AN OPENED DOOR
D. J. Hutson
The gospel that we preach is the glad tidings of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. He is One of whom there are many things that we could say, and many things that we do not know. John, the apostle, when he wrote his gospel could speak of the things that Jesus did which he had written, but he said, “there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they were written one by one, I suppose that not even the world itself would contain the books written”, John 21: 25. What a wonderful Person Jesus is! And you know none of the things that Jesus did is going to be lost; there is going to be another world where every one of them will be preserved. Indeed, there is another world, and the gospel comes that you might have your part in it. Jesus is still doing things, and we preach so that there might be someone here who is brought under the power of our Lord Jesus Christ; coming to know Him as their Saviour and Lord, coming to know what He has done, coming to know what He will do, coming to add, as it were, to those works which will be treasured up for God’s pleasure eternally.
Now one of the glories of Jesus is that He speaks of Himself as the One who opens and no one shall shut, and who shuts, and no one shall open, and therefore I read about this door. He says to one company, “I have set before thee an opened door”, Revelation 3: 8. This door of which I have read was not always open, but it has been opened; Jesus has opened it so that you might enter in. It cost Him a lot to open this door; it cost Him everything, it cost Him His life. He had to give Himself, lay down His life and shed His precious blood in order that the door might be open to you into the eternal blessing of God. Wonderful sacrifice, the sacrifice of
Jesus! What would hinder us from entering through that door into eternal blessing was that load which you and I carried, the load of our sins. More than that, the root of the thing which is working in us would ever preclude us from entering into that which God has in His heart for us in the way of blessing. But that load has been borne by Jesus, He bore our sins in His body on the tree, and Him who knew not sin was made sin for us, and it was all that that door might be opened for you, that you might strive to enter in. When I say, He bore our sins, I am speaking of believers. Can you say that He bore your sins? Have you put your trust in the Saviour? Have you taken account of Him there when He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust in order to bring us to God, as having been there on your account?
There is no doubt according to God’s word that the work is sufficient; “he is the propitiation for our sins”, one could say, “but not for ours alone, but also for the whole world”, 1 John 2: 2. God has been satisfied, the claims of His throne have been met in relation to all that ever offended Him in man. It has all been met by the precious work of Jesus, the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, and the shedding of His precious blood. Those of us who have put our trust in Him can say that the precious blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son has cleansed us from every sin. Has it cleansed you? The door is open for you and no one can shut it but Himself, and one day He will. When that day will be I cannot say. I can say when the door was opened, but when it will be shut I cannot say; it may be even before this meeting closes. The matter is urgent; we would not even ask you to go home and consider it, but would urge you to accept the Lord Jesus as your own personal Saviour. You can accept Him now while you are sitting on your seat, and come into eternal blessing and come to know what it is to be secured for the pleasure of God. That is what redemption means, it means that you have been bought back.
God never intended that man should be at a distance from Him. Some of us have been speaking of Him earlier, and of the day when He will realise His purpose, when the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will tabernacle with them and they will be His people, and He will be their God (see Revelation 21: 3). Will you be there? The door is open, and it is open, may I say, this minute; I could hardly say this hour. You may say you have heard this many times, and still here is another gospel preaching, but there may not be another. Who knows, things happen, it may not be for all of us, but for any one of us, and the opportunity may be missed and missed for ever. The opportunity is now. Do not think of anyone else, think of yourself for once. We do not normally ask you to think of yourself, we might think it would be selfish to do so; but when it comes to these eternal realities the only thing to do is to think of yourself because no one can think for you. You alone must make this decision, you alone must obey the glad tidings, you alone must accept the Lord Jesus as your personal Saviour, and come under the shelter of His precious blood.
So here was someone who was wondering about others saying, “Sir, are such as are to be saved few in number?” You look round this room, and you think of this city of Dundee and the thousands that there are all around us, and you say, Is this all that there are going to be?
Thank God it is not. Thank God there will be thousands in this city, alive even tonight, who will be saved. But, what about you? What does the Lord Jesus say? He does not answer the question, “are such as are to be saved few in number?” He says, “Strive with earnestness to enter in”. That is, make sure you are one of them, and that is the word tonight. Make sure you are one of them. However young or however old, however many times you may have heard the gospel before or if it is only the first time, “Strive ... to enter in.” The enemy of your soul will put plenty of obstacles in the way, that is why it says, “Strive with earnestness to enter in”. The enemy would say, Well, if you do this you will have to give up this, you will have to give up that. Or he may have you say, Well, I seem to be as good as other people, why should I? But whatever it is, think for yourself and have to do with Jesus tonight and come into the door that stands wide open. Although, as it says here, it is a narrow door—“Strive with earnestness to enter in through the narrow door”. Do you know why it is a narrow door? There is only room for one at a time; persons are not saved in thousands, in hundreds, in tens, persons are saved one at a time. There is only room for one at a time, and still there is room for you. There is room, for you and we would say to you, “Strive with earnestness to enter in”, be earnest about these eternal realities. I plead with you to be earnest, do not let anything stand in the way of coming to know the Lord Jesus as your Saviour tonight, and coming into the blessing which God has in His heart for you.
Do you know what that blessing is? It is that you should provide a dwelling-place for God.
Can you think of anything more wonderful than that poor creatures like ourselves should provide a dwelling-place for God? As the apostle Paul could say, “Do ye not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit ... which ye have of God ... glorify now then God in your body”, 1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20. The blessing in the glad tidings is that you might receive the Holy Spirit who will give you the consciousness of a relationship with God Himself; receive the Spirit of God’s Son whereby you may cry, Abba Father. That is the relationship into which you are brought, with the God against whom you have sinned, as you put your trust in Jesus and come under the shelter of His precious blood. Do not be satisfied with the matter of forgiveness only, but make sure that you have the consciousness of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That is the gospel as it went out in the early days; they said to Peter as they were convicted by his preaching, What shall we do
brethren? He said, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you”— each one of you, there is the narrow door “for the remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”, Acts 2: 38. The end of the glad tidings is not the forgiveness of sins, it is the reception of the Holy Spirit, in order that you might be here for the pleasure of God where once you had offended Him. What a gospel, and the door is open! Jesus opened it at such tremendous cost to Himself. It cost Him His life, and His precious blood was shed to witness that His precious life was laid down, and that He had tasted even the penalty of death. He tasted death for every thing because He is going to introduce a world in which everything is going to be treasured up for God’s pleasure eternally. He has opened up that world so that you should have your part in it, and He has gone there now.
He is living. They could say when they came to the empty tomb, “Why seek ye the living one among the dead?”, Luke 24: 5. Jesus is the living One, the only Man who could say, “I am ... the living one—and became dead, and behold, I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death and of hades”, Revelation 1: 17, 18. What a thing that is, He has the keys of death and of hades. I suppose we often think of it as the keys He will use to release the dead when the dead in Christ shall rise first, but there is also the word, “the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways”, Daniel 5: 23. So who can say, as I said before, when the door will close for you, or for all of us? Thank God the most here have gone in one by one through the narrow door. I would plead with you again, “Strive with earnestness to enter in”, the sooner the better, the younger you are the better, and you will never regret it. There are those here who have been on the pathway a long time, who have accepted Jesus as their Saviour many, many years ago, and they will tell you that in all those years, whatever it has cost them in the way of suffering and reproach, they have never regretted it because the Saviour who died for them now lives for them there above.
Our great High Priest is able to sympathise with us in our infirmities, the One who has been tempted in all things like as we, sin apart. He has annulled him who has the might of death so that we might be set free from the fear of death, who otherwise were all our lifetime subject to bondage. Are you afraid to die? Jesus has solved that question. He has annulled him who has the might of death in order that you might be set free from the fear of death. Are you set free? You are set free by having a living link with a Man who is on the other side of death, our Lord Jesus Christ, raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and seated at the right hand of God in the place of power. From there He is soon coming with that mighty act of power to call all who have put their trust in Him, and all those who have gone before who in anticipation were cleansed by His precious blood. He is going to call all and to change their bodies into conformity to His own body of glory. I love the word, “according to the working of the power which he has”, not a power that He will acquire or a power that He will be given, but the power that He has, for He has the power to do it now. That is why I say the matter is urgent because He might do it at any moment.
Still in the glory and perfection of His manhood, He is waiting the Father’s word, but when that word will be given who can say? The Father has reserved it in His own authority to control the times and seasons, and the time when this door will be shut is in His own authority, but it is open to you tonight. He is going to rise up and shut the door. What a solemn time that will be, but that is what it says, “From the time that the master of the house shall have risen up and shall have shut the door”. The door of mercy as known at this present time, the acceptable year of the Lord, will be closed for ever. There will be those who are brought in later, of course, there is the everlasting glad tidings in a day to come; but those who have refused the gospel in this wonderful time in which we are, will have no more opportunity. I trust no one here will be among them.
The door will be shut—“the master of the house shall have risen up and shall have shut the door, and ye shall begin to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us; and he answering shall say to you, I know you not whence ye are—then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten in thy presence and drunk, and thou hast taught in our streets”. You might say, I have been to the meetings week after week, I have heard the gospel, I know all about it; but if you have not accepted it for yourself the solemn word will be, “I know you not whence ye are”. There will be no excuses, nothing else will do, and the time is urgent, so strive with earnestness to enter in while the door is open; go in through this narrow door, one at a time, there is room for you.
So it says, “I know you not whence ye are ... depart from me”. Solemn word! We have to present this, the urgency of the present time, but the wonder of it is that the long-suffering of God is waiting. It waited in the days of Noah while the ark was preparing; there was a vessel in which there was salvation for man, and few, that is, eight souls entered into it; the time came when they went in and the door was shut, for it says, “Jehovah shut him in”, Genesis 7: 16. Once you go through the narrow door, dear friend, in a sense you will be shut in. Thank God for that, the security of it. It is not saved today and lost tomorrow, but it is saved for time and eternity. What a gospel! Security, what a hope we have, as it says elsewhere, “as anchor of the soul”, something that you can hold on to, something that will never give way, “entering into that within the veil” (Hebrews 6: 19), going right into the very presence of God Himself, where Jesus is. He has entered as Forerunner for us; He has gone before, the firstborn from among the dead. The dead in Christ soon will rise first, and we the living who remain will be caught up to be with them in the air, and so we shall be ever with the Lord. The door then will have been shut, the Master of the house will have risen up, but the gospel goes out today so that you might be among those caught up, so that you might go in never to go out. Think of the promise to an overcomer, “he shall go no more at all out”, Revelation.3: 12. That is a wonderful thing for the believer in Jesus that he shall go no more at all out. You enter in through this door, it is like a one-way street, but I can assure you that you will never want to go back. Sadly there are some who may turn aside from the path of the will of God, but as far as the entrance into the door goes it is a one-way street, and you are secure for time and eternity.
However young you are, you are not too young to put your trust in Jesus. He has a special interest in the children. We read in the Bible that they brought little children to Jesus that He might touch them, but the blessed Saviour would not stop at a touch, it says He took them in His arms and blessed them (see Mark 10: 16). O, before your years of trouble come, if you have not started school even, before you have to go out into the world and have to do with others who do not love Jesus, you can put your trust in Him now. You can come to know Him as your own Saviour, and prove what a Saviour He is, a present Saviour. It is not only the fact that He is a Saviour because He died for you, in order that He might save you from your sins, but He is a present living Saviour. He is able to save completely all who come to God by Him. Whatever it is that troubles you, whatever you need salvation from, the answer is in Jesus. As has often been said, He is an all-the-way-home Saviour. He will never let you down; you can always turn to Him and find that He is near and ready to support. As He said to His own as He left them, “And behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age”, Matthew 28: 20. That is, He would be with them in the way of support.
Thank God, too, there is a way in which we can prove it in the way of privilege. There is a door that you alone can open, and that is the door of your heart to let Him in, to give Him the place there to which He is entitled. Has every one here who has put their trust in Him, thrown their heart’s door open so that He has the full place there, in answer to His loving desire that you might remember Him? You can have the joy of His presence among those who gather week by week to call Him to mind according to His last request.
These things are very real and very urgent. I just leave this with you, beloved, that there is a door open tonight, and there is a way in for you. The Lord Jesus Himself could say, “I am the door”, John 10: 9. There is no way in apart from Jesus, the only way in is through Him; but He has opened the door for you and it is open today. Soon He is going to rise up and the door will be shut. I would say, strive with earnestness to enter in, do not let anything hinder you or stand in the way. There is nothing to hinder on His side. He has cleared the way completely so that you might enter into eternal blessing. You may come into the knowledge of God, the enjoyment of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, blessed relationship with God Himself, and knowing Jesus as a Saviour until the time that He comes to take you to be with Himself for ever. May God bless the word.
Preaching at Dundee
10 March 1996