TRUSTING IN JESUS
I have a simple impression about the importance of being maintained in believing. There is an initial transaction which I believe every one of responsible years in this room has already had with the Lord Jesus, when in faith we put our trust in Him for our eternal salvation. We believed on Him, that what He did on Calvary’s cross was for me, was for you, and that what He did then settles for time and for eternity the great matter of our sins. His sacrifice is all sufficient, His precious shed blood is all sufficient to meet the claims of a righteous and holy God, so that He might forgive us our sins. The Lord Jesus would claim us as His own, and we are waiting for Him to take us soon to be with Him. We believe in Him.
I remember an account of a famous tightrope walker who strung a rope across the Niagara Falls, and a great crowd gathered to see what he could do. He asked the crowd ‘Do you think I can walk across this tightrope?’ and the crowd said ‘Yes, you can do it.’ So he walked out across the falls and back again safely, and the crowd applauded him. Then he pushed a wheelbarrow out over the falls, and returned safely. He asked the cheering crowd ‘Do you think I could push a person across the falls in the wheelbarrow?’ and they said ‘Oh yes, you could do that.’ So he asked a man who was cheering loudly, ‘Get in’. The man refused. The man was not willing to place his own safety in the hands of the tightrope walker.
I think that even if I had seen that man pushing somebody else across in the wheelbarrow, I would have been very reluctant to go myself. We can learn through analogies like that. We may be happy to say that we believe that the Lord Jesus can do things. We may say that we believe that the Lord Jesus is able to bring us through, and that He is able to do anything. We might even have seen Him doing it for someone else; we might have taken account of someone else going through a very dark and testing time and being sustained in it by the Lord Jesus. We might say to ourselves, ‘Yes, I am sure that He could do that for me’. But then the test comes, and the Lord Jesus would say to us, ‘The moment has come, are you going to trust yourself to me?’ That is what believing on Him is. It is not just that you believe what you have heard from other people. It is not even what you have read in the Scriptures. It is whether you believe on Him absolutely, to trust yourself to His safe keeping.
You may already have trusted Him for your eternal salvation, and nothing can rob you of that. Not even Satan himself, our very artful and very dangerous foe, can rob you of your eternal salvation. But the question arises, Is he robbing you of your present salvation, of your present joy in the Lord? Is he robbing the Lord Jesus of your trust? Is he robbing God? When I heard the story about the tightrope walker, I thought to myself that the glory would all be to the person who was pushing the wheelbarrow. And that is how it is for you, dear friend. If you truly put your trust in the Lord Jesus, simply believing that He is able to bring you through, and do not doubt, or try your own scheming, or have your own plans for how you are going to make your own way through; if you simply confide in Him, place the whole matter into His hands, there will be no glory for you. The glory will all be His. That is what the Lord Jesus is looking for. He is looking for you to so confide in Him, to so place your full abiding trust in Him, and the glory will all be to Him. That is why He is appealing to you tonight. Surely it will be for your own joy and satisfaction – there will be riches untold for you. But what He is looking for is that the glory will be all to Him as the One who is able to bring you through. It is wonderful what Paul said to the Philippian jailor; “Believe on the Lord Jesus.” How simple it is. You can well imagine that jailor wondering, a bit like Naaman, ’Surely there must be something else I should be doing’. No, simply believe on the Lord Jesus! What a One He is, the Lord Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth, the One who came here, Jah the Saviour.
We were speaking earlier about John, who wrote the Revelation. He knew the Lord Jesus, possibly better than any other person apart from the Father Himself. As a young man, he had been with Jesus from His early days of ministry. John had seen the wonderful miracles that Jesus had done, heard the amazing parables that He had told, seen His glory on the mount of transfiguration, then witnessed His suffering as one of the few present who was sympathetic to the Lord Jesus. John had access into places that some of the other disciples did not seem to have, he witnessed the Lord Jesus suffering at the hands of men, then witnessed those hours of darkness. John was near the cross. He tells us of the One that he had contemplated, the Word, the One who he had taken account of as setting out the whole heart and mind of His God and Father. As we believe on Jesus, His objective is to win our trust, win our confidence. Where is He taking us? He has in mind to so gain your trust, that He might introduce you into the very presence of His God and Father. He wants to introduce you into a divine system of things that He knows will satisfy your heart like nothing else can. Do you trust Him for that? Do you trust that He is able to make your life infinitely more meaningful than you can? He will give you purpose, give you an objective in your life which will mean that when you come to the end of it, however long or short it might be, you will be able look back and say that it was all worthwhile. Are you trusting to your own efforts to accomplish that, or will you trust the Lord Jesus? He is the One who is not only able to save you, but is able to give meaning and purpose to your life, in a way that will be to His glory, not to yours – although it will be for your joy and satisfaction while you are here, and then when you go to be with Him.
These matters are very simple yet very fundamental. What a great matter it is to simply put our trust in the Lord Jesus, in His shed blood, and also as the One that we can lean on, the One we can have our eye on and follow, the One we can trust to bring us through. We need to be obedient to what He would have us to do, and prove for ourselves the safety there is in that, the joy there is in it. We will not prove that joy by watching someone else, we will only prove it by confiding ourselves to Him.
Might we be encouraged to do so, for His name’s sake.
Preaching of the gospel, Brechin
27 July 2014
I. Purdy