A NEW GENERATION
John 20: 11-18; Acts 8: 30-33, 9: 5 ; Philippians 2: 12-16
With regard to the Lord Himself, we read that He was cut off and had nothing. It says in Isaiah 53: 8, “who shall declare his generation?” The Lord had no inheritance; He had title to all, but He was cut off, and had nothing. And not only so, but He had no generation. I am referring to an aspect of His death which the scriptures present, not the atoning aspect. The scriptures speak of the Lord in His true and perfect and holy humanity. He had title to everything, and He was cut off and had nothing. He had no generation; He felt it, He had the positive grief of it. “He weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days”, Ps 102: 23, 24. He was cut off in the midst of His days. Would to God that we entered more into His side of things! He was cut off out of the land of the living!
Now that introduces my subject, which is His generation, and how the Lord declares His own generation.
My first point is to shew the generation in privilege; secondly, in suffering; thirdly, in testimony.
He declares His own generation, He declares it in resurrection. In the prophetic scriptures that speak of Christ and of His sufferings there is always the thought of generation. The generation is the fruit of the travail of His soul. “He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand”, Isa 53: 10. While He was cut off, and had no generation, “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied!” “He shall see his seed”.
In Psalm 22 you have the seed, the generation coming to light, and it is a generation for the praise of God; that is to say, the great thought of Psalm 22 is a worshipping generation. In Psalm 49, another great sorrow psalm, which you get in the second book, it says His seed shall inherit; it is the reigning side. In the third book of Psalms you have a seed answering to Him morally, which I shall be able to shew presently from the New Testament, but in Psalm 102, His seed shall abide for ever, He puts the stamp of abidingness on His generation.
His generation is declared in each gospel. He declares His generation in His pathway here; in John He declares it in resurrection, in the other gospels the declaration of His generation precedes, or is connected with, the sowing of the seed. He declares His generation in Matthew 12: 46-50. He indicates as His generation those who shall do the will of His Father which is in heaven. He declares it morally, He stretches out His hand toward His disciples. He says, These are My generation, who shall do the will of My Father.
Turn now to Mark 3: 31-35. Here is the call of His mother to Him, and He says, Those who sit around are My brethren, those who do the will of God. God could only be pleased with what is morally suitable to Himself, and the Lord Jesus came down here to procure a people who should be morally suitable to Him.
You came to Christ in your great need, and so you got introduced to Christ; but I ask you, do you find pleasure in the thought that the reason why you came to Christ, and He received you, was that you should answer to what He is morally? If you do not find pleasure in it there is something morally wrong in your soul. Do you take pleasure in the thought that He came down here to find a generation for God, who shall delight in His will?
If you are a Christian you have come to Him. What a beautiful thing it is that He says, These are My brethren! Immediately after you have the parable of the sower; He sows the word in order to produce the generation.
Now in Luke's gospel the order is reversed. It is after the parable of the sower that you get the Lord saying, “My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it”, chap 8: 19-21. “Do it” In all these three gospels you have the Lord indicating His generation. They do the will of His Father which is in heaven; they do the will of God; they hear the word of God, and do it. The sowing of the word is to produce a generation after this kind.
Having said that much I come now to John's gospel, which is entirely different. The poor woman here is in the garden, and she has great affection for Christ; she has no home where Christ is not. I do not know whether we have reached that. These disciples saw and believed, and went home, but this beloved woman lingered at the door of the sepulchre. She was a most unintelligent woman, but one who had great affection for Christ, one who apprehended there could be no home where He was not. You might have said to her, Go home. Peter and John have gone home. No, she would have said, I will never rest till I find Him. What entrancing affection!
The two angels are there, but all they say in this gospel is, “Woman, why weepest thou?” The angels are sympathetic with her. No angels bear testimony in John, the Lord does it Himself.
In the three gospels I have quoted the resurrection answers to the transfiguration. It is very beautiful to see it. In Matthew there is a great stone rolled against the door of the sepulchre. Poor puny man! “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision”, Ps 2: 4. They roll a great stone, but there was a great earthquake. We often think of the great power down here with man, but when we get into the presence of the power of God man disappears. The angel came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. How majestic! We are made to feel the powerlessness of man. If we were in touch with heaven we should have the sense there is no power like the power of God. It is all very majestic in Matthew.
Then he renders a testimony to those who come; it is the angel who speaks to those who are there in Matthew.
When we come to Mark we see a young man sitting there clothed in white. No one could bear witness apart from purity, therefore it says in the transfiguration, “his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them”, because power and purity go together. If a testimony is to be rendered it must be by a man clothed in a white garment. How in keeping that is with Mark.
When you come to Luke, “two men stood by them in shining garments”, this is what is heavenly. In the transfiguration “his raiment was white and glistering”, Luke 9: 29.
But here in John no voice is heard, no angels could meet that poor heart that misses the Lord. To me it is surpassingly beautiful. “Woman, why weepest thou?” It only elicited this: “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him”. The transfiguration is not recorded in John for Jesus is presented in His glory all through.
The angels there are not attractive to her; no one is attractive to you when Christ is your Object: you will turn from anybody and everybody till you find Him. Oh! she says, if I could only find Him. She thought of a dead body, but it was Himself she wanted; I must have Him, that is the point. So she turns away from the angels, and turns from the gardener, as she supposes, and then His sweet voice is heard; no angel shall say it, He will say it Himself. What will He say? “Mary!” Who could say “Mary” like Jesus? “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10: 27). I know them; Mary! Mary!
I will try and illustrate it. No one could call my name as my mother could. If my mother were outside and called my name I should know it now: no one could put such affection into it as she could. No one could say “Mary” like the Lord.
There is beautiful recognition here. She answers back, “Rabboni”: she is with Him.
Though the supper is not here, we have in John's gospel what is behind the supper. I understand the supper to be the appeal of love, and there is mutual recognition in the Supper. He is saying “Mary”, and we answer back “Rabboni”; we are with Him. The Supper has been instituted in order that we might recognise His love, hear His sweet voice; and there might be a response in our hearts to Him in such a way that we find ourselves with Him. It is affection that finds itself with Him always.
What happens now? She springs forward, as it were; we infer that from the Lord saying, “Touch me not”. She says, You have come back to be with me in my circumstances. No, says the Lord. What pleasure He had in saying it! What compensation for the travail of His soul! What an answer to His unutterable grief was the holy joy of that embrace - “Touch me not”. I am come to tell you, you must come with Me. I have made a way for you to come with Me; and He says, “go to my brethren”, words that are simple to read but in which He finds His joy. He embraces His brethren on the platform He had secured for them. He is on His own territory; He is outside the region of death and weeping. He says, Come to Me. “Go to my brethren”. He embraces His brethren; then He unfolds what it is in words that are excessively simple but very profound, and in which is our everlasting happiness. “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”.
Have you ever known anything like that? - I ask you all. I do not ask you if you have read the scriptures, but do you know this holy, unalloyed joy of association with Him the other side of death? That is where He declares His generation; He declares it morally in the passages I have spoken of; but here it is His generation associated with Him, all having with Him that wondrous privilege of knowing His Father to be their Father, and His God their God.
Now in regard to the Supper, beloved brethren. If we do not miss Him during the week, we shall not find Him on Lord's day morning. It is the heart that misses Him who finds Him. In the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and a grave; that is what the Lord has found here. Have you the tender sensibilities of affection, that you go up and down this world and say, My Lord has only found a cross and a grave in this world of man's pleasure? Years go by before we get any sense of it, but those who miss Him find Him. We may get our moral sensibilities blunted by living in nature, and in things here, but we cannot step over it: those who miss Him find Him.
You have known bereavement as we all have, how the shadow of bereavement lies on your spirit, and even the sunshine is tantalising to you, because you think of the one who has departed. But, oh! beloved brethren, if we were in affection for the Lord, how we should miss Him! You would keep on saying, He has been here, but He has gone; and when He was here in this condition of things with which I am familiar - this human life - He found a cross and a grave, that is all. Do you think you would find your home in things here if you realised that? We have to do what is right and proper, but it is in our spirits we miss Him. Sweet it is to come week by week to answer to His appeal of love in the Supper, and to find ourselves with Him and to feel the joyful embrace, “My brethren”. I cannot explain it to you, I am but a little child in these things, but I know what it is to taste it - the embrace. He says, I am glad to have you; you are compensation to Me in all My sorrow. My joy is greater in finding My brethren the other side of death; so the generation is declared on that side.
What is the privilege of it? His Father is our Father, and His God our God. He bears us up there in the sense of that blessed relationship in which He stands, and we may have, in measure, His own feelings in regard to His Father, who is our Father, and to His God, who is our God; to have the same kind of feelings in our hearts towards His God and Father as He has.
I tell you why He breathed into them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost”, John 20: 22. He not only declared the name, but breathed His own risen life into them. Did you ever have the sense of that? Once you taste that, you never forget it and you will never be satisfied till you get this holy joy again: it is a joy that you will never lose.
I have known natural joy - I am not making little of that which is natural, it is of God, but the spiritual is infinitely greater - I have known in my greatest earthly joy that I must lose it; but when I have this joy of which I am speaking, my heart says, I shall never lose it, it is mine for ever.
This is what the Lord is proposing for you, and He declares His generation on the resurrection platform. He does not leave it to angels to say it, He renders it Himself.
Now I want to show you that what produces such a generation is suffering down here. I turn you now to the Acts, where that is indicated. This is a very complete section. At the end of chapter 7 there is a man full of the Holy Ghost, and he looks up steadfastly into heaven. He is the first witness and martyr. He sees Jesus “standing on the right hand of God”, v 56. What is opened up now is a new metropolis: he sees Jesus where He is. It is all over with Jerusalem as a centre, but there is a new metropolis opened up for Stephen; and so, too, the Holy Ghost turns our thoughts to Jesus where He is. Did you realise that when we were singing the hymn?
O Lord, Thy glory we behold,
Though not with mortal eyes.
These mortal eyes have never seen the glory. How can I see it? By the Spirit; so that I may become cognisant by the Spirit of Jesus where He is, and know very well that the spot that claims Jesus is the spot that claims me. I no more belong to this earth than Jesus did. So this beloved man lays down his life; he is persecuted, but he looks up to heaven and sees Jesus there. In his heart he had the peace of the place where Jesus is. We are conscious of storms here, but God is in undisturbed repose.
Stephen stands in that court house, and there is not a friendly face. Is there any trepidation in his heart? Not a bit; the unruffled repose of the place where Jesus is is in the heart of that man in the place where Jesus was. They were gnashing with their teeth, and all the wild waves in the court house were saying, There is no help for him in God. Oh! he says, there is. There is not a flutter in his heart. Is that open to me as I pass through this world, that I may have the peace of the place where Jesus is in the place where Jesus was? Yes, it is.
The man in chapter 8 had been to Jerusalem, but he finds no rest in ordinances. Jerusalem will not satisfy him, he comes back with a weary heart. Who will satisfy him? Jesus. He was reading a roll; he was reading that wonderful chapter in Isaiah, but not the atoning part of it. It says there, “the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”. But it was not that part he was reading. “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter”, &c, Isa 53: 6. “He was cut off out of the land of the living”; he read that. “Understandest thou what thou readest?” said the Lord's messenger to him. The peculiarity of the passage is, that he was reading the part which speaks of His being cut off out of the land of the living. He says, “of whom speaketh the prophet this?” It was Jesus. Was Jesus cut off? Yes, and had nothing. Oh! says he, it is all over with me; so he was baptised; and his baptism meant this, he accepted the cutting off. If you accept the privilege you must accept the suffering. If His life is taken from the earth my life goes too.
Do you recognise the fact (how many of us do?) that Christianity is essentially a suffering thing: that we are not Jews? A young lady said to me, ‘l am greatly distressed and greatly tried. How is it the wicked prosper, and God’s dear people have to pass through so many and such peculiar trials?’ I said to her, ‘We are not Jews, we are Christians’. A Jew expected favour from God on this earth; we are Christians. A great deal of prosperity here is the result of self-will and moral departure from the truth, and prosperity weakens us. There is such a thing as the curse of prosperity. Do not think so much of it. God may permit circumstances to be such so that you may prosper, only it is excessively dangerous: you need special grace for such circumstances. Christianity is essentially a suffering thing down here, but there is great compensation. So we have to accept the suffering side; the eunuch did in his baptism. He was cut off, and had nothing, and the eunuch accepted the situation. Those who accept the situation in regard to suffering will know what it is to be sustained by glory. All through, Christianity is a suffering thing; I beg your acceptance of that, it would save us from a thousand and one disappointments if we did. Christianity in its essence is nothing here and everything there. I am not asking you to do anything extravagant, I am asking you to face out the fact that the generation is not only a generation of privilege but a generation of suffering. If we have His place before the Father we have His place before the world.
One other word. The generation is down here to hold forth the word of life - that is, to be in testimony to God. What a blessed thing! The angels might envy us our position now. I am left down here to set forth God. That is the point where we come back to the gospels, doing the will of His Father, who is in heaven. It is the answer in our hearts to the sowing of the word. If I think of the sowing, the word is the revelation of God; if I think of the reception, it is an honest and good and upright heart; if I think of the realisation, it is joy. What I enjoy becomes light to other people. The word of God is the revelation of God to me, that I might receive it in uprightness. I receive it, not with joy but in my conscience; it goes down and produces self-judgment in me, but the happy result is that it becomes life to me; and what becomes life to me is light to other people.
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure”, Phil 3: 12, 13. I ask you to consider such a thing, that it is possible for us to be down here for the will and pleasure of God. It is an opportunity that is afforded us that will not be afforded us by-and-by, that in the midst of a generation where men are doing their own will, we are left here to set forth God. Therefore God works in you. How little we have thought of this passage! How many times have I said, If I could only get some one to tell me how it is He works in me, and what it is He works in me! Well, He works in me that which answers to what He is in Himself. He presents Himself to me in Christ so that I might know Him, and He works in me the answer to what is in Himself - divine love. If I think of God, He can say, I am, I will, I do. I am, and because I am, I will and I do. He wills that which is according to what He is, and He produces that which is according to what He is. I am, I will, I do.
Now let us look at the other side. I am, but not the same as God, that is what He works in me; it is the answer in me to what is in Christ. I could not be it without Him, because the revelation is in Him. I am, I will, I do. What we need to be exercised about is our being; often we think of doing. There is the being, the willing, the doing. The doing is that He works in you efficaciously by the Spirit, the answer to Himself in love. The divine stature of every one of us lies in love. That is your true I; that is, you are identified with what God is. He is love, and that is your true I. If I think of light, it is the revelation of God to me that becomes life in me, and that is light to other people. “Holding forth the word of life”, that people may learn what God is in us. Christ was God, there was the revelation of God in Him; but, beloved brethren, we are to hold forth the word of life.
People ask sometimes about conversions. I remember once going to see a man who confessed Christ in a gospel meeting. A man came up to me and said, ‘I have come to Christ through the preaching’. I replied, ‘I will come and see you to-morrow morning’. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘I shall not be on duty’. I went next morning, and in the course of conversation 1 said to him, ‘When did this begin with you?’ ‘Oh’, he said, ‘it was Charlie did it. Don't you know Charlie? He did it’. He was a simple man. ‘Charlie was a man I worked with, and he was converted three years ago and he lived so before me’. He was holding forth the word of life; that is what we want, not fine preaching but fine living. How easy it was to stand up and speak to a man whose conscience had been reached by a man working beside him on the railway. That is what we want. I have often said that if I were a tradesman I would like to be an evangelical tradesman, and give good weight. I would not like to give the impression I was overreaching people; it is a horrid thing for a Christian to be like that. I would like to give the people I meet with every day the impression that I had to do with God, and that I knew God. You might have all the preachers in the world, but what affects people is life - “holding forth the word of life”, morally presenting God to people. Such a generation becomes a testimony; it is setting forth what God is. A generation according to purpose.
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From ‘The Believer’s Friend’, 1918