GIVING ACCOUNT

D.J.Hutson

Romans 14: 11,12; Isaiah 45: 21-24 (middle of verse)

The object of our being together now is to preach glad tidings. If any has been arrested by the first scripture read, thank God for that. It is not exactly glad tidings but it affords a background against which the gladness of the tidings that are preached in the gospel shines all the brighter, and I trust may be the more attractive, so attractive as against this background, that if you have never accepted them as the glad tidings of your salvation you may do so tonight. The glad tidings are concerning God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. So we do not want to spend long in talking about you, and we certainly do not want to say anything about ourselves. We want to speak to you about Jesus; but we want you to feel your need of Jesus. Everybody needs Jesus. There is not a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, who does not need Christ. It is wonderful that God should have taken account of you and me in all our need and should have met that need by giving His Son, so that in that glorious Person, being who He is, over all God blessed for ever, we might find all that we need. We might say with reverence that God has found in Christ all that He needs for the satisfaction of His heart. All that He has needed for everything He has found in this glorious Person who is presented to you tonight, as He may have been presented before, in the gospel, Christ the wisdom of God. As the good teaching tells us, that means that He is God 's resource. It is right to say that God has never had to go outside of Christ for anything. How great and glorious a Person Jesus is! If it was a question of creation, with all that seems to be infinite in it, and yet because it is creation it is not infinite (but what can we say about it when we cannot measure it? - measured by God alone because it is His creation), if it was a question of bringing it into being, who was able to do it? This glorious Person of whom we speak in the gospel: "By whom also he made the worlds", Heb 1: 2. If it is a question of maintaining it, astronomers can tell us about the laws of the universe and things being held in relation to one another, and that apart from some mysterious control behind it all the universe would be annihilated by a catastrophe. Why does it not happen? How is it all maintained? - " Upholding all things by the word of his power", Heb 1: 3. What He has brought into being He is able to sustain as the platform of God's operations in time. When it has served its purpose He is able to roll it up as a garment (see Heb 1: 12) as something that can be put aside, when God will usher in the eternal day and the results of all that He has secured in time will abide for His eternal glory. Christ is the great Operator. Again I say, God has not had to go outside of Him for anything, but God wanted man.

Isaiah 45, if we had read all of it, would have told us that He made this world to be inhabited. He did not make it waste and empty. That is not Genesis 1: 1; that is Genesis 1: 2. Something had come in to cause the chaos. He wanted it to be inhabited, for His delights were with the sons of men. He wanted men. Oh! the wonder of it, that divine love would have an object outside of itself. We have been speaking about relationships, and what can we say about the relationships that existed before the incarnation between those glorious Persons that we now know as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? All that we know is that infinite love was there, love that was sufficient in that sense to itself, and yet in another sense wanted something outside of itself, and has reached out in this wonderful way in creation, has looked out to men, to you and to me, that we might be the objects of the love of God, that we might answer to it and that God might find His delight in us. What a God it is with whom we have to do! The greatness and grandeur and glory that are His, and yet the infinite grace that would think of you and me. Does everyone here realise that, that God is thinking about you now? However old or young you may be, God is thinking about you. Not only do we say that because you are here at the gospel preaching, but He is thinking about every man. It says in the scripture that "if he only thought of himself, and gathered unto him his spirit and his breath, all flesh would expire together", Job 34: 14, 15. But He is not just thinking about Himself, He is thinking about you and me; He is thinking about all men. The greatness and glory of God are wonderful the more you ponder them, and yet that He should want you and me despite all that we are and all that we have been, and that He should go to such infinite cost that He might have us for Himself, not only as His creatures, but as those He has redeemed with the blood of Jesus.

So the background is that every one of us must give an account of himself to God. Does what I have said help you to understand that? Whatever your life may have been up to this point, however much you may have disregarded Him, the very fact that you are here and in a measure of health and strength you owe to Him. Is it not right that you should give account to Him about it, how you have used that health and strength, and how you have used your body? But what can you say? How would each one of us here give account of ourselves if we were brought to face God tonight? It could be; these are realities. How uncertain life is, and every one of us must give account of himself to God. Thank God there are many here who can give account of themselves in the light of what Jesus has done, because they have found in Him the One who satisfies their every need, has met the demands of their consciences, met the claims of a holy God, shed His precious blood to wash their sins away. That is the account that we read of in the hymn we sometimes sing (No.357):

'The sinner who believes is free,

Can say, The Saviour died for me;

Can point to the atoning blood

And say, This made my peace with God'.

What an account that is - the only account in that sense that anyone can give that is of any value in the sight of God. This is a quotation in Romans 14, as Mr Darby tells us in his notes. It is interesting and profitable to follow these notes through and see where they lead to. That brings the glad tidings into Romans 14. If there is the solemn side that everyone of us must give account of himself to God, we see that the previous verse is a quotation from Isaiah 45 which tells us that the God to whom we have to give account is a just God and a Saviour. "Our Saviour God, who desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2: 4) is the God to whom you have to give account. He is not a God who desires things that are impossible but a God who has made a way that is according to the righteousness of His throne, whereby you might come into the infinite blessing of the knowledge of Himself and might be able to give an account of yourself which He could accept: but you must give an account. I have referred to the time that is coming when all shall give account, but I think you only have to give account of yourself once. Do not put it off. Young people, do not put it off. We preach tonight about this God to whom you must give account as a just God and a Saviour. Tonight is a time of wonderful opportunity when you can give account to Him, and all you have to do is simply what that man did, of whom Jesus spoke, who said "O God, have compassion on me the sinner", Luke 18: 13. Just take your place as a sinner and accept the Saviour that God has provided. Take account by faith of the fact that He has met everything that was due in relation to your history, however long or short it may have been, and you will come into infinite blessing. "This man went down to his house justified rather than that other" (verse 14). So He desires that all should be saved. He is interested in you, desiring that you should be saved, and He is setting forth this glorious Person a mercy-seat, the place where God is prepared to meet man. He will meet you tonight in Jesus, and you will find in Him a Saviour God and find eternal peace. "Whom God has set forth a mercyseat, through faith in his blood" (Rom 3: 25); that is what it has cost, speaking of that life of Jesus, its infinite inestimable value, known to God alone - the life which was laid down. The life was i n the blood:

'Of all the gifts Thy love bestows,

Thou Giver of all good!

E'en heav'n itself no richer knows

Than the Redeemer's blood'. (Hymn No 1)

He says of the blood "I have given it to you upon the altar..., for it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul", Lev 17: 11. So He is a Saviour God and He has provided the precious blood of Jesus to cleanse you from every sin "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin", 1 John 1: 7. Have no doubt about it. Do not let anything make you feel that it is hopeless as far as you are concerned. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses from every sin and it is available to you tonight. We are not promising you tomorrow. There is an urgency upon the preacher. We can tell you now that God is willing to accept your account if you simply accept Jesus as your own personal Saviour. It is not automatic. Everyone must give account of himself. Has everybody here given account? Have you simply told God that you accept Jesus as your own personal Saviour? It is the only way, whatever the atmosphere you may be in. However much your parents may love you and bring you to the meetings and pray for you, in itself it can do nothing; you must give account of yourself to God.

Oh to see that your debt, however great or little - God alone knows - is met. The blood of Jesus would have been necessary if you had sinned only once, that you might come into favour and be able to give an account of yourself which would be accept· able to Him. We all deepen, I think, in the sense of what our histories have been, of the tremendous debt that we owe, but that page is not just ruled through and left there. You are justified, as clear from guilt as if you had never sinned at all, and yet you are in a better position than if you had never sinned at all. What a wonderful triumph! Adam when he fell was positionally lower, Mr Stoney says, but morally higher, because he was capacitated by the fall to enter into a moral understanding of God and to come into the knowledge of God, and it made way for the outgoings of the heart of God.

'Soon as the reign of sin began,

The light of mercy dawned on man,

When God announced the blessed news,

The woman' s Seed thy head shall bruise'. (Hymn 366)

Satan's greatest apparent victories always contain the seeds of his overthrow. When sin was brought into the heart of man - "By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; and thus death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom 5: 12) - it made way for the greatest moral triumph that has ever been or ever will be, and made way for man to be brought into a knowledge of God that he could never have had in innocence. So, justification is not just a clearing of the slate and leaving you as if you had never sinned, but it brings you into a knowledge of the love of God which you could never have had unless you had sinned. Oh what a triumph! Not to put any premium on sin! Far be the thought! If only we had a deeper understanding and judgment of it as it has found expression in ourselves we would never even suggest it, but it is all part of the wonder, the infinite mystery, of the ways of God. None can call them into question or say to Him, What doest Thou? But thank God He has brought in this wonderful way of salvation so that you might be able to give an account of yourself. "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth": complete and full salvation available for every one who will but look to God. "Repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20: 21), that is the blessed Saviour who shed His precious blood - (that blood which cleanses from every sin) and who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. I can have no greater assurance that God is satisfied with all that Jesus has done than that the One in whose precious body my sins were borne is now in the presence of the God against whom I had sinned, in infinite unclouded favour, raised again for our justification. He is a living Saviour, a Saviour who has the same feelings as when He was here - the Saviour who wept at the grave of Lazarus, the Saviour who cast out demons, the Saviour who sat at Sychar's well - the same Saviour, with all those same feelings towards you. You may have come a long way and He is interested in you, like that young man of whom it says, He looked on him and He loved him. Jesus saw something that was there and yet he went away grieved because he had great possessions. There is nobody here, I suppose, in that position, but is there anything that is holding you back from surrender to Jesus; from going the whole way and just giving your heart to this One who has done so much for you? You will never measure all that He has done for you. As we were saying, eternity would come to an end, in a sense, if we could measure these things. We shall ever continue in the appreciation of divine grace and divine love and divine Persons and these wonderful relationships of which we have been speaking and of which some of us, I trust all, have had some experience in this day that we have spent together.

So He goes on to say "There is no God else beside me; a just God arid a Saviour, there is none besides me", and it is then that He swears by Himself as to the certainty of every knee bowing and every tongue confessing; as it says in Romans, "So then each of us shall give an account concerning himself to God". So you see how blessedly glorious and simple the gospel is, that before it says that, it says that He is a just God and a Saviour. How is He just, how has His righteousness been made known, the righteousness of God which is towards all and upon all those who believe? God is setting forth "a mercy-seat, through faith in His blood... that he should be just, and justify him that is of the faith of Jesus". Are you of the faith of Jesus? Do you believe in Jesus? Not do you believe about Jesus but do you believe in Him? Is He an object of faith for your soul? Have you put your trust in Him as your own personal Saviour? If you have, then there is no doubt about it that God can justify you. No one else can justify anybody. You can go to the court, and you can be represented by counsel, and maybe you can hear the verdict "not guilty", but it does not make any difference to what you have done. But God can justify you, give you a complete clearance so that you can stand before Him on new ground as taken into favour in the Beloved; and He would look upon you as in Christ, in the same way as He looks upon Jesus. That is wonderful. None of us will ever know what Jesus is to God, and yet He would look upon you with the same favour, the same love as He looks upon Jesus. These things are real. Has everyone here a sense of God being able to look upon you in favour and complacency and that you are able to look up without a cloud to give account of yourself to God? "Only in Jehovah, shall one say, have I righteousness". I wonder who that would be. What a triumph if someone said it here tonight. It is open to every one of us. It is not any one but every one of us must give an account; and "Only in Jehovah, shall one say, have I righteousness". What a triumph if someone here should put their trust in Jesus tonight and find that God has provided Him as righteousness! You can be clothed in all the worth of Jesus, as trusting in a living Saviour who is out of death, having met everything for God, for when He said "it is finished" everything was finished for God. And then, so that you and I might be associated with Him in glory, He went the whole way and died, shed His precious blood and was buried to make a complete clearance of the state, the condition, the man, so that there should be nothing remaining before God apart from what was in Himself; and God is prepared to take account of you as in Him "Taken... into favour in the Beloved" (Eph 1: 6) in the same relationship in which He stands and to give you the Holy Spirit to shed abroad His love in your heart and that you might have the Spirit of His Son to understand what it is to be brought into this relationship. Then to strengthen you by His own Spirit so that you might be able to fill out your part in this wonderful realm of divine purpose in which divine love would have you. So it says "Only in Jehovah, shall one say, have I righteousness and strength". What is offered in the gospel? Remission of sins, you say. Thank God for that, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and inheritance among the sanctified through faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit is given so that you might enter into it now and that you might have strength. Is anyone here holding back because they feel that if they committed themselves they would not be able to continue? Oh how we all know what that is! Who of us would commit ourselves to anything if we were left to our own charges? It is pathetic to see men who are convicted as to their need and as to the right path and yet they do not take it because they feel they are unable for it. In the army once, as we were coming away from a meeting, a sergeant came out of the public house and walked back to camp with us. He said, You know, I ought to be where you have been tonight but it is no use, because if I went there I would have no power to keep it up, and I would only go again where I have been tonight. He needed strength. He had not the realisation that God who is prepared to give the Saviour and the God who has given Him will withhold nothing: "No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly", Ps 84: 11. If only you would commit yourself to this pathway, commit yourself to a living Saviour and let His position in relation to this world determine your position. There is no complex doctrine as to separation from this and that and as to associations. All these things have to be faced but how simple they are. We read earlier in Romans 14, "For to this end Christ has died and lived again, that he might rule over both dead and living". "According to thy commandment shall all my people regulate themselves", Gen 41: 40. How simple if my position in relation to anything· in this world is determined by the position of the Lord Jesus in relation to it! Professional associations - would they have Jesus in them? They ask you to sign a paper sponsored by two existing members: "I certify that so-and-so is a fit and proper person to be a member of the Institute of this or that". Would they say that about Jesus? Is it right for me to put my name there, and ask Christ-rejecters to deem me to be a fit and proper person for their company when they would not have Jesus? It all becomes so simple. His position determines my position. "Therefore let us go forth to him without the camp, bearing His reproach", Heb 13: 13. That is His position in relation to everything, be it the profession in Christendom, be it the world with all its associations, He is outside of them all, He has died to it all. "He has died to sin once" (Rom 6: 10), that is He died to the whole system in which sin has operated, and "in that he lives, he lives to God. So also ye, reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus". We were talking about giving account, and there is another account, another reckoning to do: "Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus". Do you feel weak about it? "Only in Jehovah, shall one say, have I righteousness and strength". Oh that we might come to see that God has provided everything in the gospel. He has provided a Saviour so that you might be able to give an account of yourself; and that Saviour is, as another has said, an all-the-wayhome Saviour, so that you can find in Him all the strength that you need for the road. And He has given the precious gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the exalted Man. Have you your eye upon that Man? "If thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so to thee", 2 Kings 2: 10. So with our eye on the exalted Man and the power of His Spirit here below we can go through, and we can find in God - this God to whom we have to give account, a just God and a Saviour - we can find in Him righteousness and strength. It is provided in Christ and in the gift of the Spirit. These are the infinite blessings of the gospel. Today is the time when you can have the privilege of giving account, of anticipating what all will have to face sooner or later, and you can give account today by simply accepting Jesus as your Saviour. May we all know what it is to do it and have the joy and peace which comes in believing, for His Name's sake.

 

GRANGEMOUTH

28 July 1974