BLESSING IN BEING BROUGHT TO GOD
P. Martin
The gospel has in view that you, and I, and all men should be brought to God. Not to face Him as a Judge, but to face Him as the One who is intent on extending His loving-kindness.
That is the God who is presented in the gospel, not a God that is wanting to execute judgment. No, that is His strange work. He is willing to show us His loving-kindness. What loving-kindness, dear friend, is in the heart of the blessed God for you. David was a mighty victor and a type of Christ. Some of us were impressed today with the mighty victory of Christ. He has broken the power of sin, broken the power of death, broken the power of darkness; He has met it all and is victorious. What a Victor the Lord Jesus is! Here David said, “Is there not yet any of the house of Saul, that I may shew the kindness of God to him?” Is there any that is left?
I might ask that in this room tonight. It may be that you are sitting among believers in the Lord Jesus. He would say, is there one more that I can show the kindness of God to? That is the heart of God; He is not willing that any one should perish. You may say, One person out of seventy-five in this room, would it matter? You may be the only one, and you matter to God. He is saying tonight, Is there yet any one left; only one person? You remember in the gospel that the shepherd had a hundred sheep, but when he lost one, he left the ninety and nine to go after the one that was lost; it was precious to him. Your soul is precious to God; whether you are rich or whether you are poor, whether you are a king on the throne or whether you are sweeping the streets; you are precious to God. The Lord Jesus is wanting to show the kindness of God to you. God is bringing in the resources from His own side, Why? Because you could never do it; like Mephibosheth of old, he was lame on both his feet, he could not do much; he could not have gone out to the war.
You and I, as away from God, can do nothing for our salvation, we are lost and away from God. All men have sinned, it says (Romans 3: 23), and that is you and that is me; that is every one, we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is not one righteous person, not even one, and yet that has not altered the heart of the blessed God towards you. It has not altered His feelings for you even though you are a sinner, even though I am a sinner.
God in His grace is appealing to you tonight, because He wants to secure you for Himself, because of what is in His heart, not because of what is in yours. It is not what is in your heart that calls out the goodness of God. It was not what was in Mephibosheth’s heart that called out the goodness of David; it was what was in David’s heart. Now that is the basis of the gospel that is coming to you. It is because the blessed God has feelings of kindness and compassion, and love, and mercy that He is pouring out to you tonight; it is not because you deserve it. Mephibosheth did not deserve it here, he was on the line that was worthy of death, a line that has challenged the rights of God, he was on that line. I have been on that line.
I do not know whether you have come to it that you have been on that line. Each of us as away from God has challenged the rights of God. Yet the blessed God is towards us. He says, Is there yet any? You may be the only one. Do not look around you to see if there is another.
The Lord Jesus was the Victor Himself, and He would appeal to you in wondrous grace that you might know what it is to come into the enjoyment of a place of favour in the king’s house. That is what God has in view for all men. He desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. You say, Is God great enough for that? Yes, He is great enough for it, that is what He desires to secure. But in the gospel He is appealing to you—“Is there yet any that is left ... that I may shew him kindness …?” David is told here of one who was left. It says the king sent and fetched him. The gospel is to fetch you out of your circumstances where you are. The blessed God does not appeal to you in view of leaving you where He found you. He is appealing to you because He has something greater in view in the gospel, He wants you in His presence. He wants you to come from a place of no pasture and barrenness, a place of emptiness which is all around us in the world, a place where you will find no satisfaction, He wants to bring you into a house of plenty.
Well, you know, David’s table was full. Mephibosheth was brought to eat at the king’s table. God has in view that you and I might know what it is to have a place at the king’s table, to have a place in nearness to the king, as one of the king’s sons. What a wonderful privilege for men! That men away from God, brought from nothing, brought from emptiness, brought from moral corruptness and degradation, should be brought right into God’s presence, even to sit at His table. What a transformation in the soul of a man! The gospel is able to effect it. How can it be done? you might say. How could Mephibosheth be taken from such a low estate to be brought up to such a royal position? It was done, I can tell you. Now it can be effected because of a work that has been done. The Lord Jesus has accomplished a work that no one else could ever accomplish; that you could not have accomplished. You could not effect your own salvation; he has done it all. Blessed be His Name! He has gone into death for you; He has gone into death, I can say, for me. What a wonderful Saviour the Lord Jesus is! All that stood between me and the enjoyment of the blessing, all that stood between me and the holy God was my sins, that is what stood between, but Christ has gone into death to remove them.
What a wonderful Saviour He is, that He should go there of His own accord, into death. What movements were His! I would like to dwell on them a little. The Spirit would help us to dwell on the movements of Jesus in going to the cross. He came here as a blessed Man and in His pathway here He moved onward.
Where was He going? He was going into death. The hymn-writer says,
‘Then onward to the cross,
Through toil, and grief, and loss,
The Man of sorrows wends His way;
To sheathe the judgment sword,
The wrath He there endured,
And now is crowned in brightest day’. (Hymn 245)
What a way the Saviour went. Have you ever traced the footsteps of Jesus? Those footsteps that led Him into Pilate’s court, those footsteps that caused that He should spend all night standing, being questioned, being mocked, being spat upon. What a Man! What would happen if someone spat on you? When someone spat on Jesus He did not retaliate. Men hated Him. He says Himself, “They hated me without a cause”, John 15: 25. He gave men no reason to hate Him. All that He had done was perfect goodness; healing, giving sight to the blind, causing that the deaf should hear, raising the dead. No one else could have done that.
You remember that woman whose son was being carried out of the city, her final hope in this scene being carried out in a coffin. Everything for her was lost. It is a picture of the world tonight, every hope is lost, bounded by death. That woman had lost her husband, and now she had lost her son, she had nothing to live for. The Lord Jesus comes and he raises her son; He restores her son to her. Who else could have done that? He could raise the dead even before he had gone into death Himself. He broke death’s power when He went into it. He gave witness to the power of death being broken as He came out of it. What a blessed glorious Person.
That same blessed Person was the Man that they hated. Why did they hate Him? Dear friend, have you ever hated Him? Perhaps you are sitting here tonight and you do not care about the Saviour. I do not know. Perhaps you are not interested that the Saviour endured so much, that a crown of thorns was placed upon His head, and He was beaten upon the head. What sufferings He endured from the hands of man!
Does it not affect you? He would say to you tonight. Is it nothing to you? What sorrow He endured, and what suffering. He would appeal to you, Does it not mean anything to you? He had to go that way in order that He might effect the work of redemption; that He might secure us for God, on the basis of a work that could never be changed, on the basis of a work that could never be overthrown, on the basis of a work in which God has found His eternal satisfaction. I praise Him for it. He went into death for me. Blessed wondrous Saviour! I ask Him often, What was it that made Him go that way for me? Dear friend, have you ever asked Him that?
What was it that made Him go that way for you? It was love in His heart for you. It was love in His heart, undeserved and unmerited, for me that made Him go that way. He went that way, never once thinking of turning back. He went that way in order that He might exhaust the judgment of God. All that was due to me because I was a sinner, all that was due to me by way of judgment, He took it all upon Himself. He took it upon Himself and bore it, exhausted it in three hours of darkness upon the cross. What was concentrated in those three hours upon the cross we shall never know, but Jesus knew. He fathomed, He measured, He exhausted the judgment of God upon sin. The hymn-writer says—‘Thou didst measure then sin’s distance’ (Hymn 298). We marvel at it, what the Lord Jesus bore, forsaken of God; the blessed God whom He loved as no one else could have loved. He was forsaken by His God. What a cry that was from the cross, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Dear friend, have you ever answered that cry? Why was it that He was forsaken? He was forsaken as the Sin-bearer, that you and I might never know what it is to be forsaken of God; that we might be brought into blessing in full unmerited favour by the blessed God Himself through the work that Jesus has done. On that cross, dear friend, His precious blood was shed in order that you and I, guilty sinners, might be cleansed from our sins, and find salvation in the person of Jesus. It says, “neither is there another name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved”, Acts 4: 12. You must be saved, you cannot put it off; we are standing on the verge of eternity. This room is full of persons who expect any moment to go from time into eternity. Do not be the one that is left. Put your faith in the blood, and in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ; the blood to cleanse you of your sins; the Person to satisfy your heart. He has indeed satisfied God’s heart, and provided a basis for your perfect acceptance into His presence, so that you might know, as the type indicates, what it is to be taken from a place of emptiness and admitted into the king’s house, to sit at the king’s table and to feast as one of the king’s sons. It says, “David said to him, Fear not; for I will certainly shew thee kindness”.
That is what God is saying to you in the gospel, fear not. That was a word to the jailor in Philippi when he saw that everything was lost, “Do thyself no harm, for we are all here”, Acts 16: 28. The Saviour is toward you in His grace—the blessed God is toward you in His kindness, in order that He might bring you right into the fulness of the blessing that is in His own house. There has never been emptiness on the king’s table.
Are you satisfied? You may say, I want to be happy. It is not only that the gospel presents the opportunity for happiness; it does bring happiness to men, but it goes further than that, it presents satisfaction. I have illustrated it before in this way; you may give a child a bar of chocolate and he would be happy to receive it, but he will not be satisfied until he has eaten it. God is not only presenting happiness, something to make you happy for a minute and it will be past, but God is presenting in the gospel satisfaction for men, eternal satisfaction. It is something not known in the world. I ask you, dear friend. Are you satisfied? Have you found what it is to have a lasting peace in your soul? Have you found that?
Mephibosheth had not found it at this point, he was still cautious of what David might do to him; but David says, “Fear not; for I will certainly shew thee kindness”. The gospel is preached that you might know what it is to be satisfied now and eternally in the presence of the king, and to eat at the king’s table. See what God is bringing us into, not as an individual, but to sit at the table. There is a wealth of supply and relationships, the king’s sons are there.
We are taken from the place of emptiness and loneliness and brought in to sit at the king’s table, satisfied in the company of the king, and of those that are his. That is what the gospel has in view to bring man into, to feed continually at the king’s table.
What characterises the king’s table is plenty, the fatness of the land. God has that in view for you, dear friend. You may say, I am not worthy of the blessing. None of us was worthy of it.
We are not brought in on the basis of our worthiness; we are brought in on the basis of the worthiness of Christ, what Christ means to God. All that He is, in the excellence of the perfection of His manhood, is the light in which God views those who have put their trust in Him. You can be in the presence of God as fit for that presence as the Lord Jesus is.
Everything that you have done removed by Himself and by His work, and everything that He is clothed upon you, so that when God looks at you as having your faith in Jesus, He sees not what you have been, but He sees the perfection of the Lord Jesus; and He says, I accept that man in the perfect manhood of Christ. God has a Man in subsisting righteousness in His presence now, and He is accepting those who believe in Him in the worth of that blessed Person.
It says that Mephibosheth did eat at the king’s table continually, and he was lame on both his feet. It has often been said that those feet were never seen again, they were under the king’s table. Mephibosheth was there as a king’s son, typifying the worth and dignity of the most elevated calling that God could bestow upon man. That is what the gospel has in view, to place believers in the highest calling that God could have for man. Think of the blessings that we have been brought into. Paul touches on them very briefly in his writings; he says that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ (Ephesians 1: 3).
Everything that God has in His heart of heavenly blessing is available now for men. It is bestowed upon believers in order that they might know what it is, not only to be suited to, but to be sustained in, the enjoyment and satisfaction which God has; it has all emanated from His own blessed heart. Dear friend, it can be yours today. Mephibosheth was doing nothing in this section. David has the desire to bless; David sends and fetches him; David makes him sit at his table; David provides the resource and the wealth. All has been done for your blessing, dear friend; all you have to do tonight is to repent—repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and the blessing is yours. Is that all? It seems too simple. It is simple, dear friend, for you, but it was not simple for the Saviour, it cost Him everything. He has done the work, and the work is all complete, because He is now at the right hand of God, and He is crowned there as a Prince and a Saviour.
Now in chapter 19, David is in rejection. The Lord Jesus is in rejection. We gathered this morning and we were conscious that the Lord Jesus was in rejection. If He was not in rejection, everyone in Dundee would have been gathered together. The world has cast Christ out, it has said, We have no room for this Man. How was Mephibosheth going to continue when David was not there? The Lord Jesus is crowned with glory and honour but He is not here; He has not ceased to be the mighty
Victor. Soon He is coming again. He is going to put into effect publicly all that He has done morally on the cross. He will put it into effect. He is the Taker-away of the sin of the world.
Who else could have been great enough to take away the sin of the world. The Lord Jesus has done it, and He is going to put it into effect when He comes again. We were affected this morning as we came together to remember the Lord Jesus, that the One who was before us is the One who is coming in radiant glory, “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea”, Habakkuk 2: 14. Think of the greatness of His dominion, but at the moment He is not here, He is in rejection. You may say, Mephibosheth, what is your position if David is in rejection? I would ask you, fellow-believer, What is your position when the Lord Jesus is not here? Mephibosheth had been wronged, he had been lied against. Is he going to claim his rights? He says, No, I have no rights. That is like the believer now, he has no rights because the King is in rejection. Dear friend, how are you going to get through while the King is in rejection?
Mephibosheth was feeling the absence of David. Have you ever felt the absence of Christ? When you go out tomorrow, if we are left here, will you feel the absence of the Lord Jesus? Mephibosheth was not joining in with what was proceeding. No, he was looking and waiting, that was his attitude; he did not even trim his beard, or wash his face or his clothes. Why? Because David was not there. Mephibosheth’s heart was where David was. Where is your heart? Is it where Christ is? Is my heart where Christ is? Mephibosheth says, Nothing here matters to me because my heart is where David is; David is in rejection and my place is with him there. What a privilege for believers, that as the Lord Jesus is rejected, we can hold ourselves here as in allegiance to a rejected Christ. We do not form part of the world that has cast Him out as worthless. You may say, I have not the power for it, and who of us has the power for it? The power for it is not of ourselves, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Have you received the Holy Spirit? Do you know Him? I ask the question of myself, How much do I know Him? He is a divine Person who has come because the Lord Jesus has gone into glory. He is occupying the affections of the saints with the glory of the Man who is in the presence of God. He is taking the things of Christ and showing them to us. The Holy Spirit would occupy our hearts with Christ. You may say, I find I sin so easily. I say to you, dear friend, that you are not alone in that. I say to you, Speak to the Holy Spirit about it, and ask Him to keep you in communion with the Lord Jesus, and in communion with Himself, that you might know what it is to be occupied with things that are beyond this scene, so that your taste changes. Has your taste changed? Mephibosheth’s taste had changed; he had sampled the food on the king’s table. He did not want again the things that belonged to Lodebar.
The Holy Spirit working in the believer changes the desires of the believer, and then gives the believer power that the longing He has formed might be satisfied and answered in the believer. To this end He brings the glory of the blessed Man from whence He has come and, with whom He is occupied, into the heart of the believer. He also sheds abroad in the heart the love of God, causing that the heart should be radiant with satisfaction. Dear friend, you may say to me, as I used to say when I was younger. It sounds very good, but I would like to prove it. I say to you, Speak to divine Persons, speak to the Spirit. You will find that what desires you have in your soul become good in your soul, not only light to the soul, but experience in the soul as you take it up in communion with the Holy Spirit. You will find that you can be sustained here, not in your own strength, but by the power that has been given to us in the Spirit Himself, to be here in the absence of Christ as faithful to Him.
Now David was coming again, and the Lord Jesus is coming again. Our faith looks on to that.
How wondrous to be living in the anticipation that at any moment we are going to see the face of Jesus! We have never seen His face. Peter says, “whom, having not seen, ye love” (1
Peter 1: 8), but we are actually going to see His face. He will come out of heaven. Men are looking for movements on the earth; but believers are not looking for movements on the earth, they are looking for movement from heaven. The Lord Jesus Himself will descend from heaven, come right down into the air, and we shall meet Him in the air. He is coming again, not just for me as an individual, He is coming for His church. He is coming and He will receive every one that is His. Think of the myriads of those that have died in Christ; they are going to rise first. What a moment it will be when the tombs and the sea will have to give way to the power of Christ over death. Think of each rising to meet Him, and those that are His upon the earth rising with them, being caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
Dear friend, that is what we are expecting as believers, we are not expecting great things on the earth. The earth is forming itself in great activity, but believers are being formed by the Spirit for an activity that surpasses what man could ever think of, the Lord Himself descending from heaven. It is immediately before us. May it be more so before believers.
Mephibosheth says, Yes, I was lied against but that does not matter. Anything that matters concerns the king. He says, “Let him even take all, since my lord the king is come again in peace to his own house”. We are in a world where men are claiming their rights, but Mephibosheth was not doing that. The believer can live in the enjoyment of the anticipation of meeting the Lord Jesus in the air, that can fill his soul. Mephibosheth had neither washed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes from the day the king departed till the day he came again in peace. It just shows the way that David had filled Mephibosheth’s soul so that everything for him was centred in another man.
Dear friend, I ask you simply, Is the Lord Jesus so much to you that nothing else matters? He would fill your heart with His love; He would fill your heart with satisfaction for the present time; He would fill your heart with the plenty that is in the purpose of God for you. He would draw you away from everything else that you might know what it is to be satisfied with Him, and prove that the Lord Jesus is all and everything that the believer needs. May we prove what it is to remain at His table continually. The King’s table is not for Lord’s day only; I fear for myself the danger that my Christianity may be for one day a week. We enjoy it on the Lord’s day, but the danger is of dropping to something lower as we go out in our business life, or our secular life, or whatever we have to do. Dear friend, prove that Christ is great enough to satisfy your heart through time as He will do eternally. May it be so, for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Dundee
20 August 2000