THE SERVICE OF CHRIST TOWARDS MEN

J. Mitchell

Zechariah 13: 5–7; Acts 2: 32–38; 9: 1–8

I have read these passages because of an impression as to what men awarded to Christ as the One of whom it says prophetically “man acquired me as bondman from my youth”. It is one of the most sobering things that the prophet immediately says, “What are those wounds in thy hands?” The wages of His service of love among men were the wounds in His hands and in His side. An awful thing to think about but that is the truth of the matter regarding the blessed One who came in from God, to take up man’s cause. He came into a world stricken on every hand with sin and death, all the sorrow and the distress of mankind that the incoming of sin had occasioned. God felt that, for man’s sake. He not only felt what the incoming of sin meant to Himself. He being robbed of His creature, but God felt it for man’s sake. He felt what the effect of the incoming of sin would mean for man. While God bore with it through all those generations, what was clearly in His mind from the very beginning was that He had a Man who would glorify Him, who would uphold every right of God, but a Man who would be here for men and take up man’s cause. My friend, that Man is Jesus. Political men may tell you that they are concerned to take up your cause; let me tell you something, there is only one Man who is able to take up your cause, and that Man is Jesus, and He has done it, that is the wonder of it. He came in to take up man’s cause, and He was here as a Man in the ordinary circumstances of life. It says here, “And he shall say, am no prophet”. There was nothing outwardly distinctive about Jesus; His incoming was of the most humble character; His upbringing, I suppose (little is known about it), would have been similarly of the most humble character. At one point they said, “Is not this the son of the carpenter?”, Matthew 13: 55. That is the situation into which God came in a Man, in Jesus, to take up man’s cause. The book of the Acts tells us that He, “went through all quarters doing good, and healing all that were under the power of the devil, because God was with him”, Acts 10: 38. For the first time in the history of man they had someone there who would take up their cause. There was not a circumstance, not a need, that Jesus came in touch with, but that He was both able and willing to meet that need. One would say. If thou wilt, but the Lord was not only able to meet the need. He was willing to meet it.

Yet, what was the result of all that service? The result was the wounds in His hands. I think that is very touching. The hands speak of the service of love of Jesus, and they were wounded. It says that here, “What are those wounds in thy hands?” Prophetically it looks on to the day when Israel will come to recognise what they have done to the Saviour. Think for a moment that the result of that service, perfect in every respect, was that Christ Himself, was wounded. That is what men gave Him. Man gave Him a malefactor’s gibbet, the most humiliating death, perhaps the most painful death that there could be. Man gave to Jesus for all His service here the humiliation and the scandal of the cross. He never lifted up a word in His defence. Another prophet says, “A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench”, Isaiah 42: 3. Think of the gentleness of Jesus. He never turned anyone away; He never unnecessarily offended anyone; He never hurt anyone; He never did anything that would distress the persons with whom He came into contact. All was perfect goodness in the life of Jesus. That goodness resulted in the wounds in His hands. That was man’s estimation of the service of Jesus. He came in to take up man’s cause, to lift the burden that lay upon man because of the incoming of sin through man’s own actions, and He was prepared to lift that whole burden, lift it off the whole of mankind. He was equal to it, and He was prepared to do it, but what they gave Him were

the wounds in His hands.

Then it goes on, “And he will say, Those, with which I was wounded in the house of my friends, ‘Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, even against the man that is my fellow, saith Jehovah of hosts”. There is the side of what man did to Christ. It is very sobering and touching to think of it. When we speak of man we are speaking of ourselves, speaking of persons like ourselves. There was what they did with Jesus then, but deeper still were His sufferings at the hand of God. If He was to take up man’s cause it involved the awfulness of the sufferings of Christ at the hand of God.

The word is here, “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, even against the man that is my fellow, saith Jehovah of hosts”. Think of divine feelings in relation to that. In Genesis 22 the wood was laid upon Isaac. The will of God was laid upon him, and that was going to consume him, but Abraham carried the fire and the knife. Think of the feelings of God in relation to the sufferings of Jesus, as He went through it anticipatively in Gethsemane. He went through it there in His holy relations with His Father; the inward pressure of what it was to be made sin bearing in upon Him bringing out the holy inward feelings of Jesus. Think of it!—“My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me”, Matthew 26: 39. When He actually came to the cross, and those three hours of darkness on the cross, there was no Father there for Him to call on. He was totally forsaken. Forsaken by the One who loved Him most, but righteousness demanded the forsaking by God. The penalty when sin came in at the very beginning was eternal banishment from the presence of God. The word for us in this present dispensation is that, “the wages of sin is death”, Romans 6: 23. The Scripture tell us that after death is judgment (Hebrews 9: 27). Judgment for the unrepentant sinner is an eternity without God; a sobering thing to think about. But the wonder of it is that Jesus suffered that. He suffered the judgment

before His death. For men it is after death the judgment, but Jesus suffered the judgment first and then He died. Think of the sobriety of it; think of what it meant to His holy soul. In Gethsemane, he cried out, and it was right that He should do so, that holy One, the One who knew no sin. Think of the awfulness of what the anticipation of being made sin was to the holy soul of Jesus.

The passage in Ezekiel gives us a little insight. God tells us that he is to eat his bread taken with dung that cometh from a man (see Ezekiel 4: 12). Ezekiel’s holy feelings cry out, and he says he had never eaten that which dieth of itself; it was awful to him, it was horrible to him, it was objectionable to him, but there was some alleviation brought in for Ezekiel. When you come to Jesus how much more of a horror was it to Him to be made sin, and there was no alleviation whatsoever; it was not possible that there could be an alleviation because it was my sins and your sins in their totality that were borne there in those three hours of darkness on Calvary’s cross, and removed. Thank God for that. The judgment in its totality was gone through and God was satisfied in every possible way; righteousness was accomplished, every attribute of God’s throne was upheld. God was glorified in what happened on the cross of Jesus. He was a willing Victim, but it was no mean matter for Jesus to be the Sin-bearer. I say that because I used to think that because of who He was it would have been an easy matter. It was no light matter. The very fact of what He was, the Holy One, made it all the more extreme. I say all that because, in the days in which are, sin is being made very light of. It is becoming unacceptable in society not to be a sinner. A sobering thing to think about! That is what the enemy is achieving among mankind at the present time; persons will say, I am not a prude. It is socially unacceptable not to be a sinner. We need to be reminded constantly of what sin has cost Christ, and what sin has cost God.

Then the wages of sin is death, and He died. Think of the sobriety of that, He died. He gave up that precious life, that holy life, as the hymn-writer says,

‘That holy life in death’s domain,

Laid down devoted to God’s will’.

How wonderful it is. We can feed on and contemplate the sufferings of Jesus, the holy sufferings of that blessed Man. A whole eternity of glory for God will be secured as a result of those sufferings. Everything for God is based on them, and what a wonderful result there will be. Man gave Him the wounds in His hands and a malefactor’s cross, and God took that opportunity to make Him the Sin-bearer, but God has answered all that in raising Him from among the dead. Another has said that divine righteousness enters into the resurrection of Jesus. God would have been unrighteous if He had not raised Jesus—God is a righteous God, and righteousness had been met in all that He accomplished. So you can rest your soul on the work of Christ; you can have peace with God and nothing to disturb, because righteousness in its fulness has been secured in Him. But righteousness demanded the resurrection. Indeed the one to whom I have referred goes so far as to say, ‘God would not have been God if He had not raised Jesus’. It was imperative that that blessed Man who went that way, the Holy One who became the Sin-bearer, the One that took upon Himself all that lay upon man as the sinner should be raised from among the dead. God has done that, and that is Peter’s testimony, “This Jesus”, he says, the very Person who was known among them, the very Person whose hands were wounded as a result of His service among them, “This Jesus has God raised up, whereof all we are witnesses”. What Peter says brings out God’s answer. The answer to the thirty years of secret life of Jesus was His anointing at the Jordan. The answer to His three-and-a-half years of public service was the mount of transfiguration. From the mount of transfiguration He went down to die, and the answer to that was His resurrection and His glorification. God has glorified Jesus. I say it feelingly, I trust guardedly, that God could do no other. God had to raise Jesus, and not only did He have to raise Him, but “Having therefore been exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which ye behold and hear”. He has set Him at His own right hand, and He has given a whole administration of blessing into the hands of that blessed Man for men.

The resurrection and ascension of Christ makes way for God to come out in the fulness of blessing to men. The wonder of that always amazes me. In the gospels, where the Lord Himself speaks about the vineyard (Matthew 21: 33–41), and how at last he sent to them his son, and when they killed him, he says to them, What will the lord of the vineyard do? And they reply to the effect that he will have to come in in judgment. God answers what man has done to Christ with the infinitude of divine grace. Could there be anyone like God in that?

Could there be anything more marvellous than the gospel? He answers their wickedness with the infinitude of divine grace. In Luke’s gospel the Lord tells His disciples to go and preach beginning at Jerusalem, the very place where He was refused, the centre where opposition to Christ and to God was concentrated; that is where the preaching was to commence. All through the dispensation God has exercised the infinitude of divine grace. He does not deal with men on their merits, He acts according to what He is in Himself. How wonderful that is.

There is therefore hope for you and me, sinners that we are, deserving divine judgment; deserving divine wrath; deserving eternal banishment from the presence of God; but God has met us in the infinitude of divine grace. He has set the Saviour at His own right hand, and He is there available for the whole universe. The mercy-seat has been taken from behind the veil, and it has been set out in the full view of the universe, and God is inviting men to come to Jesus today. How wonderful that is! Come to the Saviour, as the hymn says, ‘O come to the Saviour. He’s calling today’ (Hymn 324).

What a wonderful message there is in the glad tidings for men.

That is not all, coming to the Saviour is one thing. There is the administration of divine bounty in all its fulness, grace is there in its plenitude, unrestricted. Righteousness having been accomplished, God has now a free hand; not a finger in the universe can be lifted against what God has done in the liberality of His heart, in the glory of His grace. Everything has been done in infinite righteousness; perfect is the work that has been accomplished, giving God a free hand to act in the infinitude of divine grace, and in the plenitude of His bounty.

So Peter goes on to say, “Having therefore been exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which ye behold and hear”. Not only is He offering men the forgiveness of sins in the beauty of His grace, but He is pouring out such as blessing—“the promise of the Holy Spirit”. I think the idea of the pouring out indicates the plenitude of divine bounty and divine blessing. I wonder if everyone here has consciously received the Holy Spirit? God would give you the Spirit; so that what you have accepted in faith and believed in the glad tidings might become your joy. The Holy Spirit would help you in the enjoyment of it. God has in mind, not merely to deliver man from his sins, He has in mind to set up men in the joy of having a living abiding link with a blessed Man who is in the glory. That is what He has in mind, so that the Spirit has come here. Some of us have been remarking over these days that He has come from the Father, freighted with all the Father’s thoughts of Christ, to pour these thoughts into the hearts and souls of weary men; to fill their hearts with Christ. Another has said that God does not exactly present the forgiveness of sins as His end in the glad tidings (the glad tidings involves the forgiveness of sins), but God presents a Man in the glad tidings for the affections of

men. He presents the Man of His heart to men that He might be the Man of our hearts, and as feeding upon Him we might become like Him for the pleasure of God. I think that is what is in mind so that the Holy Spirit is here to indwell your heart. One thing about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is that He will constantly keep that blessed and glorious Man before your affections. I have heard persons say, I have come to Christ but can I keep it? That is not a question my friend. The matter of your soul salvation is settled in Christ in the presence of God. It is secure there. The shed blood covers that. But the real question is, Can you be maintained in the joy of it? The Holy Spirit is here to maintain you day by day in the joy of all that Christ is for men. The incoming of sin meant much to a holy God; how obnoxious sin is to God; how He felt it at the beginning, but the glorious way in which He has met it never ceases to be a marvel to me. What a wonder the glad tidings are. Is there anything like it? Can you describe anything that is like it in this universe? There is nothing that can compare with it my friend, and I am sure you will prove that day by day as you accept the Lord Jesus.

It goes on to say, “And having heard it they were pricked in heart”. That is the result of the preaching of the glad tidings, that persons are convicted, they are pricked in their heart, and they said to Peter and the other apostles, “What shall we do, brethren?” There was not a consultation about what needed to be done. What Peter said was immediate, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. As I say, there does not need to be a consultation; the apostles did not need to consult among themselves, the answer is immediate; it is the character of God to immediately meet the repentant sinner. We often say that in Luke 15, he ran to meet the returning son, and he covered him with kisses. That would be the attitude of God tonight as He would run to meet the repentant sinner.

Now I just touch on Saul of Tarsus, a well-known passage which illustrates in the most beautiful way what we have been saying. It speaks in verse 1 of Saul “still breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, came to the high priest and asked of him letters to Damascus, to the synagogues, so that if he found any who were of the way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem”, Acts 9: 1, 2. It tells us in an earlier passage that he even went into the houses, ravaged the houses of those who believed on the Lord Jesus (Acts 8: 3). What an evil man, could there be anything worse than that?

You would expect God to come in in protection of His people in bringing judgment upon that man, he deserved it. He went with a high priest’s warrant in his pocket and hatred in his heart, and that hatred was hatred of Christ. The Lord says to him on this Damascus road,

“Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?” When he is recounting it himself he adds, the Lord said, “it is hard for thee to kick against goads”, Acts 26: 14. Think of Jesus’ feeling for Saul, how hard it was for him. No doubt Saul was affected by the testimony of Stephen. Those who murdered Stephen laid their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul. That testimony of Stephen had an inward effect upon Saul of Tarsus, and he was kicking against the goads, and the Lord felt for him. That is a wonderful thing. Persons might be in exercise here, they might feel that they are absolutely alone in these exercises, but the Lord feels for you. He knows what you are going through. You might say, ‘I have not given my heart wholly to Him’, but He knows what you are going through and He feels for you and He feels with you. The glory of divine grace shone on that Damascus road, and it says, “falling on the earth he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?” As much as to say, What is there about Me that justifies persecution? There is nothing about Jesus that can justify persecution. He says that to Saul, but the glory of grace breaks him down completely. Mr Darby said that on the Damascus road all that Saul was morally was smashed. The man

was completely broken down, and that, I think, is what God would do in the glad tidings.

There is nothing like the power of divine grace; there is no greater power in the universe. Mr Raven speaks of it as God’s great operating principle, a powerful principle to break the heart down and draw to Christ. God would appeal to every one of us. I suppose every one of us here is converted, every one knows the Lord Jesus as Saviour, then I think the Lord would go over these things with us, in order that we might appreciate the glory of what has been accomplished in the gospel through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The suffering has been His, but the glory has resulted from it. May He have a greater place in our affections, and may God Himself be glorified in our daily lives, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Barbados
13 October 1996