Can we consider a little bit about the
proximity of the Prophet to God?
How does he know what God's thought is?
Where does he receive the word that is
communicating as being very God's?
What gives him access that is not available
to us?
What can we assume about the proximity of
the man to the heart of God?
How is that obtained?
How is that maintained?
Is that an easy thing?
What about distracting voices?
What about other kinds of things that get
in the way of that communion?
So we need to dwell a little bit
because it's alcoholic also.
How do these men hear from God?
Because God upbraids those false prophets and he
says, I didn't send them and yet they
run.
I didn't give them words and yet they
say, sayeth the Lord.
They never heard it from me.
They never received it in the place of
my counsel.
They were never in the place of my
counsel.
So let's speculate.
What does it mean?
Where is that place?
How is it to be obtained and maintained?
What contends against it?
I can tell you this.
There's nothing more opposed than finding God in
the secret place.
And there's nothing more difficult either to find
or to maintain.
So what is involved then?
How do we need to understand that to
appreciate this?
How to find the places of quiet and
undistractedness in which the Lord can be heard?
And can it be heard in the midst
of tumult?
If you don't have ideal conditions that are
sacrosanct in which the phone does not ring
and the Englishman is not having you to
come down to because the washing machine is
out or does that mean that you're going
to have the ideal condition?
Can you hear God in the midst of
tumult and noise and consternation and hear his
distinct voice?
All of this is hinted at, but we
need to appreciate it and to know such
places ourselves.
The sine qua non, the essential requirement of
hearing God is to come without any requirement
of your own, any desire of your own
that you would hear something of a special
kind that favors you.
You come with nothing.
You come without an opinion.
You come without an issue that you're to
be confirmed by him, that you already have
a view and you're wanting his validation.
You've got to come with nothing, that whatever
he speaks, it can be received.
If you come with a qualification by which
you need to be confirmed or you want
to hear something of a special kind for
your own gratification already, you're in a place
where you cannot hear.
We must come to God without a condition
so that what he says, however different from
our expectation, however unpleasing to our own expectation
can be received.
But if we come with a condition where
we want to be confirmed or encouraged or
we already are disqualified.
So this is a requirement for prophetic hearing,
is to come before God without an iota
of self-interest that needs somehow to be
confirmed or blessed or validated.
You simply come.
If we are prophetic, then we must necessarily
have a handle on this new crisis and
something from God about it.
But we have nothing.
What does the scripture say?
He'll do nothing without first telling his prophets?
Well, he didn't tell us.
But what if people are looking to you
with expectancy?
Will you be motivated to kind of produce
something to gratify their curiosity?
He's not spoken.
I have no special insight.
He's not communicated anything to me about with
regard to this present crisis.
We mustn't be prompted by human expectation or
to satisfy the requirement of others that expect
something from us.
As I've already said, the Lord has not
spoken with and there's nothing for us to
say.
What if we have to go through the
longest seasons of silence in a time of
upset and crisis in which people would expect
that you would have a particular prophetic insight,
but you don't have it?
Can you yet be at peace and disappoint
people in their expectations rather than be prompted
to soullessly venture something out of yourself that's
not God?
So it requires a remarkable separation from any
necessity to be recognized, to be heard, to
be applauded, and to suffer long seasons of
silence in which, although the Lord may be
speaking through others, he's not speaking through you,
and you're not going to venture or volunteer
anything that has been prompted out of your
own soul that he himself has not given.
We have to be jealous and respect the
silence and not break it out of giving
answer to the expectation of others as if
we have some reputation of necessity to maintain.
We have to be a disappointment, not only
to others, but often to ourselves and wonder
why it is that we're not hearing and
that he's not saying, but he's not explaining,
to be dead and hid with Christ in
God until his life is revealed, and when
it's revealed, it's revealed unto glory.
So to be content to remain in that
place without distinction, without being conspicuous, you have
nothing to say, you look like a dead
duck, you're embarrassing in your silence, people thought
that you were some kind of oracle, and
you have nothing to communicate, and you have
to abide in that place until his life
is revealed.
You'll notice that when it comes, it'll not
come according to your convenience or the desires
of men, it'll come according to the moment
of his choosing, and you're content to wait
for that.
A.
W.
Tozer was a remarkable prophetic voice for the
generation, and a real critic in the best
sense of directions, things taking place in evangelical
Christendom that have since become more established that
were he alive today, he would be pained
and affected.
But even in his own time, in the
1960s, he talks about a Christianity that demands
glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action.
A generation of Christians reared among push buttons
and automatic machines is impatient of slower and
less direct methods of reaching goals.
We've been trying to apply machine-age methods
to our relations with God.
We read our chapter, have our short devotions,
and rush away hoping to make up for
our deep, inward bankruptcy.
The tragic results of this spirit are all
about us.
Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of
the element of fun and gospel meanings, the
glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi
-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic
personality for the power of the spirit, these
and such as these are the symptoms of
an evil disease, a deep and serious malady
of the soul.
That really is prophetic, because what he's foreseeing
now has come in much greater measure, and
is widely accepted.
How about the mistaking of dynamic personality as
being the power of the spirit?
How many have a gift of gab, TV
evangelists, and a certain kind of, what's the
word, a resonance in electric, a vitality, a
high-pitched, high-tension form of delivery, which
is construed to be anointed?
So, can we discern, can we see through
gift of gab and humanly-wired excitement as
against genuine anointing and words that are tempted
and given of God?
And in fact, is the whole system of
TV, and the necessity for recurrent broadcasts and
audiences and support, part of the evil of
a system that breeds and encourages the thing
that's false?
Such things did not exist in the times
of old, when men had a ministry that
needed to be continued publicly, and have something
to say each time of an exciting kind.
They waited on the Lord, they were quiet
until they were called for.
We need to understand the whole system has
come in that is contrary to the thing
that is authentic about propheticness, and has come
in with such a bang as to become
the accepted mode.
And those men use words like apostolic and
prophetic as if they have a full right
to the use of those words, and somehow
represent them.
So, I'm trying to be judicious and not
be mean-spirited, but we would be foolish
not to recognize that something is coming, as
has come, as spreading like a great billow,
a wave, over the whole of our evangelical
Christendom, that is called apostolic and prophetic, and
is highly suspect.
And that many of us are in so
naive and shallow a condition, that we think
that these men are anointed, and we think
that the gift of gab is oracular speaking.
We need to grow in discernment, and pray
against this public thing that is cheapening the
church, the image of God in the church,
and raise up again the kind of thing
that we're discussing, which is so rare.
That if it comes, it's not likely to
be broadcast, not likely to be public, not
likely to be popular, that I've almost come
to the place where something is popular, and
suddenly popular, and becomes a bestseller for a
year and a half on the Times bestseller
list, that ipso facto, there's something suspicious about
it.
So, Tozer was already sensing these directions.
Every one of us in this room have
had occasions where we have been compelled to
be in situations of a kind, where we
feel ourselves to be freaks.
Everybody else seems to be having a ball,
they're all shouting amen and hallelujah, and strangely
we are untouched in our spirits, and yet
we have to suffer the painful tension of
standing out like the proverbial sore thumb, and
not being one of the boys going along
with the flow, as if there's something wrong
with us, when in actuality there might be
something right.
So, I'm raising the question, can you bear
being a freak?
Can you bear being strange?
Can you bear being out of it, and
not moving with the consensus of the flow?
Because it raises the question, either you're terribly
right, or terribly wrong.
And it may well, is something wrong with
me?
Lord, am I out of the spirit?
Why am I not being moved?
So, I want to, as I've said so
many times in occasions like this, guard your
heart, keep your spirit, but with all diligence,
don't open up to the infiltration of soulish
things, just to go along and to be
one with the many.
That means you'll stand out conspicuously, and even
be visibly obvious to those on the platform
who see that you're not moved by what
is moving others, and will be offended by
what you represent, even in your silence.
I can't count the occasions where I've had
to bear that, and I'm sure that you
have also.
So, it calls for a certain kind of
inward strength, a certain kind of willingness to
bear being a pilgrim, stranger, and sojourner in
the earth, even in the realm of Christendom,
and that you don't allow yourself to be
open and affected, let alone swept up and
into some dubious, questionable thing that purports to
be the operation of spirit, that is pure
soul.
Because once you do, you've paid a price
more than you can know, and you've dulled
your inner man, and you'll be less apt
to resist at a future time, and more
quickly to be sucked in to a whole
charismatic realm by which you'll be entirely compromised.
So, we have a strange, you guys that
are related to us would come to a
place like this, we have a very strange
situation where we're required to stand out like
the conspicuous thumb, like the square peg in
a round joint.
We're out of it.
We're not one of the boys.
We don't go along.
We don't play the game.
We don't accommodate ourselves.
If our spirit is not being touched by
something that is issued and emanating by the
spirit, we do not allow our souls to
counterfeit being affected.
We don't need a tear.
We don't need an excitement.
We keep ourselves, even if we look like
death warmed up, rather than to go along
with the dubious thing that is taking place
that is called the operation of the spirit,
and has its origin in the souls of
men, which is to say, in the last
analysis, its origin from the pit.
Keep your heart, keep your spirit with all
diligence.
Cherish the history that you have in God.
Cherish what has been framed in your inner
man through fidelity, through carefulness, through experience with
the Lord that you cherish.
You don't want it compromised or adversely affected
by some flashy thing that is now coming
down the pike and is trying to draw
you in at the cost of compromising this
inner integrity.
Keep this thing, for this is the issue
of truth.
This is the issue of reality.
This is the issue of hearing from God.
This is the issue of communion with God.
If you lose that, you lose that proximity,
you lose that closeness, and the loss is
incalculable.
So be jealous to preserve the integrity of
your inner man.
There's a price to pay for not going
along with the flow, because I have observed
some of the most significant evangelical men going
along with the flow, and they have been
compromised.
They've lost something, and when I meet them,
somehow our eyes meet in a moment, and
it's like, cats, you make me uncomfortable.
In your silence, what you represent is an
indictment, and you've not gone this way.
So, there's a price to pay for your
inward integrity, and I'm encouraging you to recognize
it, it will cost you something, but you
must preserve it at all costs.
In the end, it is the hope of
the church itself.
Part of the low condition of the church
today is that it does not even distinguish
between the gift of prophecy and the office
of prophet, so that anyone who has a
gift of prophecy is called an oracle, is
called the prophet of the hour.
He has no qualification, he has no office
at all, so low is our ability to
distinguish between these two things.
A prophet should be an inspired preacher.
Preaching itself is a holy phenomenon.
It's more than oratorical ability.
It's a special kind of communication.
It's exquisite.
It's out-of-the-heart-of-God preaching.
There's a uniqueness of that phenomenon, and if
we lose our respect and esteem for the
preached word, we are already in a place
of dangerous decline.
And so we need to distinguish between the
gift of gab, filling the air with sound
and with much words, as against inspired preaching,
proclamation out-of-the-heart-of-God, exposition,
the creative word, that when it comes, is
more than just instruction.
When it comes, it's event.
Something happens in the hearing of the inspired
word that changes, that creates a reality that
was not there before.
That's what Paul speaks of in Romans 10,
that Jews are waiting for an apostolic word.
For how shall they believe in him of
whom they've not heard, and how shall they
hear, except one preach?
For faith comes by hearing, and hearing by
the word of God.
They're waiting for a proclamation of a particular
kind, in the hearing of which their ancient
prejudices are displaced, and they experience an ability
to believe that the word itself creates the
faith to believe for that which until then
was rejected.
So proclamation inspired preaching, ultimate, ultimate.
So we would do well to hear fewer
words and yet more precious, and to esteem
the remarkable phenomenon, and those that are called
to bear such words, and to provide an
environment of encouragement for their growth in knowing
that they're not going to automatically come to
a place of full stature, that in the
early expression of their calling is likely to
be a mixed bag.
Something of themselves, something of God, something immature,
something intemperate, for which they need to be
corrected perhaps, so that there's a process.
We need an environment conducive to the bringing
forth of prophetic men and prophetic proclamation, which
contains a patience for them when they're yet
in their not mature state, when they're in
the process of becoming, because if we shut
them out, or condemn them, or criticize them
severely, we are prematurely cutting off a subsequent
gift to the church.
So can we bear it?
Can we separate the good thing from the
immature thing, and bring a word of encouragement
through saying, we appreciated what you said brother,
but when you touched this point, we felt
that now you were lapsing into yourself, and
really expressing something personal.
Well, oh really?
I didn't see that.
You see the kind of atmosphere that we
need in the church, if we are to
be appreciative of an environment conducive to prophetic
men, and to prophetic proclamation, and the preached
word, preaching itself as a sacred phenomenon, because
when the preached word comes, are we receiving
it as the word of man, or the
word of God?
And are we receiving it so as to
be changed?
Are we receiving it in a personal way?
Will we do it?
Will we obey that word?
Will we take it to heart?
Because if we're just shallow hearers, and are
just being entertained by the music of it,
the Lord will not be as quick next
time to bring the preciousness of that speaking.
We'll find our atmosphere dry, and that the
word of God is a rarer phenomenon, because
we have not been appreciative and receptive of
the word as coming from God, so as
to do it.
To hear the word of God is to
be brought under a special obligation of requirement.
But if we are dismissing it as only
something nice to be heard, or entertaining, or
stimulating, but not making a requirement, we are
missing the genius of the word.
God is not speaking for effect.
He's speaking to effect change.
We've got to hear that word, and apply
it, and do it.
And if we will, we're likely then to
hear again, so precious speaking.
That is to say, that the issue of
the preached word is not just the issue
of the preacher, but the issue of the
hearers.
More than you can know, the condition of
a congregation, what its corporate condition is, its
maturity, its soul, its spirit, its carnality, very
much affects what comes out of the man
who's addressing them.
So I can tell you, part of the
suffering of the prophetic man is when his
word comes back in his teeth, when his
word falls to the ground, when his word
is stopped at his mouth before it is
even expressed, because there's an unwillingness in the
congregation to hear and to receive.
It's an anguish to be choked up.
But on the other hand, conversely, it's a
glory where there's a people who draw out
God's very heart.
For often the oracular prophetic man will hear
himself in dimensions beyond any intention of his
own, and things will issue out of him
that he himself had not forethought nor considered,
that are coming out spontaneously in the moment,
because the people themselves are drawing out God's
very heart.
The church does not know that it itself
is one of the principal factors in the
quality of the word that comes to it.
Its condition affects what it hears and what
it receives.
And knowing that, with what attitude and what
spirit ought we to come together in congregational
settings, anticipating and desiring to hear the word
of God?
Have we just toppled out of bed?
We've had no devotional time, and we come
in whatever condition, hoping for some spiritual roulette,
that something will be said that will give
us a lift?
Or have we sought the Lord before we
come to the meeting?
Is our spirit prepared?
Are we in a place to hear and
draw out God's heart?
So we need to come to a deepened
respect for the word as being God's word,
preaching as a sacred phenomenon, not for our
entertainment, but for our change, both for time
and for eternity.
And it will very much affect what is
given and what we hear and receive, and
whether we will go on from faith to
faith, or glory to glory, or be fixed
in our still stubborn place of immaturity.
The church is in its low condition for
the want of the hearing of the word
of God.
There's a famine for the hearing of the
word of God presently.
There's much speaking.
There's profuse speaking.
The gift of gab, men have an ability,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But the word of God, the sacred word,
the preached word, that is rare.
And we are a factor in that phenomenon.
We need to spend a few moments on
the subject of reality.
Have you noticed the conflicting subjectivities to be
found in the church?
The greatest anguish over the years is, this
one has that opinion, and has scripture to
support it.
This one has this view, that view.
What is truth?
What is the truth of a situation?
What is the objective reality?
So, if we cannot discuss the phenomenon of
propheticness independent of the subject of reality, because
if a prophet is anything, he is eminently
real.
But what does that mean?
And how is that obtained?
And how is reality maintained?
Because there are so many forces working to
subvert reality and to bring us to a
place that is false or shallow.
So, a jealousy for reality, because that's God,
where he is.
Let me read a little something to you
again from Tozer.
By definition also, God is real.
He is real in the absolute and final
sense that nothing else is.
All other reality is contingent upon his.
The great reality is God, the author of
that lower and dependent reality which makes up
the sum of created things, including ourselves.
God has objective existence, independent of and apart
from any notions which we may have concerning
him.
The worshipping heart does not create its object.
It finds him here when it wakes from
its mortal slumber in the morning of its
regeneration.
Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind
and seeks to attach reality to them.
Faith creates nothing.
It simply reckons upon that which is already
there.
We need to say something about reality, and
to love reality, because the things that are
real are not always pleasant.
In fact, they're often painful.
But if we shrink from reality because of
its pain, we're losing the foundation, the understructure
of everything.
There's got to be a love for what
is real, even when it's painful, or maybe
especially when it's painful, because if we shrink
from that, we'll be moved into the realms
of the things that are imagined rather than
real, and we lose contact with God, who
is the utter foundation of reality itself.
So, to say something, what is reality?
Do you contend for it?
Do you see it as an issue?
Are there times when you're tempted to hedge,
to compromise, to look away, to read or
see something and give it a different kind
of valuation?
What is the truth of something?
Ultimate reality.
What if in the final reaches of our
supposed spirituality, there we are found to be
false?
I'm talking over my head now.
Let me try and fill that out.
What if in the area where we thought
ourselves so supremely spiritual, we come to recognize
that there is deceit?
There is an imagined superiority which is not
true.
For example, we're not given to judgment and
we're superior to judgment because we see more
compassionately the issues that have gone into the
situation, and we take a view that is
much more majestic and magnanimous than those who
are narrowly insisting on judgment.
But this so-called spiritual superiority can be
itself false.
Do we have the courage to have that
falsity identified and reject what is more dear
to us than life itself, our own supposed
spirituality?
Unless you're jealous in this way, you're not
a candidate for reality.
Unless you yourself can be dealt with severely
in the places you want most to God
and has most to do with your own
image of yourself, you're in the place of
unreality, and it will ultimately show itself, though
now it purports to be a supreme form
of spirituality.
Do we have an atmosphere of reality in
the church where we don't have to put
our best foot forward, where we are what
we are by the grace of God and
that we would freely express before our brothers
and sisters without embarrassment and can be received
in that condition with love?
The issue of reality is the issue of
the church.
If the church is phony, puffed up, if
its worship is hyped up, if it's creating
and maintaining an aura of a spirituality that
is not real, then what are we as
the church?
So I'm jealous for the word.
So Greg Connell, of course, we're likely to
be in error even as we're bringing correction.
Though the correction itself might be true, it
itself is wrong if it's not issuing from
a redemptive heart that desires the best for
the other and is not exalting itself at
the price of the other.
But wouldn't it be wonderful if the atmosphere
of the church itself was a corrective?
That the reality of the church is so
prominent, the collective atmosphere by souls that are
living in truth, that if there's any deviant
thing, any false spirituality, by contrast it will
become evident and bring its own correction.
So until that time we're told to speak
the truth in love and we need to
exhort, rebuke, and correct one another.
But I'd like to visualize a church in
which having practiced that, that the atmosphere is
so redolent with reality that what is unreal
will in a moment be conspicuous and uncomfortable.
And we'd be willing to be rid of
it and come to the true place.
But we've got to love reality.
We've got to love what is true, what
is earnest, what is authentic, and shun counterfeit
appearance, pseudo-spirituality, affectation appearances, false anointing,
being impressive, being spiritual.
That the very nature of what God is
about in his redemptive sanctifying work requires a
greater frequency of life together and a more
earnest environment in which we can be to
each other what we ought.
Churches is the ultimate thing and requires ultimate
sacrifice, ultimate attention, ultimate giving of ourselves that
we have made church the place of convenience
for a Sunday hour that does not disrupt
our going to the golf course or the
ball game or whatever, indicates what a low
premium church has in our view and for
which reason the purposes of God in fitting
our souls both for time and eternity is
lost and why the church is in its
present carnal condition.
So the church is the place where this
sanctifying thing takes place and the environment indeed
where apostolic and prophetic men can be both
recognized, encouraged, and brought to places of maturity
and sent out to exercise their office in
the world and the church outside.
And maybe a final statement for today and
we'll be continuing tomorrow in this subject is
the prophetic man, the apostolic man is the
thing in himself through and through.
It's what he is in himself so that
even when he's silent he stands for something.
You may have heard this reference that as
a young believer, still a teacher in California,
witnessing to my colleagues and one day at
the lunch table eating silently, the woman at
the other side of the table is visibly
edgy and getting irritated.
I'm watching her out of the corner of
my eye.
She can't sit still.
A Jewish woman.
She's on drugs.
She's taking pills.
She's in an illicit adulterous relationship with one
of the other faculty members and I'm not
saying a word and finally she looks like
she said, even when you're silent Cass, you're
a living accusation.
So I've always been reminded that the man
is the thing in himself even when he's
silent.
There's a reality that pervades the entire being.
He's real.
He's true through and through.
He lives in the spirit of truth.
He shuns the things that are false.
He receives the correction, the admonition of God
through the church.
He's close to the heart of God, the
proximity.
He does not desire reputation.
He has no need to be heard or
to be seen.
He can be silent and can be set
aside for any length of time without feeling
that somehow he has been dropped of God
or he's out of the purposes of God.
He has no agenda of his own to
commend.
We need to cherish this phenomenon because it
is the symbol and the prototype of the
entire church.
Imagine a church like this, precious, quiet, reserved,
having no agenda and yet of ultimate significance
to the community of the world because it
sees with a depth of insight and speaks
with an accuracy of the things that are
at hand for which the world needs to
be warned by those who have the sense
of the imminence and weight of these things.
The church itself is called to be a
prophetic presence in the world.
So all that we're saying today about the
prophetic man is appropriate in measure to the
church itself at large.
Such a requirement.
Let's pray that that which is dubious, specious,
questionable, fake will be revealed as such and
men will forsake these appearances.
The ironic thing is they may well be
called.
They may be their own worst enemies.
And out of the flesh and out of
their soul, promoting a kind of pseudo-identity
that is contrary to what God would have
given if only they would lay off and
not promote their own identity.
But what it is, we desperately need what
is true.
We desperately need the revival of the sacred
word, of the preached inspired word.
We need the testimony, we need the presence
of men who bear the very aura of
the truth and whose very silence is a
ministry, let alone their speaking.
So Lord, we just bow before you.
This was your subject today and we know
that it's holy.
And we haven't given it the contemplation that
we ought and indeed the holy calling in
our time has fallen.
And men speak of movements as if something
can be fabricated by men or they're legislating
or franchising or establishing each other as being
this or being that in callings which you
have never given.
And we're paying a price for that Lord.
The whole of the church is being subverted.
But the worst thing is that you are
being subverted and the esteem for yourself as
holy has gone down with the low place
of the prophetic call itself.
For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit
of prophecy.
So Lord, we're asking that we would be
factors in raising again the high calling.
And being ourselves candidates, my God, to be
such.
Grant us that love, my God, for truth,
for reality, the willingness to be dealt with,
to have the work, my God, of the
cross upon our flesh in anything that is
impatient and ambitious, particularly when it's religious.
And the willingness, my God, to be identified
in the places where we are ultimately phony,
where we think ourselves most spiritual and to
bear the shock of that revelation and be
willing to be chastised and brought down by
it to a place of reality and truth.
So, my God, we love you.
You're earnest.
You're a true God.
You're reality itself.
So come, Lord, help us in this, that
our prayers itself will be a factor in
restoring the true calling, Lord, for the hour
is urgent and we need again to hear
the word of God and the voice of
God.
Come, precious God, and give answer, we pray
in Jesus' name.