(ii) The End

M.H.Tucker

Luke 22: 35-37; Deuteronomy 8: 2-4, 16; Job 31: 40; 42: 12; Numbers 23: 10; 1 Corinthians 15: 24-28

Those of us who were privileged to be present this afternoon will remember that among other things that came before us on that occasion was the blessedness of that which obtained in the beginning of things. We are reminded of God’s beginning in creation and what He ordained in His considerate forethought for His creature in regard to the question of marriage, and we were likewise engaged with the lustre that the Lord Jesus Himself shed on a marriage occasion when it was said of Him, “This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed on him”.

We have of course prayed for our dear brother and sister at the beginning of this fresh path that they are each taking this day for they are starting out on a path that neither of them has hitherto trod. It is a beginning, and it is right that we should pray for them and make their beginning as auspicious as possible. We are all thankful to God for the sense of divine blessing which marked the occasion, but, dear brethren, what I have to say tonight relates to another side of the truth, namely the question of the end, which is of equal importance, indeed one might say it is of greater importance because we read in the book of Ecclesiastes that “better is the end of a thing than the beginning”, Eccl 7 :8. The question of how we are going to finish is of supreme importance.

As we grow older and the end of the road comes into clearer view, the more we feel the need for finishing our course with joy. The end of some things is an end of shame, resulting in judgment. We read for instance in the epistle of Peter, “For the time of having the judgment begin from the house of God is come; but if first from us, what shall be the end of those who obey not the glad tidings of God?”, 1 Peter 4: 17.

We read too that the nation of Israel in the apostacy in the last days is likened to a devil-dispossessed man whose house is swept and garnished but to which the unclean spirit will return with seven-fold force causing the last state of that man to be worse than the first. The Spirit of God is looking on to the awful apostacy that will develop and become full-blown in the last days.

I do not wish, however, to occupy you with that kind of thing save by way of warning, but I just wish to say a word, with the gracious help of the Lord and of the Holy Spirit, in connection with these scriptures, each of which refers to the thought of the end.

In Luke 22, the Lord Jesus is speaking as Man and it is very affecting to take account of His language as the day of the cross drew nearer. And He said to His own, “The things concerning me have an end”. That spotless lowly life of Jesus lived here for the pleasure and glory of God for thirty three and a half years (last three and a half years of which were employed in public service to God and man) had to terminate. What pleasure God found in the lowly life of Jesus! It was a life that morally was worthy of being perpetuated, but, dear brethren, it came to an end. Even the life of Jesus after the flesh came to an end. That life which was a thing of beauty on the earth in the sight of God had to be taken from the earth. It was a life of flesh and blood in which you and I live but which was unforfeited in His case because in Him was no sin nor guile and He had the right to live for ever, but He chose to lay down His life in death. It was brought to an end. The Lord did it feelingly. We have only to read Psalm 102 to take note of the holy sufferings of His soul when He said, “My God, take Me not away in the midst of my days”, Ps. 102: 24. It was part of the Lord’s very perfection to deprecate being cut off, but He was cut off because the will of God demanded it, because otherwise you and I would never have been brought into blessing. We have to remember that the Lord Jesus stooped into the condition of Manhood not to improve it, but to end it. Why? Because we ourselves have broken down in that condition. We have dishonoured God as to our responsibility in that condition. It was moreover never God’s original thought that the flesh and blood condition should be perpetuated; His thought was that it should be ended vicariously in the Person of His beloved Son.

So the Lord Jesus went into death to close up the old order of man that would never do for God. There is a saying that ‘What cannot be mended must be ended’, and that applies with special force to man after the flesh; tested in every way as he was by God and only found wanting. The Lord Jesus Himself was the only One to give full delight to God in that condition, but in closing up the life of Jesus God did not bring that condition to an end ingloriously but triumphantly. He went into death, laying down that life which He was never to resume in conditions of flesh and blood but we all know that He has taken His life again in new conditions, and He would associate us along with Himself in those conditions. He said, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself”, John 10: 18. He laid down His life of flesh and blood in death and He has taken His life not beyond death – a life that death can never have to say to at all – and He links us with Himself beyond death. I wish, dear brethren, however, to emphasise the fact that the closing up of the one condition was done feelingly by the Lord. It caused Him infinite sorrow to do it, and it should affect every one of us to note that the things concerning Christ had an end in that way. Just as the victim in the sin offering was wholly consumed outside the camp, so Jesus as the Victim came under the unsparing judgment of God and has gone in that sense but He has taken His place in a new way beyond death having Himself consumed the judgment.

I will now pass on to the Scripture in Deuteronomy which I feel applies to us all. We are reminded very happily this afternoon in one of Mr. Darby’s hymns that as passing through the desert we have to do with a patient God:

In the desert God will teach thee

What the God that thou has found –

Patient, gracious, powerful, holy:

All His grace shall there abound.                  

Moses in chapter 8 of this book reviews the forty years passage through the desert, and reminds Israel of the way that God had humbled them and proved them, all to the end that He might do them good at their latter end. What a blessed God we have to do with, dear brethren: for His purpose was to bring them into His own land – a spacious and large land flowing with mild and honey – the Promised Land of His purpose – thus doing them good in their latter end. That is God’s thought for His people as a whole. One loves to think of the Church of Christ journeying through this scene:

Here on earth beset by foes,

Well beloved by Christ her Head,

May Thy church in love’s repose

Her appointed journey tread.

I believe it is in these latter days that God will do us good in a very special sense, for if we are in the most testing days at the end we are in the most blessed days and God intends to do us good in our latter end.

The passages in the book of Job are very similar, except that the individual side is there stressed. It is remarkable that the Spirit of God should have devoted forty chapters to the consideration of God’s ways with such a one as Job. The whole book well repays close reading, I commend it to the study of all and especially to the young people. We see God’s gracious dealings with Job. He was a remarkable man, perhaps one of the best specimens of humanity that lived in that day, and God allowed Satan to try him to the uttermost. He was robbed of his possessions, his family, and his health, and in addition to these serious losses, he suffered through the tempting of his wife, who suggested that there was nothing left to him to do but to “curse God and die”. Yet Job stood firm in his integrity, and the ensuing chapters show what God was aiming at. There was a certain lack in that man’s soul that only God could perceive. He had done well, but God wanted him to do better still. In the same way the Lord Jesus, in speaking of the Father’s discipline and the vine, says it is the bough that brings forth fruit that receives attention. It is purged. Why? That it might bring forth more fruit.

Well, God saw there was a need in Job’s soul; that while he feared God and eschewed evil he yet trusted in some way in himself and his righteousness, and what his afflictions did not bring out, his three friends did by their arguments. In replying to them Job poured out his whole soul in bitterness, and justified himself. His friends could find no answer for what he said, and the time came when he said himself, “the words of Job are ended”. A very good ending too. It is a very good thing if we each of us come to that point when all attempt at self-justification is ended and God can begin to speak; first of all in Elihu, who was made to speak to Job in God’s stead, and secondly the speaking of God Himself personally who followed up that of Elihu. One would covet thus to speak to individuals or to the saints collectively so that God can follow it up. What the three friends were unable to accomplish, through God’s grace was accomplished through the further speakings of Elihu and God Himself, and Job was brought to the point to which God wished to bring him. Job says, “I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes” (ch. 42:5,6)

This is the only right condition of soul for any one of us, and the question is whether we have all arrived at it. It may account for the lack of spiritual progress with some of us – that we have not reached that point. Mr. Darby was asked at the end of his life what had kept him for so many years, and he replied, ‘I can only suppose that I started my spiritual history with a sense of my utter vileness’. Well, Job was brought to that, and God blessed him, “And Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning”. James in his epistle speaks of God’s end in the matter. There was Job’s end, but there was God’s end. James says, “ye have heard of the endurance of Job, and seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is full of tender compassion and pitiful”, James 5: 11.

God loves us too well, dear brethren, not to allow His discipline, whatever it may be, to have full effect. We would often spoil His work ourselves by interfering to bring in relief prematurely, but God comes in just in time.

He never is before His time

And never is behind.

God thus blessed the latter end of Job.

In Numbers 23 verse 10 we have the confession of a man who, alas, had no vital part in the things of God, although God used him as His own mouthpiece to bless His people when the enemy sought to curse them. God turned the curse into a blessing for Balaam is made to pronounce a fourfold benediction upon the people of God. He sees them in his first parable as a separated people, in his second as a justified people, in his third as a beautified people and in his fourth as a victorious people. God in effect makes that man to see His own work in the saints and one of the things Balaam says is this, “Let my soul die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like his”. What a solemn thing to say, the implication being that there is a great difference between the death of the Christian and the death of one who goes out of this world without Christ and without God. What comparison can there be? Every Christian’s death should be a triumph. The last end of a Christian is most glorious for he is ushered into the presence of the One he has known and loved and served. Well might Balaam say, “Let my soul die the death of the righteous, and let my end by like his”.

I said at the beginning that a lot depends on the way we finish. I would refer in this connection to Hebrews 11. Every one of the men of faith in that chapter finished well, particularly Jacob, who had a very inauspicious beginning, but a fine finish. He finished as a worshipper – worshipping upon the top of his staff. What grander finish could you have than that? You will note, however, that some Old Testament characters are conspicuous by their absence in that chapter. Take a man like Solomon; he had a wonderful beginning. He prayed that he might be given wisdom to judge God’s so great a people. He was but a little child, he confessed, and we read that God was pleased with his prayer because he had not asked for riches or glory, and God gave him these blessings in addition to the wisdom for which he had asked, but what about his end? Alas, we have to confess that it was displeasing to God. At the end of his days he became an idolater, forsaking the living and the true God, and so he is not found in the roll of honour recorded in Hebrews 11.

I would encourage every one to consider the end and to be exercised that the rest of our time should be filled out for the pleasure of the blessed God and that when the moment comes for us to go, if it be by way of death, we might, like Stephen, be able to commit our spirits to the Lord. I remember Mr. Taylor saying what a lovely spirit Stephen could hand over to the Lord at the end of his course. The important question for each one of us, is to take heed to our spirits. Twice over in Malachi you have the word, “Take heed to your spirit”, Mal. 2:15,16. A lot depends on the way we rule our spirits, and whether we are prepared to go, as Stephen did, forgiving our very murderers.

So much for our own end; I wish finally to speak of the great ultimate thought that is before God. 1 Corinthians 15 verses 24 to 28 is perhaps one of the most remarkable passages in the Scriptures in that the Spirit of God gives us a very large and very long view of what will obtain at the ultimate end, “Then the end, when He gives up the kingdom to Him who is God and Father; when He shall have annulled all rule and all authority and all power. For he must reign until he put all enemies under his feet”. It might help if I were to put divine Persons Themselves in the place of the pronouns that are used, beginning for instance with verse 27. “For he” – that is God – “has put all things in subjection under his” – that is Christ’s – “feet”. The time is coming when God will bring everything into subjection to Christ. He is going to be honoured in the very scene where He was cast out. Then it goes on to say, “But when he” – that is God – “says that all things are put in subjection, it is evident that it is except him” – that is God – “who put all things in subjection to Him” – that is Christ – “But when all things shall have been brought into subjection to Him” – that is Christ – “then the Son also himself shall be placed in subjection to him” – that is God – “that God may be all in all”. I think it helps us to see which divine Person is in mind in those verses.

Another thing I would like to bring out before I finish, is this, that the passage indirectly suggests a fresh glory attaching to the Person of Christ. After a glorious reign of a thousand years and after exercising universal sway, that blessed Person is prepared to hand the kingdom over to God. He is prepared to surrender it all. What other man would be prepared to take that course? Well, it only shows that the heart of Christ is just the same as it was in the days of His humiliation when it was ever His mind to go down. This was the subject, lowly mind of Jesus, and if He is again prepared to go that way and after a glorious millennial reign of thousand years to yield up the kingdom and the sceptre to God, it ought to encourage us to go down ourselves. There is far more pride in our natural make-up than we realise and it is only as we possess the mind of Christ Jesus – the One who was prepared to go down – that we shall be enabled to take the same path ourselves. All this is to the end that God might be “all in all”. I would not presume to be able to expound that simple and yet profound statement, but it brings before us God in His eternal supremacy, the One who is God from everlasting to everlasting. I suppose this is one of the passages that would embrace the three Persons of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – while however God will be “all in all”, the Lord Jesus Himself for ever remains Man, for the incarnation is never undone. He will ever remain a Man in the presence of God, and we shall be like Him and conformed to His image.

What a glorious end is that to which we all have to look forward! As Mr. Darby said to an anxious clergyman in 1881, when he was exercised about leaving the Church of England, and was filled with misgivings as to the future, ‘There is no future but glory for the Christian’. Let us lay that to heart, dear brethren, no future but glory for the Christian. Mr. Darby also used similar language to a young man who had sinned and been restored – saying to him at the end of an address, ‘no yesterday but the cross – no tomorrow but the glory. Go on!’ I would, in all affection, pass on that exhortation to you, dear brethren, that we may be concerned not only for the beginning and for the middle part of the course, but the finish.

May God graciously bless this word to all our hearts.

 

WIMBLEDON

28 June 1952

 

 

Ministry recalled at a Golden Wedding (E.C and E.V H.)

[In those days, there was a ministry meeting with a number of hymns and prayers, followed by tea and an address by an invited brother. Ed.]