THE APPEAL OF A SAVIOUR GOD
This book from which I have read and which we are all holding in our hands is very special. There is no other book like it. You will notice, if you have looked at the front page, that it is spoken of as holy, the Holy Scriptures, and what it contains comes from God. It is inspired by Him. That is why, for example, I would not put it on the floor because while it may not be intrinsically holy as an object, a book, what it contains is from God Himself; it is His word. It has been written by many people at different times in different places on the earth, but it is all one whole, one coherent testimony. It is beyond human ability to devise that different men in different places and at different times should write, and that their testimony should be one whole and to one end. It is a very special book. God has caused it to be written, He has inspired it and it was written under His inspiration; therefore we are well advised to read it. If God has taken the trouble, I speak reverently, to have had written what is in His mind, the very least that we as His creatures could do is to read what He has written. God has written other things of course. We read in this very book of the fingers of a man’s hand writing on the plaster of the wall of a king’s palace. He was a wicked king, a man with absolute power over men, and a man who defiled and traduced the holy things of God. The fingers of a man’s hand wrote where no other hand would dare to write, they wrote of that king’s impending doom and he had it translated. God had His servant available to translate to that king what had been written, but it did not make any difference to the king. The message of impending doom and judgment left him unaffected. There was no repentance, there was no change of heart towards God, and he perished.
God does not desire that you should perish. In the gospel He has provided a means whereby you may not perish, and much more than that, as this verse brings out, not only that you may not perish but that you may have eternal life. That is in His mind for you. I do not know if it is in your mind but that is what God has in His mind, and He has in mind for every one of us in this room that we should not perish but that we should have life eternal.
This book which we have open begins with God. “In the beginning God …” (Gen.1:1), and it ends with God. Much comes in in between but it begins with God speaking. God’s voice is living and it is operative: when He speaks, things happen. When he said, “Let there be light” (Gen.1:3), there was light; the divine word was spoken and things happened. God had the first word, and He will have the last word too. Men have had a lot to say. We live in a day when there was never so much talk, never so much writing, never so many books, but it is all going to pass away. John says, “And the world is passing, and its lust” (1 John 2:17); it is all going to disappear, and what will be left is what God has to say. The Lord said Himself, “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but my words shall in no wise pass away”, Matt.24:35. The words of God were spoken through a prophet of old, the prophet Samuel, and it says of him “and Jehovah was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground” (1 Sam.3:19): none of them. They were the words of God uttered through a man and they found a lodging place in human hearts.
God intends in the preaching that what He has to say might find a lodging place in your heart and in mine, because behind the preaching of the gospel lies no less than the appeal of the blessed God Himself. Whatever you may think of the preacher, bear in mind that behind the word as it is preached lies the appeal of God Himself, the God with whom we have to do. The preacher said to that wicked king who I mentioned, “the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways”, Dan.5:23. That is the God who speaks in the preaching. You have had to do with Him already whether you are a believer or an unbeliever because He gives life and breath to all. God does that; no human can do that. The giving of life is a divine action, and the maintenance of life too. God gives “to all life and breath and all things”, Acts 17:25. He preserves the very atmosphere in which we live. Even in this room this afternoon, we are breathing it in as creatures dependent upon God and He keeps us alive. The God in whose hand our breath is, He keeps us alive in His grace because He wants us to hear His word and to be blessed by it. He does not desire that we should perish; He says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked”, Ezek.33:11. If you are an unforgiven sinner, it will give God no pleasure for you to die as such. What will give God great pleasure, and not only God but the whole of heaven, is that you should repent. There is “joy in heaven for one repenting sinner”, Luke 15:7. I wonder if in this company this afternoon, there might be one like that, one repenting sinner. Could that be you?
So the Scriptures, the book in our hands, begins with God and they contain many divine prophecies; that is one of the evidences that they are the word of God. There are many books that are claimed to be religious books by various religions, but you will not find in them divine prophecies. In the scripture of truth, for that is how it is spoken of (Dan.10:21), you will find prophecies; that is, God spoke of things that would happen before they happened. Many of them have been fulfilled already – what God said would happen did happen. Some of the prophecies are still waiting for their fulfilment, but there is no doubt about whether any of them will be fulfilled; they will all be fulfilled in God’s own time and in His own way. What particularly marks the Scriptures out as the word of God is that He explains in them the beginning and He explains the end, and only God can tell the end from the beginning. None of us knows what a day will bring forth (Prov.27:1), none of us knows what will happen later on today or tomorrow, but God knows the end from the beginning. And He does not spring any surprises on men. He tells us the beginning and the end, He tells us about how evil came into the world and how it contaminated mankind and the effect of it, and He tells us what the end of that will be. He tells us how the great issue of good and evil that has plagued mankind since sin came into the world is all going to be resolved. Governments cannot resolve it. Policies have been advanced to deal with the symptoms of it, doctors are employed to deal with the symptoms of it, because “by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; and thus death passed upon all men”, Rom.5:12. It has passed upon them, not just because they have come from sinful stock, but the scripture adds, “for that all have sinned”, Rom.5:12. Every one of us in this room is a sinner, but the difference is that there are sinners in this room who are forgiven and there may be sinners in this room who are still unforgiven. They may be assembling with other Christian believers and attending Christian meetings but have never themselves had to do with God as to their souls. In the preaching, that is what God is inviting you to do, so that you might not be a spectator at the gospel preaching, that you might not be a passenger among other believers, but that as you sit in a company of persons whose soul salvation is assured, you might reach out in faith so that the assurance of salvation might be yours, your personal possession.
So evil and its terrible consequences came into the world and nobody has been able to do anything about it. One generation passes away, another generation follows; generation after generation goes down to the gates of death. This world, for all its advances, for all its technological skill, cannot alter these great and solemn moral realities. The world in which we are has become a graveyard. One generation after another goes down to the gates of death. Why is it? You say, it is what is to be expected, it is the natural course of things. No; “the wages of sin is death”, Rom.6:23. It is the wages of sin. You have earned your wages, and you receive them in full; the wages of sin is death. It is the judgment of God. In the presence of death, man’s utter weakness is exposed, but God tells us in His word how these things began and He tells us how they will end. All evil, together with its source, will find its ultimate destiny in the lake of fire. Near the end of the Scriptures, there is the terrible scene of judgment of the great white throne and the lake of fire (Rev.20.14).
But the Scriptures also tell of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev.21.1), of God tabernacling with men (v.3), tabernacling with people of whom God says, “their sins and their lawlessness I will never remember any more”, Heb.8:12. Think of God dwelling with persons like that in the complacent rest of His love. God is going to dwell eternally with every one of those persons as objects of His grace. God will find His pleasure in dwelling with them, not just for a little while but for eternity in a “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness”, 2 Pet.3:13. That will be the prevailing principle, not simply judicial righteousness in relation to good and evil, but everything in its right relationship, men in their right relationship with God. God will find His pleasure in men, His love at rest and every desire of the human heart satisfied in the blessed God Himself. What a scene! All that is good, all that is of God – because all that is of good comes from God – will find its ultimate destiny with God in the new heavens and the new earth. Evil, as the scripture tells us, will find its ultimate destiny with the source of it, Satan, the one who deceived Adam and introduced into God’s beautiful creation what was so abhorrent to God. All that will be gathered up and confined to the lake of fire. God tells us about this; there will be no surprise about it. When the lost appear before the great white throne, they will be in no doubt; the books will be opened and their responsibility will be there for them to see.
So in the gospel, these are the issues that we are presented with. As fallen creatures, these are the issues that God presents to us in the gospel. You will never have greater issues to face than those which are presented to you by God in His grace in the gospel. He is not willing the death of the sinner, He is not willing that you should perish, and this verse brings it out; “For God so loved the world …”. That was the great source of His initiative. God took account of the sinful state of man. He could have swept the scene in judgment because He is God, but His heart was touched. He said to His earthly people of old that He saw their sorrow; “I have heard their groan, and I have come down to take them out of it”, Acts 7:34. He looked down, it says “God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them”, Exod.2:25. He said, “I have seen assuredly the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and their cry have I heard on account of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows. And I am come down to deliver them”, Exod.3:7. God presents in the gospel a Deliverer, a Deliverer for poor, guilty sinners who are unable to deliver themselves, who lie under the judgment of God, who face the fearful prospect of His judgment. God has come in in deliverance in Jesus and He has done it because of His love.
What love there is in the heart of God. God is love, it is what He is in His nature, and it has been expressed by Him in the giving of His Son. He has given His Son, He has not spared His own Son. You think of God saying to that man of old, “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and there offer him up”, Gen.22:2. God intervened for that great patriarch, that faithful man. Abraham was not ultimately called upon to slaughter his son, but when it came to the Son of God, there was no intervention, there was no mitigation. God gave His Son in love; He so loved. There is great wealth of meaning in the little words in scripture; “so loved”. You think of God taking account of man. How could He adequately express the feelings of His heart? He said, as I have read, “and their cry have I heard on account of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows”. How could God adequately express the feelings of that great heart of love, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son”. He “so loved”.
There is another little word in Romans. The apostle says, “He who,” and then he says “yea”. “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son”, Rom.8:32. The immensity of it lays hold of the apostle as he writes under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, that God should give His own Son. There are many things that God could have given, there are many things perhaps that you would like God to have given. Perhaps you would like a bigger house, or a larger car, or a more successful business. Perhaps you would like a holiday in sunny climes. God could have given you all that and much more, but He only had one Son, His only begotten Son, and God gave Him. He gave what was infinitely precious to Himself. He spoke through the prophet to His earthly people that they had presented to Him what was lame and crippled and defiled, what was not particularly valuable or well presented to God as an offering (Mal.1:13). But when God gave, He gave something that was of inestimable worth to Himself. He gave His own Son, His only begotten Son and Jesus was delivered up “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”, Acts 2:23. It was anticipated from the outset that there would be this great sacrifice, that Jesus would come as a Saviour for sinners, and that He would become the sin bearer.
We were speaking earlier about the body of the Lord Jesus. Peter said of it, “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet.2:24. Do you ever think about that? You think of a sin bearer, One who Himself had committed no sins, for “in him sin is not” (1 John.3:5), and think of what God laid upon Him: “and Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”, Isa.53:6. As believers, we can say that God laid our iniquity upon Jesus. Those sins that I have committed – many of them I have forgotten, while some of them I do not think I will ever forget – all of them were laid upon Him. God invites you in the preaching to take a look by faith at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, to take account of a Man alive under the judgment of God. What a solemn sight! I think of Him there, there on my account, bearing sins that were mine, bearing judgment that was peculiarly my own, a judgment far greater than I could ever bear, a judgment which if it had fallen upon me, I must have been consumed by. But the glory of the gospel is that the Deliverer, the mighty Saviour who we preach, was not consumed by God’s judgment, rather He consumed it. The judgment of God fell upon Him in all its awful intensity and He consumed it. He was not only the victim in the type of the sin-offering, but He was the true altar. In the Old Testament, the victim was consumed, but the fire on the altar never consumed the altar: the altar sustained the fire and the sacrifice upon it.
So the Saviour who we preach was great enough to sustain the judgment of God. He was able to say, “It is finished”, John 19:30. That great work has been finished to God’s eternal satisfaction. The One who bore our sins, every believer’s sins, in His body on the tree went into death itself. Death had no claim upon Him but He went into death in order to destroy and “annul him who has the might of death”, Heb.2:14. What a Saviour! Well might it be preached in the glad tidings that He went into death, and as one preacher, Peter, said early in this dispensation, “it was not possible that he should be held by its power”, Acts 2:24. That power which has held every other person could never hold Him. He came out of death in the glory and the greatness of His Person; He was raised from among the dead. Think of Jesus lying among the dead and from among the dead, from the myriads that lay in death, God selected One blessed Man and raised Him by His glory. What does that tell me? That tells me that the matter of sins that Jesus bore on the cross has been settled to God’s satisfaction. He bore my sins in His body on the tree but He came out of the grave as “raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father”, Rom.6:4. The Father has installed Him at His right hand, and now He sits in the highest place of supremacy. “Sit at my right hand until I have put thine enemies to be the footstool of thy feet”, Acts 2:34.
Are you an enemy? That was said to persons who had crucified Jesus in the very place where wicked hands had taken Him and crucified Him. They “were pricked in heart” (Acts 2:37) as they heard that. The Man who they had rejected had been exalted to the highest place in heaven and He is waiting for His enemies to be made the footstool of His feet. He is sitting at the right hand of God at divine invitation: “Sit at my right hand …”. He sits in a place that no other man has ever sat in. He is sitting there, waiting in patience and He does not desire that any of us in this room should be numbered among the enemies that will be made the footstool of His feet. These persons who heard that were pricked in heart and they said, “What shall we do, brethren?”, Acts 2:37. You ask, what could they do? They had crucified the Saviour; their guilt was evident. What could they possibly do? Well, there was something they could do. Peter did not say there was nothing that they could do, He said “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins”. These were the guiltiest people on the earth, persons who had rejected the blessed Son of God, and to them first of all was presented the message of salvation, the message of forgiveness.
And not only forgiveness of sins, but much more than that. God has undertaken to meet the need in your heart and mine but He has much more in mind than simply meeting your need. Peter said “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”. The very gift that those apostles had received was going to be extended to these persons who had rejected the Son of God, and God is presenting that gift to you. How do you feel about that? In the gospel, God is presenting His greatest things to you. God could not present anything greater to you than the Saviour of His provision and the precious, inestimable gift of His own Spirit. It is with a view to you coming into the enjoyment of eternal life. That is a life that death cannot touch. Death does not interfere with it, it is eternal and it is a life that can be enjoyed now, even in a mortal condition. There has been a lot said about eternal life, but ultimately and simply it means to be living in the consciousness of the love of God. That will be the portion of those who will dwell with Him in the new heavens and the new earth; they will live in the consciousness and the joy and the happiness of the love of God. They will find that God Himself is an all-sufficient portion for their souls throughout eternity,
‘Perpetual freshness marks th’eternal day,
Abiding peace, joy ne’er to fade away’ (Hymn 173)
What a portion! God extends it in the preaching on the basis of an accomplished righteousness, a work that has been completed. God says that in the gospel: “There is then now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus”, Rom.8:1. There is an accomplished righteousness. That means not simply that persons who repent and believe will not be condemned, but that for such persons there is no condemnation. That is because the condemnation has been borne by Another and because God’s righteousness and the claims of His throne have been fully met. He is able to come out in the blessedness of His nature, and the fulness of His house is extended. One man said, ”Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who … has taken us into favour in the beloved”, Eph.1:3,6. Blessed! That was the doxology that broke from Paul’s heart as he wrote about God. It is a blessed thing to come to know God like that, as the blessed God. The glad tidings are the glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God. The very blessedness of the nature and disposition of God shines out in the gospel preaching and it shines out to persons who have been rebels towards Him. It shines out in grace and it shines out in mercy. God makes it known that He does not desire that anyone in this room should perish but He desires that each of us should have eternal life and the enjoyment of it in the gift of His Holy Spirit. You may go out of this room after this gospel preaching unsaved but you will not go out of it unsought. God is seeking you, He is appealing in the gospel. The time is urgent. The dispensation in which we live is the longest that there has ever been and it is rapidly drawing to a close. God is not mocked; He will not continue indefinitely to strive with men. He has waited, and this dispensation is a testimony to His patience and His grace, but He has set a day when it is all going to come to an end and He is going to judge the habitable earth in righteousness by the only Man that is competent to fill that place, the Man that He has appointed. The apostle Paul says that God has given “the proof of it to all in having raised him from among the dead”, Acts 17:31.
May the Lord Jesus become enthroned in your heart, may He become a personal Saviour who you can trust. Do not rely on the fact that you are associating with others that trust Him, that you are in a believing family or that you have believing parents. None of that will save you. It may be a mark of the favour of God, but it will not save you. You must have a personal transaction for yourself. He is the God with whom we have to do; every one of us will have to do with God. God invites us to have to do with Him now. There will never be a more favourable opportunity to have to do with God than this afternoon. But if you turn it down, you will meet him in judgment, and that is something that God wants you to know that He has no desire for. He does not desire that we should perish, but that we might come into the fulness and the blessedness of His thoughts. May it be the portion of every one of us, for His name’s sake.
Preaching of the gospel, Kirkcaldy
18 June 2018
Roland H Brown