GOD’S WAY
Isaiah 55:6-9; Proverbs 14:12; Isaiah 55:1-3;
I would like to speak of God’s way and man’s way. Maybe I should bring it a bit closer and say, God’s way, and my way or your way. The world will teach you, dear young friend, that your way is best. Your education, your peers, social media will all tell you that your way is best, that nothing should stop you pursuing your way, because you are your own person, you have your own will and whatever you want to be, whoever you want to be, whatever you want to do, the world will tell you, ‘Go ahead, what is to stop you? Your way is the best way for you’. But I tell you that God’s way is best, and God’s way is for your blessing, because God has nothing in mind for you apart from blessing. He wants you to be satisfied, to bring joy into your life.
God wants you for Himself, but I have to tell you that, if you pursue your own way, you will end with a ruined life. You do not need to look too far in this world to see that, and I suppose the young people amongst us can sometimes see it in the lives of their friends. Many are not being brought up in the same home with both their mother and father. There are many young persons who have turmoil brought into their lives through no fault of their own. You may ask why it is. Why? I can tell you that it is because persons have gone their own way. They thought their way was the best. But this scripture in Proverbs that we read – there are not many scriptures that are repeated twice in the Bible, but this proverb is one of them – says, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is the ways of death”. How true.
That is the plight of many but God does not want that for you, or for them either. He wants you to come into blessing and He has provided the means for it. So in
Isaiah He says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways”. God has far better things in mind for you than you have for yourself. Any desires you may have for yourself in this world will not bring you satisfaction and they are bounded by time. God has the richest blessings in mind for you. Our brother last week in the gospel read Luke 15 about a young lad, the prodigal son, who thought that his way was best. He was urgent to pursue it. After he had asked for his inheritance, it says that after “not many days”, he went away. He was urgent to pursue that way which seemed right to him. But where did it end? If God had not touched his affections in that far distant land, if that young man had not remembered his father’s house, what would the end have been but “the ways of death”? But that is not what the gospel is about. The gospel is about God’s way. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and his ways are higher than our ways.
So, beloved, what is the answer? The answer is accepting God’s way of blessing. I can assure you, not only by experience but from the page of scripture, that God’s way is best, His will is best for you. Oh, beloved, that is why the gospel is preached, because God wants to show you the way of blessing. So the scripture says, “Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near”. He is near tonight. The Lord is near you, for God has provided a Saviour in the Lord Jesus Christ. You may say, I have heard the gospel many times, I know the gospel story. But have you accepted it? Have you accepted that God’s way is best for you? God has done everything for you. He knows your need; He knows your need better than you do and He has provided an answer to your need. That is a blessed matter. As we are reminded in the epistle of John, the love of God is very different from even the best of natural love. God has shown His love to those, you might say, who in one sense were unlovable, those who were far away from Him, those who were in their sins. And if you are in your sins tonight, God’s love is still towards you, God’s heart is towards you. He wants to bring blessing into your life, and He has made full provision for that by providing a Saviour for you.
I want to tell you about Jesus; I want to tell you about the Saviour, the One who went a way of deep sorrow, that led Him to the cross where He bore God’s righteous judgment against sin. Why did He do it? He did it in order that the way of salvation might be opened to mankind; that it might be opened to you. And that way is opened tonight to every person in this world, if they will only heed God’s overtures of grace and mercy in the glad tidings. The answer to your need is Jesus. Have you ever thought about your need, about your sins? They stand between you and God, and if they have not been washed away in the blood of Jesus, they remain there, they remain as a barrier. On one side you have the sinner and on the other you have a sin-hating God, and your sins stand there. Do they burden you? Have you ever thought about them? Have you ever considered what they mean to God? Dear friend, Jesus went to Calvary because of your sins and my sins. There was no need for Jesus to die at Calvary because of anything he had done, but He went there because of sin and sins, and that matter had to be dealt with, dealt with before God. And praise be His Name, the Lord Jesus went there and He suffered at the hands of men. No other man has ever suffered like that. Think of what it meant to Jesus, the holy harmless One, the One who was separated from sinners, yet He suffered in that way. He did not react to these blows to His face, or to the scourging or the spitting. He suffered at the hands of men. There, after that mockery of a trial where He, the sinless One, was condemned to die, the Roman soldiers took Him and nailed Him to that cross. He suffered from these nails driven into His hands and into His feet. Why? Why? Well, beloved, I can say Jesus was there for me. And as he hung there, this world was darkened, during those three hours of darkness that came upon this world when the enormity of the sins of all who would believe on Him were borne by Jesus. He suffered for me there at Calvary. I can say that God, the holy sin-hating God, laid my sins upon Jesus, and He bore them. He bore them as if they were His own sins. The ones that I remember, the ones that I may have forgotten – because some sins may seem insignificant to us, but they were not insignificant to God at Calvary. No sin was insignificant; the sins of every believer were laid upon the head of Jesus and He bore them as if they were His own.
He took responsibility before God for my sins. In effect He said, ‘they were Mine’. They were not of course. No – how could they be? Jesus was the sinless One, yet He was made sin for me. Can you say that? Can you say that my sins were borne by Jesus? These words are in our hymns and we sing them; yes, we love to sing them. But can you sing, and mean it, that
‘My guilt was borne by Jesus,
When in darkness on the tree’ (Hymn 212)
You see, dear friend, that was God’s way of bringing salvation to you. The sins of every one who believes in Him were borne by Jesus, and then on that cross at Calvary, He laid down His life. Death had no claim on Jesus; He was the only One who has lived on whom death had no claim. Death has a claim on you and me, for we are sinners. We cannot exclude ourselves from that claim, the claim of death. Jesus went into death of His own volition. He had authority to lay down His life and He had authority to take it again, see John 10:18. But after Jesus died, that soldier came and pierced His side, and it says that “there came out blood and water”, John 19:34. The way of redemption is God’s way too. There was no other way, there is no other way to the forgiveness of sins. There could be no other way to take away your sins. God’s way is the way of redemption and it required that the precious blood of Jesus, the sinless One, was shed. Again, we sing;
Shed for rebels, shed for sinners,
Shed for me (Hymn 167).
Can you say that and believe it – it is God’s way of salvation?
I say again, God’s way is best. Jesus, the One who died and shed His precious blood, is no longer in death. He was taken from that cross and laid in the tomb, laid in that grave in which no other had been laid. But He is no longer there, He is out of death. His work has been completed, and He will never, ever have to say to death again. He is the One who has come out of death, the One who has the keys of death and of hades and no one can take these keys from His hand. Jesus is living and He is ascended on high at the right hand of God. He is God’s Man – a Man after God’s own heart. “Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and granted him a name, that which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow”, Phil.2:9. That is God’s way. Every knee will bow, and I have to tell you that if you do not bow your knee to Jesus now in this time of grace, there will come a day when you will have to bow your knee in a time of judgment. That is God’s way too. He has exalted Jesus and every man and woman and child of an age of responsibility will be brought to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord and King.
“Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near”. God’s way for you is a way of blessing, and He is beseeching you in the glad tidings. He is not asking you how many gospel preachings you have heard, He is asking you to believe on the Saviour. Will you give your heart to Him? It will be for your blessing. It says, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return”. Will God have a full resumé of your sins? How long would that take if, when you came to God, He had such a list? No, it says “he will have mercy upon him; … for he will abundantly pardon”. What a God! Is it not wonderful; “so are my ways higher than your ways”. When the son in Luke 15 returned, all he wanted in one sense was just to be inside the door, all he wanted was to be a bondman. But that is not God’s thought. God’s thoughts are higher than your thoughts and my thoughts, and He wants to bring you into blessing.
O dear friend, come to Christ, whatever your need is! You do not need money, for salvation cannot be bought; it does not cost you anything. But how often in our way we toil, for that is a feature of the world in which we live. God says, “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?” Why keep going into the world searching for happiness, searching for joy? You will never find it there! It is fading. It is only a gloss, a mirage. It looks good from a distance but when you get there, what is it? What is there? Come to Christ, know what it is to have eternal joy and happiness. Think of what God would provide, think of what that younger son enjoyed; “Bring out the best robe and clothe him in it”, Luke 15:22. Think of the joy of the house. “Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness”. God has food available for you. As well as knowing and having the certainty of the forgiveness of sins, He would provide for your every need as well. What a blessing that is.
The world can provide nothing like it. What can you compare with the joy and the knowledge that your sins are forgiven, and that they will never be raised again? They could not be raised again because they have been borne by Jesus: they have been washed away in His precious blood. They are gone for ever. But then it says, “Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the sure mercies of David”. God not only provides for time. He provides for eternity and if you have a link with Jesus, it is everlasting, it can never be broken. If you believe on the Lord Jesus and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved and saved for eternity, a wonderful matter. That is God’s way. It does not depend on me. If it depended on me, where would I be? When Peter cried to the Lord, “Lord, save me” (Matt.14:31), Jesus took hold of him and He never let him go. And that is the portion of the believer – an everlasting covenant that can never be broken. That is a wonderful portion.
That is the gospel, God’s way – the way of blessing, the way of salvation, the way of peace, the way of joy. Not only the forgiveness of sins, but God would also provide the Holy Spirit for you. ‘Peace, sonship, joy, the Holy Spirit given’, as the hymn (Hymn 123) says. That is God’s way. He does not leave believers to their own resources, He not only provides for their eternal salvation, but He also provides for their present salvation. Is that not wonderful? What a God! What a message! How can you refuse it? How can you say ‘No’? Dear friend, what a gospel, what a God. What ways are His and they are for your blessing.
I wanted just to touch briefly on this word in Matthew 7; “Enter in through the narrow gate, for wide the gate and broad the way that leads to destruction, and many are they who enter in through it”. The way of the world is a crowded way. There are many on it and it leads to one end. It will be for your loss; it may even be for your eternal loss. What a matter. But God has provided His way, the way of salvation. “For narrow the gate and straitened the way that leads to life”. There it is. You might say that the gospel is a narrow way. It is, because you need to leave a lot of yourself behind. You have to stand with God and look at yourself and see the way that God views you. And if you are in your sins, you have so great a burden. That weight is too much to go through the narrow gate. You need salvation, you need Christ. You need His precious shed blood and then you find that that weight, that burden, is lifted, and you can go through that narrow gate and find the blessings that are on the other side. That is God’s way. But there are few that find it. There is blessing in being among those who find the narrow gate.
How do you think these persons felt in Genesis in Noah’s time when the flood came? Do you think they were happy? That cry I am sure went up ‘O to be among those in the ark’. There were only eight souls that were saved at that time. Dear friend, God’s way is best. May you find it. It is the way of salvation. It is the way that Christ is on and He will be with you in it. In Luke 24 it says, “Jesus himself drawing nigh went with them” (v.15); He brought them into the way of salvation. If you are in the way of salvation, Jesus is always near you. The scripture says, “The Lord is near” (Phil.4:5), and if you are on that way, He is available to you – always.
I commend God’s way to you. May the Lord bless the word.
Gospel preaching, Glasgow
23 May 2021
Trevor R Campbell