A. W. Tozer Sermon - God's Great Promise to His Church

the text we found in the 24th chapter Luke and in acts one familiar passages our Lord says behold I send the promise of my father upon you but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high the next one says he showed himself alive after his passion being a symbol together with the disciples commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem but wait for the promise of the father which said he ye shall he have heard of me for John truly baptized with water but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost at many days hence last Sunday I attempted to show who the Holy Spirit is and reverently and imperfectly what he is tried to show that he's a real being and not an abstraction but he is a person and not a thing that he is very good having all the powers and attributes of the deity and that he is in one essence all one essence with the father and the son now granted that this is true what is this to do with you and me I never liked to preach in a vacuum I never liked to have anybody hear a sermon and then go home and say so what I might as well be somewhere else and so might you unless there is some moral imperative some obligation laying upon us as a result of what we know some privilege which is ours as a result of what we can find out so now what's the practical effect of the person of the Holy Spirit what are we to expect and what are we to do can't answer this all tonight but over the next week's and how does it or how should it affect my outlook as a Christian and I should it affect the outlook at this church because I expect this church to go along with his preaching now the father promised the spirit as a gift to his children and I don't know whether this is right or not but I think maybe God had in mind the love people have for their children he did say if you did being evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him and in making the spirit the promise of the Father I wonder if he didn't want to show that you don't have to be afraid of the Holy Spirit this is one thing that it's very difficult to get an audience over to get a Christian over the fear of the Holy Spirit by that I don't mean reverence for him you cannot reverence the Holy Spirit too much but you can be afraid of him and I am sure that a lot of people are afraid of the Holy Spirit but if you could remember that he is the father's promise he is given to us as the father's promised gift just as a man offers or promises his son a bicycle for Christmas or whatever the boy wants and the boy remembers I know they remember and they come back in there and remind you or sometimes in an embarrassing an embarrassing time that you'll promise and nobody's ever afraid of a promise made by a father who loves him now the members of the Rabine church should be bound in the bundle of love with the Holy Spirit the proof is that God never thought of his church apart from the Holy Spirit we were born of the Spirit we are baptized into the body of Christ by the Spirit we should be anointed with the spirit we are led to the spirit or should be we are taught to the spirit and the spirit then is the what should I say the medium the divine solution in which God holds his church and has his church the Holy Spirit is the essence of the Godhead uncreate I think the poet the hymn was said now God never dreamed of his people I say apart from the Holy Spirit and he made a lot of promises to them let's note some of the promises that he made he said for instance this until the spirit be poured upon us from on high and the wilderness be a fruitful field the fruitful field be counted for a forest then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness and righteousness remain in the fruitful field and the work of righteous men shall be peace and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever then further on in Isaiah he says I will pour water from him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground I will pour my spirit upon thy seed in my blessing upon that offspring then there's that famous passage in Joel it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh your sons and your daughters shall prophesy your old men shall dream dreams your young men shall see visions also upon my servants or upon the servants and upon the hand maids in those days will I pour out my spirit now those are the words of the Father in Jesus interpreted these words and call them the promise of the father and whenever you have Jesus our Lord interpreting the Old Testament you stay close by his interpretation don't don't to depend too much or lean too hard on the interpretations of man because we can be wrong but our Lord the man Christ Jesus never was and he called this the promise of the Father that is the father through the Old Testament through the years had promised and now Jesus sums it up and calls it the promise of the father and he says that then in the text which I read tonight tarry until you be endued with power and I will send the promise of the father upon you now I say Jesus interpreted this and I'm not going to read it tonight because it takes too long and you were too familiar with it but in John 14 and 16 14 15 and 16 you will find our Lord talking about the Holy Spirit and his coming to the church and now I notice that in the church in the Gospels and Acts and over into the epistles there are three periods that are discernible you want to jot them down or at least in your memory with respect to the Holy Spirit and his work in church there are three periods discernible there is what we call the period of the promise that is from John the Baptist to the resurrection of Christ now the marks of this period this three-year period the disciples were called and they were commissioned and they were taught do you know my dear friends that if we could get together a congregation that was the spiritual as the disciples were before Pentecost we would consider that we had a very spiritual church we'd make bishops out of those boys we would we didn't we'd the lectins of the boards and we'd write their lives and name churches after them if we could find somebody just as spiritual as they were before the Holy Ghost came at Pentecost just even that spiritual while they were getting ready you see the disciples were called there's no question they were called and they were commissioned and they were topped of the Lord we talked about these ignorant disciples do you know that these disciples had three years in the best Bible School in the world there isn't a seminary on earth that can equal the seminary with Jesus as the whole faculty he was teaching them and instructing them and sitting with them you know they used to say a University consisted of Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a boy on the other with a young fellow on one end of the log and Mark Hopkins on the other the log wasn't too long you had the University and a Bible School a Seminary consists of our Lord Jesus Christ and a willing student and they went to the best Bible School in the world now they didn't get a degree which they could frame and put on their study wall but they had a degree inside of them and they loved Christ our Lord these disciples did they love the living they loved in bed and they loved him living again that was the period of the promise you see when they hadn't received anything yet they'd only been promised something and all this time until his death and even after Jesus was creating expectation in them he was telling them that there was a new kind of life coming to them but it wasn't to be a poetic life it wasn't to be psychic it wasn't to be physical it was to be enough latest from above it was to be something that was to come to them out of the world beyond them over the threshold of their beings into the sanctum sanctorum into the penet raelia into the deep of their spirit and live there and teach them and instruct them and lead them and make them holy and give them power Jesus taught that all the way through there wherever he could find the time and the people were about him the circumstances were good he would tell them and and these things and as they came nearer to the end giving his life that is the end of his earthly life he intensified this teaching as is indicated in John 14 15 and 16 he told them that there was a new and superior kind of life coming and he told them it was to be an effusion and outpouring of spiritual energy and then he left them then there was a second period and put that down that's the period of the preparation now of course in some measure they were being prepared while he walked with him but after they after he had gone then they began to prepare they stopped their activities and you know what's the matter with us in our day we're the busiest bunch of eager beavers that I have ever known or have ever been probably in a religious world the idea is that if you're not running in a circle if you're not breathing down the back of your own neck you're not pleasing God when the fact is the Lord said don't go yet you're not ready to go you know Peter leaped to his feet when the Lord said go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature Peter leaped to his feet my dog grabbed scooped up his hat on the way out he he was going to go right now maybe found something you know and start something but the Lord said Peter came back he said tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high I think one of the biggest mistake we make with our young people is forget them born again and then start them out right away my brethren were not prepared to do the work of the Lord when we're just born again the priests were born priests but they had to be anointed priests before they could serve they had they were born priests they had to be born of the of the tribe of Levi of the family of and co hath Maria and the other fellas name they had to be in the old line say they had they had to be born into the priesthood he or they couldn't be priests but they didn't serve even though they were born priests they didn't serve as priests until they had been anointed blood was put on their ears on their thumbs on their toes and then on the blood was put on oil fragrant sweet oil the type of the Holy Ghost then after they had been anointed for the priesthood they went and served in the Old Testament priesthood but you and I just as soon as we got a fella born into the tribe of Levi we give them a bunch of tracks and say now bud get going and the result is Christianity has taken on amateurism I heard the former president of Wheaton Colin time say that we are suffering from a rash of amateurism in Christian circles and we surely are Christianity has leveled down and down and down and the high quality and the the specific gravity you know that the weight of it is gone we're lightest butterflies we flip flip flip around in the sunshine and imagine that we're Eagles flapping our broad wings above the rocks of God but instead of that we're butterflies where we're trying to work when we're not prepared to work and so there needs to be some preparations and getting ready they stopped their activities I have said you know I say lots of radical things but I don't apologize it was I have to be had time but among the things that I have said and I think I'd stand for it is that I believe the church would be better off if we'd call a moratorium on activity for about six weeks and just wait on God to see what he would do for us just wait on God they did that very thing they cleaned up the loose yNN's and they got United you know we pray O God send thy Holy Spirit upon us so we'll be united we might just dwell repeating the three blind mice because God doesn't hear that kind of prayer because you've got no sense in it there's the Holy Ghost did not come upon the disciples to unite them the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples because they were already united being of one Accord in one place now the scholars tell me I just a boy picked up a little as I went along but those were supposed to know tell me that it's a musical term that being a one who in one Accord it's a musical term means harmony and they already were one they though they were in harmony with each other and then when they were all together in one place you know if you could get God's people all together in one place a trouble is that some of you you're here but you're not here at all your mind is wandering around all over Ontario but you're here in your body but they were all together in one place somebody said that we have yet to see what God can do with a man if we can get him all together in one place if you can just get him together and get him in one place and get him focused and get him together and now they were there and then came the third period the period of the realization the Holy Ghost came upon them suddenly it wasn't until just lately just this last week that I saw a word here in the book of Acts and I found that word occurring quite often through the Scriptures and that is the word suddenly and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind then it filled all the house where they were sitting and I rather smile to myself because and words suddenly they're God's people are so afraid of suddenly they always want things to slip up on him a little bit at a time slowly everybody is willing to be filled with the Holy Spirit provided God does it very gingerly and very slowly and doesn't take away their face nor embarrass them any and doesn't frighten them but the scripture says suddenly they were filled with the Holy Ghost it even says suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts and I think I'm going to look it up but I think you'll find that word suddenly occurring prettier whenever God did a wonderful thing it did it suddenly but we're afraid of that we want we want to grow in grace we want to grow because you know you can grow and know you're not embarrassed if an altar call is given and you go to the prayer room get down on your knees and seek Almighty God and God comes and chills you and you get up and get your handkerchief out and up your eyes and say thank God the comforters come it's embarrassing you know and it takes a little bit of away from your reputation you got a feeling well look at me i-i-i used to be the head a chairman of the board and i thought a adult Sunday School class in my home church and now for me to suddenly be filled with the spirit maybe even break down cry or say praise the Lord to be awful and the result of course is we go on year after year and learn to live with that we learn to live with a spiritual corpse we learn to live our breath is frosty and our peaks are pale and our toes are frostbitten and we have in spirituality yet we learn to live with that we imagine that that's normal and we write books to prove that that's normal was not normal at all it's subnormal it's abnormal it's below normal holy ghost isn't honest and that's our trouble but the period of the realisation came suddenly and the father fulfilled his promise and the expectations were fully met and more always remember this that God is always bigger than anything God can say because words are inadequate to express God and what God can do any promise that God ever made God has to over fulfill it the reason being that God is so great and his heart is so kind and his desires hold intense and tremendous that language doesn't express it not the grief not the grief not the English no language expresses God it can if language could contain God then language would be equal to God so everything God says in the Bible must be understood to be a little greater than what he says even as God is greater than language so when God promised them that they should receive power that that power should be Ana Freitas from heaven above which could come upon them should cross the threshold of their spirits and enter into the deeps of their soul and dwell there forever and should work within them to lead them purify them instruct them and teach them we've got to believe that they are the the fulfillment will be greater than the promise because the fulfillment of God and the promises words God is always greater than words don't forget that and we let it convince in one time over in New York State there was a beautiful little Italian woman married woman and I didn't I didn't talk about this what did I talk about that night I talked about this maybe I'll preach it here some it was that text from the Old Testament that says every man shall know the plague of his own heart and I preached on the plague of a man's heart she heard it and then I told him that there was deliverance there was a balm in Gilead and there was a fountain opened in the house of David to deliver us from the plague of our own heart was she along with us some others came down to the older and she was there and suddenly she leapt to her feet with no wildness no no elder woolly stuff it was God and that lovely dark face of hers literally shown and she walked around saying like somebody oh that she'd heard her family had been killed and then suddenly she'd heard it was a mistake they were all well and happy she just couldn't believe it and she kept saying oh I didn't know it could happen to me I didn't know it could happen to me and there was an older man a man considerably older than she and she made a dash for him threw her arms around him and hugged him hard and had a little I had a little word together then she turned away all tears and smiles and I learned afterward was her father in law and they'd had a little row and she was just hugging the old man making up with him which is perfectly normal and right she'd made up in her heart but she got to him afterward well now that let's see the fulfillment now she said I didn't know this could be now she had read it in the text and she'd heard it preached but what happened to her was so much greater than anything she had been dove but he couldn't believe it was happening but it happened all right now there's a great modern error abroad and you'll find out if you listen to me for any length of time that I am NOT one of these positive preachers you know they say that you're supposed to be positive here to here to accent the positive and underplay the negative but everybody that knows how to screw in the light bulb knows there's two poles in an electric circuit the positive and the negative and you can't have a light burning on one it takes a boat everybody knows there's two sides to Canadian half-dollar when one side is say oh I can't resist race Latin and the other side this says something else but you split that down the middle and there isn't a story in Toronto that would take it both sides have to be there to positive in the negative and the newer coins they have the Queen lovely outline on there and then something on you takes boat one won't do and so there's got to be the negative you got to get rid of some things I I never had any time for these soft handed cake eating pastors who look more more normal with a pea balanced on their knees and they do on their knees in the study I never could see it but they walk around smooth and sweet on hoping never to make any enemies as long as they live brother a man is known by the enemies he makes he is and he's known by the friends he makes and I want God friends to be my friends man are so particular about God's enemies whether they're my friends or not I don't want to be friends of those that are enemies of God so I will sometimes have to tear into things that I don't believe are right I wouldn't do it except that it hinders the people of God that's all hinders him and anything that hinders God's people at my business so don't say that's none of my business that is my business I've been anointed of God to make it my business so there's an error abroad and I want to state it now I heard all night you know all my life all the life of thought it and I think I'm coming out on top well the state is like this that the individual Christian is not affected by this promise of the Father that this happened to the church wants and is not to be repeated just as the birth of Christ happened once and is not to be repeated the death of Christ happened once and is not to be repeated the resurrection of Christ happened once and is not to be repeated so Pentecost happened once and that's it now the church no longer is concerned that has taken place that was a historic fact the same as the birth of Jesus same as the death of Jesus and so they try to brush us off well tell you what I'm going to ask you some questions now and let you do your own preaching then when you go out you won't have had it rammed down your throat you will have made your own decision about I got about nine questions I want to ask you and you answer them and then when we're through we'll be through first question is was the father's promise for the first century Christians only this promise of the Father that was to come was that for the first century Christians only or did that carry over to the second century in the third century and the fourth century now am i feel all education came out of the Scofield Bible and do you know what Scofield Bible says the Scofield Bible says that the period that Joel had in mind when he says it to come to pass in the last days but I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh Scofield says at that period the last days began with the Pentecost and continues until Christ returns we are living in the period of the last days when that text of Joel's is active and efficacious and applicable to you and me and I quote dr. school fear because often he's quoted as being not being on the side of the spirit filled life but he it was an honest man and he stated that that we are now living in those latter days when God will pour out his spirit upon all flesh that's what he believed dr. Tory said that when when Peter said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and receive the gift of the Spirit which is the promise is unto you and your children and as many as are far off wasn't that first generation crowd only you and your children and as many as our fire how far off is Toronto from Palestine I would say I guess 6,000 miles I may be wrong there I'm better stay Logan my name geographer but I'd guess at it and say that's about it alright as many as are far off now that's the first problem now you settle it brother if I if I try to make you believe something you'll go away and if you meet a man that's better arguer than I am here make it believe the office that is always the reason I believe in the witness of the Spirit if you can argue a man into believing he's filled he'll meet another man that'll argue him out of believing his fill if you can argue with young fell into thinking he's born again he will meet some fella that lie him out of so I don't have never argue with anybody I point to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world and after that God then the man on his own men if I drop dead or get hit by a Volkswagen a why heal heal heal you have the the he'll have the promise of the Father and you won't have to go back to me to find out what it's so or not well that's the best question number one was the father's promise for the first century Christians only question number two is does the new birth of the first century Christians make my new birth unnecessary now the Lord said that we would have to be born again and he said we were to be filled with the spirit and they come along and tell us that that meant they were to be filled with the spirit back there all right grant they were filled with the spirit but I happen to be born 1897 that's that's a few hundred years too late for that first century and Here I am high and dry hanging on a wire and if if if I didn't live back there then I'm I'm finished I don't have any hope at all I won't listen to that kind of teaching breath and I won't because you can't reason it this way as De Pere was born again this Peters being born again do for me Peter was filled with the spirit then there's Peter being filled with the spirit do for me I won't ask you this question we're the breakfast of hand on ham and eggs I would have breakfast of eggs that Peter agent 33 AD marries me living in 1960 they didn't know Peter ate his eggs and drank his milk and agent brown bread and he was nourished in 33 AD I am living in 1960 and I have to have my hamon I'm not you and therefore I eat him and I I excused Peter on that because I figured that being a Jew he wouldn't want the stuff but Peters breakfast didn't 3380 he won't do me one better go now I have to eat now if I'm going to be nourished now Peter's being born again won't help me in 1960 I must be born again now as he was born again then Peter's being filled in that day won't help me now I must be filled now as he was fills in well how is there any difference between that me outpouring of the Spirit what the value another question I want to ask is it to the church in Toronto that the church in Jerusalem was filled with the Holy Ghost you know sometimes it seems to me the Lord's people need to have somebody gently rub their heads they get such weird ideas they need something I don't know what maybe shake their head and get it working because this idea that the church being filled with the spirit back there in the first century made it unnecessary for the church to be filled with the spirit now how silly can you get none of you people were living in the first century worried I was nobody I know around here was we weren't even new you aren't even in the minds of our great-grandfather's yet at that time we're a great great grandfather's some of you that are so proud of your ancestry is the brother said in the House of Lords in London you were eating acorns in the forests of Brittany back there at that time you know and I don't know where my ancestors were in the Black Forest is Germany somewhere I guess digging acorns or roots but the way back to that is the hour when the Holy Ghost came upon the church and the church went out in a blaze of fire to preach the gospel to the known world in the first hundred years then the long tuna the long now here we are in 1960 and we have teachers that are so infinitely silly as to come and tell us that all we have to do to just go quietly along till the Lord comes and makes us ruler over many cities they had the spirit back there and all we have the echo and the memory in the hope now they tell us another thing they say that at conversion we receive what they received back there at Pentecost now Alan asked have you ever seen anybody that received at dis conversion what Peter received in the upper chamber have you ever met anybody like that do you know anybody like that and I want to ask you this question when you were converted did you have the power Peter had when he was when he was these brethren you even label it down below Peter down to the common folk that were around him just the plain people whose names were not even known except a few of them didn't they had something that we apparently don't have in this day in which we live I think that did now I want to ask another thing is modern fundamentalism fundamental believers is that a satisfactory fulfillment of expectation raised by the Father and Christ our Heavenly Father promised the gift of the Holy Ghost to come upon these children jesus promised that we should have the spirit he should come he should take the things of Christ make them known unto us he should bring all things to our memory we should have power when the Spirit came he promised all this then I look around a cold dead dried-up fundamentalism textualism hanging out to dry and I then they want me to believe that what they have is what now is what they had back there then I just can't do it I just can't do it we Christians now are a scrub block compared with those Christians back there we're scrub when I was a boy on the farm in Pennsylvania we had scrub chickens caitli my mother go out and bring in some buff coaching's and Plymouth rocks and some others and try to improve the strain a little bit but if you get letting in go a while just let them go for five or six years and they'll revert back to type their go back to scrub you can't figure out what they are they're just little ol dried up clucking biddies that lay little eggs not too many of them and don't provide much meat and we Christians we just reverted back to old a dynamic type they were there were there were before breads in those early days thoroughbreds they had come from God or something from God had come to them and they blazed with light and power and life and look at us look at us and then we try to say we have the same thing that they have you think we have now think it over and answer the question of yourself in the den don't ask you one more does your heart personally witness that what you now enjoy is what our Lord promised to his people do you now does your heart now bear witness that what you now have is all God meant when he painted that wonderful picture of the fullness of the Spirit or is there something more for the church somebody wants to ask the question now they say we don't know this man kosher what is this is this clinical tongue ism that he's preaching no absolutely not it's only what the Christian Missionary Alliance has always believed always believed there's only what dr. Tory believe this what Billy Sunday believed Billy Graham believes Oh Billy was gifted of God to preach to sinners and he doesn't enter this too much because his gift is a bit different and he preaches straight to sinners wins them but it's what it's what Tory I insist believe it's what Moody believe down in the city of Chicago out on the south side there was a little home and in a home lived a little nice old lady food the Holy Ghost named mother cook and a young fella got converted into the city and he was here made a good salesman you know he was very busy fella he loved to run in circles and he did he whenever her running in circles and his name was Dwight Lyman Moody and one day a little old lady mother cook saw more droit and she said son I'd like to have you come over to my house sometime I want to talk to you so a movie went over to her house and she set him down on a chair and she said to something to this general effect now Dwight wonderful to see you sage so beautifully is wonderful to see uses up but you know what you need you need to be anointed with the Holy Ghost well he said mother cook I want whatever God has for me all right she said get down here and she got him down on the linoleum and they prayed awhile she prayed oh god fill this young fella well he died out there and opened his heart and brought his vessel is his empty vessel to the Lord and took the promise by faith but nothing happened so a few days afterward he was in the East I forgotten whether New York or Philadelphia I think New York and he said as I was walking down the street suddenly now there's his word again suddenly God fulfilled the promise he had made to me in that kitchen and down on the him came Horn of oil and the Holy Ghost came on him he said he crawled up an alley and raised his hand and said O God stay or power I'll die then he said I went out from there preaching the same sermons with the same text but all the difference now the Holy Ghost had come now the Holy Ghost had been there he had caused him to be born again if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he's none of his it's quite a different thing to have the spirit as my regenerator and have the Horn of oil poured out on my head quite a different thing the reason I can talk about it with a good deal of authority is I went through it and I know what I'm preaching about I didn't learn this at NIACC brother the Holy Ghost did this God did this so I'm giving it to you you'll learn this at NIACC - without an island well now you'll ponder these things William there isn't any use to try to push into anything we try to push God's poor children around pick them out of their shell in on the result is we get a lot of weird and monstrosity instead of Saints I don't want to do that I want you to do this I want you to set aside some time and I want you to search the Scriptures and see whether these things be so some people say they're not so some people say that all I'm doing is confusion confusing people I wrote a series of articles for a magazine on the Holy Spirit and as a fellow has never been never let me go he's after me still and he publishes things about me showing that I'm confusing the Saints and I wrote him a letter and I said to him my dear brother if the Lord's people we're as eager to be filled with the spirit as they are to prove you can't be the church would be quite a different Church he published that too but it's true isn't it it's true I'm not preaching a sing our Baptist brethren don't believe when you're pressing I am NOT preaching a thing that the Methodist brethren don't believe I am NOT preaching a thing the Salvation Army doesn't teach I'm not preaching a thing that our Puritan fathers didn't believe so I don't apologize it's here set aside time and search the Scriptures and if the Scriptures don't convince you that the church and the individuals in the church ought to be living a happy spiritual life then don't listen to me don't listen to me because if I preach for five hours straight and I don't preach according to the truth found in the Bible I'm wrong no matter how eloquent I try to be pray and yield and believe and obey and see what God will do for you over the next week's huh shut William R you do that see what God will do for you over the next week's

Channel: Christian Sermons and Audio Books

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Keywords: A. W. Tozer (Deceased Person), Sermon (Literature Subject), God (Deity), Acts Of The Apostles (Religious Text), Pentecost (Holiday), Christian Church, Promise (Quotation Subject), Jesus Christ (Deity), Author (Profession), Christianity (Religion), Christian (Adherents), Preacher (Profession), Pastor (Profession)

Id: hyAlVLd_r3M

Length: 43min 43sec (2623 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 11 2012