THE GOSPEL - FOR THE INDIVIDUAL
Robert White
Acts 2: 37, 38; 3: 26; Romans 10: 8, 9; John 7: 37-39 (to “receive”);
I just want to touch lightly on these scriptures to seek to underline something that I am sure we all know, that the gospel is individual, that God in His grace in the glad tidings is speaking to us as individuals; and if we come into the blessing that the gospel presents to us we come into it individually, each one of us. Every one of us here is an individual having his or her own history that God knows about, and in His grace He speaks to us as individuals. It is a great matter, that. If you think of this great city of which this is a part, and the millions of people who are here, it may seem that the sins of one may not matter very much, set against all that is going on in such an area as this. People say there are things that everybody does so it does not much matter what I do. But yet God knows us all and He knows every individual in this great city, as He knows every individual in the world today. How great He is! But in His grace in the glad tidings He has taken account of us each one, and He would desire, I believe, to assure us of that, and He would desire to present the Lord Jesus to us as Saviour individually. How precious it is to come to know a Saviour for yourself, to know the Lord Jesus for yourself! That is the intent in the gospel; indeed it is the only way of salvation; that is the way of salvation that is open to us, every one. Sometimes when we are younger we wonder who we really are and what is before us, and so on, but it is a great thing to come to this, that the blessed God has an individual interest in me and in you and He has provided a Saviour just for you and just for me. I sometimes think of Paul when he says, “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Gal 2: 20. Think of the wonder of that! You would hesitate to say such a thing, but Paul says it, “who has loved me and given himself for me”; as if there was not another sinner, the Son of God came and gave Himself for Paul. Think of the grace of that, the wonder of it, and that same grace is extended to us in the glad tidings. I sometimes think in the gospel of that word in 2 Kings, when one of the sons of the prophets was sent with a message to Jehu and it says he came and “the captains of the host were sitting. And he said, I have an errand to thee, captain. And Jehu said, To which of all of us? And he said, To thee, captain”, 2 Kings 9: 5. That is like the gospel. You sit in a company, a large company or a smaller company, and the gospel comes in that way as a message for you, “To which of all of us?? … To thee”. It is for you, it is for me, how blessed it is!
So Peter sets it out in this first scripture we read when they said, “What shall we do …?” I do not know how many people there were that asked that question; it says, “And having heard it they were pricked in heart, and said to Peter and the other apostles, what shall we do, brethren? And Peter said to them, Repent, and be baptised, each one of you”. How important it is, “each one of you”. Each one of us has our own history, our own sins, and God would say, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you”. Each one of us is before God, we might say, at this time. When the gospel is preached He looks upon us, and He looks upon us in grace. Let us come into it each one of us, “in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. This is the setting out of the gospel in this verse. It is the divine proposal. It is God’s proposal for every one of us, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. Peter says this with full certainty, with full assurance, that those who listened to him and accepted his word and believed would receive remission of their sins and they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is divinely given assurance. It is not just the word of Peter, it is the word of God through Peter. You know what the word of God is? It is the expression of what is in God’s mind and heart that comes to us through what is spoken or what is written, but it is from God Himself. And here Peter gave expression to what was in the heart of God for these persons at this time. They were great sinners they had just crucified the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah. They had an enormous amount to take account of, there was enormous guilt lying upon them at this moment, but Peter says to them, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you”. Have we each taken it up? That is God’s proposal, you might say the proposal of His grace, that my sins, your sins, might be forgiven that you, that I, might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so later on he says, “To you first God, having raised up his servant, has sent him, blessing you in turning each one of you from your wickedness”, Acts 3: 26. How individual it is, blessing you and turning you, blessing in turning. Think of these two things being put together by Peter in that verse, blessing and turning. Think of being blessed and turning to the very God against whom you have sinned. That is the gospel, the God against whom we have sinned is blessing us as we turn to Him. Think of offending somebody and having it on your mind and conscience that you have offended. It is the very person you do not want to meet, the very person you want to avoid, but the grace of the gospel is expressed in this that God blesses us as we turn to Him. How precious! Have we turned? Has there come a point in our lives when we can say we have turned? I suppose we speak of it as conversion in that way. Here it would definitely be so that persons who opposed God and all that He had done through Jesus, now definitely returned to Him in repentance and they accept what He is offering in the way of forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit. How important it is to think of that! For these persons it meant a complete change in their whole attitude and in the whole course of their lives, but that may not be exactly so with those of us brought up under the sound of the word.
That is why I read this passage in Romans, because it says, “The word is near thee”. I think that most of us here have heard the word from our earliest times. We have heard it in our father’s houses and our mother’s houses, we have heard it at the meetings, and we have heard the gospel often. We might say, it has been put right into our mouths. It has been put as far into us, we might say, as our fathers or mothers or the brethren could have put it, but then, have I accepted it? You see that is the point here in the scripture that we read in Romans. It is for me as an individual to take it up. My father and my mother could not have believed for me. No doubt they accepted in faith that the Lord Jesus would bless me, as every believing parent would, and no doubt they put the word before me. Paul says, “The word is near thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart”. Something in you then, it may be, responds, as the word of God is preached and the Lord Jesus Christ is spoken of and His precious work, the blessedness of what He has accomplished on the cross. Oh the wonder of that work! “The word is near thee”. You have heard it, have you not? Perhaps every one of us here could say that, we have heard it all our lives presented to us; he says, “that is, the word of faith, which we preach”. But you come to this, “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth”. You see how it comes down to each one of us. There has to be the point of accepting it, “the word of faith, which we preach”. Have I got faith to accept it? Have you got faith to accept it? In God’s wisdom He has put things on that basis that the blessing comes to us as we have faith to accept it, “the word of faith, which we preach”. Paul presented it in faith, fully believing it, accepting it himself. He would bring the word down right into our mouths and into our hearts. He says, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”. These are precious words, are they not, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”? I sometimes think of that, Have I ever called Jesus, Lord? I mean, have I ever actually said it? “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”, that is, He has become precious to me. He is my Lord, I have accepted Him as my Saviour, I have come under His blessed sway, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved”. How real these things are. We were speaking about Him in the reading as the living One, the One who is out of death. But you see it requires a distinct act of faith to accept that. All the current of things in this world is totally against that. The Lord Jesus as a living Man is something that never enters the consciousness of this world, “and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead”. You see, that is in your heart and my heart, you look in there and what do you find? Unbelief, doubt, all that the flesh would promote. Yet how precious it is to come to this, “and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead”. That blessed One who died for my sins, He hung there and He suffered, He was buried, He has been raised form the dead. It is buried persons who are raised. The Lord Jesus was buried. Think of that. He was put out of sight. But it says, “God has raised him from among the dead”. How selective is the resurrection of Jesus, “from among the dead”. How many millions there are that lie in death. Who can count them? God knows. The population of this world, all through history, is lying in death. The Psalmist says, “Death feeds upon them”, Ps. 49: 14. Think of death feeding upon the population of this world, but God operated to bring one Man out of death, “God has raised him from among the dead”. That blessed One could not be left there. How blessed to think that He is out of death, a risen blessed and living Man. And He is available to every one of us as a Saviour. He says, “thou shalt be saved”. How blessed it is to be saved! It is a wonderful thing. What does it mean? It means first of all that our sins have been forgiven. We will never come into judgment, our sins will never be brought up against us. How precious to be here in the consciousness that our sins have been forgiven. It is not only that we believe it, and that is true, but God by the Holy Spirit would give us the consciousness of it, that our sins have been taken away and that they do not exist in His sight. As it says in Romans, “we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”, Rom. 5: 1. We have absolute peace and certainty in our relations with God because our sins have been taken away and never exist again. How precious that is! Salvation goes right on, it goes right on to apply to us in every aspect. God will take us through salvation out of this scene altogether and place us with Jesus where He is. Salvation is a wonderful thing. God will relieve us from everything. He will take us out of death if we have died, He will change us if we are living when the Lord comes. He will take us from every other claim and every other force that might act upon us, and place us in glory with Christ in His own presence. That is salvation. How precious it is, and it is available to us now as we believe, “thou shalt be saved”. He says, “with the heart is believed to righteousness; and with the mouth confession made to salvation”. Well, these things are practical. We have heard them often and we know the scriptures, but then it is a great thing to come to reality in our souls, in a definite link with the Lord Jesus Christ to confess Him as Lord and to believe in our heart that God has raised Him, that is, to have a link with a living Man. He is my Saviour. Is He your Saviour? That is the message in the gospel, and He can only be your Saviour on an individual basis. I cannot believe for you, nor can anyone else, but God is speaking to you about faith in this blessed Person that you might accept Him and that I might accept Him and together we might be blessed.
I just read this verse in John where the Lord Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit. How precious to hear the words of the Saviour Himself! There is something distinctive and special about the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel writers record them for us that we might delight in Him and love Him, and here, as has often been pointed out, in this, the great day of the feast when things might be at their best here, the Lord speaks of those who might be dissatisfied and says, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink”. Do you know what it is to thirst and be unsatisfied in your spirit? You have everything you need physically, everything materially that you need for your comfort and enjoyment, but perhaps you have an unsatisfied spirit, an unsatisfied state within you, discontented, not settled, whatever it might be. You know what it is, you know it in your own life as I have known it in mine, He says, “let him come to me and drink”. How precious it is to hear the words of the Saviour Himself, “if any one thirst”. This is not en masse, this is not exactly the company, this is individual, “let him come to me”. How definite a matter this is to come to the Lord Jesus for satisfaction, “let him come to me and drink”. You have come to Him in respect of your sins. Your sins have been taken away through faith in Him and in His finished work, but are you satisfied in your soul? Are you satisfied in your life or are you striving for something, always looking for that which is beyond? He says, “let him come to me and drink”. How blessed it is to think of these references the Lord makes in the gospels to coming to Him, “let him come to me”. He says elsewhere, “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened”, Matt 11: 28. But here, “let him come to me and drink”. And the provision here is the blessed Holy Spirit of God who puts us in touch with the blessed living Man. He says, “let him come to me and drink. He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”. I have been struck recently, and I may have mentioned before, that in the writings of John he does not mention the word ‘faith’. He never uses it except once in the epistle, but it does not mean it is not needed because he does not speak of it, but he speaks often of believing. You see even words can become hackneyed, they can lose their force with us. The word ‘faith’ can lose its force with us. The Lord Jesus says, “He that believes on me”. It is a living thing, it is real thing, it is from day to day and moment by moment, “He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”. We are put in touch with a living Man, a Man in another scene. The Holy Spirit puts us in touch with a living Man, “He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”. We have often tried to explain what that means. I am not sure that I can, but it suggests an immense source of satisfaction and joy in having a living and precious and vital link with a living Man in another scene by the Holy Spirit given to us, and it is individual. We can enjoy it individually. We are meant to enjoy it individually, and that is why the Lord Jesus speaks of it.
I just finish with this reference in Romans because it is precious to see that having come to Him individually the Lord Jesus sets us together. He sets us together with our fellow-believers, He sets us together in local companies, and it is as set together as believers in Him that the local assembly really functions. There is this unique expression that Paul uses in the first chapter of Romans, “the called of Jesus Christ”. How precious to think of that! Look around our local company, what do you see? You see the called ones of Jesus Christ, that is, that the Lord Jesus Christ has personally called each one. He has had to do with each one of them as individuals. Each one has a history with Him, each one knows Him in his or her own way, they are “the called of Jesus Christ”. Paul is speaking about the greatness of his mission, having “received grace and apostleship in behalf of his name, for obedience of faith among all the nations”. That is a great and extensive thought. What a scope the apostle had before him in his service, to preach the gospel for the obedience of faith, and he is writing to these believers in Rome and he says, “among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ”. How important it is to take account of your local brethren in that way. You see God sets us together. The Psalm says, “God maketh the solitary into families”, Ps. 68: 6. We are taken up individually in the gospel, but the Lord sets us together, sets us together in the enjoyment collectively of the knowledge of Himself and His love, sets us together in local gatherings for the working out of the truth. But who are we? We are “the called of Jesus Christ”. Is there a company like it in the world? There is not. Think of them, each one, known of Him and loved by Him, knowing Him and knowing His love. What a strength this gives us, as we take up matters collectively together. It says, “to all that are in Rome, beloved of God, called saints”. How precious the saints are to God. How precious every believer is to Him. We have the privilege of going on together. In His grace He has given us some to go on with, but how precious these local assemblies are because they comprise the called ones of Jesus Christ.
May these things encourage our hearts, for His Name’s sake.
EAST FINCHLEY
4 November 2001