THE LIFE OF JESUS

J.A.Gardiner

Ezekiel 43: 10-12; Luke 3: 21,22; 4: 1-4; 9: 28-3 5; 22: 39-46; 24: 50-53

I am conscious, beloved brethren, of the need of help from the Spirit of God and help from the brethren as we proceed with this meeting. It is a very fine experience to be able to draw from the brethren as the body of Christ is in function. You find that things that are fresh and vital come into your soul and a great extension of liberty of speaking when that is so. I am conscious of the need of help because I would like, if I am able, to say something about the life of Jesus. Paul speaks about it to the Corinthians, that the life of Jesus might be manifest in our body, and that the life of Jesus might be manifest in our mortal flesh (see 2 Cor 4: 10,11); in these conditions in which we are there is to be the expression of the life of Jesus. It is a very blessed experience. I suppose the idea generally in Christendom is that persons read the gospels and seek to imitate what is set out in the gospels, and say that that is the life of Jesus. That is not what Paul has in mind. He has in mind that the life of Jesus, as He lives it now in the presence of God, is manifest here amongst the brethren. It is the same Jesus, there is no difference in Jesus – the Jesus of the gospels – and the features that come out in Jesus in the gospels are to come out in the saints as being found in the power, and gain, and blessedness of the life of Jesus.

So I felt encouraged to proceed on this line by reading the scriptures in Ezekiel. I doubt if I should have attempted it otherwise because there is the pattern of the house. He says, Shew the pattern to the house of Israel. We are not too interested in the literal pattern of that house; it may have certain architectural beauties and that sort of thing that some persons might be interested in, but we are interested in the pattern of the house as it is set out in Christ. He is the pattern, and if you are confounded at your iniquities you will get help. I thought that was very precious. If you find that as you look at the pattern you are not really up to it, then you are on the way for help and so am I, to get help morally to be like Christ. The desire of every true heart would be to be more like Jesus, to be living in the gain and in the expression of His life, to keep the whole form thereof and all its statutes thereof, and do them.

Well, to arrive at that we have to know Him. You have to know a person to be able to say how they lived, what they did, how they moved, what they gave expression to. That is a very comforting scripture in Ezekiel; there is the pattern of the house, and if you feel confounded at your iniquities, convicted that you have not really come up to the pattern, then there is help for you. I think that would apply to everybody in this room. I do not think there is a person here who would be free to say, who would have the boldness to say, that they are equal to the pattern. If we see the pattern I think it would promote depths of self-judgment with us and make way for Christ in our hearts. Mark at one point lost the pattern; when he went back he was not operating according to the pattern, but as the pattern came before him what depths of self-judgment there must have been because what a setting out of the life of Jesus he can give.

Matthew and Mark, and Peter I suppose, more or less go together, but Luke goes along with Paul. So I felt free to read these verses that we might perhaps get some help together to increase in our appreciation of the kind of Man that Jesus is. What a Man He is! This is the oblation, I would think , that is before us, the fine flour, the evenness of that humanity, unruffled, unable to be ruffled, because He is moving totally in dependence upon His Father. J.G.Deck's hymn (No.230) is very beautiful as he sets out the whole period of the life of Jesus; he says: 'Unmoved by Satan's subtle wiles'. Jesus was showing what man ought to be here in this world, for the pleasure of God in the midst of all the evil that is rampant. Beloved brethren, that is a very wonderful thing, that that has been shown, it has been manifest, a Man has been here, sin apart, entirely for God's pleasure, in the very conditions in which we are and He has yielded pleasure to God at every footstep of the way. There never was a moment when the Lord Jesus was not pleasurable to God. Those are the steps we are to follow; we are to follow in His steps; He has left us a model to follow in His steps, and we are to be sustained in the following in the power of the life in which He now lives, because He lives to God.

Well, I think the young brethren need encouragement, and I would like to be able to do that if I can. In the first section that we read in Luke Jesus is coming out publicly and we get some insight into the kind of Man He was, the kind of Man He is. He came into fellowship, you might say, this way, took His place along with the remnant of Israel; it says He "became a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God" (Rom 5: 8), that is how He came in, identified with the Jewish remnant; He took His place with them – "To him the porter opens", John 10: 3. He did not come in to set everything right and cause an upheaval, but He came in and identified Himself with the work of God that was there. How beautiful that is! We would like to be able to do that, just go on with what God is doing in a place; that is what Jesus would do. He would certainly encourage it and increase it, and greatly set it forward, but primarily that is what He did, He identified with the repentant remnant of Israel, carried forward, I suppose, from the end of Malachi. It says: "all the people having been baptised. and Jesus having been baptised". Now He is not a pushing person, Jesus is not like that. "All the people having been baptised, and Jesus having been baptised": He took, you might say, the last place. That is a thing that we might ask our selves: Do we like to push ourselves forward a bit? Or are we prepared to take the place that has been given to us, prepared to take the last place? Very great blessing accrues to us if we are prepared to take the last place, because some day somebody is going to come along and say to you, Friend, go up higher. That is the way to elevation, go up higher into the hill country, you might say. Chapter 2 of Luke is a setting out of moral and spiritual elevation and the function of the body of Christ; the conditions are so good that life is operating there; one sister speaks to another and there is the evidence of life inside her, there is the quickening touch inside her. Would you like to be like that? These things are set before us in this gospel; these are the conditions into which God brought His Son. There is an old man there and he had been told that he was not going to see death until he saw the Lord's Christ; God wants to give people that kind of promise, give you something for your own personal encouragement that you might step forward. So he embraces what is brought in, he holds that Babe – very wonderful! Then there is that old woman and she gives praise to God. Happy people, joyful people, moving, you might say, in the blessedness of eternal life, proving the greatness of all that God is in His faithfulness to His promise. So here is Jesus, and He has been baptised and He is praying. I would encourage the younger brethren, as I need to encourage myself, to pray. Jesus is dependent, He was baptised, took the last place; He was not looking at other people to see what they were doing, what place they were taking; He is moving into this matter in the dependence and in the appreciation of His links with the Father, and the heavens are open to Him. Have you ever had the heaven open to you? Do you ever feel when you are praying that the heavens are like brass? Probably it is because of unbelief in your own heart; I find that, it is unbelief. This is Jesus – O, the delight that heaven has in this kind of activity! If you move like this you will meet with divine approbation. Would you like to meet with divine approbation? This is the kind of way in which God says, Friend, Go up higher. Have it in your own soul for yourself; measure the pattern, look at the pattern, see how you are measuring up alongside of it; you are confounded at your iniquities, you go to God, you are needing help, you are feeling a bit guilty; forgiveness is available right away. They were confounded at their iniquities; God would open the thing up to them; that is what God would do now, open up to us all that He finds His delight in, in His beloved Son. O, what food for our souls, beloved brethren, there is in the life of Jesus! And that life is to be manifested here in our mortal flesh in these conditions. Publicly He is rejected, and publicly if this is manifest in us we will find rejection. Paul in chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians is straitened, their way not entirely shut up, he is having quite a rough time to get through, but God is with him, God is supporting him; God is bringing this thing through. This is the testimony; he is carrying the ark like the sons of Zadok. He had Christ in his heart and what is shining out is the radiancy of the glory of the glad tidings. How wonderful that is!

So it says here: "and a voice came out of heaven, "Thou" – "Thou" – "art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight". Have you ever had God speak to you, beloved, and give you some impression of His approbation of you? Dear young brother or sister, go to God, just be simple, ask Him what you can do more, how you can be more conformed to the expression of all that He found His delight in in Christ, receive a touch from Him; He will confirm you in the way in which you go. That is Christianity. Pray, be true to your baptism. That is what Jesus did; He came into this position, He identified Himself with the remnant in baptism, He came on to other ground. That is what you have done in your soul, been baptised, come on to other ground, the world to you is a wilderness, there is nothing there to minister to your heart, to minister to your taste; if there is, there is something wrong. You need to go to God and pray, ask Him, Why is it that I do not like going to the meetings? Why am I not keen to come out to the care meeting? Tell God about these things. Why is it that I find some of the meetings a bit boring? Be free, He is your Father, speak to Him, tell Him what you think, He does not mind; many others tell Him these things, but you will find God in the blessedness of His heart will direct your mind, will direct your affections, into these channels that are so delightful to Himself. Do not go along as though you are just putting up with things. No, be like Jesus, be wholly in it. He speaks about being in His Father's business. Paul writes to Timothy to be occupied with these things. Have your heart in them, and if you feel your heart is not in them and you are a bit cold, well, go and tell God about it; you can tell the brethren, you may confide in some fathers, maybe you do not foe! free to do that, you may think that there is nobody in your meeting who gives expression to the features of fatherhood. Maybe there is not but I doubt it very much; but then you have God, He will tell you, He will give expression to all the features of fatherhood that you could ever have desired. Be free. to tell Him; say you want to grow in your soul, you want to overcome, you do not want to be overcome by the world or these things that I find in myself warring against God's work in me. Be like Jesus! What does He do? He reverts to the Scriptures: "It is written"; He uses the word of God. Get acquainted with the word of God, read it, there are plenty of expositions that will help us to understand; find out what the various books mean. I remember once when I was newly breaking bread we started locally to read Isaiah, and somebody told me Mr Darby had a synopsis on all the books of the Bible and I thought, fine. I obtained the Synopsis and I started to read Isaiah in the Synopsis and I was more puzzled than ever. This is practical experience: what are you going to do now? You go along to the meeting and the brethren are speaking about things that you do not have much of a clue about. Go through it all and get something coming into your soul, some of these precious touches. One thing might be left with you in a reading, just one; somebody may have said something; well, nurture it, cultivate it, go to God with it, ask Him to show you how it can be enlarged in the Scriptures, find out how to obtain something for yourself. Do not try competing with those on the front seat about interchange of thought spiritually and that sort of thing. It says as to Jesus that He grew up before Him as a tender sapling. How beautiful is growth in Jesus! How normal! How precious!

It is a strange thing, and yet it is not a strange thing, that we may find it more difficult to be occupied with Christ wholly and solely than with anything else. We can be pretty good at minding other people's affairs, and spending lots of time on various pursuits, trivial as they are, but God would have us be occupied with Christ as He is occupied with Christ. Now we need to take this exercise to God in prayer and in earnestness of heart, and say we would like to be able to live in the life of Jesus. He greatly delights to promote, to make way for us as we are on that line. How precious to the heart of God to see the manifestation of the life of Jesus here in persons in their mortal flesh! He has Christ before Him in the fulness of His Manhood, every beautiful trait and feature shining out absolutely in Him; and down here is the new man, Scripture calls it the new man; it is the expression of Christ here in testimony. God would like you and me to be more in it. So we need to read the Scriptures, need to get to know what they mean. Deuteronomy is a very fine book. You have to find out what is meant by Deuteronomy: why should there be a second giving of the law? Why do brethren say that Deuteronomy is Moses with the people? How did they arrive at the things they say? There are remarks in the reading; brethren say, for instance, that the numeral ten relates to responsibility, and it does; well, who arrived at it? The number seven, they say, sets out perfection; the numeral eight relates to what is eternal – how did they find out? You find that out for yourself with God. What an experience Christianity is! Marvellous! Would I have been able to bring out this verse in Deuteronomy if I had been tempted? There was Jesus, the perfection of humanity; He is establishing the right of man in flesh and blood to live on the earth for ever; what a triumph that was for God! Marvellous! Wonderful! A Man here who has justified God in every one of His thoughts relating to man in flesh and blood – how beautiful that is! The devil comes at Him in every possible way and cannot get an inroad at all. Jesus is binding the strong man and He is doing it by use of the word of God. The very reason why Adam fell was because he refused to hearken and obey and to move on the principle of the word of God; he did not listen to God, he listened to his wife, who listened to the serpent. Jesus is here and He is related absolutely to the word of God, and He is related to the word of God in that Deuteronomy position, which means, I suppose, that He was ready to go into heaven at any time. That book is very wonderful. You begin to link it up with what Paul says in Ephesians 3 about his intelligence in the mystery; really what he is saying is, you will get to know that I have some knowledge, some experience in the mystery. Well, Moses is like Paul, he is able to tell them more about the land, and he had never been in it, more than any of those who eventually went over. Why was that so? Because he lived in it in his heart, that is where he lived. Is your heart in the land? Is your heart in heaven? These things are all available to us, beloved brethren, for that is where Jesus lived. Could you spend a night abroad on the mount of Olives? Could we sustain a night on the mount of Olives in that spiritual environment with God? Are we prepared to have our ear opened every morning, to take the place of the instructed? That as Jesus: "He wakeneth morning by morning, ·he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the i structed" – Why? – "to succour by a word him that is weary", Isa 50: 4. O the wonderful disposition of divine grace! 'see too how Deuteronomy bears on the new covenant, the great expression of God in love. Why does it say; "Hew for thyself two tables of stone" chap 10: 1? Are you exercised, have you enough exercise to do that? The ark is the ark of wood. Hew for thyself two tables of stone and write the law on it; do the thing for yourself, make it your own, that is what God is after; He wants persons to be in the enjoyment of Christianity for themselves. It is all right quoting what Mr Taylor said, what Mr Raven said, what Mr Darby said: it is all very blessed, but let me make that my own in whatever measure I am able to do it.

Now the Lord here is related to the Scriptures, so I went on to Luke 9. I would like to speak a little about spiritual experience. This was a wonderful experience in Luke 9; a Man who was here in flesh and blood conditions sin apart, for the pleasure and glory of God' and the establishment of every feature of God's will, is ready to go into heaven; He could have gone right into heaven then in that condition. Is that not wonderful! But He thought about you and He thought about me, thought about other things, but He was thinking about us. We know the teaching, we are coming to the sections that deal with the dying of Jesus. Are we prepared for that? – the putting to death of Jesus, the every-day experience of that, being delivered to death for Jesus' sake. It tests us very much; it does me. What do we know then about spiritual experience? It is the foreshadowing of the public display of the kingdom of God. Peter, one of the chief fathers of the Levites, is writing so that we might know that they had not followed cleverly imagined fables; he says: "but having been eyewitnesses of his majesty" 2 Pet 1: 16. That is a very wonderful setting out of what happened here on the holy mount, and Jesus is entering into the wonder, you might say, of the privilege. How much do we enter into it, beloved? There is no cloud, no distance, between Him and the Father on this mount of transfiguration. Some brethren were there and were asleep, they did not know what was going on; the bondman was committing Himself in principle to serve for ever, that is what He was saying; Moses and Elias were talking with Him about His departure which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. He was not going right up to heaven, no. He was saying in principle, I will not go free. "Ourselves your bondmen for Jesus' sake" (2 Cor 4: 5): could it be so with us, beloved? Could we speak of one another in love like that? The great desire of Paul's heart was that Jesus might be promoted amongst the brethren.

As here, He is in the presence of the officers and the judges, having His ear bored through with an awl, saying He will be His bondman for ever. Nobody has ever been able to say 'I love' like Jesus has. Think of the outgoing of Mr Darby's heart when he said, 'O Jesus, Lord, who loved us like to Thee?' (Hymn 249)! Nobody has loved you like Jesus has loved you; He has committed Himself to serve in love. There He is; Moses and Elias, great personalities, are talking with Him, they are speaking about "his departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem". Can we sustain conversation at that level? Come Lord's day morning (and I speak with all humility) it becomes a real challenge to us as to how long we can sustain an impression in the presence of divine Persons. Think of Abraham, in type, able to detain Them until he prepared that meal. There was the evidence in Abraham of moral superiority as he sits 1n the tent door in the heat of the day. In that sense there is the evidence, the manifestation in him of the life of Jesus. What a discussion this was! They spoke of His departure which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Could we enter into that holy conversation in any measure? It may be we get oppressed with sleep; I know it happens, we become almost oblivious of what 1s going on. You may be in the presence, beloved brethren of the greatest things, the finest things, the most spiritual things, and be quite unmoved, quite oblivious of what is proceeding. And then we want to make something; we miss the manifestation, so we are like Peter. How often we revert to that line; grace is not sufficient for us, we have to make something; when we seek to make something it is usually going to be derogatory to the uniqueness of Jesus. What Peter said, "it is good for us to be here", was right; and it is certainly good for us to be here. Then he proposes making three tabernacles. Well, the brethren know the teaching of that. Let us drink into the fulness of the purity of the spirit of divine grace that is manifested in Christ, and absorb the wonderful communications that proceed, not only between the Father and the Son but between the assembly and Christ in this 'holy realm of divine response. God intervenes and He says: "This is my beloved Son", He is unique; you are not to bring Him down to the level even of the greatest man – great person ages as these were, Moses setting out the authority of the truth, Elias bringing the brethren back to it in a broken day, prophetic ministry having that in mind that the saints should be brought back to the greatness of divine principles established through the authority of Moses. That was all in mind but they are not equal to Jesus. Jesus is unique, He is distinctive. Beloved, is it so in our hearts? It was so with Paul; he says: "For me to live is Christ, and to die gain", Phil 1: 21.

Now I want to speak a little on chapter 22, because I think there is a very vital point here which I have missed many times. He comes to Gethsemane from the point of view of the mount of Olives. He is committed to the Father's will. The great stress, I think, in the section is in prayer – prayer. It is very important and most essential that in times of conflict there should be intensity of prayer. You might not be able to get into a place, and there might be hearts that you cannot touch, that it is impossible to contact. I think beloved, the word of God for us from this section would be that we should persevere in prayer, and if we are in conflict we should pray more intently, because the great aim of the devil, when pressure comes upon persons, is to come in between them and their links with God and weaken that link so that that person is drawn away from God, and consequently, may eventually be lost to the testimony. O, how Jesus shines here in the wonder of His dependence, and the great desire that He has for the salvation of the apostles in urging them to pray: "Pray that ye enter not into temptation". Temptation, beloved, can be far too much for us. How we need to have our footsteps guided aright in the holy path of God's will that we do not fall into temptation. O, the beauty of this section: "and having knelt down he prayed". What a priestly action that was! Here is the bondman, He is not going back on His word, He is not going back on His committals. They knew that; this is what they talked about on the mountain, it was the subject of their conversation. The Father was never tense; He never looked on with any apprehension as to whether the Lord Jesus would withdraw, whether He would yield or give in. No, there is perfect complacency between the Father and the Son. Mark, as having measured the pattern, brings in that beautiful touch of holy intimacy when the Lord Jesus says, "Abba, Father" (Mark 14: 36); the pressure brought out the intensity of the relationship. O, beloved brethren, let us see, let us anguish in prayer, that it would be the case with us if pressure comes upon us, that we would be more cast upon our relations with God and find strength in them. It even says here: "And being in conflict he prayed more intently. And his sweat became as great drops of blood, falling down upon the earth". How intense was the prayer of Jesus! How He felt this thing! It is all to do with your sins and mine: it was nothing to do with Himself. It is the accomplishment of the will of God, which, of course, in its fulness goes way beyond the question of sin. Yet He was here in this situation because of us; let us never forget that Jesus is our Saviour and He has saved us from our sins. Let us never think for a moment that we are free from sinning, that we do not sin, because if we do we deceive ourselves; no matter how well taught we may be or · otherwise, as long as we are here in these conditions we are liable to fall into temptation and come short, and to give expression to some feature of the flesh which is sin. So there is a lesson to be learned here: "being in conflict he prayed more intently. And his sweat became as great drops of blood, falling down upon the earth". Jesus goes through His prayer here, He is going through the exercise of it, He is going through with God. How wonderful that is, beloved, to go through a thing with God and to come out the other side with God! The pressure is relieved from His spirit; He is going forward into this. What teaching there is in this! We can follow Him in grace from the mount of Olives and through this way that He goes, but, once again, alas, there are persons sleeping from grief; they cannot sustain the pressure. We need help from God to sustain an exercise right through so that we come out of it triumphant, victorious; and through it is the manifestation, and the increasing manifestation, of the life of Jesus. I think that is very wonderful.

He goes after them in chapter 24; He recovers persons, brings them back to the city. How beautiful that is! Have you ever seen Him in another form? He manifests Himself in another form. You would not think it to be He but it is. In the tenderness of His grace He pursues persons, and He can arrange circumstances and do wonderful things as persons are ready to retrace their steps, to come back to what has been spoken of as God's ideal of a city, back to Jerusalem, back to the assembly, back to the great sphere of privilege. They are back to touch and live in this area of things that is beyond death completely; it is not related to flesh and blood. What privileges are ours beloved brethren, in these days! We can have assembly experience, we can touch the assembly despite the brokenness of the day. You might say, and it might be well for all of us to ask ourselves, What is the assembly? What do brethren mean when they say we are going together in assembly? That is Lord's day morning, we come together in assembly, the formal convening of the assembly. If you do not know what it means ask the Lord, ask God. There are plenty of things to pray about; the Lord will open your under standing, He will give you to understand the Scriptures so that you can see things clearly, then you begin to know what the brethren are talking about. What is the assembly? What is a local meeting? What is a local assembly? We are to know these things by experience as well as by way of light. But He has gone up in blessing, beloved brethren. How wonderful that is! And He is coming again in blessing. There is no difference, it is the same Jesus, the same blessed Person; He is going to come in the manner in which He went up – very beautiful! – come again in like manner. He does not exude condemnation, He does not make people feel depressed, does not make you feel you are not wanted. He never embarrassed anybody: that is not Jesus; and if the life of Jesus is manifested in our mortal flesh there will be the expression of Christ amongst the brethren. What rallying there will be to the truth, because the work of God, being what it is, always comes to the expression of the truth, at least acknowledges it.

Well, beloved, let us measure the pattern, it is available for us. There are the gospels; there is the pattern, measure it; see how we come up to it morally, for that is in the area of right and wrong. The moral side largely relates to the earth, the wilderness. How are we in it? Are we in it like Jesus? He has left us a model to follow in His steps-very beautiful! It says: "who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; who, when reviled, reviled not again", 1 Pet 2: 22,23. "Neither was guile found in his mouth" is a thing we might think about, because we come along in the fellow ship, we have a bit of experience, and sad to say, – it has to be faced, you know – you begin to see that some brethren can be a little bit political, and there is guile, that sort of thing is in evidence, under the guise, it may be, of wisdom. Jesus is totally transparent and so is the holy city. "Neither was guile found in his mouth": He has left us a model to follow in His steps. Let us seek to do that as individuals, not looking at somebody else to see how they are getting on. Peter looked at John to see how he was doing; the Lord says, That is nothing to do with you, you follow Me; you be the thing yourself. Oh, what a blessed experience! Get your eyes off persons, get your eye on Christ, let your eye be single. He commends that in the gospels; "if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body will be light", Matt 6: 22. As a brother said in the reading: "that they may see your upright works, and glorify your Father who is in the heavens", Matt 5: 16. May we be encouraged, beloved brethren, to seek grace and help to find that we are able to give expression to and enjoy in a fuller way the life of Jesus as it is currently in expression.

 

LONDON

18 January 1986