The Son Of God And His Glory
John 1: 34, 49; 9: 35–38; 11: 32–38
These passages, dear brethren, bring before us the thought of the Son of God—and, of course, if the Son of God is brought in, His glory is also brought in. We need Him now. He does not decline to come either. Faith keeps watch as we are together, watching for the Son of God to come in. He says, “I am coming to you”, John 14: 18. We may say, ‘That is at the Supper’. So it is, but you cannot confine the Son of God to that—He comes where His loved ones are, and comes when they need Him most. We need Him at the Supper; but we need Him now in the presence of death, so that I am sure He would shed the light of His glory into our souls while we mourn and weep. Tears are no shame—if they were a shame, then Jesus would not weep; but “Jesus wept”, John 11: 35. God must have bottled those tears; He bottles ours, too, as we weep feelingly in relation to what He allows, Ps 56: 8. We may say, ‘This is tragic’, but then, with the touch of the Son of God, things are turned, given another aspect and another meaning. When the Son of God comes in, we look again and we find that it is not all tragic—there is something glorious about it, making way for what the Son of God can do. What can He do? What will He do? What has He done? He has battled with death itself, as the Ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth. Think of the military prowess of Christ as He went into death and overcame the might of death! Who can measure the “might of death”, Heb 2: 14? Christ has wrested the power of death out of the hands of him who had the might of it, and annulled him.
John the baptist says—“And I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God”, John 1: 34. The Son of God involves another world; Jesus Christ involves another Man. Another world means a deathless world, too. Death cannot come into that world, because the Son of God involves resurrection; as Romans 1: 4 says, “marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead”. How glorious He is! May the light that John the baptist had shine into our souls now, the light of the Son of God, the knowledge of that glorious Person, who He is, and what He can do, what He can effect and the world He will actually bring in. It subsists now to faith; that is why we need to be sustained in faith, to see another Man and another world.
The glory of the Son of God lighted up the soul of Nathanael, John 1: 49. Persons in John are selected; and each has his own identity. So you have John the baptist; now you have Nathanael. It could be that yourself and myself and every one of us may be lit up with the glory of the Son of God as it beams into our souls.
Then you have the man in John 9, who became an outcast. The Son of God finds him, for He is interested in the outcast. If we confess Christ, we become outcasts. No department in this world wants one who confesses Christ, and, of course, He is a glorious Person to confess. This man confessed Him. He was blind, then he saw and he kept on seeing. He saw more and more. It is the normal experience of the believer, that he sees more and more. The glory of this world becomes dimmer and dimmer and the glory of God’s world becomes brighter and brighter. Christianity is real because it is centred in a Person. We are linked by faith and by the Spirit with that Person. The Lord found the blind man, as He found our brother. There was a time when our brother found Christ. How glorious that is, when we find Him in our need! How much we make of Him as the Saviour! Then Jesus found him. How much he made of Jesus because he loved Him. Our brother took His side. Everyone in the village in which he lived knows that; and it was a triumphant side—the side of the Son of God, the Sun and Centre of God’s world. The Lord made Himself known to this man who was blind—“Thou hast both seen him, and he that speaks with thee is he. And he said, I believe, Lord—and he did him homage”, John 9: 37, 38. How blessed that is! Now we have in John 11 Jesus walking with a family to the grave—just what He would do with us today as amongst us. He will walk to the grave with us. What a support Jesus is! How could we walk to the grave without Him, without His support? But we can walk to the grave, and our sister can walk to the grave, because He is with us, the Son of God. He will not always thus walk. His voice will soon sound in the realm of death, but, for the time being, He walks with us to the tomb, and He wept, too. What comfort! What love!
This occasion in John 11 is “for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified by it”, John 11: 4. That is what our present occasion is for. Whatever tragedy may have happened, it is for the glory of the Son of God, to demonstrate His power—not yet outwardly, but in our hearts, so that as we go away from the occasion, still sorrowing and feeling the loss, we also feel compensated in our sorrow, and our hearts are more attached to the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us; Gal 2: 20. To our mourning hearts, and the mourning hearts of those immediately connected with our brother, the glory, the love and the sympathy come in.
Horsham
13th July 1960
from Words of Truth 1960
Word given at a burial meeting
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