THE WORD OF GOD
1 Corinthians 1:27-29; Isaiah 55:6-9; Luke 2:8-14; John 4:1-7, 15-19, 24-26, 28-30, 39-42;
Luke 23:39-47; Acts 2:22-24, 34-38
The notice board outside the hall refers to this preaching as the Word of God, and that is a big claim. When I stand up as I do now, the nature of the responsibility that lies on me to preach the Word of God often burdens me, because the Word of God is absolutely unique and distinctive. It deals with the needs of men, but I believe that in its fulness it gives something of the sweep of the greatness of God’s ways that not only deals with the needs of men, but accomplishes what will be for the pleasure of God eternally. That is a magnificent, elevated, glorious message to be able to proclaim. The Word of God meets needs, but it also has in view the fulness of the accomplishment of all the ways of God.
Now, there is plenty of concern about needs in the world; they are on every hand. We could have ideas about how some of these might be met; we could look at the prominent issues of the day. We could consider what is happening in Syria and the Middle East; we could talk about Scottish independence, we could talk about all sorts of things that would be viewed as pressing issues of the day, and we could offer opinions on them. We would simply be engaging in what is being multiplied time after time throughout this land and throughout the rest of the world. Men are using the resourcefulness, the inspiration that they might think they have, to try to solve the difficulties that beset mankind, and are making proposals for their resolution. But even where they might be successful, they would never have anything like the scope of the Word of God, which ultimately has in view the glory of God eternally. So the Word of God is a very different kind of message; it operates at a completely different level. God takes a different way from any other approach, and what I would like to do is to be able to convey something of the magnificence of this in one or two examples from the New Testament.
I have read in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. The apostle Paul was instructed by God to go to Corinth; he was told that God had “much people in this city” (Acts 18:10), and I think that must have surprised Paul. Corinth was a city which had a unique reputation for its evil, and it had had that reputation for half a millennium. That God would have many people in Corinth was beyond imagining. But that is what God told Paul, and the way in which the Word was going to be preached to the Corinthians, the way that Paul would approach it, is given in these few verses that we have read. On the one hand, there was Corinth’s commercial success and on the other its unspeakable corruption. There was the power of a Roman colony and a heritage of Greek wisdom. All the things that went into the melting pot as far as human affairs were there in Corinth. But God said that none of these things would have any significance whatsoever in the approach that He was going to have to the many people that He had in Corinth, those that Paul could describe as the “assembly of God which is in Corinth”, 1 Cor.1:2. Paul indicated the way in which God operates, and it is beyond anything that the normal intellectual approach of man, or any other kind of approach, would ever imagine.
Paul wrote “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world, that he may put to shame the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world, that he may put to shame the strong things; and the ignoble things of the world, and the despised, has God chosen”. You might say, that is a most bizarre choice, “the ignoble things of the world, and the despised, has God chosen, and things that are not, that he may annul the things that are”. But that was the approach that God took to dealing with the intractability of Corinth, and God was going to have glory from it. He was going to bring men into salvation and He was going to glorify Himself in the preaching of the word.
I have read briefly in Isaiah. I think there is confirmation there that what God did at Corinth was not a new departure for Him. Isaiah belonged to a completely different time, hundreds of years before Paul wrote to Corinth. What the apostle Paul wrote to Corinth in effect was “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts”. Now you might say that that is a bit different from Corinth, because Isaiah is not talking about ignoble things and weak things. But I think Isaiah is talking about what God is doing morally at a surpassingly elevated level. So once again we see, in principle, the fact that God’s ways really have not changed. They have become clear as the work of Christ has been unfolded. Things have been clarified as to the way God would work, but in principle God always operates at a different level.
There is another reason for referring to this scripture here. It says: “Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon”. What we have referred to thus far is what God does on the one hand, and without God’s activity there is no prospect of anything happening at all. On the other hand, you and I and every other man or woman, young or old, have a responsibility to answer to that. While God operates, the glad tidings are preached to people who are responsible, and the word that is spoken requires a response on your part. The gospel is not simply an outline of the greatness of what God is doing; there is a moral challenge in the glad tidings that has to be taken up. Notice how the prophet puts it “Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found”; that is an instruction. When the apostle Paul was preaching to the Athenians, he said that God “enjoins men that they shall all everywhere repent”, Acts 17:30. Now, that is a strong word. An injunction is something that you have to do. We are not talking about choices here, but about things which are enjoined by God of responsible people, that there may be a response to what He makes known in the glad tidings. “Let the wicked forsake his way”. Ultimately the ways of God will be moral. Things are as they should not be because of a moral challenge to God by the god of this world, and therefore the moral issue has to be faced. “Let the wicked forsake his way”. The apostle Paul had preached in Ephesus, “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21), and these were things that had to be embraced. We have to forsake our own way, “Let the wicked forsake his way”. That is part of the glad tidings. You might say, ‘I find it difficult’, and do not we all, because of what we are as sons of Adam? But we find that God will provide a power to enable us to walk in a way in which, practically and effectively, the way of the wicked is forsaken. It is by the power of the blessed Holy Spirit, and that is part of the preaching of the glad tidings. It is part of the resource that is communicated to enable us to walk here in a way that pleases God and gives Him glory in a universe where His holiness has been challenged.
It says “the unrighteous man his thoughts”; now that is a challenge to every one of us. What we do is evident, but this goes as far as our thoughts. The word of God is discerning according to the epistle to the Hebrews, “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”, Heb.4:12. The word of God comes and discerns the distinction of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Then, “and let him return to Jehovah, and he will have mercy upon him”. This is one of the wonderful dimensions of the glad tidings, that God is a merciful God. Where there is no claim upon God, where things have been forfeited because of evil and there is no way of providing a remedy by one’s own efforts, we find that we are dealing with a merciful God. Then “and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon”; this is the evangelist of the Old Testament preaching, and the wonderful way in which pardon is available becomes very clear in the New Testament. What I would like to do is to look at the circumstances of the incoming of the Lord Jesus along those lines.
We know how Jesus was born of Mary when she and Joseph arrived at Bethlehem. As to external circumstances, this was because the Roman emperor was interested in knowing how big his empire was. It was a census that took Joseph to Bethlehem; because of his lineage, that is where he would be registered in the census roll. A Roman emperor was seeking to gratify his pride by operating a census and disturbing the whole of the Roman empire in order to know how big it was. That was what was happening at man’s level. In terms of what existed in Bethlehem, it was part of the land of Judӕa which had been overrun by the Romans and the rulers there, by turns, sought to ingratiate themselves with the Romans, or attempted to overthrow the yoke under which they were. That is the way the people round about Bethlehem were operating; these were the considerations of the day. If you had lived at the time of this census, these would have been the things that everyone would have been talking about and which would have affected your daily routine. And how does God deal with it? He comes in, in the person of the Lord Jesus, as a Babe. The manner of approach is totally different, and to whom is this communicated? It is communicated to “shepherds in that country abiding without, and keeping watch by night over their flock”.
If there were people who were out of the mainstream of life, I would imagine it might be these shepherds. They were abiding without, and I think that is a little hint about their manner of life. They were not in the mainstream of Jewish life, nor in the mainstream of the life of anyone who formed part of the Roman empire. They watched by night over their flock, and it was to them that the angel of the Lord appeared “and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they feared with great fear”. This was God’s intervention, and if we think back to the way in which God approaches men in the section that we read in 1 Corinthians, these shepherds, I think, bear the character and the tone of that. It was to them that this great communication was made, “And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I announce to you glad tidings of great joy”. It was a completely different message; not the oppressive obligations of meeting the demands of Augustus in his census, but “glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people”. How comprehensive the Word was; “for to-day a Saviour has been born to you in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord”. The moral aspect is not pressed heavily on the shepherds, but they are told about a Saviour. They are not exactly told about a Saviour for the rest of humanity; this would be a Saviour for them. Whatever their distinction by being given this message, these shepherds nonetheless needed a Saviour, and this was part of the message of blessing and glory that was given to them. The message of “glad tidings of great joy”, “for to-day a Saviour has been born to you in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord”. You might say, ‘That is a magnificent Personage, that must have the authorities sitting up and taking notice! What does the Roman governor think about that?’, a Saviour “who is Christ the Lord”. This is the Messiah that the Jews have been waiting for; this must overturn everything. I think that there is a strong indication here of what the apostle outlined in principle in the first Epistle to the Corinthians when he wrote about the weak things and the ignoble things. This is the way that Jesus Christ came in, “And this is the sign to you: ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and lying in a manger”. Could you imagine anything more lowly than that? This was not a Babe that had been brought in to fine circumstances or even ordinary circumstances; He had been brought into circumstances of extreme poverty. If you had found this Babe lying in an animal’s feeding trough in Bethlehem, then you would have known that this “is Christ the Lord”. The ignoble things, the poor things, the weak things; the incoming of Jesus indicates how God was operating.
Now I want to touch on John chapter 4. Jesus was moving through Judӕa, and found that He had to leave Judӕa because of circumstances and go into Galilee, “And he must needs pass through Samaria” and “Jesus therefore, being wearied with the way he had come, sat just as he was at the fountain”. He encountered a woman. This chapter is about a weary Man and a poor woman. Once again, we see here how God operates. Jesus had accepted the conditions of humanity, and so unceasing was His activity in His commitment to the will of His Father that it has to say of Him here “Jesus therefore, being wearied with the way he had come, sat just as he was at the fountain”. “Just as he was”; how was that? Well, He was weary, that is how He sat. Can you just picture a wearied Man sitting down at the side of a fountain? Now, we have not read the whole story, but a woman came to get water. Obviously, she was not in magnificent circumstances, and her situation was such that she needed to come and draw water from the well. This is not a picture of affluence, or prosperity, having to carry a vessel from a well back to her home. The Lord Jesus spoke to her; the detail of that has been covered many times; most of us will be familiar with it. But the Lord Jesus spoke to her in spite of His weariness, He spoke to her in a way that engaged her attention sufficiently for her to say to Him “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst nor come here to draw”. He had spoken about how a well of water springing up into eternal life was what He could provide her with, and this had engaged her attention. She did not expect that from a weary Man sitting at the fountain, a Man so weak that He had to ask her to give Him to drink. This came like a word, I think, from a very different place.
So Jesus told her to “Go, call thy husband”, and we find a little indication of the confusion and the distress that must have surrounded this woman’s life. The Lord Jesus described the person that she was living with as “not thy husband”. There had been one failed relationship after another. The nature of this woman’s life raised a moral issue, and yet how gently Jesus does it. He did not drive her away. Later on she said to Him “Sir, I see that thou art a prophet”. She was aware of being exposed to the gaze of heaven. She was exposed to Jesus; she was exposed to God Himself. She then referred to worship and, most remarkably, the Lord Jesus took her up on that and He told her about worship, “God is a spirit; and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth”. So the woman then referred to “Messias”, and Jesus said to her “I who speak to thee am he”. He had taken her a way that did not give her a moment’s opportunity to say ‘That is far too big a claim from a poor Man like you’. It was unthinkable, given the way that this woman had been taken, that she should speak like that. The Lord Jesus, the One who was wearied with the way He had come and sat by the fountain, spoke with the power of the Messias Himself. Now, she went into the city and bore a testimony there, “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done: is not he the Christ?” People knew what she had done, and there was a huge moral dimension to that, yet she was happy to speak as she did, and she said “is not he the Christ?”
There was a little intermission where the Lord Jesus dealt with His disciples, but in verse 39, we see something of the power of her testimony. It says they “believed on him because of the word of the woman who bore witness”. Such had been the impact of this encounter with Jesus Christ that this woman, who would have no authority in the town whatsoever – she would have been an object of contempt and derision – could speak with the Samaritans, and they “believed on him because of the word of the woman who bore witness, He told me all things that I had ever done”. He then spent two days there, and what they were brought to was a conviction in themselves. Things were becoming closer and more personal; the inhabitants of the city were having to come to a conclusion for themselves, “It is no longer on account of thy saying that we believe, for we have heard him ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world”. That is the Person whom we preach; this is the poor Man who was “wearied with the way he had come” and sat down at the fountain. This is the way that God operates. My desire is that something of the power of this Person would affect every one of us, so that each one of us, individually, would be able to speak about our own encounter, by faith, with Jesus Christ.
At the end of Luke’s gospel, there is another scene. Jesus was being crucified. We have often spoken about His crucifixion, we have often read this chapter; the hideous awfulness of a crucifixion would be difficult to comprehend. We are spared this; we are grateful for such developments that there may have been under God’s merciful hand that prevent us from having to be witnesses of a scene such as is portrayed here. Anyone who passed would have seen three people being executed and suffering the most hideous and extreme agonies. Jesus was crucified with two men, one on either side, and there was a discussion between them. One of them offered a reproach and the other one engaged in a discussion with Jesus Himself. I would imagine that this was completely without precedent. Anyone suffering crucifixion would be at the extremity of distraction with their own misery, but here is someone who is so affected by the power of the presence of the Lord Jesus that, in circumstances of such grave extremity, he can say, “Dost thou too not fear God, thou that art under the same judgment? and we indeed justly, for we receive the just recompense of what we have done”. This was a man who was repenting as he hung on a cross. This is utterly exceptional; then he said “but this man has done nothing amiss”. There was recognition of the fact that he as an unrighteous man was being crucified by the side of the One who in the Acts is called the righteous One.
So he said “this man has done nothing amiss” and what a blessing he got. He asked to be remembered when the Lord came in His kingdom. Had a man in the process of being crucified ever been credited with the prospect of a kingdom? It is beyond imagining. But this man had grasped something of the character of the Person who was hanging beside him. This of course was communicated to him by the work of God in his soul. Jesus said “Verily I say to thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”. Can you imagine a greater transformation from this desperate scene here than to be with Christ in paradise? I do not know how big a transformation your life may need, but can there be a greater transformation than we have here, from the extremity of crucifixion to being with Christ in paradise? It is the blessing that is promised to everyone who accepts that what proceeded from the sixth hour to the ninth hour was effective in removing sin as an offence to God, completely and eternally. You can lay hold of that by faith, and you can have Christ Himself as your Saviour.
The centurion was someone who was sufficiently hardened by experience to be in charge of this event, I would suppose, and he sees Someone laying down His life in a way that he had never witnessed before. “Now the centurion, seeing what took place, glorified God, saying, In very deed this man was just”. He was situated very differently from the thief on the cross, but a similar transformation was wrought in his soul.
I read in the Acts because it relates to our time, the Christian period. The women in John chapter 4 and the scene at Golgotha were during the life of Jesus Christ, but in the passage that we have read in the early Acts, Jesus Christ was no longer on this earth. He had risen from among the dead, a fact established by witness. That is how confident you can be of the resurrection; it is established by witness. For forty days, Jesus had walked in resurrection, known to His own, in circumstances of His own choosing. He had been taken up into heaven, and again there was witness to that. He went into heaven, we can say confidently, because He was seen doing that and, according to His promise, the Holy Spirit had come upon those whom He had left behind. There was this immensely powerful testimony that went out by virtue of the power of the Holy Spirit here. I suppose Jerusalem would have been full of people at this time. They may have gone there for the passover, and remained for the feast of Pentecost, and you can see the enormous geographical sweep of where they had come from. This became the opportunity for the spread of the great things of God according to verse 11, “we hear them speaking in our own tongues the great things of God”. Nobody expected this. The Jewish religious authorities could not endure the challenge of the teaching and practice of Jesus, and the Roman governor had been overwhelmed by the insistent demands of the Jews. Both difficulties seemed to have been resolved by the crucifixion of Jesus, according to human modes of thought. God then acts, and the Holy Spirit is given as a result of the glorification of Jesus; He came here to bear testimony to Jesus glorified. And so people heard the great things of God.
We read about the way in which Peter spoke. The very people who had put Jesus on a cross are addressed in this preaching by Peter in these words; “Jesus the Nazarӕan, a man borne witness to by God to you by works of power and wonders and signs, which God wrought by him in your midst”. These things could not be contested; they had had the benefit of the Saviour, the Son of God, in their midst, and had treated Him according to these words: “him, given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye, by the hand of lawless men, have crucified and slain”. They were guilty of this unspeakable evil, but God used the evil of men. We return to 1 Corinthians chapter 1; this way in which God operates is beyond the imagining of men. Can God use the hatred and the murderous instincts of men? Can God use that? Well, according to Peter, Jesus had been taken by lawless men and crucified and slain, but he had been “given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”. God works in this way, and finally Peter concluded his word: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I have put thine enemies to be the footstool of thy feet. Let the whole house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him, this Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ”. Peter in effect said, ‘This is your Messiah, and this is the One who has universal dominion’. What a powerful effect it had, “they were pricked in heart, and said to Peter and the other apostles, What shall we do, brethren?” And the word was “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. Here we have repentance once again, and the name of Jesus Christ recognised for remission of sins, “and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. The men who demanded His crucifixion were being given the offer of the indwelling Spirit of God.
So we return again to the magnificence and the absolute superiority of the ways of God, that those who were responsible for His crucifixion were offered the wonderful opportunity of repentance and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Well, these gifts are not diminished. You can be brought in to be able to live practically and powerfully above the instincts that may have driven you before, to live by a new principle by the reception of the Spirit of God. May we all have this blessing, for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Linlithgow
29 September 2013
J. M. Macfarlane