A MATTER OF REAL URGENCY
In saying what I have to say, dear friends, on these verses which I have read, I want to strike a note of urgency and of warning, for the scripture tells us that God “is ready to judge the living and the dead”, 1 Pet.4:5. He is ready; He takes note of all that is going on in the world, and at the present time He is ready to judge both the living and the dead. The fact that He has not yet intervened in judgment is but an evidence of His longsuffering, His desire that all should be saved. But His longsuffering cannot go on for ever. Do not forget that. It has gone on for a long time, and He is ready to judge the living and the dead, and therefore it is urgent that if there are any here who have not peace towards God, who have not had the question of their sins settled, who are not marked by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Saviour of sinners, it is urgent that you should attend to the matter now. You cannot possibly guarantee that you will have another day. It is very urgent that these matters should be faced, and faced immediately with God.
You remember that in the days of Noah, God announced that judgment would come before it came, and during that time Noah, with possibly the assistance of his sons, was patiently building a great ark, a great ship, in order that, at any rate, his house should be saved. How he would be mocked. Scripture tells us there were mockers. There are mockers to-day, mockers of Christianity. There were mockers in those days, Scripture tells us so (2 Pet.3:3). You can quite understand how he would be ridiculed, building a great big ship with no water in sight anywhere. You can imagine how they would mock, how they would ridicule, how the young ones would grow up to mock at this old man building this big ship. And all that time, the longsuffering of God was waiting, and the Spirit of Christ in Noah was preaching, and that was going on for about one hundred and twenty years, and then there came a day when God told Noah, and his wife, and his sons, and their wives to go into the ark, and the Lord shut the door. The Lord shut them in—it was a settled matter. There was nobody else in the ark. Scripture says, “few, that is, eight souls”, were saved (1 Pet.3:20). Think of the whole world being carried off in judgment except for eight persons: “few, that is, eight souls, were saved”. They had plenty of opportunity. There had been others who had listened to God’s word and had been taken before the time came, we know that, but when it came to the time, there were few saved, and yet they had had a long period of God’s long-suffering and waiting, and the Spirit of Christ in Noah preaching, yet only “few, that, is eight souls”, Scripture says, “were saved”. Think of that.
So God shut them in, and then the windows of heaven were opened, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the rain began to fall, and it went on relentlessly, forty days and forty nights. Just picture it for a moment, the position of those there who had turned a deaf ear to the preaching of Noah, as the water came down and down and down. They would say to one another, ‘Is it never going to stop?’. They would go up onto the highest hills, and still it rained, on to the top of the highest hills they could manage to climb, and still it rained. The water came until it was something like twenty feet or more above the highest mountain, and they were all drowned except eight, except those who stood in relationship with Noah. Noah is a type of Christ, and it is only those who stand in relationship with Christ who will be saved. And you can come into relationship with Christ now, through faith in Him. You remember how a woman came when the Lord Jesus was here. She said, “If I should only touch his garment, I shall be healed” (Matt.9:21), and she came and touched the hem of His garment, and He called her “daughter”. That is, He as much as said, ‘Through faith in Me, you have established a relationship with Myself’. It is only those who stand in relationship with Christ who are saved, and no others. It was those who stood in relationship with Noah; “thee have I seen righteous before me” (Gen.7:1), God says. It was those, and no others, who were saved.
And so I would urge, dear friends, this matter of really facing issues. You see, things are going to happen suddenly. Perhaps I may be allowed to tell you what is a secret, belonging to believers in Jesus. The apostle Paul says, “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all fall asleep” – that means die – “but we shall all be changed, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye”, 1 Cor.15:51. A “twinkling of an eye”; just think of that. How long does it take for a twinkling of an eye to take place? And that is the length of time it will take for believers in Jesus who are alive at the coming of the Lord to be caught up along with those who have fallen asleep and will be raised then. That is the length of time it will take for them to be taken out of this world altogether, and the world that has had the gospel preached and despised it, or ignored it, or procrastinated, or put off a decision – that world will be left for judgment.
Well, dear friends, it is urgent to face these things. Excuse me speaking in this outspoken way, but the time is short, and a twinkling of an eye might happen at any moment, when the day of the gospel message will end for ever so far as you are concerned. Do not think there will be any hope after that. And so the Lord says, “Enter in through the narrow gate, for wide the gate and broad the way that leads to destruction, and many are they who enter in through it” – many. “For narrow the gate and straitened the way that leads to life, and they are few who find it”, Matt.7:13. Few, that word ‘few’ again. It has been impressed on my mind in relation to this evening’s meeting: “into which few, that is eight souls, were saved”, and “they are few who find” the narrow way to life. Are you going to be among the few? Someone came to the Lord and said, “Sir, are such as are to be saved few in number?”, Luke 13:23. He did not say ‘yes’; He did not say, ‘Oh, no, there are a great many’. What He did say was, See that you are among the few. He said, “Strive with earnestness to enter in through the narrow door” (v.24). That is what the Lord said. See that you go in at the narrow gate.
What is the narrow gate? The narrow gate is repentance toward God. That is what it is. It reduces you. It means that all our self-importance and our self-confidence has to go and we simply take our true place before God as sinners needing mercy, having nothing that we can claim save the abiding value and efficacy in the sight of God of the precious blood of Christ. Thank God for everyone who takes that way. You may take it. It is the only way, it is the only way to enter the way to life. Perhaps someone will say – for there are those who speak scornfully and jokingly of these things – ‘Well, if it is a broad way, there will be plenty of company in it’. That is very true. Someone will say, ‘There will be plenty of company in hell’. How do you know? There will be no company there to assuage the torment of hell. We get a picture in Luke 16 of a man who died, not in faith. And it says that in hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment (v.23). Hades is not the lake of fire; that man was not in the lake of fire yet. He is awaiting the judgment of the great white throne, and then it will be a question of the lake of fire. “And in hades lifting up his eyes, being in torment”. What awful torment, the remembrance of opportunities lost and gone for ever. That, I believe, was the torment. He asked for a drop of water to cool his tongue. He cried to Abraham to send Lazarus, one who was safely in Abraham’s bosom, to just give a drop of water to cool his tongue. Abraham says, “Son, remember” – ah, what a word, ‘remember,’ remembering in hades, remembering in the lake of fire – “remember that thou in thy life time receivedst thy good things”, Luke 16:25 (AV). He had had all there was to have, enjoyed them without God, paid no attention to the glad tidings, and it was all gone and gone for ever.
So then the man says, Well, at least send Lazarus to warn my brothers, my five brothers; warn them not to come to this place of torment. He did not say anything about plenty of company or anything of that sort. No, he said, “this place of torment”. He said, ‘Warn my brothers not to come – under no circumstances to come’: that was the word. Think of that, departed this life, in a place of torment, and yet he retained natural affection, and earnestly desiring that his brothers might not come. Abraham says, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And the man says, No, but if someone rise from the dead and go to them, they will repent. Abraham says, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, not even if one rise from among the dead will they be persuaded. And that is exactly what has happened. The Lord Jesus is risen from the dead. He is at the right hand of God. The Holy Spirit has come down from heaven to tell people that salvation is in Him. Forgiveness of sins is announced in His Name, and alas, people treat it as though it was of no consequence. That is the position, dear friends. I beg of you, anybody here who has not yet turned to the Lord, to do it now. This is your opportunity. This is your most favourable opportunity. God is waiting on you, and the Lord is waiting on you, the One who gave Himself a ransom for all (1 Tim.2:6), and the efficacy of His work extends to cover you and me, and everyone here, and the whole world, if only they would have it.
And so, as I was saying, it is a time for being urgent. I would come now for a few moments to this scripture which we have read. I did not read the first verse, but the question is raised, “Who hath believed our report?” Who has believed it? What a question to raise. A report – a testimony to the world as to Christ, and His atoning work, and to His having been down into death because the penalty of death lay upon man, as to His having risen triumphantly from the dead, and His being at the right hand of God, and repentance and remission of sins preached freely in His Name, without price. The question is, who has believed it? Is there someone here who has not believed it? God is looking on. Have you not believed in Christ? You may have friends and neighbours all round you who have, who testify to you the reality of these things, and their satisfying character too, and you know it yourself too. You know it in your conscience that it is so. And yet someone has not believed the report. “Who hath believed our report?”, the word says, “and to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed?” “The arm of the Jehovah” – what does that mean? It means the power there is with the Lord to do what no one else in the world can do, and that is to save the soul of a guilty sinner. No one else in the world can do it, but there is One with the power and the right to do it. He has acquired the right, dear friends, by having given Himself a ransom for all. Think of the grace of it. Does it not touch your heart?
Well, now it says in this chapter, “Surely he …”. Who is the ‘he’? Jesus. The Old Testament scriptures are full of Jesus. They all point to Jesus. If you are at all acquainted with your Bible, you will remember the incident recorded for us in Luke 24 when the Lord Jesus on the day when He was risen from the dead, walked a matter of seven miles or so with two people, two disciples of His. They did not know Him. He was in a spiritual condition as risen from the dead, and they did not know Him, and yet He was there, flesh and bones, walking with them, and it says, “having begun from Moses, and from all the prophets” – that takes in Isaiah – “he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (v.27). So you read Isaiah, and you say, Isaiah is talking about Jesus. “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; and we, we did regard him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted”. That was how they were regarding him, as stricken of God and afflicted. “But” – now notice this ‘but’ – “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed”. Can everybody in this room put himself or herself in that ‘we’ and ‘our’, put it into the singular? If there is some young man here, or young woman here, or old one for that matter, or child here, who has not yet turned to Jesus, I say, put yourself by name into this verse. ‘He was wounded for my transgressions’. Thank God I can say it, ‘He was wounded for my transgressions. He was bruised for my iniquities. The chastisement of my peace was upon Him, and with His stripes I am healed’. Thank God for that.
Peter refers to this in his first epistle. He says, “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet.2:24. What a testimony from the great apostle, the foremost apostle, as it says in Matthew’s gospel, “first, Simon, who was called Peter”, Matt.10:2. And yet although a great apostle, and one who was martyred for the name of Christ, he had a sinful history, a guilty history, but he says, “who himself” –referring to Jesus – “bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet.2:24. Could you read anything more affecting? Who is Jesus? I will tell you who Jesus is. God Himself in His Person, “over all, God blessed for ever” (Rom.9:5), yet become a Man in wondrous grace, and in manhood His name is Jesus, a name which conveys the truth of His Person, for it means ‘Jehovah the Saviour’. Think of that; God Himself coming in in a Man in order to save your soul. As the Lord Himself says when He was here, “The Son of man” – that was the title He took – “did not come to be served” (Matt.20:28). He did not come to be served, He is not asking to be served, but He says, “to serve”, to do anything that was needed. That is really what the word
means. He came in that spirit, to do anything that was needed, “and to give his life a ransom for many”. Where would you and I have been, dear fellow believers, if it were not for Jesus? Is there someone here who has not turned to Jesus?
‘I heard the voice of Jesus say,
Come unto me and rest’.
Have you heard it?
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
Behold, I freely give’.
Have you heard it?
‘I heard the voice of Jesus say,
I am this dark world’s Light;’ (Hymn 248).
Are you in light, or are you in darkness? It is a question of how you stand in relation to Jesus. “He was wounded for our transgressions”, it says, “he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed”.
There are some who are never healed. Why? Because they do not appropriate what is available for them. The Lord is not going to force it on you if you do not want it, but I say He has given Himself a ransom for all, and His wondrous death in its abiding value before God is efficacious to cover all your sins for all eternity. You cannot possibly have anything better than that, and you have no alternative. I beg of you to remember what I started with, and that is that God is ready, ready to judge living and dead. The fact that He has not done so yet is but a witness of His long-suffering, and it may be His long-suffering has you in mind. But do not strain it too long. Do not strain it any longer. It may be He has been waiting in long-suffering over you for ten years, twenty years: I know not, God knows. I say, do not strain it any longer. Why not yield now?
Jesus is at the right hand of God. He is “nigh unto all that call upon him”, Scripture says (Ps.145:18), and He is also rich – “the same Lord of all”, it says, “is rich towards all that call upon him” (Rom.10:12), regardless of age, regardless of sex, regardless of your position in this world, it is all of no account in the eyes of God. What is of account is that you are a man, a woman, or a child; you have a soul that God loves; you have a soul for which Jesus died. What is of great importance, of all importance is that you should appropriate the Saviour who is presented to you in the glad tidings.
And so it says further, “All we like sheep have gone astray”. We are all on one footing here. No doubt if you are used to your Bible, or have come to gospel preachings before, you have heard the scripture quoted that says, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom:3:23), and there may be a danger with some, because it says that all have sinned, to think that the matter is so general that it does not matter very much. It does matter. Everyone has to give an account of himself to God, and when the day of judgment does come, books are going to be opened. God is writing records day by day, day by day. Have you ever thought of that? Business houses have their ledger accounts, a separate account for each of their customers. They do not mix up the accounts, they keep accurate records of all that is due from each separate customer. God has His books, written up every day, every day adding to the toll of your sins if you have not yet turned to Christ. Think of the solemnity of it. And yet, thank God there is in the precious blood of Christ, and in the value as God sees it of His work on the cross, that which is great enough to wipe them all out for ever. Thank God for Jesus. Oh, I would that everybody here would turn to Jesus. It says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way”. Is there anybody here who says that is not true of him? “All we like sheep have gone
astray; we have turned every one to his own way”, yet every sheep is sought out by the Shepherd singly. The Shepherd does not seek out sheep in a flock. No: it is when He has found them He places them in the flock, but He seeks out the sheep singly, and goes after that which is lost till He finds it (Luke 15:4).
Is some lost sheep going to give Him an opportunity to find him tonight? That is what is in mind in the preaching, that you should be found by the Shepherd who has given His life for all. So it says, “we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid upon him” – Jesus – “the iniquity of us all”. Now think of the comprehensiveness of that. What a Saviour you have in Jesus if your faith is in Him. One who was great enough to bear the iniquity of all – of all who put their trust in Him. Think of the immensity of it. How one loves to speak in that way of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Think of His coming down and taking that place, going into the place of judgment in the presence of a holy, sin-hating God, and bearing without any mitigation the judgment due to all the sins of all those who put their trust in Him. The value of His work is such that anyone and everyone may put their trust in Him, and find it equally efficacious for them. “Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”. How many are there of the redeemed? How many do the ransomed number? I cannot tell you. It says, “ten thousands of ten thousands and thousands of thousands”, Rev.5:11. I know that refers to angels, but I am sure it is true of the ransomed as well, and they all owe their blessing to Jesus, and they will all be in glory with Jesus, and they will all be conformed to His image. There will not be a single thing lacking that God looks for in man, because it is all before Him in Jesus, and He is going to find it answered to perfectly in those whom His grace takes up. Are you going to be among them? God is calling souls by the glad tidings to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus. Are you going to shut your eyes to it?
Well now, this is the Saviour, One great enough in His Person and willing in His love to have laid upon Him the iniquity of all who put their trust in Him. He “hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all”.
But now I want to say a word further as to the next section, because this is a very important matter. It is going to show you that if you are a believer in Jesus, there is the need for discipleship, discipleship in this world. You do not want to go on hand in glove with the world that has crucified Christ. You may say, Oh, it is different now. No, it is not. Only in outward appearance, only with a veneer cast over it to give it a kind of Christian appearance, but at heart it is unchanged. And so we find, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, but he opened not his mouth; he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and was as a sheep dumb before her shearers, and he opened not his mouth”. He could be spat upon, but He opened not His mouth. He could be stricken with a reed, struck in the face, but He opened not His mouth. That is your Saviour. That is the kind of treatment He has had in this world. All classes of society combined to give it to Him. There were the religious people, the high priest, the scribes and the Pharisees. There were the educated men of the upper classes, the Roman governor, and Herod and so on. There were the ordinary people. There were the soldiers, too. There was the rabble. All combined to heap every kind of reproach and ignominy on Jesus, the Son of God. If you want to read about it, you can read about it in the 26th and 27th chapters of Matthew’s gospel, and the 14th and 15th chapters of Mark’s gospel, and the 22nd and 23rd chapters of Luke’s gospel, and the 18th and 19th chapters of John’s gospel. You can read it all there, read it all in detail. You will get an impression of what kind of treatment has been meted out in this world to the Son of God, your Saviour, if He is your Saviour.
I am speaking now to those who have put their trust in Jesus, to whom Jesus is their Saviour, whom they confess as Lord. I trust you do. It is salvation for you in this world. You do not want to be drawn along in the current of this world. God has pronounced judgment on this world. He has not yet executed it. “Now is the judgment of this world”, the Lord says, “now shall the prince of this world be cast out”, John 12:31. He has pronounced judgment on it. There is no hope for it. Indeed it says in the second epistle to the Thessalonians that the Lord Jesus will be revealed with the angels of His might in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who know not God and who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thess.1:8). Do not set these things aside. They are there in the Scripture. The word of God abides for ever. You must face these things. And so I say to those who belong to Christ here, you do not want to be carried along with the current of this world that is coming into judgment. Think how it has treated Christ. The world is no different in heart now from what it was then. It is precisely the same. And so it says, “He was taken from oppression and from judgment; and who shall declare his generation?” You know the history, how Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, a man responsible to administer justice, how he said, “I find no fault whatever in him” – no fault. He repeated it, “I find in him no fault whatever” (John 18:38; 19:4), and then, in spite of that, he delivered Him up to be crucified. Well, He was taken from oppression and from judgment; “who shall declare his generation?” He has been cut off from the land of the living, and God has exalted Him to His right hand in heaven, but who is going to declare His generation? Are you? Every believer in Jesus in greater or lesser degree is declaring His generation. If you are a believer in Jesus, you are of His generation. It is a good thing to let it be known that you are. Take your stand as a disciple of Jesus, one who is going to follow Him and confess His Name, and seek grace to be true to His Name, and be apart from all that is inconsistent with His Name. That is what we want to do. That is the way His generation is declared.
Who shall declare it? It says, “Who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was he stricken”. And then we get, “men appointed his grave with the wicked, but he was with the rich in his death”. That is how God intervened, “because”, it says, “he had done no violence, neither was there guile in his mouth”. You know, it was a practice under the Romans that when a malefactor was crucified, they dug his grave underneath the cross, so that when he died he should just be put in the grave there. There were three crucified at the time Jesus was crucified. He was in the midst, with one on each side, and I have no doubt the three graves were dug, but, when Jesus had died, God said as it were, That is enough, you shall not go any further. And so God appointed that there should be a rich man, Joseph of Arimathæa, who had a fine tomb hewn out of the rock, one no doubt he had prepared for himself, but when the time came, he came forward and demanded of Pilate the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave, and lovers of Jesus took the body of Jesus down and laid it in this tomb. Although “men appointed his grave with the wicked”, it is as though God said, ‘He has had enough indignity now, He is to have no more’. So “he was with the rich in his death”.
And now, dear friends, it is not a question of a grand, monumental remembrance of Him, it is a question of His having a place in the hearts of His people. That is the kind of monument that God intends for Jesus in this world. He has been raised from the dead and has sat down at the right hand of God. The next thing is that He will come for His own, but in the meantime the great point is that He has a monument such as no one else has ever had, or ever will have, in the hearts, and in the confession, of His people here on earth. It is for you to
have your part in it if you are a real lover of Jesus. The Lord Jesus has His assembly in this world. You may say, Well, Christendom is in a state of confusion. I quite agree. You may say, One place of worship is as good as another. I am not going to argue that question. All I say is that the Lord Jesus has His assembly here. He loves it, and He is sustaining it against all the efforts of hades to overthrow it, and you can find it if you want to find it. The Lord will show you the way to it if you want to find it, but I say it is a great thing to have a part at this present time in the maintenance of testimony to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom you own, as I trust you do, as your Saviour, and who has a monument thus in the affections of His lovers which no one else has ever had, or will have, and you can contribute.
Well, I have not much more to say. It says, “He shall see of the fruit of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied”. Is He satisfied? Are you one of those giving Him satisfaction? All the saints, all the lovers of Jesus, all those who have put their trust in His precious blood, are the fruit of the travail of His soul. Are you among them? He is satisfied in those He has, but He would like to see them added to. He would love to see you added to the number. You would provide Him with increasing satisfaction. “He shall see of the fruit of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied”.
Just one word more: “by his knowledge shall my righteous servant instruct many in righteousness; and he shall bear their iniquities”. Now that is an important matter, that we should be instructed in what is right in the sight of God. The Lord is able to instruct us in it. He will show us what God’s judgment is of sin. He will show us what God’s judgment is of every working of my own will. He will show me that because He has borne it Himself. You will not want to go on in any sin, in any self-will, in any course of your own, when you see that that has involved the sufferings, the holy sufferings, of your Saviour. That is the way the Lord instructs us. That is the way He gives us a right estimate of sin. He shows us what it has cost Him in His atoning sufferings and His death, and in the light of that you will say, I do not want to go on with that any longer. I want to come in a practical way under the control of my Saviour, and own Him as Lord. He shall have control of my life now. That is what God intends, that you should come under entirely new control, entirely new management. You know, sometimes going along the road you can see in a shop window, ‘Under entirely new management’. What do they intend to convey? They intend to convey that whatever things were like in the past, they are different now. That is exactly what is intended to be the case with every believer in Jesus, that whatever their lives have been in the past, they each come under fresh control, they each own Jesus as their Lord, and things are different. Their lives henceforth can be for the pleasure and glory of God.
Well, I have nothing more to say, dear friends, but to urge what I said at the beginning, the real necessity – do not think it is the passing thought of a religious meeting, or anything of that sort – the real, urgent necessity of facing these matters now, for God is ready to judge both living and dead, and in a twinkling of an eye the opportunity of receiving and believing the gospel will be gone for ever.
May the Lord bless the word.
Preaching of the gospel, London
25 November 1957
Alfred J Gardiner
(From The Word Proclaimed, 1959)