GOOD NEWS
Ephesians 3:8,9 (to “in God”)
I seek to draw your attention to the references in these scriptures to the glad tidings. I suppose most people like to hear glad tidings – good news. There is a scripture in the Old Testament that says, “as apples of gold in pictures of silver, is a word spoken in season” (Prov.25:11) and “as cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country”, Prov.25:25. It is a remarkable scripture. “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”
There is no better news than the news that comes from heaven, the glad tidings of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. It is good news, beloved friend, and they are indeed glad tidings. I think God delights to hear them. Would that more people were anxious to hear them. Would that this hall was filled with people desirous of hearing God’s good news concerning His Son. As received into the heart and the soul, they bring peace and joy. How many sad hearts there are in this world, but God has glad tidings for them. Things that burden and trouble and distress because of sin – God has the answer to them all in His glad tidings concerning His Son.
The glad tidings is a wide thought and I seek help in speaking a little of them. In the first scripture read in Acts, it speaks of the “glad tidings of Jesus”. In the second scripture, the Lord Jesus called them the “glad tidings of the kingdom”. He used that name frequently when He was here; He preached the glad tidings of the kingdom. And in the third scripture it speaks of the ”glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ”. How many times many of us here have heard the glad tidings preached, but I wonder how much I fully appreciate the glory of them. They are rich, they are deep, they are glorious, and they are eternal and centred in one Man – our Lord Jesus Christ.
I would like to speak first from this scripture in Acts, which speaks of the glad tidings of Jesus that Philip preached to this Ethiopian man. He did not know anything, it would seem, about the wonder of God’s grace. He had been to Jerusalem and I suppose he had been to the temple there and heard something about the Jewish system. He was returning and, through the grace of God, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. How thankful we are for God’s sovereign grace. Maybe some soul here has been reading the Scriptures. Maybe there are many around us, perhaps unknown to us, reading the Scriptures. Well, God is sovereign in the way He works. He has in mind that all men should be blessed and come to the knowledge of His saving grace. This eunuch was reading from the prophet Isaiah. It has often been referred to as the gospel prophet, and he was reading chapter 53, speaking prophetically of the sufferings of Jesus.
I suppose that the eunuch may have read the chapter up to the portion he refers to in verse 7. The prophet had written about One who should grow up as a tender sapling, as a root out of dry ground (v.2). What a Person Jesus is. When He was here on earth, He was a root out of dry ground; He was unique in His Person. This wonderful prophetic chapter highlights the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus in manhood. What good news from a far country! The glad tidings of Jesus speaks of how God Himself came down in the Person of His Son to this very earth, and coming in the most approachable form, as a Babe, to His creature man. How affecting that is. Why should He have come that way? You may ask, ‘Why did He not come in His glory’? He came near to men, as I said, in the most approachable way. No one is afraid of a babe, are they? A babe generally draws out the affections, and that is how Jesus came. He was “holy, harmless, undefiled” (Heb.7:26); perfect in His manhood as a root out of dry ground. He came in all His perfection and glory into this very scene. It has often been said that He drew nothing morally from this scene through which He moved.
The angels celebrated the birth and incoming of Jesus. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace”, Luke 2:14. What news it was for sinners such as us that God Himself should come near to us in all His blessed grace to reach us. Then it speaks of the fact that Jesus was unwanted; “like one from whom men hide their faces” (v.3). He was largely rejected when He came. You might ask why. Was there anything that Jesus did which would cause offence? In Him there was nothing but good; He healed those possessed by demons, showing His mighty power in all that He did in healing in sovereign grace. Yet it says prophetically in Isaiah 53 that He was despised and left alone of men. It did not deter Him, my friend. His love is too deep for that; no despising turned Jesus aside. How often words of discouragement turn us aside. He felt the rejection, for He came in love for men and yet was despised. How perfect were His feelings as a blessed Man, but rejection did not turn him aside. He went onward to the cross. We were speaking earlier today of His path of suffering, and the judgment of God against sin and sins that He bore on our account.
What must have entered into the mind and heart of the blessed Saviour knowing full well what it must mean for Him if the whole question of sin was to be faced. He had come that way for that purpose, a blessed, holy, sinless Man to bear the judgment of God that rested upon us as sinners. Jesus bore it all Himself. He felt intensely, as the Scriptures point out, not only His rejection by those He had come to save, but what His portion was as the sin-bearer, that the whole question of sin and sins should be resolved. So the prophet says that He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows and “we did regard him stricken, smitten of God” (v.4). He was stricken and smitten by men – His face, it says in the previous chapter of Isaiah, was “marred more than any man”, Isa.52:14. But then He was stricken and smitten of God. Jesus went that way that He should be the Saviour of sinners such as you and me.
Is your heart attracted to Him? What good news it is that He is available as a Saviour. Who else could you turn to? O, turn in simple repentance to the Lord Jesus! “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”, Isa.53:6. All my sins were laid upon Him. I can say that as having put my faith in Him. He bore the judgment of God which was my due. Love bore it. God has a righteous basis to forgive all those who have put their faith and trust in Jesus, and in His precious shed blood. Has every one of us here turned to the Lord Jesus in repentance? God has a basis, a righteous basis, to forgive the repentant sinner. God has righteously established that basis in the death, the shed blood, the burial and resurrection of Jesus and He can come out to repentant sinners in full and free forgiveness. What a Man Jesus is; what a Saviour He is!
I commend it to you – the glad tidings of Jesus. That is the Man, the blessed, glorious Man who was here and who suffered and died on our account. He has effected that precious work of redemption that I should go free. Now such glad tidings bring peace. “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever”, Isa.32:17. Have you that quietness and assurance in your soul? Faith gives it to you. You have the blessed assurance of the word of God. If you have your faith and trust in Jesus, it brings peace. Peace of soul is a precious thing and it is available to us as we turn to Christ. Men put a lot of store on joy, and there are many outward manifestations of people apparently enjoying themselves. But peace? Mr Darby said peace is a fuller, deeper thing than joy1, and peace of soul will give you true joy. That is where you will find it; true joy is when you have peace in your soul. Philip preached the glad tidings of Jesus to this eunuch, and they are being preached still to whosoever will. The Saviour is now exalted and glorified at God’s right hand, but He is still the same blessed Person, and the glad tidings concerning Himself and all that He has done are still the same too.
The scripture in Matthew refers to the “glad tidings of the kingdom”. The Lord Jesus is now risen, as having completed the work of redemption, and is exalted and glorified at God’s right hand in heaven. All power has been given to Him now in heaven and upon earth, and He has a kingdom. It is a very blessed thing to know something of those glad tidings. I understand by the glad tidings of the kingdom that, as a believer, I am to come under the dominion of the Lord Jesus. Naturally I think that, if I follow my own will, I will be happy. I have to confess that I so like my own will. It is endemic in all of us: we just like our own will. We would all have to acknowledge that at times we have followed the course of our own wills and that it did not bring happiness. It brings sorrow and distress and leanness of soul. There is something very blessed about the glad tidings of the kingdom. We confess that Jesus is supreme and we gladly give Him His glorious title – the Lord Jesus. It is a lovely title. It has been said that the Lord Jesus is also a title by which He is known to His assembly. How often we speak of Him in that way, and He presents Himself to us now in all His attractiveness that we might come under His blessed dominion.
There is no one so attractive as Jesus, and there is no one who loves like He does. There is no one who has your interests at heart like Him, and there is no one who has your blessing in mind as He does, because He loves you. The appeal in the glad tidings is to own Him as Lord and become one of those who are subject to Christ. Of course, a king would be no king if he did not have a kingdom. The Lord Jesus has a kingdom, comprised of all those that belong to Him here and are subject to His blessed will. What they prove, beloved friends, is that the glad tidings of the kingdom are truly glad tidings. I wonder if all of us have fully bowed the knee to Jesus. I take that as a challenge to myself. If someone tells me to bow the knee to someone, naturally I would probably resent that. But may the appeal of Jesus reach into your heart! He has done so much for you, given His life for you, His precious blood has been shed for you, and now He lives in heaven on high for you – all to keep us and preserve us in the pathway here according to His blessed will. May it cause you to bow the knee to Him. The glad tidings of the kingdom is preached that we should do that.
God has glorified Him and anointed Him in heavenly glory and He is presented now as the blessed Saviour. You can read in the gospels that Jesus, at the beginning of His public service, preached the glad tidings of the kingdom and there was power to meet every effect of sin upon mankind. How wonderful that is. No opposition will overcome those who put their faith and trust in Christ. We live in a world that is going on fast to judgment. Men are turning every recognised ordinance of God on its head in the pursuit of their own will and think that it will bring them liberty and happiness. Beloved friends and brethren, it will be the opposite. I believe it will bring stress upon men, physically and mentally and morally, such as they have never known. But what a blessed Saviour Jesus is! Come under His dominion and rule, as the apostle Paul did when he was converted. He said, ”What shall I do, Lord?”, Acts 22:10. To come under His rule is to come into a place of safety. Would you like to be safe? I would. Safe and sure in the arms of Jesus, subject to Him and following His blessed will.
Now I just finally close with the scripture in Ephesians, in which Paul speaks of the gospel as “the glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ”. To those of us who love the Lord Jesus, Ephesians is a very challenging and searching, but interesting, epistle to read. It was given to Paul to announce among the nations the glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ. What God has given in His grace, He would have us to receive through the glad tidings, and the precious gift of the Holy Spirit. It is in the mind of God that every believer should understand something of these unsearchable riches. I believe they are under the hand of the Holy Spirit, the One who, as the scripture says, “searches all things, even the depths of God”, 1 Cor.2:10. What a wonderful gift of God is the giving of His Holy Spirit. We are united to Christ by the Holy Spirit and also united to one another by the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that you have received, if you have, dwells in me. He would open our affections in relation to everything that is of God, open our minds to understand the unsearchable riches of the Christ where He is now, enshrined in glory on high. We wait for the Lord to come to take His own to be with Him, and in the meantime we see through “a dim window obscurely”, 1 Cor.13:12. We are not able in this present mortal condition to apprehend fully the true glory of the heavenly realm. We need bodies of glory like Christ’s body of glory, which we shall receive when He comes for His saints – then we shall see clearly. Each believer shall see Him face to face, the One who has been exalted at God’s right hand, but the same blessed Jesus.
There is a realm that He occupies, and the Holy Spirit has come from that scene to open up to our minds and hearts something of these glories, the unsearchable riches of the Christ. That glorious vessel, the assembly, composed of all those who have put their faith and trust in Christ and received the gift of the Holy Spirit – that whole great company will soon be taken from this earth to be with Christ eternally. I trust that everybody here is sure that they will be part of that heavenly company. This Christ-rejecting world is going on to its already pronounced judgment, while at the rapture, the church will go from its hidden place here on earth to glory.
What glad tidings they are, the glad tidings of Jesus, all centred in God’s beloved Son. The suffering Saviour was here below, but now He is exalted on high and lives to intercede for His own. He has a kingdom and we are blessed as coming under His dominion and then soon to come into the even greater blessedness of His presence. I would just like to leave you some impression of the greatness of the glory of God’s glad tidings. May we come to Him, and come into the blessing of subjection to Him. Then as having received the Spirit, may we have joy, living joy in our hearts as having the glory of that blessed realm that Jesus fills, filling our hearts.
May it be so for His name’s sake.
Preaching of the Gospel, Colchester
20 February 2022
David A Smith