THE SHEEP AFTER CHRIST CAME - THEIR ADVANCEMENT

THE SHEEP AFTER CHRIST CAME — THEIR ADVANCEMENT

It must be plain to every careful reader of the New Testament that the sheep, the members of the flock of God, were greatly advanced — that is, they received a very great accession of blessing — by the coming of Christ, set forth in pattern in the gospel, but fully established consequent on His resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit. It is most interesting to trace in the history of the disciples the gradual way they are led up to the highest point.

In a paper like this one can only sketch the line, and note the more important steps to their ultimate promotion. The first great definite step was that they left John and followed Jesus. No doubt they were, as we should say, converted when with John. He had come in the way of righteousness. There was a call to repent; everyone reached by the word of God followed him. They were the sheep at the time, and they were the best at the time, for they represented the godly remnant; and hence our Lord, to fulfil all righteousness, took His place with them, and was baptised by John. Now two of John’s disciples followed Jesus. The extent of their advancement does not appear in this step, but surely it was a very great one. They have come to Jesus. They have at least broken away from the system which obtained under John. “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force”. They had advanced from that order of things, and in following Jesus, though they did not enter into the full reality of the step at the moment, they had truly entered into the kingdom of heaven; and the least there was greater than John the baptist, simply because in Christ an entirely new order was introduced. It is not now the mere servant; not one trying to attain to anything. Now it is, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”.

It is a great day in the history of the soul when one breaks away entirely from John the baptist and that order of things. I do not say the disciples knew in power the new order they had come to, but they knew at least that the presence of Christ swayed them into concurrence with His ways. It was not possible that they could be with Christ and not feel that they were in a different order of things from that which they had left. To describe the nature and measure of the transition from John to Christ — that is, what Christ confers — can only give us an idea of the advancement which they received. It is plain that Christ Himself is the measure of it; but we have to learn the steps by which we are led along in order to reach at length that “as he is, so are we in this world”. The Lord could say to His disciples when on earth, “When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said, nothing”. That flowed from the simple fact of His presence down here. This was an entirely new thing here, that a Man’s company could be so full and blessed, apart from the comforts of this life, that they not only lacked nothing, but when He was taken from them they were like unfledged birds, powerless and disconsolate.

In Peter’s history, or rather in the notices given of him in the gospels, we learn the definite and gradual way a soul is led on to the new ground — that is, christianity. One of those who followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. “He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias,

^[p. 386] which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone”, John 1: 41, 42. Peter, as we find from Luke 5, was drawn to Christ. It is simply and solely the power of God which can lead the heart of man to like what is divine and perfect in holiness. Peter is first drawn to Christ; he has received light. So far he answers to the blind man of John 9. In the case of the blind man we see the exercise that takes place in the soul consequent on receiving light from Christ — light which is to conduct one into an entirely new order of things, things wholly unknown before. Peter has light, and he follows Christ, but he does not yet know Him. In Luke 5 we are told of a distinct step in advance. The Lord had used Peter’s ship in preaching, and Peter had not only cordially devoted his ship to the Lord’s service, but when He proposed to him to launch out into the deep and let down his net for a draught, Peter complied, though it was contrary to his own judgment. The result was that they enclosed a great multitude of fishes. The effect on Peter was so great that “he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord”. This is a remarkable step; no doubt he was converted before this, but he had never before felt himself in the presence of God, and he is sensible of his unfitness. “He fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord”.

It is the sense of unfitness, not any reluctance to be with Him. Jesus says, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men”. As it was the Lord who awakened the fear, so He is the One to remove it. This is a very important step. The blind man had reached it, if he had not surpassed it, when he could say, “Lord I believe. And he worshipped him”. Now this man was isolated from all that was esteemed among men; he was in the solitude of light. Man morally was outside of him.

The next definite step is the “new bottles”, in the end of Luke 5. When the Bridegroom should be taken away, the children of the bridechamber should fast. As to earth, the source of happiness was gone; but there was to be given “new wine”, and this new wine must be put into “new bottles”. The Lord had come — the new piece — but you could not attach Him to the old. The rent or severance between them would then only be the more apparent.

The more we keep in mind the unparalleled newness of Christ come on earth, the more easily shall we apprehend that nothing already here could comport with Him. All must be new now, and hence there must be a new bottle for the new wine. It was no more to be the man here, because that indeed the Greatest had come, and the thing now was to receive Him. Everyone receiving Him would be of the new piece, and by the work of God a new bottle for the new wine. Hence, while our Lord shows what He is in the ship in the storm, in Matthew 8: 23 - 27, He later makes Peter sensible of His power to make him walk on the water when not in the ship. It is quite true that Peter had not been given this great power at the time he walked on the water, but he was made acquainted with it as derived from the Man Christ Jesus, and thus placed in manifest superiority to the things which would ordinarily swamp man. The great thing is to grasp the promotion to which the saint was advanced; not merely His perfect composure when the storm raged, but His ability to take the position of complete superiority to all the power of evil here. May we have some adequate conception of the greatness to which we are promoted. It is a great step in this new history when we learn, as Peter does in Matthew 16, that Christ is the Rock on which the new structure, the assembly, is founded; yet this enlightened Peter cannot discern the difference between what is merely according to men and what is according to God. The Lord has to rebuke him; “thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men”. Oh! how slow we are to leave man, as of Adam, out of our consideration, and think only of God and the Man who suits Him! A little after, Peter is an eyewitness of the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and again he confounds Him — God manifest in flesh — with Moses and Elias; so slowly does the heart, under the best influences, see the great distinction between Christ and all other men.

In the history of Peter we learn our own. He was singularly attached to Christ; as we find from John 13, he could say, “I will lay down my life for thy sake”. He said on a previous occasion, “We have left all, and have followed thee”. It is deeply interesting to see the attachment which has been created between the soul and Christ — the work of God truly; but it is important to note that this attachment exists before the full effect of His death is known. Peter does not really accept His death, hence his violence to the high priest’s servant. It is much easier to understand Christ’s power than Christ’s weakness. He was crucified in weakness. It is long before the true and full consequence of Christ’s death is a known verity to oneself. It is remarkable that, parallel with the terrible sorrow to Peter that Christ is condemned to die, he is plunged into the deepest humiliation as to himself. He denied the Lord. What a moment of anguish! On the one hand, his heart rent at seeing Him condemned to die, and at the same moment the unutterable shame at his own worthlessness in denying Him. Until this step is learned, a time of unspeakable woe, there is no real severance from one’s own self. The death of Christ liberates us when learned, and it is only in His life that I am free from myself. I can “thank God through Jesus Christ;” and I can say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”. The Lord came to him when He rose, the brightest day of his new history. Peter then received peace and life, the sense of it at any ^[p. 389] rate, for the first time; and in John 21, restored in heart as well as in conscience, he starts on his new course, as indicated by the words, “Follow me”.

How wonderful and beautiful to contemplate, and in a measure to apprehend, the immense moral dignity to which Peter was promoted from that day when his brother Andrew announced to him the presence of the Messiah — the growth, the exercises, the sorrows and the joys; the humiliations on the one hand, and the great moral heights to which he was advanced on the other, until we now find him following Him who left us a model that we should follow in His steps.

We have to bear in mind the nature and scope of the work of God in his soul before the day of Pentecost, and then we have to apprehend the fulness of power which he entered into and enjoyed what had already been given to him. The divine greatness of the work of grace in his soul could not be apprehended or enjoyed but by the Spirit of God. No one could enjoy the life of Christ but by the Holy Spirit indwelling, yet the work of God was wrought in his soul in a new way beyond any one before him, because Christ had come, and he could be in the presence of Christ without fear. Before Christ came, all were subject to fear. Now Peter, sensible of his own unfitness, can leave everything for the One who has removed all his fear before God. There is real love to Christ in Peter’s heart. Never before could a man know the power of God to enable him to walk superior to all the power of evil here. Never before could it be revealed to any one that Jesus is the Rock; and the revelation did not come before there was a work in Peter’s soul preparing him for it. So at this time he could say, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life”. Never before could any one have seen Christ’s glory — the power and coming of the Son of Man as eyewitnesses of His majesty. Never before did anyone know or could anyone have known that combination of sorrow and distress through which Peter passed when Christ was ^[p. 390] condemned to die, and he at the very time denying Him — the corruption of man’s heart exposed in the most poignant way at the very moment that the Lord was about to die to set us for ever free from it. Never before had the risen Man, the last Adam, breathed into man and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” — no doubt, life in divine power. Never before was man’s mind opened to understand the scriptures. But Christ being glorified, the Holy Spirit descended, and each was filled with the Holy Spirit Every divine work in Peter’s soul, which could not be before Christ came, was now brought into distinction and splendour. The work of God is seen and enjoyed in divine power and freshness. The work is there, but divine power is required to set forth the beauty and magnificence of the work. With man’s works, the more they are magnified, the less perfect they appear; but with the blessed God, the more any of His works are magnified, the more beautiful and perfect they are proved to be. Hence when the Holy Spirit dwells in me, not only is all His work in me illuminated and declared in its divine grandeur, but our relation to the Son and the Father is made known — (John 14.) — a communication boundless in its nature, and incomprehensible save to the Spirit of God. By Him we are introduced into a region of blessedness and delight unspeakable, ever enlarging and ever more entrancing.