SETTLED FACTS
A. J. E. Welch
God’s glad tidings present to men great
accomplished facts, things which cannot be questioned, matters which stand immutable beyond every question which men may venture to bring. We have often noticed how in this powerful address after Pentecost Peter presents the facts, but in a manner which is intended to affect every one of us. I have to ask myself, Where do I stand in reference to these great facts of which Peter is speaking? He spoke nearly twenty centuries ago, but the facts remain; they remain unchangeable, and men are brought by God’s word to see where they stand in reference to the facts.
What these remarkable passages that I have read particularly lead to is the wonderful fact of a living Man in heaven, a glorious Man, and in consequence of His exaltation the Holy Spirit come here, come into God’s house here. These are facts that remain, facts which in their bearing remain the same. Though the times, in the sense of what men do, have changed so remarkably since these words were spoken, the glorious facts remain. And I have to ask myself, What is my life in reference to that glorious Man up there and to the Holy Spirit here? Have you a link with Christ up there? Is He the absorbing object of that heart of yours?
Does He in His glory, being who He is, and if I may use the expression with reverence, being what He is up there, eclipse everything else that men might present to you? He is a heavenly Christ, a Man in heaven, One to whom God has committed everything, One who is perfectly competent to have everything according to God under His hand. He shall come into the scene from which He was rejected, spurned and crucified, in the might of power, and secure everything in perfect order according to God. What link have you here and now with that glorious Person, a living, glorified Man who has none the less His eye upon you? As you read the Scriptures and hear the word His eye is upon you. We are not
speaking of things as men speak of history, we are not speaking of things as mere information, the point is the blessed, glorious reality of a living Man being in heaven exalted into the place of pre-eminence by God, and the blessed Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, having come.
What do these things mean to you? It is a terrible thing to be outside of them; God has no thought that you should be outside of them. We have been speaking of God’s grace, and God’s grace is surpassingly wonderful in the way it works with men, women, and young persons, but it works in connection with Christ where He is in the glory. What is He to you?
There was adequate witness as He was here, “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, as yourselves know”. What a penetrating, powerful word! What an exposure of the world that cast Him out!
Perhaps some of us need that, a real exposure of the world that rejected Him in all its elements and aspects; what men speak of as the cultured ones as well as the morally hateful ones are features of the world that rejected Christ. It is a challenge whether we are clinging to any of the features of that world, even features which may not be grossly immoral or offensive but which none the less spring up out of the world that has rejected the Lord of glory.
“As yourselves know—him, given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”. God was in this matter; this would baffle many of Peter’s hearers, rejecting Christ as they had done, to be assured that God was in their rejecting Him in the sense that He was to go vicariously into death. How marvellously God works; but He does not work as men away from Him might determine. He is not hindered by what the thoughts of men might
be; He is God, He is able to intervene in His own way. But why does He intervene? For blessing, to secure your heart for Christ, to secure you as knowing the blessedness of the gift of the Holy Spirit, to be in the full light of God as His glad tidings would present Him to you.
That is the thought with God. It was necessary that that glorious Person should die. Have we a true judgment of sin? Are we apt in these days in which we live to be so much affected by the course of things that surrounds us that our judgment of sin is blunted? Let us get our eye on the cross of Jesus, “ye, by the hand of lawless men, have crucified and slain”. What was seen in Jesus was a spotless life which none could call in question, a life lived under the eye of God and fragrant to Him in every detail of it. It set forth the divine ideal in man in an absolutely unqualified sense, yet such a life as this was brought to an end, as the outward appearance would support, by lawless men in crucifying Him.
I say ‘the outward appearance’ because the outward side was that lawless men placed Him on the cross to die; the other side of the matter, the divine side of the matter, is that He laid down His life. He did it, He laid down His life, and that on your account. There could be no modifying of divine judgment as to sin, and the purging of the guilt of your sins could only be by the bearing of that guilt by Jesus upon the cross, forsaken by God. There is the outward side of the matter and there is the divine side of the matter, and God would bring you into His side of the matter, what Jesus has effected for Him—and for you too, according to the riches of His grace.
Could there be anyone here who would stand alongside those who rejected Him? It was “by the hand of lawless men”, and yet the lawless men were not the sole ones who had the guilt, “him ye, by the hand of lawless men, have crucified and slain”. You might say it is the solemn, divine view of the nation of Israel as having rejected Christ, but the gentile nations came into it, as we know, and endorsed the rejection, and the world endorses it still. You may not credit that. It is something that some people find very hard to accept, an assertion that the world endorses His rejection still. Go out into Nostrand Avenue and preach Christ, and you may find one here and one there who is attracted and will say, ‘I love the Lord Jesus, He is my Saviour; I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ’. There are such, thank God, but as to the crowd that passes down Nostrand Avenue, what will you actually experience from them? They will pass on, their steps will quicken; they do not want to hear about Jesus. Their consciences may be exposed, and yet they do not want to hear about Jesus. And yet we have in mind the wonderful facts, that He went to the cross, He suffered and died there. His precious blood was shed as the soldier smote His side; the atonement was wrought in suffering and death and bloodshed by Jesus, and it is a glorious, completed matter. That is the fact; there is nothing more to be done; the one sacrifice has taken place and God has borne witness to His absolute acceptance of it. How? By raising Jesus from the dead.
I am impressed today with the need of getting a greater sense of resurrection power, the power that raised up Jesus, the power that has its bearing upon those who love Him, to set them free from the whole dominion of death in the scene out of which Christ died. Though we be in it as to our bodies and walk for a little time until He come. He would free us from the dominion of death and bring us into the glorious light of life as we know it in Him. God has raised Him, “Whom God has
raised up, having loosed the pains of death, inasmuch as it was not possible that he should be held by its power”. It was not possible that He who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, He who went that way entirely vicariously (that is, on account of others and not on account of any need of His own) could be held by death. He came out of death in the might of His power. “This Jesus has God raised up, whereof all we are witnesses”. Notice how that is emphasized, the reality of the fact that God has raised Him, and that as being raised He had to do with His disciples for forty days before He went into heaven. That is, men were to be brought into the real experience of having to do with a Man raised from the dead, even Jesus, that their thoughts might be not limited to what lies on this side of death but transferred to the glory of a Man out of death. And we need to have our minds transferred from the scene of death, and what belongs to it, to a scene that is dominated by Christ, whom death cannot touch, and have Him as the contemplation of our hearts.
So he goes on, “Having therefore been exalted by the right hand of God”—exalted, given the highest place; the right hand of God is the place of power. What a time it will be when Jesus comes in power and takes up His rights in this very scene! I was impressed by that this morning as we gathered to break bread. We gather in the light of the fact that He is rejected here, and we feel His rejection and His absence, but this very scene is yet to witness the glory and power in which He shall come and display perfect competence to hold everything according to God—all in the hand of one glorious Man. What the world is looking for is a man that has the competence to hold rule and to keep peace and to prevent insurrection.
There is only one glorious Man that shall do it, and that
is Jesus. The confusion of these times politically, commercially, and socially should have its voice to all of us, a negative voice maybe, but a strong one, to turn us to Jesus as the One by whom everything shall be set in order at His coming. When you see the disorder you think of how these things will work when Christ is on the throne, when His sway is extended everywhere, when everything shall be in a moral order that has never been seen before.
Yet that same glorious Person, exalted as He is, would engage and fill your heart here and now. You do not have to wait for His public manifestation; we may have to wait for a little for that, but you do not have to wait to come into the knowledge and appreciation of the self-same glorious Person who shall come in a cloud from heaven with mighty power. He would have you to know Him tonight, to have Him to fill your heart tonight, to have Him to fill your life. All these things are great facts—His death is a fact, the shedding of His precious blood is a fact, His burial is a fact, His rising is a fact, His exaltation is a glorious fact, and you have to examine where you stand in respect of all these great facts. They are things that are immutable; men may seek to criticise and to invalidate them in their wicked arguments, but they stand as being of God.
Then Peter says, “having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which ye behold and hear”; he is referring to the fact that the Holy Spirit had come; and He is still here. Do you know the Spirit? Are you conscious of having received the Spirit?
Do you find something in yourself that gives you an impression of the exceeding love of Christ, and links your heart with Himself up there? It is the Holy Spirit who delights to do that. Do you find power to reject what is not of Christ? The Holy
Spirit gives power to reject what is not of Christ. If you find difficulty, find yourself being drawn away perhaps into the elements of the world that refused Him, turn to God and seek the gift of the Holy Spirit, intensely real as it is in the sense of power. He will go with you every moment of the day. One who will witness in that heart of yours to things which are not of God, warn you against them, and give you power to turn from them. But He will always turn your heart to Jesus to find some fresh glory that you have never discerned before in that glorious Person, and give you to know the reality of life in relation to Christ in glory. That is life, real life!
The blessedness of that is, something which perhaps some of us have never yet fully touched; but the reality of a life that is lived in relation to a glorified Christ and enjoyed in the gift of the Spirit is something which God would have us brought to as we hear His word to us. It enters into the whole life of the person. How many, alas, there are who think of christianity, to use a very common expression, as a one-day-a-week matter. In fact it is to be, according to God, a continual matter, a matter of the most precious enjoyment; there is a spring of power that gives strength for a responsible walk here under the eye of God that is pleasing to Him, and that is what is in mind. May this be the issue of the bearing of these facts upon every one of us. The facts cannot be changed, but the point of God’s word to us, as it goes out in this favoured time, is where each one of us stands in reference to the glorious facts which God presents to us. May He bless His word for His name’s sake.
Preaching in Brooklyn, N.Y.
19 November 1978