CHRIST EXALTED
David Robertson
Acts 2: 36-39; 1 Peter 3: 15; Colossians 2: 6,7
One is impressed to speak a little as to the exaltation of Christ. No doubt most have heard, all in this room have heard, of the place of glory that the Lord Jesus fills. Exalted, as it says earlier in this chapter “by the right hand of God”. And the gospel proceeds from the standpoint of the Lord Jesus Christ exalted – a wonderful consideration and it gives one joy to speak of it, that that blessed Man is exalted.
Peter in his preaching says, “this Jesus whom ye have crucified”. That is the Jesus who was here who men refused and eventually crucified, the Jesus who suffered the abandonment of God in the three hours of darkness, who completed the work under the eye of God, a holy God. That meant that God was totally satisfied with the complete judgment of evil, the judgment of sin, that Jesus would be glorified. Wonderful matter! And the preaching, as I have said, goes out in the light of that, goes out from that glorious standpoint, that there is a Man exalted, that God has made Him both Lord and Christ. That is something peculiarly attractive, I think. He has made Him both Lord and Christ.
Now what the gospel really is is an announcement of the most wonderful administration that has ever occurred in this world’s history. And that is the administration of the fulness and wealth of divine blessing that is flowing from heaven to men. It is in the hands of a Man, it is in the hands of Jesus: God has made Him both Lord and Christ. It is a wonderful thing to get that into your soul – especially if you are a believer – that God has made Him both Lord and Christ. You may say, what does it mean? Well, in my simple way to express it, it means His lordship in blessing and full blessing, not part blessing but full blessing. The full blessing involves many different blessings but it eventuates in the greatest of all blessing, and that is that God is prepared to give men the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is the wealth of the fulness of divine administration that is flowing from a Man in heaven. As we have often been reminded in the preaching, and it is good to be reminded of it again, His first great administrative blessing was to shed forth the gift of the Holy Spirit. In fact in this very book, in this very chapter of the book, if you want to read, (you young boys and girls, if you want to read it, read it freshly), you will find that in Jerusalem, in this city where Peter was preaching, already men and women and no doubt young people were indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. They had received the tidings in the announcement of the most wonderful administration, divine administration that has ever occurred in the world’s history. What an administration it is! It is full of divine wealth. It involves many other blessings.
Later on Paul in his preaching could say that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. Everything is through this Man. It is the only thing preached in the world, the only proclamation in the world that stands or is given in the light of a Man glorified. There will, for instance, be many speakings in this city today and all are centred in men down here, some refined men, some otherwise. It is all man under the bondage of sin whether he is refined or otherwise. But this word, the preaching of the glad tidings, is centred in a Man up there, in the presence of God.
Now I do not feel able to be too long, but I want to get this through to you, even if I have to labour to get it through, that the gospel is centred in a Man up there. What a thing it is that these blessings come through that Man. There is no blessing of God unless it comes through the hands of this Man. But what an administrator He is! He has pleased the Father. It says, “the Father loves the Son and has given all things to be in His hand”. It has pleased the Father to put everything in the hand of Christ. And he has made Him both Lord and Christ: that is, the fulness of administration is in the hands if this blessed Man. And if you are going to be blessed it must be through Christ. Paul later on in his preaching says, “that through this man is preached unto you the remission of sins”. What a preaching that is, what a blessing that is! I trust we all know what it is to have received the forgiveness of sins through Christ, through this Man. No dignitary in this world could give you it. I do not speak disparagingly but the Pope exalted in Rome could not give you the forgiveness of your sins. Nor could the Archbishop of Canterbury or all these men who occupy places of high rank in religious circles. Not one of them could give you forgiveness of sins. But the Saviour can give it to you. The hymn says:
‘Hear Him speak the word of pardon,
Trust in Him who died,
And thy heart will lose its burden,
By His side’.
Have you ever known it? It is a wonderful blessing, to know that your sins are forgiven. How can He do it? Because He has borne them all in His own body on the tree. What a Saviour He is, what a precious Saviour He is. He is precious to me and I know persons in this room to whom He is precious. Is He precious to you?
Have you received the forgiveness of sins through Christ? Paul says, “through this man remission of sins is preached to you, and from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses”, Acts 13: 38,39. The law could never justify you. The law could condemn you; the law could prove that you are a sinner time and time again. It could never justify you, it could condemn you, but the glad tidings bears this glorious message that through Christ and in Him you can be justified, not only be forgiven, not only your sins forgiven but justified, set up in the righteousness of Christ before God Himself.
How blessed these things are! How glorious they are! They are the result of Christ occupying this great place of administration. I suppose it is seen in some type in Joseph. He became the administrator in the realm of Egypt and any blessing or anything that man could get in the way of blessing had to come through his hands. It is only a type; Joseph was like you and me, a man, but nevertheless a wonderful type of Christ. Oh to come to the fulness of the thing! For that you must come to Christ Himself. And God has made Him both Lord and Christ. I want you young boys and girls to remember His Lordship in blessing. That is why these two titles are combined, Lord and Christ. In a coming day He will exercise judgment, for God has not only placed the administration of blessing in the Son’s hand, but He has placed the administration of judgment in His hands. That will be Lordship in judgment. I do not want to speak about that. I am glad that I do not at the moment need to speak of it: I am glad I have this word of blessing to preach to you.
There was one man who received a word for another man and he says, “I have a word from God for thee”. And what a solemn word it was; it was a word of judgment. But my word tonight is a blessed, glad word. It is a blessed word to tell you that the administration in all its wealth and all its bounty is in the hands of the One who has been made both Lord and Christ. What an administration that is! If you want to see the administration working out, read Romans chapter 5. You will see it there in Paul’s language – through this man, through Him, through Jesus Christ our Lord. It goes on and abounds. That is the kind of blessing it is.
The foundations of the preaching were laid we might say in chapter 3 of Romans. We cannot ignore that. It says in the Psalm “he has established His foundation in the mountains of His holiness”. Oh what a thing that is! To speak of those three hours of darkness, just for a moment, a solemn matter, the time when the Lord Jesus took the place before God as the sin bearer and when God judged in an unmitigated way all that was due to sin against the Lord Jesus Christ. Think of that cry: one’s heart is always touched to refer to it, for He says, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” Who could speak of it, who could speak of it further than I am speaking of it? What a matter it was as the judgment of sin. My holy sin-hating God against the sinless One. The Lord Jesus had no sin of His own.
I was hurt very deeply, you could say, to speak very simply, possibly two or three years ago. On a side of a big building in Cumnock where I live, the large side of a house, no windows in it, just a gable end, someone had printed on it in huge letters, ‘Christ died for His own sins’. I felt that keenly, that someone had the audacity, the complete lack of conscience to paint that on a wall in large letters. I looked at it for some time and I spoke to the Lord Jesus: I said No, Lord, that is not true, you died for my sins. That is the truth, Christ died for your sins, and He died for my sins. Peter says, “He bore our sins in his body on the tree”. What a thing that is, one’s heart is always touched as speaking of it. But what a thing it is that Christ died for you, the One who had no sin of His own. “He who did not sin”, He knew not sin, in Him sin was not. Pure, spotless, holy Lamb of God. The hymn says:
Lamb of God for sinners wounded,
Sacrifice to cancel guilt.
What a Saviour He is! He and only He could speak the word of pardon. I love that sight in Luke 7 with that woman. He says, “Thy faith has saved thee, go in peace”. That is the Saviour speaking. Only He could have spoken those words. And He is prepared to speak them to you tonight. If you have never heard Him speaking before, come to Him repentantly and acknowledge your need of a Saviour and find that He is ready to speak to you the word of pardon. What a thing it is to find your burden rolled away. Have you not felt it? I can remember a time and others can tell you of their time too, when the burden grew very, very heavy: it increased day by day, and I used to put my head in the pillow at night and there it was again. What a joy it was to find that the burden rolled away, and why did it roll away? because my sins were forgiven for His Name’s sake, the sake of the Saviour. What a great matter it is, the great matter of justification. Some say ‘just as if you have never sinned’. But that is not good enough. It implies innocence, as if you have never sinned at all. But you have sinned. The great truth of justification is that you are set up before God in the righteousness of Christ, accepted in another Man. God is looking at Christ instead of looking at you in all your sins. Are you there in Christ before God? In Mr Darby’s translation, you will find where I have quoted in Acts 13 that it is, “In him every one that believes is justified”, not merely by Him but in Him you are justified from all things. That is, you have a standing before God in righteousness.
There are many other blessings. There is the great blessing of reconciliation, that where you were at the distance of a sinner, and the distance that sin had brought in, away from God – it speaks of here to those who are afar off – but then through the work of Christ reconciled to God through the death of His Son. Where there was distance there is now nearness. That is a peculiar kind of nearness, not just as you are near me and I to you tonight, but a peculiar kind of nearness. You say, What do you mean? It means that you are detained before God for His pleasure. You say, that is teaching; well it is wonderful teaching. It is holy experience, that you are so near to God, but are near to God for His pleasure. Instead of God taking account of a sinner in his sins, He looks at persons who are justified and reconciled. They are brought near to God and they are there for God’s pleasure. God can find delight in such. How glorious the work of Christ is, how complete the work of Christ is!
There are many other blessings we could speak of – the blessing of sonship. Paul speaking of Christians says, “Ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”. Think of being a son of God! Think of being brought into the blessing of sonship! It is all part of this wonderful, bounteous, divine administration that is coming through the hands of Christ exalted. Again, you are a son not only for your own delight, you are a son for the Father’s delight. As we have often been reminded and often enjoyed, sonship is for God. It is a wonderful blessing. In some sense it is the highest blessing for man, that God should look on you as a son. But you are a son for God’s pleasure, to give the heart of God delight.
Finally as we have seen in this chapter, the greatest blessing is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The first touch I got in my soul in a definite way as to the reality of the indwelling Spirit was in Edinburgh. I was there for meetings and Mr Taylor was serving. I was nineteen at the time and I had the Holy Spirit but it had never come into my soul with definite reality what it meant to have the Holy Spirit. During one of these meetings he began to speak of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and of the rightness of raising the question in the preaching as to whether souls had received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Well, have you? Have you received the gift of the Holy Spirit? You say, I have been breaking bread for a long time now. Yes, but that is not what I asked you. I asked have you received the gift of the Holy Spirit since you believed? I got such a touch in my soul was almost tangible. I had a definite touch as to the glory of the matter, to be actually possessed of the Holy Spirit of God. Between the meetings another young brother and I used to have a walk and a man says, What are you boys doing in Edinburgh, you have been here the last couple of days? We said, We have been in the hall up there for meetings with Christians. Oh, he says, that is interesting; I am a believer. I said to him, That is interesting; have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed? He said, I am not that kind of believer; I am a rationalist believer. It found the man out, he was a materialist, he believed in the facts of the gospel in a certain sense but he had no sense of the blessing of them.
Dear young friend, my simple word tonight is that I want you to come into the blessing of the glad tidings, to know your sins forgiven, to know you are justified, to know you are reconciled to God, to know you are a son of God and to know in your soul, in your heart, that you are a possessor of the Holy Spirit. What a wonderful blessing it is! No wonder the Lord in John 4 says, “It shall become in him a fountain of living water springing up into eternal life”. It is a wonderful blessing. This is a wonderful administration. There is nothing like it, but friend, are you in it? Oh you say, I would like to know the way. That is what these people wanted to know. What shall we do, they say? Not what shall we do for our salvation; you could do nothing for your salvation, the Saviour has done it all. But you can find your way into the blessing – repent and be baptised, each one of you for the remission of sins. Repent - is it not a wonderful thing to be in the time when you are allowed to repent? God will close the door of repentance. But the door is wide open. There is not a man nor a woman nor a boy in this world who cannot repent today, because God has the door wide open. It is open for people to repent: it is open for you. You may have got out of the way, you may have got into a bit of trouble, but I can tell you that the way for you to take tonight is the way of repentance. That is the word, Repent. It was a definite word, repent. Repent while you are allowed to do it, repent. As I say, the day will come when the door will be shut, and people will not get in. They will knock at the door and there will be a voice from the inside saying, Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity, I do not know you. They will not be allowed to repent then. The day of apostasy is near and the door of repentance will be closed. But, friend, it is open. Take full advantage of it. I appeal to you to take full advantage of it. It is the way into this blessing. Repent and be baptised. You may say, I was baptised when I was a baby. That is true. The people who were addressed here were Jews that were coming into Christianity and they needed to change their ground, they needed to take up a new moral stand. Baptism was the way in that sense for them. But it was all towards the remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
I commend this word to you; it is a very simple word. I just wanted to add two or three more thoughts in the other scriptures I read.
Peter says, “Sanctify the Lord the Christ in your heart”. God wants to give you a part in the system of Christianity. It is an anointed system. You might not understand that, but it is divinely anointed. It is a dignified system; it does not bear the stamp of a particular kind of man of this world, even though he is a refined man, even though he might have the greatest education in this world. Christianity does not bear the stamp of that kind of man. It bears a divine stamp. It is an anointed system; it is anointed with the Holy Spirit. God would love you to have part in that. But you will find that, when anointing takes place anywhere in the scripture, always Satan attacks it. He has attacked the anointed system today, and he is attacking you to keep you out of the anointed system. Maybe you once had your part in it. Maybe you have lost your part in it and Satan attacks you to keep you out of it.
When David was anointed, as you will find in 2 Samuel 5, the Philistines began to attack immediately. If you read Psalm 2 you will find that when God has His anointed there is an attack. That is what Satan is doing today. Even the Lord Jesus, when He was anointed, very soon was carried of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. The devil is seeking to undermine and erode the working of the anointed system, and to destroy your part in it. How can you secure it? Sanctify the Lord the Christ in your heart. The safeguard is in there beloved brethren. It says, “Keep your heart more than anything that is guarded for out of it are the issues of life”. We are speaking of something that involves the issues of life. Outside of that there is nothing but moral death. Down, down, down, that is how it goes. I have seen it in persons; I have seen it in persons who are believers. They get a little away and a little further away and a little further away until they are in the grip of Satan. It is a sad thing; I would say to you sanctify the Lord the Christ in your heart. It is a word for you, a word for me. But is a word in affection, a word of appeal. Do you know anything greater than to have part in an anointed system? Are you really in it or are you out of it? Friend, sanctify the Lord the Christ in your heart. What does it mean? It means that He has the chief place in your affection. It is pure area, sanctified, and sanctified no doubt by the operation of the Holy Spirit of God. It is one of the great operations of the Holy Spirit, to bring you to purity, purity of affection for Christ.
My simple appeal to you is, “Sanctify the Lord the Christ in you heart”. Then finally, as you have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, walk in Him. That is that love for Christ, and the very fact that you have received Christ, means you have to walk a different way. Your way becomes regulated, not because of some kind of law that you are under or some kind of arbitrary rule, but your steps become regulated because you have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord. Think of walking that way. We have all known people who have walked that way. One would delight to be among them in these days. You can take account of my walk; no doubt Paul would speak of it as newness of life. You no longer walk the way you once walked but you have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, and then you walk in Him. Your steps are covered by Him. In a simple way the test for everything would be, What would Jesus think of this? What does it mean for me to walk in such a way as having received Christ Jesus the Lord? I think you become simple; you can test a person out by that simple test. I trust that God will bless the word and that there will be fruit for God from the word, for His Name’s sake, Amen.
EDINBURGH
13 August 2000