The Hidden Life of Faith — A.W. Tozer

The Hidden Life Illustrated by Moses in the Rock

Here in this chapter, or the sections of the two chapters which we read this morning, there is the most charmingly beautiful scenes found anywhere in the entire Bible. And this, I would not say is a type of anything, but I would say that it is a marvelously beautiful illustration.

It doesn't preach to us, maybe, but it sings to us. And it sings to us a song of the hidden life. I will hide thee in a cliff by the faith. The song of the man in the smitten rock. In the gospel orator, there are certain clear, specific results.

Faith as a Gift of God

I say that faith is a gift of God to contact hearts. It is not a conclusion drawn from facts. It is a spiritual ability imparted by the Holy Ghost. I keep bearing down on this, and telling the people, because it is one of the doctrines that has been lost by us.

It is not denied, it is de-emphasized, with the result that it, for all practical purposes, does not validate Christian doctrine today. That faith is not a conclusion. We do not say, quote the Bible, yes, this text is in the Bible, therefore did God write that text?

Yes. If God wrote the Bible, this is in the Bible, and God is true, therefore is that text true? Yes. Well, then you're a believer. Now that faith, certainly, it's a kind of intellectual conclusion drawn from a set of facts.

But the faith in the gospel orator, formed men, is a gift of God, a spiritual ability to trust Christ by the Holy Spirit to the penitent man, and withheld from every other sort of man. That is, who has this real faith, this imparted faith, enters an immortal kingdom at once, into the kingdom of God, and he joins a select circle.

He joins the elect. It is not the ecumenical circle that we hear about so much recently. More than that, it's bigger than that. It is the select circle. It is the circle of the elect, of the immortal kingdom.

And when a man thus does enter that kingdom, he becomes what I might call a man. I will hide thee, said God. I will put thee in a cliff to the rock. And this was, I, a sort of type, but at least a beautiful illustration of the God-hidden life.

The God-Charmed Life in Christ

Now I want to say four or five things about this man of faith. That he is a God-charmed man. He is a man who has been wrongly taught. He lives in the center of the miracle. And he becomes, in one real sense, a true Bible mystic.

He feels that the whole world is his. And he comes to accord with it. When the Lord Jesus Christ was in the wilderness, it said that he was amiss. And I suppose the average reader of that passage might pity the Lord or say how wonderful that he was protested.

But G. Campbell Morgan, in his, called, what he called it, The Crisis of the Christ, that's it, says this, that it's all wrong to think that he was surrounded by beasts bent upon destroying him. He said that those beasts gave him early creation, and that they recognized their maker, and that they were tame in his presence.

He did not harm the one from whose hand they had come. So that the Lord among the beasts was as safe as the Lord among the beasts. That sentence, that was not from his book. But the idea there, that he was perfectly safe there as he would have been in heaven, because beasts shall honor me, said God.

And they glorified him by lying down at the feet of his son. This God-charmed man sees the miracle, where everybody else sees no miracle at all, the crass laws of nature and matter and form. But the true child of God sees the miracle.

It is not a sign of senility or a sign that a man's mind is bad when he insists upon seeing God or a grain of sand, and of hearing the voice of God in the sighing of the wind or in the of the storm. He is in charge of it.

And the God-charmed man, he is charmed and entirely safe. It was said about Jesus, you remember, that his hour was not yet come. God could not harm him while he walked among them, because his hour was not yet come.

He was a charmed boy, a charmed life. In the Old Testament there is that passage, typical again, or at least a picture of how a sample of how things were in the city. His servant became frightened. He and King had sent a great host with chariots and horses and soldiers against him.

Elisha and the Opened Eyes of Faith

There they were, a great host. The margin says a heavy host. I don't know how many that would be. And the young inexperienced man hadn't learned that he was living a charmed life and inhabited a perpetual miracle.

He came running in excitedly to his master and said, Oh, master, master, they're surrounding us. There is a great host. And he said, Don't worry, young fellow. They that are with us are more than they that are against us.

Oh, Lord. He opened his eyes and let him see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he looked, and lo, in the mountains were a horse of fire surrounding Elisha. And Elisha went on and prayed, Oh, God, send these men in temporarily blind.

And they became temporarily blind. And he led them into Samaria and captured an army. These two men, this preacher and his associate, they led the whole army and captured them. The associate, full of zeal and some ignorance, said, Father, what shall we do?

Kill them? No, he said. Give them something to eat and send them back. He had inhabited a miracle too long. He didn't need to kill men. And he said, Now, Lord, let them see. And every man saw and said, Now, they were in Samaria captured.

Obedience and the Safety of God's Calling

Now, that's an example at least. It's a sample of how God works. I have illustrations drawn from church history, which I shall not at this moment give you, but which could be given in proof of the fact that it was a charmed life.

And I repeat what I have often said, and hold as a part of my living creed, that if a man dies, he cannot die till his work is done, if he obeys God. Now, if he leaves the way and goes among the wolves of his own meanful intention, I have no hope then that he shall fulfill the will of God.

But if he obeys God, where God sends him, he is a safe man till he's ready to die. And who wants to live five minutes after the Lord says, Come up to this, to be asleep, when the clock rings and the voice of the Lord says, Come on.

He is not a charmed man with a charmed life, but he's a God-descended man. I got great help from Moses. When Moses was in a sudden jam with Israel, Korah or somebody was after him, it said, In solemn sweet cloud came to his meeting.

And Moses stood back behind him that surrounded him with jewels. When the woodsman builds a huge roaring fire, he could see their eyes shining in the dark, but not the one who dared come to the circle of life.

A God-descended man. And the scripture says, By whom the offenses come. And he says again, no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. And against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. Against thee is a true tongue that says about you is true.

The Lord will condemn that tongue. But if it's not true, the Lord will condemn that tongue. He says, I will go before L. B. Compton, whom I quote sometimes as being one of the greatest preachers. His southerner, North Carolina, had experience.

Written up in the slow, stately language of the King James Version might well be misunderstood as a lost chapter from some of the books. Compton at one time was sued by a rich townsman for something or other for which he was not to blame.

And as you know, this man has influence on his side. He has everything on his side. Why do you not hire, get your witnesses going and do something? He said, I can't, God won't let me. All God let me do is pray.

So he prayed down to the wire, I believe the day or not more than the day before the suit was to be aired in court. And everybody knew him, a poor preacher. What could he do against an influential townsman who had brought suit against him?

They lost everything to the man of God. But he waited on God in holy prayer. And the day, I've forgotten which, but a few hours before the trial was to come up in court, there was a call. This preacher, please come down and pray for a man who was desperately ill.

He hurried down and you guessed it, the ill man was the man who was suing him in court. He got down on his knees beside the bed and prayed for him. The suit was called off and everything was made up. And everybody said, what has God wrought?

And God defended man when he belongs to this charmed circle. But he's also a God taught man. Paul in Corinthians 2 7, we speak the wisdom, uh, which is of God, a hidden wisdom, a mysterious wisdom by God before the world for your salvation.

God's Hidden Wisdom and the Spiritually Taught Believer

And that wisdom of God sometimes leads men in a way we know little of. I think I'll tell you what I heard at conference. I spent three days of last week at conference. A good brother, a man without much education, but a deeply spiritual man of God that's sweet by the name of Olson preached.

And he told us this story. So good that I must share it with you. He said that when he was a younger preacher and was on the radio singing, he says he doesn't do it anymore. He's found he didn't know it.

And he was singing. He said, he got a call one day saying, would you please come out to such and such a home just out and, uh, have a little meeting with us there. So he said, sure he would. And he took his gift and they're sending him books and a friend and they drove out when they got there, the yard was full of cars and the house was full of scammed in sitting around in borrowed chairs.

He said, when he walked in, they looked at him as if he had been, but he said that God had sent him. So he passed to him books around and got the key on the old guitar saying, then he said, he asked his friend to testify, which he did.

And he said, he launched in and preached a rather, I don't suppose I learned it, but a good gospel sermon. And he gave the altar call and they went down on their knees everywhere and began to pray. And some of them found gathered up his hymn books, started for the car.

And somebody ran out and said, brother Olson, come back and pray for my sister. He said, are you saved your sister? No. Well, he said, you're both get saved before I'll pray for her to be healed. So he got them both saved.

And he certainly knows that a large number of those who were saved that day, still are walking with God. And some of them have died, but live to the end of their days. And he said, after he had gotten safely away and the circumstances were known, he was in the wrong house.

And it was a family reunion of the Nelson clan. And nobody, but being good Scandinavians, they had enough religion somewhere to let him have his way. Now that's what I mean. I've gone in. Here was a simple hearted fellow that wouldn't know a Greek root from a root of gin carrot.

But he did know the voice of God when he heard it. He said, I could near faint when I think about that now. Oh brother, he said, was I ashamed. But the Lord had had his way with a man who was simple enough.

And God spoke to history, which was before the foundation of the world. And the man that's hidden is a God without a doubt, because he's led by a kind of instinct, if he's a prayerful man. I have reason to believe they're true.

Spiritual Instinct and the Voice of God

They're not all quite alike, but they have one central likeness, the story of the instinct of animals. I read not long ago of a female, a dog they had had around the place, and she was cherished and loved by all of them, but something happened and they sold her.

And they took her hundreds of miles across the continent west. And at the end of about those 21 days, she came limping in, the pads of her feet and she herself, a complete wreck, and skin and bone, but came her nose across the threshold and lay down and looked up and whimpered.

She was back home. How did she find her way over the unknown highways for hundreds of miles? Nobody can tell you that. When a man is lost, he doesn't try to find his way home. He speaks to his horse, puts the reins on her, and braces himself against the storm, and she finds her way home.

The bird finds his way back to her, and nobody knows how. There is a spiritual instinct that's like that. You're so puzzled, you don't know a thing, you comb your intellect, nothing registers, no bell rings.

And after a few years have gone by, right thing. Why did you do the right thing? There is a hidden mystery which is ordained before the foundation of the world. Think to the Holy Ghost and the breast of a man will keep him right.

I've been meeting men and I find a wonderful thing that God is speaking to them. He's been speaking to me over the last 10 years and is saying to me the same thing. And I get letters from people and they're hearing the same voice, the same direction.

A few aren't. Occasionally somebody will barge in and take over who is in the rut and who has heard no voice for years except the hard voice of authority or theology. But those who listened and of the other world, they're saying about the same thing here and there.

But the day then the Lord met me and before me yesterday morning in the station downtown, he told me of a Christian businessman, one of the leaders of the CBMC, who lied on the same thing he's been talking to you and me on.

Another man writes me matters about. That's a close enough. And they're way over there and tells me in a long, what God, the same thing he's been saying to us. And I run into the effort in the mission cloud at Keswick and we pray and talk to God's been saying the same thing.

The Victorious Life and the Spirit-Filled Church

He's not saying it to everybody, but he's saying it to enough. And now comes our teacher. How'd that get here? 20 years ago, they couldn't have got past Cicero for Hammond. He would have been down there and had them all in jail.

Nobody would believe the second work of grace and the victorious life that ever got to where we're getting in that, which this church has stood for 25, nearly 26 years of my full minutes of speaking. And there's this mysterious wisdom that's moving among men.

And God is saying, if you don't get a lot of your bones, you'll rattle yourself to death. And he's beginning to give life back to us again. And if the Lord lets some of us live a while longer and keep on doing good and right, I believe the day will come when we'll even get away from Hollywood and our dispensationalism back to the spirit filled life that God blessed.

I may be too optimistic, but I am. I might say he's a God fed man, or I'm going to skip that. The hidden manna. I will give you the hidden manna. Isn't that brother Ravens? He's a privileged man. How privileged he is.

The Mind of Christ and the God-Privileged Man

This man is not known of anybody. It says that in first Corinthians, the second chapter, that we are, how does it word it there exactly? I read so many versions, I don't always remember. He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.

He knoweth the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. And here is the God privileged man, man of mystery who lives in the circle hidden in the, under the hand of God.

And he lives a life for the flesh to analyze him. A couple of weeks psychoanalysis, since you know that has spawned this psychiatry and psychiatry and I don't. But for 25 years, I have been familiar with psychoanalysis and they're supposed to know all there is to know about you.

There is Sigmund Freud and his. They begin to take us apart and pull us bone from bone to see what makes us. Holy ghost comes down as a cloud and fire. You say behold these Christians, what weird people.

Treasures of Darkness and Blessing Through Trial

I might point out that he's a God enriched man. I will give you, says the Holy Ghost, the treasures of darkness. Shakespeare had written that. He'd have said the treasures of light. Who would have thought of the treasures of darkness?

It took God to think. I will give you the treasures of darkness. Not in the darkness do men usually hope to find treasure, but God says I will enrich you. The troubles that come to you are that that will break and blessing on your head.

Finding the Hidden Place of Refuge

And I close text, I flee unto them. Will you this morning find the hidden place? Maybe you've had a tough week this week. Doesn't always go as well. Maybe you've had a tough week. Maybe you didn't equip yourself quite as well as you wish you had about it this morning.

Don't stop there and don't let that get you down. Moses didn't always come off in the most saintly fashion, but he was a God hidden man. From every swelling tide of woes. This is where Jesus sheds the oil of gladness on our heads.

All like me. And they've got good grounds. Everything I've said. I have to agree with everything. By faith in the kingdom of the elect. Where God will trust that we can make it 100%. 100%. We'll forgive everybody that has ever done anything against us.

I trust we'll forgive with people and pray for the people we don't like. There are such people. I said seriously, I never met a man I didn't like. I have. I thought you had. But don't let's let those things hinder us.

Let us trust the Lord to forgive us and cleanse us from all where he enters. He to hide me. We take together. It was broken and hide ourselves under the.