“MY BELOVED SON”

F. C. Mutton

Matthew 17: 1–5; Isaiah 42: 1–4; Psalm 2: 6–9

The Father would have us share His thoughts as to Christ. It is one of our greatest privileges to love Christ with the same character of love as the Father. This is very precious to the Lord Jesus too. How often we think of the Lord’s words in John 17 as He prays to the Father, “that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them” (verse 26). We are thus intimately bound up with the Father and the Son. In that same prayer in John 17 the Lord asks “that they also may be one in us” (verse 21). It is a wonderful thought that we are intimately brought into the circle of divine affection, to share the Father’s love to the Son, to be with Christ before the Father, having the Father’s Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus. How exalted the privileges of christianity are! In our first scripture the Father says, “This is my beloved Son”.

In our second scripture it is, “my servant”, and in Psalm 2, “my king”. In each case it is God claiming Christ and giving us to understand His love to Him in whom everything is headed up for His pleasure and who at such cost has secured everything for Him.

In Matthew 17 it was a peculiar privilege for these three men. They are brought up into a high

mountain apart, apart from the world, far above the level of earth. They are three selected persons of the greatest distinction. One often thinks of the distinctiveness of the apostles.

They were the direct result of the work of Christ, as He said, “I will make you ...”, Mark 1: 17. We might say carefully that He took up the raw material and formed it into something very wonderful which we see in its fulness in the Acts as Peter and John say, “Look on us”.

They were men who had been with Jesus, who had been formed by Him, educated by Him, disciplined by Him; but they had also been in the greatest privilege with Him and had been initiated into divine secrets. There were also two men from the Old Testament, Moses and Elias. What men they were! But none is to be compared to Jesus. Peter would attempt to associate Moses and Elias on the same level as Jesus and there is immediately a divine intervention, “a bright cloud overshadowed them”. Peter speaks of it as “the excellent glory”; and there came a voice out of the cloud. Peter says, “such a voice being uttered to him”, 2

Peter 1: 17. He had never heard such a voice before, conveying all the power and depth of the Father’s love, poured out as it were in relation to the Person of Jesus.

Just before this the Lord had spoken of His sufferings. “From that time Jesus began to shew to his disciples that he must go away to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised” (Matthew 16: 21). The Lord was to move onward to death, but now is the point of His glorification. What those downward movements meant to the Father! We have His exact words here, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”. There had been faithful men earlier—Moses is said to have been faithful in all His house; but every other man now recedes. It says in Matthew 17: 8,

“they saw no one but Jesus alone”. We are left just with the impression of the Father’s love to the Son. God had sent forth His Son; that moment had come, that supreme moment in the ways of God, and the Son was here in the perfection of His devoted service. We were speaking in the reading as to the bullock in Leviticus 8: 14; Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the bullock, speaking of the mind which was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2: 5). That mind was in perfect harmony with the Father’s will; as is said of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, “they went both of them together”.

We contemplate this worshipfully—a divine Person in manhood in the most blessed intimacy with the Father. The Lord Himself says, “The Son can do nothing of himself save whatever he sees the Father doing—for whatever things he does, these things also the Son does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son and shews him all things which he himself does”, John 5: 19, 20. This is for our contemplation. What it meant to the Father to see the Son pursuing the path of His will, in His mind and heart the Father’s purposes cherished, and moving onward to death to secure them, every step taken in the dignity, devotion, and glory of sonship. Think of the Father’s holy and absolute confidence in this blessed Person as John records, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things to be in his hand”, John 3: 35.

How infinitely trustworthy! Here was the One to whom the Father had committed all His pleasure; the whole wealth of eternal purpose depended on Jesus, as one of our hymns expresses it, ‘By Him the working out was all achieved’ (Hymn 5) We witness this scene in reverence to gather an impression of the Father’s supreme delight.

We see a divine Person here in manhood, on the one hand to undo all the works of the devil, but positively to bring in all that is for God’s pleasure, and to

establish it for time and eternity, and every thought and action is fragrant and delightful to the Father. So the Father says, “This is my beloved Son”. We must allow for what is the Father’s exclusively. There is what we share, but there is what is the Father’s alone; “No one knows the Son but the Father”, Matthew 11: 27. This would cause us to worship in the sense of what is infinite and inscrutable in divine relationships.

In Isaiah we have “my servant”. There had been many other servants. We think of such as Moses, David, Solomon, and the prophets. But this is the uniqueness of Christ as “my servant”. How wonderful that He should take a servant’s place, being found here indeed in a bondman’s form. We need to contemplate the manhood of Jesus and to feed upon it that we might be formed in this character. It says, “my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth!” This is the Father’s view of Jesus day by day as here, devoted to the securing of the Father’s will in its glorious fulness and in every detail. “He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street”. There is nothing that would impress man as such, no natural forcefulness, but the fulness of divine power as upheld by God, and the Spirit upon Him, as He Himself said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Luke 4: 18), and again, “If I by the Spirit of God cast out demons ... “, Matthew 12: 28. So Paul says, “God was in Christ”, 2 Corinthians 5: 19. What irresistible power, what effectiveness in service!

Men had to confess, “He hath done all things well”, Mark 7: 37.

These are remarkable references in Isaiah 42: 3, “A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench—he shall bring forth judgment according to truth”. Was not the woman in John 4 a broken reed and a smoking flax? How

gently the Lord handled her, with what skill, and yet with what faithfulness, so that she was not broken or extinguished but set up as a vessel of the Holy Spirit and a worshipper of God.

Think of that bereaved household at Bethany in John 11. You might say almost broken, the character of a bruised reed. The Lord intervenes in the deepest sympathy and compassion. It says, “Jesus wept”. Yet withal divine power was there as the Lord said, “Lazarus, come forth”.

So, the word is, “Behold my servant”. The Father calls us to share His delight in Him; “Mine elect in whom my soul delighteth”. The Spirit would strengthen us, as we read the gospels and contemplate Jesus, to share the Father’s delight in His Servant. And thus may we be formed like Him. It says in verse 4, “He shall not faint nor be in haste”. Let us learn from Him. Some may be fainting, discouraged perhaps by smallness of numbers. What small numbers Jesus had! He says prophetically, “I have spent my strength for nought”, Isaiah 49: 4. The visible fruit of His toil was very small, but He did not faint and He was not in haste.

We are to learn from Jesus: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”, Philippians 2: 5. Sometimes we are in haste. Sometimes we cannot wait. We need to contemplate “my servant” moving ever in relation to the Father’s will and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 2 presents God’s King. “I have anointed my king”. This is very steadying. What confusion there is around; what powers of lawlessness and evil. This is a word of comfort and assurance—“I have anointed my king upon Zion”. How wonderful to be in the light of this and the present experience of it as translated into the kingdom of the Son of the Father’s love in the midst of a lawless world. So we anticipate the world to come and experience

what the kingdom is, “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”, Romans 14: 17.

We are in the light of the heading, up of all things in Christ. The kingdom is a very wonderful area, where the will of God prevails. It underlies all assembly experience. If I am not a subject and obedient person I shall never really enjoy assembly things. Worse than that, I shall bring in trouble among the brethren. But subject persons are a source of strength to the brethren; their wills have been broken, as was the will of Saul of Tarsus who was led by the hand into the city. He came into the kingdom. He had seen the glory of the King. Saul had said to Him, “Who art thou, Lord?” (Acts 9: 5), and the answer was, “I am Jesus”. How blessed to be in the kingdom and thus to be ready for the assembly.

Then we think of the millennial day, of which Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: 25—“For he must reign until he put all enemies under his feet”. This is the full answer to Psalm 2. The King has already been anointed; that is the secret in our hearts, and we know the power of the kingdom. But it is shortly to be displayed publicly; all things are to be put under His feet. All other rule and authority will be annulled, everything brought into subjection to God’s King.

That is how time will finish up. It says, “Then the end”, that is, the end of all God’s operations in time, everything subjected to Christ and then “he gives up the kingdom to him who is God and Father”, and the Son Himself shall be placed in subjection to Him, that God may be all in all.

How wonderful to be in the secret of God’s purpose, His fixed purpose, to head up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth. This is steadying and keeps us restful. Think of all the powers that

have risen up in history, and current powers of evil—what Paul speaks of in Ephesians 6: 12,

“principalities ... authorities ... the universal lords of this darkness”. The divine answer is, “I have anointed my king upon Zion”. So let us go forward, dear brethren, assured and steady and worshipful in the knowledge that all is safely in the hands of the Son. May God bless these thoughts to us.

Address at Endbach
10 June 1978