Thursday, February 15, 2007

Removing the Veil

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer was published in 1948. But his teaching on how to think about and deal with sin continues to be relevant for today's Christians, and for future generations. Why? Because we are all sinners (Romans 3:23), and we do not consistently seek to confess our sin, rid ourselves of it (Hebrews 12:1-4), or live the life we have been called to live, "But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do" (1 Peter 1:15).

To be holy is to be different or set apart. Is there a noticeable difference in our actions, speech, thoughts, activities, passions, and pursuits from the world around us? Or just a slight one? The battle for our allegiance is fierce (flesh vs. spirit, old man vs. new man, temporal vs. eternal), but God has given us all the resources that we need to go to war--His Word, the Holy Spirit, an open invitation to seek Him in prayer, and fellowship with other like minded believers. The problem is that we don't tap into them, at least not all the time.

Our fleshly desires, the depravity of our minds and our willingness to love the "things" of our world hinder us from growing. So what do we do? WE DIE! Die to ourselves, and live for God (Romans 6:8-14). We have to stop talking about how we want to change or would like to change and just do it. What's the key? It takes discipline, commitment and a targeted, well intentioned approach at each specific sin in our lives. With God's strength, we can do it (Philippians 4:13)!

The following are quotes taken from Tozer's book The Pursuit of God. Specifically, from chapter 3 titled Removing the Veil. I hope you will be just as encouraged and convicted as I was from the words of a man that was truly on fire for God.

--"God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day."

--"At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His presence. That type of Christianity which happens now to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress the Christian's privilege of present realization. According to its teaching we are in the presence of God positionally, and nothing is said about the need to experience that Presence actually."

--"The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the church is famishing for want of His presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged."

--"We sense that the call is for us, but still we fail to draw near, and the years pass and we grow old and tired in the outer courts of the tabernacle. What hinders us?...It is the veil of our fleshly, fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. It is the close-woven veil of the self-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross."

--"It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify. We have but to look into our own hearts and we shall see it there, sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but there nevertheless, an enemy to our lives and an effective block to our spiritual progress."

--"This veil is not a beautiful thing and it is not a thing about which we commonly care to talk. But I am addressing the thirsting souls who are determined to follow God, and I know they will not turn back because the way leads temporarily through the blackened hills."

--"To be specific, the self-sins are self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them."

--"One should suppose that proper instruction in the doctrines of man's depravity and the necessity for justification through the righteousness of Christ alone would deliver us from the power of the self-sins, but it does not work that way. Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. It can fight for the faith of the reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace, and gain strength by its efforts."

--"Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. We may as well try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate."

--"Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life, hoping ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy "acceptance" from the real work of God."

--"Insist that the work be done in very truth and it will be done. The cross is rough and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the presence of the living God."

A.W. Tozer

60157: The Pursuit of God

Monday, February 12, 2007

4 Ways to Miss Out on Heaven

Have you thought about eternal life lately? The Bible tells us that it is possible to know for sure that we have eternal life: "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life" (I John 5:13).

"Why will you die when you can live?" (question from MacArthur's sermon below), brings to my mind Jesus' teaching in Mark 8:34-38:
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

We can live our lives here on earth trying to enjoy every pleasurable thing known to mankind (money, power, "stuff" etc.) that we can get our hands on. But how long will that last? 50 or 75 years? Who knows when they are going to die? It could be tomorrow. If you are not sure where you are going when you die, I hope you will read on.

The following excerpts are from John MacArthur's sermon, 4 Ways to Miss Out on Heaven. The text is John 8:21-30.

4 Ways to Miss Out on Heaven

You shall die in your sin...verse 21. How is it that that happens? Let me give you four ways to guarantee you will die in your sin and I'm going to borrow them from the words of Jesus here, four ways to guarantee you will die in your sin, four ways to guarantee that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is meaningless to you.

Number one, be self-righteous...be self-righteous. That will do it. The first guaranteed way to die in your sins is to be completely content with your own ability to please God. Believe that you can be good enough, or religious enough, or pray enough, or go to church enough, or be moral enough, or have good deeds that outweigh on some imaginary scale the weight of your bad deeds, just be self-righteous.

Then He says this (verse 23), "You are of this world, I am not of this world." And here's the second way to guarantee that you will die in your sins and that is be worldly, be earthbound, another guarantee, be preoccupied with the world, live for the world, live for the temporal system, live for the ideologies of this world system.

and thirdly, verse 24, "I said, therefore, to you that you shall die in your sins for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins." Here's the third guarantee way to be certain you will die in your sin, be unbelieving, be self-righteous, be earthbound and be unbelieving. That's really all it takes. Be unbelieving.

fourthly, be willfully ignorant or obstinately ignorant. Verse 25, this is so amazing. So they were saying to Him, "Who are You?" This is absolutely unbelievable that they would say that, after all they had seen, after all He had done, after they had heard....Why are they willfully ignorant? John 3 makes it clear, "Men love darkness rather than...what?..." It was dark because they wanted it that way. It's always dark when you love your sin. It was a willful darkness....

You want to die in your sins? Just continue in your course, just believe you're good enough the way you are. Just carry on with your love affair with human ideologies. Just refuse to believe the great truths concerning Christ. Love your sin so much that you choose the darkness and are willfully ignorant. But to do this you're going to have to stumble over the cross. That's right, you're going to have heartlessly, irreverently trample Christ's blood because you know the gospel. So you're going to have to stumble across the cross. Even this morning as we come to the Lord's table the cross is going to be demonstrated again and you're going to have to reject it again to continue the course you're in. Inconceivable, really, why will you die when you can live? Why will you not be like those many who believed and didn't want to die in their sin? Why will you not accept an atonement for your sin? That's the all encompassing question. And the answer is your self-righteous, you're good enough the way you are, you love the world too much, you refuse to believe or you love your sin and you cherish the darkness and the ignorance that comes with it. In any case, the price is eternal.

Read the entire sermon