Legacies of Light: AW Tozer

A street sermon in Akron. An attic prayer. And a life that wouldn’t make peace with a low view of God. We follow A.W. Tozer’s journey from a teenage conversion to a ministry that challenged the church to recover holiness, embrace lordship, and set our minds on things above. Drawing a line from Peter’s invitation at Pentecost to Colossians 3, we explore why a towering vision of Christ changes everything—from the way we worship to how we preach and live.

I share Tozer’s fiercest insights in his own words: why entertainment can’t sustain a church, how “motion” often mimics growth, and what true exposition aims to do—produce moral action, not mere information. We also talk about the work behind The Pursuit of God and the need to behold the majesty of the One who sits enthroned, who calls the stars by name, and never learns because He already knows all things. This isn’t a call to be louder; it’s a call to be deeper.

But the story isn’t airbrushed. We reckon with Tozer’s blind spots at home—the distance, the costs of relentless focus—and what that teaches us about holding a high view of God alongside a practiced love for people. If you’ve felt the ache for more than spiritual gadgets and clever slogans, consider this your invitation: raise your gaze, expand your heart, and let truth lead to action.

If this conversation stirred you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review with one way you plan to set your mind on things above this week.

Transcript

Peter’s Invitation At Pentecost

SPEAKER_00 0:26

If you could summarize the ministry passion of A.W. Tozer, the verse that he quoted at the very beginning of one of his most famous books, sort of serves as his life verse, set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you've died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. To see Jesus Christ exalted was his driving passion. So take your Bibles and turn to Acts chapter 2. We'll look there at one particular verse and then over to Colossians chapter 3 eventually. If you're familiar with those inaugural days of the New Testament and certainly this day of Pentecost, you're aware that the Apostle Peter stood and delivered the sermon that would effectively launch the New Testament church era. And in that message, he delivered an invitation. It was the first of its kind to potential New Testament Christians. It was actually a quote, it's there in verse 21 from the prophet Joel, where Peter uses this in his sermon and invites them. He says this, and it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Isn't that a great verse? That's a wonderful text. In fact, the writer here actually makes the comment that with many other words, Peter kept on exhorting his audience to be saved. Look there at verse 40, that's what he writes. And with many other words, he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, Be saved from this perverse generation. So we're not told what those words were. We're just told that with many more words, he continued to preach and deliver this exhortation and this invitation. Luke goes on to add, of course, that about 3,000 people believe the gospel bound up and delivered in that sermon. The man that they had crucified had resurrected from the dead. In fact, with what we have learned this morning in our study, look at the significance of verse 36. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and what? Christ. Same person. This Jesus, whom you crucified. Wow, that was stunning news. That this one was indeed both sovereign Lord and anointed Messiah. And of course, thousands believed. They accepted the invitation and effectively called upon the name of the Lord and were saved. It was this text and this invitation that would be acted upon some 1900 years later in the heart and life of a farm boy named Iden Wilson Tozer. Iden was born in 1897 in a small farming community in western Pennsylvania. And his family was extremely poor, struggled to make ends meet. In fact, when he was 15 years of age, the Tozer family moved to Akron, Ohio, and in an attempt to land jobs in that growing automobile industry, and this particular industry was the tire industry. In fact, Aydin got a job at Goodyear back in the early 1900s. One afternoon, in fact, it was 1912, Aiden was walking home from his job from Goodyear, and he overheard a street preacher exhorting the crowd from this text to call upon the Lord and be saved. Now, Tozer knew enough of the gospel to be convicted. In fact, the Spirit of God, he said, convicted him at that moment. But he went home and immediately climbed up into the attic of their house and fell on his knees and called upon God to save him. He knew immediately that he was different. He would often write that he knew instinctively that Christians were supposed to be different than anybody else. He would later write this are you willing to live with the fact that you as a Christian are an odd number? You feel love for one you've never met. You talk every day to someone you can't see, and expect to go to heaven because of what somebody else has done already for you. How different can you be? Well put. So A.W. Tozer's life began in Christ and he began to grow and he loved to study. He'd be out of step with his world. In fact, he would be out of step with the majority opinion of the rest of the Christian community. His ministry was almost prophetic. He was calling people to a different kind of life, to break free from the status, quo. He considered himself a prophet, not receiving revelation from God, but declaring revelation from God with power. Seven years after that event, when he was saved in his attic, at the age of 22, without any formal training, he began 44 years of pastoral ministry. He was later elected editor of that denomination's magazine called the Alliance Weekly, and his and that's where he really began to impact the world. His first article appeared on June 3rd, 1950. Those articles immediately challenged, would be a nice word, the status quo of the church. In fact, in his first editorial, Tozer wrote, and this sort of signaled the direction he would take. And I quote, it will cost something to walk slow in the parade of the ages, while excited men of time rush about confusing motion with progress. A key phrase he loved to use. He constantly warned the church of her spiritual decline. For instance, he wrote this: He said, Until we have a reformation, all our books and all our schools and all our magazines are only the working of bacteria in a decaying church. If he could summarize the ministry passion of A.W. Tozer, the verse that he quoted at the very beginning of one of his most famous books sort of serves as his life verse, and that's Colossians chapter 3. You might turn there and I don't know, as we go through these, you might feel the freedom to write the last name of the individual next to their text. It'll remind you perhaps in an encouraging way. Write Tozer by verse 1. Paul is writing to the Colossians and he says, Therefore, if, literally, since, since you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above. Where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth, for you've died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God, and when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. To see Jesus Christ exalted, seated, sovereign, to see God majestic and glorified, for that to be your vision was his passion. This would be his driving passion in life. In fact, he wrote in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, which you ought to write that down somewhere and read that. He writes this so necessary to the church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the church, with her worship and her moral standards, declines along with it. The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God. And we do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God. He would sell several million copies of his books, by the way, and give all the money away. That created problems for his family, and I'll talk about that in a moment. But Tozer obviously and passionately believed in this exalted vision of Christ, to whom every believer must entirely surrender. In fact, he coined the term lordship before the term lordship had been coined. He was the first to use it, and he used it often. Tozer was often offensive to anyone who fell short of this vision of a high and lofty God. He would write so much of what passes for New Testament Christianity is a little more than truth, sweetened with a little music and made palatable by religious entertainment. He once offended a holiness church. He'd been invited to preach on Sunday morning. Before he spoke, the service packed to the walls was, in his view, nothing less than a service pandering after silly music and other forms of entertainment. So when his turn to preach came, he got up and without any warmth or introduction, said, Whatever happened to the holiness of God to you, holiness people? He then set his sermon aside and proceeded to preach on the holiness of God. No wonder he said that later in life he had preached himself off every platform in the country. Keep in mind, Tozer is challenging a church fifty years ago. What would he say today? Imagine what he would say to our generation. To the world of Christians 50 years ago, Tozer wrote, and I quote, the church has sold out the carnal methods, carnal philosophies, carnal viewpoints, carnal gadgets, and have lost the glory of God in our midst. We are a starving generation that has never seen the glory of God. If that isn't painful enough to hear, Tozer's criticism becomes even sharper. He would write, the church today is limping from one gimmick to another like so many drunks in a fog. Not exactly the most popular way to communicate your point, but his point is well taken. He wasn't all criticism. He preached and wrote of biblical solutions. He would write these powerful words. To regain her lost power, the church must have a transforming vision of God. Not the utilitarian God who is having a run of popularity today, whose chief claim to men's attention is his ability to bring them success. The God we must learn to know is the majesty in the heavens, who sits upon the circle of the earth, who stretches out the heavens as a curtain, who brings out his starry host by number, and calls them all by name through the greatness of his power. Again, can you can you hear the echo of Colossians 3 to see Christ exalted and the glory of God enthroned? I have uh tried and I'll try each week to summarize the legacy of these individuals, and uh it's it's impossible to summarize the legacy of A.W. Tozer, but there are at least three aspects of his ministry that continue to demand another hearing, another challenge, another evaluation for us as an assembly, for us in this generation. Let me give you two or three of them. One relates to the matter of preaching and teaching. So for all the teachers and the preachers, these are important words, and for the congregation to accept, nothing less than this. He said that the lack of genuine exposition of Scripture is oftentimes nothing more than the teacher's unwillingness to get himself into trouble. That's a powerful statement. I think we'll skip over that verse. You know, I think we'll avoid that chapter. That'll get us into trouble. But Tozer would remind those who teach the Word of God, and he focused especially on preachers. He said, preachers are not diplomats delivering compromises, they are prophets delivering ultimatums. And that's because he would note the purpose of genuine exposition as application. Biblical preaching desires nothing less than moral reform. And he would write, and I quote, no one is better off by simply knowing more about God, knowing that God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth. The devil knows that. So did Ahab and Judas Iscariot. No one is better for just knowing that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to die for their redemption. In hell, there are millions who will know that. The purpose behind all doctrine and the preaching of it is to secure moral action. In other words, it isn't just biblical knowledge for the sake of knowledge. In fact, Tozer once shocked his world. He may have heard this quote. It's a familiar one, but he shocked his world by writing it this way. The devil, he said, is a better theologian than any of us, yet he remains the devil. As I read through pages and pages of Tozer's comments on the pulpit and the pastorate, it became pretty obvious to me that he would have little patience with the contemporary preaching of our generation that skips to one favorite verse after another, where the audience is sovereign and the consumer mentality plagues the church, platitude after platitude, avoiding the hard passages, hard doctrines, anything doctrinally divisive, effectively encouraging a growing biblical illiteracy in the church, applauding knowledge without application or action or conviction or purity. One final legacy. Without a doubt, this is the most critical contribution of A. W. Tozer. And it's the most obvious one, of course, we've already talked about it. In and through his writings, it would be the exaltation of Jesus Christ, his ability to write in such a way that you read a few lines and your perspective of God is immediately magnified, improved, elevated. On one occasion, he um he spent all night awake as the train he was on traveled from Chicago to Texas. He had asked the porter for a small table to be brought to his room, and there in that little compartment, he began riding away. Eventually the porter became a little worried. The light was on, but Tozer hadn't come to the dining car, and he knew he hadn't eaten, and so he knocked on his door and he said, Friend, would you like me to bring you some supper? Tozer never looked up, but just mumbled, yes. Bring me some toast and tea, please. At the end of the train ride, Tozer walked into the station with a rough draft under his arm, completed, started and finished that night with a book entitled The Pursuit of God. It would sell more than a million copies, but more importantly, it would reveal the very nature of God that was being lost, he believed, in his generation. And if you will read it, you will discover that we are losing it still. In this, he would write, God is never surprised. God is never amazed. He never wonders about anything. He doesn't need information unless he's drawing it out of someone, as he did with Adam in the garden when he asked, Adam, where are you? God has never learned from anyone. God cannot learn. Could God at any time or in any manner receive into his mind knowledge that he did not possess and had not possessed from eternity, he would be less than himself. To think of a God who must sit at the feet of a teacher, even though that teacher be an archangel, is to think of someone other than the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth. God knows effortlessly all matters, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all feelings, all desires, every unuttered secret, God never discovers anything. How's that for a refreshed vision of the omniscience of God? The truth is, like any reader of biography, and I hope you are, the more you learn about someone, the more you discover what ought to be emulated and what needs to be forgotten. Even the Apostle Paul would put it this way: be imitators of me as I imitate Christ. In other words, don't just follow me because I'm an apostle for the sake of imitating me. Imitate me only insofar as you see me imitating Christ. So we have to be careful. No Christian from the past or the present should be shown as perfect. He was well aware of his shortcomings, not aware of other shortcomings. One author wrote, and I've struggled, in fact, even with this statement, but he wrote that Tozer battled depression. He may very well have, but the more I read of him, the more I wonder if it was something more akin to struggling with this deep sense of introspection that can come across looking similarly. He often seemed muddled in a painfully silent fog, as if no one else was around. It wasn't unusual for him to come to the family dinner table and not say a word, the entire dinner, with everyone else at the table awkwardly afraid to do so themselves. He was an imposing man. While he commended his wife's gift of hospitality, he really didn't like it when she used it. What's worse, he even refused to allow his wife's family to visit their home. He felt it distracted them. It was a decision that brought a great deal of hurt and frustration to that family, as you can well imagine. All but one of his children didn't understand him, felt estranged, and never felt close to him, except his youngest, a daughter. Tozer is proof that while it's possible to see God in fresh and intimate ways, it's possible to miss seeing other people around you at the same time. The old adage, the cobbler's wife has no what? Shoes. Is too often true, and in some ways it was true in the life of A.W. Tozer. I mean, here was a man whose mind and affections were so set on Christ above that he missed some things that needed attention on earth below. The truth is we're all more like him than we knew, aren't we? We all have blind spots. We need each other to share those to help us along. And I think people were afraid. His wife was, his children, his associates, to challenge him. A.W. Tozer's advice and perspective still rings true. For the average Christian, the opposite is true. So much of our affection, so much of our attention is based on the things of earth that the things of Christ are never pursued with passion. We care more about our car than Christ. I mean, not many of us are going to err on the side of Tozer. I mean, think about it. How many of us would give away thousands of dollars in royalties only to be forced to ride a bus with your six kids in tow? Don't misunderstand. I think he should have bought a car. Like I think a Chevy pickup would have been perfect for him. But as Warren Wearsby wrote of him, he wrote these words: Tozer was in so many ways a man who walked to the beat of a different drummer. He simply wanted God more than anything else. And he was never content with where he was in his pursuit of the glory of God. I'd like to err more on that side more often than not. Listen to a prayer he composed. And I close with this. O God, I have tasted thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully aware of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. I want to want thee. I long to be filled with longing. I thirst to be more thirsty still. Show me thy glory, I pray thee, so I may know thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Give me grace to rise and follow thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus' name. Amen.