“THE MAN”
Leonard Barlow
Isaiah 32: 1,2; 53: 1-8; John 19: 1-6; 1 Timothy 2: 1-7 (to “apostle”); Acts 2: 32-36
I make no apologies for reading several scriptures although fully aware that those present, no doubt, know full well the scriptures read. One of the things found so often in reading scripture is that something fresh and living comes into your heart. How wonderful the scriptures are! When you get older maybe you begin to appreciate the scriptures more and more because, as the Lord Jesus said, “they it is which bear witness concerning me”, John 5:39. Sometimes it might be well to present something of the terms of the gospel on such an occasion especially in regard to persons who may need help as to them. However the greatest setting out of these is found in the epistle to the Romans, and yet at the beginning of that epistle Paul says, it is “God’s glad tidings … concerning his Son … Jesus Christ our Lord” (ch. 1: 1-4). So that, if it is the setting out of the terms of the gospel, the subject is one glorious, blessed Person.
The scripture read at the beginning in Isaiah is of special comfort in the day in which we find ourselves. Everything around, you might say, is marked by confusion whilst matters of judgment seem all awry. Possibly there was never such a day when universally there was so much perversion of what is right. How comforting to have the light in your soul that there is a king who is going to “reign in righteousness” and princes who are going to “rule in judgment”. Perfect administration and control. It is not very far off – although it is not right to speculate when – it could happen in a very few years time, in less than a decade, when that glorious Person is going to take up His rights here, when He will exercise universal dominion. It will not be that men will have necessarily changed. But conditions will have been changed because all will be under that glorious King who is going to “reign in righteousness”. Alas, as another has said, what is often scarce amongst believers is hope. Oh that in all the confusion and everything that so readily may cast us down, God may afresh lift up our hearts in the glorious hope of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, not only to take those who belong to Him to be with Himself, but the day when He is going to be fully vindicated! That blessed Person who was cast out and rejected here is going to reign. God would encourage our hearts that we might be looking up and thinking of that day as those who love His appearing.
Well, the scripture also goes on to refer to “a man” and that really is the burden of the message this evening. To occupy you with a blessed Man, a Man who is “as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the storm; as brooks of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land”. That is what He would be to anyone at the present time. Though assuring to have the outlook of Him coming, this scripture draws our attention to “A man” as another said, “a man called Jesus”. Mr. Darby says as to the greatness of that Person, He never ceased to be what He was because of what He became, but He was perfect in what He became. A perfect Man, a real Man though no mere man, yet a real Man! Speaking reverently, He had all the sensibilities of a man, sin apart, and that is the glorious Person who is presented in the glad tidings. He is the One who on an occasion like this – and that is what is sought above all else – might draw near to us and just implant some fresh view of Himself, maybe if needed, “as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the storm; as brooks of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land”. This is a thirsty land, for there is nothing here to satisfy. What needs there are! What storms there are, adverse winds that are blowing! What pressure there, is yet this Man would be such to all who have their faith and trust in Him. What a resource!
My mind was thus directed to Isaiah 53. How challenging as to whether we do believe; however it was the scripture that the eunuch was reading in Acts. He was going through that desert, a thirsty place where there are winds and storms. He had just been up to Jerusalem in the place where, I suppose, he most would have expected to have found something that would satisfy his soul, in which was a crying need. He is going back disappointed, but is reading the scriptures. Do you? Oh I think that is beautiful, for the Eternal God’s eye was upon that man as he went back on that journey from Jerusalem he where had not found anything to satisfy his heart. How good to think of that scene. God’s eye is upon persons, especially those who might be seeking and who have not found any satisfaction, and His desire is to draw attention to the blessed Man in whom the answer is alone to be found. So he transports the most effective preacher of the day, the only man, I think, who is referred to as an evangelist. Oh to be truly evangelical like Anna. I am not talking about being asked to preach. An evangelist is one who can be used by God to bring souls to Jesus, “evangelise Him”, who can present that Person in such a way that the heart of another is attracted towards Him, like John the Baptist. You think of God’s concern for souls, looking down on persons who are seeking and have no satisfaction, and using every means possible in His grace to reach them. Think of Him using Phillip the evangelist and causing him to go right into a desert alongside of one man in order that he might learn about this Man who was “a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the storm” and the One who could satisfy his thirst. What a Person He is! Isaiah 53 does not tell us who He is. I have often been struck by that, that there are certain passages in scripture which are not exactly explained in themselves. I suppose if I had been reading this as an Israelite, not that I could exactly put myself in that place, I too would have wondered who this Person was. Is this the Messiah? (They will recognise Him as such in a shortly coming day). It does not say anything about Him being the Messiah. It speaks about the One of whom it is said, “For he shall grow up before him as a tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground”. In other words, it speaks of the lowly, wonderful way in which the Lord Jesus came into this scene as a babe in Bethlehem’s manger, growing up, not seeking to make Himself exactly in favour with men although in one sense He could not do otherwise because of the moral excellency of His manhood. But He was not growing up before men; He was growing up before God. What pleasure, infinite pleasure, God found in the pathway of that glorious Person! One of the things surely that God most appreciated was the absolute, unqualified obedience that marked that blessed Person. He Himself says elsewhere, “on this account the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again … I have received this commandment of my Father”, John 10: 17,18. What a wonderful thing to think in the scene which was marked on every hand by disobedience, there was a glorious Person marked by perfect obedience. This involved His downward movements and therefore no place in man’s world for “he hath no form nor lordliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him”. Another has said He would not have made a successful merchant or General, but how delightful He was as His servant in the sight of God.
And then it goes on to speak about Him. Oh to know Him better, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hide their faces”. He was down here in a scene of misery, scene of sorrow, but how Luke loves to portray Him in the movements of His heart! Constantly we are provided with touches like, He “was moved with compassion”. Some of us were reminded this afternoon as we were reading in Matthew’s gospel, of those two blind men who called upon Him. It says, “Jesus, having stopped”, then “Jesus, moved with compassion” (ch. 20: 32, 34). Oh, how beautiful it is! For the prophet proceeds “surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; and we, we did regard him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted”. But think of the way He allowed men to treat Him! You cannot help wondering at it, can you? When you think of who He was, the Creator of the universe, the One “without him not one thing received being which has received being” (John 1:3), and yet here as a blessed Man entering into the sorrows of others and bearing their guilt. “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed”. God would engage us with Him tonight, and none else. He would remind us of the way He has been, what He has done, what He has suffered. It goes on to speak of it: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, but he opened not his mouth; he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and was as a sheep dumb before her shearers, and he opened not his mouth”. What beautiful perfection was seen in those final steps of the pathway of Jesus!
You ponder about those earlier years, the best part of which we are told little about, those thirty years prior to His public ministry. We get touches, but what is brought out even there was His committal and obedience. He says, “did ye not know that I ought to be occupied in my Father’s business?” (Luke 2: 49), then immediately afterwards He was subject to His parents. What a feature that is! You think of the king that is going to reign in righteousness who was Himself the obedient, subject One, the One who “becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross”, Phil 2: 8. That is the One whom God has “highly exalted … and granted him a name, that which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow”, Phil 2: 9,10. Because of who He is, it is right that every knee should bow to Him, but, if I may speak reverently He is entitled to it because of what He has done, because of what He is as a blessed Man that every knee should bow to Him and every tongue confess Him as Lord.
I wanted just to draw attention to that touch in John’s gospel because it might be asked, well who is this Man? Pilate says, “Behold the man!” Acts presented to you as He was to that crowd. Just cast your minds back to what is seen in those earlier verses, a Man who had been scourged, a Man who we are told elsewhere had been spat upon, a Man who had been mocked, a Man on whom they had put a crown of thorns and given a purple robe? However it says, “Jesus went forth”. This, I think is the link with Isaiah, a king, the regal dignity that marked Him but the mockery that men would put upon Him. There was the King, yet Pilate says of Him, “Behold the man!”, not just a man but “the man!” How great, how attractive He is to opened eyes as He is presented to the people. One of the testimonies that Pilate has to twice repeat is that he finds no fault in this Man. Can you find anybody in whom you cannot find any fault? There is only one Person of whom that could be said and that is “the man”, Christ Jesus.
That is what made me refer to that other scripture in Timothy because it says there, “the man Christ Jesus”, that is no longer in a place of humiliation, but glory. Christ Jesus refers to Him where He now is. So in speaking tonight of One who was mocked, One who was crucified, that One who bore “the sins of many” (Heb 9: 28), in those hours of darkness on the cross, that blessed Person is risen and glorified and He is the “mediator of God and men … the man Christ Jesus”. It says of Him that He “gave himself a ransom for all”, one of the beautiful ‘alls’ of scripture. It does not matter what their colour or creed; whether they are Muslims; whether they are Hindus: He “gave himself a ransom for all”. It is not that all will come into the benefit of it, but nevertheless the truth is He “gave himself a ransom for all”. “For God is one, and the mediator of God and men one, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all”, One, who because He is a man can lay hold of you and me; because He is God, if it is a right way to express it, can lay hold of God. How wonderful that is! Everything for God eternally, everything that stood related to God’s thoughts right from before time was involved the wonderful fact of the incarnation. That God Himself would come in as a man and in manhood fill it out in absolute perfection and not only fill it out in absolute perfection, but as a man suffer for men, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3: 18), “the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all”.
The scripture in Acts relates to the very beginning of this dispensation; we are now at the end. Peter himself in beginning that address says, “a man borne witness to by God”, Acts 2: 22. And then he speaks about what God has done to Him. He speaks about the present moment in which you and I live, “God has made him, this Jesus … both Lord and Christ”. You say, Well, yes, I have heard that plenty of times but have our hearts really entered into the greatness of what that means, that is universal dominion has been given to Him now. There is a man that is going to rise up in the day to come and he is going to sit himself down in the temple of God and say that he is God. There is a Person who is God overall blessed for evermore who has become a Man in order to effect God’s glorious work of redemption who has shed His precious blood, One who has suffered for sin, and that is the One that God has “highly exalted”, the One whom Peter was speaking about right at the very beginning of this dispensation, and although things may have changed down here, that has not changed. God has made that same Jesus “both Lord and Christ”, no change whatsoever. ‘Lord’ means that it is needful that everyone should bow to Him and recognise His rights; ‘Christ’ means, I believe, that everything that God has in His mind for men is available through and in that glorious Person. The proof of all is in the presence of the blessed Spirit of God here.
Isaiah says, “Who hath believed our report?” Who has believed it? Often I am challenged – I do not know whether you are – as to whether my faith really lays hold of the fact that there is a blessed, living, glorious Man in the presence of God, the One who “bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Peter 2 :24. The One who lives to make intercessions for us, the One who is going to take us to be with Himself, the One who is going to give us a part eternally alongside of Himself in the presence of God, the One, as a result of whose exaltation, the Spirit has come, a divine Person here to indwell us, the very Spirit of God’s Son in our hearts, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father”, Rom 8: 15. How great these things are! The fact is that God in His grace has not only “not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (Rom 8: 32), but has given men of His own blessed Spirit. What a God! What wondrous reality it is that you and I as believers will never have anything more than we have at the present moment. We shall have glorified bodies, yes, but the glorious place where Christ is, is our place, and the blessed Spirit that is indwelling our hearts indeed will be the power alone eternally that will enable us to enjoy the vastness and fulness of everything that relates to that glorious Man.
How great God’s glad tidings are! These persons were convicted. There is a great need at the present time for conviction. They said, “What shall we do …?” There are persons who think they can do something to earn something from God. No, you cannot do anything. The simple answer to it, Peter says to them here is, “Repent … for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”, much greater than the things that this world can possible offer, things that are lasting and abiding, things that are related to the blessed knowledge of God Himself. Things related to the Lord Jesus, the Man who was once here, the One we have read of in the scriptures, in all meekness, lowliness, humbleness, that One is the One whom God has “highly exalted”. He has not changed. He has not altered. Nothing has changed Him. Nothing has altered Him. The compassions that He showed as a blessed Man in His pathway down here have not changed; they have not altered one iota. As I am speaking tonight in this very room at the present moment there is a glorious, living Man on high, the One who wants to be and to be proved by us all as a personal glorious, living Saviour. While in the presence of the blessed Spirit here, there is a divine Person who desires that He might be our strength.
The answer to that scripture I read in Isaiah relates to these two things, the present glorification of Christ on high and the presence of the Spirit here, “in a thirsty land”. The Lord said of the Spirit that He is, “a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”, John 4: 14. Then He says later on as to His glorification, “out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”, John 7:38. In the first scripture, while it waits the day when He is going to be acknowledged as the king and reign in righteousness, what is presented in the latter portion of it, are things that can be entered into and known even at the present time. May God grant, beloved, as persons who believe the report, that we may know and prove these things and that there might be a present, living answer to the affections of our Lord Jesus Christ and that there might be increasingly what is for the pleasure and glory of God. May it be so for His Name’s sake!
ST ALBANS
9 October 2001