Beware of the Religious Word Game - A. W. Tozer Sermons

under angel of the church in Sardis write this these things said he that hath the seven spirits of God in the seven stars I know thy works that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die for I have not tongue thy works perfect before God now before I try to speak on these texts I'd like to have you those made a moment of Prayer Oh God how God now Lois how tough the young heart is how encrusted and hard-to-get-to what a system of Defense's it has built up around itself but we appeal to thee thy holy son said but when he went he would send the comforter and when he came he would convict the world of sin and righteousness and jetsam now Lord arguments can't convict they can persuade the line but they can't get past the defenses of the heart when you seek me tonight as thou lets make Stephen irresistible so that they could not resist the spirit and the wisdom by which you spoke we pray that if it please the old Lord thou will tonight bless the word of one unworthy unworthy to tie the shoe laches a steel speak Lord here we are gathered together this nice evening and just the short time and there won't be one of us left oh god we would face eternity tonight and think and decide and determine in the white light of never lasting tomorrow help us now we pray here in speaker to Christ our Lord amen now there are three texts here by the Holy Ghost written the first text says that the gospel may come in one of two ways it may come in word only that is empty with me come in power that is with moral effectiveness now Paul said that he knew that the Gospel message had come to the Thessalonians effectively in moral power and he gave as his reason that they had much assurance and they became followers of Christ Nepal as he followed Christ having received the word in much affliction that they could turn them back they had a strange and supernatural joy which Paul labeled the joy of the Holy Ghost and they went on not to be followers only but examples in their own right there became examples to the other churches and from them sounded out the word of the Lord they became a missionary church now that's what the first text says and if it's true that that's what happens when the word comes in power and the text opens the door to the belief that the word can come nominally and without power then exactly the opposite would be true they would become Christians by some decision but without much assurance they became Christians but they were not followers of the Lord particularly except in name and when the flexin came they didn't take it very well and they hadn't very much joy they had to work it up they didn't stay long and they were not very good examples and they were lukewarm when it came to the missionary zeal now that's a fair explanation here and it lies in this thessalonians verse now the second text says that the effect of the gospel when received in power in addition to what he Paul the same writer said in Thessalonians he tells us that it regenerates a man's nature generate means to create and regenerate means to do it again that's what it does when it's received in power and that the old things of the old first generation that is the first creation passes away and everything becomes new a set of new things takes the place of the old set that was placed aside when the Holy Ghost regenerated the heart to belief in the gospel then the third text says that there are those who have heard the possible in word only and they are called Christians they are Christians in name that's what normal means it means in main but that actually they have not been changed fundamentally at all and they are still old that is they are still dead I said that generation means to create to make alive to regenerate and regenerate means to do it again and the reason God has to do it again is because sin came and we died and has to do that it has to do this the life-giving job second the second time and order we might live but that there are some who have only a name to have this change they've not been changed fundamentally at all they're still all they still belong to the old life actually and the Holy Ghost says they have a name to live but actually they are dead now I have given a brief exegesis of these three verses these three great major truths that lie here because I want you to see what it means to have the gospel coming word and then what it means to have the gospel coming power and then the danger that it shall be only in Word and not in power and then what we should do about it now that it's possible to be a believer in the gospel but have that gospel powerless within us and have it in word only I say is taught in the scriptures our Lord Jesus taught it in Israel we told them bluntly and frankly and went on telling them till they got them so angry they killed him he told them that they were dead he said you're dead you're like dead men's bones you said you polish and paint your separate cars but they're full of dead men's bones said you stand and make your long prayers you put on your religious robes but you don't have anything they looked at each other and tugged at their long beards and determine that as soon as it was possible to do it without a mob scene resulting that killed Jesus well they killed him finally God raised him from the dead the third day set him at his own right hand they thought they were murdering a man but God was offering a sacrifice that's the difference that's the irony of fighting against the Lord Jesus Christ well now I'd I just like to talk to you a little while about the Christian religion as a work game because that's what it is and too many places you said I know that very well because I used to belong to the less and less denomination I know that was truly they were debtors could be the pastor didn't believe in the virgin birth and somebody else says yes I went afore I came to a new road I used to go to a church where they didn't believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch they were scoundrels they were they were liberals but do you know that the Holy Ghost isn't talking about liberals at all here he isn't talking about people that deny the truth of the scripture he's talking about people that admits the truth of the scripture and they receive the gospel as a fact and don't denied need to support it and follow it and take the pastor out if he didn't preach it but it's only reached them in words because their religion is simply a word game now you know what the difference between a game and work a game and serious action the game is something you do and that is you you create a problem and then you have fun solving it you ever think about that I don't know much about hockey as I've said but baseball I grew up with a bat green a rifle and the ball bat I grew up with one one hand the other and the other as a kid in Pennsylvania and I know little about baseball so we'll use that for illustration and show how that baseball creates a problem and then solves it to spend millions of dollars solving a problem that didn't exist until they created it now here's the way it is you see they decide a fella decides now let's create a problem he'll named Abner Doubleday we created the problem he said and I'll tell you what we'll do this will be our problem we'll put one man out here with the ball and put another man 60 feet away from him to catch the ball and he throws it to him now the problem is for this man with the ball to throw it so the other man catches it but in the meantime in order to make it tough for this man to get the ball through to the other man we're going to put a fell in there with a stick and this man with the stick will stand there and he'll try to keep that ball from getting to that another man's mix now that's a problem we will that's that's what we will work on one fell out you'll be called the picture of the hurler or and the ball be called as a beam or the Apple or the ball and this man will wind up and gyrate and then throw and the other man will catch but this Schuller with the stick he's the devil in between and what he's trying to do is to keep him from catching it so that's the way they do it now they got a problem there but the problem never existed you know there was polio and cancer and there would war and there was starvation and there was everything but they had to create a problem and then put the healthiest men in the world out to play and that was the problem didn't exist or doubleday created it over in what's the name of town in Pennsylvania for New York well in you know now this happens and this fella throws this ball and the fellow with this stick hauled off and the strikes and if he connects with it that problem is solved in his favor he's having fun either they they feel they hear the sound of the ball on wood and they say that I think it sounds like Homer but there are a nine or eight other men out there they determined that he's not going to have that solution they're going to have it so there they are the shortstop the three baseman and the three outfielders they're all there ready to catch that ball and if anybody can get that ball before it get down the fellow that this stick is out that is he his problem suddenly blew up in his face now that's the way we're doing you know they spend millions of dollars solving that problem hundreds of times of a sunny afternoon now I don't think it's sinful to watch a ball game but I have a lot of sympathy for that president of a certain college years ago who refused to allow a football team to travel he said why should we spend money to send out a lot of healthy young fellows with a bagful of win and they have them tasted all around and carry it and kick it over a field that couldn't they find something better to do well now that's a wet game and from people like games I'll I used to like game before I got too old and creaky to play them but I admit it I never took it seriously never take a game seriously because it's play there are they that a lot of activity and a lot of noise in an infinite amount of perspiration not to say a consumption of tubs of popcorn in in Chicago where I went to three four times to see a game in 31 years right I noticed also a prodigious amount of beer was also slouching down in the gullets of the various and raptured onlookers in other matters they had their eating them hot dogs and other things well now they're all adding a lot of fun and the fellow down there in the black suit he was determining whether or not who on whose sad this solution was whose problem it was a new salt and when he gave his vote in favor of the team with the Red Sox he got roundly abused by the boys with white socks now that's a word game or that's a game not a word game but a game and I just give you that little outline order that you might see how our game is carried on and one thing about a game is that nobody is any better nor any worse for whatever happens you're at I used to another in October every October I go down to New York and have a week there in a church and they billet me in the Manhattan hotel and they have televisions in every room in the Sunday after I mean the afternoons it's just the time when they're having the World Series and I how you sit and watch those boys you know I get in an inning or two win between other things and who worse off to me I I always pitted the fellow that lost no matter who he was because there was such a big good-looking fellas and I hate to see any of them lose you know some picture there that just looked as if it walked right out of a magazine ad then they each stand there you know look serious shake it off shake it on we didn't want that and didn't want that one you shook everything there was off and then the picture sold whatever he wanted to or through what everyone - anyhow road comes so naturally when you're talking about baseball even though it's grammatically out but anyway nobody's any better and nobody's any worse for it who it's ever side is on if the man with the stick wins he's not any better off he just goes home and his wife doesn't like him she still doesn't like him and if he's in bet he's still in debt and if he's got a disease he's still got his disease and no matter what we gotta have but he still has he's no better off and the other fellas no worse off now that's a game but if a man plants a tree that tree lives for a hundred years and if a man cuts down a tree a tree was and isn't and if instead of playing this is war there's a problem there too but it's not a problem men have created artificially it's a real problem if there was an enemy outside of Toronto soldiers with guns ready to come in and take City Hall and take over men would leaked arms within this city and man who never picked up a gun before would pick it up and in the name of Canada and Toronto they'd stand at the street heads and fight to protect the city why because they knew and wouldn't know that if the enemy came and took the city it would mean slavery and bondage and occupation when it's a game whoever wins it doesn't matter any of but if it's war matters tremendously who wins you have the Olympics go to Norway or Valley California wherever it is and they compete with each other it's all games and when it's all ready go nobody's any better or any worse off because they created their problems before they sent those boys over here to solve them but when Canadians and Americans were fighting Hitler it didn't matter where it was a difference between slavery and living on your knees and hailing I found it left the two on paper hanger with paranoia it didn't matter the difference between playing a game and fighting or there's a difference between playing a game and planting a garden and in religion the temptation of everybody is to take it as a game the word games instead of a baseball or a football we have other little gadgets that we throw around words we write books and buy books proofread books sweat over books we edit magazines we buy magazines we subscribe we write songs we sing songs we make prayers we say prayers we need preach sermons we hear sermons and this requires of course a vast amount of activity and tremendous a lot of money and a good deal of perspiration particularly in the summertime and a lot of inconvenience and it would deal a good deal of money I say and yet to a great number of people they're simply playing the game of religious words makes no difference the giveaway is that the religious word game doesn't change anybody fundamentally they're not much different from what they were before somebody went out in investigating and no there isn't anything somebody won't spend time investigating and these boys are usually college professors they investigated the what do they call it ethics of religious men or men who wasn't religious business ethics now they say we're going to take a hundred men who are devout Church men and we're going to investigate their ethical standards in their business then we're going to take a hundred scoundrels who never went to church and laugh at the whole business and wouldn't give a dime to support any preacher and we're going to investigate their ethics to see how they run their business and after a while the spending of a lot of money and a lot of investigating you know what they came up with they said by and large there isn't one bit of difference between the ethical business standards of the religious church man and the non-religious man who never enters the church door that was the United States I don't know what it's the same here but I would suppose that you don't get sanctified by crossing the border I never I did I got a lot of trouble sometimes with customers men but outside of that I never felt I was any holier going either direction we're just human being brethren wherever we live and whatever a nice analogy if it's true one place is likely to be true another so what are these men building this these hundred men that have been investigated just playing a word game they go to church maybe their rushers an up and down the aisle they go looking dignified with a with a group Marilyn or their preachers and they stand up and take a text and breathe through their nose heavily and preach the words and people say it wasn't that us sermon and they shook his hand and say I was blessed but he goes out and the next morning his business ethics haven't been changed a bit he's had fun playing the word games we set up a problem and sold it we throw the ball and somebody else but the snake hits it and it's all over we say boy our churches grow we're known in the city we're a great church aren't we and let's let's see what we can do to make the thing look better so thank God we're women we're going to paint the thing one of these days someday you're going to come won't know it it's gonna be white up there instead of whatever that is and you're going to pay for it later and I forget brace but them that's the word game my brother and that's the word game and now I for might but I don't know how what you think about it but I want nothing to do with it I want nothing to do with that which isn't real I want nobody fooling me with unreality nobody come and pall over me if he doesn't mean it nobody lie to me in the name of a ticket nobody asked me for a dime to support something that I don't believe in no man asked me to believe in a religion that I've got to take on somebody else's Authority if Jesus Christ can't change me if my Christianity isn't real if I have a problem my face isn't a real problem if it doesn't mean heaven and hell and ethnic veil then I don't want to be muck in with it at all I'd rather take a walk and listen to the birds sing and listen to any man preach who tries to smooth me down or to put up a problem that doesn't exist and play with it that's what's going on all the time in the giveaway of this religious word game is that no one I say it's fundamentally different the same old principles motivate the life man comes and says he's a Christian you want to join the church but these natural appetites are just the same only they're refined a little bit that's all bruised egotism hasn't been destroyed it's only less gross than it was before you know it's possible for an egotist to get a college education and be refined negative skillful at hiding the fact that he is an egotist then he can refine that still more by getting converted and the word to the Lord will come to him but it won't come to him in power oh it does is refine his egotism and then there's selfishness exactly the same selfish fellow he was before only he's purified his selfishness a little bit now and he's that he loves game is just as he always did be just as he just rubs his hands to see the money come in only now he gives a little of it to the Lord it should off his income tax and feels that he is a saint but all he's not done is what any any center might do and pride but now he has a different object you see the trouble is the roots of the life are changed that's why we're half dead that's where we're where we are the roots of the life haven't been changed we're growing in the same old roots as we were before when you were religious man carrying a hymn book or a Bible under our arms and that's why Christians are so largely ineffective brethren that's why communists are so tremendously effective because they believe in what they're doing they say there is a problem we didn't create it but there it is let's lick it and we Christians have to fight that and face it and win over them but they mean business and we're fooling they mean what they're saying the devil means what he's saying always remember this the devil isn't fool the devil isn't fully Christians often do but the devil never does now when the gospel comes in power we're not playing anymore it's real I don't mean to say by the way please don't get this wrong and using an illustration if you think for your Health's sake you ought to go out and knock a ball around out on the golf course go ahead it's perfectly all right with me that's just on the side that's something extra but don't imagine for a minutes you can get away with it word game inside the Church of Christ or in the kingdom of God because we can't we don't know we can't God won't accept any and you tossing things around or playing with words or songs or sermons or books what happens to a man when he's really born we've used that word born again in evangelistic circles and Christian businessmen circles and Gideon circles Youth for Christ circles and gospel circles of missionary we've use it until it doesn't have any more meaning left it's worn as thin as an old 1914 dimes but it's still in the books they're still there brother you've still got to be born again that is regenerated made a new creature those are the same words or a different word meaning the same thing and when a man has been regenerated renewed made over recreated born and new born from above born again what does happen to him when religion seems to be a game and becomes a serious reality when instead of playing a game each fighting a war when the Word of God has come in power number of things happens and time gets away and I'm going after an old rapid miss one is this cities immediately changed from the external to the internal from external to internal our trouble is externality everywhere we go everywhere we go automobile manufacturers keep poor automobile owners on their toes continually by changing just one little button inside the big machine and the fella has an old button that's just a year old I gotta trade this in the external EEOC's and if your house had one level and you have a friend who has a split-level you're worried until you get a split-level I was born in a split-level house log cabin and I literally wasn't so as my lap she doesn't want me to tell it but she would born in a log cabin two and a different plug cabin of court in two different states then you know we go from the externals to the internal release our hope our interests everything that we're absorbed with an in is internal instead of external and we see the emptiness of the appearance of things and reforms and all God said that God looked at on the inside of a man and and live on the outside and the the new man sees that transcendency of things of things eternal and the transiency of things simple and belonging to the earth and he sees the inadequacy of everything intellectual and he sees the value of things that are above that happens to a man he doesn't have to have an education he doesn't have to be cultured he just has to be born anew and when the Holy Ghost regenerates him he sees this and the holy ghost ships his interest into a new sphere the kingdom of God and the love life shifts from self to God he's dedicated now to the honor of another he was once dedicated bitterly dedicated to his own honor and now he's a dedicated to the honor of God and he's changed in this - he desires social approvals he used to I say desire social approval he wanted to be approved by the people and now that's all changed and he wants to be approved by God Almighty that's all once in one of the big cities I think New York in what they call commuter trains you know what they are he said that there was a ticket seller there and not a ticket seller but it took a taker out every call he was they even at the gate taking the tickets and the people were coming along and it was in sight of an office building and they queued up and everybody was anxious to get home that train was in danger of pulling away and the ticket taker was looking at each take it and punching it demanded each one or someone to crowd by noise and I want to see your tickets and so they got to sustain unpleasant things about him and somebody said to him finally mister you're not very popular with this crowd are you no he said I'm not very popular with this crowd obviously but he said I want you to look up here on the 14th floor he said you see that Windell there was a shade did yes well he said now my boss lives up there and he said he's been known to watch me from up there and he said if I get careless and let him go through he said I won't be very popular with him and from him I get my pay so he said regardless of what these people think I want to be popular with the boss well now let me is change that around a bit and say that as long as a man is a natural man he wants to be popular with the crowd but when he is born news he said I don't care so much now about the crowd but I want to stand a prove of God I want God to say in that day this is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased and I can well afford to spend the angry attacks of the people that I can only keep right with God will lens his attitude toward earthly goods completely changed he's no longer feels that he's a proprietor owning anything he feels he's a steward who just has something for the time being and though there's a big difference in your life and won't mean you'll have any less but it'll mean you'll have a different attitude some Christians feel that they are that their God their proprietors they own the going and they give God part of it and he lived on God's service and then I thought but there other people who get blessed message differently they say oh god I'm not a proprietor I'm a steward this is all line and I am serving these and I don't give me an amount that's mine I simply give you back what's line and you let me keep enough to run my family and my business now that's a different attitude but if the only right attitude as long as we imagine we own anything that thing will curse us as soon as we know that we all nothing it's gone that's what happens to a man when he becomes a Christian and then here he receives an liveth by a new moral code man who knows God all I had grieve over the situation that's loose in the earth these times you missionaries going out god bless you you're going to have to fight not the devil out there so much as changing standards changing standards the early days and the old time the you a man used to go out and have an old chief head man why do they said get rid of it get rid of everyone but the first nowadays they talk about culture well but it's contrary to their culture it's not the way with it would we we're trying to impose our culture on them and what is a case of downright compounded adultery becomes excuse now the psychologists and psychiatrists and sociologists and professors have made skin suits and real and say watch it's a different culture that's raw Sodom had a different culture to Sodom's culture I won't go into now I couldn't without blushing before a mixed audience that was their way of looking at things when a stranger came at night they said bring him out we want to know him the angels of God spoke the place and pulled Laden said we'll handle these their fire came down from heaven and burned the whole thing into ashes all around people are sick well it's their cultures their way looking and saying don't try to make Canadians out I'm merry America under Brady leading where they I want to get the gospel to them if the gospel doesn't change a man and transform a man and take the evil out of the man he's not got the gospel the gospel is a transforming power otherwise you have a name to live in you're dead certain fellow this came out in all the papers certain fellow gangster out in California Jew and then Mickey Cohen he heard about the brain campaign he decided to go to hear the man you win and he showed an interest and he talked to the evangelist and finally mr. Graham said to him well Mickey if you give your heart to Jesus Christ you're going to have to do some changing and your update on in hard and he said am I going to have to government Jewish religion said you're going to have to become a Christian world you clown styled angry never went back now we excuse it and say well but tell him no no no no he doesn't have to change anything good believe on Christ thank God Billy didn't do that you lost a friend and made an enemy that he kept his own government clean on the thing I already mentioned this because it's in all the newspapers and magazines and everybody knows about no man who's been really born anew he lives by a new moral code I say he doesn't go to the psychiatrist a psychologist or the sociologist or the anthropologist and say huh what do you think of the Sermon on the Mount he says if see that was the phrase they used to use in olden times when Greek philosopher gathered a bunch of young men around him and they believed in that philosopher so completely that all air dancer was addicted he said to him and if he said it it was so I never knew that philosopher I trusted that much but I know a man I trust that much that holy thing which will be born of you shall be called a son of God I can trust him so my moral code is it's a true said of Jesus Christ faith you've heard it said so and so but I say unto you you've heard it said I say unto you it predicts it I said it see said it that's your moral code you don't go to the philosopher and find out about Chopin how I thought about it I don't care what that old scoundrel thought about I don't even care what Plato thought about Jesus Christ is the one who saves me if I'm say he's the one who transforms me he's the one who stands with bleeding hands feeding for me he's the one who shall speak and raised me from the dead he's the one who shall stand my advocate above my Savior by the throne of love so I don't care what George Dewey says about it and I don't care what Julian Huxley says about it and I don't care what HG Wells says about it what they say in New York University Columbia or Toronto he said if she kicks the man who is a Christian doesn't ask somebody else he says did Jesus Christ say that will and I'm going to obey and all this he acts upon and lives by in his total life not in his public life only but in his total life in private as well as public and at any cost to himself he'll follow Jesus Christ and carries cross if he's truly born new regardless of the cost of property or costing pain or even in life itself now there's a danger my friend I bring this to a close there's a danger of our falling short here millions millions have an aim to live I can't keep statistics in my head overnight maybe I ought to be glad for that because it got too many figures in your head you have no anything else but sometimes embarrassing when you want to call them up and they won't come I forget a minute 65 million thoughts more than mass must be more tonight because 180 million people there 192 new census and I guess 67% of Myr go to church I talked to an Englishman in London either this week or last he came to see me here through an editor from London one just stuck with me like him down we had a chat here and got to talking about news they got out of America in England and I said yes I know that I am a rather amused well as I'm not embarrassed to get magazines from London telling about the religious revival in United States my quarter to him I said I brought a magazine published in London I couldn't remember the name of it maybe it was a good thing and I said I read an article in there saying that there was of a literal forest fire from coast to coast in the United States a religious revival rage spiritual appeal well I said I lived in the United States six years and I travel all up and down the United States from Florida to Seattle instance North City in Boston along to San Diego and I have never seen he just should be said never seen there are millions who have a name to live but their debts you say they're the Liberals no they're both don't have any name to live they don't pretend to live they say I don't believe in that stuff I believe just be good and fan the fires with inion love your brother integrate and be nice and you'll be alright no they're not talking about liberal I'm talking about people who are supposed to be Christian and who have received the gospel but received it in word only it has never come in power because it has none of the fruits of power about it nobody thinks this could be true of himself the Brethren it will pay it to do some heart searching in this terrible out the only safe thing to do is to surrender to the power of the gospel surrender to the words of Jesus Christ for your life or your life at home your business life your property life your private life your personal life your secretly surrender to it and don't let an area of your life as big as a postage stamp belong to the devil give everything to Jesus Christ everything stay it'll cost me my job alright God will find another job for you I've been young and now I'm old I've never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread but he else that I'll get stuck in jail if I follow the Lord alright go to jail and sing as Paul and Silas did I'll lose property alright lose your property better by all means living there into the house and a poor one at that and I have a mansion on the Avenue with questions and uncertainties and moral spots all over it are no way better come clean and get right back up clean up confess up to go along covered up having a name to live and be dead I earn for this church I earn for here we are situated where they can come from everywhere now known all over the city and if the great god almighty could come and would come and revive us again and waves of power and light and hope and confession and moral elevation could come upon us we could we could become a standard for the city but it's got to come one at a time one at a time you must get right by yourself you must do that confession you must do that paying up you must do that cleaning up you must bring that business into line with the teachings of Jesus you must seek his face remember the word can come without power and leave us with a name to live but dead the word can come with power transform change regenerate make the old things new and make us examples to earth which do you want that's pray

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Keywords: Beware of the Religious Word Game, Beware of the Religious, Pastor (Religious Leadership Title), religious, a.w. tozer sermon, A. W. Tozer (Deceased Person), Book Of Revelation (Book), aw tozer, aw tozer sermons, a w tozer, tozer sermons, Sermon (Literature Subject), Christianity (Religion), tozer, Christian (Adherents), a. w. tozer, a.w tozer, sermons, a.w.tozer, a w tozer sermons, a.w tozer sermons, a.w.tozer sermons, a. w. tozer sermons, a.w. tozer, a w tozer sermon, Sermons

Id: NZkL-TZA-QQ

Length: 44min 32sec (2672 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2011