THE PRESENT AND PERSONAL POWER OF CHRIST
J. McKay
1 Kings 1: 38–40; John 11: 24, 25; 12: 31–33; 20: 17
I would like, dear brethren, to say a word, if the Lord gives grace for it, as to the present and personal power of Christ. We have been challenged in our affections and in our minds by what has engaged us as to the matter of our responsibility. We are responsible. We have been richly blessed and the measure of our blessing is the standard of our responsibility. But we are greatly tested as we speak of our responsibility, whether it be personal, household, or collective. I think it would help us, dear brethren, to rise to the challenge which the Spirit of God would bring in, to realise the present and personal power of Christ which is active on our behalf. That is what gives the positive assurance that what is of God in these days of outward smallness and breakdown is going to be carried through in triumph. You may feel tested, you may feel weak, you may feel that in your locality things are fragmented and small; the divine answer is to return to God’s thoughts in relation to the Man who is holding the initiative at the end of the dispensation. That is what is stressed in John’s gospel. In John, as we have often been reminded, the Lord Himself holds the initiative right the way through. In spite of what men do, in spite of what failure there may have been, or the opposition which may exist, the Lord Himself is holding the initiative right to the end. I think that should be an immense comfort to us all.
I began, not that I wish to say much about it, with the section in Kings where it says that King
David was old. He was weak and he could not get any warmth. Now that represents, I think, some failure in responsibility. Something had happened in the history of David to cause deterioration. He was not as bright as he had been, and it was a question of putting on clothes.
Christendom is full of that; in the absence of vitality, clothes are introduced to make things appear what they are not. It is not the divine answer. David had weakened morally. It says in relation to Adonijah his son that his father had not displeased him at any time by saying,
“Why doest thou so?”, 1 Kings 1: 6. There was a weakening somewhere in the moral standard and as a consequence of that Adonijah exalts himself. Christendom is full of the exaltation of man; not persons whom God promotes, but persons who promote themselves.
Now I think it is very interesting, dear brethren, to see the divine answer to this situation.
David is recovered through the skill of Nathan the prophet. Thank God for the prophetic word amongst us; may it be preserved to us. It says, “by a prophet he was preserved”, Hosea 12: 13. We want to be preserved. We are in days of danger; we want to be preserved together in the full light of the prophetic word. So Nathan recalls David, as directed of God, to the divine standard that Solomon is to be king. The answer is not to condemn Adonijah; that is left completely; the divine answer is, as David says, “Take with you the servants of your lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule ... and ... anoint him there king over Israel”.
Dear brethren, I believe that the answer to failure in responsibility on our part is to return to God’s thought as to the Man who is to control everything. I think it is important for us to realise that He is in power. Do you realise that Christ is in power at this time? You look forward and you say, ‘Yes, there is a day coming when the
earth will see His glory; all will acknowledge that He is the Man to control things’. Do you realise that He will never have any more power than He has at the moment? Paul speaks in Philippians 3: 21, of ‘the working of the power which He has even to subdue all things to Himself’. Dear brethren, I would like this occasion to be one of encouragement. If anyone is downcast here, if anyone is depressed, the great divine answer is to see that Christ has power currently to sustain us in relation to the whole course of God’s testimony. It is the complete and glorious answer to man’s failure in responsibility.
In John 11 we find the Lord Jesus moving in relation to this family in Bethany. John 10 has witnessed His total rejection by the Jews. They took up stones to cast them at Him. The Jew totally rejected the Man of God’s choice. In the section that follows the Lord moves onwards powerfully right to death itself. It has been likened to the ark of the covenant going forward towards the waters of Jordan. It is a powerful movement. The Lord Jesus, in John, does not go in as a victim; He goes in as the great Invader, the One who will conquer the power of death, the One who is overcoming everything that is against God’s thoughts in blessing for His people; and on the way He comes to Bethany.
We have spoken about Bethany in the reading, an exemplary place in many ways. Three persons were there and it tells us in chapter 11 verse 5 that Jesus loved them. “Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus”. It is an attractive scene, but the Lord wanted them to learn Him in a way in which they had never known Him before, and what comes into this setting in Bethany is tremendous discipline, sorrow which was crushing. Lazarus falls sick and the Lord is not there, and
the sickness continues and ultimately Lazarus dies. You look round, dear brethren, and you see the enormous pressures that exist among the saints, and you wonder at it. Persons whom we may feel we could ill afford to lose from our midst, they are absent from these occasions; persons in this area whom we have been used to seeing at these occasions are missing, and we feel that. The Lord is intent, through the experience, on teaching us His own personal power in a way, perhaps, in which we did not know it previously. He loved them, indeed He did, but they had something to learn in relation to the glory of Jesus, and I believe that there is something for us to learn through the present pressures of our brethren in isolation, our brethren in very small circumstances sustaining burdens that some of us know little about.
The Lord cares about these things and He would draw near to us as a Person who has immediate power in relation to the actual circumstances of His people.
Now in verse 24, where we read, “Martha says to him, I know that he” (that is Lazarus) “will rise again in the resurrection in the last day”. Perfectly true. A perfectly just statement of a faith that was common to all believers, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection in the last day”. But notice that the statement in itself is completely unconnected with the Person and glory of Christ Himself. The Lord says in answer to it, “I am the resurrection and the life”. Dear brethren, I believe we need to get to know the Lord in this way. Others have said that we shall never know any feature of truth rightly until we see it in relation to the Person of Christ. So here Martha says, “I know that he will rise ... in the last day”; the Lord says, “I am the resurrection and the life”. The Lord has present power to come into that situation of sorrow and to bring about a total and complete remedy to it. The Spirit would help us to
trust Him more.. God has trusted Him; we need to trust Him. There is a verse in the Psalms that has often attracted me as to God Himself. It speaks of “God ... thou confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of the distant regions of the sea”, Psalm 65: 5. Can we stimulate one another, dear brethren, in relation to confidence in the supremacy of divine power in spite of outwardly sorrowful and difficult circumstances?
The Lord says, “I am the resurrection”; the answer to death, the answer to the sorrow of it.
“And the life”, that is, the bringing in of what is positive according to God lies in the present power of Christ. I think we should be encouraged (young ones amongst us need to be encouraged) that Christ has the power in His hand at the moment for every exigency which may arise. At the beginning of Revelation He presents Himself, does He not, as the One who has “the keys of death and of hades”, Revelation 1: 18. There is nothing that can come against the saints that is not subject to the control of Christ. As Creator, He is supreme in the universe, but as Man, everything is His by right of conquest and there is nothing that can come against us unless He allows it to. He allowed certain things in chapter 11 of John’s gospel, and He allowed them for a reason, so that when we come to John 12, as we have often said, the Lord has a greater place among them than He ever had before. Dear brethren, is it so? Can it be so, that in the presence of the sorrow we find the unfailing and unfaltering support of Christ Himself, the One whose personal power is not only equal to meet the need, but to bring us into life?—“I am the resurrection and the life”.
When we come to John 12: 31, we read, “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out; and I, if I be
lifted up out of the earth, will draw all to me”; this is the complete answer to all the scattering that has happened—“the children of God who were scattered abroad”, John 11: 52. We are in the presence of a confused condition publicly. The great divine answer is that the One who has been into death and come out of it becomes the attractive centre for all that is of God. The completeness of this verse is impressive, “Now is the judgment of this world”. All that is going on in man’s world is but for a time; “the world is passing, and its lust, but he that does the will of God abides for eternity”, 1 John 2: 17. The Lord says, “Now is the judgment of this world”, that is the termination of everything that belongs to Satan’s system, “now shall the prince of this world be cast out”. Supreme power in Christ will remove the challenger, not only the challenge but the one through whom it has come; and then He says, “and I ... “. O, dear brethren, can our affections be moved today in relation to the present power that He has?
“I, if I be lifted up out of the earth, will draw all to me”.
The lifting up of Christ in John’s gospel is treated of in various ways. The first one stresses that it is essential, ‘the Son of man must be lifted up’. It was essential if the great work of redemption was to be accomplished that the death of Christ should happen. Then He speaks to the Jews in chapter 8 saying, ‘When ye shall have lifted up the Son of man’. How solemn is man’s failure in responsibility! The Jew was responsible. ‘When ye shall have lifted up the Son of man, then ye shall know that I am He’, John 8: 28. The truth of the greatness of who Christ was dawned on them at that moment, when they lifted Him up on a cross.
But in John 12 the reference is unique and what it stresses is the greatness of the Person who
was lifted up; and not only that, but His supreme power! “I, if I be lifted up out of the earth”— out of the earth; notice that. As Mr. Raven taught, the Lord did not die on the earth.
It was impossible that He should die in the scene where He glorified God. He was lifted up out of the earth, but He was in a position in which men could see Him. Oh, have you had a glimpse of Christ in that position? It is like the brazen serpent lifted up in the wilderness.
Everyone that looked, lived (Numbers 21: 8). It is very interesting in that passage that the fiery serpents are not removed, they are still there, the danger still exists, but God has the answer and the brazen serpent is lifted up upon a pole. It is God’s answer; and everyone who looked, lived. So the stress in this passage is that He is lifted up out of the earth. There is something that is drawing us, dear brethren, out of the earth, away from what is material, away from what is passing, away from what is so transitory, attracting us in relation to the One who is the divine centre. “Will draw all to me”—O, dear brethren, He would wean us away from earthly pleasures, from things that we shall have to leave anyway; He would draw us. His personal power would attract us away from these things and He would seize us in relation to the greatness of the divine system.
In John 20 we have the same Person and He is speaking with the same power and the same authority. Nobody could doubt Mary’s affection. She had been at the tomb. She had been alone there in the early morning. The Lord was glad to see her there. Then the Lord says, where we read, “Touch me not”. What does this mean? In the previous passage we have had the impression that He would draw us out of the earth. Here I think, we see the danger of our holding Him in relation to what is
earthly. You know, there are a lot of Christians like that. They would hold Christ in relation to their own circumstances. They would like His power to be used simply for their benefit, simply to open up the way through for them, to avoid, perhaps, undue pressures in their circumstances. They would like the Lord’s power to be exerted entirely in relation to what they need in their circumstances on the earth. Christianity is a heavenly thing and if the Lord draws us out of the earth. He is drawing us in relation to heaven, and if He has power on the earth, if He is the resurrection and the life, and we can prove that in earthly circumstances, we can also prove that His initiative extends into this heavenly realm into which He would lead those who are available to Him.
Can I appeal to every heart here as to whether we can be more available to the present power of Christ? He says, ‘Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, I ascend’. The voice of power! The voice of supreme authority!—
“I ascend”. It is not that He is taken up; Luke’s gospel gives us that. He was raised from among the dead, as the scripture says, “by the glory of the Father” (Romans 6: 4), and carried up!—wonderful indication of divine favour! But here, His personal power is evident in the words, “I ascend”. May we have a glimpse of Christ, not only as the One who can come in in relation to our sorrows and circumstances here, but the One who is moving upwards in view of what is being secured for God in these days. Who else could speak like that—“I ascend”?
He goes up in the right of His own Person, ascending up where He was before, but He goes up as Man.
Never had man been in the presence of God like that before. He is as Man in final conditions in heaven and we are to prove His service as He moves
upwards, and as He comes amongst us.
I believe we get some touch of this on the Lord’s day as we are together. He comes in at the time of the Supper and He comes to where the disciples are. He comes to our immediate circumstances and He has sufficient power for them in every detail. Then He would extend that power and our experience of it, so that the moment comes in the service when, according to the beginning of John 17. He lifts His eyes to heaven and says, “Father”. “I ascend”; when the Lord moves upwards, dear brethren, we want to make sure that we are free to move with Him, for it is in His power that the service of God is sustained. His power is not only sufficient to answer every failure in human responsibility, it is sufficient to furnish all that God ever desired from man. He wants us with Him in that. If His power affects us in the meeting of our circumstances, and is sufficient to draw us away from what is earthly, let us not miss the experience also of the power that will introduce us into heavenly and eternal circumstances.
Thus we may see that the power of Christ is the divine answer at the end of the dispensation.
We can trace it right through this gospel. In John 21 disaster had occurred and Peter had led them astray. Peter was a professional fisherman; he knew how to do it; but the time came when he just moved of his own accord, independent of the initiative of Christ, and he had to be brought back. We have all had to be brought back. We have all had to be brought back to the point where we recognise that Christ is the One who is to have control. So you reach the point where He says, “Come and dine”, John 21: 12. There is much to enjoy. For many of us maybe Christianity is not enough enjoyment, and I think that it may be because we do not have enough confidence in the Man whom
God has entrusted with everything.
That is my impression, dear brethren, that the answer to any sense of inadequacy on our part in responsibility is to see that the power of Christ bears on us right at the end. Let us not seek alternatives. Moses, great man as he was, at one point in wilderness history sought an alternative. You will read about it in Numbers. He turned to one called Hobab—whom Mr.
Taylor described as ‘a child of the wilderness’—and he said, “thou wilt be to us for eyes”, Numbers 10: 31. Do not let us seek an alternative, dear brethren, to the initiative and power of Christ. Again, in Numbers 10 the divine answer is immediate, not in condemning Hobab, not even in condemning Moses, but in an immediate movement of the ark. The ark moved of itself, and I think that is the point to which the Spirit of God would bring us, that Christ has the initiative and it is for our encouragement and stimulation that it is so. Let us trust Him; let us see that in spite of the weakness, of which we are only too conscious. He is going to see the testimony through in triumph and the end is going to be glorious.
The prospect that lies before us is wonderful! He will call us up; we shall meet the Lord in the air! He is not coming back to the earth; He has already glorified God on the earth; He is not coming back to it. I suppose, in the light of that passage in John’s gospel, He will draw us out of it actually, will He not? We shall rise and we shall meet Him in the air. May we be encouraged by these things, for His name’s sake.
Address at Malvern
31 May 1985