Robert Taylor
THREE PREACHINGS
The verses that I have read come from what are perhaps three of the most outstanding preachings in the course of time. They are not outstanding for their length, nor for the man who spoke them, because he is spoken of elsewhere as unlettered and uninstructed, nor are they remarkable for how much is in them in the way of teaching, although that may be the case, but they are remarkable in this, that God used them to demonstrate and to inaugurate a dispensation of blessing. The circumstances were that the people to whom Peter was speaking were perhaps more guilty than man had been at any time in history, and yet God opened the windows of heaven in these preachings to inaugurate a dispensation of blessing that has continued to this very day. Men, especially in official bodies, have great ceremonies at their inaugurations, great resources are spent in inaugurating new things; and many of them very soon run out of resources, they cannot maintain the glory of the inauguration. But, in the glad tidings, the resources of divine love are still as full today as they were when they were inaugurated. The windows of heaven are still open in blessing. God is still disposed in the riches of His grace to meet guilty man in all his need, as He demonstrated here.
In one of the preachings of which we read there were three thousand souls blessed at one time. What a demonstration of God's attitude and disposition towards His guilty creature that was. There are no questions raised. God did not interview each one of those three thousand and ask them what they had done. He did not go over the details of their history to find out how guilty, more or less, they were, but He was there disposed to come out in all the wealth of His house to meet every condition in every one of them, to their satisfaction and relief, but too to His eternal glory.
In the first preaching, Peter tells the people that they were guilty of having crucified the Lord of glory. That is a solemn thing - the Man who had been there among them, who had healed their sick and raised their dead, and fed them too. Oh the grace of Jesus, that when they were hungry He fed them, when they were blind He gave them sight, when they were in prison He released them, and yet they crucified Him! Peter brings that home to them, and no preaching of any worth would be right unless it brought home to the audience some sense that they were guilty in the sight of a holy God. You may say, Well I, am not guilty of having crucified Him. That may be. Peter was speaking to the audience here who were.
But then he says in the next preaching that "ye denied" Him. Perhaps you have denied Jesus. You may think you have not, but I say this in all sobriety and affection for you, that if you go out from a preaching of the Name of Jesus in the Spirit's grace without having confessed His Name, you are guilty of having denied the Saviour. You may think that is just a simple matter, that you could come to a preaching and leave it just as you please, but Peter says to these persons, "ye denied the holy and righteous one". So it may be that you have heard the preaching, have known something too of the prompting of the Spirit of God, and gone out unresponsive to those pipings of divine grace. It would mean what Peter says, that you have denied Him.
He says in the third section, that ye have rejected Him. That is even more solemn. But it brings every man into the presence of God. It is not only the Jew that stands guilty of having crucified Jesus, but the nations as well as Israel were gathered together at the cross of Jesus: The inscription on that cross was not only in Hebrew but also Greek and Roman when they crucified the Lord of glory. Peter brings that home to these persons, and while I would not dwell on it at the moment, it brings every man into a place of responsibility, every person who hears the glad tidings, man, woman, boy or girl, they stand in a place of responsibility in relation to God who has proclaimed a dispensation of blessing.
But Peter goes into much more. While he brings home to them their guilt, he brings home so beautifully the resources and wealth of a Saviour God who would have all men to be saved. You may have thought that there would have been a better three thousand persons to bless than those, but God took advantage of that most guilty audience to show the resources of His love and grace and the fulness of the delight that He had found in Jesus. That is what Peter brings out in these preachings, that the foundation of the whole dispensation of blessing rests on the fact that God has glorified His servant Jesus. That is why it continues until today. The guilt of man may well have caused God to close the books, He may well have said, One thousand years is enough, but here we have come to almost two thousand years and the books are still open, the offer of pardon and mercy is still flowing in all its fulness, because God has glorified His servant Jesus. What delight heaven has found in Christ. If man rejected Him, crucified and delivered Him up, heaven has found its full delight in a Man who here on earth glorified God. Those precious words are uttered from His own lips, "I have glorified thee on the earth". Peter says here "God has glorified his servant Jesus". What better approbation could there be of the service of Jesus than that God has glorified Him. Think of God taking account of His servant Jesus before He was in public service. If it required God in His wisdom to bring men from the east to proclaim His incoming, He did that. Bringing out again the unresponsiveness of the Jew to the circumstances in which Christ came. These men proclaim to them that there was One who was born the king of the Jews. The angels could not contain themselves, as they saw for the first time on this sin-stained universe, one who was holy - "that holy thing born". Born, come into man's circumstances, how the whole heavenly host was vibrant as those heavenly praises were sung. Mr Darby says,
More just those acclamations
Than when the heavenly band
Chanted earth's deep foundations,
Just laid by God's right hand.
They sang when the earth was created, but how sweet the song, how rich the praise, when they saw the Lord of glory lying in a manger. They could not contain themselves. God's Servant. That was what He came to do, to serve God. You say, Did He not come to serve men? True He did. I may say that is the secondary side of His service. Many would think it was the primary point of His service that He came to heal, He came to bless - true - and how blessed that is from our side, but the primary point of His service was that He came to glorify God. He came here to lay a righteous basis for a dispensation of blessing. He was here in the lowly conditions of manhood, working as men worked, dressing as men dressed, feeling hunger as men felt it, touching humanity in all its facets, a man, truly a man, and yet He glorified God in the circumstances of humanity. Oh how heaven took account of every moment of that pathway of Jesus, day and night. The angels too were full of wonderment, as they saw Him, tempted of Satan - what that must have been to heaven, a Man here, tempted of Satan, forty days and forty nights when Satan harnessed every resource and every armament in his armoury against God's servant Jesus, and he left Him. He had to go out. God was glorified there in a Man, in His pathway at every step, but He was glorified too in His death because He died:
Then onward to the cross,
Through toil and grief and loss,
The Man of sorrows wends His way,
To sheath the judgment sword.
He sheathed the judgment sword. There God was glorified, that the judgment was exhausted, the judgment that was due to those around, fell upon Jesus.
Peter brings that home to them. He says "ye delivered him up", "ye denied" Him in the presence of Pilate. How the guilt was heaped upon the race. It was not only that they denied and delivered Him up but the very man to whom they delivered Him up, Pilate, said "I find no fault whatever in him". O my friend, think of justice being miscarried as never before. They put Him up to the judge, but would they accept the judge’s verdict? The verdict was 'I find no fault whatever in Him'. Peter says he had judged that He should be let go. Yet the answer to those words of Pilate was "Crucify, crucify him". What a moment in the history of time when the very judge under God's hand says, I find no fault in Him whatever. Not from one examination. You may say there was another court of appeal and the verdict was the same. How thoroughly He was examined, Pilate, Herod, the priests, the Sadducees; just like the offerings, all laid bare and there the perfection coming out in every detail - I find no fault in Him whatever. That was the Man who bore the judgment sword. That was the Man who stood in your place and mine. Peter says to these persons "he stood in your place". You could have well understood it if God had come out in judgment in those days in Jerusalem. He had demonstrated His grace in the pathway of Jesus and man's answer was, crucify Him. How God would have been justified in coming out in judgment upon them. But no, Oh the marvel of His love! The triumph of His mercy, the judgment fell where it could be borne. Had it fallen upon man, it would have been the end of time. Had the judgment fallen upon those around, it would have been eternal damnation. God would have been denied, may I say respectfully, the opportunity of opening the windows of heaven, in a dispensation of blessing.
But the judgment fell where it could be borne, it fell upon Jesus, His holy servant, and there in His death, as never before, He glorified God, as He bore the judgment due to you and me and in the bearing of it, hear this cry - "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". Words that have run through the history of time, words that have been heard and answered in heaven, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". Here is the answer to that cry that God not only forgave them, but He demonstrated it in giving forgiveness to three thousand souls at one preaching. Oh the wonder of divine love! Oh the matchless superiority of divine grace, that the judgment having been borne, He has come out in blessing. But how severe was that judgment! The depths that the Saviour tasted, the distance to which He went that that judgment should be thoroughly met. Peter speaks in this section about their sins being blotted out. That is how God has come in in this dispensation of blessing, that He is prepared to blot out. Things blotted out are truly gone, you cannot see the marks, it is blotted out, removed for ever from His presence. God is prepared to blot them out. That is what Peter is saying in the preaching, but what a distance, what a work that involved for Jesus. It involved not only the cross, it involved that He died, it involved that He was buried.
Paul says it very briefly, "he died for our sins, and he was buried", and "he was raised". There is the gospel in a nutshell. But O what it meant for Jesus, the distance to which He went - that He died and He was buried. It is something that is unfathomable, the burial of Jesus. Why should He be there for three days and three nights. In three hours on the cross, from one point of view, He bore the judgment that was poured out. Yet, there He is three days and three nights. He felt it. You say He was dead - yes He was dead - but He felt the fact anticipatively, because He said "the Son of Man must be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth". He felt it at least anticipatively, that He was going into that distance, God's servant. What it must have been to heaven, after those thirty-three and a half years of life upon this earth, that there should then be three days and three nights, that He was in the distance.
That is how far He has gone. But He has been raised. That is what Peter brings home in these preachings, that He has been raised. Blessed be His Name, the work has been fully accomplished. The resurrection of Jesus is showing that God has been fully satisfied in His Holy Servant Jesus. He not only raised Him, in answer to the work that He took upon Him, but He has glorified Him. That is where the glad tidings is coming from tonight. It is where the blessing is coming from for you tonight, from the glory, God has given Him a Name above every name. Peter says here, "there is no other name". There is a hymn that says:
Join all the glorious names,
Of wisdom, love and power
That mortals ever knew, that angels ever bore,
All are too mean to speak His worth
Too mean to set the Saviour forth.
He has a Name that is above every name. That is the Name that is proclaimed in the preaching.
Peter says - "God has made him both Lord and Christ". He has put Him in a position of supreme authority, but too in an unassailable position of blessing. For Christ is the great Blesser, the Christ is the One who is going to bring in a whole millennium of blessing for Israel and for men. He says "God has made him, whom ye have crucified" - there could be no greater contrasts. Men put Him on a cross, God has made Him Lord and Christ.
May I ask, is He Lord to you, has He become your Lord, is He the One to whom you have bowed the knee in full allegiance? Is He the One that you make the resource for the circumstances of your life? Peter does not leave them without a sense of guilt. But the preaching would not be a preaching if it did not bring home the infinite resources to bless; however great the guilt, the resources of divine love are more than equal to it.
It is a wonderful thing - two chapters at least in the Bible about this lame man being blessed. Not many persons have two chapters about them. He was an insignificant beggar, a man that was an outcast of society, but the Spirit of God takes these two chapters to demonstrate the resource of divine love to reach those outcasts. There are two very fine things said about him, it says "he was there in complete soundness", then it says too "he was sound in body". It is what the gospel would bring you into complete salvation - one day there begging alms at the gate of the temple, and perhaps just a few minutes after, he is walking and leaping and praising God. He confounds Jerusalem, really, the Pharisees, and the priests, those who looked after the temple and all its ordinances, they were confounded, that a man that had been lame for forty years, was there walking, leaping and praising God. Oh the power of the Name of Jesus available tonight to meet and to enter into the very recesses of the human heart, that men may be set up in complete soundness. Complete soundness would involve that not only your sins are forgiven, but the man was not only made to walk, but he was leaping and praising God. So the gospel goes all the way. You may not embrace the fulness of it, you may not even be prepared to enter into the fulness of it, but God, from His side is coming out in His blessing, that you may come into the fulness of what the glad tidings would set you up in. The man is set up: as Peter says, "complete soundness in the presence of you all". But then he says more, he goes on to speak of Jesus being the corner stone - "Jesus the Nazaraean, whom ye have crucified, whom God has raised ... this man stands here before you sound in body". Some persons whom you meet are not just too sound. I would not say that they were not Christians exactly, but they have been brought up under a teaching that says they can be saved today and lost tomorrow; they are not completely sound. There are other persons whom I know who are undoubtedly Christians, and yet they would live their lives in things that are not pleasing to God; they are not completely sound. The gospel is coming out that you may be there completely sound, "sound in body". It is very fine to meet somebody who is sound. You speak to them, you get a good echo, you get a good response - others say We will try, I mean some day to give my life to Jesus, I know Him as my Saviour, I mean some day to be more committed. You meet these persons and most of us, may be all of us, are in that category in some way, but the gospel is preached to make us completely sound. That, my friend, comes about through coming to the Cornerstone. "He is the stone which has been set at nought by you" - he is not saying now that they have crucified Him, but he is saying that you did not appreciate Jesus. That is what he is coming down to in the preaching. Oh the grace of the preachings that it does not bring home the guilt that is beyond what is reasonable. He says - "He is the stone which has been set at nought". Who is there that has not set at nought the Lord Jesus? But he is saying that if you have done that, God has made Him the Comer-stone, and for this man, for Peter's audience, He is saying that He wants to be the corner-stone of your life. God has made Him the corner-stone. I do not know much about building, but the Comer-stone is there as a distinctive feature of the building; it gives it character and what character Christ has given to this whole dispensation! Peter is appealing that you who have gone on perhaps up until today without giving Him His true place that you make Him the Corner-stone of your life. You the builders, He has become the Comer-stone. Peter makes a good deal more of that when He writes to, perhaps, some of these same persons later on, he makes a good deal of the building and the Corner stone. The corner-stone is something to attract your heart that it may become the dominant feature in your life. Most of us spend a good deal of time when we are not regulated by the Cornerstone, but the appeal would be to make Him the Corner-stone, the pivotal feature of your life, that like the man here we may be fully in the testimony of our Lord in complete soundness, for our own joy and blessing but too for God's praise and glory.
BIRMINGHAM
9 November 1997