GOD’S INTEREST IN MAN

J. Lovie

1 Timothy 2: 1–6; Luke 8: 35, 47, 48, 54, 55

The gospel, among other things, brings out God’s interest in man. It is a wonderful fact that God, of whom it is said, “the heavens, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee” (1

Kings 8: 27), and who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” (Habakkuk 1: 13), has man in view for blessing. There is a verse which says, “If he only thought of himself, and gathered unto him his spirit and his breath. All flesh would expire together, and man would return to the dust”, Job 34: 14, 15. In the glad tidings we find that God has not only thought of Himself; He is thinking of man. Wonderful grace! because, as we think of that, it involves you and me. God has thought of you, God has thought of me. God is thinking of all men, that is, the race, involving men, women, and children. He “desires that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth”.

I have read these passages to seek to show how God’s interest in man expresses itself. He has not taken hold of angels by the hand (see Hebrews 2: 16); God is not thinking of angels. He is thinking of the seed of Abraham. Luke’s gospel gives us a daughter of Abraham and a son of Abraham (see Luke 13: 16; 19: 9). It is a wonderful fact that grace is acting where sin has abounded so that persons can be rescued from the thrall of the bondage and burden of sins. It is vital therefore that we have a personal transaction with God about our sins. We cannot come into this just because our parents were in it before us. Our parents may in our earliest days have committed us to the waters of baptism—in faith they did that—but that will not save us. What is needed by every individual is a personal contact with Christ about his sins.

God’s interest in men is shown in the way that Christ has become Man. God Himself coming down, a heavenly Stranger, coming into the circumstances where men were. Oh the glory of the stoop in the incarnation! The Lord Jesus came into the condition to which, in us, sin attached. It never attached to Him. He was sinless; the blessed perfection of the humanity of Jesus shines in the gospels. It shines in heaven because He is there, a Man in heaven. We find in the temple system that the cherubim were looking out (2 Chronicles 3: 13), looking out for man returning. God is looking out for you to return. Think of the interest of heaven as a man says, “I will rise up and go to my father”, Luke 15: 18. Think of the way heaven is stirred—

the father “ran, and fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses”. There is no doubt about the reception that heaven accords the repenting, returning son.

In 1 Timothy there are other persons who are also interested in man returning, and they are praying to God. This is a feature of God’s house—that is, God is having the character of His house continued and represented in this dark and evil world where sin is so rampant, where lawlessness, violence, and corruption are abroad on every hand, where wickedness, religiously and politically, abounds and so many are held in tradition. There are persons who are praying for men; it is going on today; the supplications, prayers, intercessions,

and giving of thanks are going on for all men. That is, there are persons, maybe very close to you, who are praying for your recovery, interceding with God about you.

Abraham shines as an intercessor. God had confided in Abraham as to the destruction of Sodom and had said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?”, Genesis 18: 17.

Abraham was called “Friend of God”; God opened up His secrets to him connected with His judicial ways and the overthrow of Sodom. Think of Abraham conducting God to judgment and at the same time coming down to the numeral ten, that if there were ten righteous there the city might be spared. You see, he brings it down to the level of man’s responsibility; he does not go below that. Every man is responsible as to how he answers to the light God presents in the glad tidings. So, in the imminence of the destruction of Sodom, Abraham shines as an intercessor. Then God goes after an individual. He goes after Lot. How deeply affecting that is! Lot was rescued out of Sodom; it shows the means that God takes to rescue one person. Well, it is thus that the character of God’s house is maintained. There are those who are interceding with God; they have feelings like God about men, the God who “desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”.

In Luke’s account the Lord is introduced as David’s son; “The Lord God shall give him the throne of David his father”, Luke 1: 32. That is not said in Matthew, it is said in Luke. It shows how grace is reigning “through righteousness to eternal life”, Romans 5: 21. It is the power of grace acting where sin is rampant; God is showing that He is interested in the race and proceeding to secure man from under the thraldom and power of sin. As was said earlier. God’s great interest in men is expressed in the way Christ became Man, suffered in the sinner’s stead, and bore the judgment due to sin on the cross at Calvary so that God might come out righteously in forgiving the returning sinner.

So He clothes the returning son with the best robe and brings out the ring and the sandals and the fatted calf. There is the wealth of heaven, all in grace from the divine side, to meet the returning sinner in Luke 15. It is so expressive of the heart of God in Luke’s gospel and His thoughts as to men, because, finally, God is to have men eternally for His pleasure in a scene where sin or evil will never intrude. Christ where He is, exalted at the right hand of God, is the standard and measure of God’s favour and blessing for men in sonship. God is to have men “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8: 29), to be like Christ in that scene eternally. That is what awaits the christian! What awaits the lover of Christ is final correspondence to Christ in His body of glory. The believer in Christ, through faith in the blood of Christ, and the consciousness of a link with the Saviour, can look forward in the anticipation of the full thought of salvation. The final touch of salvation will be that we shall get a new body, when the dead are raised, the living changed, and “caught up together … to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we shall be always with the Lord”, 1 Thessalonians 4: 17.

God’s interest in us has been so expressed that Jesus, His beloved Son, has dealt with the whole matter of sin—“Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and … he was buried; and … he was raised the third day, according to the scriptures”, 1 Corinthians 15: 3, 4. Oh thank God that everyone here tonight can, if they come through mercy’s door by way of repentance and faith, find themselves among the many whose sins Christ bore.

So here in Luke 8 you have a man, a woman, and a child. You have a man whom no one could bind. No one could change this man—he was demon-possessed. He “did not abide in a house, but in the tombs”, that is, his residence was the place of death. Nothing but contact with the Saviour could meet his case. Nothing but that can meet your case and mine. So it is that, finally, persons came out to see what had happened, and they found the man “sitting, clothed and sensible, at the feet of Jesus”. That is what the gospel can do. It is the over-abounding, subduing power of grace, effecting what law could never do, what good resolutions could never do, what the demands of the legal system could never accomplish.

The Lord is securing persons for the assembly, men, women, and children. That is, it is the race of man that God is interested in, in view of His house.

So you have a woman. She had been going on for twelve years and had “spent all her living on physicians”. Luke who, of course, knew better than most as to physicians, says she “could not be cured by any one”. That is just a touch that Luke gives, because he was, “the beloved physician”—Colossians 4: 14. The woman comes, touches the hem of His garment, and immediately she is healed. It is life through contact! It is the effect in the soul of contact with what is down here, because the hem of His garment is down here. It is within your reach, and you can touch it. It is what the Lord has down here that represents Him; it is life through contact with the system in which life is, and it is flowing out from Him into her through that contact with “the hem of his garment”. That is, it is what is transmitted by way of healing power from what is here on the earth that represents the Lord in testimony. But it is the Lord Himself who is the life-giving Source. Think then of the body living in the life of the Head.

Mark makes this comment, ‘The woman … knowing what had taken place in her’, Mark 5: 33. With the man, it is what has been done for him, but with the woman it is what is done in her, that is, she is in touch with a new source of life. That life is now in the Head in heaven. It reached her through contact with the hem of His garment. I think it is a view of the body down here, as Colossians presents it, living in the life of the Head above, where Christ our Head in glory is everything to us. It is the greatness of Christ as the Colossian epistle presents Him to us, and the assembly quickened, living in His life. So if you want to know more about Christ in heaven you will find the Head described in the body.

Then you get the child, and the child comes in for blessing. “And her spirit returned, and immediately she rose up; and he commanded something to eat to be given to her”. I think this is very affecting. Well, where would she get this kind of food? You will find it in the sphere where it is, where the youngest can be in the presence of the food that is being ministered.

The roast lamb was food for leaving Egypt—that is feeding on Christ as presented in the lamb, sufferingly, sacrificially—but for the wilderness it is the manna—Christ in humble, lowly grace, and that available to every one of us. We can have daily provision of that kind of food.

So may the Lord strengthen our hearts and may we be responsive to His appeal in the gospel and see God’s interest in man, so that the fulness of the blessing that is available in the glad tidings may be laid hold of by us, that is, the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit, the blessedness of

justification by faith—and the gift of sonship. In Romans 11: 25 Paul alludes to “the fulness of the nations”, that is, how God is working in the gentile world to bring out a people for His name. He is doing it through the glad tidings. May the Lord bless the word.

Preaching at Cullen
10 October 1976