CHRIST – OR THE WORLD?
J. D. Gray
I want to talk to you about life, what your thoughts may be as to it, and what God’s thoughts are. There are a lot of souls in this room, and every one has to do with God individually. You may have relatives or friends in the room, but when the time comes you will have to meet God and meet Him yourself. You have a soul that has been given to you of God. We are often reminded that man is not like a brute. Man was “formed ... dust of the ground”, created by the hand of God, breathed into by the breath of God. So that Paul says it was right what one of the poets said, “We are ... his offspring”, the offspring of God, that is creationally. That applies to every human being in this scene. How many have walked in this scene! Scripture speaks about them. Great men have walked here and their memorials are put up; but they pass. You go along Princes Street or George Street in Edinburgh and you will see memorials to men. At some time they were the great heroes of the country. When Nelson was killed at the battle of Trafalgar the news came back to England, ‘Nelson your hero is dead’.
But he has gone, gone into eternity. Where he has gone is God’s matter. I am not speaking about Nelson derogatorily, I only cite him as a great personage. So you come down to others nearer your own time, and they have gone. Churchill has gone.
He was a great man used of God to save this nation in the war, raised up no doubt by God, a God-fearing man I would think from some of his writings. God knows whether he was; that is not my matter tonight because he is now in a fixed position, and that is true of every man that has gone out of this scene. “In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be” (Ecclesiastes 11: 3); once death takes place there is no change, you cannot change the position. Luke 16 brings that out; in fact just before where we read you get the rich man and the poor man and their positions are fixed. The poor man is in the bosom of Abraham and the rich man is in hades, “lifting up his eyes, being in torments” (Luke 16: 23). The scripture is parabolic, bringing out the fixity that is there—“A great chasm fixed, so that those who desire to pass hence to you cannot”, between those who die in Christ and those who die without Christ. My friends, I would ask you, How are you going to die—with Christ, or without Christ? If you live with Christ, then you will die in Christ. If you are living without Christ, it may be you will die without Christ.
There is an incident that comes to mind because of something that happened to an associate of mine in the past year. He had an accident; he fell off a bridge; but what it brought back to me was an incident I heard about many years ago as to a squire on horseback who got thrown from his horse and was knocked unconscious. He was known to be a godless man and had been spoken to many times. However, the man came round and said, ‘Between the saddle and the ground, I Jesus sought and Jesus found’. Oh, do not wait for such a situation! That was God’s extension of mercy to that man, and so with this poor fellow, maybe between the bridge and the ground he sought Jesus and found Him. You feel for your fellow-men, for a colleague you worked alongside, but the sobriety of it is that you are at the gospel preaching tonight and you have life before you. There are a lot of young people here, and they have life before them. Are you going to be like these people in this chapter? There was nothing wrong in eating and drinking, getting married and being given in marriage. There was nothing wrong in buying and selling and planting and building. We do such things every day—I am talking literally; I mean we have to do with commerce in our business lives and earn our living, but the point is, they did it without God, without Christ. They were godless persons. “In the days of Noe … they ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them”. Was God justified? He was justified. Why? He had waited one hundred and twenty years.
There was a ship being built. There had not been a flood of waters before, but there was a ship building. Noah appealed to them in the gospel of righteousness to repent, and they would not repent. Before the flood there was quite a civilisation and there was a lot of violence in the world, and there were personalities such as have never been known since. Scripture discloses that to us. There was the awful sin of angels leaving their first estate and marrying into the human race—I cannot explain that to you, but Scripture tells us that—and God had to wipe the scene clean of them or the awfulness of violence and evil would have reached heights beyond anything we could imagine. But God appealed to men in the glad tidings of Noah to repent, and there was salvation for them in the ark, but they would not. They ate, they drank, they married and they were given in marriage.
In the days of Lot it was the same, and God rained fire and brimstone on the two cities of the plain, but not before He acted to bring Lot out. In fact, Abraham solicits God. He says, What if there are ten righteous persons? God says, “I will not destroy it for the ten’s sake”, Genesis 18: 32. There were not even ten righteous persons, and Lot and his family—his wife and his two daughters got out, to use a homely expression, just in the nick of time—dragged out, because Lot was a righteous man and he vexed his righteous soul. Dear young friend, if you are Christ’s are you going to vex your righteous soul throughout the whole of your life by being part of a godless world, amongst godless people and their fellowship? That is what Lot did. He went down to Sodom and he became a dignitary in the city. There are persons who have gone out of fellowship who have done these things, taken up positions on town councils and as mayors. They are living amongst godless men in a godless society that has no time for Christ, “The stone which the builders cast away as worthless”—the men of the world have rejected Christ and these persons are vexing their righteous souls day after day. That is what Lot did, but God took him out. A true believer will be taken out, even though it be by being caught away by Christ before the judgment. I say again, dear young friends, what are your thoughts about life? What are your plans? What are your secret thoughts? You do not have to tell me; I do not want to know. Tell the Lord about them, because He knows them anyway. Is it to be Christ, or the godless world?
You say, ‘Well, I know Christ as Saviour’. Well then, I appeal to you, are you going to continue in sin that grace may abound? That is what Paul asks in Romans. Will you continue in sin? You say, ‘I know Christ as Saviour; my future is secure’. I would have to say to you, If you really know Christ as Saviour then your future is secure, because your salvation does not depend on your works after your conversion, it depends on Christ’s work. But I say to you, It is a shameful way to treat the Saviour who died to save you, shedding His blood at such cost to redeem you, to say, ‘I shall continue in sin and wilfulness that grace may abound’. God’s grace will abound in the sense that He will extricate you from it finally. But what are you going to do with your life? The Lord would search us all as to the secret motives in our hearts. I do not know your motives; I do not know what you are thinking; you could be thinking anything, and I could be too, but I want to live for Jesus, that is what I want to do. Do you want to live for Jesus, or do you want to go into the world? It is Christ or the world. You cannot have both. The most unhappy person that walks through this world is a believer who is trying to be worldly. An unconverted man enjoys life to some extent. There are the temporary pleasures of sin; Scripture says that. A true believer who is walking separately from the world really enjoys life. It is a different kind of life. A worldly believer is a most unhappy person, whether he admits it or not, because he is sinning against God. It is a terrible thing to sin against God wilfully. But, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins”, 1 John 1: 9. What a God! He would view your sins, even although they may have been wilful, as sins of inadvertence. After Christ was raised from the dead and the preaching went out, the early chapters of Acts show how God regarded His crucifixion. Peter says, “Ye did it in ignorance”, Acts 3: 17. God says, ‘I will regard it as a sin of ignorance’.
‘Repentance only. God requires from man,
And faith in Christ, His well-beloved Son’.
(Hymn 123)
Do you really know your sins are forgiven? Are you washed in His precious blood? There is power in the blood, power in the blood of the Lamb—wonder-working power. O, my friend, do you really know Christ as your Saviour? Do you really have an appreciation of the enormity of the sins that have been washed away? The Lord says to the man in Luke 7, “There were two debtors of a certain creditor—one owed five hundred denarii and the other fifty; but as they had nothing to pay, he forgave both of them their debt—say, which of them therefore will love him most?” (Luke 7: 41, 42). Are you a fifty pence or a five hundred pence debtor? We are all five hundred pence debtors; before God every man is a five hundred pence debtor. You could not redeem your soul if you wanted to, neither could your father, nor your mother, nor your brother or sister, neither could a millionaire redeem your soul. There was only one price to be paid, and Christ paid that price.
Do you value life? It is reported that when the ‘Titanic’ went down one man offered a million pounds for a place in a lifeboat, but he did not get it. His millions were worth nothing to him. You say, ‘If only I had a million, what would I not do with it?’ People go after money. Oh, that is human nature. There was a man faced with the realities of life and death and a watery grave. A million pounds for a place in a boat! The most precious thing that man has is his life. He will hang on to it at all costs. O, friend, the most precious thing you have is your soul.
It is God-given. If you were in the situation of the millionaire, you too would offer your million. You are in the same situation as the man on the ‘Titanic’. You are perishing if you are without Christ, but salvation is free and full, and the price has been paid. You do not have to pay the million pounds for a place in the boat. God has provided the wherewithal, and all He requires from you is repentance and faith. We sing, ‘Sinner, see thy God beside thee’. No wonder that godly men break out into such expressions. Why is it? Because they are affected in their souls by the forgiveness of their sins. ‘Sitting, walking, talking with thee’—the Lord Jesus would draw near to you, the Spirit of God would convict you.
You need conviction. You need to be convicted of your sins. Conviction is real. I am not doubting the simple lisping of a child who may in simplicity trust Christ; and the Lord would regard that. But when you grow up into your teens and come into adulthood, there is a power working in your system that is greater than you, and you need fresh conviction of the power of sin that works in your members, and the only answer to overcoming that power is the power of the Spirit of God. You are not able for it, and neither am I, and it works out in the teen-ages of the lives of all of us as we grow up into manhood and womanhood. There is a power working in the human body and within your frame that you are not equal to, that the devil can activate, the passions of the flesh that work in our members. We are not equal to controlling them, and therefore we need the power of the Spirit of God. So you need to be convicted, convicted of the power of sin.
You need a Deliverer, and that Deliverer is Christ. He may be your Saviour from your sins, you may have trusted in Him in the simplicity of your heart as a child, but growing up into womanhood and manhood you will come through exercises that are desperate at times. You will come through moral exercises as the passion of the flesh begins to work in your members. I say again, you will find there is a power there that is greater than you, and there is only one Person who has bound the strong man, and that is Christ, and the Spirit of God, given from the Lord Jesus, is the power in the believer to overcome the world and the flesh.
How is it a young believer can go against the stream of the world? It is only by the unseen power of the Spirit of God (see 1 Peter 4: 14). That is how you can go against the stream of the world. It is not in your own power. Dear young friend, are you going to dedicate yourself to go against the stream? Where is true life anyway? It is not in this world. That is going to end. Maybe you will live a long time, maybe not so long, but life with Christ is true happiness and true joy. That is what the Lord is offering you. You will not find life of the character that you are seeking anywhere else but amongst God’s people, eternal life. The character of life that you will enjoy in heaven, if you have trusted in Christ, you can enjoy now in the power of God’s Spirit.
You say, ‘I am only a young believer; all that seems to be for older persons’. Well, maybe you think that, but you should begin when you are young. The men the Lord gathered round Him were young men, and I believe the women were young women. The Lord wants you. Are you not going to give Him the best of your life? Will you give Him your best? He does not preclude you from marrying or from having a family.
But make sure that your marriage is “in the Lord”. That is true happiness, walking in the same path, in the same fellowship. You can enjoy natural joys—very blessed they are. You can also enter into business, you can plant, you can build, you can sow. These are all honourable things as you are doing them for the Lord, and doing them with the Lord, each day seeking His guidance.
I want to ask you. Do you read the Scriptures every day? Honestly, do you read the Bible every day? You be honest with yourself before the Lord. You do not need to read much. I am not saying that I read much. In the morning it is sometimes just a verse or two, but I tell you also that I have proved the blessing that comes from God through reading a few verses every day. I will tell you what it does. It forms your character. Characteristically you become dependent on the Lord. Never fail to pray. Pray every morning; pray at night too. Ask the Lord to guide you. You know, dear young friends, you need to pray more earnestly in the morning in one sense than at night, because in the morning you are going out into the world, and you need protection. Young women and young men need moral protection as they go out into this world to earn their living. It is a dangerous atmosphere. In school, business, the office—it is dangerous. You need moral protection, you need heavenly protection, and the Lord will give you that. I was reading an interesting thing. It says, “Their angels in the heavens continually behold the face of my Father who is in the heavens” (Matthew 18: 10), and I have often thought it was
limited to the angels, but in the article it was stated that Christ Himself becomes that to the believer (see JT Vol.33, p.421).
Have you ever thought of that, that Christ protects you as you commit yourself to Him when you go out in the morning? He will protect you morally. You need moral protection, dear young people. I tell you, you do not know the power that is working in your body naturally, and it is a power you cannot control. You need moral protection, and that protection comes from the power of the Spirit of God and from beseeching the Lord Jesus Christ to protect you.
There is a wonderful system of divine protection for the believer, unseen, unknown by the world, protection that enshrouds you, that protects you round about as you are dependent.
What a protective system we have been brought into, and God is the great Protector, “preserver of all men, specially of those that believe”, 1 Timothy 4: 10. In the evening you kneel down to pray, and that is good. You are in safety in your house, but still commit yourself to the Lord. But still, I say, you are not in the same danger as when you go out in the morning.
So you see how necessary divine protection is. Practical salvation has to be worked out by you. If you have trusted Christ as your Saviour, then your future is secure, but I appeal to you to live in suitability to the confession that you have made as to the Lord’s name, and in suitability to the fact that you put your hand to the loaf in the Lord’s supper. Day by day salvation is necessary. The Lord will see you through, but you need to call on His name.
Confession of the Lord’s name is not easy. You say, ‘When you get older it must be very easy’. I do not find it easy. I found comfort in reading in some letters of Mr. Darby that he did not find it easy either. I thought he would surely be one to whom it would be simple, but he says somewhere in his ‘Letters’ that he found it difficult sometimes to confess the Lord’s name. Confession is to spring from our appreciation of Christ and love for Him. But be encouraged; the Lord will help you as you commit yourself to Him. I trust you will be helped to weigh over these matters. The Lord says in our scripture, “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it”, that is, seek to save his life in this world on the lines along which I have been speaking, “and whosoever shall lose it shall preserve it”. That is, if you are prepared to weigh things over, and lose certain advantages in this life, you will preserve that life of yours and come into the enjoyment of eternal life, which is far greater than anything this world can ever offer. May it be so, for His name’s sake.
Preaching in Kirkcaldy
16 February 1986