A TIME OF BLESSING
We can read in footnote ‘k’, ‘Or ‘toil addeth nothing to it’’.
I was struck the other day by reading a remark in ministry that all of our blessings as believers relate to what is eternal. It made me stop and think. There are very many blessings that I have and will have, and from an early age we are encouraged to count our many blessings, but the remark emphasised that all of our blessings relate to what is eternal. At the present time, there are many challenges around us in the world, and yet there are many mercies we enjoy here. They may relate to employment and health and home, and other things that we can receive as the Father’s provisions, but what God would draw our attention to is that our blessings, our true blessings, are in relation to what is eternal. Ephesians says that we have been blessed with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ” (chap.1:3). Those are the blessings that God would draw our attention to; those are the blessings that God is presenting to you and to me in the glad tidings today.
You can read in Deuteronomy 28 of a time past, when God said to His people that, if they remained faithful to Him and to His commandments, then He would bless them in many ways, and they were remarkable ways. Yet they all related to this scene, they all related to what the children of Israel would receive here, food, shelter, protection from their enemies, rain for their crops. But there was a requirement of the children of Israel that they should be obedient, that they should remain faithful to God, and in that section, He goes on to say that if they were not faithful, not obedient, then there would be divine judgment experienced by them. Dear friend, the glad tidings today go out in a very different dispensation – one of remarkable grace. When I read that section in Deuteronomy 28 and 29, I realised that for me there would have been no hope. I can look back over my life and see how many times – and maybe I see only a fraction of the number of times – that I have been unfaithful to God. But the glad tidings now is presented not on the principle of demand but of God’s mercy. As the footnote shows, the verse can be read as ‘toil addeth nothing to it’, that is to the blessing. There is nothing that I can do to deserve the blessing of God, but the “The blessing of Jehovah, it maketh rich”. What a wonderful dispensation of blessing we are in
So what are these blessings? They are of God, and we know that God is eternal, therefore the blessings that God offers us in the gospel relate to what is eternal. We live in a world in which everything is passing, a world which we know is not eternal; in fact people are worried that the earth is running out of its resources. If people go on using them up for another fifty or a hundred years, they worry about whether life could be sustained because of what will happen to the earth. But the blessings that God is offering are not bounded by the earth, but they are part of what is eternal, they are without limit. How wonderful the blessings of God are!. And yet we are here on the earth, an earth which is limited, and everything which is natural and living within it is bounded by death as a result of sin having come in. It came in because man did not obey the word of God. The working of Satan in the heart of man, the disobedience of man taking a position of independence from God, resulted in sin coming into the whole earth that we are in, and we know all too well it is still bounded by death. But the blessings that God is presenting you with cannot be bounded by death. What would it be if the best that God was offering us was bounded by death? No, that could not be so. The Christian’s blessings must be those which are spiritual blessings, blessings in the heavenlies. I know that I need to reflect on that because I personally know that I strive after many things that relate to this earth, things that are not of heaven, things which I seek to draw satisfaction from but very quickly I realise that they do not bring satisfaction. But “every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies” is available to you and me, and they are the things that God is offering in the gospel.
What is it that God presents in the glad tidings? First of all, He has made Himself known to us; the glad tidings start with the presentation of God Himself in the person of His only begotten Son; it begins with faith in Jesus. You say, I cannot see Him. The blessings of the gospel can only be seen by faith. We can see the effect of them, as we experience the effect of the Spirit’s work in and around us. But we cannot see the person of the Lord Jesus, and therefore there is a need for faith on our part to lay hold of the blessing that God presents, which is all in that Person. But we also need to realise that these blessings can only be enjoyed when we realise that what we are according to nature, what is all around us, and our state of soul as away from God – all are bounded by death. God does not just want to bring us into blessing and to leave us at a distance. A holy and righteous God desires that everything that keeps us from nearness to Him should be judged in His presence. The moral basis on which we can be in His presence eternally must be addressed in order for us to enter truly into the blessings.
I need faith to see the blessing. I need to recognise what sin is in the sight of God and judge it, repent of it before God, repent of what I am and what I have done as under sin, and realise the need that I have for salvation and blessing. And then, as we do that, we can see the glory of the Person. There were many recorded in the Scriptures who did not at first realise the greatness of the Person who was there, but they came to see the awfulness of what they had done and what they were, and their eyes were opened to the glory of the One who God had sent here, the source of all our blessing. The woman at the well in John 4 is such a clear example. The Lord Jesus helped her to see that what she was, what her life was and what she was striving for, was certainly not blessing, but that what He could offer her was blessing which was eternal, it would never dry up, a resource that would be there for ever. We can think of the man who had been lying beside the pool in John 5; there was nothing he could look for in the world other than the slow passage of time that would lead to his death. There was nothing that could bring him blessing, but the Lord Jesus came to him and it was through Him that blessing could come in immediately. Then we can think of the Lord Jesus upon the cross and the centurion looking upon Him. Even in those moments of apparent weakness upon the cross, the centurion was able to see the power of the One who was there (Matt.27:54). In every circumstance, the glory of His Person was there; even in the manger. Those who came to see the Child, those that came to bring Him gifts saw Him as a child, and yet wondered at His glory (Matt.2:11).
This Person is presented to us, dear friends, as the source of all of our blessing. He desires to have company with you. In His divinity before time began, He was the Creator, and when it was said “Let us make man” (Gen.1:26), He was there, and yet He came into this scene, stooped into manhood in order that He should have company with you and that your blessing should be secured. He went to the cross, He hung there and suffered despite His perfection, despite His glory, despite His power, despite everything that He was to provide for mankind, all that He would make known to man which would change the whole of the passage not only of time but the whole of eternity. Wicked hands nailed Him to the cross, His side was pierced and the blood and the water flowed forth. It is in that Man, the One who did hang upon the cross, the One who was there for those hours of darkness as He was made sin – it is in Him that our blessing stands. The blood flowed forth as a witness that will stand for eternity that our sins could be washed away in the power and the perfection of that one Man. Heaven saw in Jesus the answer to everything that had brought death upon the earth, everything that had brought distance between man and God, and in that one Man was the means of salvation, an eternal answer to remove the distance between man and God,. What blessing! Is there anything that I could do or could have done to add to that work, to that Person, to the shedding of that blood, to His words upon the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23:34. Then the loud cry as He entered into death, His being placed in the tomb, His rising again, His being received up into glory – is there anything I could have done? Is there anything I would even have understood as to what was transpiring during the time when that work of Jesus was being completed? There is not. And it is only as reflecting upon Him and upon His work that I will see that in Him is a blessing that is eternal, a blessing that God has provided, a blessing that has nothing to do with this earth, and that He is the very centre of all of my blessings. Through all of that, we see the demonstration of the love of God towards us.
Another blessing is that God is love. All the work of Christ, the presentation of salvation, and all of the blessings that we could never exhaust – all that exists because of the love of God for man, because God is love. We might well wonder why God would love man. Perhaps the greatest demonstration of the hardness of the heart of man is the insistence that people have evolved from a lower creature, and the rejection of the belief that man was created, was formed, by the loving word of God in order that He Himself should have an answer, so that God should have a response from persons. The love of God from before time began has remained unchanged. He has worked to redeem man that He formed, through the giving of His only begotten Son and the presentation of eternal blessing. Dear friend, He would welcome you into His presence. It is God’s love that underpins everything that He has done, will do, and loves to do for you.
If we reflect on that time in Deuteronomy, God’s love was the same then but it waited for the death of Christ for the failure of mankind to be dealt with. The presentation of the glad tidings goes out now and the love of God is the same, except the answer to my sins is in the work of Christ and His precious shed blood. The love remains unchanged, the love remains all powerful. That blood and that completed work, if laid hold of in faith, is the basis for my entrance into what is really life, because if I have a relationship with that Person, if I know Him in love, then there is life. Not life bounded by death but life as the woman at the well was to enter into immediately. She was given life by a Man who was not only able to tell her all things, but to provide living water that would spring up in her into eternal life.
So what is that life? We would all have our own experience of it, but it means that I can be occupied with Jesus, a Man in a different world, a world that will never change, where love shines through all and where He is. As I pass through this scene, I know that, at any moment, I can turn to the One who is the source of my blessing, the One who loves me more than anyone else could. I can speak with Him and contemplate the glory of His Person. Very soon, I will see Him, see His face, see the shining of His glory and know what eternity really means. Although this life may have just begun for me, it is a life that will never end. That brings immediate rest and peace to my soul because, as this scripture tells us, there is nothing that I can bring, there is no work that I can do to add to my eternal blessings. I can simply rest in the presence of divine Persons and know that everything has been done, and I can be at peace before God.
The next blessing that I would draw attention to is joy, something that man strives for in so many ways. If you look at the development of the economy of this country over the last hundred years or so, it has been towards what people call the service sector, especially the leisure and entertainment industries. People have worked hard and invested heavily to find satisfaction and joy in this world. It is interesting that at the present time, God has allowed so much of what man has worked for in leisure, in entertainment, to be paused. People have been left to reflect a little as to what life is like without the provision of the entertainments that they normally have. For the believer, restful in the presence of divine Persons, having the certainty that my eternal salvation rests in God’s love and Christ’s work which underpins it, there can be rest and peace and joy in the soul. I do not need to strive for it; it is there for me to enter into. It is a joy that is from God, a joy that gives peace and satisfaction to the soul.
We might think about all of these blessings and say to ourselves, surely I do not deserve these. Those of us who have believed for a long time may think of what we have done, all that we have needed to repent of, the many sins that we have committed, our continual failing. Another blessing, and the effect of it will be for eternity, is the wondrous grace of God that He has given us what we do not deserve. The character of our blessings is marked by His love, by His grace, grace that God alone has shown towards us. As believers, the blessings we have are in Jesus, not because of what we have done, not because of what we have deserved, but because of what God is. That places me before God as if I had never sinned. We know that there are many things that we have done wrong, but because of the work of Christ, I am justified before God, placed in a position before Him as if those things had never happened, at rest before Him because God has covered the distance and has answered every question through the work of Christ. God will provide for my practical needs day by day, and the grace of God undoubtedly lies behind the Father’s provisions that we have here. But how wonderful that the disposition of God towards me in blessing remains now and for eternity; there are so many blessings I do not deserve but God has willingly provided all of them.
Our being maintained in the enjoyment of them is through the operations of the Holy Spirit. I could never enjoy nearness to Him without the Spirit. It is God working in us that will cause us to turn to Him, to realise what we are and realise what He is. It is the person of the Holy Spirit indwelling us who would delight to bring before us and to amplify our appreciation and understanding of the person and the glory of our Lord Jesus, the greatness and the love of God, and the warmth of that love. The Holy Spirit would bring us into what is truly life and the experience of that life. We begin to appreciate more and more the grace of God towards us and have a sense that we have been justified to be in the presence of God and enjoy the wonder of all these blessings, all because of what God is and what He has done through the work of Christ. The Spirit’s work now is living, the Spirit’s service will continue into eternity. My blessing is in Christ and it is made living and real because of the person of the Holy Spirit. God would love an answer from us from all that He has done!
I have spoken about divine blessings, and the Scriptures are full of them. If you were to ask the myriads of believers across the face of the earth today to describe all of the blessings that they all enjoyed, think of the vastness of the result! Many of them would relate to what is eternal, not bounded by this scene but bounded by the scene of eternity and the greatness and the love of God. Dear friends the vastness of the blessings that God would provide, made real by the Spirit, would cause me to answer in praise and in worship towards Him. I would ask you whether you do? I was tested this morning by the hymn 312;
‘The more we learn Thy love, we love the more!’
The blessings that God has provided are eternal and limitless, and all based on His love. As I appreciate that love more and more, I would trust each day, the question I would test myself with is, what am I doing, how am I demonstrating in my response to Him that I love Him ‘the more’? These blessings as presented are very simple, and yet they are remarkable, they are powerful, they are beyond the scope of this earth. They are far greater than anything that the world has to offer. When the Lord Jesus was here, His own power was greater than the power of the earth. Think of what He did; by a word He could influence the weather, the sea, the movement of the animals, the fish in the ocean. The power of God is immense. He has provided us with incomparably greater blessings, “every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies”. How great they are! They are the very greatest things that God offers us, He has provided all of them most powerfully and they will never change. The only thing that should change is my appreciation of them.
I would encourage us to reflect upon these blessings, but firstly to lay hold of the certainty of salvation. What a blessing! May none of us leave this room without the absolute assurance and certainty of that. But then to contemplate the wonder of the Person of Jesus, divine love, grace, eternal life, our being justified before God and the activity and work of the Holy Spirit within us – contemplating these blessings would bring us to love Him more. May it be so for His name’s sake.
Gospel preaching at Colchester
10 January 2021
David J Martin
THE GREATNESS OF CHRIST
Matthew 12:41,42; John 4:12-14; 6 32; 8 58
I have an impression as to the greatness of Christ. It seems a very obvious thing to speak about; in fact how could we add to what has already been said about it, for it has been a positive subject in ministry all our lives. I was affected on Lord’s day by a brother’s impression about Jesus saying, “I am the resurrection and the life”, John 11:25. We speak about resurrection as a truth, as a doctrine, and it is a wonderful truth, but one Man, Jesus, gives character to it. Similarly, in the hymn we have just looked at referring to redemption (Hymn 87), there is one Man who is the Redeemer. There are many glories of Jesus that in one sense He can share with us, but there are glories that are His alone, that only attach to Him. Only He is the “firstborn among many brethren” (Rom.8:29), yet how thankful we are that as believers we can be associated with Him in that wonderful relationship as His brethren. Only He is “the head of the body, the assembly” (Col.1:18), and believers have a very precious link with Him there too, and only He is the Bridegroom, although through grace we form part of His bride. I would like to refresh our souls again in the wonder of Christianity. As our hymn said, we begin as
‘Captives to sin, gone far from Thee’,
but God in His sovereignty and His grace and His mercy has reached out to us where we were, given us a place among the sanctified (Acts 26:18) and taken us from the dunghill and set us among nobles (Ps.113:7,8). These things surpass understanding, but it is very valuable to speak about them.
We have been reading Matthew in the house and I always marvel that the Lord Jesus refers in verse 40 to Jonah being in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights as a type of Himself. It is most remarkable because Jonah found himself in the belly of the fish because of disobedience, and yet Jesus takes up that type – in which Jonah refers to the weeds being wrapped about his head (Jonah 2:5) – to illustrate the depth to which Jesus would go to atone for our sins and to remove the whole order of fallen man that was seen in Jonah in his disobedience. It says of Jonah that he went down to Joppa, he went down into the ship, he went down into the bottom of the ship and then he went down to the bottom of the sea. Jesus went down in obedient love and devotion to the will of God and in thoughtfulness for us. While Jonah went down very low, the Lord went even lower.
And then the Lord brings in Solomon. In contrast to Jonah, Solomon was greatly exalted, a great type of Christ glorified, Christ exalted among the nations, looking on to the great millennial day when He will be publicly glorified and vindicated. Solomon was greatly exalted in his time, but as to Christ we know that every knee will bow to Him (Phil.2:10), including these persons who rejected Him, who ridiculed Him, criticised Him, ill-treated Him. Take Pilate, for instance; we read at the end of the gospel that Pilate judged Jesus to be innocent. He found no charge proven against Him and yet before he released Him, he scourged Him (Matt.27:26). Cruelty upon cruelty in its wickedness, but did that change the divine disposition? Not at all! “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23:34. The time for judgment will come: that time of severity and the time of judgment lies ahead, and persons who trifle with the day of grace will have to answer before the glorious One on the great white throne. But I do not want to speak about negatives, I want to speak about positives, and this scripture in Matthew speaks of two wonderful glories of Jesus, that He is more than Jonas and He is more than Solomon.
Turning now to John 4, a brother commented in a book of ministry I was reading on the fact that in John 4, the Lord is depicted as greater than Jacob, in chapter 6 as greater than Moses and in chapter 8 as greater than Abraham1. Now these persons all meant a lot to the Jews; in homely language they were their heroes. Abraham was a hero; the Jews said in chapter 8, “Abraham is our father". Jesus in His grace said to them in relation to what they were doing, ‘Abraham did not do this; if you were Abraham’s children you would have behaved differently’ (v.39). They were claiming something, yet there was in them no moral correspondence or moral affinity with Abraham. It has been said of this poor woman in chapter 4 that she learned far more quickly than Nicodemus2. I think that would be because she had nothing to claim. Her history was completely out in the open, it was desperate. She was a wicked woman, an immoral woman, and yet coming under the saving grace of Jesus she was cleansed and she was dignified. Nicodemus is maybe a bit more like ourselves; he had a religious background, he thought he could claim something, and the Lord has to reason with him. He says to Nicodemus, ‘You are the teacher in Israel, and you do not know these things!’ (John 3:10). The truth of new birth was depicted in the Old Testament in the book of Ezekiel and Nicodemus should have known that. But I do not speak critically of Nicodemus; indeed I find him a very comforting person in the gospel of John because at the cross, he eventually comes out in faithfulness to the Lord, and joins Joseph of Arimathæa in taking care of the body of Jesus.
Nicodemus learned slowly and waited a long time before publicly associating himself with Christ, but we should not wait until a long time in our history has passed before we do that. This woman was a quick learner. When she said, “Art thou greater than our father Jacob?”, I do not think that was the language of unbelief – rather it was the language of incomprehension; she could not really understand it. This Man had come and sat at the well, then started to speak to her and listen to all her needs – and I am sure she had many – but then He began to warm her heart. I love to associate with this chapter that wonderful verse “The charm of a man is his kindness”, Prov.19:22. I think this woman’s heart began to glow, began to burn, began to throb; she said, “give me this water”. She recognised that the Lord had something very precious to give her, and she wanted it. But first of all her sinful history, the moral question in her life, had to be resolved, and it was resolved and resolved quickly. Then there was the gift of the Spirit; in principle, she was given the Spirit, she was given a new power, she was given an inward spring. By the end of the chapter she was going to these Samaritans and saying “Come, see a man …” (v.29).
I think her doubts had been more than answered, she surely knew that this Man was greater than Jacob. Jacob was a remarkable man. One of the lovely comments that I like about Jacob is that in Hebrews 11, in that great list of spiritual worthies and personalities, he is the only man with whom the principle of worship is associated. I think that is remarkable. Jacob’s history was like ours often is, but it would be good if we could arrive at the conclusion that Jacob arrived at. In ministry we have had over the years about Jesus as the heavenly Man, Abraham has been said to represent the heavenly man characteristically, Isaac the heavenly man officially, but Jacob represents the heavenly man reached through discipline. I think we can relate to that, we can appreciate it. It is almost as though this woman had a certain regard for Jacob because the well was near Sychar, which was near to the land which “Jacob gave to his son Joseph” (v.5). She was aware that there had been spiritual history, but it had not done any good to that woman until she saw the Man about whom it really spoke, the Lord Jesus Christ.
In chapter 6, the Lord is teaching in depth, and He is contrasting the manna which God, not Moses, had provided for the children of Israel for their journey through the wilderness, with the true bread which was His Father’s provision. Moses was a very patient man, he was a wonderful man, being described as the meekest man in all the earth (Num.12:3). When he was criticised, God took up his case and those that were criticising had to be adjusted at severe cost to themselves. But here the Lord is saying that the food that He was speaking about was far greater than what Moses had told them about. As “the true bread out of heaven”, He exceeded Moses.
And then in chapter 8, which brings out a more serious situation, these persons were claiming Abraham for their father although there was no affinity between these so-called children of Abraham, and the One that Abraham looked forward to, the Man Christ Jesus. It is interesting that, on the mount of transfiguration, Moses and Elias appeared with Jesus speaking with Him, and Peter spoke out of turn and said, “let us make here three tabernacles”, Matt.17:4. Peter “knew not what he should say” (Mark 9:6) – he was not appreciating the greatness of the Man that was there, the distinctiveness of Jesus. Moses was a great man. So was Elias, he was a great prophet, he sought to bring the people back to God, but there is no comparison with Jesus. When we come into the divine realm, we can understand Paul speaking in his writings about “the one man Jesus Christ”, Rom.5:15.
That is the simple exercise that I have had, dear brethren, and trust we all find it refreshing and encouraging. May the Lord bless the word.
Alan D Munro