Welcome to From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith and powerful sermons for modern preachers
too.
This week we have A.
W.
Tozer with his message, What Is It to
Accept Jesus?
But I want to ask a question and
then I want to answer it.
I know these sermons that start out with
a question usually don't get the question answered
and I hope I don't fall into that
trap.
But the question I want to ask tonight
is, what is it to accept Jesus?
What is it?
I'm going to try to answer that question
and thus I'll be taking a few practice
shots before I really get underway for tomorrow
night and the rest of the week.
But in the book of 2 Peter, there
is a passage that will serve as a
text.
It's 1 Tim.
Wherefore, the rather, brethren, give diligence to make
your calling and election sure.
For if ye do these things, ye shall
never fall.
And I just want to talk a little,
not give an exposition of this verse, but
with a thoughted sort of background, give diligence
to make your calling and election sure.
Now, what is it to accept Christ?
I'm very happy to be able to tell
you this, that there are very few things
in the world that matter very much, and
there are still fewer things that are matters
of life and death.
There are a few, however, that are not
only important, they are vitally, critically important.
For instance, a compass to a sea journey.
You start out on a journey on the
sea without a compass, and the chances are
a million to one that you will run
in a circle, sail in a circle, till
you die.
It takes a compass to cross the ocean.
And a captain who would take a vessel
out onto the great bounding ocean without a
compass, he's not gambling, he's committing suicide and
murder.
Or a guide, say, in plenty of water
on the desert.
A lot of things don't matter.
What color a man's hair is when he's
crossing the desert, that doesn't matter.
Whether he has any or not, that doesn't
matter.
That's comforting to some of us.
And what colored clothes he's wearing, that doesn't
matter.
What color the camel is, if there are
colored camels, that doesn't matter.
But that he has a guide in water,
that does matter.
And a man who would try to cross
the Sahara Desert without a guide and without
sufficient water, he's not gambling, he's not a
bold, reckless, daring fellow taking a chance, he's
a fool committing suicide, that's all.
Because when it comes to crossing the ocean
or crossing the desert, you've got to either
be right or you'll be dead.
Now, when it comes to my relation to
Jesus Christ, that is one of the few
important things that matter in the whole wide
world.
That really matters because it's either be right
about that or be lost.
When we are careless about our relation to
Christ, we are not bold fellows, we are
fools.
We are not being careless, we're being criminally
reckless, we're being reckless, we're being reckless, we're
being reckless, we're being reckless, we're being reckless,
we're being reckless, we're being reckless, we're being
reckless, we're being reckless, we're being reckless, we're
being reckless, we're being reckless, we're being reckless,
we're being reckless, we're being reckless, we're being
reckless, we're being reckless, we're being reckless, we're
being reckless, we're being reckless, we're being reckless,
we're being reckless, we're being reckless, we're being
reckless, we're being reckless, we're being reckless, we're
being reckless, we're being reckless, we're being reckless,
and we're killing ourselves.
We're making absolutely certain that we've perished.
Now, our relation to Christ, the average person
takes for granted.
We say that Jesus Christ came into the
world to save sinners, and that's true.
We say we are saved by Christ alone
without works, and that is all true.
It is salvation through faith and grace without
works, that is all true.
But the point is, how do I come
into saving relationship to Christ?
Now, that's the big matter.
Did Jesus die for the whole world?
Every Protestant believes.
That we are saved by faith without works?
Every Evangelical Protestant believes.
But how do I come into saving relationship
to Jesus Christ?
There are millions in the world that have
not come into saving relationship to Christ.
Not only that, there are millions who know
that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and that
by coming into saving relation to him they
are saved, and they yet have not come
into saving relationship to Christ.
If I were to ask the question, how
do I come into saving relationship to Christ,
and drive you back into a corner and
force you to answer, not only you, because
I'm not being personal here, I just mean
the Evangelical Christians everywhere, there is one of
three answers given, and they are usually synonymous
and interchangeable.
One of them is taken from Acts 16,
Belief on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou
shalt be saved.
The other one is taken from John 1,
verse 12, Receive Christ as your own personal
Savior, and you shall be saved.
Then there is a third one that has
no biblical foundation at all, but seems to
be a sort of interchangeable use with John
1, verse 12, and that is the words,
Accept Christ.
And that Accept Christ thing is going all
around the world now, and accepting Christ is
being made a panacea for all ills.
It's being recommended as the surest possible way
to whip the Russians and to conquer Communism.
Accept Christ and there won't be any depression.
Accept Christ and your business will prosper.
Accept Christ and you'll stand the opposing batter.
Accept Christ and you'll knock out your opponent
bloody on the ring.
Accept Christ and your solar plexus will relax.
Accept Christ and you'll get the man you've
been dreaming about.
Accept Christ is the touted panacea for all
ills.
I want to ask the question, what do
we mean when we say, Accept Christ?
There's a lot of easy acceptance these days,
and it's being fatal to millions of people.
I may be preaching right now.
Let me say two or three things to
start out with, brethren.
I'm not cowed in the slightest, nor awed
by you here at Pittsburgh.
You've got a big reputation and this conference
is supposed to be a big thing, but
you don't cow me a bit.
I don't come here awed in a hushed
voice.
I've seen crowds just as nice looking as
you, and where there was just as much
of the Holy Ghost present.
So you and I stand together, or kneel
together, exactly on the same level, and I'm
not a bit afraid of you.
I love you, but I'm not a wee
little bit scared.
So that, I think we ought to get
started off right on that.
You can't awe me, but the fact that
this is the great Northside-Pittsburgh convention, brethren,
you're on your road to the same little
hole in the side hill that I am.
And you're on your road either to heaven
or hell, and I'm not always sure which.
Therefore, I want to talk very plain to
you.
I know your pastor.
He's a very kind, gentle, suave type of
man, and I'm a blunt farmer.
But he likes my kind of preaching, so
he won't mind at all.
So he and I agreed on this.
He didn't tell me to say this, so
I thought it up myself.
But that in our presence, all ready to
go, all full butterflies in your stomach and
all fluttery and ready for a week of
wonders, you may not even be converted.
You may not even be saved at all.
You may have gotten in a window or
leaped into a crack in the roof.
You may not have come in the door
at all.
You may not be in the kingdom.
And that's why I'm going to probe around
and help to find you.
And if somebody howls, why, he's it.
Now, what about it, this easy acceptance?
I say it's been fatal to millions.
You accept Christ and your problems are over.
Accept Christ and you say, that's true, but
it's presented in a manner that makes it
untrue very often, because it makes the whole
attitude wrong.
It puts Christ in an attitude of standing
hat in hand awaiting our pleasure, forgetting that
he is the Sovereign Lord and that he
can by a snap of his finger turn
worlds out of being or bring worlds into
being, and that he is the Sovereign Lord,
Second Person of the Trinity, and he waits
hat in hand for no man.
And that is not what I think of
him, but what he thinks of me.
That's the most vital, fatal question that I
can answer, and I ask myself now, is
what does Jesus Christ think of me, and
what's my relation to him?
But always remember that instead of his applying
to us, we apply to him.
That instead of a Christ waiting meekly and
modestly like a paperboy outside waiting for his
quarter, Jesus Christ stands in his tall majesty,
and you and I will either bow to
him and accept him in the right sense
of the word, or we'll turn away and
leave him forever.
And we can do the latter and still
be religious as a Mohammedan.
There's a lot of painless accepting of Jesus
these days.
This is being preached pretty broadly, that we've
taken all the pain out of accepting him.
How can I be saved except Christ?
Accept Christ, go to Christ, and smile at
the personal worker, and I'm in.
Now, brethren, any salvation that comes without pain
and without cost and without inconvenience is only
a thin veneer, just a paint job, and
underneath there may be rottenness and corruption and
dead men's bones.
We ought to get that straight, that accepting
Christ saves you, but accepting Christ isn't what
it's properly thought to be.
It might have worked, I suppose, in Israel's
day, if they had been willing to be
as shallow as we seem to be willing
to be, when the Lord said, you'll put
blood on the doorposts and all that passover
thing, and then they'd stayed in Egypt and
not rigid for the trumpet, not got their
garments on and their shoes on their feet
and their hat in their hand and their
staff and ready to go.
Their descendants could have been in Egypt to
this very hour.
They had to act in the direction, yes,
I accept Moses, I accept the passover, I
accept the blood, I accept the lamb, but
I am staying in Egypt.
They could have perished in Egypt and died
there.
They had to get up and be ready
to go, and then when the trumpet blew
long, they had to get up and go,
or they'd still have been in Egypt.
Then there's the story of the prodigal son
who went into the far country.
Years ago I wrote a little script that
I had never printed, maybe someday I will,
but it was something like this.
It said that there was a certain man
who had two sons, and one of them
said to his father, the younger one, give
me the portion of goods that follow up
to me.
And the father divided unto them his living,
and after a few days the younger son
took his departure into a far country, and
there he wasted his substance with riotous living.
And he joined himself to a farmer in
that country, and the Jew that he was
was sent out into the field to feed
swine.
And the pay was so low and the
famine so bad that he fain would have
filled his belly with the husks if the
hogs hadn't been pushed him away.
He was there quite a while and sort
of got used to the smell of things
and the look of things around there.
And after he'd been there a few years,
lo and behold, a young man appeared, and
he had some cracks in his pocket, and
he said to the younger brother who lies
with the swine, I have good news for
you, good news.
And the younger brother says, and what is
it, pray tell?
I have news that your father is ready
to forgive you, if you'll only accept forgiveness.
And the young man says, ah, the time
of mine eyes have been dimmed with tears,
thinking about the shoddy trick I played on
my poor old father.
And I certainly would like to be forgiven
for the way I treated him, but how
can I be sure why?
And then comes out the tract and the
young evangelist says why you can be sure,
because it says here, whoever believeth in him
shall have remission of sin.
The young fellow cries softly, blows his nose
twice, and gets up, and the evangelist says,
well, goodbye, and God bless you now, witness.
And he walks away and leaves them among
the swine, and he never leaves the pen
at all, he stays right there.
But after thinking it over a while and
reading the tracts, he gets up, and he
forms a little society of other swine herds
who were willing to listen to the good
news, and they clean out an old pen
and start a tabernacle and sing choruses.
But it's noticed that the citizens of the
far country, when they come, and the first
church of the swine herd says, Praise be
to the Lord, so persecuted they the prophets
which were before me.
They don't figure that it was that they
smelled bad, but they were being persecuted.
And then one day a man came and
put the Bible under his arm, and he
asked permission to speak, and they said, Speak
on.
And he quoted from Isaiah, Wash your hands,
and cleanse your heart, and learn to do
good, and cease to do evil, and straighten
out, and keep my sabbaths, and obey my
voice, and then come and let us reason
together, saith the Lord, though your sins be
as scarlet.
But the elders of the first church of
the swine herd rose, white-faced with anger,
and said, This man is a heretic.
He teaches evil.
Have you not been happy in this swine
pen lo these many years?
And they dumped the young man out, and
he takes his Bible and disappears sadly down
the road.
And still they sing choruses, and still the
populace walks around them because they find it
inconvenient to come too close, because of the
way they're living.
And back in the old days, when the
calf goes up and becomes a cow, and
that's the end of the story.
But, brothers and sisters, that's the way we're
doing it these days.
We're doing it these days, we're running around
killing people, and it's deadly as cyanide.
No, no, no, the prodigal son had to
leave that dirty, smelly mess and come home
and get cleaned up.
And so does every sinner.
And no amount of tears or sobs or
thick phlegm in the throat or tender, quavering
notes will change the solid truth of God,
that except a man repent he shall surely
perish.
Now, Jesus Christ was very clear about it
all.
Clear as daylight.
With Jesus Christ, there never were any shadows,
never any wavy lines that you didn't know
where you were.
Never any shadows.
Everything was either black as night or clear
and white.
And it was an either-or with Jesus.
You're either saved or you're lost, you're on
the road to heaven or you're on your
road to hell.
You are God's child or you're not.
You've repented or you haven't, you're forgiven or
you aren't.
Always there was a clear line of demarcation.
But it's the desire to make converts that's
let the bars down.
It's the desire to build up the church
and get a bigger crowd that's let the
bars down.
And people can get in now.
Almost anybody can get into the average church.
Brethren, I don't know how much longer I'll
be around.
Some old lady over at Hula Beach, she
says, dear brother, told her he's getting feeble.
Well, I don't know whether she meant physically
or mentally, but I'm not as feeble as
I might be yet.
But I'll tell you one thing.
While I'm around, I'm not going to sell
out the message.
While I'm around, I'm going to draw the
line tight and sharp and say, look, make
your calling and election sure.
Now, what is it to believe in Christ,
to accept Christ?
Well, let me get it to you.
It is to form an attachment to the
person of Christ that is revolutionary, that reverses
the life, that transforms the life and completely
changes the whole character.
That is to accept Christ, and if that
hasn't happened, then you have not accepted Christ.
It's to form an attachment to Christ that
is not only revolutionary, but complete, and that
leaves no part of the life unaffected.
Jesus Christ doesn't save people by chunks.
You can't save a man from hell by
pieces any more than you can pull a
man out of the sea in pieces.
If a man is perishing, drowning in the
sea, they don't pull him out in chunks,
they pull my whole man out in one
whole piece.
And so Jesus Christ saves the whole man,
the whole personality, all the man.
And when I accept Christ truly, I form
an attachment to Christ that is so complete
that it leaves no part of my life
unaffected.
It exempts no area of my total being
from his control, and is not only revolutionary
and complete, but it's exclusive.
Christ is not one of several interests.
Christ is the supreme interest, and every other
interest has its meaning and takes its significance
only from the fact that I have settled
that supreme interest.
A really saved man has found Jesus Christ
the supreme interest of his life.
Now, let me say here, I got a
nasty letter from a fellow one time for
saying this in print, but I fixed it
up.
I wrote back and told him he was
a nice fellow and he wrote me an
article.
But I don't believe in Saviorhood without Lordship.
This is a modern heresy, that Jesus can
save you by pieces and you can accept
him in pieces.
You can talk about your delayed payment, if
you want to.
You can buy automobiles and TVs that way,
but you can't get saved that way.
Nobody was ever saved yet who deliberately said,
I will take Christ as my Savior and
later I will figure out whether I want
him as my Lord.
Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord.
And the Bible says that we are to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, not on
the Savior, but on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And apart from the Lordship of Christ, there
is no Saviorhood.
But we have messed this whole thing up.
In order to make a place for a
second work of grace, we ruined the first
work by telling the people they can be
saved now and accept the merits of Jesus'
blood now, and then later, maybe ten years,
maybe ten days, maybe ten months later, they
can take Jesus as their Lord.
No, it won't do, my brother.
I admit that sometimes we can come with
a very imperfect knowledge of who Jesus is,
and we can throw ourselves on his mercy
and attach ourselves to his person, and later
on there will be such a blaze of
glory come to us as to his Lordship
and to all that he is, that it
will be to us like a second conversion.
But if there is any reservation the first
time, there will never be a second time.
I cannot come and divide the offices of
Jesus and say, I take him now as
my Savior and I'll give some thought later
to him as my Lord.
My brother, if he can't control you, he
can't save you.
If he can't be Lord of your life,
he can't be Savior of your soul.
We might as well get that straightened around.
To accept Christ is this.
I'm not going to talk long tonight.
To accept Christ is this.
It's to accept his friends as my friends.
And I'm glad for that.
I've got so many wonderful friends.
I don't deserve any, and I have so
many wonderful friends.
I know I'm getting old because they call
me Our Beloved.
When you begin to get old and battered,
then they say, Our Beloved.
When they cease to pay any attention to
what they say, they give you a honorary
degree called Our Beloved.
They're calling me Our Beloved now, and I
don't know whether anybody is listening to me
much or not.
But I still have my friends, and I
have some wonderful friends.
And we accept his friends as our friends.
Some of our dear young people try to
accept him and then keep their old unsaved
friends.
Can't do it, Junior.
Can't do it.
If you do not quit the old game,
you prove that you have not accepted Christ
in any right sense of the word.
For to accept the Master is to accept
all the servants of the Master.
To accept the head of the house is
to accept all the children of the household.
And to accept Jesus is to accept Jesus'
friends.
I think there's probably no one thing that
injures as many young Christians, I mean youthful
Christians, as bad friendships.
I see them in my church, I suppose
everywhere it's the same.
They come and they go through, and we
put them through every grilling, and we know
how to try to make them see what
there's to be saved.
And they seem to be converted, and we
think they're converted, but they don't leave the
old crowd.
They go back and love you, the old
gang, and in two weeks' time they're cooling
off, and in two months' time they're backslidden.
Now, if you're going to be a friend
of Jesus, you're going to have to be
a friend of Jesus' friends.
And the sweetest people in the world are
the friends of Jesus.
Now, learned people, I like to be with
learned people.
I like to be with sharp-brained, trenchant
thinkers that can out-Plato-Plato.
But I love God's people better than I
do with the thinkers, because the thinkers can
be such lamely, miserable wretches often.
But the dear children of God always have
a flavor about them.
It's the aroma, the sweet fragrance, of the
lure of the valley and the rosewood shand,
and the garment smell of married aloes and
cash out of the ivory palaces.
And you know something, brothers and sisters, if
I'm around you very long, I'll sniff, and
if I don't smell the fragrance of Sharon's
dewy rose, I'll pray for your salvation.
Yes, sir.
A bee always comes back smelling like where
he's been, and
you'd catch one, hold him carefully from the
top, and smell him.
He smelled like buckwheat.
You always smell like where you've been.
And a Christian that walks with Jesus always
has a fragrance of Jesus about him, a
moral sweetness of Jesus upon his life.
Well, then, to accept Christ is to accept
Christ's enemies as my enemies.
And that takes some courage.
The first is fellowship, and the second is
courage.
God has so many half-saved Christians, so
many that I don't know whether they're in
or out, and I know or don't think
anybody does, but God, I don't know whether
the angels even know or not.
But God knows.
But they will not allow themselves to make
any enemies.
They're going to be a friend to everybody,
including Hitler and the devil, but they're still
going to sneak into the kingdom of God
somehow.
Man will never make it.
Why don't you stand up and realize that
Jesus Christ has enemies that hate the ground
you walk on?
And they'll not be his friend, and they'll
not be your friend.
Perfectly willing to make enemies for Jesus' sake
always have been.
You know, it's the oddest thing.
A lot of Christians lose friends trying to
make friends and influence people.
And some other Christians make friends perfectly willing
to make enemies.
Years ago I had to decide whether I
was going to try to please everybody or
please God and let the chips fall where
they would.
And I've had more friends since than I
had before, but they're the right kind of
friends.
That's the main thing.
To accept Christ means to accept Christ's ways,
which is obedience.
You can't say, I have accepted Christ and
then go some other direction.
You've got to go the direction he's going
in all times, under all circumstances, in your
home and in your business and everywhere.
To accept Christ is to accept his rejection
as my rejection.
F.
W.
H.
F.
Meyer, the great English poet, one of the
great English poets, was also a Christian.
And he wrote some beautiful things.
He wrote a thing called St. Paul, and
in that he was good enough that he
ranked up along with Tennyson.
He was an ordinary psalm writer.
But he said something speaking for Paul, as
though he were Paul.
He said, and God forbid that I should
fall into the treason of accepting an honor
which they gave not me.
Do you understand that?
Be received by those who reject my Savior,
welcomed by those who turn my Lord out
into the knife, loved by those who hate
the one who died for me.
Never, never can it be.
There's a certain rejection that the people of
God have to get.
Now, I'm going to tell you something.
I'm old enough, I'm fifty-eight.
A man who's fifty-eight can always earn
his right to say anything he wants to
with decency.
And I'll tell you this, brethren, I hope
you never get so big and popular over
here that you lose the stigmata of the
cross of Jesus off of you.
Northside Pittsburgh Church grew out of the stigmata
of the cross, the rejection and the blood
and the spitting and the shame.
I hope you never prosper to a point
where you think you can get along without
the stigmata of the cross.
A great evangelist came to B.
L.
Moody and said, and not B.
L.
Moody, but A.
B.
Simpson, and said, Dr. Simpson, if you'd stop
preaching healing, you'd be one of the most
popular evangelists in America.
He said, Brother, I always want to keep
something of the shame of the cross on
my ministry.
And we'll be to us anywhere in Chicago
or Pittsburgh or anywhere in the day when
they speak well of us and too many
people like us.
His rejection is my rejection.
I won't ask to be rejected, and I
won't seek persecution, but I want to walk
so close to him that when they reject
him, they'll dump me out along with him.
And then it's to accept his cross as
my cross, and that means death.
There was a cross on the hill, and
that cross on the hill meant salvation to
me.
But there's a cross in my heart, and
that cross in my heart means sanctification to
me.
But we don't hear much about it anymore.
You can examine young fellows out of Nyack,
and they don't know what you mean when
you say that deeper life or the second
work of grace or sanctified life.
They look at you innocent as a young
calf, and they say, We didn't hear that.
What do you mean?
Brother, I know when you heard it, I
went through it.
Oh, I thank God for the privilege of
dying.
Yes, sir.
My dear old mother-in-law, God bless
her memory, she sleeps with the just and
sings with the Saints in the glory.
She got me down on my knees in
the living room beside the old pump organ
and said, Young man, you need to be
baptized with the Holy Ghost.
All I thought I needed was just to
let my personality flash.
I had personality then, and I lost it
later.
But I used to have a flashing personality
and black hair, lots of it, lots of
black hair.
I'd toss it when I preached, toss my
black hair out of
the Holy Scripture and it really made you
stay.
So after hours and hours of dying and
dying and dying until I thought I was
pretty close to dying, until all my joy
went and all my self-confidence went and
all my peace went and everything went, and
I was finished.
And I felt unsaved and lost and miserable
and rejected and almost felt like saying, Eli,
Eli, I want to sit back there.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?
And just at that hour a verse of
scripture was quoted in my ears and I
believed it, and down came the Holy Ghost
like a flood of golden oil and leaped
into my spirit like a lightning flash and
went to the depths of my body.
I had to die first though, but nowadays
they have a shortcut.
They teach you how in seven easy lessons.
You can buy a little booklet to show
you how to be filled with the Spirit.
But the way I was filled was after
God had killed me, then Ken resurrected me,
and I take his cross as my cross.
The cross that slew him slays me, and
the cross in which he was raised up
I am raised up.
And then it means his life is my
life.
I accept his life as my life.
That's resurrection.
I read a book one time, what was
that book called?
Written by an Englishman.
He should have been doing something else at
the time.
I forget the name of the book, but
it was about the cross.
And so after I had read that, it
was years after I was filled with the
Spirit, I read that book on the cross.
And that day Brother had a concept of
the cross that I think was very inadequate.
He kept me up on the cross all
the time.
And when I was through, I was still
on the cross.
But I remember that even Jesus only hung
on the cross six hours, and then he
quit.
He died.
Now I believe it's entirely possible for us
to have this business of dying, get it
out of the road.
Oh, I know there's a sense in which
we die daily, but I also know there
is a sense in which we come to
Jesus Christ's cross, and own that cross as
our cross, and then go on to believe
in his resurrection from the dead.
What made Dr. Simpson the great Christian leader
he was, was not that he taught the
cross.
A lot of men teach the cross.
I could read the word, but I will
not for decency's sake.
There came a certain woman writer in England
at about that time.
She had you on the cross all the
time.
You never got down off of that cross.
And I read devotional books that keep you
on the cross all the time.
The Brethren, it is such a thing as
getting your dying over with, and then rising
in faith with Jesus Christ to a new,
beautiful, wonderful life in God.
Then if you ever get off the track
somewhere, you'll feel that cross again.
But you don't have to.
You can walk with a Savior, bump out
down, accept his future as your future, which
means union and identification with Jesus.
And when we sing at our altar calls,
a song that never was written for an
altar at all, it's Where He Leads Me,
I Will Follow.
And we've sung that at the altar calls
until we have associated that song with the
invitation to a point where the average Christian,
if he were asked, would admit that he
thinks of the Where He Leads Me, I
Will Follow as falling down the aisle of
an altar.
But that's not an altar song, that's a
life song.
That's a song for tomorrow and next year
and the next decade and the next score
of years of Jesus' territory.
Where He Leads Me, I Will Follow means
that I, by accepting Christ, have identified myself
with his holy being, his person, to a
point that wherever he goes, I'll go and
know why.
The old prophet was on his way to
be whipped off into heaven, and his young
assistant pastor was following along behind him.
The old man wasn't sure of the boy.
He knew he had a lot of gift,
but he didn't know whether he was willing
to die or not.
He said, I'm going over here to such
-and-such, and you're going back home.
And he said, as the Lord liveth, I'll
not go back, I'm going where you're going.
He followed him clear through the Jordan.
That's following your prophet, and that's following Jesus.
I don't want him to go anywhere that
I can't go, and I don't want him
to go anywhere that he can't go.
And I don't want to have any honor
that he can't have, and I don't want
to be put anyplace where they wouldn't have
him.
That's where power lies, ladies and gentlemen.
It doesn't lie in advertising, it doesn't lie
in personality, it doesn't even lie in intellect.
Power lies in following the Lamb wheresoever he
goes.
This is to receive Jesus, this is to
accept him and believe in him.
If you go wrong here, it'll be fatal
to you.
It's either be right or be lost.
There's no middle ground, no compromise, no halfway.
It's either be right or be lost.
And now in the name of Jesus Christ,
this five minutes after 902 minutes, in the
name of our mutual Savior and Lord, won't
you think it over about yourself?
Are you sure that when you accepted Christ,
anything really happened, that you really got in?
You say, I feel good?
Yeah, sure.
They feel good when they're bebopping down here
at the hottest night spot in Pittsburgh.
You can work yourself up into a wonderful
time.
A lot of religious people have a good
time, but it's just psychic.
It's flesh, it isn't spiritual.
When you accepted Christ, did you accept his
friends forever as your friends, his enemies forever
as your enemies, his ways as your ways,
his rejection as your rejection, his cross as
your cross, his life as your life, and
his future as your future, world without end?
If you didn't, I don't think you're saved
at all.
You've been deluded, deceived.
May God Almighty help us.
Moral sanity requires we settle this first.
Don't take it for granted, but make your
calling in the election sure.
Dear brother Tom Hare, some of you know
him here in Pittsburgh, I'm sure.
The old praying Irishman, Scottish false, preaches too
long and too loud.
But he's a dear saint of every one
way.
I saw him in Beulah Beach.
He's just around as I am, skinny.
I put my arm around his old fat
Irish body, and he put his arm around
my skinny American body, and we walked over
the Greensward Road, Beulah Beach, together and said,
where are you going, Tom?
Well, he said, after I leave here, I'm
going back, 13th of September, I'm going to
fly back home, and I'm going to call
a moratorium on talking.
He said, I've been talking too much.
What's my trouble, brother?
I've been talking too much.
He said, I'm going back home, and I'm
going to stop all talking, all engaging, all
preaching for six months.
He said, I'm going to spend six months
searching my own heart and having the judgment
seat of Christ now while I can do
something about it.
There is wisdom from on high, ladies and
gentlemen.
Even though he prayed three nights a week
for years and years, and even though he
walked so close to God that he shamed
the rest of us, he still had talked
himself thin and was going back home to
have a little judgment seat of Christ.
He said, I want to know the worst
about meself while I can do something about
it.
I prayed for you.
You'd let the excitement of everything carry along,
lean back and refuse to be moved by
mere excitement.
Ask yourself, my soul, how is it with
you?
Ask God, my God, am I really in,
or do I just think I'm in?
I'll give no invitation tonight, but I do
want to pray for you.
Let's pray.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
in Classic Sermons series.
This week, you heard A.W. Tozer with
his message, What Is It to Accept Jesus?
Tune in next week to hear David Wilkerson
speak about another gospel on From the Pulpit
in Classic Sermons.