of the plain foot
washing up unto the high spiritual level and
says, in effect, I humbled myself to serve
you in your need in order that you
should learn to humble yourself to help others
in their need.
And what I do now, thou knowest not,
but thou shalt know hereafter.
You see, it was deeper and of more
spiritual significance than they ever dreamed.
Then he said, if you knew these things,
happy are ye if you do them.
Now, my friends, the great danger here was
the danger of literalizing his lessons.
And that is the great danger today, the
danger of literalizing the lessons.
You see, the easiest thing in the world,
the easiest way to discharge this 13th chapter
of John is to wash somebody's foot.
There couldn't be anything easier.
We all come to church all fixed up
and perfumed up and carefully ivory-soaked.
Then we sit down and somebody washes the
foot already clean, and then we say, now
that's fulfilling the passage.
All right, do it.
And I say, if I were in your
church and I'd go right along, I'd have
no objection, nothing wrong with it, it's just
all right.
But the point is, it is literalizing a
spiritual thing, and if you don't look out,
you'll take the easy way out.
For the easy way out is to wash
a clean foot.
And I have no doubt that many of
those who practice literal foot washing wouldn't stoop
to go down to the ghetto and wash
a colored man's foot, wouldn't stoop to go
to the prison and give the gospel there
to some group of forgotten pariahs rejected by
society.
They discharge the whole weight of this chapter
for sitting in church every Sunday evening and
washing somebody's clean foot.
So miss the lesson altogether.
Now I want to talk a little, and
that won't be too long I hope, about
the error of literalizing spiritual truth.
To literalize, of course, means to give a
truth its fulfillment in the performance of an
external act.
The truth is laid down, and it has
an external shell like baptism.
And then we literalize it by allowing it
to be fulfilled in the external act.
And thus we escape the force of it
in the sharp nails of the cross and
death to self and crucifixion of our ego.
We escape all that by literally fulfilling a
passage in its external application.
Institutionalized religion has always done that.
They've literalized doctrine.
And they have missed the living heart of
it by making it external.
They've put it on the outside instead of
on the inside, forgetting that God lives not
on the outside, but on the heart.
Against this fatal error of fulfilling the external
letter of the law and missing the inner
spiritual meaning, against that fatal error the prophets
of old times pleaded and thundered and wept.
And for it they got thrown into jail
and some of them slain.
And against that fatal error of literalizing a
doctrine and escaping the force of it by
so doing, Jesus our Lord himself warned while
he was on earth and for it he
got crucified and nailed on a cross.
And we escape the truth.
We escape the deadly and glorious life-giving
weight of the cross by literalizing it.
Put the cross on your church steeple and
you've escaped the weight of the cross, the
sharp killing point of the dagger.
Put the cross around your neck on a
chain and you have escaped all the meaning
of the cross by literalizing it, externalizing it,
objectifying it, putting it on the outside.
Take baptism, for instance.
I've heard on the air and I know
and have friends who believe that you are
born into the kingdom of God by water
baptism.
They carry out Matthew 28 to the letter,
baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost, and behind those curtains is a baptistry,
and we believe in it here.
But do you know the easiest way in
the world, the less painful, the least painful,
and the least purifying, and the easiest, is
to obey Matthew 28?
Go get baptized.
Whatever mode they practice in your church, go
get baptized.
And then you get a certificate.
This, the undersigned, this will certify that the
undersigned has been duly administered the rite of
holy baptism in such and such church, signed
Rev. So-and-so.
Keep that around when the Lord comes and
you'll be all right.
The easiest way in the world to escape
the force and the power and the sharp
point and the weight of the meaning of
Scripture is to do the thing on the
outside and dust off your hands and say,
it is done.
Brethren, it's not quite so easy to go
to Romans 6.
Let's go there a little bit.
Romans 6 tells us a few things.
Matthew 28 doesn't tell us.
I can find it here, but I can't.
Shall we then continue in sin that grace
may abound, God forbid?
Know ye not that so many of us
as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized
into his death?
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism
into death.
That like as Christ was raised up from
the dead by the glory of the Father,
even so we also should walk in newness
of life.
For if we have been planted together in
the likeness of his death, we shall be
also in the likeness of his resurrection.
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified
with him, that the body of sin might
be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve
sin.
For he that is dead is freed from
sin.
That's not so easy, is it?
That's spiritualizing.
That's getting at the roots of it.
The external practice of it is simply the
external practice, but the meaning of it is
spiritual.
When anybody is put into the water in
baptism, if he has not also gone in
or does not also follow the Lord into
the crucifixion of his old life and the
rising in newness of life, then he has
simply gotten away in a very ecclesiastical way.
That's all.
Nothing else has happened.
He's a sinner who is dry.
Until he went in, he comes out a
sinner who is wet.
And there is no difference.
But oh, how many there are that look
back with hope upon the hour they went
into the water and were baptized.
Now, I say we practice baptism here, but
I trust that we do not literalize it
to the point where we believe that it
has been fulfilled when we have gone into
the water.
It would be as foolish as for a
woman to get married, then go to the
door, pull up her wedding ring, say goodbye,
honey, and leave her husband for the rest
of her life.
And then if anybody said, Are you married?
She'd say, Sure, look at this.
She had the symbol of it, but she
didn't have the reality of it.
No home, no children, no responsibility, no housework.
Some other part of the world.
And the man who had given her the
ring was way back there.
And there she had the symbol of that
which had never been consummated.
And so it is in spiritual things.
To be baptized with water, confirmed, sprinkled, or
have anything else done to you without having
the spiritual reality is to lose yourself in
externalities and never consummate the spiritual meaning at
all.
And there's the Lord's Supper.
Again, we observe the Lord's Supper in this
church once a month.
But the literal observation or observance of the
Lord's Supper costs us absolutely nothing.
It costs you nothing to get baptized.
They don't even charge you for it in
Protestant churches.
It costs you nothing, except the inconvenience of
getting wet and cleaning up again before you
take your place in the audience.
It costs nothing to have the Lord's Supper.
Anybody can receive the Lord's Supper in its
external, literal observance.
1 Corinthians 11, listen to this.
This is another matter altogether.
It says here, For he that eateth and
drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself
of not discerning the Lord's body.
And all the weight of Paul's argument here
is that they were doing an external act
without knowing what its internal meaning was.
And they carried the thing so far that
they actually overate and overdrank at the communion
table.
And he said, You are being judged by
God because you do not see the internal
meaning of this.
You have institutionalized and literalized the Lord's Supper.
I never know whether to go away and
weep or growl or pray or just how
to take it.
The idea that tithing is a slick way
to make nine-tenths go better than ten
-tenths used to.
If that's true, sir, then you would be
a business fool if you didn't tithe.
You don't lose anything by tithing.
It's a business investment and you get more
back than you put in.
Yet that's what I hear.
Tithe and your nine-tenths will go further
than your ten-tenths did.
Well, anybody that wouldn't do that, somebody tell
me that if I will if I will
give away a dollar and keep nine, I'll
have eleven as a result, I'd get rich
in twenty-four hours.
All you have to do is keep books
and juggle your money.
No, peeling off one dollar out of every
ten and giving it to the church is
the easiest possible way to discharge your obligation.
That's why I never like to compete with
other churches in missionary office.
Some Alliance Church I heard of that's having
a big offering, one of the members said,
we're tired having Park Street Church get that
credit.
Oh, sister, come down off of that old
nag before God lets you and your church
down I wasn't this church that said it,
but that was quoted to me as having
been said by one of these churches that's
going to town on missionary giving.
No, my brethren, if that's your reason for
giving, you're doing the easiest possible thing.
A person can give commissions and give to
the church and give heavily and never have
the cross touch their inner life at all.
Never have the nails enter their hands or
feet.
Never die to themselves.
Still have their own way in everything.
Many a Christian woman walks up and sticks
a little sanctified chin at her husband and
makes him peel off of his old tie
and brings it to the church.
She's had her way and reversed the order
of the scriptures which says that the men,
she's the head of the house, and she's
done God's service, she thinks.
In that great day when everything's leveled down,
nobody can tuck himself out any.
Everybody's reduced to size.
There'll be a lot of us weep some
tears.
I'm glad that the scripture says that there'll
be no tears in heaven because God will
wipe them all away.
John R.
Wright claims, I think, that there'll be tears
in heaven otherwise they couldn't be wiped away.
And for once I'd like to say I
agree with the man.
That, uh, that, uh, the, the, oh, I
agree with him on a lot of things.
That's not at all.
I come from Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania Dutch have a way of saying
things backwards.
I say that in that day some of
us will find that when we decided to
give our tie when we decided to take
the easy, external way of serving our God.
Say, don't you believe in tithing?
Oh, I believe in tithing and some more.
But I warn you against literalizing it to
the point where you fail to see its
meaning.
Jesus told the fellow who tithed mint and
cumin and myrrh and everything else, he said,
you did right in it.
This you should have done.
Here's where you broke down the weightier matters
of the law.
Mercy and kindness and love.
You've forgotten it.
And you have institutionalized and literalized the service
of God.
And you've carefully gone and weighed out your
mint and myrrh and anise.
And you have gone away feeling that you've
done God's service.
No, no, said Jesus.
Because that is only the external shell of
religion.
The internal heart of religion is love and
faith and kindness and mercy.
And you've had none of these.
But you're good tithers.
And then there's church attendance.
There are those who haven't heard from God
for 21 years.
And they have been in church every Sunday
for 22.
And you couldn't get them.
Usually you'd have them be carried there on
a shutter.
There's church attendance.
And I believe in it myself.
I think we ought to go to church
regularly.
And when I preached this morning on one
of the roots of the righteous being regularity,
I meant what I said.
If you know what you can do, you
can literalize church attendance and never get anything
from God year in and year out and
still always be in your place.
Why tread ye my courts, says the Holy
Ghost?
Why tread ye my courts?
To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices and your burnt offerings and the fatter
-fed beasts?
And when ye come to appear before me,
who requires your hand to tread my courts?
Bring no more vain oblations and incense, their
abominations unto me.
And your new moons and sabbaths and calling
of assemblies, I can't stand.
It's iniquity, even your solemn church service.
Your new moons and your Lent and your
Fridays and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth.
There are trouble unto me, I am weary
to bear them.
When ye spread forth your hands, I'll hide
mine eye.
Wash you, make you clean, put away the
evil of your doings from before mine eyes.
Cease to do evil, learn to do well.
Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless,
plead for the widow, and then come and
let us reason together, saith the Lord.
Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they
shall be as white as snow.
Astutiously, we have ruled out that opening passage.
Wash you, make you clean, put away the
evil of your doings, learn to do well,
seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless,
plead for the widow.
And a little quartet will stand up and
sing in a very sad, soft catterwall, though
your sins be as scarlet, though your sins
be as scarlet.
Nothing is said about washing you, making you
clean, putting away the evil of your doings,
learning to do well, judging the fatherless, relieving
the oppressed.
And it's all here together!
The Holy Ghost put it here.
So you see, friends, the easiest way to
do anything is to observe the external observers,
or observe the external fulfillment.
Then there is simple living.
And again, I would say that any of
you who have convictions about their simplicity of
dress, that is all right.
And I think that we've gone too far
the other way, and I think you women
could stand a lot of good preaching, too.
And I think that a lot of these
ravings under dark bridges, some of you good
Christian women have put it in the heads
of these young crazy fellows.
Not by anything you said or did, you
wouldn't stoop to that, but because you insisted
on dressing like Lana Turner.
Now, that's just on the side, that wasn't
in the sermon.
But I say, and I mean that, and
don't you get rid of it now by
laughing.
I mean what I say.
Simple living.
But you know something?
The easiest way, let me read it to
you here in the Bible.
Likewise, ye wives, if you have been subject
unto your own husbands, that is, they may
not the word, they also may without the
word be won by the conversation of your
wives.
That's conduct.
While they withhold your chaste conversation, couple with
fear.
Whose adorning?
Let it not be that outward adorning of
padding of hair and wearing of gold or
of putting on of apparel.
Period.
Now, that's as far as some people go.
So, they studiously avoid adorning, outward adorning, padding
of their hair, which means braiding.
They will not wear gold.
They never go quite so far as to
rule out putting on of apparel.
They put on some kind of apparel.
Usually it's not very good looking, but at
least it covers up.
And then they put a period there.
But did you know that's only part of
it?
That's the external and that's the easy way,
sister.
The easiest way in the world for you
to get rid of the point of this
is to go home and decide to lower
your skirts four inches and wear nothing but
long-sleeved dresses and dress full fashion.
Now, if you do that, that's the easiest
way to get around this.
But what do the rest of us say?
Who's adorning?
Let it not be the outward adorning, but
let it be the hidden man of the
heart, in that which is not corruptible, even
the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,
which in the sight of God is of
great price.
The spiritual side of it is that the
heart must be an ornament, that it must
be meek and lowly and quiet and holy
in the sight of God.
So you see, sister, the easiest way for
you to fulfill Peter's instruction is to dress
a little more modestly.
And I wish you would for that matter.
But if that's as far as it goes,
you haven't had anything happen to you yet.
It's a lot easier to wear a long
dress than it is to humble yourself and
do what your husband tells you to do,
because that's what it says here.
It's a lot easier to wear long sleeves
than it is to have a meek and
quiet, humble heart.
Keep still instead of talking back.
I've gotten in trouble with everybody in Chicago
tonight, haven't I?
Is there anybody left?
I'll fire you up.
Not you?
All right.
And it's true, nevertheless.
Now I'm through and I hope for three
minutes.
The difficulty that lies here has led to
two mistakes.
It has led to people taking refuge in
literal fulfillments and forgetting that everything is given
for the heart's sake.
It has led, on the other side, to
denying the literal meaning of everything altogether and
throwing it out.
Quakers did.
They said, if you want a baptism, out
it goes.
Baptism is inward.
Lord's Supper, out it goes.
And there are those in Chicago who say,
church attendance?
I'll go to the field like it if
I don't feel like it'll stay in bed.
That is using Christian liberty as a license
for the flesh.
Both are mistakes.
The correct way is to obey the letter
of the word, but in doing it, knowing
that it's only for society and the outward
eye and for uniformity and regularity that it's
the external shell, the scaffoldings of the temple,
and then not neglect the inward sanctuary.
And in your baptism, rise in newness of
life to walk in the Spirit.
In your Lord's Supper, eat indeed of the
Body and Blood of Christ by humility and
faith.
In your tithing, give more.
And then in your humility, say, O Lord,
I've given nothing.
And accept it as a sacred ministry.
Your church attendance, come regularly and all the
time to all kinds of weather.
Bow your head when you come and say,
My God, if you don't open my heart
and illuminate my spirit, this will just be
a trip to church.
Help me to be kind and loving and
do well and teach that you do evil
and be good to the poor and help
the widow in order that this sermon might
do me some good.
And in your simplicity of living, if you
want to live and dress with a modesty
becoming you as a Christian woman, don't imagine
you've purchased merit by so doing.
But say, O God, help me and while
my outer adorning is simple, let my inner
life be a shining diamond for God.
Let the gold and the silver and the
platinum and the silk and the beauty of
it be in my heart.
Well, that means foot-washing back to where
we started.
And it doesn't try to settle.
My own personal convictions are that the Lord
has given us two ordinances.
The Lord's Supper and water baptism.
And that foot-washing was not intended to
be an ordinance.
But I nevertheless have utter respect for those
who believe otherwise.
And believe that in their simplicity they do
what they believe is right, and if they
also have the inner adorning and in their
humility do it for Christ's sake, I believe
God will honor them.
So I do not see it that way.
If I believed in it, I'd practice it.
And if the church board said, Mr. Tozer,
you can't be pastor of this church and
teach it, I would say, all right, goodbye,
it's been nice to know.
I'll go somewhere where I can preach it.
But I don't happen to believe that that's
literally to be so.
I just happen to believe that that was
one more of the many simple things that
Jesus did.
Like the birds and the flowers and kings
and builders and all the rest that he
used to show for spiritual meaning.
But two ordinances stand out.
The church of Christ has held them all
down the centuries.
So two things are necessary, my brethren.
Obedience and a deep inner understanding of the
Holy Ghost in the heart.
Those two things are necessary.
Else all our observances mean nothing at all.
Institutionalized Christianity grinds people through as they grind
them into the urn and put the uniform
on them and send them out.
It's not so easy, brethren.
Bible schools teach how to win souls and
through easy lessons.
And you get a hard old sinner and
take him through Dr. So-and-So's easy
way to win a soul.
And he comes to him and he's been
given the treatment, but he isn't saved.
He's just been given the treatment.
He goes out thinking he's saved, and he's
proud of the fact he's saved, but he's
not saved.
Nothing's ever happened inside of his heart.
There hasn't been a change.
He hasn't learned to do well and ceased
to do evil.
He hasn't learned to help the poor and
the fatherless and do good and walk humbly
with his God.
So his sins have not been washed away.
The scarlet iniquities in his heart have not
been made white as snow.
He has observed the text and missed the
inner meaning.
Or they take him and put him into
the water and bring him out.
These folks cry on his neck, say, Oh,
I'm so glad you got baptized, but nothing
has ever happened in his heart.
Let's not avoid the cross by carrying the
cross around our necks.
Let's let the cross enter where it belongs
into our hearts and slay the old man
with these deeds.
Then we'll know the true meaning of the
cross and deeds.
And so will all other ordinances.
If you go to a church with a
worship meeting, go ahead and worship, and don't
ever say that I said any smart thing
about it or that I oppose it.
I don't.
I just don't think it's for us now.
But, please, if you're practicing, be sure you
know what you do.
For Jesus said, You don't know now.
This is the external thing.
You don't know.
If that's all there was to it, then
you'd know.
But you don't know now.
But when the Holy Ghost came and God
took religion from the outside and put it
on the inside, then they knew.
And I hope you know.
I hope we all know.
Oh, God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
when you're going to be around long, none
of us, these young people, without a gray
hair, without any evidence of age at all
upon them, they won't be around long.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all
its sons away.
They fly forgotten as a dream dies at
the opening day.
The little tribes of flesh and blood with
all their cares and fears are carried downward
like a flood and lost in the following
years.
Oh, God, we pray, give us spiritual goodness.
Give us insight.
Give us prophetic vision.
Please help us to see past brick walls
and water and beads and fruit and basins
and bread.
My God!
These things all perish with you, isn't it?
Help us to see past it all and
discern the Lord's body and discern the deep
meaning of things.
Lord Jesus, they crucified you because thou didst
see the deep and the meaning of things
and they saw nothing but the shell.
Please help us that we may not be
on the side of them who crucified you
in our sympathies.
Help us, rather, to get over on the
side of them than understood by midlife that
the kingdom of God is within you and
that you are the temple of the Holy
Ghost which you have of God and that
Christ dwelleth in you except to be reprobate
and that Christ in you is the hope
of glory.
Please, Lord, we pray thee, keep us right
and help us to be right in all
the practical things of life.
Help us to be sound and practical and
help us also, great God, to pierce through
all the outer scaffolding and gaze and gaze
and gaze.
For there is a kind of fire that
burns between the wings of the chariot.
O bring, O bring, thy loving Spirit into
every troubled breast.
Let us all in thee inherit, let us
find that second rest.
Great God, take away our bent to sinning,
our sandal misery.
In the faith of this beginning set our
hearts at liberty.
Now, God, we pray thou would talk to
everybody's heart tonight.
In this frank and blunt message, we pray
that thou would help everybody to understand what
is meant that no good person might be
offended.
If an angry bad man goes away mad,
we haven't much care because they walk away
from thee white with anger.
But we don't want any good person to
go away feeling bad, unless, by conviction, the
Holy Spirit is trying to teach him the
error of his ways.
O for Christ's sake we pray that thou
would make thy people good people.
May it be said of us, every one,
if not now, then may it very soon
be true of every one of us, he
was a good man and full of the
Holy Ghost.
Grant this, we pray, for Jesus.