Exalting God — A.W. Tozer

I haven't done that yet, I've been sort of talking, and I thought I'd get the text this morning to you. I don't know whether you like that or not, I assume you do after you. I mean, I like preaching, not necessarily me.

I don't like my own preaching. I wouldn't get up to hear it, but if you have, I'll try to bring you something that'll help you. That's what I want to talk about for a little while this morning. I don't know if you noticed this, they're just male housewives.

David’s Crisis and the Exaltation of God

David wasn't that sort of fella. David was a soldier, a king. He was in the affairs of the state, he had military affairs, and also he had an, I said something and he, I hope he's new, I hope that gets his effects by exaggeration.

I didn't exaggerate much of David, but he found he was among lions in the forelegs with a bush on it. He was talking about, he said, the people are lions. He said that their teeth were like... He did some very rough editing.

He put God between me and said, Be Thou exalted, O God above heaven. Give me the power of the people. This desire to look good before the people. He never stopped talking to his wife about it for the rest of his life.

He had a victory. He might even write a text about it, you know, about how the victory he had. And how he prayed and what the Lord did. He had been like a lot of people I know. He was a demonized. But he didn't.

He went to God personally. He put God between him and his brethren and said, Be Thou, O God, above heaven. It doesn't make you much better than what happens to me. The result was that God gave David the victory, the victory himself.

That's the theme I want to say this morning. And anything here on is a commentary. I might happen to say something that might be appealing at first. But this is what I wanted to tell you. The relationship between God and the people.

God’s Proper Place Above All Creation

God, you know, is supposed to be above and you're supposed to be below. That's where it's right and proper that God should be exalted above us and above all of us and above everything. God should be below.

That's where it ought to be. But you know, there are such things as the fall of man. It's all upside down. David, instead of man, he took it around and laid it as first. Everything's all upside down. As I've said four or five times now already, God is by virtue who God is.

God must, for all good, be at his first. You know, as is God. He made the heaven and the earth what he'd been thought of and God had him thought of him. The earth never would have been. And God never thought of our Lord.

God didn't make the universe. And because he gave man the ability to do a little making on his own, well, man turned around and made things like this. I don't know. It just tells you whether this is of some value or not.

I presume that he is. You know, somebody seen anything nice after looking at a cow or looked through city streets, I suppose these are nice. But they're a little bit godly things, whether they reflect into the starry heavens once.

How about that? Out of good hope they don't fall at all. God made the heaven and the earth and everything. God belongs first. First in our lives. First, positively. But we turn around and we make God second or third or fourth.

The Idolatry of Money, Fame, Beauty, and Marriage

That's our whole problem. That's our whole trouble. Your trouble isn't what you think it is at all. Your trouble is that God isn't where he belongs in your life. Now, there are millions of people who call themselves Christians and yet they haven't fixed that order right.

But God in their lives, in any sense of the word, he isn't. He doesn't. They haven't put him where he belongs. They say, I'm a Christian. I want to go to heaven. And around this time they all say, once they accept Christ, they couldn't backslide.

That's an impossibility. But at least they couldn't lose their life. Everything's all right. So they're Christians. But when it comes to them, God doesn't get a chance at all. You say that God is first.

But when it comes to money and God, when God and money are up and we're voting for one or the other, 99 .95 of the so-called Christians think it's God. That God, I used to hear that kind of stuff in the bathroom, yelling and they're jogging and they're glistening.

Now they pay him for singing it on the radio and television. There are some of those musical gargoyles. They used to bring church choirs. And when people liked their gargoyles and their musical games, they invited them to come and sing and they're paying them a fabulous amount of money.

In order to do that gargoyling, 99 .95 of the so-called Christians vote for money. God doesn't get a chance at all. You say that God is first. That God, I used to hear that kind of stuff in the bathroom, yelling and they're jogging and they're glistening.

Now they pay him for singing it on the radio and television. There are some of those musical gargoyles. They used to bring church choirs. Now they're jogging and they're musical games. And they're paying them a fabulous amount of money.

In order to do that gargoyling on the radio and television, in the gallery, you need a choice sometimes. What is this choice? It's between God and money. And they chose money. They chose to make themselves famous, that kind of famous.

Just put your hand up. Henry? Henry Bird. No matter how old I am, you know that. I'm not a little kid. The kind of Henry, popular as, I mean, I can't think of any of them. You know, big as an ounce of Henry Bird, everybody's after him.

What they call fame is really fame. I don't believe it, but it's what they do. So they start to search cars. And the question came, is it God or is it fame? I said, don't you call it fame? And they chose fame.

Is it God or is it money? And they chose money. Is it God or is it beauty? That's all they wanted to say. Is it God or flesh and bones? They chose flesh and bones. God or money? Any teachers here, here, I'm psyched you're backing up on what I'm saying.

Talk to them. Talk to them. They want to get married. They want to come in. They come in to your cottage, your home, and they say, now we want, and when you try to talk them out of it, they say, well, that marriage license clerk, remember when it came off the ground?

Nothing I can say would prevent it. If he can't talk you out of it, they say, okay, next thing you know, you've got a single step, fella. It's all about marriage, you know. But anyhow, when it comes down to marriage, they come in, you couldn't, I remember a girl in a certain city, I won't tell you where it is.

She got converted. She got all the way. She came to a service, and people brought her. And I preached that night, and I didn't preach the gospel sermon. I was greatly disappointed. The people that brought her, they thought I should have preached the gospel sermon, but that night I wasn't particularly led to do it.

But so, that was a statement. She got converted anyhow, sent me a notice letter. And she did. She got converted, and she's a nurse. She was quite a strange woman, quite a strange woman. And we baptized her, and she got salamander, and everything was going along nice.

And then one day, she came driving down the aisle after service, and on this trip, and I looked at the dogs that roamed in the aisle, and the cat had chewed on me. And he smelled, and he had a cigarette for me.

And she said, Is he married? I asked her, and she was a nice, bright-faced young Christian girl. And then I looked at him, and I said, No. Of course not. Well, that fellow's no Christian, is he? Well, no, he wasn't.

But do you know what happened? They never came back. He went back. He caught a guy on the second or third bounce, and dragged him, and dragged him. Now, I can prophesy what happened. It just went down in flames.

Possibly he still reads the Bible, and he's not there. I tried to patch it up by telling him he's married, saying that he's a Christian. But I said, There's proof and hope. I said, You'll get right with God in ten minutes.

Fine. He said, Well, he can't, buddy. But he wouldn't think about it. He just wanted that girl. He got her. So it came down to God, God and marriage, and there's much distortion going on in the generation, when anybody sees God as a marriage.

They pray, They say, I've got the will of God. What they meant was, they succeeded in persuading themselves that the Lord wouldn't mind too much for God, and a glow of something or other, whatever that is.

Then they spend the rest of their lives going to beds, and calling up evangelists, and writing to elders, and saying, What have I done? What have I done? I know what you've done, honey. You married her.

You married her. There's a choice between God and the man, and he took the man. Well, it happens. So, that's the negative side of it. If I stopped there, everybody would get too sad to eat breakfast. But I think it's the happiest I've seen.

Consecration and Putting God First

It's this. That you don't have to live that sort of thing, that sort of life, and don't have to have that sort of thing happen. There is a place of normal, relaxed happiness. We're in a right relationship to each other.

You've taken God, and he's in our Lord. You have dedicated your life to God, and to his Holy Son, Jesus Christ. God is first absolutely first in everything. He comes first in everything. Now, because I know, articulars are often required.

People sometimes write to me when I read my reports, and I mention something or other, and they say, well, it's too down, particular. People want particulars. Of course, you can't always say it in one place.

So, I want to give you some particulars, and show you this. I want to offer you something this morning. You've got intelligence, and you must get it. And I hope you believe that you have. I want to give you a letter, with which you can live a little, quite a little, in these mornings.

I want to offer you a ladder, a very ladder, to explain to you how you can have a richness of human experience, as you've never known before, and how you can have a deep, your total nature, faithfulness, and growth, and the butt-edge of the true God, God himself.

All right, here's the key. You say, God, you are exalted, you are exalted over me. You take that position. Exalted, oh God, over me. So, now, to break it down, you are exalted over everything, over everything that I possess.

There is nothing, Lord, that I put before you. I am first, oh God, above all things. Let thy glory be above all that I possess. Everything that I have, Lord, be thy above it all, glory above it all. Now, have you ever done that?

Never will you ever do it. It's as simple as all that. God is first. He is above all. That's first. And then, we come to the second, and that is, be thou exalted, oh God, above my friendship. I have some dangerous friendships.

Friendship, Influence, and Separation from Former Ways

I suppose that there isn't any known obstacle such as, as bad friendship. Well, many people argue, oh, I got it, I said that one time when an eight-year-old boy picked it up, and on and on and on, talking about people being good girls, even though we're all good girls, and we're influenced by the people he's hanging on to it, power around him, very greatly.

It's because iron sharpened with iron, that is, one piece of iron rubbed against another piece of iron affects both of them. And you are affected by the people who are your friends, and they're affected by you.

If they're all between the boundaries, the feeble people have no power to affect them good girls. And if, if a young fellow who hates God and young man keeps on being offended, young man who loves God is going to be offended, but the young man who hates God, he can hurt, sometimes, but we all hurt.

You can hurt the other way around. So, be wise, draw it above my friendship, and have any pains, Lord, that I wouldn't put you first. Now, what's most important, particularly what's important for young people, what's important for teenagers, is when you are converted, I hope, if you can't, you give up the old cause you used to travel around with.

If you didn't, you are the result of it. Come out clean, cut all the cords that bind you, as we think, and, and fluff off the old things. I wouldn't want you to do that. You're a monster, you're annoying, and shut myself up, and now you make other things.

I was converted, converted when I was 17 years old. I just, you know, it goes back, and your parents probably heard me say it somewhere, but you wouldn't. I converted when I was 17 years old, and I don't know how.

I heard a fella preach on them. I came out of a home where there were no Christians at all. I know, we never went to church, only about once a year, if you can't believe, but, I, I heard this fella preach, and he said that if you don't know how to pray, pray without anyone, you have a dream accident.

He said, if you don't know how to pray, go home and pray, God will have mercy on you, a sinner. I got out of my mother's womb, and I got down on my knees, and I said, God has mercy on this church to join.

I joined the church, my Christian church, up the road a little way, and then I stood it up, up the street a little left, up in the Indian Alliance, and I've never belonged to anything since, but the Alliance.

But, that was, that was being converted when I was young. You know, I had been running around with a gang, you know, and my father, he never had done too many bad things, but he's done a lot of things which were unquestionable.

Uh, I, I gave him up, but you know, I gave him up more or less on, on the bounce. But, if you're a really good Christian, and insist upon living a good Christian life, the only problem with running into devil is you naturally.

And if they haven't left you naturally, if you're not living, the point is, all things that are enjoyed should be sent over to God, and we should follow God's desire and God's order. Now, comfort, talk to me about this or not.

Comfort, Self-Denial, and the Christian Battle

Anybody get up at five o 'clock to get out here leaving like this this morning and have a big crowd here? Well, I guess you don't mind your comfort too much, right? Good, I don't know which. But, if any of you are a Christian, in all hope put a good size grapefruit in without cutting yourself.

But, even though you have to make up your mind whether you're going to live for your own comfort, and be comfortable, then you have to make time to take it off. How many of you have a cup tea and a glass of and a of.

They never asked for the plagues of the world, but now they all change. Now the plagues are a problem. People are running after, young people are running after, good birds. I said, oh, don't be fanatical about it.

He said, I don't think we should go to hell with this. He said, the movies. What did he tell you? He told you the truth. He said, your mind is dead. He said, no, I'm not dead with the movies. But the plagues are too.

That's not right. He said, you're crazy. Now, I was. And this is too. A little puny. Because I've had my own whole brain. Crazy, loving, bad. The church I joined, it was denomination, I'm sorry not to mention.

It was a Christian church. It was in the basement of the old church, making sandwiches. It was Sunday afternoon. We were trying to prepare our own. Instead of making God, and things of God, and prayer, and song, and Christian fellowship, and happy old people.

So to make them happy, they had to give those two back-living kids something to keep them from just dying of frustration. Have them have a life of God in them, to make them, to just keep them happy. And then, the ambitions, I think I've mentioned.

Here's your reputation. You're going to have to say, oh, God, be right, God, above my reputation. Everybody wants to be with you, somebody. And my likes and my dislikes, and even my health, and finally my life itself.

Be thou my life, oh God. According to many people, as I've said before, this is not a playground, but a battleground. And the Christian life doesn't call you to play. It calls you to labor and fight. And when you're laboring and fighting, you don't look.

You don't look for comfort then. I heard of a 2nd Lieutenant one time. He was in his 13th battle. First time. And he headed for a ditch. He dived head first. Now, he crushed his hand and all. He dived into the ditch, and he screamed.

Those children had it. They were screaming at him. Tough old fellow. All right, poor fellow. Of course, you're out there to get shot at. Get out of the ditch and fight. Well, you ought to like the 2nd Lieutenant.

He dived for the ditch. It's because he don't know his battleground. He thought he was killing him, if you know what I mean. They don't just shoot at you. If you hear a bullet whistle by, you don't think that it's anything unnatural for a Christian to get shot at.

God put him out there to fight. You think God would whistle by, that's all. You can tell me I'm a clown, but if you're really worried about the lightning, because the lightning hit there first. If the lightning hit you, you didn't hear the thunder.

That was about it. If it's by, you can smile at that one anyhow, because it hasn't got you. And if it gets you, the devil is around the world, and the world's upside down. You've seen the pretty part of Chicago.

Gordon and Richard, that is, we were on the plane together, with the daughter, young Charles Richard, 17, she told me. Good-looking kid. I hope she's here this morning. We saw a medic out here. I figured it was going to be an old 67 or 63-year-old student.

You know how students are. There was a medic with a great, big, gorgeous blue Cadillac. He borrowed it, so he killed him. And he took us down here to the hotel to see us. But he took us to the sea side.

Man, oh, man, Chicago. I've been living here 31 years, and I haven't seen it all like myself. And they were still workplaces. I could have taken them to still workplaces. But, of course, Chicago doesn't all consist of gilded panels and the strangest, vicious, devil-ridden crap you ought to be in at night.

I had to experiment around the corner. Nobody knows me over the wicked world. And you're going to have to stay to yourself. And I did. She didn't save me. My old ex-grandmother said to live in a bomb box.

I never found out what a bomb box was, but I assumed it was some comfortable place. She said, well, you have to live in a bomb box. She thinks she was married to live in a bomb box. Well, living in a bomb box, I assumed, would be like a fire being set.

You're a soldier. So I didn't say to make you, to give you comfort. But she saved you to put a gun in your hand. And to set you out there, a soldier for you and a soldier for Jesus. That's the goal. You've out-exalted the body of my God.

Exalting God Through Humility and Faithfulness

Let God be first. Would you be willing to put God first in everything? Everything? Sure. I've told it to the older generation, but not so. But I won't tell it to you, the younger generation. I used to tell you a little story.

And it's about a German teacher by the name of John Tyler. John Tyler was a great orator, about thirty-four years old. He was a great orator. He had a huge church. Everybody came to him and let him in.

One day, an apprentice came in and said to him, give that to me. He said, would you like to have it? I said, yes. And he said, oh, sure. So I began to give. He said, in fact, I took on the people last night.

So the next Sunday, he took on the people last. He had a sermon of twenty-one points. I read the sentence. It was a good one. He said, teach one half of this. Then the people asked to crucify the last, the last weapon of God in Christ.

So this fellow came back some time afterwards and said, I see. So that was a good sermon. He said, thank you. The faith began to grow. So did you mind if I said something to you? He said, no. He said, you don't have what you think about.

He said, I realize. But you don't have it. He said, you, you, you have given us fuel this morning, but you don't know what it is in your own mind. Now, Master Eccles, the great German teacher, could have, or Master Paulus, if I say Master Eccles, you know I mean that.

That's a person sometimes associated with my mind. But, he said, you don't, you'd have said, now listen, if you came to go pass over this church, I'd look after it. But he didn't. He said, he didn't know to lean back on his dignity.

He said to his friends, he said, well, maybe you're right. He said, I can't teach you on the phone from up country. He said, you're the lonely doctor, and I'm just a poor farmer. All I know is what the Holy Ghost has said.

He said, that's what I want to know. He said, well, you come to my study and teach me how I can live the life I preach about. He said, well, long time, this Nicholas from up country was fine. Only this lonely doctor, he was a fellow who was.

He just started studying down. He came up to a place where he was spare. He said, I'm not fit under that boat, but I'm not going to teach well if there's a patient. He said, you talk to me. So for eight months it went on that way.

Tyler just couldn't seem to get to the point, but in no time. So finally one day he said, well, I think I am now. I think I've got it. I said, well, I'll ask you to preach. So he got his Bible and started to read the text, and he couldn't get over it.

He began to cry. He asked him to get him sick. He said, well, he finally turned around and came to see me. He said, you know, there was one part that wasn't any good. One minute. Now he said, this morning the Lord allowed you to make a fool of yourself in public.

And he said, now, I think you're in a position to improve it. You want to see that now, didn't I preach? He refused. He said, no sir, I'm going to stop here next Sunday. He was on his feet and read it.

And he said, if last Sunday's performance by the great Tyler is any better than next Sunday's performance will be, he didn't think that either. And he read the announcement. Tyler will preach here next Sunday.

He took another hand, grabbed this new thing he's got to buy, and maybe he'll just make a little bit of ass. He's a winner now. So he got up that morning and took care of the text. And he said, he's never seen his face in the Bible.

And he didn't know a thing about us compared to him. And he didn't know a thing about what that means, in that he wasn't as bad as we are, in the Bible, in the Scripture. So he just said it like this.

He said, the Lord's coming real soon. And you preachers, that's a tremendous thing, that he's calling you to stop this thing. You people are going to die. And he said, the Lord answered. Everybody would know that he wasn't anybody.

He wasn't anybody. Then the Lord made him into this great angelic person, I think, before he was born. He was before the Lord of Reformation. He said to you, if God can exalt himself above you, you put God where he belongs, and you take the Lord in the place where he belongs.

Then God will begin to be a little bit more sincere, rather than just how many hundred people are listening to me now. I'm telling you, it is, it is. I'm about you. You see, I will go. Not to go to church, except to go to the breast of the Lord.

God bless you.