IS IT REAL?
David Hutson
Psalm 90: 1-4, 11, 12; Hebrews 11: 6 (from “… For he that draws near);
1 John 1: 1-4; 1 Corinthians 3: 16, 17; 6: 19, 20
Some of us have been impressed of late and challenged by the question as to whether things are real with us, and I raise that question as to how real things are with each one of us. We can know the terms; we can know the scriptures; we can know the ministry. Does it bring to us what is real, or is it just something which might be laid hold of academically, so that we know the terms and maybe outwardly we answer to the terms and have an appearance of what we should be? Or is it real?
So I read in Psalm 90 as to God Himself, in the light of what it says in Hebrews that everyone that comes to God “must believe that he is”. In one sense, you might say that is a paradox because you would not come to someone if you did not believe that they were there. It says, “For he that draws near to God must believe that he is”, but I believe that in the words “that he is” there would be a reference to the name by which He made Himself known to His people of old, the “I AM”. So those that have come to God in past ages have believed “that he is”, and we who are privileged to draw near to God “believe that he is”, the same God, unchanged. We have spoken of things that have come in in Christianity which are unchanged, that are going through, but it is all because God Himself is unchanged. It says in the Psalm of Moses, the man of God, “from eternity to eternity thou art God”. “Before the mountains were brought forth, and thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from eternity to eternity thou art God”. There is another glorious name by which He was known, “thou art the Same”, (Nehemiah 9: 6), and we need, beloved, to remember that in the light of all that we know of God according to the scriptures. “Who knoweth the power of thine anger?” We have a word that we could have read in Hebrews, “For also our God” – “our God”, not a different God, the same God – “is a consuming fire”, (chap 12: 29). He is no different, and how do we know the power of His anger? It was seen at the cross, the unmitigated wrath of God falling upon the head of my Saviour when He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Matt 27: 46. Where would we have been were it not for that cry, and who knew God like that blessed Man, being who He was in His Person and yet a real man? And God’s unmitigated wrath falling upon the head of my Substitute so that I might draw near to God and know Him as a Priest who “is able to save completely those who approach by him to God”, Heb 7: 25. Let us be sobered, dear brethren. Dear young people, I would appeal to you particularly to be sobered because this is the God with whom we have to do. How we joy to sing:
Our God, we bless thee for Thy love
Made manifest in Jesus (Hymn 456)
How He has drawn near to us in the Person of His only begotten Son! It is the God who “so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”, John 3: 16. But it is the same God. We are to be sobered by these things, but I think it would help us in our conduct, in the fear of God. Beloved Mr. Renton of this city left a legacy with us, I believe, in the south. At the last fellowship meeting with him, as I recall, he spoke to us about the fear of God. He said God’s eye is ever upon us. Indeed Job, if I may say aside, refers to Him as the “Observer of men”, (chap 7: 20). But the fear of God, our brother said, is the consciousness of His eye upon us. Would it not make a difference to the things that you do and the way that you do them, and where you go, if you thought that the eye of God was upon you, preserving you in His fear? “The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom”, (Prov 9: 10), and you will find that there is resource with God in order that you might walk here so as to please Him.
I pass on to John. How real is Jesus to us? How real is He? John is particularly concerned that we might have the joy of the knowledge of our Lord Jesus as He was here. He is not here now; He is in the glory. God has “highly exalted him”, as we read in the earlier occasion, “and granted him a name, that which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow …” – I trust every knee here has bowed to Jesus – “and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to God the Father’s glory”, Phil 2: 9-11. Does everyone here own Him as Lord? “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved, “Rom 10: 9. That would be “to God the Father’s glory”, God Himself being the great end in it all. He has “washed us from our sins in his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (Rev 1: 5), and we are “built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit”, Eph 2: 22. God is the great end in all His operations.
But John is concerned that we should know what a real man He was. So he speaks of “that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; that which we contemplated, and our hands handled, concerning the word of life”. It is not a capital ‘W’ here but no doubt in John’s mind he would be thinking of what he wrote, or was to write, in his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God”, John 1: 1,2. Glorious Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in flesh! John said He was real, so real that they could see Him and hear Him and even handle Him. He says Himself, “Handle me and see”, Luke 24: 39, but that was out of death. There was a time when He would say, “Touch me not”, John 20: 17, no longer to have relationships with them in a way that He had as being among them, the lowly Jesus, in His pathway here, but now the One who was to ascend to His Father and our Father, to His God and ours. And as coming in, as the ascended Man, who could limit where He had been? He could say, “Bring thy finger here”, John 20: 27. He could say to Thomas, suggestive of the unbelieving Jew and his conviction in the coming day: “And the life has been manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and report to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us”. We speak of eternal life, do we not, as an order of relationship and being? Oh the wonder of it, the relationship that we see there! “And Jesus lifted up his eyes on high and said, Father”, John 11: 41. What a relationship! And, beloved, He has gone right through in relation to the great matter of sin which had come in to bring in distance between God and His creature, so that you might have the same blessed relationship. He the only-begotten, you taken on by adoption, that you might be able to cry, “Abba Father”.
How wonderful these things are and they are real. He was a real Man and He is a real Man in the glory. The Holy Spirit is here to bear witness to Him, but He has been seen there. Stephen could say, “Lo, I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God”, (Acts 7: 56), a real man. Jesus is real, beloved. He is not an historic Jesus. He was here in blood and flesh, but, of course, as to His Person, we cannot limit Him, being one with the Father and the Spirit, in relationships unknown to human mind, “from eternity to eternity”. “In the beginning was the Word”. I like what we were reminded of once as to Him, that He was in the beginning before the beginning began. We cannot compass these things. We are finite. Our minds are limited by time. Oh the glory of the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ and yet a real man!
“That which we have seen and heard we report to you, that ye also may have fellowship with us”. Their fellowship, the apostles’ fellowship, was something distinctive as they were here in the days of the life of Jesus on earth. Paul could speak, as has been said, in a distinctive way as to what has “shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”, 2 Cor 4: 6. It has been said it was a direct shining as to the apostles, actually, personally, you might say, shining out from that blessed Man into the hearts of the apostles “for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. It is a shining out now in the gospel, having come down to us. That was their fellowship. “And these things write we to you that your joy may be full”. Is your joy full, dear fellow believer? I believe our joy would be more full if Jesus were more real to us. “That your joy may be full”. Does Satan bring in doubts? I know what that is. Who does not? But if Jesus is real to us, the Holy Spirit of God is in us to bear witness to His place in glory and “greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4: 4), that our joy may be full in the knowledge of the place that He has secured for us and where God regards us even now as in Christ before Him. How wonderful these things are, beloved! They are real. And He is real. His sufferings were real. His death was real. His precious blood that flowed from His riven side was real and its value abides, as John says later: “and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”, 1 John 1: 7. It is real. Do you get doubts as to that sometimes? Can you
… point to the atoning blood
And say, This made my peace with God (Hymn 357)?
It is real. All these things are real. I do not apologise for stressing it because they can so easily become academic with us, something that we have known from our mother’s knee, and we can recite the scriptures, quote them, tell people about Jesus. But is it real? Is your joy not only full in the knowledge of your Saviour and what He has done for you, but in what He has done for God to bring you to God, that God might find His pleasure in you where once you were far in the distance in sin?
The Holy Spirit is real. Paul had to raise the question. Would he have to raise the question here with any? “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God?” It refers to the inner shrine. The inner shrine was where the very presence of God was known, the God whom we were speaking of at the beginning, the God who is “from eternity to eternity”. But we are “built together”, as we read in Ephesians 2, “for a habitation of God in the Spirit” (v.2), “the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you”. “If any one corrupt the temple of God, him shall God destroy”. They are challenging words. There is no qualification. And yet some of us were reminded at a meeting earlier in the week, “If thou, Jah, shouldest mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared”, Ps 130: 3,4. Oh that we might be preserved in the sense that His eye is upon us and conduct ourselves accordingly, not with slavish fear, but with reverent fear of the God with whom we have to do. And He dwells in His temple by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is here. “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God?” It could be said of Corinth, before the breakdown publicly had come in but, characteristically, as we seek to walk in the light of the assembly, this is the truth that the Holy Spirit is here in our comings together. How do we conduct ourselves? How do we come? There are reasons why we might be late, but surely it would affect our punctuality if at all possible. How do we deport ourselves? As Mr. Taylor said, would we sit in the assembly as we sit in a railway station? All very practical. “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” How do we dress? How do we come together in the light of the assembly of God which has not broken down, which is “the pillar and base of the truth” (1 Tim 3: 15), finding its expression in our local companies?
Paul goes on to say in chapter 6, “Do ye not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God?” In John’s epistle he speaks of the Spirit which we have, “that he has given to us of his Spirit” (1 John 4: 13), that is His own Spirit. We have it of God. “And ye are not your own”. What are you going to do with your body? That is what Paul is at here. I know it is in relation to a specific sin, but what do we do with our bodies? Where do we take them? What do we engage them with? It is no part-time matter, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
I do not apologise, I say again, for being plain because this is the truth. The truth is to control and govern us among other things. How it would make Christianity simple for us! That is how I like to think of these things. They seem very profound but, as accepted in dependence upon the Lord Jesus and in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, how simple it makes Christianity! You do not need a book of rules as to where you can go and what you can do and how you should behave. This in itself is sufficient so that in a sense you can just be a simple Christian. Did I refer earlier to what I came across in Mr. Darby, ‘What is a Christian’? It is one of whom it says in the second epistle, “Ye are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read of all men, being manifested to be Christ’s epistle”, 2 Cor 3 :2,3. “Christ’s epistle”, Christ written upon you so that what is seen is Christ and that man – that was judicially removed from before God at the cross and put out of His sight in the grave – that man is gone. “If therefore ye have been raised with the Christ, seek the things which are above, where the Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God: have your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth”, Col 3: 1,2. It makes Christianity very simple. So I appeal again to the young. If it is a question of whether you can do this or that, whether you can go here or there, can you take the Spirit of God with you? It is not anything part-time. “Do ye not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God; and ye are not your own? For ye have been bought with a price”. Oh the price with which you have been bought! What it has cost Him! We sang in the hymn:
‘Twas all for us – our life we owe,
Our hope, our crown of joy, to Thee;
Thy suff’ring in that hour of woe –
Thy vict’ry, Lord – hath made us free. (Hymn 437)
Free for what? Free to do our own thing? Far be the thought! To be free for God that there might be that “known and read of all men”, Christ written upon us, so that what should be coming into evidence is Christ.
I confess, beloved, that what I am saying is a very searching matter to myself. I do not hold up myself as an example. I should be able to. It would give more power to the word if I could, but “the word of God is living and operative, and sharper than any two-edged sword”, Heb 4: 12. It has been said that it does not have a handle so that, if you handle it, it cuts you. I feel the edge of the word, beloved, but I just leave it with you. Are these things real because if they were, it would make a tremendous difference? May God bless the word!
EDINBURGH
18 August 2001