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THE SERVICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE GLAD TIDINGS

D. B. Robertson

I desire to speak regarding the service of the Holy Spirit and the glad tidings. The glad tidings of God; God Himself is the great source of them. They are concerning His Son,

Jesus Christ our Lord; He is the subject of the glad tidings, but the glad tidings themselves are so great that it requires the power of a divine Person to preach them. Peter speaks of those who delivered the account of the glad tidings, and did so in the power of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven (1 Peter 1: 12). I have no doubt at all that an educated man might be able to preach a technical gospel, in fact it may be very often done, but for the gospel to be effectual it must be preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come from an exalted Christ. That is, He came from the great area of Christ’s exaltation to take charge of the administration of the preaching of the glad tidings down here. I would like to say that the greatest administration in a public sense that has ever taken place in this world is the administration of the glad tidings. In Romans 3 you get the great foundation established in the perfection of the redemptive work of Christ. Romans 4 shows us the way into it, the righteousness of faith operates and brings a man into it and he gets the blessing. In Romans 5 you get the administration of the glad tidings, a most wonderful administration. It is a chapter worth reading. These three chapters, 3, 4 and 5 are wonderful chapters.

I believe the first great feature that the Holy Spirit would emphasise in the preaching is that the Man who has accomplished the work of redemption according to the will of God, is now installed in glory. That is a wonderful truth. The Spirit would bring that home to you that there is a Man there. God waited a long time for the Man to be there. Sin had come in and disrupted the relationship between man and God, and how God felt that. God yearned for a man who was fit for His presence, not man at a distance but man who was fit for His presence and that really is seen now in the fact that now a Man has arrived and He is in the immediate presence of God, exalted and crowned with glory and honour, and from that sphere the Holy Spirit has come and He brings power into the glad tidings and He brings in more than power, He brings divine feelings into the glad tidings.

I want to speak about these passages that have been read. There was an order set up in the tabernacle system and it was a representative order. God never intended that it should be any more than that, it was figurative of what God had in mind. What it represented in God’s mind was a great universal order set up where man could be in happy relationship with God and serve God for His heart’s pleasure. That never really operated in the tabernacle system. The great hindrance was that sin had come in, and man under the domination of sin was far from pleasing to God—so that there were certain limitations, certain prohibitions, in the old order of things. Possibly the greatest prohibition was that there was no way man could get into the holy of holies; that is, the way into the immediate presence of God was barred. The high priest went in there once a year and he had to go in with blood, not his own, it was only a temporary figurative arrangement of things. Another thing that the old economy could not do, while there were the offerings of the law, they could never purge the conscience, so a man always had an uneasy conscience. Another thing was that the value of it only remained for a year; it had to be renewed yearly. Now God felt all these things, and it says here that “the Holy Spirit shewing this, that the way of the holy of holies has not yet been made manifest”. I think the Spirit of God was anticipating the time when it would be made manifest. He was yearning for it. Divine Persons felt the barrier that kept man from the immediate presence of God, and the Holy Spirit was showing that the way of the holy of holies had not yet been made manifest. It had to wait. The offerings were figurative, they were looking forward to something else, they were looking forward to the day when God Himself would take up the whole question of sin and settle it, remove it from His sight and eventually remove it from the world. He will yet take away the sin of the world; the Holy Spirit was anticipating that, and what is expressed in that is divine feelings. How God was yearning that man would come into His presence, but it was not yet made manifest because this great work had to be done.

That brings me to the next part read, “how much rather shall the blood of the Christ, who by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God”. I want to touch on this feelingly as I have an impression of it. I think it indicates that the Lord Jesus here was moving as Man into this area as relying on the Holy Spirit’s power. It had come to possibly the most momentous point that could happen in the history of time. The Lord had become Man and God had found pleasure in Him, His life had been exemplary, He was the true oblation, every feature there was pleasurable to God, everything that He did, everything that He said, every thought was in perfect accord with the mind and the will and the heart of God. He led a life of untainted purity. He was holy, sinless and spotless. What a Person, what a blessed Man! It comes to this point. In the gospels we know that He faced things in Gethsemane. We would bear that in our minds. The Holy Spirit comes into this verse, “who by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God”. That is not the sin-offering yet, it is the burnt-offering.

What I think the Holy Spirit would do is to give a touch as to the intensity of the devotion of Christ in manhood towards God. The Spirit was here active in Christ, providing Him with what He needed in the way of strength, “who by the eternal Spirit”. We may say reverently He was using the power of the Holy Spirit at this moment. He was moving in that power.

Earlier He had done that, He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, not into it but in it; and here He is supported by the Spirit. What the Spirit I think would testify is that here was a Man in the intensity of devotion to God, a life completely devoted to be offered up as God saw fit to be disposed of. Think of that—that is the burnt-offering. The sin-offering was offered at the place of the burnt-offering. There was no sin-offering altar, the sin-offering was offered on the altar of burnt-offering and this is what we have here. The Spirit I believe would give us that peculiar touch, especially to those who have believed and learned to love the Lord Jesus, how we would feed on the intensity of His devotion at this critical and solemn moment when He “by the eternal Spirit offering himself spotless to God”. What a work it was. At that time, as Mr Darby said, ‘then the Lord lays the sins on Him—He is made sin for us’ (Notes and Comments Vol. 2, p.23). What the law could not do, what all the offerings that were offered according to the law could never do, God was going to do it and He was going to do it in Christ. He became the sin-offering in the sight of God, the One to whom He was so intensely committed, the whole matter had to be undertaken between God and Christ. At the cross it was a holy transaction between God and Christ. The only unholy things that were there were your sins and mine. What a transaction that was when the Lord Jesus Christ became the sin-offering, when God judged unmitigatedly His judgment upon Him.

‘O day of greatest sorrow,

Day of unfathomed grief!

When thou didst taste the horror

Of wrath without relief. (Hymn 190)

Who of us could measure that? It is infinite! If man were to be brought into the presence of God it was necessary. If man were to be blessed even in the way of forgiveness of sins it was necessary that there should be a sin-offering, and that that sin-offering should satisfy a holy sin-hating God. It was all vicarious, there was no sin in Him. It was a work that was undertaken vicariously, nevertheless it was a work that was undertaken to glorify God in respect of the whole sin question.

I want to touch on the three great results that came from it. The work was so great, the clearance of sin was so great that there were immediate results from it. One is that there is an immediate access into the presence of God. That is a wonderful thing, that way was made, not only for God to come out to man but for man to go in to God. Is that not wonderful? The second great result is that man could get a

purified conscience with absolutely no doubt in his conscience, no nagging doubt. Is there anything yet to be taken into account? No, the whole matter is settled, the conscience is purified, you may say, from dead works. What are the dead works? Dead works are just like a religious code of things, how things are filled out religiously, just in a form of things. This was a vital matter that man was now able, as coming into the gain of the sacrificial work of Christ, to go right into the presence of God, and be there at perfect ease and in perfect liberty to serve God and to worship God. What a great result, and it is more than that. The third result, He is there on the basis of an eternal redemption. No longer once a year, no longer needing to be repeated year after year, He was there not only for time but for eternity. He was there on the foundation of eternal redemption. I would ask everyone here if you understand that. Are you really conscious of how you are redeemed in the sense of being brought near to God?

It says, “Christ indeed has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God”, 1 Peter 3: 18. That is, immediately into the presence of God, without a doubt, your conscience relieved of all its burden, with a sense of your sins having been dealt with, and sin itself has been dealt with. You are in the presence of God, not only for your blessing but for God’s satisfaction, and you are there for ever because it is an eternal redemption. I know that the work of remission, as we have been taught, requires not only the sufferings of Christ, but it requires the death of Christ and the blood-shedding of Christ and that comes into this passage. The Spirit would bring that into the witness of the glad tidings too, “how much rather shall the blood of the Christ, who by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God, purify your conscience from dead works to worship the living God?” And then, “death having taken place for redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, the called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance”. I think there is a fourth result. The first result, as I say, is immediate access into the presence of God, and be there with an untroubled conscience, everything is clear between your soul and God. That is a wonderful thing to have an abiding peace in your soul as having put your trust in the redemptive work of Christ, and you are there on the basis of eternal redemption. At the end of verse 15 it says, “the called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance”. So there are four great results.

The Lord has completed the work, He has entered death, He must die. Christ died for our sins, He was buried, He has been raised again (1 Corinthians 15: 3, 4). That is the completeness of the great work of Christ; death had to take place, the blood had to be shed, but then there was not only the removal of the penalty of sin, the penalty of death, but the power of death was shattered. Think of the Spirit bringing us into the joy of that, the power of death shattered. I was just going to recall a little incident about the blood of Christ for the sake of the younger people. I learned about it many years ago. There was an old lady and there was a Christian brother staying very near her. She was ill and obviously nearing death.

He was not sure whether she was the Lord’s, whether she was covered by the precious blood of Christ, whether she was free from judgment, and he raised the question with her. She smiled at him and this is what she said, ‘I am resting on the solitary dignity of the blood of the Christ’. Is that not wonderful? You think of the immensity of what that woman said, ‘I am resting’, that is, she had settled peace. I trust you have settled peace. Maybe you have a troubled conscience, but you need no longer, if you put your faith in Jesus and trust Him as your Saviour, and see that that work was accomplished to relieve your burden and mine. She said, ‘I am resting on the solitary dignity of the blood of the Christ’. There is no other. They can bring in all the alternatives that they like in Christendom, but there is no other. The blood of Christ is the only ground of redemption, and the only ground upon which your sins can be remitted. There are those who esteem the blood of the covenant common, they make it a common thing, but it is dignified; ‘I am resting on the solitary dignity of the blood of the Christ’.

I trust we can all say that we are resting on the solitary dignity of the blood of Christ, and not only that, but that we know that our Saviour has been into death and is out of it, is raised, and that redemption and remission of sins is preached in the name of a risen Saviour; the Spirit’s power is in that and there is great triumph in preaching it. I believe the Spirit has great joy in preaching it, but more than that, He would bring into your heart and my heart this assurance that we get in chapter 10, “the Holy Spirit also bears us witness of it”, Hebrews 10: 15. You might say all this is about Israel but He is bearing us witness and His witness is this, “This is the covenant which I will establish towards them after those days, saith the Lord—Giving my laws into their hearts, I will write them also in their understandings; and their sins and their lawlessnesses I will never remember any more”. I love that verse, it is sweet to me, it is precious to me. I read something of Mr Taylor’s this week. He said if he was to spell out the word ‘grace’ in the types he would spell it this way, “and their sins and their lawlessnesses I will never remember any more” (J. Taylor Vol. 60, p.184). That is the work of divine grace, it delights to liberate you and to give you the inward consciousness that all is well. I spent a short time with a brother, Mr John Trotter, before the Lord took him. We spoke about many things, and one thing that we did speak about was that we were all going to have bodies of glory like unto Christ’s own body of glory. When the time came and we had to leave, as I walked to the door, he said, ‘David, everything is all right’.

Friend, young man, young woman, is everything all right? Face it now. Is everything all right? Are you sure? I am bringing in the witness of the Holy Spirit, there is a witness to us that the ground has been established that God can bless you righteously. He can give you forgiveness of sins, he can can quit you of every liability. He can reconcile you, can bring you near to Himself, He has removed the distance, He can secure you as a son of God, and have you in His presence for His own pleasure. These are the things that the Holy Spirit would delight to testify to you. I am thankful to God for the opportunity to testify to the wonder of these things and to appeal to you and to ask you again, Is everything all right? If it is not get things settled with God. I cannot settle them for you, no power on earth can settle them for you, but you can have an individual transaction with God, because God has respect for the work of Christ.

In the chapter which we read in the reading today (Hebrews 9), there are three great things established in it, one is the work of Christ, the second thing is the will of God, and the third thing is the witness of the Holy Spirit. These are great things! The work of Christ, how perfectly complete it is, God has been glorified, the ground has been cleared for God to bless man righteously, and to bring him right into His presence. The will of God—what is the will of God? One of the poets said, ‘is it thy sovereign will one man to bless, and ten to send to hell?’ No, it is not that. His will is that every one should be saved and brought to the knowledge of the truth, and that includes you. Friend, is everything all right? Face it now, and there is the witness of the Holy Spirit to give you the inward consciousness that everything surely is all right. God is ready to say, ‘Your sins and your lawlessnesses will I remember no more for ever’.

I would finish just with the word, “Wherefore, even as says the Holy Spirit”. It is not what He has said, it is what He says. I have testified in a very feeble way to the glory of what God has done in dealing with the whole issue that lay as a barrier against man coming into the presence of God for His pleasure. All that has been done. What is His final word? Here it is.

“Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts”. I believe that there are persons in this room who have faith, and that their prayer at this very moment is that you may not harden your hearts. ‘Swing your heart’s door widely open’, and let Him in. You can keep Him out, you know. God has dealt with the great barrier of sin, but it might be that there is a barrier of will operating in your life, you might have other things before you; count the cost. There is an old verse that says,

Have you bartered your hopes of eternity’s morn,

For a moment of joy at the most,

For the glitter of sin, and the things it will win,

Have you counted, have you counted the cost?’

The Holy Spirit is still saying, “Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts”. May the result from the word be a yield in increased pleasure for our blessed Saviour God, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Glasgow
8 June 2008

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