The Secret Of Victory - A. W. Tozer Sermon

or in the 57th psalm the one that was read last Sunday morning worship hour I want to use a few verses particularly one began with verse 4 my soul is among lamb and I lie even among them that are set on fire even the sound of men whose teeth are Spears and arrows and their tunnel a sharp sword he thou exalted O God above the heavens and let that glory be above all the earth they have prepared a net for my steps my soil is bowed down they beg to put before me into the midst where all they are fallen themselves my heart is fixed O God my heart is fixed I was singing your praise wake up my glory wake sovereign hop I myself will awake early I will praise thee O Lord among the people I will seen under the among the nation's for thy mercy is great under the heavens and thy truth under the cloud and it repeats the verse again verse 5 is repeated word for word without exalted old-guard above the heavens and let thy glory be above all the earth this was written by David when he was fleeing from Saul and was surrounded by his foes now David in that brilliant way he had of describing things said that he found himself among Lam Meem loose teeth were Spears and arrows and whose tongues were a sharp sword he was surrounded by them and he had the authority of peace all back of them they had back exam and he had nobody but God but he had enough so David being taught in the ways of the spirits did something that we probably wouldn't thought of doing David immediately put God between him and his enemies they did knew that he must have a victory but he knew that if he was to have anything like permanent victory that he couldn't ask God to exalt him so he didn't say Oh God I am thy king to be successor to salsa nice king now God I want you to come to my rescue and His Christ these enemies under my feet you know better than that so he prayed or I don't know what you would call it a prayer not it's an ecstatic explanation rather than a prayer we Dow exalted old God above the heavens and let thy glory be above all the earth whatever happens to me God be thou exalted whatever these men with sharp teeth and flaws and Spears and arrows do to me God let thy glory be above all the earth my heart is fixed on this will God my heart is fixed and I will sing praise because I want the need will be exalted O God above the heavens and thy glory above there now here is God's way of doing and it's backwards to ours and it needs a lot of attention we need to sing about it and pray about it and preach about it until we get a hold of it for we're very slow - God must himself be exalted above all or else the victory of the Kings notice would have been a treacherous victory who would have been defeated and said or when he would have been defeated even though he'd won over his enemies it would have been a treacherous win a Pyrrhic victory that would have cost him too much so he put God's word long high above all exalted above all and then David came out all right because he put God where God belongs now that's the little secret and I could stop right here now and pronounce a benediction and we would have learned something I'm sure and we would have learned one of the most important thing that's possible to learn because you see the trouble of the world is there is an inverted relationship between God and mankind that's the whole trouble that moral derangement you see God belongs above all when we say we magnify God we don't mean we make God big you couldn't do that God's already vastly perfect but we mean that we see him big and when we say that we exalt him we don't mean that we're aging we mean that we acknowledge him to be as exalted as he is and the trouble with the world now is the trouble with the race of men that we have not put God where he belongs in our thinking in our conduct and in our all our philosophies and in all our attitudes of life now there are millions who call themselves by the name of God there are millions who pray to God no doubt but the true place of God in the heart is to be learned by where we put him when we're in trouble where we put God when difficulties come and where we put him at other times in our life now I want to ask you some questions here and you can answer them for you so I don't - that I that you should arise and ask for the floor and give a verbal answer it wouldn't do in any good because we already know but I want you to answer for yourself who wins when it's a choice between God and money with the average person even who calls himself a Christian who wins when it's a choice between God and money - give who wins when it's a choice between God and ambition a lot of young people turn to the Lord when they're in their teens and then they become ambitious and they find they have some talent and they go on and develop that talent and the world finds it outs and sends for them and they have to make a choice between following that ambition which will take them to the world and away from the church or following the Lord and I think a clean 97 percent of them will follow their ambitions who wins when it's the question of fleshly enjoyment or doing the will of God I would say that out in the world their God has much at all and would never get a vote but in the church it would seem to me that God ought to get all the votes there are I don't see where they could possibly be any excuse for anybody voting on any other side but on God's side and yet when it's a choice between fleshly enjoyments and God the church usually votes on the side of fleshly enjoyments now we might as well face that you see I am NOT a backscratcher who knew that before you invited me here and I think that I have shown it by what I've said from this pulpit for the last year that I am NOT a backscratcher God did not say tozer go ye into all the world and scratch the backs of my poor undernourished sheep but he said go tell them the truth preach the words of them and tell them the truth and I find that there are enough people who like that kind of thing to make his church succeed there are enough people anyhow I nearly got off all there Madeline because I want to remind you that I was saying that between fleshly enjoyments and God we usually vote for fleshly enjoyments provided we can somehow strike a compromise and have God - and then between God and Mary's now I have known one or two instances in my ministry and I've read of a few here and there in books of Christian biography where men and women separate because one or the others not a Christian they're going together and they decide to marry and then one of them as being a Christian decide they can't do it he or she can't do it somebody told me just the other night so I'm young lady telling me about going with a young man and they were quite friendly and there was some little thought anyhow that they might hook up for the rest of their lives and because he wasn't the kind of man he should have been she turned from him and said no and broke it off and it's still broken up now that happens once in the blue moon but it doesn't happen very often usually a young man or woman follows the Lord literally and happily along they're the first ones a young people service and the last one out there the first one who takes part in - which listen to testify and all until they meet the man or the woman that it may be the boy or the girl and then God gets shunted aside while they decide whether they're to marry and when they're to marry and if it's a choice between god and marriage they marry then a choice between God and friends there aren't Veniamin very many people who give up their friends for Christ's sake so there are many many many people who give up self for Christ's sake so now who wins when the the vote is between God and these things usually they other things women God God loses and that's why we're in the state were in the estate the curse doesn't come causeless and neither does the blessing come list and we're living at this poor dying rate because we are violating the laws of the kingdom now if a young man wanted victory in his life and he wanted to know the secret of victory when it came to a beautiful young girl she's beautiful when she's called up ready to go but he ought to see her in the morning anyhow when it comes between the choice between a beautiful young girl and the god young man says diesel exalted ol God above the heavens and that's a glory be above all the earth then the victory comes to the man's life and you would find many victorious young people walking about if they learn when it comes to their ambitions to say God be above my ambitions that thy name be above all my ambitions God would give the victory but God won't give it to you directly you have to give it to you by way of the throne we have to put God where it belongs first and then when we do God bless us as we give us the victory but if we try to get the victory as they say your collaterally that's a good word now so we got to go out straight on one direction to get the victory we don't get it well now the world staggers on to no foreseeable future we who believe that the Lord is coming back again and believe that there's going to be a new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness where were looked down upon as being a little bit off in our heads they said everything will be alright peace and Brotherhood throw your arms around each other and squeeze hard enough and finally we'll all be squeezed together well they're over there squeezin in the Congo now and what's happening over everywhere it's the same we're so busy being brothers that were cutting each other strokes all over the world even in even in such places as cities that ought to know better New York and Washington and London and Paris where everybody ought to be ashamed of themselves right in a way the bills look the way they're acting we're having we're having a mixed-up time of it was we are putting God down and putting men up when humanism came along about the generation ago and made the human mind to be the criterion of all thoughts and could got down and theology seems to be the queen of the sciences and the queens of the sciences became science itself or or became humanism or sociology and of course we went down because we had not put God up if you exalt God God will exalt you but if you put God down you will go down and the world is in the message him because God had no place in the minds or hearts of the people and they're part of God in Redemption the work of God in redemption is to restore this inverted order and to put God up and put man down in order that he might put man up now in order that he might do that God came down and he came down just as far down as he could get it was impossible for him to get down any further than he got you remember what it tells us over here in the Epistle of Paul that he considered not the things he considered not being in the form of God something to be hung on to but he made himself of no reputation we voided his reputation and that's the last thing anybody wants to do but God could afford to do it and he took upon him the form of a servant and that was humbling himself and it was made in the likeness of men and that was still going down further and being found the impatient of a man he humbled himself self still father and became obedient unto death and that's another step down even the death of the cross and you couldn't go down any further than that now there's a big word where Paul there or little works wherefore also God has highly exalted him and given him a name that is above every name that the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth selves you see we are ages ago we are exalted when we have exalted God and gone down then God picks us and lifts us up but when we try to climb up it's the business of God to keep us down if we will humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God he will exalt us in two times but our carnal hearts want to be exalted right away we want to get up there and now and God say you can afford to wait children I am I Sun went down and stayed down 33 years and then went still down further and further and further until he touched the Zee nadir the tur bottom of all possible humiliation and then because he did that I raised him and gave him a place at my right hand fulfilling the text that he that he that honor me I will honor Jesus Christ honored God even in bloody death and degradation and because they did God put him at the right hand and has given him a name that is above angels for under which of the Angels said he at any time Howard my beloved son so remember my friends that redemption does a lot of things for us you and I are inclined to simplify or or take the the kindergarten attitude we think that salvation makes us happy and nowadays at the broad everywhere people are writing books about it how to be happy and how to feel good inside just take Jesus you feel good inside forgetting that the whole purpose of redemption is not to give you a tickle inside your heart a little purple of read that purpose of redemption is to reverse the inverted order of things and put God where I belong so men can be where he belongs this can raise God all young to the throne and put man down in the dust where he belongs in order that God made the dust regimes of the throne that never never does God raise demands of the throne except from the dust never does he lift him to his right hand except from the low place of humiliation now part of the story of the part of the message you know of Christianity is the integral part of it that he take up his cross and let him follow me that in forsake houses and home and husband and parents in his life Oh God did the choice between me and my house between the V and my house alright I'll take thee God it's a choice between my home and me I'll take V God it's a choice between husband and God I take God's and you look after the husband it's a choice between parents and God now I'm not talking out to the left side of my sphere I know what I'm talking about my brother and I went through this I went to it when I was a lad 17 years old I got converted my mother wasn't converted my father wasn't there were a lot of brothers and sisters buzzing around that and the relatives weren't and my mother looked down on a fanatic she was a good starchy presbyterian and looked down on as an idolater kotsenburg but Sheila she looked down on everybody you know and I preached on the street she thought it was terrible she said can you imagine my son preaching and not only preaching but preaching on a street corner Ruth was a terrible thought to her later on when she got converted herself and saw what the Lord was doing why she humbly admitted that the Lord would been right all the time but you you you've got to know these things for yourself and I happened to know them for myself my parents I had to walk out I had Seidelman leave the house but I had to live in a way they didn't approve but the Lord saved them it's wonderful to remember Lord save my father and he saved my mother and he saved my brother-in-law and he saved two of my sisters and all because I exalted God and when the choice came between my parents and God I took God when came between my friends and God at your God now but the spirit is trying to say to you this morning and to me is that we are to exalt God above all things and to live and to be so that his glory is exalted above the heavens now this is the ladder by which you climb to the kingdom of power this is the lever by which you can move mountains and no question about it and for each one of us there is yet a place of richness of inward experience that we don't know very much about a richness of inward experience I have just been reading in fact I'm in the process of reading the biography of Teresa of Avila now Teresa was a nun and we tend to a vert our faces and walk by on the other side but an awful lot of you Christian women would do well to trade with her if he could by the grace of God not not her crucifix in her holy water shed they she can keep though they didn't help her anyhow and she was shopping up north but her knowledge of God my brother her knowledge of God the inward experience that she had her inward experience of Christ in you the hope of glory oh there were an awful lot of Protestants before the Protestants ever came into being and lost an awful lot of Protestants before Ruth the time an awful lot of evangelicals who didn't know they were evangelical I sometimes can quote back to their Catholic friends some of their own sayings and some of their own people who were evangelicals didn't know it because they found God in Christ and they found God salvation by grace without the works of the law or merits of mankind or the saints well there's a richness of inward experience that the saints have had down the year then that God promises to his children and it's all this is the secret of it is all by this and there is a deep satisfaction to the total nature and there's a usefulness in the kingdom of god there's fruitfulness and growth and there's a ravishing knowledge of the most holy God a ravishing knowledge of God I repeat and it is when God is exalted and we are a base now I wonder if you can say this morning and mean it be thou exalted over me my god be thou exalted at my expense he now exalted o God let it cost me what it will cost me God has too many bargainers he have too many Jacobs who sit down with a lead pencil and figure out if you will bless me God I will give you a tenth and Jacob lived like that for a long time at any race he became a better man later on after God got everything he didn't get only the Penta got his hahaaa wife and his children and his property he got everything and it was all over there and Esau was on his way to kill him and there was Jacob not what he's since gone that with everything gone but he hides he just had what he were wrapped in that's all and there it was on the bank of the river and he prayed to God and God wrestled with him at night and changed his name from Jacob but we attend to dicker with God and you got down and try to try to get an easy way Lord I want to be blessed but I don't want to cost me this much couldn't we couldn't we talk this thing over nofas God we can't talk this thing over my rules are my rules and my word is my word and my will is made known in the word and there isn't anything to talk over so you come my way and you will be blessed go your way and you'll lose everything now that's so simple that I can't see why the church is misted but the church has missed it let that glory be above my possessions Oh God why people they say that no Canadian is ever really what he ought to be until he has $25,000 in the bank drawn interest I heard that up here they didn't say that down home they told me that up here and that's okay you can have it and I don't mind at all I wish was fifty you give half of it a new rule Church and the foreign missions but that's not the point the point in who's who do you work for on this and if it were a choice between giving it all up for having God's highest will which would you do most people what she could compromise they take a little of God know little of what they have and there are friendships been alone said you know that we found it hard to give up our friend in order to find the friends spell the word friends with cat with lowercase letters and the word friend with uppercase letters there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother you can capitalize that and there are friends and we have them of all sorts and all the greens some friends who do anything for him and some friends who would grumble if they had to do anything for you but we have friends and we've got to give them all up in order that we might have the friends and when we have the friends we'll have friends you know the Lord never takes anything away but what he gives something better back it's always so I gave up the approval of my parents and the the respect for a little while of my friends because they thought that I was going off a little route and left to you because I was following the Lord and was down among those Alliance people my father said my head had been filled with things well my head just got a little in it there wasn't much room for too much but I hope my heart got a whole lot more allow lost some friends but I gained the friends and now I have friends around the whole wide world I don't think there's an island or a continent anywhere that I don't have friends on it and I mean friends and I know people that I know and have talked with and prayed with and preached to and they preached to me maybe and I I did reading a book reading some forty five reviews somebody sent me from Germany I didn't know there's any book of mine published in Germany but here I found out there was and it had 45 reviews from the mega dönitz I had somebody translate some form in it and what they were saying about now it was a good or bad and it turned out to be good least we read the good ones now I have friends over there I have friends over there and I wouldn't have the faintest notion how my German Christian friends would greet me I haven't the faintest notion and I would say hi to them but I don't know what they'd say to me I don't know but they're my friends I gave up my little handful of friends for God's sake - now I have friends all over Germany and they tell me in India and Japan the Lord is letting my books have a sale and I have friends there that I've never seen as well as in Armenian Spanish countries when I mentioned that only because I want you to know that when God takes away a friend takes away friends for the friends he get friends back again but it gives you better friends than you had before my friends now our Christian friends they're good people they're not perfect people but they're the best people on earth nevertheless I'd like to stand right out on the street corner down here at floor and young or wherever your Main Street is I'd like to tell the round world the best people in the world are Christians they are the best now they're not perfect and part of my job has been to chastise and to to lay the latch on the Lord little sheets occasionally in order that they might not lie around and wither up a glutton by the green pastures but while I'm doing it I love the men respect them as the best people in the world Christians are that so God will give you back take away people it wouldn't do any good anyhow now give you back the best people in the world for your family and then your comfort some of you will never show you up yours we saw you at our meeting I'd faint and the pianist would tumble over in a dead heat because you see it's not a comfortable for you to be there you are not there because it's you you stay by your comforts I don't know what's the what there is on Wednesday nights on the tea we as a swede call it but that no doubt one of the reasons but anyhow we give up our comforts to lie down the lie down there and turn around three times and lie down from the fireplace of a cold night no it's really something but Jesus Christ our Lord got up and went out into the cold weak world and gave it all and it so did his apostles and so have the saints all down the years so give up our comforts exalt thee how exalted O God above my comforts and be thou exalted above my pledges and he that exalted above my ambitions all these private projects that people are having be thou exalted above my reputation now that's always pretty hard thing to die to we desire to have a reputation then only fine we can't get any we want a reputation for being happy that we don't have a reputation you see that's the way it works we we find we don't rate then where we smile like st. Francis and say well I don't rape raise the Lord and then people say isn't she saintly she's happy because she doesn't rape but it's another way of raiding you'll see it's just another way of getting your ambition fulfilled and then there's my life then my dislikes and my health and even and finally my life itself I have had to shoe off and chase off and and change the way all my life friends who were afraid I'd kill myself you know they say all I'm afraid you'll just kill yourself and work yourself to death don't you worry about that's my brother because working yourself to death the kingdom of God is a wonderful way to die but God doesn't let many people die like that penny you know used to teach in the Alliance they teach that you are just as Hitler posed you know unrest in the Lord and wait patiently for him and you'll never die even as you will leave side until you're 70 plus but then he used to teach that you could tell yourself in the kingdom of God and he said lots of preachers killed themselves serving a lazy Church that won't help and they died and he said the Lord will judge that church that was finished beliefs but don't worry about my help because I put my health on the a long time ago the Lord can have my help fly what I wanna hang around our turkey world like this after my work is done five veggie estates and hang around the last leaf on this the tree in the spring the last rose of summer withered and wilted and pathetically hanging on the end of the stem waiting for the first wind why should I want to do it no give your health to the Lord get up and pour yourself in pour yourself in and in your life itself you are so afraid I I knew I know preacher that I think I told you it once before but I've been here long let's repeat now but I I knew a preacher they came to him and they said now you got angina pectoris and if you don't take care you'll die and so he whimpered leg up Tuffy's it is been spanked and all he went to California and retired settle down and lose now God said they said to another man another friend of mine you have angina pectoris and if you don't watch out you're going to drop over dead well he said that's all right I want to die in God's kingdom and God worse so he went to work and work he did and kept on working one morning his rival got enough to get breakfast him back to under husband bring him down to breakfast away from you women have the zoo and there was my good friends lying on the floor great tall handsome fellow stone dead he died between the time she brought up some or at least she's gotten up without knowing it he tumbled out there but he had given his last breath to his God he hadn't gone to California and pulling it horns and said I'm afraid I'll die about it for God's sake sighs it's all right you can afford to do it Christians can die when they can't do anything else we can always die and it's the last thing most people ever do and it's not at all bad give yourself to God Oh God be exalted above my health the exalted above my life and I don't worry about the length of my days long time ago the Lord said the number of thy days I will fulfil I haven't given much thought to it since the number of thy days I will fulfill and as I days so shall thy strength be you know I have those who takes and the Lord gave them to me and I've been living by them but we worry so much about our health they don't out there in the world a man who's the president or vice president of a big concern he comes staggering home 11 o'clock at night with a briefcase and says sewage wife I had an awful day in the office doctor says now you don't look out you've died you're in a terrible shape and he goes right on living like that why to make sales so we can have it Aguirre up next year and the bigger card year after that he goes right on for money but when they come to a Christian and say log out because you you need to protect your health he takes them for granted I have friends down in elision New York City now McAfee was with me for 16 years it was factually never married the handsome fella but never married and I introduced in one time and I said that this man is a Bachelor of theology and I said one northern Baptist gave him the bachelors degree he supplemented and he just stayed single all his life well anyhow there are some people take things too seriously or not and when some doctor says now not ease up ease up don't take those meetings don't don't go out there and preach in the missions say goodbye boss galore I knew the Lord before I knew you go ahead you of any house I found people that shops and tried to protect your help and you stumble over and finished off in no time well give up your friendships give up your possessions give up your comforts and your ambitions and your reputation and your help and even your life and you'll find that Gotham's will give it all back to you push down shaken together press down and running over now this is very hard to comprehend this kind of teaching you know because it's not the kind of teaching we hear about now we hear something else all together breezy self-confident Christians tell us about how wonderful it is to accept Christ and then have a good time all rest of your life the Lord won't demand anything of you yes you will my friends the Lord will demand everything of you and when you give it all up to him he may bless it and hand it back but on the other hand he may not remember Betty and John spam of us 25 years ago or so he led them out and they said now you give up this Christ business or you dies he said will not give up Christ all right she said Neil Diamond helped our moves bend your head over their bent their head over and John and Betty Sam were beheaded we have Christians who have been called upon to give all but all they're richer than Midas richer richer than all the kings of the earth richer richer than all of the misers of the world because they were permitted to give themselves and to give themselves to God one of the Saints I have some letters that he wrote he was a great saint of God and He Lord had blessed him and given him a lot of things but he had a the other desired was back in the Roman days when they were killing Christians this dear old Saints had a desire to die as a martyr and that he wrote to his friends Christians in Rome and now he said that I want to attack a favor of you said I have a yearning in my heart to die from My Lord said I've lived for him and I've given my off but he said it's not enough I want a crown they fed on all other crowns I want to die for my Lord see now he said the way things are going I'll die says about my sentence but he said if you intercede you can get me off now he said what I'm afraid of is that you intercede please for Christ's sake don't do except let me alone that don't go to the authorities and ask to get me off you disappoint me and do me a disservice that I'm an old man and I've given my office and now I want this crown yet let me have it let me alone he said I hear you want to go intercept don't do it they didn't he didn't and the Romans did and so that man got his crown thanks God so that's the roster of the great I might name him the roster of the spiritually great what made them like they were well they all found a secret Oh God be thou exalted above all thy kingdom come and my kingdom go and be sure of one thing before his kingdom can come yours has to go I don't know if eschatologically which mean according to teaching a prophecy that's what that were long word me I don't know whether that's good taught y'all a G or not that I know it's good Christian experience that's before the kingdom of Christ can come within me my kingdom has to go out of me I got to get off that throne and hand it back to the one whose it has been all these centuries even Jesus Christ our Lord now can you this morning and will you do this one thing and I'm finished are you willing to say O Lord exalt thyself above me and all that I am possessions friends comforts pleasures reputation health life everything now god I mean it now test me Lord and see whether I do bring my life into line so that I will be fooling myself but I will really know that this is true our Lord said a chain of circumstances in motion that would bring me to the place where I can say and mean it these are exalted above the heavens O Lord and thy glory above the sky that is the language of heavens have you ever wondered what language they speak in heaven this is it this is the language of heaven they will come from the north and the south and the heat and the West they will come from german-speaking countries and Spanish and Latin and rescanning Syrians they will come from all around the world and they'll never have to sit down and go through the painful process of learning a language in the kingdom of God we'll all speak the same language and the key word will be worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive glory and power and wisdom and might and honor so you will know heaven's language when you get there without studying it and you'll not speak with an accent unless you haven't learned the language of heaven here if you learn the language of heaven here you will not speak with an accent there but if you in the language of heaven here I don't know but what it might be noticed in that day Paul spoke about being ashamed in the presence of Christ and I wonder if it is impossible to live a life here that makes us ashamed when we work up there to see how little within and how poor compared with what we might have been then we might speak with an accent but I hope when we arrived in that place we'll all be able to sing together all hail the power of Jesus name let angels prostrate fall I want you to close by thing not the one in the bulletin but another one 394 please number three number 394 let seeing all stand not seeing full-throated to glorify Jesus Christ our Lord

Channel: Christian Sermons and Audio Books

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Keywords: victory, sermon, secret, tozer, christianity (religion), minister, pastor, Psalm 57 (Written Work), Psalm, bible, church, preacher, A. W. Tozer

Id: fcIxJt4MVQQ

Length: 39min 45sec (2385 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2016