03 - Preparing the Way for the Lord

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip, tetrarch of Iturea, and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Lord, make His paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked places shall be make straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. (Luke 3:1-6)

"Prepare ye the way of the Lord." These words were spoken by a man of God in a particular time; it has a particular and specific historic setting, and it can be understood that way.

God was preparing a people for the greatest event that ever took place in this world—the manifestation of the Messiah. In order to do that He had to prepare the people morally to understand Him and to receive Him. That is the historic setting, but remember these words also have application for today because they constitute a spiritual principle which God has laid down and from which He has never varied during the centuries. It is always that way. If God is preparing to bless a man, that man has to get ready. I know that will shock some people, because there is a badly conceived theory abroad that God does it all; all you and I have to do is be born. After that God just picks us up on eagle wings and sweeps us irresistibly through to the crown at last. I cannot imagine how such a notion could ever have lodged itself in heads as small as ours are, but it is there. Consequently, it is necessary to point out that this is an error and that the principle of God’s operation is that when He is about to do something unusual for a nation, a church, an individual, He gets that individual, or nation, or church morally ready. John was sent to do that very thing. God wills certain things for people—spiritual prosperity, I might call it. Let me say that it consists of about two things: first, clear forgiveness of sin and washing from the same. God’s will for everyone who hears the gospel is that we should be forgiven and thoroughly cleansed from sin. Second, we should be filled and walk in the fullness of the Holy Ghost all the days of our life. That will eventuate immediately, of course, fruitfulness, peace of heart, purity of life, and general usefulness to our generation before we go hence to be no more. This is not talk about a deluxe edition of a Christian. When I talk like this people often say: “Well, that is simply your extreme view of it. That is a deluxe, leather-bound edition, but do you not know that God has His paper-bound editions too? The simple twenty five-cent editions make up the great mass of Christians. They will get in; they are all right, too. It is all right for mystics, hermits, and certain ones such as Dr. A. B. Simpson, ¹ Charles Wesley, ² or some other saint to rise to spiritual heights, but for us that is all out. We are too busy; we have too much to do and besides, we are living in a different generation.” If you feel that way about it there is not much that I can say that will help you. I hope you know better than that, because a Spirit-filled Christian is not a deluxe edition; he is a normal Christian. If he is anything less he is sick. A normal Christian is a person whose sins have been forgiven, who has not only a theological knowledge that his sins have been forgiven, but has also a deep consciousness of it. This is not an unusual Christian, or he ought not to be. The old writers used to talk about “restored moral innocence.” They said there are two ways to be innocent: one is never to have done it; the second is having done it to be so forgiven of God that you have no sense of ever having done it to the extent that you have restored moral innocence given to you by God. I believe this. There are many of us that have gotten converted the hard way. We got picked out of the shell, and our belief in our having salvation rests upon a conclusion drawn from a text. We have been made to believe that that is faith. I read a certain text, and I draw a certain conclusion from it. I say, "Well that is it. Now, let us go have a soda." That is about as deep as many of us go. The forgiveness in the blood of Jesus Christ is a profounder thing than that! It is profounder than a conclusion drawn from Biblical promises. It goes in to the depths of the spirit, it restores a sense of everlasting well-being, and it gives to the heart restored moral innocence. God means it to be for every one of us so that we can say, My God has reconciled, His pardoning voice I hear;

He owns me for His child, I need no longer fear. ³

My spirit answers and tells me I am born of God. God wills this condition for every one of His children. But do you know there is a difference between one who is forgiven theologically and one who is forgiven actually? There is a difference in the whole lift of his spirit, his countenance, the quality and tone of his testimony, his approach to life, others and God, and a difference in his prayer life. God wills that we should be Spirit-filled Christians, walking in the fullness of His Spirit. You do not have to coax God into a good humor; we do not have to pray all night to get God coaxed up to do it for us. This is what the old camp-meeting brethren called “the purchase of the blood.” All this is ours by blood right! He died and rose again the third day and ascended to God the Father Almighty. It was all done. We can add nothing to it. Utter spiritual prosperity, the tree in full bloom, the field in full grain—this is the will of God for His people. When we say we are going to have a revival, what do we mean? We inadvertently admit that we are spiritually below par. We unintentionally admit that we are badly in need of having brought to us these things which are all ours by the grace of God which is in Christ Jesus. Let us remember that when God prepares to bless a community, a church people or a group, first He has to get us ready. How can we get ready? There is a great fallacy abroad that a lot of talk will do it. I have never believed much in talk, though I have talked now for thirty-five years. Talk is all right if you mean to walk along with your talk, but I suppose that there is no organization in the world that has quite as much talk associated with it as religion. Politics comes second. And very often there is not much more reality in our religious talk than there is in political talk. I trust God that it is not true that a word once spoken never is recalled. I trust God that somewhere out in the waves of space all the words spoken in all the churches of the world since the crucifixion are not being recorded. Would it not be an unattractive universe to roam around in and be bumped into from all sides by endless barrages of religious words? And we have spoken so many words because we have done so few deeds. Great deeds require few words, and few deeds require a great many words. So when we want to get ready we begin to talk. It is part and parcel of our way of doing, I suppose, because we continue to do it. There is also a notion that if we get very busy we will get blessed. I suppose American people are the busiest people in the world. Someone from the Orient once asked what American people do with the time they save. That question has never been answered. We screech to a stop from forty-seven plus miles an hour at a stale yellow light to go nowhere at all! We American people think we are highly cultured and educated. Actually, we are often like a big bunch of fools, for we do things that the Chinese would never do; we do things that the ancients would have smiled at. Great people have always thought before they acted. American people seldom think; we have our thinking done for us and put in digest magazines so that we do not have to think. We have our religion dished out for us in fiction form so we never have to grasp an abstract idea. Abstractions are absolutely indispensable to any grasp of spiritual things, and yet we have it all done for us. The writers and printing presses are busy printing things for us “saintlets” who haven’t mentality enough or character enough to really believe and meditate and contemplate and dream over high things until they get ahold of us. These religious fiction writers always pick Shirley for the name of the girl in the story. I have often wondered about Shirley—how did she get so popular? And her boyfriend is always named Ned. I have seen so many of these books of fiction—Ned and Shirley. They go to a ballgame and hold their Testaments over their heads and say, "Praise the Lord! Hit a home run, Charles!" It is always so neat, and so Victorian, and so completely unreal. But it takes our minds off God, heaven and hell, reality and death, the Holy Ghost, moral things and lost men. And that is the curse in the world and in the church. We cannot talk our way out of this jam; we cannot talk our way into preparedness for the mighty inmoving of God upon us, and we cannot work our way into it either. We can run around the neighborhood giving out tracts, and that is a fine thing to do. I have done it and hope I never get too old to do it, but that will not help us either when it comes to this thing God wants to do for us. This sudden restoration of moral innocence that gives the heart a sense of forgiveness and cleansing, this fullness of the Spirit that walks in the Holy Ghost and bears fruit unto righteousness—that is divine. Never by external activities and talk will it ever come. And the reason it has not come sooner is that there are certain moral blocks that prevent God from moving in. He wants to come, He wills to come in, but there are certain moral blocks that prevent the blessing—moral blocks in our hearts and in our conduct. These blocks must be removed. Just as a blood clot gets into the heart and causes coronary thrombosis by preventing the full flow of blood, so there gets into the veins and arteries of Christians certain blocks. The Lord says, “You know better than this. You have read your Bible, and you have it before you.” Indeed, the glory of the Lord wants to break in upon you and show you what is wrong with you. But we are prone to hunt somebody up and take up some of their time to have them tell us that we are all right. We are always ready to overlook what we very obviously know is wrong with us. This is a moral block—something that is blocking out the incoming of God. I believe that the Holy Ghost comes into a person’s life, as Dr. A.B. Simpson said, "like breathing in," without any effort on our part. If you were to break a light bulb, there would be a pop; it is a vacuum, and the atmosphere wants to rush in there. It cannot get in past the glass, but as soon as you break it, the air rushes in. You do not have to get on your knees and cry, "Oh atmosphere, please rush into this bulb!" Break it, and it will rush in. That is all you have to do. You do not have to wait around and talk and talk and talk. I believe that God wants to move in that very same way. He wants to move in an unusual way—not unusual because it is strange, but unusual only because so few of us are blessed in this way. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." That sentence is jostled around a bit. Usually the subject is first, but here it is second—"You prepare the way of the Lord." The human heart is very deceitful and desperately wicked apart from the good grace of God, and we can cheat ourselves, living half a lifetime, growing old and gray, and cheating our own hearts unless we become suddenly very, very honest. I pray that we might not try to play tricks on our own hearts. We know what is bothering us. "Prepare YE the way of the Lord." Why is it that you cannot control your temper? Why is it? No, it was not your Irish mother. It was your devilish ancient ancestor who had that virus injected into his veins and so we all have it. I had an English father and a German mother, and I had a temper like blue lightning. I had to do something about that temper or it most certainly would have done something about me. Why can you not get victory over it? Why must it always upset you and make a fool of you in company? And why must it spoil your testimony before your friends? These blocks are in our hearts. They are what we call dispositional sins, but they may also be in our conduct in external things. We have got to get rid of them. I hope you do not want anybody to baby you, and say, "All right now, let us not take this too seriously; all is well." Let us not think of it like that. If all were well, you would not be half dead and you would not need the revival for which you have been praying. The fact is, all is not well, and we must have help here. We must have a visitation of God to individual hearts. I do not know that I can tell you too much about mass revivals. When I was a very young man I used to preach a great deal on mass revivals. I had read Finney and was quite an expert on the subject of mass revivals, but as I have gotten older I know less about it than I used to. But I can tell you how an individual can get revived. I can tell you how an individual can have such a spiritual revival that it will mean a growth and a bursting out in spiritual life as wonderful as when Jesus healed the lame man (Matthew 9:2-8; Mark 2:3-12; Luke 5:17-26). You can come out of sickness into health, out of weakness into power, out of heavy conscience into a beautiful sense of forgiveness and innocence again. You do not have to wait until so many sermons have been preached before this happens; it can happen to you now. That I do know. I am not able to answer the question of whether there will be a great world revival before Jesus comes, but I say that you can have all that revival can bring within a matter of hours or less if you will "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Let us look at those things which may be keeping us from individual revival. Let us just cruelly break them down, and spare no horse flesh.

Personal Friendships

Let us look at personal friendships. Maybe the reason I cannot get victory over my flesh and the reason I am not able to live a fruitful and victorious life is because I habitually run around with the wrong people. It is my opinion, after careful observation, that the greatest hindrance to the spiritual progress of young people is bad friendships. After many years in the ministry, I have observed it. Some bright-faced fellow who decides in a sudden impulse as he hears the Word of God, "This is for me! I want to follow Christ! I want to accept Him and believe Him!" You show him the way, and it looks all right. You think, "Here is another disciple for the Savior." But he goes back to the same crowd he has been with. Maybe he mumbles a testimony, and tries to compromise it, but it is the same old crowd. It is not very long until he is all cooled off. Instead of walking with the Lord, he is not, or if he is, he is making very little spiritual progress. Bad friendships, I say, are a reason for our slowdown in spiritual growth. Let us decide this. You say, "You would not have me turn my back on my best friend!" Well, I will not answer that, but I will quote somebody else. "If any man come to me, and is not willing to give up father, and mother and friends and houses and homes and his life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Matthew 10:37-39). Any friendship that slows you down is a bad friendship, and you ought to give it up, whether it is by telephone, by mail, or in person.

Personal Habits

    Then, let us look at personal habits. Do my habits honor God? I must search my heart. "Search ye," says the Holy Ghost—in effect, "prepare ye" my personal habits. Do they honor God? Do they help me or do they hinder me? As I look myself over as we should, my common sense tells, "Now, wait a minute here, bud. That habit you have just cannot help you in the kingdom of God." You can excuse it, say it doesn’t occur in the Scriptures, challenge somebody to find the text, but in your heart you know that it hinders you. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord” by removing that hindrance. Take it out of your life, whatever it is.

Moral Habits

Then there are my moral habits. Here is a little rule to know whether they are all right or not. Would I dare have them publicly known? Am I habitually practicing anything that I would not have publicly known? There are lots of things we do not do in public, common decency tells us that there are certain things that are to be done in private, but could I have everybody know my moral habits—what I am doing and how I am living, without embarrassment? If I cannot answer “yes”—joyfully—to that question, then I know what is wrong with me. I do not have to go ask somebody or write the question and answer department of some Christian periodical. I have an answer on that—I know already. If I will not admit it, I am simply being dishonest with my own heart. I have secret habits that will not bear the light of the gospel. "My pastor does not dare know about that! My teacher does not dare know about that! I would not want my friends to know." Well, I cannot do a thing about that from here, because the Lord did not say, "Tozer, prepare the way for these people." He said, "Prepare ye," individually, each of you, "the way of the Lord."

Past Life

I think about my past life. Are all my sins forgiven? Sins may be forgotten and not forgiven. Some people have long memories, maybe, when it come to remembering the wrongs of others, but when it comes to themselves they quickly forget, and it falls into the lint and dust of things forgotten. Because they have forgotten it, they think God has forgotten it. But they fail to take into account that this is a moral universe run according to moral laws, and God is a holy, moral God. He cannot sustain His own character and maintain His own reputation among created beings, and let anything get by. If there is an unpardoned sin anywhere, that unpardoned sin still stands against the perpetrator. You want all the wrongs righted as far as possible. You say, "There he goes now, I knew he was a legalist. He is preaching restitution." Yes, I am preaching restitution. You see, it is so reasonable. Suppose that while brother McAfee⁴ slept over where he and I stay, that I sneaked out of bed, and stole a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet, and then said, "Forgive me, God, for stealing this ten-dollar bill. I am sorry, and I take the blood for it, and I will never take another ten-dollar bill." Then I go out and buy myself some things with his ten-dollar bill. I ask you, do you think it is reasonable that I can go about preaching, praying, looking pious, being happy in God and get my prayers answered without restoring that ten dollars? Never! I have to take that back and say, "Ray, I am sorry, I yielded to temptation and stole ten dollars from you. Here is the ten dollars." Then after that I can smile again, and preach again. I used to steal when I was a boy. I never robbed banks, but I stole things. After I got converted I went around giving them all back. I suppose people thought I was plain crazy. I remember once I stole a ride on a railroad train in a boxcar. One day I was seeking God, and something said to me, "Now how about your riding around on the B & O Railroad without paying?" "All right, all right, I’ve ridden on what they called the ‘possum belly, on the old flat car," I said. "I suppose the only thing to do is write in." That sounded silly, and it was I suppose, but I sat down and wrote to the passenger traffic manager in Baltimore. I said,

Dear Sir,

Some years ago I rode one of your freight trains into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I do not know how much I owe you, but I am a Christian now and want to get this off my conscience. I am writing to ask you how much I owe.

    I got a letter back, but I am sure that the gentlemen dictated it with his tongue in his cheek. He said,

Dear Sir,

I am very happy to know that you have become a Christian, and I am in receipt of the letter that tells me that you have bummed around on my railroad without paying. I appreciate your honesty in telling me so, but my answer is that you probably did not get very good service, and we have no rates applying to boxcars. Therefore, you may consider yourself forgiven.

I suppose there was a "ho-ho" that went up from the office when that letter went into the basket, but when I opened that yellow envelope with B & O’s signature upon the left corner and read that I was forgiven, I knew everything was all right. You think that is carrying it too far? Maybe so, but in this day, when folks do not carry things far enough, if I am going to be a fanatic I want to be a fanatic in the right direction. Do you not also? If I am going too far, I want to go too far toward Heaven instead of toward Hell. I believe in restitution, and I believe that there are some things that need to be straightened out in our past lives. When a thing has been forgiven by the blood of Christ, there are not devils enough in all the lost creation to dig it up. But God is our Father and we are His children, and in His household He wants a fair, honest, clean people. Though that sin is now gone, there is a certain relationship between individuals that ought to be straightened out, and that is where restitution comes in. It is not to save us; it is to lift the weight off our hearts and get the right relationships established between man and man. When a thing has once been forgiven, it is forgiven, and that is the end of that as far as God is concerned, but if you know that you can pay it back from man to man, do that. David said this strange thing: "My goodness extendeth not to Thee, but the saints which are in the earth" (Psalms 16:2-3). All this restitution of straightening out with my friends and living right with my fellow man—it does not endear me to God—"My goodness extendeth not to God, but the saints which are on the earth." I have got to live right with people. I do not believe in promiscuous confession. If it has been forgiven and I know that confessing it to the public will not do any good, then I believe it ought to be put where God put it, under the blood and left there, world without end. But if any good can be done, if I can straighten it out, if I can put that ten dollars back in that man’s wallet, then I ought to do it. A full confession must be made to God, where I cannot make it to man. There are many sins that I have committed that I cannot confess to people for various reasons. But God forgives it all, and wherever it is possible we ought to maintain the right relationship, and that is always possible between individuals.

Relationships with Others

If I have caused hard feelings anywhere, I ought to go get that straightened out. You know this is the day of the smart-aleck, the quip-artist, and cynical people. We have fed too long on the New Yorker and the radio commentators, and we have become hard. I believe God wants His people to be tender people, quick to forgive and ask forgiveness. Many of us, I suppose, are not blessed because we owe an apology to somebody. We ought to go to somebody and say, "So-and-so, I am sorry. I have said awfully mean things about you, and I have not liked you at all." God has sent me around to a few people like that, including a man bigger than I was. I was afraid of him, and I thought maybe if I told him how I felt about him he would bowl me over, but he did not. He grabbed my hand and said, "It is all right, I never had anything against you." If I had carried that down in my heart all these years—it was thirty years ago—I would still have that down in me festering. But I got it straightened out. So my relationship to other people does matter.

Relationship to God

As well, my relationship to God certainly does matter. I wonder if God is pleased with my service for Him, pleased with my worship, pleased with my obedience, and pleased with my love of the Scriptures. Is God pleased? You see, we live in a triangle, and we cannot get out of it. God and myself and others—that is the everlasting triangle in which all God’s people live. I have to maintain those three relationships and keep them right. It is an easy thing to do if we will be obedient and trust in God. My relationship to God is primary; my relationship to people is secondary; my relationship to myself comes third. In conclusion, when the blocks are removed, when I have taken them away, then, it says here in the grand, beautiful, poetic language of Luke, "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed." And that is revival, when the glory of the Lord is revealed. God will not debate this with you and me. If you do not like what I am saying, I cannot help that. I hope you do, but if you do not I cannot help it. Everybody has a monitor in his breast if he’s a Christian. The Holy Ghost dwells there and draws the sharp line between right and wrong. Every man or woman, if they listen to the Holy Ghost within them, will know whether they are right or not. Everybody knows in his own heart whether his relationship to God and his fellow man is right. Everyone can know whether his personal habits are hindering him, whether his secret habits are pure enough to be known to the world, whether his past life is forgiven, and whether he has straightened up, so far as it is possible, his relationships to his fellow men. You cannot get God over on our side at all on that; we have to come over to God’s side. There is no such thing as coming to God, the Eternal One, and making terms. God makes the terms and you accept them, that is all. God never changes. God is not reconciled; rather, God is propitiated and man is reconciled because the change is not in God, the change is in me. God always remains the same, like the sun that shines, asking no questions, shining His Holy Grace upon mankind. If you pull down the blinds, the sun cannot get in, and these blinds have been pulled down long enough in our hearts. Why not now? Are you interested in this revival, or is it just another thing you attend because it is interesting? Are you concerned for your own soul? Do you want something new from God? Do you want to enter in from the twilight into the sunlight? Do you want to move from half-spirituality into the full-blazing light of God’s love and be a spiritual man or woman? Then, let us be very frank and bold and honest. Let us look into our own hearts and our own lives and our own conduct fairly with the light of God’s Word. If you find there that there are hindrances and blocks, let us courageously remove them. And without any urging on God’s part, God will move in on your life and transform it wondrously.

[This sermon was an evangelistic message delivered at Wheaton College, Pierce Chapel, September 29, 1952.]