THE CROSS, THE HOLY GHOST, AND THE COMING OF THE LORD
[p. 56] THE CROSS, THE HOLY GHOST, AND THE COMING OF THE LORD
I wish to bring before you at this time three great landmarks of Christianity which we get in figure in this scripture. It is important to apprehend the scope of divine things. This enables us to judge things by the principles involved rather than by mere details. The three things to which I refer are the cross, the gift of the Spirit, and the coming of the Lord.
But before speaking of these things it may be helpful to glance at certain events in the previous history of the children of Israel. Thirty-eight years before, God had brought them out of Egypt that He might carry out His purpose of blessing according to the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were not redeemed because they were better than the Egyptians, for there was no difference in nature and practice between the Israelites and the Egyptians (see Ezekiel 20: 5 - 9). Both alike deserved the judgment of God, but God wrought for His Name’s sake, and in grace and sovereign mercy He put a division (”redemption”, Exodus 8: 23, margin) between His people and Pharaoh’s people. It is God’s grace and sovereign mercy that makes a difference between His called and chosen people and the world of the ungodly. But this could only be on the ground of atonement, and therefore the lamb must be slain and the blood sprinkled on every Israelite’s doorpost and lintel. The Antitype of this is “Christ our passover ... sacrificed for us”.
How could God in His holiness take us up on any other ground save that of atonement? “The precious blood of Christ” is of small account in the estimation of men, but it is of infinite value to God and to faith.
“Let one in his innocence glory,
Another in works he has done;
THY BLOOD is my claim and my title,
Beside it, O Lord, I have none”.
Then, after being sheltered by the blood of the Lamb, the people had to learn the glorious power of Jehovah as a Saviour God. God is for His people against all the power of evil. On the ground of atonement God can claim His people for Himself, and act in victorious power on their behalf against every foe. So, at the Red Sea, they had to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord”. The divided waters, the dry land on which they passed through the Red Sea, the overshadowing cloud of Jehovah’s presence, and the complete overthrow of the Egyptians in the midst of the sea, were all the blessed testimony of God’s mighty power as a Saviour God. What answers to this for us can be found in Romans 4: 24 - 5: 1.
Death is a place where man according to nature has no more footing than he has in the sea. But the fact that the Lord Jesus has come into death for us makes it “dry land” for those who believe. Faith now finds the surest footing in death, because He has died in the most blessed grace and love, that God might be known to us as a Saviour God. And now the hand that held [p. 58] up the watery walls of the Red Sea until the redeemed host had passed over, has raised up the Lord Jesus from the dead.
Believer, let this great fact enter your heart in all its amazing significance! The One who “was delivered for our offences”, and who “his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree”, has been raised from the dead by the God whom He had so perfectly glorified. What a complete triumph of grace! And He was “raised again for our justification”. HE is the measure of our righteousness and acceptance with God. We may well sing that God has “triumphed gloriously!”
Consequent upon these wondrous actings of God in sovereign grace and mercy, the people found themselves in the wilderness. Canaan was their destiny and their inheritance according to God’s purpose, but He led them forty years in the wilderness, as we read in Deuteronomy 8: 2, to humble them, and to prove them, to know what was in their heart. There was, indeed, another side to the wilderness, for it was the place of divine resources and care, and where nature could only see a barren desert, faith saw God. But it was the place where the true character of the flesh came out.
The people had scarcely finished singing the song of redemption in Exodus 15 when it was manifested that they were still capable of murmuring against God. And all the way through the wilderness the flesh disclosed itself in many hideous forms. In the scripture we have read this evening the people are almost at the end of the wilderness, but the flesh is unchanged; they “spake against God, and against Moses”.
[p. 59] Do we not know something of this? Have we not experienced the risings and rebellings of a nature that knows not how to submit to God’s will? In the first joy of conversion we did not realize this; but since then many of us have had to learn that there was that in ourselves which was more terrible — more opposed to God — than we ever imagined before. We have had to learn the incorrigible badness of the flesh. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8: 7, 8).
Death must come in upon what we are as in the flesh. “Much people of Israel died”. It is not necessary that we should take literally forty years to learn that the flesh is incorrigibly bad, but we have to go through it in moral time, which is not measured by months and years, but by exercise of soul. It may be that Saul of Tarsus learned it in three days; others may never come to it until their death-bed. But the end reached is that we know “that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing”. We are obliged to cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7: 24).
It is at this point that we are prepared to understand the blessed import of the brazen serpent being lifted up. If we find ourselves full of the poison of sin, and therefore under death, it is clear that we must look for deliverance and life altogether outside ourselves. An object was lifted up before the eyes of the bitten Israelite, and by looking on that object he lived. Nothing could be more simple, yet nothing more profound and blessed.
[p. 60] The object that was lifted up had no poison in it, for it was made of brass, but it was made in the likeness of the creature that had the poison. As a type it answers to Romans 8: 3. God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and He was lifted up as a sacrifice for sin. The One who knew no sin was made sin for us. He became sacrificially what we were actually, that He might remove sinful flesh from before God in holy judgment. I am not now speaking of sins, but of sinful flesh. I venture to say that many young believers are much more troubled by sinful flesh than by actual transgressions. Very often when there is no outward act of sin the soul is sorely distressed by evil thoughts and fleshly desires and motives. These are the outcome of sinful flesh, and, being born again, you condemn not only the fruit but also the root from which it springs.
How blessed to see that sinful flesh has been condemned in the death of Christ! It was in boundless divine love and grace that He became a Sacrifice for sin. Nothing but His death could make an end of sinful flesh, but in that precious death it has been utterly condemned. Are you glad to know this? If you have not learned to hate yourself, you will not care to know the meaning of the cross. But if you have been harassed and troubled by sinful flesh until you abhor yourself, you will rejoice to know that it was condemned when the Son of Man was lifted up.
Thus the death of Christ is our title to be with God as those who are apart from the flesh. And not only has that precious death removed sinful flesh, but it has become to our wondering souls the revelation of God’s grace and love. The death of Christ becomes our [p. 61] way out of death into life. It removes what we are, and it reveals what God is, so that we may find our blessedness and life in the knowledge of divine Persons.
But the love which was manifested in death still subsists in the Son of God risen and glorified, and by that love He binds us to Himself on the resurrection side of death. He says, “Because I live, ye shall live also”. He has laid down His life for the sheep, that He might bring them into eternal life in association with Himself, As the Glorified One, He gives eternal life to as many as the Father gives Him. All that constituted our life according to the flesh has been condemned in His death, that we might live in association with Him as risen from the dead. Is not this glorious beyond conception? We are called to participate in the life of the last Adam — to be associated with Him in His heavenly portion as the One who has gone to the Father. He came that we might have life, and that we might have it abundantly.
Then, after the lifting up of the brazen serpent, we come to the springing well — a God-given well which the princes and nobles digged while all Israel sang, “Spring up, O well!” In this we see a type of the Holy Ghost.
In John 3 we have the brazen serpent; in John 4 the springing well. “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (verse 14). We could not enter into eternal life except by the Spirit, for it is only by the Spirit that we can be superior to the flesh and its lusts. The man in Romans 7 is striving against sin, but it is too strong for him; he is weak and in bondage. In Romans 8: 2 he is free. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ [p. 62] Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. A law is a principle which acts continuously in the same way, like the law of gravitation. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes free from the law of sin and death. The power of life is in the believer by the Spirit, and he thus becomes superior to the law of sin and death to which he was subject as in the flesh. He enters with God upon the new ground that he is in Christ Jesus, and he thus reaches power and liberty.
When the Lord speaks of the Holy Ghost as a well of water in the believer (John 4), it is evidently in connection with inward satisfaction. “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst”, etc. The Holy Ghost is given to be a divine spring of refreshment and joy in the soul of the believer. He is given to carry our affections into a circle of things that death can never touch, and where we may find most blessed satisfaction in the knowledge of the Father and the Son. He is given to bring us into what has been called “a region of satisfied desire”. Well may the murmurs of the wilderness give place in our hearts to the song, “Spring up, O well!”
Do we know anything of this, beloved brethren? Have we seen the end of the murmurer at the cross? Are we now in the power and joy of the springing well? It is one thing to know the doctrine as to these things, and another to realize the blessedness of the springing well in one’s own experience. May God so attract us by these things that we may rejoice to part company with “our old man” at the cross, and that it may become our steady purpose to judge and renounce everything that would hinder the well from springing up in our souls!
Then, finally, they “pitched ... toward the sun-rising”, (Numbers 11: 11). This is suggestive of the future. We might say that the cross is our past, the Holy Ghost is our present, and the coming of the Lord is our future. If we look around we see men making prodigious efforts to establish themselves in possession of the earth, and to subdue all the powers of nature to their service. But with all the boasted progress of science and education, dense moral darkness reigns here, for God is unknown. So long as the present state of things continues, every improvement, and every accession of knowledge, tends to exalt man, and more completely to exclude God. It is in the power of many now living to recall the effect of vast social improvements and marvellous inventions. Has not the effect been to make man more self-sufficient, and practically to exclude recognition of God from men’s minds?
Is this state of things to continue indefinitely? No; God has set bounds to the pride of man, and in His appointed time He will set aside in judgment everything that is opposed to the knowledge of Himself. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming back in glory and power to subjugate everything to God — to overturn the whole present system of things — to dispossess the god and prince of this world — and to fill this very scene, where sin has displayed itself so long, with the knowledge and glory of God.
“All the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall” (Malachi 4: 1, 2). Here we see the twofold effect of the coming of the Lord. All the pride and wickedness of man, which are so prominent now, will be burnt up, Everything that is prominent in the present system of things will be destroyed. Everything in which the glory of man appears will come to nothing. But, on the other hand, to those that fear God the Sun of righteousness will arise with healing in His wings. The oppression of the poor and needy will cease, the lowly will be exalted, and the meek will inherit the earth. The will of God will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
It is because the Christian looks for an entirely new order of things that he holds aloof from all the politics and schemes of the present age. He does not belong to the present age, and he cannot recognize it as being of God, He pitches toward the sunrising! All his hopes and expectations as to the ordering of things here are centred in the Lord Jesus Christ. He rejoices in hope of the glory of God. The Christian is sometimes regarded as being “behind the times”, but in truth he is very much in advance of the times! Men are occupied with things which are going down — and going down under the judgment of God — but the Christian lives in view of a wonderful range of things which are coming up! The glory and blessedness of these things can only be known by knowing the Person who will bring them. It is the blessed Christ of God, who is now crowned with glory and honour at God’s right hand, who is going to bring the glory of God into this poor, dark world. We know something of the excellence of what is coming by knowing Him. One might study prophecy a long time and yet have a very [p. 65] poor idea of the moral character of the age to come. But if we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we are in the light of it all now. Not a ray of glory will ever shine out in the coming age that does not shine this minute in the face of Jesus Christ. So that in the light of that glory our hearts are removed from the empty glory of this present world, and we pitch “toward the sunrising”. May it be so increasingly with each one of us!