“WHAT I HAVE” AND “SUCH AS I ALSO AM’’
In Acts 3 we find that Peter says, “What I have, this give I to thee”. Then in chapter 26, Paul says, “Such as I also am”; he wishes that everybody there was such as he was. So that is what we have in the gospel. On the one hand it is what God has, believers have the light in their souls of what God has in Christ, the resources in grace that He has in Him. Think of having One in the presence of God in the Person of Jesus, who has accomplished redemption so gloriously, so completely, that God can come out in absolute forgiveness to whosoever will! What a magnificent position that is! How worthy it is to be announced in the glad tidings, that such is the position! “What I have, this give I to thee”, Peter says. There is no condition. That is the attitude of God, prepared to give what He has for men; and He has it on a righteous basis, so that no one can challenge it. Someone might say, ‘Well, but what about my sins? How can God forgive them?’ The answer is, God has the means in His hand, in virtue of the accomplished work of Christ, that He can proclaim the forgiveness of sins to everybody. That is a wonderful position; but then there is something more than that in the gospel. It is not only that God is giving just what we need, but then He says, I want to set you up in such a way that you will be able to say, not boastfully, but thankfully, ‘Such as I am’. On the one hand, “What I have, this give I to thee”, on the other hand, “Such as I also am”, ‘I would to God that everybody was such as I am’. Would everybody here like to be in a position that he is really satisfied? That is a wonderful position to be in, never complaining, always satisfied. You might say, ‘Well, is that true of you?’. I would not like to say, but it may be. I think it should be. It is what is proper to a Christian, and you can see it in Paul. God secured it in one man. Paul could say, “Would to God”, he could say what we have here, “Such as I also am”, and he could also say that he had learned in whatever circumstances he was to be satisfied in himself, Phil 4: 11. That is a wonderful position; I wonder whether everybody here could say it was true of him, that he had learned in whatever circumstances he was in, to be satisfied in himself? Not satisfied with himself; not exactly satisfied with the circumstances, but he was satisfied in himself. That is to say, he had a source of satisfaction in himself that stood good and held good whatever circumstances he was in. That is victory! That is one of the things that the gospel is going to give to those who receive it. It is going to give them real and lasting satisfaction.
We have here, in this first passage that I read, Peter saying, “Silver and gold I have not; but what I have, this give I to thee”. That is the first thing. “what I have”; then the next thing is, “such as I also am”. These are what I want to present to you in a few words, if I can: “what I have”, in the first place, God ready to give it freely, and then “such as I also am”, God ready to bring it to pass by means of the gospel.
They involve the gift of the Holy Spirit. If you have not received the Holy Spirit, you certainly have not the means of being satisfied in yourself. I can assure you of that. You might think that if you had £10,000 or £20,000 it would mean a lot of comfort and happiness to you. I think you would find, if you did get it, that you had made a mistake, for you do not find happiness in that; but you do find it in what Paul was. He could say, “Such as I also am”. I have learned in those circumstances in which I am, to be satisfied in myself”, Phil 4: 11. But that was not theory, that was practice, that was experience, and that is what the gospel can do.
So Peter says here, “Silver and gold I have not; but what I have, this give I to thee: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaræan, rise up, and walk”. What was it that Peter had? He had light in his soul as to Christ in glory, that He had accomplished redemption, and that God was prepared to give in His name, forgiveness of sins to everyone who obeyed the gospel. That was wonderful light to have that in his soul. And then to be able to announce it to others, and to announce it with confidence, that this is what is in the heart of God. That is what God is prepared to give, and it is available for everyone. Has everyone here received forgiveness of sins? Is everybody here sure that he or she has received the Holy Spirit? That is the great gift God proposes in the gospel, the gift of the Holy Spirit. You cannot afford to be without it, but it is possible to be without it! It is possible to be brought up in the meetings, and to know the truth in the terms of it fairly well, and yet not to have the Holy Spirit. If there is anybody here who has not received the Holy Spirit, or is not sure whether or not they have, I would urge you to get to the Lord about it at once. You know what the Lord says; “Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you”, Luke 11: 9. Now take the Lord at His word. If there is anyone here who has not received the forgiveness of sins, or anyone here who is not sure whether he or she has received the Holy Spirit, I say to you, take the Lord at His word! He will not deceive you. He will not let you down. So take Him at His word! He says, “Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find”. You see, it is getting more urgent. First of all the Lord says, “Ask”, and then he says, “Seek”, and then He says, “Knock”, as though He would say, ‘If you do not get an immediate answer, keep on knocking and knocking’. And so, I would say to anybody here who has not received forgiveness of sins, or is not sure whether he or she has received the Holy Spirit, I say, ask. Get to the Lord about it at once. “Ask”, He says, “and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you”. That is an absolute promise. The Lord will not deny Himself. Take Him at His word, and see what results from your really getting to Him, to ask for what you need. Perhaps you may secretly say to yourself, ‘I am not sure whether I am quite prepared to have to do immediately with the Lord in that way. I am not quite sure what the outcome may be. He may raise awkward questions’. That is quite likely. You get an example of that in chapter 4 of John, where the Lord spoke to a woman. He said to her (He was sitting by a well), “Give me to drink” (v 7), and the woman was astonished, because she was a Samaritan and He was a Jew. But the Lord went on, and she said, “How dost thou, being a Jew, ask to drink of me who am a Samaritan woman? for Jews have no intercourse with Samaritans”, v 9. And the Lord said, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”. See how the Lord was just engaging her interest in a very skilful and tender way. So she said, “Give me this water, that I may not thirst nor come here to draw”, v 15. That was what the Lord wanted. Now she was interested; so immediately He changes the conversation and says very abruptly and unexpectedly to the woman, “Go, call thy husband, and come here”. Why was that? He just put His finger on what was really the secret of her life, and made her feel that He knew all about her. That is a good thing to be made to feel that, because the moment is coming when everything about you, and everything about me, will be brought into the light, and made clear exactly how it stands. It says, “For God shall bring every work into judgment”, Eccles 12: 14. That does not necessarily mean into condemnation, or any penalty, because it says that “God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil”. So it does not necessarily mean penalty, when it says God will bring every work into judgment, but it means that God is going to express a judgment about everything. Not only so, but He is going to show what His judgment is to us, so that you and I may see exactly what He thinks about all that we have done, and all our surrounding circumstances too. He will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. It is a fine thing to face that, because then if you face things with God, you will find that there is abundant and adequate provision in the work of Christ, the work of redemption that He has accomplished, abundant provision to meet everything that is wrong, every sin, every act, that has involved guilt on your part. Thank God that there is provision for it in the death of Christ. Forgiveness of sins is announced in His name, but coupled with repentance. Do not forget that! Repentance and remission of sins are announced in the Name of the Lord Jesus. I have said several times lately, and if anybody has heard it before, he will bear with me for repeating it: you will find if you turn to Matthew that when John the baptist started in his ministry, the first word he used was “Repent”, chap 3: 2. Then, in the same gospel, just afterwards, when the Lord Jesus started in His ministry, the first thing He said was “Repent”, chap 4: 17. That is something that everybody here should face: ‘Repent’, that is what God is saying, ‘Repent, repent’. Has everybody here repented? Are you characteristically repenting? A repenting sinner is what God loves to see, and repenting sinners. That does not only mean persons who have not up till then been converted, but have now come to the point of repentance and obedience of the gospel, but what God loves to see is persons that are constantly repenting. That is to say, you will find as you go through life, and the more you go on with God, and the more you go on with the Spirit, that there is a good deal to be repented of continually. But cultivate the spirit of repentance! Cultivate it! Not that you want to be occupied with the past; I am not suggesting that for a moment. But do not allow time to come in during which you get away from the Lord. We know what it is, as Christians, to get away from the Lord at times. We know something of that. Do not let it continue any longer than you can help! See that you get right, right with God, right with Christ, and then right with the Holy Spirit too, so that He is not grieved, and then right also with your brethren.
So in this chapter here Peter says, “what I have, this give I to thee: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaræan rise up and walk. And having taken hold of him by the right hand he raised him up … And leaping up he stood and walked, … walking, and leaping, and praising God”. Well now, one thing that God looks for is that we should know how to walk. God Himself is the first one mentioned in Scripture as walking. He walked “in the garden in the cool of the day”, Gen 3: 8. Then, later on we read of John the baptist: “looking at Jesus as he walked”, John 1: 36. Now, what about our walk? God is concerned about the walk of believers. He says, “He that says he abides in him” (that is in Christ), “ought, even as he walked, himself also so to walk”, 1 John 2: 6. That is, Jesus has set out in Himself the standard of walking that is pleasing to God, and He wants His people to learn how to walk as He walked. That is only by abiding in Christ.
Now, just for a moment or two, I wish to refer to this other passage, where the apostle says, “Such as I also am”. He says, “I would to God”. It is Paul expressing the feelings and desires of the heart of God. “I would to God”, he says, “both in little and in much, that not only thou, but all who have heard me this day, should become such as I also am, except these bonds”. That is a remarkable thing! You might think, surely God would set Christ before us as the standard of perfection in manhood. That is perfectly true, but He does also set Paul before us as one whom we are to imitate. I can see the grace of that, because we might think that is all right in a kind of theoretical way, that Christ is the standard of walk of a man according to God. But you might say to yourself, I can never quite come up to the perfection of Christ. But the Spirit of God is equal to that. At the same time the Lord would meet any such thought as that, and He would say to you, ‘I will give you an example in a man exactly like yourself, Paul, a man who was in fact the chief of sinners’. So we read here that Paul says, and he is not speaking boastfully, “I would to God, both in little and in much, that not only thou, but all who have heard me this day, should become such as I also am, except these bonds”. Now I want to say just that the secret of that lies in the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that is the great gift that God is proposing in the gospel. He is proposing the forgiveness of sins, but do not let it remain there. That is not all that is proposed in the gospel, though very essential as a start. At the same time, what He is proposing in the gospel is the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Again I say that if there is anyone here, a boy it may be, or a girl, or a young person, who cannot honestly say that they are sure that they have received the Holy Spirit, I say to you, get to the Lord about it, and ask Him to make you sure. That is the point. You want to ask, and you shall receive. Do not forget that. “Ask, and it shall be given to you”, the Lord says, “seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you”. Take these things up and make them good in your own experience, and find that you do receive the Holy Spirit, and you find that in the gift of the Holy Spirit you begin to learn how to walk here in such a way as not to grieve Him; that you do not want to be all the time grieving Him, so that He has to retire. The Spirit will never leave you, once He has taken possession of you. But, alas! if we grieve Him, He will retire and leave us to ourselves. We do not want that.
So let us see to it, that, in the first place, on the basis of repentance and faith in Christ, we receive the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then let us see to it that we learn how to honour the Spirit, instead of grieving Him, so that He is able to bring home to us in our own experience, what the power and satisfying character of Christianity really is.
May the Lord help us in these things, for His Name’s sake!
CHELMSFORD
15th December 1968
From The Word Proclaimed, 1969
SHARING THE FATHER’S DELIGHT IN CHRIST
I think these scriptures would give us an impression, dear brethren, first of all of the positive delight which the Father has in Christ and then how He would share that with us. That is a wonderful thing to contemplate, how the Father is prepared to share with us the pleasure that He Himself finds in Jesus. So we find in this third chapter of Luke’s gospel that Jesus was baptised, “baptised and praying”. It says, “all the people having been baptised and Jesus having been baptised and praying”. Well now, these are simple statements but they mean a good deal; “Jesus having been baptised”, a wonderful thing that Jesus should be baptised. There was no necessity for it from a personal point of view, but the people had come in a spirit of repentance and had accepted baptism as the expression of that repentance, and Jesus in wondrous grace identifies Himself with them, so that He Himself is baptised. It says, “and Jesus having been baptised”; and then it adds, “and praying”—and praying. Jesus having been baptised in identifying Himself in wonderful grace with the repentance that marked the people who had come to be baptised, and then it says, “and praying”: “Jesus having been baptised and praying”.
Well now, prayer, if it is genuine prayer, is the expression of dependence on God; but where do you get the most complete expression of dependence on God? I believe you get the most complete expression of dependence on God when Jesus came into the world as a newborn babe. That has impressed me greatly, dear brethren: I doubt if you can find anywhere any greater expression of dependence on God than you see in a newborn babe. A newborn babe is dependent on others for everything, everything, and hence a newborn babe is the absolute expression of dependence; and that is the way when One of the Godhead came into human condition. He came in in that way. Not in self-confidence, not in self-sufficiency or self-assertiveness but as a newborn babe. Now that should impress us, dear brethren; if any of us tend naturally to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-assertive, let us recognise that the way that Christ came into the world was as a newborn babe; and that means that dependence, I think I am right in saying, is the first feature of moral excellence in the human condition. You might say, Well, surely obedience would be the first expression. Well, I would not quarrel with that, but you do not expect a newborn babe to be obedient. You cannot look for obedience in a newborn babe, it is not capable of it; it needs to be developed a little before the sense of responsibility is there. But a newborn babe is essentially an expression of absolute dependence; and that shows me, I think, that dependence is the first feature of moral excellence in the human condition that God looks for. What a contrast to the world around where men are self-assertive and self-reliant, and what God loves to see is dependence.
Well now, let us just allow that to sink in, dear brethren. I realise that I say these things; you may say to me, Well, are you dependent? And that is the normal result of having these things brought before us; they present a challenge to us, and we seek grace to accept the challenge; because if God sets out that a certain feature of things is morally excellent in His sight in manhood, then it is for us as His creatures taken up in infinite grace to see to it that the Spirit is allowed liberty to develop those features in us. So it says here, “Jesus having been baptised and praying, that the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form as a dove upon him; and a voice came out of heaven. Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”. But now, that is a positive statement on the part of God that He found in Jesus positive delight, and it was in Jesus in human condition and as praying; notice that, as praying. “Jesus having been baptised”, that is He identified Himself in baptism with the repentant people. A wonderful thing—He has done that in the most absolute way when He gave Himself for us, and bore those sins that repentance expresses acceptance of; wonderful thing, and so Christ has gone that way. And then it says, “a voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”.
But then Peter, in his epistle, he carries us somewhat further; he says, “he received from God the Father honour and glory, such a voice”, such a voice; not merely a voice, but such a voice, as though on the holy mount Peter and James and John were privileged to hear the very tones of the voice in which the Father spoke to Jesus; such a voice being uttered to him by the excellent glory: This is my beloved Son. At the baptism of Jesus the voice says “Thou”, but now on the holy mount the voice says “This”, that is to say, the Father is addressing Peter, and James, and John; He is, if I may so say, addressing us and calling our attention, calling the attention of others, Peter, and James, and John, to the pleasure which He Himself found in Jesus, “This is my beloved Son in whom I have found my delight”. So Peter says, “this voice we heard uttered from heaven, being with him on the holy mountain”. Before that he says, “such a voice”. When we think of what actually happened on the holy mountain, we can see the change that has come over Peter. What actually happened on the holy mountain was that Peter said, “it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias; not knowing what he said” (Luke 9: 33), that is what scripture says, “not knowing what he said”. But Peter rejects all that, he lets all that sink into oblivion, and so we do not want to bring it back again from that point of view, what we want to concentrate on is the exceeding moral glory of what actually happened when it is divested of all the wrong thoughts that Peter at one time attached to it. We are allowed now to see that Jesus “received from God the Father honour and glory, such a voice”—such a voice, the Father’s own voice and the Father’s own tones of voice, “such a voice being uttered to him by the excellent glory: This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight; and this voice we heard uttered from heaven, being with him on the holy mountain”. Well we have not been literally with Him on the holy mountain, but I think in this day of the Spirit we are privileged to have some entrance into what Peter, and James, and John were given entrance into. We can get some impression by the Spirit of what that voice was—“such a voice”, and of what it said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”. It means that the Father is willing to share His own pleasure, His own joy in Christ; He is willing to share it with us. He wants to share it with us. That is the wonderful thing; that is what is possible in virtue of the indwelling Holy Spirit; wonderful thing.
The more we touch of these things, dear brethren, the more we increase in our appreciation of the Holy Spirit Himself, that He has taken His abode in us in order that these holy things of God might be known by us in actuality. Well that is our portion through grace. We can well rejoice in it, and God grant that we may increase in our appreciation of it. We do not want to be occupied with things that are not worth being occupied with. Christ has already gone up above all the heavens that He might fill all things, Eph 4: 10. That day is not far distant and there is not going to be room for anything that is not of Christ. Let us bear that in mind. Let the younger brethren here bear that in mind that it may regulate their outlook, that there is not going to be anything remaining that is not of Christ. He has gone up already “above all the heavens that he might fill all things”.
So let it be that He obtains the place in our hearts that the Father intends that He should obtain, and as He does obtain that we shall find that we are more and more at home in the Father’s presence because we are being given to share by the Holy Spirit that in which the Father Himself finds His full delight.
ABERDEEN
September 1969
From a recording
An address at three-day meetings with Roy Hibbert