HOW WE MAY SEE JESUS

D. J. Hutson

Luke 2: 8–17; 23: 33, 34, 44–49; Hebrews 2: 8 (from “But now we see not”), 9

The second scripture that I read referred to those “who had come together to that sight”. I trust we may all have a sight of Jesus tonight. Those that we read of at the beginning of the gospel were interested. I trust everyone here is interested. Think of the invitation there is in Mr. Darby’s hymn—

‘Come now, and view that manger—

The Lord of glory see,

A houseless, homeless Stranger,

In this poor world, for thee’.

How much there is sometimes in two words —‘for thee’. Dear friend, whoever you are, do you realise He was there for you? In chapter two of Luke’s gospel, it says, “for today a Saviour has been born to you in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord”, but note the words

“born to you”. Has everyone here realised that it was to you that He came? These shepherds appropriated it; they were interested in it, and they turned aside that they might have a closer view of what had come in in this Saviour who was born to them. Is everyone here interested in the Saviour who was born to you? He was born nearly two thousand years ago, but still it is to you. It was to these men, but it is to you as much as it was to them—a Saviour. You need a Saviour as much as they needed a Saviour, but there is a Saviour for you.

There is a beautiful word in Isaiah where it says, “he became their Saviour”, Isaiah 63: 8. Do you realise that? God Himself became their Saviour. He has become your Saviour in the Person of Jesus; He has drawn near in a way which could not repel but could only attract. Are you attracted by the way that Jesus has drawn near? What does the apostle John say? “Perfect love casts out

fear”, 1 John 4: 18. Think of the perfect love of God that was manifested in the way that He drew near in a Babe in Bethlehem’s manger! How could anyone be fearful of the way that God drew near in the Person of Jesus, when this Saviour was born. These dear men were interested. Are you interested in the Saviour? Have you come here because it is the usual thing to do on a Sunday night, or do you want to know more about the Saviour? We, who believe, shall see the Saviour, we shall be occupied with Him eternally, and we shall never exhaust all that there is in that glorious Man. Yet He came in as a Babe in Bethlehem’s manger. He was here so that you might not be repelled, but that you might be attracted by the love of God which has drawn so near in the Person of Jesus.

Even the youngest can, as it were, imagine for themselves what it would look like, and yet there is something that is so peculiarly distinctive in the incoming of Jesus. It does not speak of a manger, it speaks of the manger. When the Lord Jesus came in, everything was prepared for His coming in. You may say there was no room for them in the inn, and so there was no room for them in the inn. There was no room in the society of men, in its social circles or anything of that kind, there was no room for Jesus. But a body was prepared for Him and the manger was prepared for Him. There was only one manger for Jesus. God had gone before and there was preparation made in order that He might draw near in all His love and grace; so that He might be attractive to you; so that there might be a way in which you might know the perfect and absolute love of God; so that He might be known in His holy nature, and not in a way which would repel you, but would attract you and cast out every fear. Do you ever have any fears when thinking of having to do with God? You lay awake at night perhaps, fearful, all is silent; perhaps you know that at some time father and mother and your dear ones are going to be taken to be with Jesus; and perhaps you wonder. Have they gone? Is there fear in it for you?

There is no need for fear; the perfect love of God made known in Jesus will cast out every fear. He has drawn near in a way in which you need not fear, in which I may say you cannot be afraid, with all the attractiveness of a babe in Bethlehem’s manger. Who is not attracted by a babe? That was the way that Jesus came. I would say in holy reverence, that is the way that God Himself has drawn near. God was here in the person of Jesus, a holy Stranger, in this manger at Bethlehem, so that you might not be afraid in any way, but you might be attracted by the way in which He has come near to you to make His heart known.

May you be interested, like these men were. “Let us make our way then now ... and let us see this thing that is come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us”. It has been made known to you perhaps many times in the gospel, you have heard it many times for yourself, but have you turned aside to see? God is interested in persons who turn aside; persons like Moses who turned aside to see that bush that was burning and was not consumed. Think of God Himself in the person of Christ, come into this condition of flesh and blood, so that you might be attracted, so that you might be interested! God is interested in all those who are interested in Him. He would kindle your interest afresh tonight, that you might come and see for yourself the way He has drawn near to you—to see that a Saviour has been born to you.

Not simply that a Saviour has been born, not that it is just, you might say, an impersonal matter, for the gospel is intensely personal, it is for you and it is for me. Many here have appropriated the Saviour, Jesus who has drawn near in such an attractive way, which will never repel anybody but which would only attract. O, the way that God has drawn near in Jesus!

You say, Surely He would have been given a place, surely He would have been welcomed, surely as He moved in that pathway there would have been those who would have accepted Him. Thank God there were those,

for we read of the women who followed Him, and those who knew Him; who stood afar off at the cross. Jesus Himself was here preparing persons into whom the Holy Spirit could come, that there might be continued on the earth at the present time a testimony to the way in which God had drawn near, that there should be that here which continues in the expression of Christ, and that the life of Jesus might be manifested in persons who have come to know Him. So the Lord Jesus moved here, rejected on every hand and finally was meted a malefactor’s death, “one on the right hand, the other on the left”. I love to think of the way that John presents it, “one on this side, and one on that, and Jesus in the middle”, John 19: 18.

He must have that place, “in the middle”, whatever men might do; God is in complete control, He has retained the initiative. The Lord Jesus in John’s gospel is peculiarly seen to have the initiative, “he went out, bearing his cross, to the place called Golgotha”, John 19: 17.

He had the initiative in the matter of His own crucifixion. Yet it says, “one on this side, and one on that”; not one on the left and one of the right. John would say, “one on this side”, and that is the side John was on. We have to fix ourselves in relation to the cross. Are you on this side or are you on that? Come over to this side where John was, come over to the side where the disciple was whom Jesus loved, and prove for yourself the love of Jesus, even as that dear man proved it for himself.

There were those who were indifferent, those who beat upon their breasts, for they had no sympathy, no feeling in relation to the way that Jesus was hanging there on the cross. We do not get His sufferings portrayed for us in the same way here as in other gospels; we do not get that cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But we do get that there was darkness. That great matter that was to be settled for God’s eternal glory, and for your eternal salvation, in the work that Jesus was to accomplish, involved that He should go into that darkness and bear the sins of all who

put their trust in Him. Are you among them? One could say, He “bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Peter 2: 24. Can you say He bore yours? You can avail yourself of the opportunity, and say with others, “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”. What a load it was that He bore! My sins! if I had but sinned once it would involve for me eternal banishment. I have sinned more than once, but all those sins have been laid upon Jesus. Many here could speak of their histories, but it has all been laid upon Jesus as having put their trust in Him. What was compressed into three hours would, for us, have involved an eternity of banishment from the presence of God for ever. All was compressed into three hours, and this blessed Saviour was able to sustain it all, and was made sin for us, that awful venom which courses through the veins of the human race, the very thing itself condemned so that you might be set free. Would that one could speak of it more feelingly, more powerfully, that it might enter into your soul, the sufferings of Jesus; what He has done for you, a Saviour for you, born to you. He came into the world for you, came into the world for me. There is no man in the world we cannot speak to and say, He came into the world for you. Have you turned aside to see? Have you received Him for yourself? Have you viewed that manger to see the Lord of glory, the homeless, homeless Stranger, In this poor world, for thee? Have you seen this sight? Have you seen Jesus on the cross? Have you taken account of the fact that He was there for you?

One died for all. He died having borne the judgment of God. The types all fall short, for there the victim was slain, and then the fire was brought to bear upon it. But the fire of God’s unmitigated judgment in relation to sin and sins was borne by Jesus as He was there alive; He was able to sustain it, and at the end of it He bore the penalty of death that was due to you and to me on account of our sins. You are under judgment, you are under the sentence of death, you cannot absolve yourself

from it, and you cannot blame Adam and Eve for it. “By one man sin entered into the world

... and thus death passed upon all men”—Does it stop there? No because it says, “for that all have sinned”, Romans 5: 12. Death has passed upon you because you have sinned. But Jesus has died. He has borne the penalty, that “he should taste death for every thing” (Hebrews 2: 9), that the whole question might be settled for ever, so that there should be a scene in which death can never come. It was all the mighty work of Jesus, what He effected at the cross, what He bore there, what He was able for, what none other could do. He became a Man, He was made some little inferior to angels in order that He might suffer these things, suffer death as the penalty, and His precious blood was shed as a witness to it. O, what a sight! The Son of God was crucified; the Man that died was God. The mystery of these things, the wonder of them! Let us remember it was God who came down Himself in order that He might relieve you and me. He came down into the position in which we were Himself in the Person of Jesus to reach us and extricate us, to set us free to be for His pleasure eternally and for our eternal blessing. What a Saviour Jesus is! Would that one could speak of Him in a way which would move every heart to accept Him and to love Him, to come into the blessing which has been secured at such a cost.

Then He was buried. He did not have to be buried on His own account, for it says, “neither wilt thou allow thy Holy One to see corruption”, Psalm 16: 10. There was nothing in the precious, holy, sinless body of Jesus that required burial. As to us, as is seen at the grave of Lazarus, “he stinks already, for he is four days there” (John 11: 39), what corruption! But Jesus, by going this way and rising again has brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings. He has been into the grave. He has been where I should have been, gone out of God’s sight as it were. How it comes back to us in that word that we read in type, “I had not thought to see thy face”, Genesis 48: 11. How real it was that He, as it

were, should be lost to sight to God for that time. But He was buried on our account. I think Joseph of Arimathaea illustrates for us so potently what it means that He was buried vicariously. There was his own new tomb, and as he went by it afterwards he would look at that tomb, and he would say, That is where I was to be but Jesus was there instead, Jesus was there for me.

As you see that position on the cross, and that position in the grave, that is where you should have been, but Jesus was there for you. Have you appropriated it? Have you come to see that sight and to see that it was all for you? Have you seen that God had you in mind at that very time? He had in mind that you should come to know Him as a Saviour God and come into blessing; that you should come to know what it is to have the enjoyment of eternal life, a life that is beyond death, which can be known and enjoyed at the present time. He has given so much that it might be yours now. There is no need to wait until you die. What will be known then, for those who believe in Jesus, is to depart and be with Christ which is very much better. But you can know even at the present time what it is to enter into these eternal relationships for your own joy and pleasure and for God’s satisfaction. God so loved, what a word that is, “For God 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. O, the giving of God! He has given so much. What can we say as to the giving of God? “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him grant us all things?”, Romans 8: 32. The heart of God has been made known to sinners like you and me that we might come by faith to accept the Saviour.

Where is He now? That is why I read in Hebrews. We do not preach a Saviour who is still on the cross. The Saviour has been on the cross bearing the sins of all who put their trust in Him, but we ask you to accept the

Saviour who is now in the glory. What a Saviour He is! As it says, “But now we see not yet all things subjected to him, but we see Jesus”. That is the present sight. What I have spoken of is past, and yet in a sense may it not be past for us. May we never lose sight of the way God has drawn near to us, may we never lose sight of the way Jesus has suffered for us, may we never be far from the sufferings of Jesus. How it would preserve us! Now we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour. He was, “made some little inferior to angels on account of the suffering of death ... so that by the grace of God he should taste death for every thing”, or it could read, “for every one”. He has done it for you. There is no need for you to fear death.

Put your trust in Jesus as the One who has tasted death for every thing, and you will find you can be at perfect peace. Death will no longer be, as another has said, a prison door into eternal banishment from the presence of God for ever. It will be just the entrance into the enjoyment of the love of the One who gave Himself for you, and which will then be known without all the trammels of the mortal condition.

How wonderful it is to look on to being for ever with Jesus. But then it says here, “we see not yet all things subjected to him”. There is that which is subjected to Him. Are you subjected to Him? Perhaps you do know Him as your Saviour, but do you know Him as your Lord? Have you acknowledged His rights? What a cost He has paid to secure these rights over you! He has rights over you as Creator. That is who He is, by Him also God made the worlds; but He has secured rights over you by redemption. God lost man for His pleasure through the incoming of sin, but as you put your trust in Jesus, find your sins forgiven, find that the power of sin is broken, you can say, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. You can come into the blessed knowledge of deliverance and know the power of the Holy Spirit, as coming to know Jesus as your Lord. “No one can say, Lord Jesus, unless in the power of the Holy Spirit”, 1 Corinthians 12: 3. You

can acknowledge it as you have the Holy Spirit, acknowledge His rights over you, and answer to His claims over you too. He would desire that you might remember Him, in the time when they still say publicly, “We will not that this man should reign over us”, Luke 19: 14.

You can have the privilege of being subjected to the Lord Jesus, by owning Him as your Lord, and proving that in confessing Him as your Lord there is salvation—“if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord ... thou shalt be saved”, Romans 10: 9. You young ones going out into the world, going to school, to the workshop or whatever it be, and you find you are in a tight corner, what is the answer? Confess the name of the Lord Jesus, own that He has rights over you, simply say, I belong to the Lord Jesus, and I cannot do this, or I cannot do that. Christianity is intensely simple, there are indeed principles that must govern us, principles that we speak of as to separation, and other things, but they are all really settled in subjecting yourself to Jesus and acknowledging His claims. Think of how it says, “And everything, whatever ye may do in word or in deed, do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus”, Colossians 3: 17. So you can say, Can I do this in the name of the Lord Jesus? Can I go there in the name of the Lord Jesus? Can I associate myself with this in the name of the Lord Jesus? How simple it is, and yet how wonderful to prove His support and the reality of His power as you confess His name! a name God has given Him, a name which is above every name, a name which is soon to be acknowledged universally.

Soon He is coming, and when He comes He will come as Saviour. He came in as Saviour at Bethlehem’s manger, but He is going to come as Saviour in glory. As believers, we are waiting for Him to come as Saviour, when He will change these bodies of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory. We shall appear before the judgment seat of Christ, but the One on the judgment seat will be the Saviour, and He will just unfold to us all

the way that He has brought us, all the way that He has been a Saviour. It will just be to enrich our appreciation of the One with whom we shall be occupied eternally. What sights these are. Let us keep near to those sights, to see the way that He came in, to see the way that He went out, but to see Him now as He is in glory, and all that has flowed from that place in glory for our blessing and God’s pleasure. May these things be more real to each one of us, myself included, and if we have not really appropriated them for ourselves, may we do so for our blessing and for God’s pleasure. Amen.

Preaching at Aberdeen, Scotland, 26 January 1997

EXTRACTS

I wish now to illustrate from Solomon what I have in mind. I hope young believers especially will follow what I have to say, so that they may know the interest that God has in them from the very outset. Solomon is taken up, representing one in relation with the father as adopted.

God said of him, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son”. So that although Solomon was chosen, he was not adopted as he was born; but he was loved as he was born. I need not say that God could not adopt what He could not love; He adopts what He can love; and certainly He cannot adopt the man after the flesh. There is that which is of God, and God, I may say, loves one, not only in the general sense in which it says God loves the world, but He loves what is lovable. God loves what is lovable, as we get Moses saying, “Yea, he loved the people”, “When Israel was a child then I loved him”. He was lovable. And so it is that God loves you, and He adopts what He loves; and so with Solomon. He is called Solomon by his father, meaning ‘peace’ or ‘peaceful’, and I may say a young man or woman is of no practical value until he, or she, becomes “a son of peace”. All the troubles among the people of God arise

from those who are not sons of peace—like Absalom.

Well, as Solomon was born, and peace marked him prophetically, God comes in and indicates as to him more than peace, he is lovable. These are the traits of the initial work of God in us, and the greatest care is required lest damage happens between that and the time when the believer should say, “Abba, Father”. God sees the end from the beginning, and so Solomon as a child is loved by Him, and he was called Jedidiah because of the Lord. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit”, and “God is a Spirit”. But then adoption comes in; the believer gets the Spirit of adoption whereby he cries “Abba, Father”. Every believer should be assured that he has the Spirit of God. “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear but ye have received the Spirit of adoption”. God has marked me off and sealed me; He has anointed me; He has given me the earnest of the Spirit in my heart; I have received the Spirit of adoption, and I cry “Abba, Father”. God has worked in me, and now I am come into the region of family relationship; I am consciously in sonship, having liberty to call God, Father. That is the great line in Solomon. As David is before the great assembly in 1

Chronicles 28, he “stood up upon his feet” and said that he had had it in his heart to build a house for the Lord, but he was a man of war and had shed blood; but as divinely instructed he says, “God has chosen Solomon” to build it. He dwells on the thought of sovereign selection, for he has now arrived at it. It is a great day when one arrives at the realm of sovereign purpose, and everything, beloved brethren, in God’s realm is on the ground of sovereign choice. God has chosen us in Christ “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love”. And so David says, “Hear me, my brethren; …

for he has chosen Judah to be the prince, and of the house of Judah the house of my father”.

God has very good reasons for choosing. He chose David because He ‘liked’ him—“Among the sons of my father he liked me to make me king over all Israel”.

God Himself says, “I have found David ... a man after mine own heart which shall fulfil all my will”. But then David says, He did not choose me to build a house. Not only does He choose one to be king, but He chooses His workmen—and every man has his work appointed to him; and so David goes on to say, “And of all my sons, for the Lord hath given me many sons, he hath chosen Solomon, my son”. The sons were all given to him, David says, but Solomon alone is chosen to build the house of God. And he says, He has taken him to be His son. Solomon was adopted.

Now I want you, young people, to understand this great period of spiritual history—the period of adoption. In that passage in 2 Samuel 7 God says, I will be his father; not only is He in that relation, but He will do the part of a father; Solomon would lack nothing of all that a father could do for him. “If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men”; note it is the rod of men, and the stripes of the children of men. This is the discipline of the young, so that they are preserved; as it says, “What son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?” We are dealt with as His sons. He is the Father of spirits, and as subject to Him we live. And so now we are consciously and intelligently in adoption, and under the Father’s care and discipline, and times of discipline may be severe. ‘Stripes’, I apprehend, may be more or less according to the divine choice, but there are the two—the rod of men, and the stripes of the children of men.

J. Taylor (Vol. 28, pp.446–449)

There is a phraseology now, such as ‘being occupied with Christ’, and expressions of that kind, which propose to give Him full prominence, but which are denied in practice. It is deemed only orthodox now to speak so, but I feel we must insist that the external should bear the marks of the internal; and that others should be able to

judge of the occupation of the heart from the expression or fashion in which we appear. The truths of Scripture are received and treated too much as information. The mind sees and enjoys them as something incomparably fine and beautiful, but there is lacking the sense that every fresh ray of light is really lost or useless unless it makes its way through the pitcher; that is, unless the vessel is so controlled and coloured by it, that there is manifestly more likeness to Christ, and increasing growing up unto the measure of the stature of His fulness.

There must be standing to produce state, but if the state which is suited to the standing be not preserved, Satan’s great aim is attained—even to prove the nullity of the truth of God, and that there can be the admission and profession of standing, without anything characteristic of it. Satan cares not what truth a man holds, provided he retains the character and principles of the world, and this really does more damage than ignorance of standing. The misfortune with many is, being content with a success at their first start, and being so elated by it that they are not set on going forward.

J. B. Stoney (Vol. 12, pp.113–114)

That is the idea. You are at the Lord’s supper as the expression of love to Christ. We might regard what we get here as suggesting the principle of covenant. There is the thought of the principle of covenant in the Scriptures, apart from the new covenant which has its own force.

But the principle of covenant runs right through Scripture, and enters into christianity. You get the principle of covenant in Romans, because you commit yourself in baptism; and in Corinthians, you commit yourself in the Lord’s supper.

J. Taylor (Vol. 87, p.156)

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