(The Chief End of Man - Part 10): Application - Saved Unto the Worship of God — A.W. Tozer

The Church as a Royal Priesthood

The book of 1 Peter, 1 Peter 2, verse 9. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

The praises there would be the glory or the high and holy qualities that make God God, the virtues. But ye should show forth the virtues of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Now let us offer a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, the world is very evil and the times are waxing late and we are running out of time. O God, lay hold of us this evening. We pray that we may have eyes to see and ears to hear, hearts to understand, that we may be saved from the routine and the rut.

We pray that we may have eyes inside and outside, anointed understanding. Help us, Lord, for Christ's sake. Amen. Now, for several weeks I have taught you, always back to the same thing, starting wherever I started, always coming back to the same thing.

I have taught you what worship is and that we are created to worship, as the text tonight says, but that we are largely failing in the purpose for which we have been created and redeemed. So in this closing one of this series, this is the last for this series, I wish to apply the truths which I have taught.

Most of you have heard them all. Therefore, I want tonight to make application of these things, first to the Church thought of as a company of people, as it says in 1 Peter, a royal priesthood, a holy generation, a peculiar people, first as the Church and then as the individual that composed the Church.

Now, have you ever stopped to consider why we exist as a Church at all? In so many things we take for granted, we never ask why. We're too busy with everything, and we don't ask why. We're born into it, and we just do it, and we don't ask why we do it.

So there is a Church here where a company of people meets every so often, and one across the street where a company of people meets, and a couple up the way here, and down another direction. Now, why?

Well, let me answer to say that a local Church exists to do corporally what it should do individually, namely, worship God, show forth the excellencies of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light, reflect back the glory of him who shines down on us, even God, even Christ, even the Holy Ghost.

All that Christ has done for us in the past and all he is doing now leads to this one end, and I sound strange to myself when I say this, because you hardly hear anybody that is saying it. I do not, I have not got a messianic complex, I think, I hope I have, and I do not want to take even unconsciously the attitude that I alone am a prophet of the Lord and I would like to die along with Elijah.

God says he has 7 ,000 that haven't bowed to me, and he usually has. But as far as I get to hear men, and as far as I am familiar with books, and that I think is fairly right, my familiarity, I do not find this being taught very much, that we are saved to worship God.

Moving Beyond First-Grade Christianity

We have it that we are saved for a number of reasons. I suppose that if you were to ask the average Christian, you were to take the average Christian who was really born in the world and is truly a Christian, and say, well, why were you saved?

Well, he would say, I was saved to have peace of mind, or I was saved in order that I might be delivered from smoking, or I was saved in order that I might give up dope, or I was saved because I had a bad temper and it bothered me, or I took the Lord Jesus as my helper because I was failing in business and I wanted him to be my business partner, or I was in school and I wanted him to help me to get good grades.

We would have, I suppose, very many reasons, and I am not going to be too hard on people really, because I notice in a study I once made in the New Testament, that people came to the Lord for many reasons.

One man came because his boy was sick. A woman came because her daughter was sick. Another woman came because she had had a chronic disease for twelve years. A politician climbed out of a tree and looked down because his heart ached.

Nicodemus came by night because his religion was not adequate and his heart was empty. So the Lord received them all, and the Lord receives everybody that comes to him in faith, even if their motives may not be the highest, I suppose.

But the point is, why should we always stay where we started in? That's what I can't understand. Why should the Church be composed of a school of the first grade with never any second grade? Oh, if a few got into the second grade, nobody got into the third.

Why should the Church be a spiritual school composed of first graders who never went beyond the first grade? There's an old joke I heard of a man who said that he ought to be well educated, who spent five years in the fourth grade, and that's, I suppose, funny, but it's not so funny when it comes to the Church.

I suppose we might say, and I think the devil would laugh, I doubt whether God would be so much pleased, but we might say, well, I ought to be a good Christian. I've been in the fifth or the fourth grade or third grade now for 29 years coming next to Michael Mass.

I think this is a tremendous and terrible thing, that a Church should remain, should be dedicated to the proposition that everybody ought to be static. And if that's where we are, why were we converted?

Well, I was converted so I could be happy, happy, happy. And everybody's happy, say amen. And this is as far as we get, my dear friends, this is as far as we get. Nobody wants to get any further than this.

And I don't mind telling you that I'm kind of sick about it all. Not only here, it's everywhere the same on the North American continent, and I suppose all around the world. And we're out busy evangelizing, making your first graders, so we can keep them in the first grade till the Lord comes and gives them a rule over five cities.

Redemption's Purpose: Worship

Seems to me that it's an awfully badly mixed up concept of Christianity. For now the Lord Jesus Christ died on a cross that he might make his people worshipers of God. That's why we were born, that we might show forth the excellency of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

He is thy Lord, worship thou him. And we see when it's all over, and the consummation has taken place and been fulfilled, that the beasts and the elders and the creatures under the sea and above the earth and in the earth and in the heaven are all crying aloud, Holy, Holy, Holy to the Lord God Almighty, which is and which was and which will be.

This is the purpose of God, that he might redeem us and put us all in the choir and keep us there singing his praises and showing forth his excellencies while he ends his rule. This is the purpose of God in redemption.

So I say that he has done it for us and he is doing it now. What he's done all leads to one end. And all we should lead to one end. All that we do should lead to one end. For activity's sake, it is not of God.

It's not a high thing. Religious people are very active people, I suppose. Politicians and preachers are the longest-wounded. Two weeks from tonight, Brother Gray, Senator Thiessen is going to be here and take a part in the service, and I'm going to have the longest part.

That'll be the only time when the preacher and the politician ever got together and the preacher preached longer than the politician. But it'll be two weeks from tonight, God willing. But we're very noisy, very wordy, and very active people.

But activity, for activity's sake, it's not of God. Now we must bring our ideas into harmony with the Lord of the Church. Would you like to do that? Would you? Are you interested in this? Bringing your whole thought, your whole philosophy of Christianity, your whole conception of what the Church is, into harmony with the Lord of the Church and his teaching.

What the Church Is Not

Well, I might say what the Church is not, and I'm not saying it because I'm slapping at this church. That's not the idea at all. But we might put clear away we're not a social club. A church must have certain social connections, I suppose, and certain fellowship.

But we are not a social club. And we are not a current events forum, reading Time Magazine or Liberty or some other magazine and taking off like a little airplane off of a ramp from what we've just read.

We're not a current events forum. And we're not a religious theater to provide a place for amateur entertainers to display their talent. Barn talent, displaying their gifts. We're none of these things.

We are a holy people, a supposed to be, a royal priesthood, a holy generation called out of darkness to show forth the glory of the one who called us out. Now, we should take whatever steps are needed to fulfill our high design as a New Testament church.

Does that sound reasonable? That we should take whatever steps are necessary to fulfill our design, our high, holy, sovereign design as a New Testament church and to become a true church of Christ. Now, to do less than this is to fail utterly.

To do less than this is to fail God, and it's to fail our Lord Jesus Christ who redeemed us. It is to fail ourselves. And it is to fail our children. And it is to fail the whole ghost who has come from the heart of Jesus to do in us the work that is to be done to make us a holy people, a sanctified people, mirrors of the Almighty, to reflect the glory of the Most High God.

The Church's Failure and the Loss of the Next Generation

Now, if we fail God, you say, Well, it can't happen here, but that I hope you'll never use that argument. If it does happen, the result is that the next generation will depart from the faith. Always remember that.

If a church in one generation fails at its high design, the next generation in that church will depart from the faith altogether. That's how liberalism comes. You can strive out here at the City of Nimitz where I live, and you can go to the lake.

You who know Toronto better than I know it. You'll find church after church standing as a monument to the fact that the generation before failed God, and this generation is liberal and not preaching the word of God at all.

So they keep it up by social activities and by tying it in to whatever is going on in the world. But as a church it has failed and is not a church anymore. The glory has departed. The glory has departed.

If we could see the visible cloud hanging over churches these times, as once the visible cloud and fire hung over the camp of Israel in the wilderness, if we were permitted to see the fire by night and the cloud by day, hanging as a plume over the churches in which God is pleased, I wonder how many churches in this city we would see having a plume of fire by night and cloud by day hanging over them to tell all the world this is God's loving place and God is pleased with this place.

A Church Must Be Measured by the Word of God

But instead of that we would see only monuments. Monuments out in the country. Out in the country they have in some smaller towns, they have a rather quaint, and sometimes I think of more of it, but nevertheless they have this habit of burying the good people out back of the church.

They came to the church so much that they thought, well, we might as well bury them out back. They're here all the time anyhow, so maybe I'll just bury them out back of the church. They have a little church out of the church, the Little Brown Church in the Vale.

Do you remember singing that song, the Little Brown Church, come, come, come, come? I never could count the comes. And I always got mixed up and came in with too many or too few comes when singing that song.

But come to the church in the Wildwood, oh, come to the church in the Vale. Now, that little church is in Iowa, the state of Iowa. And out back of that little church there are the old people that used to come, come, come, come.

But now it's just a monument, a place where people come and say, that's the little church where Mbella was that wrote that song, and they pass on. But the Christians are lying out back of the church, they're sleeping out there.

And I don't know about that church, but most of these monuments, they're great big buildings kept up nicely. But the people that have the fire are lying out back asleep, and the people that don't have the fire are sitting inside asleep.

And that's the church. I say it's a monument for the fact that the church failed God. It would be a tragic and a terrible thing if you can keep coming to Avenue of the Church week after week and putting in your huge offerings and keeping it running and keeping interested in it and never worry over it and never have any anxiety about its spiritual condition.

Then it's too bad. Because it's only as men and women laboring as we are. It's only as mothers travel in Israel, that Israel keeps alive and keeps pure. Now, that's the church. You must not accept the church as it is.

You must check it with the Word of God and see if this is the way it should be. And then reverently and quietly and slowly but surely and patiently and lovingly to bring the church into line with the New Testament to see that this is the way it would be done if the Holy Ghost were preached.

The Individual Christian as a Reflector of God's Glory

And when that takes place, the Holy Ghost begins to glow like a light in the church. It begins to glow like a light. And that's what my heart longs to see. Now, secondly, the individual Christian, that is, the individual professed Christian, if you fail the purpose for which you were created, which, of course, is to be saved, to be born of God, to be filled with his Spirit and then be a reflector of the glory of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, to be a reverent, humble worshiper of the Most High God, if you fail in this purpose, then you had better never have been born.

Jesus said to one man, it were better for that man if he had never been born. In what there is no retreat or escape once you're born. And once we grow up and become in that state that we call the state of responsibility, there is no retreating.

You can't go back. But it would be better if I failed to reflect the glory of my God, if I failed God, it would be better if I had never been born to the world at all. How utterly tragic, how unspeakably tragic to be forever a broken vase.

How utterly tragic that God should make me to be a vase in which he would place the flowers of paradise, the lily of the valley, the rose of Sharon. And out from that simple earthen vessel there would go forth a fragrance that would fill the universe of God.

And when I allow that vase to be shattered on the floor and not be used for the purpose God had intended, how utterly tragic to be a stringless heart and to have all the shape and outline and form of a Christian but have no strings that the Holy Ghost could pull over.

How utterly terrible to be a barren fig tree. Jesus walked to Jerusalem once, or out from Jerusalem with his people and saw a tree that had leaves on it. And he went to that tree and found that it had no figs.

And the way a fig tree does is different from an apple or a peach or a pear. The way the fig tree does is the fruit comes first and then the leaves. And when the leaves appear on the landscape, they tell everybody, come, come, there's fruit here.

And according to the nature of the tree, the fruit should have been there before the leaves were there. But the leaves were there and the order had been reversed when Jesus came and potted the leaves and reached in for figs.

There were no figs. And he turned to his disciples and said, see that tree? No more fruit forever. And he crushed it and it withered from the top down. How terrible to be a barren fig tree. To have the form and delineation of a Christian but have no fruit.

To be a star that shines not. Those sore and awful men, Peter and 2 Peter and Jude in this little epistle, speak about the dark stars that shine not and clouds without rain. How terrible. How terrible to be a shattered mirror of the Almighty.

Meant of God to attach and reflect the beautiful light of God back to all the universe. But to be a cracked and shattered mirror that can reflect nothing. And thus to be disapproved of God and to have been banished from the garden and be eternally aware of all this.

The Tragedy of Spiritual Awareness Without Fruit

You know the frightful thing about human beings is our consciousness. That we are aware of things. But isn't your awareness, if you were not aware of anything, no matter, nothing could harm you if you weren't aware of it.

But it's your consciousness, it's sentiency, it's ability to feel, it's awareness. Hell would not be hell if it wasn't for the awareness of it. If man slept unconscious in hell, hell couldn't be hell.

But the rich man who died and found himself there was conscious he was there and knew his brothers were not there but would be coming there. The story is too well known to repeat. But he begged that he might, somebody might go back and tell his brethren.

It's awareness that matters. I preached somewhere not too long ago and I think the Lord was blessing me all right. And afterward a man came to me that had been under my ministry somewhat years before.

I was sitting in a restaurant eating with a preacher and this man came by with his wife and they stopped him in at our table. And he said, I enjoyed hearing you today as you told me it was like old times.

And then he wept and said, he'd had a bump back there that had thrown him out of the church and he wept and said with tears, think of what I lost and gave up. I could have heard this and could have had this kind of thing.

But I foolishly sold it out and he went on passing. I could say nothing, could do nothing. He was aware of what he had missed. Not in my preaching necessarily, but the fellowship of the church and the truth was what he was talking about, not my sermon.

Surrender and the Pursuit of a Purified Soul

Now if this is true, my dear friends, if you have been called to God out of darkness into light to show forth the excellencies, the virtues, the beauties of him who called you in worship, in continual and perpetual, radiant, vibrant worship, then you're not doing it.

Or you have never been, you've never loved yourself to be born of his spirit. You've never surrendered at all to the cause of the gospel. And let me say that your first interest should be to become a purified soul.

Your first interest should be to be to have a purified soul. I bought out here, I think it was here, perhaps it was in some city elsewhere, but I was flying out of here. And I bought an upper stand, one with paper bounds, and it's a new translation of the Purgatorial, that is Dante's second piece in his Divine Conquest.

I had had them, had them in various translations, but it was a cheap paper bound, and I wanted something to look at while we waited around, so I took it. And of course it's entirely Roman Catholic, altogether Roman Catholic, all of its philosophy is Roman Catholic.

But it's profoundly serious, Dante's work. Profoundly serious. And his Purgatorial, of course, is the story of Dante. First he went to hell, that's the infernal. Then he got graduated upward into the Purgatorial, and finally went into Purgatio, the heaven itself.

But this was the new translation by the Italian poet, Ciardi, on the Purgatorial. There they are getting ready for what they hope is heaven. It's half a room between hell and heaven. They're not bad enough for hell and not good enough for heaven, but hanging in between, they're being purified.

Purified in the oddest and strangest ways. Purified by carrying great rocks on their shoulders. Purified by being subjected to every kind of temporary punishment. Fire and cold and heat and all the rest in order that they might be a purified people.

Now I speak respectfully of this because Dante believed that. He believed that. He'd been taught that, and though he was a genius, he believed that. I don't. And no Bible teacher, no Bible reader can believe it.

It's appointed unto men once to die, and after that, the judgment. To depart and be with Christ, which is far better. For if we are absent from the body, well, whom is the Lord? But absent from the Lord, well, whom in the body?

And the rich man died, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, and Lazarus died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. That's what the Bible teaches. But we think we should follow the priest, where when the priest is gone and we can't do any more, then we'll decide we want to be poor, and we can be rich at the same church, and we can have the Sadducees.

God doesn't give anything. He doesn't give anything. Whether he's buying in Thursday, giving up the world on Wednesday, and work for the church, and on Thursday, he's buying the church busses, he doesn't give anything, because he couldn't pay for the loan.

He didn't give it. The loan you give it when it costs you something. The loan you give it when you have intentions to give it, when it costs you something. David said, God forbid that I should give anything that would cost me anything.

Somebody wanted, somebody lent him, and said, oh, he loves it this. And he said, take my loan, and I said, I have nothing. He said, I'm not offering anything. Somebody gave me this and it cost me something.

It's all about saving God. If I don't save God, tell the devil, I said, I can't do anything without saving God. So, I'm caught in a pinch. I tell the devil, tell the robber, until the cop gets him, he isn't a robber.

He's just caught. So, the first thing you should do is to be a purified soul, no matter how you look. Not after I'm dead, and gone to purgatory. You don't have to feel you don't have your relatives to be purified enough.

If your relatives happen to be too busy, they'll stay out there and they'll rot. And if you don't have enough money, for instance, to get father's attention, they'll stay out there and they'll rot. What came through seemed to me to have been sorrow and tragedy.

I'm not God. I don't need no Christ. I want to see purpose. This ought to be our first interest. We shouldn't do this until we're purified people. When purified people are going, ooh, I could go on going, do, do, do, do, do.

I've said a lot of good things to a lot of people. But I've also said a lot of good things to a lot of people because they come to town and everybody knows that they're not able enough. Not able enough, see.

And people say, oh, I'll wait till I'm old. And they'll know when the terrible time is that they'll all know that they're sometimes not able to have a care. In the psychology and psychiatry of these days, the devil is very busy.

Very busy. You know, some of these things have been borrowed from Freud, he's a master of it. The problem is that we ought not to allow the consciousness of guilt to get us down because of the guilt complex.

We ought not to be too much bothered by religion. Don't be bothered by it. My brothers and a couple of them are not bothered enough by the institution, the Christian institution, that there have been long wars in that institution.

Somebody said to me, that I could explain to you the laws and laws of the Church until I've been closer to religion. He said, to the best of my knowledge and all I know, that I have been closer to this institution, I have never known one person who had a close to religion.

But I have known hundreds of people in my life that could have been closer to religion than I would have been if I didn't have a car. I wouldn't have taken that car away from your car. Nobody ever needs to come to me and say, call me if I'd like to see you and we can meet together and expect you to come to me.

I wouldn't come to you. I would do what you would do if I didn't have my company to tell me those things that you like to stay close to me. My company is where I want to be. It's within your reach. I could go on and keep going and just believe that I am right now with you.

I'd be happy to stay with you if you should tell me something, something.