WHAT GOD HAS PREPARED
David Spinks
These scriptures we have read speak of what God has prepared. God has prepared so much. He prepared it in a past eternity. The scripture we read of in Hebrews speaks of that and it should affect every believer. He says here, “Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body”. We are on holy ground, and I feel unable to speak of such great and glorious things, but it is wonderful to think that in a past eternity the conversation in the Godhead was that there was One who would take a ‘body prepared’. There was One who was willing to empty Himself, as it says in Philippians 2 and take a bondman’s form. A body prepared: a body prepared by God.
In this body that was prepared He was going to recover and give glory to God now and eternally, and deal with everything that stood in the way to remove it for God’s glory eternally. He was going to bring a people through as I read in John’s gospel, “I go to prepare you a place”.
Christianity grows in your heart. As you come in to see Christ, you come in through an opened door. You maybe come in initially as a sinner saved by grace; you come in through the narrow door. But as you go in through the narrow door you see a glorious Man and He is the Son and the centre and the subject and the power and the life that is everything that is in Christianity. So I say to the youngest believer here that if you know Christ you have got everything you need.
It is a hard thing when you are younger because there are so many things to influence us and so many things to attract us in the world. And even when we get older there are still things that attract us. It is wonderful when you see something that is more attractive, that is permanent, something that is stable and can never be shaken. It speaks in 1 Corinthians 3 of Christ as a foundation.
May it touch our hearts tonight to see the glory of all that God has prepared in a Man called Jesus. If these things are prepared by God you can be assured they will come through to fulfilment and never fail or break down. We live in a day when we are used to breakdown and we are used to failure. We are used to things beginning again because something has been corrupted and failed. There is no failure in Christ. There is no failure in this sure foundation. There is no failure in the One who came in to take a body prepared, prepared to fill out the will of God: ‘perfection in a Man’; we sometimes sing that:
Divine perfection in a Man. (Hymn 20)
How wonderful it is to see it.
Every heart and every soul that is saved for eternity will be gazing and having their affections fixed on this blessed Man. There will be nothing to distract us. There will be no other object there. It affects me that there was One of the Godhead who was prepared to come into manhood, to meet the sin question, to recover man for God and bring about everything for the pleasure of God eternally.
What does He say here? “Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not”. Think of what was brought out in the Old Testament about the thousands of sacrifices that were brought yearly. Here is one precious, holy Sacrifice that was acceptable to God. He accepted that sacrifice, and as a believer you have been affected by it, and have accepted the sacrifice of Jesus because you have put your faith in Him. You have trusted in His finished work; and it is also wonderful to seek the Spirit’s help, to dig deep, in page upon page of what is found in Scripture about that blessed Man, and you will never find disappointment.
There are so many pages in the Bible; it says in John’s gospel that if the books were written the world would never contain them, chap 21: 25. “Thou tookest no pleasure in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin. Then I said, Lo, I come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will”. “In the roll of the book”: think of when that book was opened. Think of how in the roll of the book a day came when this Babe was born into Bethlehem’s manger and there was One who was coming in and taking up a body to do the will of Another. How glorious!
Somebody said to me, ‘Christianity is very tangible because it is found in a Man who lives in heaven’. That is glorious. We are not speaking here of some mystical thing. I am speaking of a glorious Man and the object is that He should become greater in our affections. “Lo, I come (in the roll of the book …) to do, O God, they will”. There was no other who could do that will; there is no other who could fulfil it to the glory of God. No other man that God took up, many in the Old Testament, many good men, could ever fulfil the will of God, and neither could you and neither could I. There is only one Man who came in prepared in obedience to fulfil it to the glory of God. And He has done it; He has taken it up. Coming into the world, seeing what sin has done: think of the ravages of sin and the bitterness that has come into the heart and mind of man due to the fall of man, and here was one Man who was coming in to take up the sin question.
“Above, saying Sacrifices and offerings and burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou willedst not, neither tookest pleasure in (which are offered according to the law); then he said, Lo, I come to do thy will. He takes away the first that he may establish the second”. This is glorious because this brings you and me in. Christ takes away the first order of man, and He brings in another order which is out of heaven; the second Man as out of heaven, 1 Cor 15: 47. God in His grace does not just leave man in a vacuum but He took the first away in a Man who bore the iniquity and met the sin question and He settled it righteously to God’s glory eternally. This Man took it away that He may establish the second.
The second Man is out of heaven. “He takes away the first that he may establish the second”. The establishing of the second is continuing right through this dispensation. I wonder if I am established in the character of a Man who is out of heaven. Christ, my Saviour, has removed sin in its totality, and He is now living in heaven and He is establishing men according to the Man who fills heaven. Am I being established according to that Man and am I being influenced by the grace of the Saviour? That is the character of the second Man. That is the character of the Man who does not come in by force. Men in this world put man under authority by force. You come under authority of the Saviour by grace. You come under His authority through the establishing of the second. He established it as coming out of death. He has established it by going into glory, and the Spirit having come, and He lives there. And not only that: “By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”.
Sanctification has been accomplished. The saint who has trusted in Jesus is set apart for holy purposes. I am not set apart now, as saved by God in His grace through the Lord Jesus, to do my own will. It says here, “sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”. I wonder if I understand that. Am I set apart, and do I believe that God has set me apart for Himself? Or do I believe that God saves me to leave me to do my own will? Never! That could never be the case because God wants every believer whom He has purchased, in whom He has wrought, and whom He has redeemed through the precious blood of Jesus, for Himself and for Himself alone. That is the grace of God that brings man back for Himself and gives blessing to the creature in whom He does it. How wonderful.
“And every priest stands daily ministering, and offering often the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down in perpetuity”. What does that mean? He has sat down forever “at the right hand of God, waiting from henceforth until his enemies be set for the footstool of his feet”. I am sure there is no soul in this room that is an enemy of God. But every soul will have to bow to Jesus, bow to this Man, and I am sure every believer here has done. That is a wonderful thing to do. But put yourself in the way of what He has effectuated in His love, that He has taken away the first and established the second, and you are sanctified in that blessed Man. You are set apart for the holy purpose of God, waiting for henceforth.
“For by one offering he has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified”: perfected forever, perfect in the sight of God. Once you are saved and have faith in the blood of Jesus and you have the gift of God’s Spirit within you, you are perfect for God’s presence. That is wonderful. You are a soul who has been recovered by the grace of God and you are ready because of the operations of divine love, perfected in the presence of a holy, righteous, loving God.
And that is why I read in Corinthians where it speaks of, “Things which eye has not seen, and ear not heard, and which have not come into man’s heart, which God has prepared for them that love him”. That is the question that I ask myself more than anything. God loves me; do I love God? That is the question for every heart here. God desires to have every soul in His own presence in suitability. But do I want these great things which eye has not seen and ear not heard; the things that God has prepared for those that love Him? God loves me, but do I love God? Do I love the things which He shows me, the secrets which He opens up to me, the great things that He shows me as in Christ Jesus, the things that are opened with the power and grace of the Holy Spirit that this chapter goes on to reveal.
Again I ask the younger brethren here and all of us, ‘Do you have the gift and the power of the grace of the Spirit functioning in your life?’. It is a gift of God, a free gift that He would desire to give to you. It is part of what God has prepared. Think of divine Persons there in a past eternity, each one of Them preparing to come in to take up an action in this world which would be for the blessing of man and the glory of God eternally. How wonderful that is.
Think of the Lord and what He has taken up. Think of the lowly place the Spirit has taken up, a divine Person coming to dwell within the heart of the believer, young and old alike. God dwelling in your heart through faith. How wonderful. What does it say of the Spirit? “But God has revealed to us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God”. No one knows the depths of God apart from the Spirit of God. I do not know if there is anyone who could say they have touched the depths of God. So it shows that we will never fathom this great area which God has prepared for us. We will never reach the end of it. There is something that can be taken in and can be opened up to your mind and to your heart and your affections every day of your life and God has prepared it for you. He prepared it for you to receive it and for you to be encouraged and built up in it. How wonderful a thing it is.
“But we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things which have been freely given to us of God: which also we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, communicating spiritual things by spiritual means”. We are in an atmosphere today where things are communicated by spiritual means. We can take in spiritual things by spiritual means. In the reading we conversed over the truth together, and I believe we are in an atmosphere where love had liberty to speak spiritual things by spiritual means. How wonderful that is. There is the liberty of the Spirit of God opening up something of the things that are prepared by God for the saints who love God.
I think as you get older you begin to see how fragile the things of the world are. How great and glorious the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. I wish I knew them more. But God gives a desired heart and He can fill the youngest soul and He will give you more. You will never exhaust what God has prepared for you. It is limitless in that sense.
“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned; but the spiritual discerns all things, and he is discerned of no one”. At the end of that passage where we read it says, “we have the mind of Christ”. Paul was speaking to the Corinthian saints who are going back and he was trying to encourage them to show what they had, the resource they had, not in themselves, not in anything that was of man, but the things which God had prepared, things which are of God. He had to go on to the next chapter to speak to them as to babes, “babes in Christ”, v 2. That is the scripture which speaks of the foundation which has been laid. How wonderful it is.
“But we have the mind of Christ”. I would encourage all of us, but our young ones especially, to find yourself in the body of the assembly, to find your life in the environment where the Spirit speaks, where Christ’s headship is known and where God’s wisdom is known, where the things which God has prepared for those who love Him are known. They are not known in the world. They are not known by the intelligence of man, but they are known by the simple believer who desires to understand them and makes way for the great resources that God gives them. Do I make way for the Spirit? There is something far greater for man than man could ever get for himself, things “which God has prepared for them that love him”, the glory of them all, as I believe they are found in the assembly at the present moment. “We have the mind of Christ”.
We are in a broken day. We live in a day of small localities and where ones and twos gather. “But we have the mind of Christ”: how glorious that is! We have the power of the Spirit. We have a resource outside of the world that gives us the avenue to see the things that God has prepared. Eye has not seen nor ear heard the things that God has prepared for those that love Him. Again, I bring that question back to my own heart. Do I love God enough, do I love the things of God enough, do I love the people of God enough to come out during the week and to find out more of the great things which are in the Scripture, are in the heart of the Lord Jesus, and are in the hand of the assembly, to make known the great things of God? They are prepared for us. That means that they were there in the thoughts of God before time began. God does not have afterthoughts. I speak reverently and carefully: God has prepared these things. And He has prepared them and put them in the assembly for the blessing of the personnel and for the glory of God. How wonderful.
Every one of us in this room here belong to a locality, and you should feel blessed and thankful for that. You are brought into a company where the saints love you and they cherish you. And I say again, to you, younger brethren, find yourself in the local assembly. Find yourself in the body of the saints because there is life there; there is preservation there and there is the operation of the Spirit there. There are things which God has prepared for those that love Him. God is not loved in the world. Even in the sphere of Christendom, there are areas where it is man that is loved. They put the name of Christ on it sadly, but man is loved there. Let us be in the area where God is loved and where the Spirit has access to open up the truth to us, the great things of God. They will be the occupation of the saints eternally.
I read in John 14 because there is a Man who has now gone to prepare us a place. The blessed Man who came here and took up a body prepared has gone in to prepare a place for the saints in glory. How wonderful. I think that is grace that the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, who loves you, desires to take you to be where He is and to enjoy the love that He enjoys in the presence of the Father Himself. This is what the Son does. This is the operation of the Son Himself: “I go to prepare you a place”. Why? “That where I am ye also may be”. Do not stop, or fall short, in enjoying the great things that God has prepared for those that love Him. Do not stop short in the great things of God because we will be those who miss out. The great terminus for the believer is over the Jordan, enjoying the things where Christ is in liberty in the Father’s house.
These are things that God has prepared for those who love Him. “I go to prepare you a place”. That preparation involved the suffering of the Saviour. That blessed Man, my friend, went into death in order to secure a vessel for His own pleasure eternally. He has done it for all men, but as it says in Scripture, He has done it in relation to the assembly and He carries this company back into the love of the Father Himself. The great terminus in Christianity is the love of the Father. How wonderful and gracious it is of divine Persons that they take up everything that they enjoy to bring us into the same relationship. The Lord Jesus was worthy to go back into glory at any time as fulfilling the will of God, but He died upon the cross, He suffered the shame and agony of it. He bore the matter of sin upon the cross. He has gone up into glory and the Spirit has come in order that we may enjoy the things that God has prepared.
And He has gone in. He has gone right in to the presence of the Father. “I go to prepare you a place; and if I go and shall prepare you a place, I am coming again and shall receive you to myself”: “receive you to myself”. We will be like that blessed Man in sonship’s glory eternally. The great terminus of everything that is in Christianity is found in Christ. He is the Man who has prepared it. He has prepared it; the body was prepared for Him. He has come in in grace to resolve every issue outstanding between God and man and now the grace of the Spirit comes and He dwells in the assembly. And there you see everything prepared.
This is my simple impression. Do not move outside of the bounds of the love of God. Do not move outside of the bounds of what God has prepared. He is not just prepared to save you: how great that is! He is prepared to bring you in and to love you, to put the ring upon your hand and the sandals upon your feet, and to give you the dignity of one of the sons of God in the presence of the Father. How great is divine love. How great is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we be uplifted and may we be encouraged by the things that God has prepared.
May the Lord bless the word for His Name’s sake.
Edinburgh
25th January 2025