Five Rules for Holy Living — A.W. Tozer

Hearing God’s Song Through Creation

If we only knew it, we would find that we are living in a world that an awful lost dark no man's land, but it is the back door of heaven, it is the backyard of heaven, and if we listen, we sing. Now I say that the footprints of God are everywhere about us, and while we can't see him, we can see his luminous, and like a bird that sings, as Middleton said, the bird sings darkling.

We can't see her, but she sings, and so God sings among his branchings in his universe, and you and I can't gaze upon him, for no man can see God and live, but we can hear him sing his song of creation and redemption, and feel the pressure of his breath upon us as we move through the world.

Seeing the World as Celestial

I say, we'll never see things rightly until we see them as the gardener, the old Englishman that wrote this, and I thought it was so beautiful that I copied it to give to you. He said this, your enjoyment of the world, until every morning you awake in heaven and see yourself in your father's palace, and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial, having such a reverent esteem for all as if you were among the angels.

The bride of a monarch in her husband's chamber hath no such view. The bride of a monarch in the chamber of the king has no cause for delight such as yours, for you live in the maid. Therefore we ought to remember that this world that we live in is a lattice through which if we look carefully we can at least see dimly the garments of our ancestors.

We ought to learn to live like that. We've become secularized. We've allowed the merchants to pull us down and make us secular and worldly. We ought to all be poets. We ought to all be poets. If we can't play, I know where Middle Sea is.

If anybody would want to shoot me against a wall, I can find it. But that's about all I know about it, but I'm less. I never wrote much poetry. I've written a little. One or two things got amused. But I am a so are you, and so are we all, when we can see God Almighty in his world and hear the voice of God calling.

William Blake and the Glory of God

We go out in the world and see nothing. We hear in a previous sermon some time ago about William Blake, the great English poet that was standing on the seashore, looking out east across the waters, and the sun was coming up.

And a man walked up and stood beside him, sun up and coloring all the eastern sky, and the little waves caught the color in a thousand shining pieces. And the sun was half up across the waves, just a hemisphere, half up.

Blake turned and said to the man beside him, what do you see? And the man beside him was a merchant from London, and he said, that looks like a gold sea, a sovereign there. What do you see? And Blake said, I see the glory of God.

And I hear a multitude of the heavenly hosts crying, holy Lord God Almighty. There is your difference, my brother. That's the different world that you live in, whether you live in a world where you see stars and sun, or whether you see the glory of God and hear the voice of the cherub and chanting glory to God in the highest and peace on earth.

We ought to learn to live like that. We ought not to allow merchants and dweldly men to pull us down. Merchants are all right. If you're a merchant, don't get mad. I have to use merchants, sell, I sold three books or seven or something one time.

But so I'm a merchant too, so don't get angry with me, only remember that's the ledger type of mentality, the file card type of mentality, isn't it, Tybor? God's looking for a man who can break out of vaults and storage chambers and billfolds and percentages and all the rest of it, and see God in his beautiful world, venerate all things, esteem all men.

Human Dignity in the Image of God

Why am I to esteem all men? I am to esteem all men because of God. Though fallen and marred and ugly and lost, faith knows their true value. Faith knows that every man has the capabilities and capacities to become a Christian.

And every man whose mind may now be in impurities and whose heart is considering evil and thinking and planning dark deeds upon his bed, in that man there lies the capacity for mighty deeds for God and the capacity to know God.

Occasionally art collectors will come upon an old masterpiece, an old Ruben or an old Da Vinci, and they will hire people who know how to do it to reconstruct it, to restore it. And here it is, just an old, cracked affair, smoky, and nobody can see anything there but these keen, sharp-eyed men.

These experts know that that's a Da Vinci, and they know how to restore it. They scrape off the dirt, they know all the chemicals to use so as not to hurt the paint, take away the dirt, and pretty soon shining there before them is an old masterpiece, an old Dutch masterpiece.

Maybe you're a tough man, shining as beautiful as it was the day that it was created. So we look upon a man and the world looks upon him, no good, that's all, he's no good. Or we say he's a black man, he's a yellow man, he's a red man.

Or they say he's a white man, he's white trash, and we glare across the color lines at each other and say, that man's white trash, that man's a colored man, that man's a yellow man, forgetting blood who dwell upon the face of the earth.

And that if we only knew we're not looking at a yellow man, we're looking at a man made in the image of God, who happens to have a little more yellow in him. When they look at you, I'm not looking at white trash, I'm looking upon a man who has less pigment, he's the same under his skin, with every man who lives in the world.

You know what they said about the colonel's old grady, our sister's under the skin, and you don't have to prick very deep until you find the colonel's lady and her maid, same women. We have faith in man because we know he was made in God's image, and that's why I walk with a smile in my heart when I listen to all these scare fellows who are telling us that we're going to blow ourselves off the earth, tell us that we are going all to go up and be atomized, that we won't even, won't even anybody be around to bury the atomic dust.

The last undertaker will be atomized along with everybody else. I don't believe that for one second. I don't think that man made in the image of God is going to destroy man. I think he may destroy a lot of men.

Blowing up cities is quite your sport in these last terrible days of education and sex, when everybody knows more than they ought to, but the human race is still going. God made us, and we are to esteem man, esteem them for what they can be.

Grace Restores the Fallen

There was that woman, the Bluebird, who lived in Blueberry Bend in the Bowery in New York City a generation ago. She was a woman whose very life was given over to the devil. She used dope, she drank, she used tobacco.

The very way that Paul says we not even talk about it. She was that kind of woman, a beast, an evil woman, and she was in jail. An army woman went and stood outside and told her she loved her. He kept telling her, and she cursed her and drove her off, and she came back and told her again, and she cursed herself, and she kept coming back, always this little woman with the funny hat and the little red band around it, keep coming back.

And finally she broke down the Bluebird, and one day the Bluebird said, you say God loves me. You don't love me, and she said, but I do love you. She said, you don't love me, you're doing your job, you're paid to do this, you come down here, you're just slumming after you, and you're paid to do this, you come down here and tell me God loves me, and you don't even love me.

She was dirty in her hair, she said, if you loved me, you'd kiss me. And the little Salvation Army girl reached through the bar's little face as far as she could through and grabbed the Bluebird and pulled her dirty face up to her and kissed her full on the mouth, fell in a sobbing heap on the stone floor of the prison, and wept her soul out, wept her soul out.

To her girlhood days, back to her innocence and her purity, back to the days when she went to Sunday school and learned God is love, there in a dirty heap sobbing on the floor, she gave her heart to God.

She was pardoned and let out of jail shortly afterward. Immediately some Christian group, I would assume the Salvation Army, and lived only about three months after her conversion. But her testimony, she went to every saloon, every dirty house where she'd been, and every halfway house where she'd been, she went to every one of them and testified and told what God had done for her.

They said that the cruel procession was so long that the police had trouble with it. People ought to see, before she'd been the dirt on the streets in Mulberry Bend, and now she was a saint indeed. And Grace came out to see the last, to take a last look at the now clean, holy face of the Bluebird.

I esteem all men, far but for what they can be, by the blood of the Lamb and the renewal of the Holy Ghost. Godless philosophies today, the godless philosophies that tell us they have been, that out of them have come the totalitarian states, Nazism, Communism, Fascism, but the Christian honors human life.

He honors human life because human life has about it, as the dirty picture by Da Vinci or Rubens, has about it the inklings of immortality. And oh, if God Almighty, by his Son Jesus Christ, takes that fallen masterpiece, restores it, you will find shining out of it again the face of Jesus Christ.

Loving the Brotherhood of Redeemed Souls

For Christ became a man and was flesh to walk among us. Next, love the brotherhood. Now the brotherhood is the brotherhood of the redeemed souls, of course, related by a higher life than the flesh. You see, we live, as I've said before, on two planes.

We live on the natural and on the spiritual. And we have a brotherhood of the natural. I sat Friday noon listening to what I had said at the coronation, but of course I meant the inauguration. And I confess I had a heart of tears.

My flesh is American, but there is something grander and higher and nobler than that, and that is a brotherhood in the Spirit. And I find among some of you people that I've only known a year a closeness, a warmth, that I do not feel even for my Native Americans.

The person that sits beside you in the pew may be a stranger to you and only wandered in here as, we say, a visitor to the Church. That person is a Christian, he is closer to you than your unsaved brother, nearer to you than your unsaved father could be, nearer than you might have if they're not saved.

I have relatives who are saved, and there are nearer to me, nearer to me, of course, relatives that are not. And I have very little to say to them. After a half hour of discussing old times and the farm and Pennsylvania, friends that are gone and a few that are still alive, I have nothing more to say to these relatives.

I have nothing more to say to God's children, never, never. God's children have eternity to talk about these things. They that love the Lord spake often one to another, and wrote it down in a book, and they shall be mine, says the Lord, in that day when I come to make up my jewels.

So the people of God, there's a love of the brotherhood. And I say again, and I suppose I'll say it many times if I continue to preach here, as I plan to, that the brotherhood of the Church is a sweet, wonderful brotherhood.

And they can rule me out, but if they're Christians, I take them in. How does that little poem go? My enemy drew a circle and shut me out, but love and I had a will to win. I drew a bigger circle and took him in.

Christian Fellowship Beyond Denominational Boundaries

One time in the city of Chicago, we ran out of room for Sunday school, so we, it was a Lutheran church across the street, and we rented there, and we'd send sections of our Sunday school over there, the overflow over into the Sunday school apartment of the Lutherans.

And we finally overflowed that, and we might not have their upstairs church, the auditorium as we call it. And they met and they sent back the word. They said, we cannot permit non-Lutherans in the sanctuary.

And we took it all right with a rise out of their sanctuary. But they don't fool me. If they're real Christians, I'm in, brother. They can't shut their, what do they call it, session or senate or whatever it is that voted us out.

They can't vote us out. Nobody can vote me out. I notice I go occasionally through Catholic churches and big cathedrals here and there. There's St. Louis Cathedral in St. Louis and St. Peter's in New York and so on.

And always there's one little holy spot, and it'll say, visitors are kindly not across these ropes. That's a holy spot. They only have that in there. But there are no holy spots that I can't enter. Now I want to just tell you that.

Entering the Throne of Grace

For the scripture says, having therefore a high priest who has gone before us into the holy place and sprinkled it with his blood, let us come therefore to the throne of grace. So I can enter the throne of grace.

Oh, my friend, wherever there's a Christian, he's my brother, even though he may stare down his nose at me and consider that I'm a Christian. If he's a Christian, I'm a Christian. And someday I'll grab his hand in the glory and say, I told you so.

I told you so. I made it. I made it. Yes, sir. I remember once down in West Virginia where I was preaching ministry. I took my first pastor in West Virginia. He had a dear old saint by the name of Brother Break-Iron.

That's an awful name for a man as gentle and tender as he was. He was one of the godliest men I ever knew in my life. He had a face that shone like the morning sun, fresh polished. And his prayers were something to listen to and something to hear.

Salvation and the Question of Water Baptism

Brother Break-Iron. Well, he'd praise the Lord day and night, you know, and praise the Lord until he died. And he said to a man who believes that you're born again when you're baptized with water. And he said, now, I don't believe that anybody is saved until they have been renewed.

You're regenerated by the baptism of water. I said, well, I can't argue with you, but I'll ask you. What about Brother Break-Iron? He's a Methodist, and he's only been sprinkled. Do you think he's saved?

And this fellow rubbed his chin and said, I don't want to say. I really don't know. And here was a dear old man, you know, all you'd have to do is just snip his thumb right into the glory, you know. That's all you'd have to do, you know, just snip his shoelaces, and he'd have gone.

But this fellow ruled him out on a doctrinal technicality. You can't do it, friend. You might as well stop. You can't shut out anybody on a doctrinal technicality. Love the Brotherhood. I should have made five sermons out of this, I find, but I hear the preachers say.

Fear God With Astonished Reverence

Now, fourth, fear God. Fear God. God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and his own Christ our Lord and also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. Now, this fear here is not be afraid of. It means astonished reverence.

It may grate up anywhere from the fright of the guilty soul to the awestruck worship of the trembling saint. Fear God. He used to have much anymore. They say he was a God-fearing man. I like that. But they don't use it now.

He's a God-fearing man. Well, this carnal, secular, evil world where the devil switches his tail, constantly you can feel his hot breath on your neck. To go through the world being a God-fearing man is an accomplishment.

I'm telling you that only God can enable us to do it. So fear God. I preach on that so much that I'm going to skip that one and go on down to the last one, honor of the King. Now, what do we mean by honor of the King?

Honoring the King and Human Government

The reason for all of this lies before us here. We honor all men as men and admire and respect men because of their humanhood, because they were made in the image of God. And we honor the King because the King derives his royal honor from the exalted worth of the men he rules.

Always remember that. I believe in government, human government, whether it's a democracy, a monarchy. But I am not fooled at all by people. A king or a queen earns their honor not from within, but from the honor of the people they rule.

And the philosophy is the philosophy that says that man, whether he be a president or a king or a queen, that person who rules over men is in a place of high honor because men are in a place of high honor.

And when John Fitzgerald Kennedy, swore a simple oath of office, he sits and looks out over a big, broad table or desk. He's president now of a great country, but he's just as proud of his honor he derives from 182 men made in the image of God.

And that beautiful, gracious lady that sits in England and reigns as queen, the beautiful lady she is. And she gets glory from Canadians and Englishmen. And you've got to be careful, I don't know whether it's Irishmen or not, because I know there's war over there.

But I mean the Commonwealth, the people over whom she reigns. The glory of the king comes from the people. The glory of the people comes from the God who made them in his image. That's the philosophy of kings and queens and presidents.

And I believe in it. I believe that we value, even honor, human government because God established it. And we honor kings and queens and presidents because God placed them there over his people. And we love the brotherhood of redeemed men because Christ redeemed them.

Creation as the Garment of the Deity

And we venerate God's creation because, God speaking, it was done. And his creation is the garment of the deity. I don't know whether you like this or not, and really, you know, I don't want to become an old ivory tower scholar.

I don't like the stuff that a common, busy man is bored with. I don't want to do too much of it. But I run on to some things in my reading and study that I just think is so good I like to come. And when I find a good record somewhere, a real nice record, I always want to send it to Becky.

And some nice thing that I like, I say, I think the people would like this. Well, you know what I ran on to one time some years ago? I was one of the three Hebrew children, me, Shack, Shade, Ramach, and Abednego.

Of course, that's in the book of Daniel. And they were thrown into the fiery furnace because they wouldn't worship an image. They were Jews and they wouldn't worship an idol. Everybody knows about that story.

The Hymn of the Three Hebrew Children

But long before Christ was born, maybe a hundred years or more before Christ was born, there was something written about that. And it says, three Hebrew boys, me, Shack, Shade, Ramach, and Abednego, had themselves a worship service before they were, or about the time they were thrown in there.

And they celebrated and they sang. And here's a little bit of what they said. And I want you to see here how all that I've said this morning, and sums it up a hundred years or two hundred years before Christ was born.

I want you to notice how many things there are. Waters and sun and moon and stars and wind and heat and fire and winter and summer and frost and dew and ice and snow. You just watch it as I go along. Oh, ye sun and moon, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever.

Oh, ye stars of heaven, oh, ye winds of God, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever. Oh, ye fire and heat, ye winter and summer, ye dews and frost, bless ye the Lord, fly him forever. Oh, ye ice and snow, nights and days, light and darkness, lightnings and clouds, bless ye the Lord.

Oh, ye mountains and hills and green, oh, ye seas and floods and all that move in the waters. And ye fowls of the air, praise and magnify God forever. And ye beasts and cattle and ye children of men, ye servants of the Lord, ye spirits and souls of the righteous, bless ye the Lord, praise and magnify his name forever.

Now there are more. This is an excerpt out of that hymn of praise that they sang or were supposed to have sung when the fires were crackling all around. Instead of being in there grumbling, they said they were praising.

And then some Christian got a hold of this and he added another verse. And he says, Oh, ye home of heart, bless ye the Lord. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. Amen forever. Now, that sums up today.

That we are to venerate all things because God made them. We are to esteem all men because they were once made in the image of God. Brotherhood because they are of our spiritual kind of life. We are to fear God because of who he is and we are to honor the King because God placed him there to honor his people who may be made in his image.

All God's children said, Amen. Amen.