Take Heed How Ye Hear

by A. W. Tozer

I was meditating here over the fact of my going over to the North Side¹ for ministry next Sunday and I was thinking that I have been staying pretty close to this pulpit in recent times and just reminiscing a little bit over the pulpits I've been asked to come to and didn't go, because I'd rather stay and preach to you.

I think about the Westminster Chapel² in London, where I could have been for a month, for two or three different summers, and didn't take it – and wouldn't. I've been invited to Park Street³ in Boston and many others.

When Brother Redpath⁴ was leaving for London or leaving for his home in England or ... wherever he's going in England, he asked me to take his pulpit for a month. And I told him that this church wasn't as big as Moody's but that I considered it was one of the most important churches in the world and I couldn't possibly do it. And I didn't until he finally got stuck just before he left and so, just before he went away a man failed him because of illness in the home and I said, well, I can't possibly said no for one Sunday. That accounts for my being there – you know, honestly, I'd rather preach to you, here. Though you're only about probably a fifth or less of the number that I would over there but I hope I may have a message – two messages – for them, which in content and in spirit may help them greatly next week.

And as for preaching to big churches or large crowds, I haven't any ambition for it; it may just be laziness and lack of spirit – or it may be a deeper wisdom and I'm inclined to think it is. Anyhow pray, if you will. You're going to have two of the best preachers in the Chicago area here – excellent preachers – next week.

Now, in the book of Luke, verses sixteen to eighteen of the eighth chapter:

“No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed;

but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light.

For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest;

neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.

Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given;

and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.”

Now, verse eighteen, the first sentence, Take heed ... Take heed how ye hear! I want to talk a little word about that and then, of course, before we do, let's pray.

O God, we thank Thee for the singing in which we hear a sound that isn't earthly. It's neither the cheap song of the world nor is it the fine classical song of the world – but there's another voice, we hear it. It harmonizes with the beasts and elders and living creatures and ransomed, who with palms in their hands, stand by the sea and sing together to Him who loved them and washed them in His own blood.

We're glad to hear this, Lord, and know what it'll be like – a little bit of it, at least. Thank Thee for an assembly of Christians, thank Thee for this church, thank Thee for this crowd here this steamy night.

And Lord, it isn't the largest church on the continent, but to us, the dearest and the most important. And we pray that Thou will grant that tonight there may go forth truth that will be helpful to people. Some don't need it, some are on their way, some have long past the necessity for any of my preaching. But younger ones are coming up, new ones are coming in, many others, by the scores, are going to other parts of the country and other parts of the world and taking the instruction and the message with them, there. New ones are hearing.

God grant, we pray tonight that in utter humility and consciousness that it is not I and not man and not the voice of man but the voice of the Spirit! May we hear these people, Lord Jesus! Grant mercy to be over us.

Bless this hot, noisy, jumpy city with its cacophonous rackets and its fears, and its lusts, and its deceptions, and its lies, and its demon possession! O God, have mercy on this great concentration of evil that we've named Chicago! We thank Thee that Thou hast in it a number who haven't bowed the knee to Baal nor kissed his image and ever will! Thank Thee for them, Father. Thank Thee that some of them are here tonight. Graciously help us that it may be in power and not in word, only. In Christ's Name, Amen!

The text says, Take heed how ye hear. When the Great God brings salvation to us, He let it ride on a voice, He let it ride on a sound and salvation must begin, now, where we are and continue through successive stages of progression until we are glorified. For always remember that, you don't have full salvation until you're glorified.

I'm a little shy; I just learned the other day that a President of a well-known Bible Seminary said that Tozer was a “legalistic santificationist” – I thought that was nice and I appreciate that! If I were keeping a diary I'd write that in for my grandchildren, but I may, in some people's eyes, be a legalistic santificationist but I shy away from a lot of the terms that are used even in our society.

I shy away from the term, 'Four-fold Gospel.' The God I know isn't satisfied with four-foldness, nor five-foldness, nor ten-foldness, nor twelve-foldness nor a hundred-foldness, but He multiplies Himself and magnifies His glory and surprises us with new and wondrous revelations of Himself that far exceed our little four-fold.

Then, I don't like the word 'Full Gospel' – I suppose I should, but I don't. I like it when you read it in its great, emotional flow of “full salvation”, – yes, I like that. But to put a word before the Gospel – a word of man's choosing – I don't quite like it – “Full Gospel.” You see, my brethren, you don't have full salvation, really, until you're glorified.

Now, it is the will of God that we should be saved by hearing and that we should begin to hear now and that we should obey and follow, go on, until we pass through stage after stage and finally be glorified at last. And God, in doing all this, proceeds after a known law of life; it is, that man can change.

“Change and decay, in all around I see,”⁵ and that's one of the saddest things in the world; that we change so. We change ... change and decay. But it's also one of the most comforting things that I know.

I want to ask you a question, now. Just to ask you a question and trust to your humility and realism to answer it. Would you like to have a visitation from an angel? Would you like to have a messenger from Heaven – the messenger of the Annunciation – the angel of the Annunciation to come to you and say, Mr McAfee, Mr Moore, Mr Patter – I could name all of you – me! – I have a message from the Most High God: it is, that you remain; and it is so decreed by the Everlasting Father, that as you are at this moment you shall be eternally! Period! This is the judgment of God and the decision of the Most High: there'll be no change from here on! It seems to me that that alone would be cause for one hundred days of mourning and thirty days fasting to be told you'll never change! You'll remain as you are!

I say, this would be an annunciation so terrible, a declaration so frightening ... I think that instead of this bringing happiness to us it would drive us into despair for it is the hope of every man who has named the Holy Name of Jesus that he's going to be better tomorrow than he was today. That if he lives through '57 it will add up to something better than '56 and if he lives through '58 it'll be better than '57. Not more money, not more prosperity, not better weather, not more health, not that, but that he'll be a better man in God! That, I say, is our hope, brethren; that we can change, that we're not fixed, that God Almighty hasn't cast us in, and fixed us by an eternal changeless fiat.

It's predicated – this message that we hear from God, through the Word – it's predicated on our ability to change. If you've got a temper tonight like the very devil it's possible for you to be so delivered that the change will be noticed by everybody that knows you when you're in the fire. No matter what habits you have or what mental habits or what vices you may have there is power in the Gospel of Jesus Christ to change you so completely that it's like changing a beast into an angel!

There is power, there is potential in man to change. You don't have to continue to be what you are and it seems to me that's the first message that the world ought to know – you can be different! That's the first message the world ought to know and the Gospel should follow that message for preaching any Gospel without that basic knowledge, that I can change, that God can change me, that I am not fixed like concrete but pliable like clay.

And this is a known law of life and God takes advantage of it. I don't know but what the angels that sinned and kept not their first estate may have been fixed eternally, unable to change, at least, there's no hope for them. But for you and me, there's hope! Man can change, and not only change but learn. And so there's a sounding of a voice through the Word, a living voice when you open this book.

When you open this book, don't read it as you would read a newspaper or a classic – expect to hear something in it! Expect it to speak to you and expect the voice to vibrate and expect it to be alive, for the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. This book is a live book! It's only dead, to the dead and to the hopelessly dead. To all others it's a live book!

You see, my brethren, there's a difference between redemption and salvation. Jesus Christ died on the cross and provided redemption there and there isn't anything that can be added to redemption. Redemption is the finished work of Christ on the tree – that is, He finished that part of the dying on the cross – that part was done. When Christ said, “It is finished!” He didn't mean redemption was finished – he meant that part of redemption was finished. The rest of redemption was that He had to rise again and go to the Father for He saved us by His death but He justifies us by His resurrection.

Let's not bear down too hard on that one, single prayer that it's finished. For when He said it's finished, He meant the giving out of His life, the pouring out of His life, the atonement, the sacrifice was made: the Lamb was dying. But if God had not received the Lamb salvation would never have been – redemption would never have been – accomplished! But God accepted the Lamb, raised Him from the dead, sealed Him and put Him on high and made Him Lord and Christ and thus effected redemption. So that redemption is all Jesus Christ did for us from the time He picked up His cross till the time He sat down at the Father's right hand – that's redemption!

And that's done, and there's nothing we can add to it! Not the keeping of the Sabbath, not the eating of certain meats, not the long periods of fasting, not even prayer can add anything to that. Long before you existed; when you were only a fore-thought in the mind of God, it was all done – there's nothing to be added! Nothing, nothing to be added.

There are cults – Adventism, and others – that say there's something we must add, that it's not finished, not done, that there's something we must add. I believe that to be blasphemy ... that there's anything we must add! Nothing more is to be added! This man, when he had made one sacrifice for sin forever sat down on the right hand of God! From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool!⁶ Nothing can be added and any attempt to add is to insult the Saviour who gave His all! That's redemption – salvation is something else.

Salvation is redemption applied to the individual life! Redemption is objective; it's that which is done. It was that which was done before you were born, before America was a nation, before the Crusades, before the fall of Rome. It was that which was done in that relatively short period of time; redemption, the lamb was led out to die, He died, rose, and sat down in what the old theologians call “His Session” – His seating before God. Now, that's redemption.

But the application of that objective truth to me subjectively, now that's salvation. And so, salvation is both a human and a divine thing. Salvation is divine in that God did that which man could not do. And redemption is one hundred per cent divine and there's nothing that any man can do or any angel can do – that's divine! But salvation has a human element, a human side to it and it means that I've got to make a response to that redemptive message. I have to make a response to it otherwise it does not become saving to me. Christ died for Englewood⁷ and redemption was provided for Englewood but Englewood is not saved – why? Because Englewood made no response. And the sinners that we know that die every day are sinners that die in sin not because they were not redeemed by the blood of Christ but because they do not respond, they do not hear.

Now, it is our part to understand and to hear – to hear and to understand and to respond. Remember that we can sit and hear truth and be none the better for it. Remember that, that it's the response to truth ... suppose that you were ill with a certain kind of disease for which there has been a specific cure discovered as, say, the yaws⁸ – is that the name of that disease? - yaws, it's a disease that eats the fingers off, and eats the nose off, and eats the ears – terrible thing! And from what I can learn one or two injections of penicillin cure it! They're having difficulty over there making the heathen understand they're not gods and that this is not a “Jesus needle” – that it's not a miraculous thing.

But suppose we had a terrible disease here – suppose you had it and there was a specific discovered that would cure it in twenty-four hours and suppose that a man got up before you and for forty-five minutes and lectured on that medicine and told what it would do, the cures it would effect and then suppose that he threw the meeting open and twenty-five people got up and said, I want to testify that what that man said is true, I had that disease, I took that medicine and look at me now! I can do a day's work, I feel good, and sleep – as my father used to say – like a top! Well, has anything been done for you, yet? No, you're sitting down there; you're hearing a man tell of the merits of a certain medicine. You're hearing people testify that that medicine cured them! But nothing's happened to you! You still have your disease. What are you supposed to do? You're supposed to hear it, believe in it, and do something about it!

And that's exactly how it is with salvation. The blood of Jesus Christ is the medicine of immortality and the dying and rising and living and pleading of the Saviour is redemption without anything man can add God Almighty's universal panacea! But you've heard that talked about until it's old stuff to you and until you have heard with faith and then risen to do something about it and apply it to your own self by obedient faith it doesn't mean anything. It's all objective, all outside of you – it must become subjective and get inside of you. No confirmatory work has to be done; we need to look for nobody – to nobody – for confirmation; it's all been done. In the beginning was the Word and there's a speaking Word and because in the beginning was the Word and you were created in the image of the Word, you can understand the Word and even though fallen, like the man – the young man far from home in the far country among the swine, still because you were made in the image of God and in the beginning was the Word and all things were made by the Word and without Him was not anything made that was made, you have in you the ability to hear the Word.

Take heed how ye hear for redemption is yonder! Salvation is when redemption, which is yonder, becomes present and within us by obedience and faith. So there's a voice and it sounds living and vibrant all through the Word but you know there are different kinds of hearers. I've looked through the Scriptures to notice the different kinds of hearers; don't get braced for a long sermon, I'm going to be brief. But there are a number of hearers, perhaps six or seven of them here and they're enough, each one, for a sermon. But I'm going to condense them and point out what kind of hearers we may be.

For instance, here's a faithless hearer – a hearer without faith. Israel had the Gospel preached unto them, said Paul, but it did not help them because it was not mixed with faith. There was no faith in the hearts of the people that heard it so it's possible to be a hearer without any faith at all. Then, here's a dull hearer; a dull hearer is a bored hearer.

You know if you could take all the dullness there is in Protestant religion and bottle it and if we could burn it you could heat the whole United States all the winter of 1957. And if it was like gasoline you could run all the trucks on the highways for the next five years with it because boredom is one thing that is pretty present in the Church of Christ, and somebody will say immediately, Well, you preachers make it so, and there's a lot of truth in that – a lot of truth in that, we do ... we do! We talk about things – the most important – in a tone of voice that has no interest whatever, no vibrancy. We give the impression, So what? I know that boredom is partly the result of the pulpit but also boredom is partly the result of people trying to feed people who aren't hungry and trying to get people to seek God who don't want God and trying to get people to get their life insured who don't think they're going to die and trying to get people to get ready for a second world when they don't believe there's any more than one. They live as if they only believe there is one world. A lot of that boredom, that dullness is a result of hearing, and hearing and not doing anything about it.

An then there's the critical hearer. I find him in the Bible, too. He's the fellow who wants to know about the grammar and if it isn't quite what it should be he won't listen and he wants to know about the delivery and is it forceful? When I go anywhere and I'm advertised as a “forceful preacher” I always remember what they said about the egg that's “fairly fresh” – anybody that wants to eat a “fairly fresh” egg! It's what you call 'damning with faint praise.'⁹ But there's the critical hearer – is the preacher forceful? And, how are his illustrations?

You know what? If you knew that at twelve o'clock tonight the sound of the trumpet should echo through the land and all the old forgotten graveyards of our Puritan fathers should be visited by the Holy Ghost and the dead should rise and the living change, the poorest preacher in Chicago would be an orator in your ears and you'd be glad to hear any little thing; critical hearers. Then there's the forgetful hearer and Satan steals the seed, and there's the neglectful hearer who has good intentions and his good intentions are always put before his deeds – he's always intending to do it.

Did you ever stop to think how much you'd have done if you had done what you had intended to do? Did you ever think how far you'd be out along on the highway toward Heaven if you had done all that you had intended to do? If you had sought God as you had intended to seek Him? No, hell is paved with good intentions, our fathers said. And I read in my Bible of the trembling hearers. When that jailer trembled and fell down and said, What shall we do? Oh, what shall we do? He said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved! Then there's the submissive hearer as we read about in Cornelius' household – there's a congregation anybody could have preached to; wouldn't have cost you one dollar, do you know it? Wouldn't have cost you a dollar.

You know, the price of souls is going up these days. Peter preached and three thousand were converted and the overhead¹⁰ was exactly nothing – didn't cost anybody a dime¹¹! It's been going up now, in recent times and so it takes thousands and thousands of dollars to rescue one sinner because we're not submissive. Cornelius' household didn't cost anything to get them converted because they said, Here we are, Lord, ready to hear whatever Thou hast to say to us! So Peter preached the Gospel and while he was speaking to them the Holy Ghost fell on them! That's because they were ready for it; they were a people submissive and prepared and ready to hear what God the Lord will speak!

Ah, how precious is the little time that we've got left! How precious is the little time! And how vital is this little time to the long, long future that lies before us! Take heed how ye hear! Some of you have had the good fortune – and misfortune – to be brought up in Christian homes where you heard the Word from the time you were born.

They say that preacher's children are sometimes the very hardest to reach and the ones that go the farthest astray but it isn't always true and history will show that it isn't true. I saw a chart once of how many of the presidents of the United States and vice-presidents and the leaders everywhere were preacher's children and great leaders, college presidents, great missionaries, statesmen: preacher's children. So they're not as bad as they're said to be but I think I know why they sometimes hear in a bored way because they've just had it from the time they can remember – and sometimes not much life in them, a bit dull. Routine! Routine religion is like a routine kiss – who wants that? I ask you, now, who wants that? And who wants routine religion? If it isn't voluntary and impulsive it isn't religion at all!

We grind it out sometimes and make the poor little fellows sit – Mrs Deekes used to say – God says to the little children 'Squirm!' and we say to the little children, 'Now sit still!' That's in Sunday School class. God says 'Squirm!' and we say, 'Sit still!' And we make them sit still and listen to that which they don't understand and wonder why they're bored. Yet my friend, if we only knew it, if we only knew it, that voice, that word, that ... dual message – for it is a dual message; it's a message of reproof and a declaration of intention.

The reproof is, Repent ye! And the intention is to save you through the Gospel of Jesus Christ! So if you will hear that message now, dig at your heart, and dig up your fallow ground, and get free from the dull boredom of it all, and shake yourself and say, Am I as faithful as here? Do I believe what I'm hearing? Am I hearing interestedly or am I a dull, bored hearer? Am I a critical hearer or am I a humble, submissive hearer ready to hear what God the Lord will speak?

It's going to mean a tremendous lot to you in that great day which can't be very far away – it's going to mean everything in that great day; you can change, you're not frozen, fixed by a fiat of God to be what you are now but you can be changed. The power of the Gospel is a transforming, recreating power and it can change characters, it can change dispositions. Somebody says, Mr Tozer, my disposition is so bad that I'd poison Heaven if I went there! Wouldn't we all? But there's deliverance, there's change, possibility lying here – the book tells us! Hear the voice, come unto me. Fear the Lord. He's says, Lo, I stand at the door and knock and if any man hears and opens I will come in. And all such passages, both in Old and New Testament; they ring with invitation, warn and console and plead. Hear the voice; take heed how you hear!

Some of you young people have been reared on Sunday School. You were brought up; you were brought here when you were still in your first year dedicated – you'll likely to become dull, I want to warn you! You'd better ask God Almighty to put life and nerve inside your soul and don't let it die, by the grace of God. What about it tonight? What about you, young fellow? What about it?

Somebody wrote me about a young child – Tommy – that some, I guess, maybe five years old, the son of one of the teachers at Nyack¹² and they said, Let's go down to the Alliance Church in Nyack¹³ and hear Mr Tozer. And Tommy said, Oh, I heard that man once. And I wonder how many little Tommys there are feel the same way about it – I heard him. Well, I admit that sometimes it's pretty “the same” and sometimes it's pretty dull but it's a thrilling, wondrous, life-giving fact that however poor the preacher God is calling men to Himself and if we will but listen ... What about you? Let's pray.

Holy Father! Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, we cry unto Thee! All around about us unseen there are the dark and sinister forces determined to destroy, in every way possible, our people, particularly our young people and we beseech Thee, O Lord Jesus – we hate to ask any more, Thou hast given us Thy blood, Thou hast given us Thy life and Thy death, Thou hast given us Thine all – but we still plead, O Lord Jesus! Thou who canst do it, drive back the devil and hold back the darkness and deliver the minds of the young from the influences of the world and from the brainwashing of TV and radio, and newspapers, and magazines. Save them we pray Thee from the brainwashing of social custom and habit and vogue. Deliver them, we beseech Thee, from Sodom; from being like the Sodomites around about them. Help them to escape unto the hills and to seek shelter while they can! Gracious Father, hear our prayers! Save us, we beseech Thee from the evil that's everywhere about! Save our people! Save our young people! Save our children! Save our people, O Lord, we beseech Thee! Save them from the consequences of our own dullness!

Save them, we pray Thee, from the results and the fruit of dullness of days gone by. Save them, we pray Thee, from stumbling over insincerity and hypocrisy – or what seems to be it – and grant, we beseech Thee, that there may be hearers who are alert and submissive and faithful and obedient, ready to do what they're told by the voice of the Word. We thank Thee!

Speak on, O Lord, speak on! Do not stop speaking! Let there not be a famine of the Word of the Lord in our day! Keep on speaking through Thy Word, we beseech Thee, and help us to keep on hearing until this sad old world is finished, until the day of atom bombs and terror and iron curtains¹⁴, and fear and feuding is all over and there shall be peace from the river to the end of the earth and men shall say let us go up to Jerusalem and hear what the Lord will say. God grant that time soon may be, but while it tarries yet a little, we pray Thee, send us to our knees in prayer, for Jesus' sake! For Jesus' sake!

You dear young people I want to urge you: don't get up and go to your school or your work without seeking God. Don't go to bed without seeking God. Don't laugh and listen till the last minute to something amusing and then go to bed. Seek the face of God, seek God! Seek God! We're going to have a hymn-sing down here a half hour earlier than we used to be. Don't take advantage of that and come in long after you should have been. Get in off of the streets and please your parents by being in a little early. Take the worry out of their hearts because they're never quite restful till you're home. Gangs and vicious killers on the streets and accidents and nobody's quite restful till you're in. So, go and sing and rejoice and testify then go on home. Your parents will not rest till you do. God bless you, young people! And you older people, think on these things. Hear what God the Lord would speak and be careful how you hear over the next hours.