THE DAY THAT JEHOVAH HAS MADE
Psalm 118: 22-24; Luke 23:34 (to “they do”);
I would like to say something about “the day that Jehovah hath made”. I wonder when you think, “the day that Jehovah hath made” is. It is today! In the gospel, we have to do with God, and to Him a thousand years are as one day, 2 Pet.3:8. It is a day of opportunity; it is a day of hope. Even in this poor, benighted world where moral darkness shrouds everything, the gospel message in all its fulness shines out; this is “the day that Jehovah hath made”.
It involved the coming of Jesus into this scene, which was necessary to bring near to us God’s love in all its fulness, but it was also necessary in order to meet you in your need, in your sins and away from God, without hope. “This is the day that Jehovah hath made”. It involved that that blessed Man, God’s blessed Son, experienced rejection here; “The stone which the builders rejected hath become the head of the corner”. Does it affect your heart that your Saviour went out of this scene enduring the ignominy and the shame of the cross? It says of Him that He became “obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross”, Phil.2:8. God’s heart in all its fulness was shining out at that time. Has it shone into your heart, have you rejoiced and been glad in “the day that Jehovah hath made”? That depends on whether you have let the Lord Jesus into your heart. He is the One who was rejected here. The last the world saw of Him was on that cross of shame. And why was He there? He was there to suffer and die for your sins and mine. What a momentous work! Everything for God depended on the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything for you depends upon Him. He is like the nail in a sure place (Isa.22:23); every vessel could be hung upon Him. And you can depend upon Him because the blessed Man that went out of this world by way of the cross has now been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and He has entered into His own glory. That is “the day that Jehovah hath made”.
Do you know where He is now? He is seated on the Father’s throne at His right hand, in a position of power. One day He is going to take up His own throne; that will be a future day. But at the moment we are talking about today, “This is the day that Jehovah hath made”. How many days in man’s reckoning has God gone on in His overtures to man? How many years? The present count is two thousand and fifteen years and God’s overtures are still outgoing in the gospel, it is “the day that Jehovah hath made”. What a wonderful message! In this poor benighted world, God’s love to the sinner was displayed in the way that He “has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all”, Rom.8:32. That blessed Man, as Peter says, was “cast away indeed as worthless by men”, 1 Pet.2:4. Just think of that; in this world’s estimation of God’s beloved Son, He was something that could just be discarded, cast out as worthless and rejected. But God has made Him “head of the corner” (1 Pet.2.7), and He is the foundation of “the day that Jehovah hath made”. Jesus is at God’s right hand and He is available there as a Prince and a Saviour to you.
And God’s overtures in grace go out. Think of His overtures of grace that extended to a man like Saul of Tarsus, a man who was bent on exterminating the name of Christ here, but he found it was futile. That Man in the glory would have been justified in striking Saul down in judgment, but He did not. He said “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?”, Acts 9:4. It was “the day that Jehovah hath made”. The wonderful basis that God had, on which to come out in blessing towards all men, was in the finished work of Christ when He bore my sins in His body on the tree (1 Pet.2:24). Sin was not overlooked; it could not be so by a righteous, holy God, but what you and I deserved in the way of judgment for our sins was laid upon Him and He exhausted God’s judgment of sin. Every other man would have been exhausted by it, but He exhausted God’s judgment of sin, and every moral question was resolved to God’s full satisfaction in that finished work of Jesus and His precious, shed blood. Have you put your faith and trust in Him, and in His precious blood; and
‘Can point to the atoning blood
And say, This made my peace with God’. (Hymn 357)
How efficacious is the blood of Jesus! It is able to cleanse us from all sin, (1 John 1:7). There is no such thing as a hopeless case, not in “the day that Jehovah hath made”.
I read that verse in Luke 23; “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, because it characterises “the day that Jehovah hath made”. It is the day of grace. That blessed Man who suffered vicariously on the cross could say “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. That is the character of the dispensation in which we are. God’s overtures in grace would reach out to you wherever you are. Nobody is out of His reach; the “blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”, 1 John 1:7. Whatever has happened in your history, the answer is in the blood of Jesus and in His finished work. We spoke earlier about nearness, about the distance being removed. Paul speaks in Ephesians 2 of the middle wall of enclosure having been broken down (v.14). Think of the hatred that there is between the Arab and the Jew, questions that man cannot solve, but the answer is in the death of Jesus; the middle wall of enclosure has been broken down. All these things are involved in “the day that Jehovah hath made”; “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. He has borne the judgment that you might never bear it. You could not bear it! You are entirely dependent upon the Lord Jesus and His finished work.
I read in John’s gospel because I think “the day that Jehovah hath made” involves the establishment of a wonderful administration of grace that is in the hands of Christ. He says “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things to be in his hand”; that is true today. It is wonderful to have a sense that you are in the hands of Christ, the very best hands. The Father loves Him, and there is an administration of grace under His hand. What kind of things happen under that administration? I think the next chapter gives us the clue to it; persons find the living water under that administration of grace. The poor woman in John 4 was a moral wreck. We see the ravages of sin today and the effects of the breakdown in relationships, and yet the Lord Jesus, being wearied with the way He had come, drew near to this poor woman by Sychar’s well:-
‘Trembling soul, behold thy Saviour ...’
Then:-
‘Sinner, see thy God beside thee,
In a servant’s form come near,
Sitting, walking, talking with thee!
Sinai’s mount no longer fear’. (Hymn 112)
That was the experience of this woman in John 4 and it is experienced in “the day that Jehovah hath made”. Whatever her history, the answer was in Christ; that is where it was. Whatever your history may be, the answer is in that same blessed Man! I never cease to marvel at the way that the Lord Jesus in lowly grace approached this woman. She was the most unlikely material, you might say, but then so am I. That is the wonder of the present day, “the day that Jehovah hath made”; it is “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. His overtures of grace extended to this woman. She was searching for satisfaction. What a search for satisfaction there is in this world today, but you will only find it in one source, you find it in the Lord Jesus Himself. This woman found satisfaction in Him; not only were her needs met but she was taken possession of by Christ Jesus. She left her water pot, and she made her way into the city and said “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done: is not he the Christ?”, John 4:29. That was the result of a person receiving Christ into her heart and being glad and rejoicing in “the day that Jehovah hath made”.
So that He says “Every one who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever, but the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. Are you conscious, dear friend, that this fountain of water is springing up in your heart? The gospel involves not only the reception of the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, but the conscious sense of the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s unspeakable free gift. We spoke in the reading of how essential He is for the Christian, otherwise your Christianity would be a dead letter. Persons go to college to study, to take the cloth as it is called, study the Scriptures with just the natural mind of man, and it could be darkness. What makes it living is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Are you conscious you have that? You can ask the Father and He will give you the gift of the Holy Spirit. He gives Him to those that obey Him. But there is a process here; it “shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. I think this woman grew in the appreciation of that; “shall become in him a fountain of water”. It might start small but it grew in her. It grows and it grows, just like the light that shone in Paul’s heart. It was “a light out of heaven” (Acts 9:3), but he recalled it in chapter 22 as “a great light” (v.6) and in chapter 26 before King Agrippa he called it “a light above the brightness of the sun” (v.13). On Friday, we saw an eclipse, saw the dimming of the brightness of the midday sun. It is beyond what men can view with the naked eye, and so they tell you not to look at it because it is blinding. The greatness of that light grew in the apostle Paul’s heart, so that when he was before Agrippa, he says to him, “believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest. And Agrippa said to Paul, In a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian. And Paul said, 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”, Acts 26:27-30. There was a man who was glad and rejoiced “in the day that Jehovah hath made”.
How much of what is springing up in this fountain of life is coming out into expression in us? Paul wanted all those in that courtroom to have what he enjoyed, “except these bonds”. He might have been outwardly bound, but he was not inwardly bound; he was in the enjoyment of that living water and he was glad in “the day that Jehovah hath made”. He was really saying, If it could happen to me with my history, it could happen to you too. So this woman in John 4 had the experience of that water springing up into eternal life. She says “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst nor come here to draw”. I marvel at the skill of the Lord Jesus. He created a desire in that woman’s heart for the living water, and it is not until then that He raises the moral question, “Go, call thy husband, and come here” (v.16). She was in the presence of the One who had the answer to her history; once a moral wreck, but one who came into infinite blessing in “the day that Jehovah hath made”. She did not have to go back there to draw water: she had the source of satisfaction in her heart. Have you got that source of satisfaction in your heart, so that you do not have to rely on the joys of this earth or the entertainment of this world? You do not have to rely on them. All those things will come to an end, they all fade away, but the water that springs up into eternal life remains. At is a source, not only for satisfaction now, it will be the source of your satisfaction eternally, but it is available now in “the day that Jehovah hath made”.
There is a wonderful evangelical touch in those verses in chapter 7 of John’s gospel. “In the last, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried saying, If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink.” That message is still going out today, “the day that Jehovah hath made”, and it is a message of earnestness. Jesus stood and cried; it is urgent. It is not something you can put off, because “the day that Jehovah hath made” may soon come to an end. When it will come to an end we do not know, but this may be the last time that the gospel is preached here; we do not know, but this is the day of opportunity. Jesus is crying “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink”. This day is spoken of right through to the end of the Bible where it says in Revelation 22, “And let him that is athirst come; he that will, let him take the water of life freely” (v.17). The evangelical message remains to the very end of the “day that Jehovah hath made”. And in John 7, the appeal of the Lord Jesus went out in its urgency; “In the last, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried saying, If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”. What is inside must come out. It came out in Paul; he could not contain it inside. It had to come out; “out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”. Now that involves a certain influence. A river is a resource, it is an influence for life, it is an influence for good. What about my influence? It is “out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he said concerning the Spirit, which they that believed on him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified”. What a wonderful time Pentecost was! When the Spirit came and sat upon each one of them, and they began to speak in tongues, they spoke of the wonderful things of God (Acts 2.11); it was the testimony to “the day that Jehovah hath made”. Think of the power of Peter’s preaching, Peter of all people! What grace there was in Jerusalem; the place where the Lord was crucified was the first place in which the gospel was preached. What grace; it was “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. There were three thousand souls converted by the word spoken in the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter says “God has made him, this Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (v.36). Not that He was going to do it, He had already done it; made Him both Lord and Christ.
Have you come under the domination and sway of that blessed Man? Paul spoke about being delivered from “the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love” (Col.1:13); that is Saul’s conversion in a nutshell in that verse. It is a wonderful thing that Jesus has been glorified and the Holy Spirit has come as a Witness to a Man who is in heaven, who has been received in glory bright up there, as having secured everything for God. It had its beginning then in “the day that Jehovah hath made”. I trust that everyone here will be glad and rejoice in it, as having the experience of receiving Christ into your heart, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit you might know something of the joys of heavenly things. The joys of this earth fade away, but the joys of heavenly things remain and they will remain throughout the eternal day. We have touched that in our spirits today.
May there be some further results in “the day that Jehovah hath made”. How much longer it will be available I do not know. We cannot speak about tomorrow, but I can speak about today, “To-day if ye will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Heb.3:15), but come into the full blessing of salvation as found in Him, in His name.
Preaching of the gospel, Brechin
22 March 2015
D.J. Wright