"COME NOW"
“COME NOW”
Isaiah 1: 18; Isaiah 41: 1; Isaiah 43: 26; Isaiah 50: 8
In these scriptures God is inviting men to draw near, to get into close relations with Him; the invitation is presented without any conditions as to the persons. It is not to persons who are known as believers; it is an invitation to all, for God would accord liberty to all classes of persons. He has no doubt of course as to the result. David, a great sinner, after he had sinned, said to God, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in thy sight; that thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, be clear when thou judgest” (Psalm 51: 4). David understood that God would prevail, and He prevails in grace now; it is His greatest victory. He will prevail in judgment too. So another sinner, Jacob, says to Him, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me” (Genesis 32: 26). Now Jacob had been brought up in an excellent household, his father was Isaac, a man of faith, and his mother was Rebecca, a woman of faith. He left his father’s house, not clandestinely or with any double motives, but under orders, but he remained away too long. On the way back, we are told, a man wrestled with him; this involved the close relations that I have suggested. He wrestled with him till the dawn; it was night when the transaction took place. This is so with many young people who leave their father’s house, and go into distant lands, in some instances to escape the consequences of sin. But there is no escape from God; even if one could go down to the depths of the Pacific or the Atlantic. God intimates in the prophets that no one can get away from Him. A few thousand miles is nothing to Him. In many instances God has wrestled with such people, and in this case we are told a man wrestled with Jacob, until the rising of the dawn. And Jacob wrestled with Him; that was the saving part of [p. 101] it, he was not in a hurry to get away from the wrestling; it was close grips. The man wanted to get away from him. That is, he would bring out what was in Jacob’s mind, for Jacob really had been born again as we say; he had the real thing in his soul, although he had allowed it to become very beclouded; the real thing was there, and wherever that is, there is hope. The gospel indeed is for such. So on that memorable night of Jacob’s history God was concerned to get him, for the man who wrestled with Jacob was no less than an angel, no less than God. God was there Himself, wrestling in close grips with that sinner. He would set him free in his soul, for Jacob was in great dread of his brother, as men of this kind are, anxious to get away from him, from the consequences of what had preceded. Indeed Jacob had fled from the face of his brother, for he had incurred Esau’s hostility. So it is with many who flee their country, their homes, their birth-place, as if they could escape responsibility, but they cannot do it. God met Jacob on the way and he had to do with God. He thought he had to do with his brother Esau, and that Esau would carry out his threat to slay him, but it is more serious to have to do with God than with Esau, or with the magistrate, or the judge or the jury. God met him and wrestled with him, and when He said “Let me go, for the dawn ariseth”, Jacob says, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me”. There was nothing more delightful to God in that transaction than those words. And Jacob was blessed.
Now I want to connect that with this verse in Isaiah, for what I have been speaking of enters into this verse. The first thing is the approach on God’s part to a sinner. He says, “Come now, let us reason together”. It is not come tomorrow, or any day during next week, or make a date; it is “come now”. That is God’s way. If things are to be done, do them. So He says, “Come now, let us reason together;” what [p. 102] has God in mind? Surely you would say the sinner has in mind that his sins should be washed away, but no, God has that in mind. That is what He has in mind in this proposal: in close quarters with any sinner here. He has it in mind to settle the sin question, it was settled for Him centuries ago, it has been settled for God, but He has in mind that it should be settled in your soul now. “Come now”, He says, “let us reason together”. “Come now”. Why should you not come. There is no matter so important; if all the matters that you have ever had, or ever will have, were all put together, they could not be compared with this matter of having the whole question of your sins settled. That is what God has in mind in this proposal. Now is there anybody here with sins on his conscience? It may be a christian here with sins on his conscience, for christians do have unconfessed sins. You remember the woman in the gospels that Luke tells us about; she was bent over for eighteen years, she could not look up to heaven. The Lord says, Satan did that eighteen years ago; something happened eighteen years ago, and Satan got the advantage, and caused that woman to be bent over like that. Now there are many christians like that — yet the Lord says, She is a daughter of Abraham, she is a royal person, she belongs to the family of faith, but that which happened eighteen years ago has never been settled. Somebody here might be like that, and God has in mind that the matter should be settled in this meeting; it should be settled now, and in order to settle it, He says, I am here to reason with you, let us reason together. What beautiful grace! What condescension on the part of God to draw near to you! He makes this proposal having in His heart nothing but the solution of this sin matter. Indeed He tells us “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”. Is that not a wonderful proposal? It comes home with great force at [p. 103] the present time, that if there is anyone here with sins on his conscience, now is his opportunity. God is here now; His eye is upon you now, and it is for your blessing that this transaction should take place, that the burden that has been resting upon you all these years should be removed tonight, that you, as a forgiven sinner, should be able to look up to heaven and trust God. Indeed we are told that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1: 9).
Well now, I pass on to the next verse, which is in chapter 41. My subject is God drawing near, so that you should respond in your need, as a sinner, and have matters settled with God. He will give you every opportunity to state your case. God, of course, has the right to be arbitrary, but He is wonderfully gracious, and comes down alongside the sinner, and says in effect, Now look here, tell me what is in your mind, let us reason together, reason these things out, set out your case fully, and I will listen to you. And so in this chapter, He says, “let the peoples renew their strength: let them come near; then let them speak”. He says, I give you every opportunity to come near, renew your strength, if you think you are in the right, if you think your course has been right, if you can show that it has been right I am ready to listen to you. Let the people renew their strength, it is God graciously coming down, dear friend, to your state. Is there any matter, especially this sin matter, any matter that attaches to you that is causing concern to others, or to yourself? He says, Now strengthen yourself. He said to Job, “Gird up now thy loins like a man” (Job 38: 3). It is God in grace giving you full scope to set out all that is in your mind, with a view to settling the matter. He alone can do it, it is a matter between Him and you; it may also be a matter between you and others, but it certainly is a matter between God and you. With Job it was a matter between God and him;
[p. 104] earlier it had been a matter between Satan and Job, then it became a matter between the three friends and Job, and then between Elihu and Job, but now in the end it is a direct matter between God and Job, and so God says, “Gird up now thy loins like a man; and I will demand of thee, and inform thou me”. God is going to put questions to him. Think of the grace of God, coming down to a man like that, giving him full opportunity to plead his own cause. Job had done this earlier, but as God proceeds to speak, he says, I have nothing more to say. The victory is won, not only for God, but for Job. So now He says to the people, “Come near”. O! beloved friends, do not stay away from God whatever you do. He opens the door to you in this wonderful verse, and He says, “let the peoples renew their strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us draw near together to judgment”. Now it is not only a question of your sins, as in verse 18 of chapter 1, it is a question of judgment. The first great question is the sin question, as I said before, have that settled in your soul; it has been settled for God, and for myriads of God’s people hundreds of years ago, but it is not settled for you yet. For some of you tonight the matter is still unsettled, and God would bring home to you the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus, saying, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”, and all is through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ which He poured out in love for us on Calvary’s cross. But now it is a question of judgment, and as you will observe in the following chapters to the end of chapter 48, God is speaking not only about the judgment of certain individuals, but also about the judgment of the world, the judgment of the earth, that is, in the sense of government. He alludes to Cyrus here, and He refers to him as the righteous man from the east, a figure of Christ. That is, God is now calling attention to what [p. 105] he had in His mind in regard to the earth and in regard to the universe, and He would allow you to open up your mind as to things. It may be you are a politician, a man who has a great interest in politics and international and world affairs, and God would say to you tonight, If all these things are in your mind, I would like to talk to you about them. I have been talking to you about your sins and how they can be settled to My satisfaction and to yours by the death of Christ, and I am ready now to speak to you about the government of the world. And if He does that, if He unfolds to you what is about to happen, then it is no question of the British system, or the American, or the Spanish, or the Italian, or the Japanese. It is a question in His mind of what is going to stand, and that the government of the world is going to be in one Man’s hands. That is what God intends, and the apostle Paul told the Greeks in the city of Athens on Mars Hill, that “He has set a day in which he is going to judge the habitable earth in righteousness by the man whom he has appointed” (Acts 17: 31). Now that is an unfolding of the future, that is the settlement of this whole international matter, and it raises the question of where I am to be when that takes place. Where are you to be? Suppose you turn a deaf ear to chapter 50, verse 8, how is it going to be with you when the Lord comes and takes up the reins of government here? Where are you to be? Well, if you are a rejecter of the gospel, I have to tell you that He is coming with His holy myriads, and that those who obey not shall be punished with everlasting destruction from His presence (see 2 Thessalonians 1: 9). God has appointed a day, it is fixed on the divine calendar, and it is going to happen on that particular day as sure as the sun rises tomorrow. He has fixed it, fixed a day when He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He has ordained. Where are you to be? Are you ready to face this serious matter that you are [p. 106] not going to have any place on the earth when the Lord Jesus is in charge of it? You certainly will not have any place in it. He will punish with everlasting destruction all those who do not believe the gospel. You may say, I do not believe in everlasting punishment, but that does not alter the fact. If everyone in the world did not believe in it, it is true nevertheless. The Lord Jesus shall be revealed “from heaven, with the angels of his power ... taking vengeance on those who know not God, and those who do not obey the glad tidings of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 1: 7, 8). Are you ready to take issue in that way and let things drift along until that day? How serious! In this verse God says, “let the peoples renew their strength” — I am going to talk to you about this. He has called this man from the east, a righteous man: in type that is Jesus, and He is going to have complete charge of all government. Then I would call attention to the last sentence of verse 4: “I, Jehovah, the first; and with the last, I am HE”. That word “HE”, which should be written fully in capitals, refers to the deity, it is the Name of God. That is to say in this argument, in this matter to which He is inviting you, He is speaking to you as in the deity, that is God Himself in the absolute. There is no question about it, He will do this thing, and where are you going to stand? So this verse in chapter 41 is a most solemn thing, for “He has set a day in which he is going to judge the habitable earth in righteousness by the man whom he has appointed” (Acts 17: 31). The apostle has already said, “God ... enjoins men that they shall all everywhere repent” (Acts 17: 30). As much as to say, that God does not wish that anyone should suffer, that anyone should be judged in that day and so He now enjoins that all men everywhere shall repent. Who is the Man whom He has ordained? It is Jesus, whom He has raised — “giving the proof of it to all in having raised him from among the dead” (Acts 17: 31). No great warrior or leader of men ever had this place.
[p. 107] From this point of view it is God showing His delight in this Man. He died for us, as it says, “who has been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification” (Romans 4: 25), as if He died on our account, and was raised on our account. But when we come to Romans 6: 4, we are told that He was “raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father”, that is, the Father delighted in Him. In that delight He sets Him over all the earth, over the universe, indeed He has appointed a day with that in view. Well now, that is this verse, and it is God speaking in absolute supremacy as the Creator and Upholder of all things, the First and the Last and He says, I am doing this. I do urge anyone here who has not settled these matters to do so now. He is inviting you to go into them all with Him in order that they may be settled in your soul.
I go on now to verse 26 of chapter 43. He says there, “Put me in remembrance, let us plead together; rehearse thine own cause, that thou mayest be justified”. Now you see how gracious God is; there is another side to your position. He says, If there is anything that you have in your mind, and you think I have forgotten, put me in remembrance of it. It is wonderful condescension of God in order to settle matters in a sinner’s soul. He says, If there is anything that you have got since you have been born into My creation, make it known. You are in My creation, I have given you My spirit — because everyone of us gets his spirit from above, we do not get it from our parents, we get it from God, we are responsible to God as having it. Indeed it says, “man’s spirit is the lamp of Jehovah” (Proverbs 20: 27). It is a door by means of which He can illuminate your whole moral being, and now God would say, What have you against Me since you were a baby, since you were a boy, since you were a girl, as the case may be? You may be in business, or married life; what have [p. 108] you against Me? Have you anything in your mind that you think I have forgotten, or that I am at fault in? Think of God graciously condescending to deal with you on these lines. It is marvellous to me. He says, “Put me in remembrance”. He says in the verse before, “I am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and I will not remember thy sins” (Isaiah 43: 25). He would say in effect, that is the kind of God I am. You tell Me if there are things that I do not remember about in My dealings with you, if I have been hard with you. Some people have the temerity to say that God is unreasonable. They complain about things in their lives, their lives have been so hard, and others’ are so easy — they complain against God. Even a great servant like Jonah was angry with God. Do not our rebellious hearts sometimes rise up in complaint against God? “Who art thou” says one, “that answerest again to God? Shall the thing formed say to him that has formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” (Romans 9: 20). God says, Even if you do, I am ready to listen to you. And did He not come down in the person of Jesus? Read the gospels and you will find in Jesus the perfect verification of this in all the gracious ways in which He met men, listening patiently to them. He is ready to listen to you tonight on the same principle. He says, Put me in remembrance, if there is anything that you can bring forward I am ready to listen. And then He would go on to say, Let us plead together; rehearse thine own cause, that thou mayest be justified. If there is anything you have, bring it out, go back on your whole life, on your history as before Me; bring out anything you like. Even go back to Adam and trace the whole history of the race down to the present moment, I am ready to listen to you. To my mind it is marvellous that God should take up such an attitude towards His poor creatures, but He does it in Christ, in the incarnation, God manifest in flesh as it says.
[p. 109] It is a wonderful fact; would that everyone here would ponder it! “And confessedly the mystery of piety is great. God has been manifested in flesh, has been justified in the Spirit, has appeared to angels, has been preached among the nations, has been believed on in the world, has been received up in glory” (1 Timothy 3: 16). Think of God coming into these circumstances; think of God in Christ coming into such circumstances that He was spit upon, and suffered other indignities. It was God, beloved friends, God coming near to man as the beautiful verse says:
Sinner, see thy God beside thee,
In a servant’s form come near,
Sitting, walking, talking with thee!
Sinai’s mount no longer fear. (112:3)
That verse conveys touchingly what is embodied in the verses read. God is challenging anyone here tonight who has any complaint against Him, for He is ready to listen to you. He says, Let us go into it together. Will you not accept His proposal for your own soul as you sit there. After this meeting, take it up with God in your own closet. He will go into it in every detail, and you will find, if you are at all honest, that God will triumph in grace, and you will acknowledge it, and will say to Him as David did, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51: 4). He goes on here to say, in verse 27, “Thy first father hath sinned, and thy mediators have rebelled against me”. You see, if God opens up the door for a sinner to draw near and talk with Him, He reserves the right to say something. You may go over the ground as you have often done shamelessly, speaking ill about Him, but now God says, Let Me say something. Thy first father hath sinned. Some of you here may have a family tree; people like these family trees, particularly if there is any ancestor who has a little distinction; that is a very common thing. Well then, God says, You look at [p. 110] that family tree, you go back as far as you can in your ancestry, go back to Abraham, go back beyond him — your first father sinned against Me. It has been one history of sin in all your ancestry down to yourself, and are you any better? No, you are not, even your teachers sin against Me; and that brings up a very important question. Young people are damaged in their schools and turned against Christ. The educational systems of the world are detrimental to men’s souls, women’s souls and children’s souls, and God says here that thy teachers have transgressed against Me. You may say, Well, I have been brought up in this school, and I got a good religious education, and so forth, because that is part of the dignity that belongs to people. You may be sure if you graduated from any well-known school or college, you will not forget to say that; that comes into prominence at once. Well now, God says, Have you examined these teachers? They have sinned against Me (there is no doubt that He has in mind the terrible influence of the teachers of modernism) so that you will have very little to say — every mouth is to be stopped. God does not stop mouths arbitrarily, He stops them logically; every mouth is to be stopped, and all the world be guilty before God. God will let you tell Him all about your ancestry, your schools and your colleges, and He will show you that in every instance the things go against you. It is all in order that you may acknowledge and face the truth, acknowledge the truth as Saul of Tarsus acknowledged the truth. The Lord met him; he was a man of great ancestry, you know, a man of great education; he tells us so. God met him one day, the Lord Jesus came down near to him, God in Christ. He calls him by name: He says, “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?” (Acts 9: 4). It is a question here, it is an argument raised, it is similar to what I am speaking of. The Lord says, Why do you persecute Me? Why do you speak against Me?
[p. 111] Why do you speak against the brethren? Why do you refuse the gospel? These are pertinent questions asked by Him who has a right to ask them — not to condemn you but to bring out the true facts of the case so that you may judge yourself and be saved. And so Saul says to the Lord, “Who art thou, Lord?” The Lord says, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest”. “I am Jesus”. It is the same person as said in chapter 41, “I am HE”. He is here tonight saying to you, “I am Jesus”, I died for you, I gave My life for you, I am here tonight to save you. “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest”, and Saul says, “Lord ...” He has surrendered — ‘O surrender now’, as the hymn says; it is the time for it, as you are surrounded by spiritual people who love Jesus; most of us here are saved people, forgiven people, we surround you and the Lord calls upon you to surrender now. Now is the time. So Saul says, “What shall I do, Lord?” (Acts 22: 10). He had his pockets bulging with mandates from Jerusalem, he had authority from the high priest, he was going to Damascus to persecute the saints. He was a ready instrument; it was his own thought, he secured these letters, he was going to damage, to hale to prison the followers of Jesus. But now all is changed; the Lord says, “Rise up, and go to Damascus, and there it shall be told thee of all things which it is appointed thee to do” (Acts 22: 10). The Lord went into Damascus too at that time to tell Ananias about Saul, and Ananias went to Saul and put his hands on him, and said, “Saul, brother, the Lord has sent me, Jesus that appeared to thee in the way in which thou camest” (Acts 9: 17). Now that is God. He is the first and the last, He changes not, He is the same yesterday, today and for ever. He is here tonight. I am not speaking theoretically; I am speaking practically, I am speaking what I know, that God is here tonight in the power of the Spirit, to deal with any soul like Saul and to settle matters. And here He tells you all about your ancestry and your teachers — they are [p. 112] sinners, you have not a support left, your only hope is to confess, to get down and own that you are a poor sinner with nothing at all to commend you, and the grace of God will take you up.
There is just another word in chapter 50. It is the Lord Jesus speaking here, the Lord as Messiah, speaking in this chapter, and He says among many other things — “Who is among you that feareth Jehovah, that hearkeneth to the voice of his servant? he that walketh in darkness, and hath no light, — let him confide in the name of Jehovah, and stay himself upon his God”. Now I think this is a challenge to modernists, and to all infidels and sceptics, all triflers, those who would take the Lord’s name in vain, the enemies of Christ. He says here, “Who is mine adverse party?” He is ready to answer you, to have to say to you, “let him draw near unto me!” He says. This is found later in the gospels. There was a time when the Lord was about to die, and as He came to Jerusalem and stood in the temple, He looked around and saw everything as it was, and presently they began to ask Him questions in the temple. Jerusalem was the seat of His adversaries, so when the Lord set His face to go to Jerusalem it was well understood by His disciples that He was going into the lion’s mouth, where the adversary was. He said Himself, “For it must not be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem” (Luke 13: 33). He was at the very centre and citadel of opposition and they ask Him questions, one after another, and the Lord was there, and ready to answer them. Woe be to these infidels, these modernists — these sceptics and evolutionists! The Lord is ready now to talk to you; He will not talk to you later. When He sits on the great white throne and you are consigned to eternal judgment, you will have nothing to say; it will be all settled then. You will be judged by what is recorded in the books, but now He is here in the gospel period, He says, I am ready to listen to you, I am ready to contend with you,
“[p. 113] Who is mine adverse party? let him draw near to me”. He is not quiescent in regard to all these systems; He is exposing them root and branch, and if the thing is exposed it is judged, and so the Lord would challenge anyone here tonight whose proclivity is to be sceptical or critical. It may be in your heart, though you may not express it, but the Lord says, Come near to Me if you are an adversary. It is no question of your salvation at the moment, it is a question of your being an adversary. If He has to say to you and you are at all subject you will get salvation too. God is no respecter of persons, the infidel here tonight is the object of mercy, as well as any other man and the Lord is ready to have a word with you and the Lord’s people here are ready to have a word with you, if there is any movement in your soul about these matters. You have been sceptical, you may be relenting a little bit, the Lord would reach you at this point through His people, and He will have a word with you; it may mean your salvation, it may mean your deliverance from all that darkness into which your soul has come.
Well that was all my message; may the Lord bless His word.
[p. 114] The Living God, Melbourne and Sydney, 1936 (Volume 136).