ADDRESSES ON THE PSALMS
([p. 64] 7) THE GLORY OF GOD AND JESUS
The greater part of us have no doubt often heard this scripture read and commented upon — so that one cannot expect to present anything new in connection with it; but incidents of this kind are so full of character, that each time they come before us they present some fresh feature; and it is that which has encouraged me to read this passage at the present time. This particular chapter is a point of transition, and a point of transition is pretty sure to be a point of contrast. Now we learn most things by contrast. The Epistle to the Hebrews has often been said to be an epistle of contrasts; the Spirit of God uses the contrast between what has been, and what is, to convey to us the truth. The contrast is between what had been, and what is — not between what will be, and what is. Stephen might have presented the contrast between what existed, and what would be, but that was not the mind of the Spirit; the mind of the Spirit was that he should present what he himself saw, and that was the transition from what had been to what is.
All know the circumstances of his witness and death; he passes off the scene as the first martyr; and the man at whose feet the witnesses laid down their clothes, comes in and takes up from where Stephen left off. The Jews crushed out the life of Stephen by stoning him, but God raised up the most unlikely man to continue where, in a certain sense, Stephen had left off.
I will say a little now upon the point of contrast of which I spoke, the contrast between what has been, and what is. The impression I want to convey is of what IS; it is so extremely important that all should be encouraged to be taken up with what is. I quite [p. 65] admit it is with unseen things, but unseen things are present things, and eternal things. You want to be looking at the unseen things — it seems like a paradox to speak of looking at things that are not seen, but that is the way in which the apostle speaks and he says, “The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal”. Stephen looked at things which are not seen, and he learned that the unseen things are eternal. Stephen was taken up with things not apprehended by the natural eye. Most will be familiar with the detail of the chapter: he begins by passing in review the ways of God from the times of the patriarchs down to the then present moment. The first section of the chapter takes up the patriarchs, the next the nation, and the third the temple. These are three landmarks in the chapter. The point in connection with the patriarchs is that God gave them the promises, but they died. They never had the fulfilment of the promises made to them. Of course, Abraham had Isaac, who had been promised to him; but in general the patriarchs did not have the fulfilment of the promises made to them; they embraced them, and the promises had a great effect upon them, but they never had the fulfilment. It is marked in the chapter that they died, they passed off the scene, and to all appearance the promises were left unfulfilled.
Then the next point is that the nation had been as perverse as ever a nation could be — they turned idolatrous, they rejected their deliverers: first his brethren cast out Joseph; then, later on, the people refused Moses and thrust him from them; and in result they became idolatrous, and were to be carried away into captivity beyond Babylon.
Then in regard of the temple — the tabernacle was brought into the land, but Solomon built God a house; but God afterwards repudiates the house, for the time had come when the people were resting in the fact of God’s house being among them, no matter what their condition, and hence God says, “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me?”
I speak of these things, because in a sense they make up the sum of what had been; everything which God had proposed down here; all had broken down, all was marred, and was coming to an end. Who at the present moment thinks anything at all about the patriarchs who had the promises, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Infidels possibly doubt even their existence. But they are the men who had the promises, and you could not conceive that God should fulfil the promises apart from them — they must get the promises. They have died in regard to men, but they live to God; God is the “God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” — that is what the Lord said to the Sadducees, He appeals to that as a witness to resurrection. But for the moment all had ended in weakness, the men to whom God had been pleased to give the promises were dead. As to the nation, God went on with it for a certain time, but it became idolatrous, and so went into captivity, and there was an end of it, and indeed of the temple too. God refused the temple, and it was trodden underfoot by the Gentiles — there was an end of everything, all was virtually past, and Stephen reviews all in the early part of his address. It is wonderful to think that all that had been of God in the world should have come to an end; it is a strange thing outwardly, it would almost appear as though God were weak; to think that all those things which had been set up of God should end in utter weakness. The Jews in captivity beyond Babylon, at the same time the house of God repudiated, and the city trodden down of the Gentiles. If you take up these things in a natural way, you cannot understand them; but if God allowed these things to come to an end, He meant it; and He did not mean that they should be revived.
[p. 67] Christendom has tried to take things up again on the old footing, to revive the ritual that belonged to the Jewish system. And this country has assumed to be a kind of favoured nation, much as Israel was, and cathedrals and so on are called houses of God. You get in all this an attempt to revive what has been, and to take up things in a natural way out of their proper connection with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. The promises will assuredly be brought to pass, but not in connection with man after the flesh; the bond between God and Israel after the flesh is completely broken. The millennium will come in for Israel, but God will never renew His relations with them on the old footing. The latter glory of the house will be of a special character when everything is set up on an entirely different footing to anything that has been.
Now I speak of these things as things which have been; but we see represented in Stephen the things which are, and the things which should occupy the attention of Christians. Whatever Stephen had in the way of intelligence, he had a large acquaintance with the scriptures, but what he speaks of is also what he apprehended at the moment; he was “full of the Holy Spirit”, and announced what he realised, what came within his apprehension, in the power of the Holy Spirit, at that moment. Now I think that God gave to Stephen a kind of answer to all that had come in. Stephen had been permitted to pass in review the weakness that had marked everything which had been set up here upon earth. Everything in which the Jew would have rejoiced had failed utterly, and Stephen was permitted to see the termination of all. The patriarchs, the nation, the temple — everything had failed; all hope on that ground was completely cut away, and God gave to Stephen, as far as I understand it, the great answer to it all. And the answer is the “Glory of God, and Jesus”; God had in reserve an answer to every bit of failure. So that although we [p. 68] see on the one hand the entire failure of everything down here, yet, on the other, we see God’s reserve, the glory of God and Jesus.
Now the glory of God is a great point to begin with — the glory of God is moral; Stephen did not behold it with his natural vision, he was full of the Holy Spirit. It was in Holy Spirit power, and by Holy Spirit vision, that Stephen saw the glory of God. The glory of God is what is distinctive of God, what is peculiar to Him. Glory is always distinctive, and the glory of God is glory that is God’s, and in which no one can participate. If you ask me to go a little more into detail, I would say it is the displayed harmony of His attributes with His nature; and I think the Spirit of God gave Stephen an apprehension of it here. When sin came in God’s attributes were not in harmony with His nature in regard to man; His love might be towards man as ever, but man had become removed from the righteousness of God by reason of sin. But now comes to light the truth that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. What has been brought to pass is that God has been glorified, and in such a way that His attributes might be in complete harmony with His nature, in regard of sinful man. God’s attributes must ever be in harmony with His nature, if you speak of absolute Godhead, but if you bring in the thought of sinful man, then God’s attributes need to be brought into harmony with His nature. In Christ God’s righteousness is declared, His love manifested, and in the resurrection you get the testimony to the establishment of righteousness for man. God has been glorified, His righteousness declared, and God has a free hand, if one might so speak, to carry out the dictates of His love. God so loved the world, but in order that the love of God might be effective, the Son of man had to be lifted [p. 69] up, and in that God was free to express the greatness of His love. The universe of bliss will be the fruit as it is the conception, of divine love. We see the great answer which God was pleased to give to Stephen, He saw the “glory of God”.
Another point comes out in connection with the glory, Stephen saw “Jesus”, Man was there, and, mark you, Man crowned with glory and honour. He said, “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God”, Man had gone up to that height — Man, born of a woman, had gone to the right hand of God, the proof and expression of the divine acceptance of man in Jesus. You have to put these two things together, God’s glory secured, and Man in the place of highest acceptance and honour with God. That is what Stephen was permitted to see. He looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus on the right hand of God; then he bears witness to it, his testimony is to the Son of man. There are two lines in Scripture connected with the Lord Jesus, one is as the Son, and the other as the Son of man. As Son, He comes out to express God; and as Son of man He takes everything up on behalf of man. You will find these two lines pretty well marked in Scripture. In the fourth book of Psalms the burden is “Jehovah reigneth”, but in the fifth book Christ comes in on behalf of man, and is welcomed in the very city from which He was rejected; that gives you the two sides of what is connected with Christ; He expresses God, and on the other hand, as the Son of man, He has secured everything for man. Man is in the highest place of acceptance and honour with God — Jesus is there, the Son of man on the behalf of man. This is what came into view to Stephen, and if to him, to us too. Every hope as connected with earth is over, we have no hope for earth, and we have to take that into account; the natural desire of the human heart is to make something [p. 70] of the earth, but we have to learn that there is no nation, no temple — these things have been on the earth, but they have come to an end in weakness, and what, I ask, is the worth of the earth without them? No temple, and no people of God, strictly speaking; and the Patriarchs dead; the very temple of God a desolation and a ruin; you may depend upon it God never intended to give to the Gentile the Jews’ portion — at least, not in any material way; it would be to give to the younger brother, the elder son’s portion. The Father says to the elder son, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine”. He did not give that to the younger son, the younger son got another portion, the best robe, and the ring, and the shoes. The truth is the Gentile gets, in a spiritual way, what the Jew has lost in a material way.
Well, Stephen saw the glory of God and Jesus. The greater the apprehension of the glory of Jesus, the greater sense we have of the place of grace for man; if we see the glory of Jesus, we have a sense of the acceptance and favour in which man stands. The greater the glory, the greater the grace. Stephen said he saw the heavens opened; he had an apprehension of what is in heaven. It was the first time that the heavens were opened to man; they had been opened upon Christ when He was here upon earth, but now they are opened to man, so that man by the Spirit may have an apprehension of the glory of God and Jesus.
I come now to what is upon earth. At the present time, Jesus is in heaven, and the testimony of God comes from heaven, but what is there on earth for God? The fathers are dead, there is no nation, and no temple, what is there for God? Well, there is one thing, there is the work of God. The Holy Spirit is here, and the work of God is the effect and fruit of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Now that comes out in Stephen. The Holy Spirit is the mighty power down [p. 71] here, acting on the behalf of God in order to produce in men complete conformity to the Man in heaven, so that man might bear the image of the heavenly as he is in the acceptance of the heavenly — “As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly”, and the glory of Jesus is presented to man in order that he may know his acceptance. The work of the Holy Spirit down here is to conform the believer morally to the glory of that Man.
Now there are two things which come out in Stephen — superiority to the power of evil, he triumphed over that; and then there was likeness to Christ; those are the two effects produced by the power of the Holy Spirit; and as to apprehension, it was the glory of God and Jesus; he says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”, then he could say, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” — that was triumph over the evil. I think one might venture to speak of this as the proof of conformity morally to Jesus in glory. And that is the effect and fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit.
Now in regard of ourselves — Stephen is a beautiful picture of what the power of God can effect; but we need to remember that for us, too, the platform has been cleared, everything, so far as the earth is concerned, has completely failed, and Christians have to learn that they must not indulge hopes in regard to this earth; the hopes of a Christian are concerned with heaven, and things moral. That is a great point. God has not given to us a temporal or natural portion, but our portion is a spiritual portion, and it is of all importance that our attention should be taken up with what is moral. There is first the apprehension that the Holy Spirit gives you, and then also His work down here. The Holy Spirit carries out His own blessed work down here, that you might be in conformity to the glory of God, and to the One who is in heaven. That work was carried out in Stephen, and [p. 72] the Spirit is bent upon carrying it out in regard of you and me down here.
One question I would ask — how far is it true of us that we are superior to the power of evil? How far are we proof against the god and prince of this world? so that we are not affected by the glory of the world. Satan does not come to us as a roaring lion in the present day, but with the glitter and tinsel of the world. How far are we superior in the power of the Holy Spirit to his allurements? Then there is another question, how far are we conformed to the One in the glory? There is a mighty power down here upon earth which can effect this. It came out in Stephen, He called upon God, and on the Lord Jesus, as the effect of the Spirit’s teaching; all sprung from love in him, and where did that come from? From the sense of divine love; he had the blessed sense of divine love, and at the same time, he was in the knowledge of acceptance; and this came out in the way of conformity to the One in heaven. It is a great thing to apprehend the presence of the Spirit, and not only that, but the work of the Spirit, His actual positive work in conforming the saints to the One who is in the highest place of acceptance on high. These are great things to be occupied with, things which are unseen on earth, and yet are the very substance of Christianity. We have not the house, nor the nation, and if we have not the unseen things we have nothing; it is a great thing to be in the light of the glory of God, and Jesus, and in the knowledge, too, of the work of the Holy Spirit down here.