GOD SETTING THINGS OR PERSONS

W. McKillop

Genesis 1: 16–18; 9: 12, 13, 16; Romans 3: 22–26; Ephesians 1: 19–21

Perhaps the brethren will have noticed in the reading of these scriptures that they all refer to God’s setting certain things, or setting certain persons, and I would like to direct your attention to this great matter. I am not thinking in Genesis 1 exactly of the physical creation, although that is what is spoken of, but I am

thinking of the moral universe into which God would bring men by the glad tidings. What is clear from Genesis 1 is that as the universe is marked by divine order and light it is intended to bring persons under the rule of heaven. So God made the two great lights. It does not say when He made them, they were undoubtedly made long before when He made the heavens and the earth. But there were two, the great light to rule the day and the small light to rule the night.

Clearly what God intends in the preaching of the word of God is that men, who are generally characterised by lawlessness, should be affected by divine grace and mercy and be brought under divine rule. So these two lights are intended for the purpose of rule. Not an arbitrary rule, for they refer to the heavenly influence and rule of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the heavenly influence and rule of the assembly in the time of His absence. So God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. That is, the sphere into which God would bring men morally and spiritually through His word is of the greatest possible advantage. Men are brought into a sphere of divine light. Indeed the apostle Paul was told as part of his commission that he was to turn men from darkness to light, and the light to which they were to be turned is clearly the light of God in Christ, that is the great light referred to here typically in Genesis 1.

But God set them in the expanse of the heavens, meaning that all men were in His mind, it was to affect the whole race. The expanse of the heavens would show how extensive the thought of God was as He brought in this great light; He was thinking about all men. He intended that all men should come into divine light, they should be turned from darkness to light, so He commands all men everywhere to repent. The commandment to repent is intended to bring lawless persons, through repentance, under divine rule. We do not need to

enlarge on the lawlessness that is all about us in the world because it is obvious to every thinking person. The race is governed, apart from the work of God and the presence of the Spirit on the basis of the death of Christ, by the principle of lawlessness. This will soon be seen in a full-blown way as the apostle told the Thessalonians, “the lawless one shall be revealed”, 2 Thessalonians 2: 8. It is solemn to think that in this western world where the light of God shone so brightly for centuries, soon there will be someone appear who is called the lawless one, and what he will bring in is absolute moral darkness.

In the meantime God is appealing to men, and to every one of us, to come under the blessed influence of the light that He has set in the expanse of the heavens. You notice, “to give light on the earth”, that is it comes to us where we are. When the Lord Jesus came into this world by incarnation, He came as the light of the world. He is not now in the world but He is in the expanse of the heavens, that is light is coming to men from Christ in that place of exaltation.

So God intends to bring every person into the blessedness of being in such a sphere, where there is light and where there is rule, the beneficent rule of heaven, and to divide between the light and the darkness. God did that in the physical creation, and what He would do by the word of God in every preaching is to divide between light and darkness in the souls and minds of men.

One writer in scripture says, “Woe to them ... who put darkness for light, and light for darkness”, Isaiah 5: 20. There are undoubtedly many persons on the earth today that cannot distinguish light from darkness because the word of God has had no entrance into them.

Therefore they do not understand that God has placed Christ in the position of supremacy, and that He also has placed the assembly for the great advantage of believers as providing light and rule during the night, during the period of the Lord’s actual absence from this scene.

The glad tidings really are to open the eyes of persons, so that they should take in by faith that there is heavenly light shining in Christ where He is, as we sang in the hymn at the beginning,

‘O the glory of the grace,

Shining in the Saviour’s face!’ (Hymn 438)

That is heavenly light shining in the Saviour in His heavenly position. Then down here, during His absence, heavenly light is shining, reflected light of course, but nevertheless divine light is shining through persons who have been brought into the assembly on the ground of redemption and by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I read the passage in Genesis 9 because God was speaking about what He had done and God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I set between me and you and every living soul that is with you, for everlasting generations”. Think of God committing Himself unreservedly to something like this. The flood, of course, is a great figure of the judgment of God expressed in the death of Christ. You remember it says that when the waters attained their full height Noah alone remained and what was with him in the ark. That is morally true today, the only evidence of life according to God is in persons who are with Christ in His present position in the testimony. But here God is speaking about the fact that He is still thinking about everlasting generations. How many generations have there been since the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus? I do not know, perhaps somebody here does, but God is saying that regardless of how many there are from that point, I have set my bow in the clouds. There Christ is as the evidence of the mercy and goodness of God. It is not the sun in this passage, it is the rainbow, “I set my bow in the clouds”, and then He says, “And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it”. Think of God looking upon Christ where He is in relation to God’s blessed attitude towards men! Nothing can alter this, “I set my bow in the clouds”.

Think of God so delighting in Christ that He refers to Him typically in this way, “I set my bow in the clouds”. I suppose the clouds would represent what may darken, but even if they shut out the light of the sun for a time, God is saying, What I see in that is what I have established there in Christ out of death and glorified. So He says, “that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living soul of all flesh that is upon the earth”. Every living soul, that includes you and me, all of us here and all others that are on the earth. Think of God looking at the bow in the cloud and saying to us, in language we can understand, “that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living soul”. It is not that God forgets things, not as we do; when He says, “that I may remember”. He is speaking in a way that we can understand. It is intended to affect us that, as God looks on Christ in this blessed way, He remembers His attitude towards the race and towards the whole earth, for He says, “every living soul of all flesh that is upon the earth”. It is not confined to any group of persons or any nations, but God is saying, I still have the same universal outlook as in Genesis 1, the expanse of the heavens. As He looks on the bow He is thinking about how He is committing Himself, for He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. That is the God who is speaking to us in the glad tidings.

I referred to Romans because it is another presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ. It brings out God’s delight in the mercy-seat, and the mercy-seat is, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ. The great issue in this epistle as we know is righteousness. When the apostle writes “all have sinned”, it means they have been lawless and unrighteous, and that refers to all of us, we have all been like that, but God is thinking about His righteousness, but He is also thinking about His grace and mercy and the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So it says, “whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood”. Wonderful matter that God at the present time is thinking about men from this point of view, although “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. God has set forth Christ as a mercy-seat and He is available to every person through faith in His blood. So He says, “righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ towards all”, that is no one is missed out, it is towards all. If all have sinned, righteousness of God is towards all but by faith of Jesus Christ, that is, that Person becomes the object of faith. The preaching of the word of God is that our Lord Jesus Christ might become the object of your faith. If He does, then the righteousness of God is not only towards you but it is upon you. You notice the apostle says, first “towards all”, which would be all, but it is “upon all those who believe”.

That brings up the solemn question. Are we all believers, in this room, on our Lord Jesus Christ? It is simple to say that the gospel really segregates the human race into two classes, those who believe and those who do not. The solemn thing is that those who do not believe are still in their sins, and the righteousness of God, which is towards them in its blessedness, is not upon them because they have not believed in the Lord Jesus, who has accomplished redemption which expresses in its fulness the grace of God. The righteousness of God is “upon all those who believe”. It goes on to say, “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus”. Not only has the Lord Jesus accomplished redemption but also the redemption is in Christ Jesus; it is in that blessed Man in His present position in the heavens. Think of being justified freely by God’s grace, because we have faith in the blood of Christ. It is not, as is often said, when you are justified it is as though you had never sinned, that could not be, but you are not held to account, because the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. We cannot change the fact that we have sinned, God has not overlooked it, but He has provided a remedy for it in the blood of the Lord Jesus. And so He says, “whom God has set forth a mercy-seat”, that is the way God has come out in mercy, in grace, and not in judgment. The present, thank God, is not a time of judgment, it is a time for the dispensing of grace, the dispensing of mercy, and it is for the unrighteous, the lawless, those who have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

I would say, too, that those of us who are believers should rejoice with God in the fact that He has set forth Christ as a mercy-seat. How that should appeal to our spiritual affections that this blessed Man, God has set Him forth, it is not a hidden matter, it is not a question of searching it out, God has set forth a mercy-seat. It is an established matter and God delights in it, and those of us who believe through grace rejoice that the mercy-seat is there in all its blessedness for men.

I referred to the passage in Ephesians 1 because again we have our Lord Jesus Christ spoken of, and it is the greatest exercise of the power of God, which is expressed in this scripture, “what the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe”. These are the persons who have come under the rule of the great light, the persons who see the bow in the cloud. If you remember, referring to the bow in the cloud, Ezekiel likens the appearance of the man he saw above the expanse, he says, “As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain”, Ezekiel 1: 28. The prophet had a prophetic vision really, not understanding it as we do, that it was Christ, and as he looked at that man who was above the expanse it reminded him of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain. Well, we have that really because it says and “he set him down at his right hand in the heavenlies”. This is a higher position than what we read of in Genesis 1, there it was the expanse of the heavens, but this is the heavenlies, an intensified thought of heaven, and God has set Christ down at His right hand in the heavenlies.

What precedes that is this wonderful working of “the might of his strength, in which he wrought in the Christ in raising him from among the dead”. The greatest exercise of the power of God that ever could be was in raising Christ from among the dead. In fact Mr. Raven says at one point that this was the greatest exertion of the power of God raising Christ from among the dead, and raising all the other dead will just be, so to speak, a matter of detail. God had shown in the presence of the universe the might of His strength in the resurrection of Christ, but, having raised Him from among the dead, it says He “set him down at his right hand in the heavenlies”. You notice that the exercise of this power, according to verse 19, is towards us who believe. God intends that believers should begin to understand what is in the heavenlies. We understand, of course, that persons need their sins forgiven, and that having their sins forgiven they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that is another matter I would speak about briefly.

Are you conscious that you have received the Holy Spirit? It is God’s prerogative to give the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him, but are you conscious that you have received the Holy Spirit? As we were saying in the reading, one evidence of it is that you want to be with the brethren, and I think a leading indication of it would be that you want to remember the Lord Jesus. If you have received your eternal salvation through Him, and if God has given you the Holy Spirit, you want to be among those who are remembering the Lord Jesus. But then, I think we all want to be among those who are interested in what is in the heavenlies. You might say, Why should we be interested in that? Well, it is because the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. If I am a believer who is accustomed to being moved inwardly by the Holy Spirit, I want to know what those things are. It is not good enough to say that one day we will have the actuality; the gift of the Spirit is given that we might enjoy these things now together, while we are still here, and that we might understand more fully they relate to the blessed Man whom God has set down at His right hand in the heavenlies. He is in the place of power; on the cross once He was in the place of outward weakness, but now He is in the place of almighty power.

What will help us as we go through the wilderness is that He is in that position, as Hebrews shows, and functioning that we might reach what the heavenlies speak of. It is quite right that the Lord, in His priestly service, helps us in the wilderness, but the real point in His priestly service is that we might reach the land, which is typical of the heavenlies, and that we might together enjoy those spiritual blessings that we have been blessed with. And so, I would commend to us, beloved brethren, and especially to the beloved young people, that you keep your eye on the One who is “the leader and completer of faith”. As we go through the wilderness, starting tomorrow, we need to look stedfastly on “Jesus the leader and completer of faith”. It says of Him in Hebrews 12, that He is set down at the right hand of the throne. I will read the verse to have it accurately. Hebrews 12: 2, “looking stedfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith—who, in view of the joy lying before him, endured the cross, having despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. There is One there who is for you in all your wilderness experience as you go through it and you look stedfastly on Him. The footnote tells us that it means to look stedfastly on someone to the exclusion of other things. So that you are single-eyed for Christ, and He is acting in a most affecting and powerful way to carry you through the wilderness so that you may enjoy what the heavenly land is; He is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Wonderful that all that is toward us!

It should encourage us greatly, I believe, to think of Christ in the way of which we have spoken of Him; the great light set in the expanse of the heavens, the bow set in the cloud, the mercy-seat set forth, and then set down at God’s right hand in the heavenlies. But in all these thoughts, it is what He is towards us, what He is as available to us. What I would desire for us is that He might become more and more to us in these ways as a result of this preaching, whatever its limitations may be.

There is no limitation with the blessed Man who is at the right hand of the throne of God. He is active in order that we might be carried safely through, and that we might enjoy together the blessedness of our heavenly portion. May God bless the word.

Preaching at Dundee, 24 August 2003

EXTRACT

What you see here (John 7: 53) is that every man went to his own home; this was how matters stood. But there was one Man who did not go to any home on earth. He went to the mount of Olives. We see how one Man in the crisis can be effective by maintaining a link with heaven; that is what the mount of Olives stands for. And early in the morning He comes again into the temple. Then we have the working out of the exercises of this chapter in the next. The Lord comes in and teaches; “All the people came to him; and he sat down and taught them”. What appeals to me is that in the midst of this confusion the people of God are to be taught, and that not according to the education of a university, but with thoughts that are like the Teacher Himself. What is needed is one coming from the mount of Olives, and that suggests a heavenly Teacher; the Holy Spirit is the prominent feature. The secret is that we have access to heaven by the Spirit.

J. Taylor (Vol. 23, p.203)

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