Now this, as you understand, represents stages in
the journey.
This is about 20-some sermons I've preached
on it, and I've arrived at verse, we've
arrived at verse 8, chapter 3.
This is a faithful saying, and these things
I will that thou affirm constantly, that they
which have believed in God might be careful
to maintain good works.
These things are good and profitable unto men.
Now this little phrase, this is a faithful
saying, it's really a sentence, is characteristic of
Paul, in fact, peculiar to Paul.
And commentators don't quite agree, they don't disagree,
they just don't quite agree, about whether Paul
meant, this the foregoing is a faithful saying,
that after the kindness and love of God
our Savior toward man appeared, and so on,
or whether Paul meant the following is a
faithful saying.
You can't judge by the way it's versified,
for the versification was not the original.
Knox translates it, it is well said and
I would have you dwell on it, that
those who have learned to trust in God,
so on.
So I think and believe that Paul meant
the following is a faithful saying, and these
things I will that thou constantly affirm, namely,
that they which have believed in God might
be careful to maintain good works.
Now this phrase is used by Paul in
the Bible, and by nobody else but Paul.
The nearest to it comes in that passage,
in two passages in Revelation, these are the
true sayings of God, and these words are
true and faithful.
But no place else does anybody say this
is a faithful saying, that was Paul's phrase.
Now he said in 1 Timothy 1.15,
this is a faithful saying that Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners, of
which I am chief.
He said in 1 Timothy 4.9, bodily
exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable for
all things.
And he says in 2 Timothy 2.11,
is it?
2 Timothy 2.11, if I have it
right, I will not bother to look for
it.
But yes, he says, it is a faithful
saying, for if we be dead with him,
we shall also live with him.
If we suffer, we shall also reign with
him.
If we deny him, he will also deny
us.
Then he uses it again in the text
of the morning.
Now I think this needs to be explained
a little bit, not that any great world
-shaking matter hangs upon it, but it's good
to know what a man means and why
he said it, even if it is not
the most important thing that he ever said.
The using of the phrase, this is a
faithful saying, doesn't make the Bible any less
true or any more true.
But we are interested in this man, Paul,
we owe more to him than to anybody
else except Jesus Christ, perhaps David.
So we'd like to know why he said
this.
Now I give you my explanation.
I think that the fact that it's stated
in simple, non-scholarly language doesn't make it
any less true.
And if I were to encumber it with
learned jargon, it wouldn't make it any more
true.
So here's the explanation.
That in the early Church, before the epistles
were written, there were many sayings that came
from Jesus our Lord and from his apostles
that had not gotten written yet.
And they were sung as snatches of hymns.
They were repeated often among the people, such
as some of our phrases, Jesus never fails
and God answers prayer and so on, or
trust and obey, phrases that are not biblical
but that sum up biblical truth simply.
And you hear it often.
You many times hear a preacher say, we
sing, and then you'll quote part of a
hymn and say, this is true.
Well, now that's what Paul meant here.
The people of Paul's time had a little
saying among themselves that Christ Jesus came into
the world to save sinners.
And he said, now that's true.
That's a faithful saying.
He said, you'll hear it and it's so.
Then bodily exercise profits little, but godliness is
profitable under all things.
He said, now that's true.
You hear this said and that's faithfully said.
And then this about Christians, all Christians ought
to maintain good works.
I said, you hear that said often.
The preachers say it often and it's come
down to us from our Lord.
Now he said, that's a faithful saying.
That's the explanation.
And that's why he used it.
Now he said, I want you to affirm
this constantly, keep saying this, dwell on it.
Said the translation read before, dwell on this.
They had been saying it, but he said,
now I want you to know that it's
true and therefore keep saying it.
This is more than a good thing.
It's so true that it's divinely true.
And it must be repeated.
You must keep bearing down on this and
I will let you affirm it constantly.
See, preachers are supposed to have nothing much
to do but sit around and then appear
in the pulpit on Sunday.
But the simple fact is to keep a
balance between unnecessary repetition and sufficient repetition to
make a thing work, takes a lot of
prayer and a lot of hard thought.
Some brethren just repeat continually, till I don't
know where I could go to sleep better
than sitting third row back in their church.
Because they won't say a thing that I
haven't already heard.
And they won't even say it in a
different way.
But there is another matter and that is
that if you don't keep hammering on it,
people will forget it.
If you don't keep saying it, it won't
have any dynamism in it.
So he said, I want you to affirm
constantly.
So if you want to pray for your
preacher, you pray that he'll know how to
say it often enough and emphatically enough to
detonate it and set it off and cause
a moral explosion.
And yet not say it so dullly that
people will go to sleep under it.
Keep that in mind, young preacher there.
That's a job we have to do.
Now, what is this saying that he said,
you often hear it, he said, you often
hear it said among the brethren.
And I want to assert it that it's
true.
And I want you to keep saying it
because it's of God.
It's this, that they which have believed in
God should be careful to maintain good works.
They which have believed in God should be
careful to maintain good works.
And I want you to hear this little
phrase.
They which have believed in God.
What did he mean by this anyway?
They which have believed in God.
You have to admit it's not very plain
because the Parsees believe in God and the
Hindus believe in God.
And I can say to him by saying
simply that every religion known to man except
perhaps Buddhism, and there's an argument over that,
and Confucianism.
And Confucianism is not religion but a philosophy.
And so therefore, every religion known to man
believes in God.
And every praying person believes in God.
And everybody believes in God.
So he says, they which believe in God
should maintain good works.
Now that's making it pretty broad.
But do you know, my brethren, that we
can know what is meant by knowing who
said it?
Oftentimes a man will say a thing, he'll
write a thing, and it'll be ambiguous, which
means it can be taken two or three
ways.
Two ways usually, but often more than two
ways.
And he doesn't make it clear.
But you can know what he meant by
knowing who he is.
By knowing his testimony.
By knowing what his past life has been.
Somebody will pick up a copy of the
magazine I edit, will read it in the
dentist's office.
This one woman wrote me that she did,
read it, I've forgotten where, but with some
office.
Picked it up and read it.
And she wrote me a long but friendly
scolding letter about, because I thought the world
wasn't getting better.
Well, she said, didn't make it clear.
Well, the reason she didn't get it was
that she hadn't known the background.
If she had known the background, if she
had known that I was of the Christian
and Missionary Alliance, if she had been around
this church a little, she'd have been able
to read between the lines and make out
what I was saying without my having to
spell it out with woodblocks.
Now, it is the same with anybody that's
known across the street.
If he speaks ambiguously, don't write him a
letter and scold him.
Know what he means by what he believes.
The man Paul, we know what he believed.
Believed in God, he said.
What did that mean to a Jew who
had become a Christian?
What did that mean to a man who
was a believer in the Messiah?
You know what it meant.
Now, there are men in this city, and
I'm not going to dignify them by mentioning
their names or degrade myself, but there are
men in this city who are so liberal
and modernistic in their views that when they
say, believe in God, you don't know what
they mean because they are misinterfacing both ways,
and they balance themselves on the tightrope carefully
and are careful to please everybody, and the
result is when they say, they that believe
in God, you have no remote idea to
whom they refer because they have no sure
conviction themselves.
So they use the phrase loosely and carelessly,
but never did Paul.
Paul said, they that believe in God ought
to maintain good work.
He was writing to a church, and he
was an apostle.
Who was this man, Paul?
Oh, my brother, he was one who had
gone all over Asia Minor preaching one thing.
God is, and Jesus Christ is the Messiah.
God the Father is, and Jesus Christ is
his Son.
He'd been in jail and out of jail.
He'd been stoned and cuffed and kicked and
starved and cramped on and shoved around and
lied about and maligned and columniated, and he
had got all that because he loved God
and Jesus Christ, his Holy Son, and everywhere
he went he went quoting the Old Testament
scriptures, Jehovah great I am by heaven and
earth confessed, and so he didn't have to
write a whole page to make them know.
They knew what he meant because they knew
who said it.
So my friend, it's possible for you to
live a life that you can keep pretty
tight mouthed and still have a mighty good
testimony.
Everything you say, they won't misinterpret you.
They will for a little while, but as
soon as they get to know you, they
won't misinterpret you.
If you only half say it, they'll know
what you mean.
Tom Harrod could come here and talk a
half an hour and never mention Jesus and
go away.
I wouldn't worry about it.
I would if some man did it, because
I'd know that the context, as they say,
would indicate they didn't want to mention him.
But Tom Harrod lives and he hurts so
much all the time, he takes Jesus Christ
for granted, and so did Paul.
And so when Paul said there to believe
in God, everybody knew what he meant.
He meant trust in Jesus Christ, who is
the way unto God, and who is God
made manifest to dwell among a mystery of
Godly men.
Now, Paul used this same thing before.
Paul would have been flunked out of Wheaton
or out of Nyack from the Moody Bible
Institute for this one.
Paul said, For I know whom I have
believed, and I am persuaded that he is
able to keep that which I have committed
unto him against that day.
Now, he said that.
That's there in print, in English, and it's
a good, fair, close representation of what he
wrote in the Greek.
Now, he'd have been flunked out.
They'd have written in red pencil across the
top, unclear.
Your pronouns have no antecedent.
And they'd have marked him down to 55
on that paper and sent it back.
But the old man of God, that was
the last book he ever wrote, that 2
Timothy.
So he said, I know whom I have
believed, and he didn't say whom the whom
was.
He didn't put any name there, you see.
I know whom.
And some Jew could have said, I know
what he means.
He means Jehovah.
And a Parsi could have said he means
Zoroaster.
And somebody else could have put his God
in there.
But they'd have arrested Paul's language to their
own destruction because Paul never meant anybody but
Jesus Christ, his Lord.
He was the one who went around turning
the world upside down by what he had
to say about Jesus Christ.
He was the one who said that I
count my life but nothing that I may
win Christ and be found in him.
So when he said, I know whom I
have believed, he didn't need to put the
antecedent to the pronoun in.
Pronoun was Jesus.
It's possible to live so that when you
use pronouns and say he, people know who
you mean.
You don't have to explain it.
It takes a little living to get there.
But after a while you can get there.
And Paul was there, brother.
He was there.
It takes a little living to get to
a point where just raise your hand and
folks know what you mean.
Ah, God has these people.
He has them.
I saw some of them out and some
would go.
First, first meeting I was, I was there.
I got there Tuesday and they introduced me,
or just before they introduced me, they said,
brother, Olin Jones will lead us in prayer.
Well, I didn't know Olin Jones, but the
man, young fellow about my age, got up
and led in prayer.
And, oh brother, what a prayer.
And I said to the district superintendent afterwards,
I said, is that man as good as
he sounds?
He said, oh, he is.
He said, he just walks with God.
What a prayer.
Was worth my going over there to hear
that man pray.
What a prayer.
Well, so childlike, so reverent, so deeply sincere,
so radiant.
He just talked to God as if he
had, he just was addressing him face to
face.
And then he quietly sat down.
Well, that, that set the meeting up for
me.
I didn't have to have anybody sing a
girl's trio after that.
I was already set up for the sermon,
just to hear that man pray.
Now, that man, after that, could say anything
he wanted to say, and I knew what
he meant, because I knew who he was.
So Paul said, I know whom I have
believed, and of course the whom is nobody
else but Jesus.
And I know that he's able to keep
that which I have committed unto him.
Now, what's that?
No antecedent there.
That relative pronoun, it's got to have something
back of it, but it doesn't have anything
back of it.
Paul?
What's the matter?
Well, Paul said, I'm so wrapped up in
God, I forgot to be grammatical.
So he'll keep that which I have committed
unto him.
What's that which he's committed?
Oh, my brother, I just wish we could
just read all of Paul's epistles and his
sermons in the book of Acts and see
everything Paul has.
Hope for the future, his glory, his crown,
his heaven, his father's house, everything that Paul
had lived for and was soon to die
for.
That's what Paul had in mind.
He didn't have to make a grocery list
here or a bill of lading to tell
us what he meant.
He said, that which I have committed, knowing
Paul, we know what he meant.
And I repeat that you'd better get fast
to a place where you can keep still
and still give your testimony.
You better get there quick to a place
where you don't have to spell it all
out.
People know what you mean.
They know what you mean.
We got people in this church that could
get up and pray and never mention Christ's
name and sit down, and I knew what
they meant, and God knew what they meant.
The theologian or the Bible student, particularly the
freshman, would condemn them out of hand.
But God knew what they meant, just as
he knew what Paul meant here, and he
knew who Paul meant.
Then he said, he'd keep that which I've
committed unto him against that day, and he
didn't say what day.
What day?
If somebody's birthday, Christmas, Easter, what day?
Paul didn't say what day.
So you see, Paul made three errors there.
School miles would have turned him down.
But Paul's life was his grammar, and Paul's
known message, what he stood for, what he
lived in, what he was soon to die
for, said what he didn't say and couldn't
say in print.
What day is it?
Ah, it's the day of his appearance.
It's the day of his appearance.
It's the day when he shall walk out
and walk down the sky and shout with
a loud voice that's heard round the world
and wake from the dead every sleeping saint
and glorify every living one.
That day.
Paul looked forward to that day.
We're so learned in some evangelical circles now
that we are ashamed to admit we believe
in that day, but I still believe in
that day.
I haven't got it all straightened out, though
I used to have.
But I believe in that day.
I believe in the coming of the day.
And that's the only day the Christian lives
for anyhow.
He lives for that day.
Paul said that day, and he didn't have
to, he didn't have to explain it.
Everybody that listened to Paul knew.
They knew that he had written, he had
preached, he had prayed, he had exhorted, he
had labored with that day in view.
So he didn't need to say what day.
Now, he said they that believe in God
should be careful to maintain good works.
Now there's confusion, and this will be repetitious
because it's occurred before.
But let's hope instead of it being repetitious,
it'll turn out to be just underscoring for
emphasis.
The confusion about good works in the Church.
Incidentally, I got another letter last week.
Some weeks go by and I get nice
letters, and others they go by and I
don't.
This last week wasn't my week.
I should have stood in bed.
But a second lady wrote me, and she
also scolded me for about three solid, finely
written pages.
Because of what I had said, that not
all faith pleased God.
Well, poor lady, she's in, of course, confused
because her teachers have taught her wrong.
Some have taught error about this, that good
works are meritorious.
Jesus said, after you've done all you can
do, and have done the best you can
do, say, I'm an unprofitable servant.
That's what Jesus taught about good works.
And Paul went to great pains to teach
that you couldn't be saved by good works.
But some people have taught that you could.
They have taught that salvation is achieved by
good works, and that grace is a supplement
to good works.
That there's a place for grace, but that
grace merely comes in and pays out what
you can't pay.
You pay seventy-five percent of your way
to heaven by doing good, and grace comes
in and graciously helps you with the other
twenty-five percent.
Now, that is taught in some circles.
Not, of course, in that rather ridiculous way,
but they teach it.
Now, this, of course, isn't violent contradiction to
the teaching of the New Testament.
The hymn says, Could my tears forever flow?
Could my zeal no respite know?
These, for sin, could not atone.
Thou must save, and thou alone, and that
is a faithful saying, and worthy of much
repetition.
But others have gone in the opposite error.
Always remember that the human race very rarely
stays in the middle of anything, except when
they're caught in the middle.
They're moving from one extreme to another constantly.
For instance, dresses, but we won't go into
that.
After the First World War, I saw the
girls walking around dressed just as they're dressed
today.
The pendulum has swung once more.
Well, have your fun, girls, have your fun.
But the pendulum swings from one extreme to
another.
And the other extreme is, and it's the
extreme we're in danger of in our school
of thought, we so fear the first error,
that salvation is by good works, that we
rule out good works as a part of
the Christian system.
There's a great danger there, my brethren.
Yet through the atonement in Christ's blood, here's
the formula, and this is a faithful saying,
and worthy of much repetition, that through the
atonement in Christ's blood, we are saved by
grace through faith unto good works.
There's your formula.
You can put that down.
Through the atonement in Christ's blood, we are
saved by grace through faith unto good works.
Now, the New Testament says, 2 Corinthians 9
.8, that we are to abound in every
good work.
Hebrews 13.21, Paul prays, or the writer
prays, that God will make us perfect in
every good work.
Acts 9.36 says, Dorcas was full of
good works which she planned to do.
Am I accurate?
Dorcas was full of good works which she
planned to do.
Is that right?
What does it say?
She was full of good works which she
did.
I like that.
Again, nobody put that in.
I'd rule that out, of course.
Anybody would, correcting papers, would rule it out.
But the Holy Ghost said, Dorcas was full
of good works which she did.
But many of us Christians are full of
good works which we hope to do after
vacations over.
And then, Ephesians 2.10, we're created in
Christ Jesus unto good works.
First Timothy 2, women should not adorn themselves
with outward adorning, but rather with good works.
First Timothy 5, let not a widow be
taken in.
Now, remember, this was the old folks' home
in the early Church.
And when a Christian woman came to the
door with her application blank, they said, who
have you got for reference?
She said, well, I'll give them a pastor,
and Paul knew me and Timothy knew me.
They checked with Paul and Timothy, and they
said, did she do good works and did
she wash the same feet?
And if they said yes, they took her
in.
If they said no, they said, we're sorry,
Grandma, but we can't take you in.
You haven't got a life of good works
back of you.
Can you imagine that?
Wouldn't that empty some of our old folks'
homes?
The only thing, the only qualification to get
into the average denomination of old folks' home
is just to be old.
That's all you have to be, just be
old and you can get in, if you
have the money.
But their qualification was they had to be
filled with good works, and had to have
a record behind them of having served the
Saints and looked after the Church and prayed
and loved and labored in the Kingdom of
God, or else they wouldn't take them in.
They didn't believe they were Christian.
They could carry their big Bible under their
arm, but they still didn't believe they were
Christian.
They said, no, sorry.
A Christian is one who is saved by
grace through faith under good works, and good
works is the only part she can see,
you know.
Everything else is submerged, invisible.
Grace is invisible, faith is invisible.
How do I know you have faith?
You say you have, how do I know
you have?
You say you believe in the grace of
God, how do I know you do?
There's only one proof, good works.
Paul didn't say, don't take any old lady
in unless she testifies that she was a
believer.
He didn't say that.
He said, don't take her in unless she
has a record of good works behind her.
She's been a hard-working Christian.
Because, you see, if you come to be
65 or 70 or 80 or whatever it
is, years old, and you're ready to retire
and go to a long home, if you
haven't shown by that time, by your works,
that you're a true believer, you're not a
true believer.
That was Paul's argument.
In Hebrews 10.24, the Holy Ghost says,
provoke until love and good works.
And that's what I'm trying to do this
morning.
I'm provoking you.
And I may provoke some of you too,
but you'll get over it.
Then Acts 10.38 said that God anointed
Jesus Christ of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost
and power who went around doing good works,
doing good, healing all that were oppressed of
the devil.
So I gave you some scriptures here to
show, nine of them, plus the text which
is 10, and we could find many, many
more to show that while nobody's saved by
good works, everybody is saved under good works.
And if we're not saved under good works,
we're not saved at all.
Could my tears forever flow?
Could I go into the desert and starve
to death in a cave?
Could I give my body to be burned?
Could I distribute all my goods to feed
the poor?
If I had not faith in Jesus Christ
as my dying Lord and risen Savior, I'd
perish.
Could I preach a lifetime?
I'd be a castaway myself unless I trust
in the merits of Jesus, but alone for
my salvation.
Grace is a charming sound harmonious to the
ears.
And how sweet it is to know that
the grace of God saves us without works
and without merits.
But the devil gets behind that, and from
behind that he whispers, now look out for
good works.
Watch it, watch it, watch it, don't do
any good works.
It's enough that you go to church and
sing.
The Bible teaches that if you're saved by
grace, through faith, you'll do good works.
What kind of good works?
Well, of course, they vary with the age
in which you live, and they vary with
the opportunities, but I'm quite sure it isn't
putting your money in the basket.
That's one of them, of course.
But I believe that God's people ought to
be the busiest helpers in the whole world.
I think that we ought to be.
I believe a lot of lodges exist today
because the church hasn't done her part.
Believe it.
Some Christian men say, yes, I belong to
a lodge, but I don't attend it.
I only have it for its insurance value
and because there are good works.
I believe that if the church of Christ
had listened to Paul's faithful saying and had
had it understood that as soon as you're
converted, you go to work to help mankind,
never would have been one of those lodges
right in Christendom.
It wouldn't have been needed.
But as long as we think that salvation
is by grace, through faith, under sitting down,
why, we'll have to have outside help.
A French or Swiss writer, I think he
writes in French, but a Swiss writer by
the name of Rougement, has said a very
beautiful and wonderful thing.
I bought his book the other day and
I've only read two or three pages, but
I got this out of it.
He said, God Almighty says, I am he
that is.
And the devil says, I am not.
He says, God works by asserting his being
and the devil by denying his.
So he says the devil gets hold of
us by denying he exists.
And so why be afraid of a non
-existent thing?
Why be afraid of someone that's merely an
old wives' tale or a ghost or a
spook or a harpy?
The devil hides behind not anonymity but non
-existence and whispers, I don't exist.
Then goes to work on people.
Now, I believe the devil has been busy
behind his screen of non-existence, as we
people so learned and sophisticated that we don't
believe in the devil, but we believe the
devil has gotten his work in.
So that Christians are not doing good works.
Paul said they should be, and Paul set
an example by using thread and needle.
George said it by using thread and needle.
Others went about giving of their goods.
The centuries have shown how the Church can
labor and work.
My dear friends, you ought so to live
that somebody somewhere in the earth will have
you to thank at the end of the
day.
You should so labor and work and sacrifice,
pour in your money and your sweat into
something helpful to mankind, to alleviate human suffering,
assuage human grief, and give light to the
blind.
You should so live that in that great
day they'll know you're Christians and they won't
have to say, are you a believer?
Have you got the right doctrine about grace?
They'll look at your good works and know
that anybody that wasn't saved by grace through
faith would never live like that.
And they'll say, okay.
Faith saves you by grace through the blood
of the Lamb.
But after you're saved, you're not to sit
down on what the old country people call
the stool of do nothing.
You're to get up and get busy.
Dave Lutzweiler wrote an article saying that Christianity
was a layman's movement, that every Christian ought
to be active.
I've already gotten a two-page blister on
that.
Two-page blister.
But I still believe it.
I read the article, made a few suggested
changes, and printed it.
Every child of God should be busy.
That's something.
If you can't sing, don't try to sing,
please.
Don't try to sing.
So many of God's people want to be
used of the Lord, but they want to
sing.
Well, if you can't sing, don't try to
sing.
But there's something you can do.
You can turn the pages for the organ.
You can do that.
You can do something.
Find out what to do.
And don't say, oh, there's nothing for us
young people to do.
You don't have to organize things.
Do them.
Do them, brother.
Do them.
You're intelligent, sister.
You read up.
You know.
You're alive in the world.
You're a 20th century person.
You know where the needs are.
And if you don't know where they are,
you know how to find out where they
are.
Therefore, see to it that you work in
the name of Jesus Christ, the labor of
love, and get good works behind you.
The only way we'll know you're a Christian,
you know you're a Christian, you say, by
your faith and by your witness.
Very good, and I believe in both.
But we'll never be sure you're a Christian
unless we see you laboring for the Lord
Jesus Christ in faith and love.
So while we can have good works of
a kind, as I've said, without being saved,
you can't be truly saved and not have
some kind of good work.
Over at Summit Grove, I met a man,
48 years old, a Mr. Henry P.
Kurtz, photographer by trade or profession, whichever that
is.
Makes his living that way, and he had
come to the camp meeting for the purpose
of taking down the sermons on tape.
And as soon as he could get to
me, he said, Do you know, Brother Tozer,
I've been converted just a year and a
half, and do you know how I converted?
I was converted by hearing a tape recording
of a sermon you preached.
You know, now the tape recording, of course,
I might have been asleep at the time
he was hearing that.
But while that tape recording was being made,
I was pouring something into it.
And before it was being made, I was
getting ready for it and pouring something into
that.
So I think that when the Lord comes
to give every man according to the deeds
done in the body, he won't give that
reward to a hunk of celluloid.
He will know somebody was back to that
praying, laboring, and preparing.
I hope to meet a lot more like
that.
I hope you'll meet a lot like that,
and I believe you will.
I believe you will.
I don't mean to scold you.
I believe you will.
But some of you need to be provoked
because you just sit around.
In God's name, Brethren and Sisters, let's hear
this faithful saying, that he that believes in
God should be careful to practice good works.
Amen.