PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD

Edwin Mutton

Luke 23: 39-43; 1 Samuel 22: 23

I want to use these two scriptures to raise a question which I believe God would raise with each one of us. We sang in our hymn:

The world to doom is passing,

And you are passing too. (Hymn 220)

We are all passing through life and are passing, as far as our natural life is concerned, to an end. The end of the world, the Bible tells us, is doom. This world as a system is doomed. The question I would like to ask you is whether you are passing to doom with the world or whether you have another hope. The two men we have read about in Luke 23, one died with the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, the other, seemingly, died without Jesus. That is what God presents to you in the gospel – a very simple question – are you going to finish your life here with Jesus, or without Him?

Everybody here is in one class or the other at the moment. Thank God that in His goodness the gospel is being preached so that if you are without Christ now, you do not die without Him. It is a very solemn thing to die without the certainty of the Lord Jesus as Saviour. I seek help just to bring that message home to you and then in the second scripture to raise the question as to whether you are trying to live without Christ. It is one thing to die without Christ, but there may be someone here who will die in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus as their Saviour, but is trying to live their life without Him meanwhile. That is very sad too.

These two men in Luke are put together, as so many in scripture, by way of contrast. They both had the same opportunity; they were both next to the Saviour of the world. It says, “one on the right hand and one on the left”, when the Lord Jesus was crucified. They could not have been nearer salvation, and you could not be nearer salvation than being in a place where the word of God is being preached; where the Name of Jesus is being preached, because there is no other Saviour; “for neither is there another name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved”, Acts 4: 12. Comparative religion is a snare of Satan. There is no religion, there is nothing and no one to compare with the Lord Jesus. There is no other way to have peace with God than to accept the Lord Jesus as your Saviour. These two men had equal opportunity. It is a great thing in the world these days, equal opportunity; everybody must have the same opportunity. Dear friend, in the gospel, you have the same opportunity as anybody else, you are at no disadvantage, you can hear God’s word and you can hear what concerns God, “God’s glad tidings … concerning his Son”, Rom 1: 1-3. Christianity, as we so often say, is centred in a blessed risen, glorified Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. These two men had equal opportunity to accept the Lord Jesus as their Saviour, one embraced it and the other one seemingly missed it.

One took it and became a preacher straight away. Think of that! A man who was saved and immediately preached the gospel, one of the most potent gospels that have ever been preached, “this man has done nothing amiss”, Luke 23: 41. You say, That was a short word! Ah, but what was in it? The Lord Jesus, the One presented in that preaching is a Man who did nothing amiss. You could not point a finger at Jesus and find any fault in Him at all. Even Pilate had to say that, “I find no guilt in this man”, Luke 23: 4. A centurion said, “In very deed this man was just” (v.47); even these unlikely persons had to say that. You will find men in the world that will admit that the life of Jesus is a very good model. The life of Jesus is something that ought to be imitated by men. Of course it should, but show me the man that has been able to do it. Show me a man who apart from putting their faith in Christ and receiving the gift of the Spirit has been able to live like the Lord Jesus lived – there would not be one. Men admire what they see in the Lord Jesus, but they will not come to this that what they deserve is death. That is what this malefactor came to, “we indeed justly”. That is how you will get the blessing, by coming to God in repentance, “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ”, Acts 20: 21. This malefactor had both and he was there, so close to salvation. God has come close to you too. I love that hymn:

Sinner, see thy God beside thee

In a servant’s form come near (Hymn 112)

This malefactor saw Jesus at that lowest point in His humanity, he saw Him at “the death of the cross”, Phil. 2: 8. He actually saw Him crucified and he was next to him. Think of the grace of God that has bought the gospel just where you are. You may be a malefactor, yet God comes right beside you where you are.

I was reading recently about some of the Nazi criminals in the Nuremberg trials. In the hours before they were shot because of what they had done, they had the gospel preached to them. Men did not forgive them, they condemned them to death, but God drew alongside them, and in His mercy several of them received the gospel in the closing hours of their wicked lives. That is what this malefactor did. Man would say, It is not fair that a man who has lived a life of crime is saved in the last minutes of his life? We do not have to do with men, no, we have to do with God. Thank God we are not judged by our fellow men, we have to do with God, a God who is infinitely fair, but a God who is not willing that any should perish, even a criminal a few hours before he dies, God is not willing that he should perish.

God does not take delight in the death of a sinner. You read things in the paper of wicked people who have done wicked things and men rejoice to see them die; they say, thank goodness they have gone, they deserve all they are getting. Dear friend, you and I deserve the wages of sin, we deserve to die. Why? Because the wages of sin is death and there is not one of us here, not a man or woman in the world who could stand before God and say I have not sinned. But this man was next to the Saviour of the world – the only One who was not worthy of death, and yet He was about to die, about to shed His blood, about to bear God’s judgment against sin. Think of what that involved; what it meant to the Lord Jesus to be made sin, “the just for the unjust”, 1 Peter 3: 18. All those terrible things that have happened in world history, all those things that have happened in your life, the Lord Jesus bore God’s judgment against them all. Did He bear your sins? He bore the sins of many. Thank God that there are many in this room who can say that Jesus bore their sins. I trust everyone in this room can say:

I could not do without Thee,

O Saviour of the lost (Hymn 220)

Maybe you do not think you are lost. One malefactor did, the other one obviously did not; he made a mockery – he was as near the gospel as the malefactor who was saved and yet he missed the blessing. We do not know what God could have done in the closing minutes of his life, but scripture starkly records that he did not respond to being so near the Saviour and hearing this appeal from his fellow malefactor. Dear friend, you have the chance now to hear the gospel about the saving power of God’s grace. A Man that has been here, provided of God, the God who “has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (Rom 8: 32), and here He was facing death that you and I might go free. Dear friend, dear young friend, Jesus has paid the price. There is a price to be paid to God for your history and mine and the price has been paid. No doubt many of us have read that tract about the little girl, an orphan, whose mother had obviously preached the gospel to her and she got on the tram and when asked for her fare said, ‘there is no fare, Jesus has paid the price’! Can you say, that Jesus has paid the price? If only we realise what that price was. If you read the history of the apostle Paul you will see that he had an increasing sense of the price that had been paid for his salvation. He could say, Jesus paid the price, “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Gal 2: 20. Can you say that?

Are you delighting in the saving power of the grace of Jesus that met you where you were; came right where you were, when you could do nothing to save yourself? Without it you will pass with this world to doom.

You say, that is not very twenty-first century. Dear friend, one thing about the gospel, God’s word, is that He never needs to change it. Men would love to change it, men in Christendom are trying to change the Word of God, they are trying to say that sin is not sin, that certain things are just something that applied when the Bible was written several thousand years ago. Dear friend, God does not need to revise what He says. God is God and you have to do with Him as a creature. God is not changing His standards, God is not changing His view of sin. What you see at the cross, what men saw at the cross, is what God thinks about sin – he has condemned it. “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son”, Rom 8: 32. That shows what God thinks about sin. Men may say that shows God’s love, yes it does. God’s love and His judgment of sin are seen at the same place, at the cross. You see there what God thinks about sin. If you and I thought as seriously about sin as God does we would be kept very humble and preserved in a sense of mercy. God in His mercy has met us where we were. I love what the old preachers used to say, that Grace has met us where we are because Love wants us where it is. That is the gospel. God takes you from the dunghill of your lost estate, however wretched you may be. I do not know what you have been up to this week or during your life, but however far you have gone, living maybe in debauchery, maybe going on with things that no one else knows about. Grace has met you where you are. Grace is God’s love away from home. Love is what we will experience in heaven in the Father’s house:

With its love and light and song. (Hymn 154)

That is where God’s love is free, where it rests upon Christ, where God wants you to enjoy the very best, but love has come away from home and in grace has met you where you are. You have not loved God, no, but He loved you.

Why does God do that? To relieve us of our sins? Yes, but also because He wants us where He is, God wants you in His house. He wants to give you an inheritance, to bring you into the fulness of what He has in mind for men. He does not only want to relieve you of the burden of your sins, wonderful thing that that is, but God wants to bring you right into His house. Mr John Welch said to us in a preaching in Frinton, ‘popular evangelism brings God to men, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but he said the full gospel brings man to God’. God has not just come to meet you to relieve you of your need, He wants to meet His need which is to have you and thousands more like you, men women and children, in His presence eternally, the ransomed throng. That is what God is securing, far greater than my need or your need, that is God’s need and because God has a need He has sent His Son to die, to be a propitiation for our sins. Jesus has paid the price and you and I can go free. God wants to bring you into the glory of what it is to stand before Him in a known and enjoyed relationship. That is what this malefactor got, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”. Those are the two words I want you to take home with you. Are you with Christ or are you without Him? One malefactor seemingly died without Christ, without God, without hope, lost. There are only two classes of persons in this room, the lost and the saved. In the old meeting room where I was brought up there was a gangway down the middle, and I remember the preacher saying, if the lost sat on this side and the saved on that side, would you be sitting on the right side of the room? I can remember an old brother who used to say that every time he preached, but it eventually went home, because I was lost then, and I was sitting on the wrong side of the room. Thank God that you do not need to be lost, you can come to the Saviour, He will come to you, He came to this man. The whole of his life this man had no respect for God at all, and right at the end of it God placed the Saviour next to him. That is what God will do in your experience.

The apostle Paul had that experience. What did Jesus do? He came just where He was on the Damascus road, and arrested him in his path (see Acts 22). God can do that. Would to God that there were more dramatic conversions among us. Some of us have been brought up in Christian households, and we thank God for that. Do not ever cease thanking God, dear young brother and sister, for being brought up in a Christian household. We do not know the half of what goes on in the world. Sometimes our work brings us into contact with persons who have not been brought up in Christian households. It is a very, very great blessing to be brought up in a Christian household. But one of the downsides is that sometimes we can think we are converted when actually we are not. We can slide into things very easily, and in that sense I say that some of us have needed a second touch just to show us exactly how far away we were from God. But, however far away you are from God the Lord Jesus will meet you where you are. If you resist His message like the apostle Paul did, maybe He will come into your life dramatically. Why? Because God does not wish the death of a sinner. Every time you see a funeral cortège going down the street and maybe you have feelings of sadness or sorrow, think of God’s feelings if it is an unsaved sinner. Think of God seeing that cortege going to the grave with a lost soul. Do you not be a lost soul, Jesus is waiting to save. That is why the preaching has been arranged here this evening. There are brethren in this place who are concerned that lost souls should be saved, and God is speaking again and saying that you can have a living personal link with the Saviour.

We need to maintain a strong moral element in our gospel preachings. I think the Lord has spoken to us in various things of recent years to show us that. We cannot take things for granted, even among the people of God. You may have been brought up in a Christian household and you may have the most godly parents that anyone ever had, but if you do not have a personal link with the Lord Jesus you are lost. The faith of your parents, your brothers and sisters, will not save you, but God is saying you can have it. You can have the joy your parents have, you can have the joy your brothers and sisters have, by having a living link with the Lord Jesus. However bad you have been, however bad you feel you are, or however good you feel you are, God would say, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3: 23), and the Saviour is available for every one.

The other malefactor seemingly had no time for the gospel, but the Lord Jesus says to this one, “Verily I say to thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”. Think of that! Today you can be as fit for heaven as the apostle Paul. You say, Impossible – no it is not, because his acceptance is the same as yours will be if you put your faith in Christ. The apostle Paul, the apostle Peter, Mr. Darby, Luther, all these men will be in heaven on exactly the same basis as you and me, no difference, no preferential work, no, the shed blood of Christ is the only basis for the salvation of sinners and it can be yours. Mr. Stoney said that when you accept Christ in the gospel you get everything God has to give. You may understand very little and some of us still do after many years of knowing the Lord Jesus as Saviour, but in accepting the Lord Jesus you have everything that God has for you. You say, I do not understand the wonderful gift of sonship, I do not really understand eternal life, but you have it by faith in Christ, and as you make room for the Spirit in your life He will unfold more of these glories and what there is for the believer to enjoy. Maybe you have never understood justification, maybe you have never known what it is to be really in the liberty of the Spirit, but as accepting Christ you have everything. And as you give your life to Jesus and prove the power of the Spirit, you will be expanded in what you have got.

The Israelites went over the Jordan, they were in the land but sadly they never took possession of very much of it. If you look at the map and see how much they actually possessed it was very little, even by the end of the Old Testament. But it was theirs and, dear believing friend, you have the title deeds to the greatest blessings that God has. Do not just leave them in some dusty solicitor’s office, get them out and go and see your inheritance and enjoy it. It is God’s inheritance too, God’s inheritance in the saints (see Eph 2: 18). Think of that. What we have enjoyed today, the Lord’s Day, is not only our inheritance, it is God’s inheritance, His investment in the saints and as you accept Jesus as your Saviour, think of the investment that God has in you. Think of the value you are to God. He sent His own Son to die for you and to bring you into eternal blessing. That is how much God values you.

In the second scripture I want to say a word about being with the Lord Jesus now. David says to some of his followers, “with me thou art in safe keeping”. In the Lord Jesus you have an ‘all the way home Saviour’. God is not only saving you for the sweet by and by! He wants you to live with the Lord Jesus now. To know what it is to enjoy the company of fellow believers, the Christian circle where the Lord Jesus is revered and where God is served and where there is so much for the pleasure of God and where we can experience eternal life, a character of life which is eternal enjoyed down here, even in these mixed conditions. He wants you to enjoy all that and to be a testimony for Him in this world. I want to raise this question with all of us, young and old alike. We may be with Jesus if the Lord were to take us to heaven tonight, but if He leaves us here, are you still going to be with Jesus tomorrow? In the sense of your eternal security of course you will be; that is the wonderful character of our acceptance before God. As we were saying in the reading, it does not depend upon what I think of Jesus. My love for Jesus by one o’clock Monday afternoon may have gone down from what it is now. I go out into the world and temptations come and if my acceptance depended upon what I thought of Jesus and how much I loved Him, my acceptance would go down too. But your acceptance depends upon what God thinks of Christ, what He thinks of His work, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you”, Exod 12: 13. So you have not got to worry about your eternal acceptance before God. If you have accepted the Lord Jesus as your Saviour you are safe and you will go to heaven when you die, and if the Lord comes tomorrow you will go up with all the other redeemed saints. Your acceptance as you put your faith in Christ is absolute and secure, but this time tomorrow, will you be with Jesus in your personal life? Will my life tomorrow, when we go to our normal employment, or to school, be with Jesus? David says here, “with me thou art in safe keeping”.

It is only by being with Jesus that we can be kept safe and kept from falling. I want to ask you that question too, Have you Jesus with you in your life? Do you keep with Him? Scripture says, “keep yourselves in the love of God”, Jude 21. There is a responsibility on us to keep ourselves near Jesus and in the area where He is known and loved. The Lord Jesus would love to be with you every day. Do you start the day that way, do you ask the Lord Jesus to help you? Do you speak to the Spirit? The Spirit’s mission is to keep us in touch with the Man in the glory. Do you start the day like that? Or do you go out in the day thinking you can get through it in your own strength. Sometimes we do, things come up and we think we can handle them ourselves, David says, “with me” you have nothing to worry about. It is a wonderful verse, “Abide with me, fear not; for he that seeks my life seeks thy life”. Have you ever thought about that? All that reproach and all those temptations and things that come upon you, the Lord Jesus would say, I have been in these situations, I have been in this world, I know what you are facing, I know what these temptations are. It says of Satan that he tempted the Lord Jesus with every temptation (see Luke 4: 13). I doubt there is anyone in this room who has been tempted by every temptation. We have to be careful when we speak about the life of the Lord Jesus because He was separated from sinners, in Him sin was not, but we do not have a high priest who, to put it simply and I trust reverently, does not understand what we are speaking about. When you go to the Lord Jesus with your problems and your exercises, the Lord Jesus understands them, and the Holy Spirit, resident in a believer’s life and heart is here linking us with Him. Think of that, a divine Person in the heart of a believer to help him through this difficult time. The Lord Jesus never promised that this waiting time would be easy, but what He did promise was that He would be with us all the days until the completion of the age (see Matt 28: 20). What a wonderful thing to be with Jesus. Without Him you will not stand in this world, rely on your own strength and you will fail. That is not theory, that is personal experience and I am sure that it is echoed in many hearts, that if you try and get on without Jesus you will not succeed. Stand in your own strength and you will fall, you will fail, the enemy will tempt but, “with me thou are in safe keeping”.

So, dear friend, do not just let it stop at your eternal salvation. Ask yourself the question, am I going through life day by day with or without Jesus. He would love to be in your life. He would love you to be a pious person having a life that He can come into and in which He can be with you. There are many scriptures where it says persons, “walked with God”, (see Gen 5: 22). Enoch was one, he walked with God, Abraham was another. Noah was another man who was with God in his daily life. All these great men we read about, but you can have that experience, you can walk with God, you can have the Lord Jesus in your life, you can be here and you can be helped to be a testimony.

The Lord Jesus is not here now corporeally in the world, and nor is the Spirit corporeal. The testimony in this world is men, women, boys and girls who have Jesus in their hearts and the Holy Spirit in their lives being here in testimony. Are you a testimony to a risen Saviour? Are you a testimony too to a rejected Saviour? Do you expect a better place in this world than the world gave to Jesus? Sometimes we feel that we are hard done by when we suffer and then you see that if you follow earth’s rejected King you will be rejected too. It is not a surprise that the world does not want you, it is not a surprise that if you are true to Jesus they make fun of you and deride you, but think of the inheritance you have. Think of the love you have in Jesus. Have any of your worldly friends got a friend like Jesus? Have any of your friends a resource like you have in the Lord Jesus and in the Holy Spirit? What a wonderful resource it is. You see men when a sorrow comes into their lives and they are devastated, absolutely knocked over – you have a friend in Jesus. You may have a catastrophe in your life, but thank God you have one who is with you, “with me thou art in safe keeping”. I had a colleague who lost a little girl of five, he had no link with the Saviour. You wonder how people get through a thing like that without Jesus. It brings home to you what a resource you have in One who is not only a Saviour, but He is a friend, an all the way home Saviour with all that resource. Then the resource of the saints, those who are like-minded, what a resource we have in the Christian circle as we go through the exigencies of the testimony and the trials and tribulations of life. A believer is not exempt from the sorrows and sufferings and part of the groaning creation, but he has this wonderful friend in Jesus. What a friend we have in Jesus!

If you have a link Him, you have a friend in Him, but do you spend time with Him. You are not much of a friend if you never spend time with your friends. If you have a friend you want to spend time with them, and what is more you probably want to do the same things as they do and to become like them. Well, if you keep in the company with Jesus, “with me thou art in safe keeping”, you will become like Jesus. You become like the company you keep. You can tell a man’s friends by the company that he keeps. If you keep company with Jesus you will become like Jesus and you will be here as a testimony to Him and for Him.

It is vitally important that you know that if you die or if the Lord comes you will be with Jesus. Paul says, “with Christ, for it is very much better”, Phil 1: 23. He was talking about actually dying but it is true anyway. I am reminded of Spurgeon who said at the end of a preaching, if you do not feel you are saved, come back and listen to the preaching next week. A man walked out of the hall and was killed by a tram, and Spurgeon said, never again will I give anybody time to be saved, “now is the well-accepted time”, 2 Cor. 6: 2. Then for all of us, even if you have a link with the Saviour, make sure that you are with Jesus in your daily exercises, otherwise you will make mistakes and fall. May the Lord help us in these things.

 

 

KIRKCALDY

10 August 2003