“I KNOW”

John 9:24,25; 10:4,5; Job 19:25 (to “liveth”); 2 Timothy 1:12 (to “believed”)

It will be observed that in these scriptures, persons speak of what they know. That is not just what they hear, but it is conscious knowledge, and it means that they speak from personal experience. When you come to the gospel preaching, what really matters is what you have experienced personally in your own soul. I might ask the question at the outset: What do you know in your own soul about the Lord Jesus? Do you know Him as your Saviour? That is where the gospel begins. That is not where it ends, but it begins there, and you certainly cannot go anywhere else unless you know Him as your own personal Saviour. That involves a transaction with Him in relation to your sins. Have you ever felt the burden of your sins? Have you ever cried to God for mercy in relation to them? I can tell you this, that we have to do with a God who hears the faintest whisper of any sin-stricken soul, and if you cry out for mercy in relation to your sins, then it is mercy you will receive. That is the God that I know. This man in John 9 knew one thing, “being blind before, now I see”. By the end of the chapter he knew more than one thing; he had come into the knowledge of the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, that is another Man in another world.

In conversation as we were walking to the room tonight, we observed that many believers will speak happily and openly about the Man of the gospels, and we are thankful for it, but it is not so common to hear them speak of the Man in the glory. That involves the gift of the Holy Spirit. All these things come into the gospel. In the time of the Reformation in Germany, there was a man called Martin Luther; younger ones will probably know a bit about him. In the experience of his soul he found that he was justified, not by works, but by faith in Christ. It was one thing that he knew. There it was, he could withstand the whole power of Rome in relation to that truth. Why? Because he experienced it. The experience of these things brings stability into your soul. How else could he have withstood the power of the church of Rome at that time? It was a truth that he was used of God to recover, the truth that you can stand before God without one single sin upon you because of your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, not on your own merit. We have none; “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags”, Isa.64:6. God has not come to call righteous persons but sinners to repentance. Do you know whether you are a sinner saved by grace?

This man in John 9 went on in his history and he was faithful to the experience and the light that he had, and the first thing that marks him is the obedience of faith. He was a blind man and the Lord Jesus put mud on his eyes. You might say, That is not going to help his condition, but Jesus said to him, Go to Siloam and wash (v.11); and he went. That was the obedience of faith. You can picture him, can you not, a blind man, mud all over his eyes, wending his way to the pool of Siloam, but he went and he came seeing. You have to stretch out in faith in order to make these things your own, and once they are your own, you have stability and a foundation in your soul. It is not a question of what you have been told by way of information, but it is the experience in your soul that counts. Now he was faithful, this blind man, and he found himself cast out. The Lord Jesus had already been cast out. There was a religious system operating which found no place for the Lord Jesus Christ, and because the blind man had light and was faithful to what he had experienced, he also was cast out. We began this morning with a hymn at the Supper which spoke of gathering in the scene of His reproach and shame (Hymn 203). That has not changed; the Lord Jesus is still in that position of reproach. The verdict of this world about Christ has not changed: “Away with this man” (Luke 23:18), and “we will not that this man should reign over us”, Luke 19:14. It is still a world which is hostile to our Lord Jesus Christ. Particularly in the western world, anti-Christian influences sweep in. What is it, dear friends, that will keep you in such a day? It is the experience that you have in your soul of the knowledge you have of God.

The Lord Jesus knew about this man being cast out. He found him, and He says to him, “dost thou believe on the Son of God?”. The man was ready for further light and further experience. I wonder whether I am, or whether I am content to know that my needs have been met. Maybe you know that your eternal destiny is secure. That is a wonderful thing to know, for if you know the forgiveness of your sins you would know that there is nothing in the world, not all the money in the world, able to redeem you from your sins, except the precious blood of Jesus. This man said, “And who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him?”, and Jesus said, the One before you is He. Do you have a conscious sense of knowing Jesus as the Son of God? Jesus was no ordinary man. He came into blood and flesh condition, sin apart. No one else has come into that condition, sin apart. We have all been born in iniquity and in sin (Ps.51:5). Therefore, if the sin question was to be resolved to God’s full satisfaction, it could not be by anyone that had sin upon them. But the Lord Jesus “by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God” (Heb.9:14), and that offering was acceptable to God for sin. No other offering would have been; Jesus met the question of the sinner’s need when you could do nothing about meeting that need. However you view yourself, as a fifty pence debtor or a five hundred pence debtor (Luke 7:41), you are still a debtor and you cannot meet that debt yourself. But there was One who did and did so willingly, and that was the Lord Jesus Christ by the shedding of His precious blood on the cross of Calvary.

This man in John 9 was rejected, and the Lord Jesus was rejected. He went out of this world enduring the ignominy and the shame of the cross. Think of it, the Lord of glory, the Son of God, went out of this world, the world which He had made, in that way. What grace that was! This man was introduced into another world of which Christ was now the Centre, and in his experience he really went on to the next chapter, where he learned that he was one of the flock who knew the Shepherd’s voice. Now we live in a day when there are many voices. We are not called upon to distinguish all those voices. All you need to know is the Shepherd’s voice, that is all. Where will the Shepherd’s voice lead you? Do you think it would lead you into this world of sin and violence? I do not think so. This world is a dangerous place. The man in Luke 10 journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho found it was a dangerous place. You might ask, How do you know the voice of the Shepherd? By acquaintance with Him! You see, Christianity is not a theory, it is an experience. If somebody you know very well phones you, they do not have to announce who they are because you recognise the voice. The Shepherd’s voice would keep you safe in a world of evil. And not only that, the Shepherd’s voice would lead you into the Christian circle where the Lord Jesus is loved. That is where the Shepherd’s voice would lead you. In verse 9 it says, “I am the door: if any one enter in by me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out and shall find pasture”. So that you know liberty and you know salvation. You find an area of green pasture, where the Lord Jesus Christ is the food for every soul; the only food that can satisfy and the only Man that can sustain you in a world in which we still are where our Lord was crucified. I trust that each one of us by experience knows the Shepherd’s voice.

Now I come to Job. This is a remarkable verse in the Old Testament; “as for me, I know that my Redeemer liveth”. Do you know that your Redeemer lives? Are you conscious of being in the enjoyment of a living link with Christ? There was a man, Saul of Tarsus; like you and me he did not know the Lord Jesus in flesh and blood condition here, but he set himself to obliterate the testimony of our Lord. Saul was on his way to Damascus when there was a voice from heaven, “why dost thou persecute me?”, Acts 9:4. That was the voice of a living Man. Later on, when Festus referred to Paul, he said that Paul spoke about “a certain Jesus who is dead, whom Paul affirmed to be living”, Acts 25:19. It would be no good saying to Saul of Tarsus that the Lord is dead because He had spoken to him from the glory, and Saul recognised, in a sense, the Shepherd’s voice that led him into Damascus and into the Christian circle there. You know the story, do you not, of the atheist and the believer, and the conversation they had? The believer said, ‘The Lord is living’; the atheist said, ‘How do you know that?’ The simple answer was this; ‘He spoke to me this morning’. These things are real, they are to be the experience in our hearts of a living link with a living Man in the glory. It is not theory, it is an experience.

In 2 Timothy, we have Paul saying, “I know whom I have believed”. Not what he believed, but a Person; “I know whom I have believed”. This second epistle to Timothy, as we have often said, relates to our day when the church publicly had turned away from Paul, as in that time all in Asia had done (2 Tim.1:15). You might have said, ‘Well Paul, everything is now in failure, you must be downcast’, but at the beginning of the epistle he had said, “I know whom I have believed”. Every experience you have with the Lord Jesus will increase your confidence in Him, and will increase your knowledge of Him. Do you believe that He is One in whom there is no possibility of defeat? Nothing is impossible with Him, He has overcome and is now a glorified Man at the Father’s right hand having accomplished the will of God. Because He is there, there is an avenue of blessing opened up which saved me and cannot be closed. That still remains. Everything is in Christ, a glorious Person. If you have Him, you have everything. If you do not have Christ, you have nothing. Everything is in that Person; “I know whom I have believed”. It was the unshakeable faith of the apostle in a Man that appeared to him on the Damascus road, the One whom we have proved as the ‘all-the-way-home’ Saviour through thick and thin, and whom Paul proved through suffering and loss, and even imprisonment. But what rich epistles came out of the prison, and even in those circumstances, Paul would have clung to this, “I know whom I have believed”. It did not depend upon Paul, it depended on the Man with whom he had a living link, a living Man in the glory.

Now I trust that each of us knows something of these things in our experience. May it be that you start knowing the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, and you know the forgiveness of your sins, and you know by experience that you have been justified by faith in Christ and not by good works; that you know and are preserved by knowing the Shepherd’s voice and that you have a living link with Christ in glory. “I know that my redeemer liveth”, and that despite the difficult day in which we are, of which it says, “difficult times shall be there” (2 Tim.3:1), like Paul, your complete and implicit faith can be in the One you know; “I know whom I have believed”.

May God bless the word.

Preaching of the gospel, Colchester

18 September 2016

D J Wright