AWAITING THE LORD’S COMING
Song of Songs 2:16,17 (to “away”); 4:6,7;
1 Thessalonians 1:8-10; Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Revelation 3:11
We were speaking earlier of divine activity in connection with the coming of the Lord Jesus – divine anticipation of His coming, indeed. I desire to say a word now as to what should mark us as anticipating the coming of the Lord Jesus.
In the Song of Songs we have these two references to which I think we can relate in our experience. There is a time when the day shall dawn, and the shadows flee away. What a moment that will be!
‘What will the sunshine of His glory prove!
What the unmingled fulness of His love!’
(Hymn 213)
That moment – when the day dawns and the shadows flee away – may be immediately upon us. We know about the shadows. We do not need to speak about them. We know about the night – it is all around us. But there is a moment coming when the day shall dawn and the shadows flee away. And when the shadows flee away, they will never return. In man’s world when the day dawns it is for so many hours and then the darkness comes again. But that will never be the case in divine things. What a blessed prospect that is, the shadows fleeing away. That prospect, beloved, is as sure as can be; it is as sure as God’s word. That day will dawn, and the shadows will flee away.
In the meantime we are receiving from Him, we receive from His hand. He feeds His flock among the lilies. That is a blessed thing, the Lord Jesus feeding His flock. Have you taken your place among the flock, and are you receiving something from Him? Did you receive something in the earlier meeting? He feeds His flock among the lilies. What He provides is always pure and good and attractive. That service of His will continue until the day dawn, and the shadows flee away.
In the next passage, it is he that is speaking, it is what he will do. In the first passage we read in the Song of Songs, it is the female speaker whose words are recorded. As many will know, in this book where there is a reference to “my love”, that is the male speaking or referring to the female. And where there is a reference to “my beloved”, it is the female speaker referring to or addressing the male. This is so throughout the book. In our first passage, it is the female speaking, and in the second, he is speaking. And he says: “Until the day dawn, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, And to the hill of frankincense”. You think of the fragrance that is found in the Lord Jesus. Think of the fragrance that God found in Him. How blessed was that pathway of His! But the myrrh not only suggests fragrance, it also suggests suffering. That is the way the fragrance is produced.
I just wanted to leave this touch on our souls before we go further, that the greatest blessings we have, and the greatest prospects that we have before us immediately, are all based on the fact that One has suffered. He has suffered beyond what we could say. It is a ‘mountain of myrrh’. Who could measure that? He says: “I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, And to the hill of frankincense”. How great were the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. Oh, beloved, let us return in our affections constantly to the sufferings of Jesus. It is a foundation for our souls.
And then you find that the fragrance comes from it. What fragrance comes from His suffering! The hymn writer says:
‘What odours choice He smelled,
So rich in Thee’ (Hymn 268)
What fragrance there was in the life of the Lord Jesus. What fragrance there is in Him now! Do you find that fragrance? I am sure we all do. When there is a touch from the Lord Jesus in our souls, there is something sweet to our senses. When the brethren speak together, we find there is something sweet to our senses, something that is fragrant. We appreciate the beauty and the fragrance of that blessed One. Well, there was a cost that underlies that fragrance.
Going on to the epistle to the Thessalonians, the apostle Paul was writing to these dear believers whom he had only seen for three weeks (Acts 17:2). They were young in the faith. It does not mean they were young in age, but they were young in the faith. That is true of believers today. We have been reading John’s first epistle at home – and I believe the brethren here have been reading it too – and a remark was made that supposing a man eighty years old was converted, he would be a little child in John’s estimation, in the terms that John uses. He would be young in the faith. These Thessalonians were young in the faith. They were growing. They had suffered persecution because of their faith. That is a fine way of learning. But they had not known the Lord for very long. And here the apostle, in his characteristic way, speaks about what he can commend. He commended much about the Thessalonians. He was not critical of them. What he says is that he had come to them and he recalls: “how ye turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to await his Son from the heavens”. Then he adds: “Jesus, our deliverer from the coming wrath”. The One we know as Jesus, the Son of God Himself.
It is a wonderful thing to turn to God from idols. In the Old Testament, Ephraim says: “What have I to do any more with idols?”, Hos.14:8. He had experience of having to do with idols, but now he says, ‘What have I to do with idols?’. He had finished with them. Oh, beloved, how quickly idols can come in our way. The apostle John says “Children, keep yourselves from idols”, 1 John 5:21. They can come in any form. In an affluent society, as we have in the West, there is one great god that men will do anything for – money. In one sense, it is the god of the world; what an idol money is.
Other things draw our affections, they take up our time. It could be something that you may be carrying in your pocket. I am not being critical of anyone, but you see people and, when they sit down, the first thing they do is to get their phone out and start to spend time looking at it. They have no time for anyone else. These things become idols. Beloved, the apostle says “ye turned to God from idols”. Let your time be first for the Lord: devote your time first to Him, and be free of idols, be free of anything that would come between your heart and God. An idol is anything that would come between your heart and the Lord – that is an idol: “ye turned to God from idols.”
They would not have done that if they had not had the presentation of God first. You do not turn from idols unless you have something better! Have you something better than the things that might occupy you naturally? Have you found something better than that? Then turn to God from idols, to serve a living and a true God and to await His Son from the heavens. He is coming from the heavens. He is not going to be found on the earth, He is coming from the heavens, and we will be caught up to meet Him – we will be caught up from the earth, we will be caught away. What a blessed moment! We appreciate Him as our Deliverer from the coming wrath. What wrath is coming upon the world! It is said: “but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost”, 1 Thess.2:16. That should give us an incentive to turn to God from idols. Jesus is the One who is coming for us, the One whom we are soon going to see. ‘To see Thee who hast loved us’, we sang (Hymn 200); how precious that is – what a wonderful prospect, to see Jesus.
Well, let us go on to Titus. Paul is writing to Titus and he speaks about the grace of God. Has the grace of God come to you? Of course it has! Have you recognised it? Have you recognised God appealing in grace to you? His appeal goes on. As long as we are here, the appeal of grace will go on. The grace of God carries with it salvation for all men. That is a blessed matter. You can speak of the grace of God to anybody. It does not matter how bad they are. The worst sinner you can think of – the grace of God is available to them. And when you have been touched by the grace of God, you understand that the ‘worst sinner’ is closer to home than you realised. What you find in your own heart can be shocking. Sometimes you come across things arising in your own heart and you think: ‘that is not worthy of a believer’.
The grace of God has appeared, teaching us certain things. It teaches us how to live; it teaches us that “having denied impiety and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, and justly, and piously in the present course of things”. Who is this true of absolutely? Who was it who in perfect holiness lived soberly and justly and piously here on earth? There is one blessed Man who set that out in perfection. And the grace of God has appeared in order that you and I might be found here like Him, like Jesus. Having denied all that was contrary to Him, He was here soberly. He had a right assessment of everything, He was never carried away by anything of man, but He lived ‘justly’: perfect justice, even in the face of injustice, marked Him. And ‘piously’: we see piety in the Lord Jesus, He set it out, He lived by faith. In every circumstance, He was in relation to God. That is piety: “soberly, and justly, and piously in the present course of things”.
The believer is to be like Jesus. How far short we come. We need the help of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we find that we fail again and again. That is a basic experience of believers. You read about it in Romans 7, but in chapter 8 you find that the power to go through is found in the Holy Spirit, a divine Person Himself, so that we should be like Jesus morally here. We are not in perfect conditions. Things keep arising in our hearts, but we have the power in the Holy Spirit to overcome and to judge such things because we are “awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ”. What a title that is - “our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ”.
And we are awaiting His appearing. When He appears publicly, everything on the earth will be put right. In large measure, temptations will be removed when He appears; and it is His appearing that the assembly is waiting for. We might say that the assembly is waiting to be with Him. Yes, she is; but her great concern is to see His appearing. You say, how can that be? The assembly here is the wife of Christ. She is His wife, and she resents totally the way the world has treated Him, the way the world has cast Him out. Do you resent that? Is it a matter that causes you sorrow? The assembly resents His rejection by men and she is looking for the time when He will be vindicated here. This is His scene, the scene where His glory will shine. And the assembly is looking forward to that time when He will be vindicated.
The Lord Jesus in all the perfection of His manhood is not looking primarily for His vindication, although He is awaiting the time when everything will be put right for God; but as to Himself, He is waiting for the time when He has His assembly with Him. The Lord Jesus is awaiting the rapture. The assembly, while so doing also, is particularly looking for His appearing – “awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ”. What a prospect – to see Him, and to see Him in glory! We will no longer see Him as the stranger here upon earth, rejected and despised of men – although of course no moral feature of His will be lost – but He will never again be despised, but rather accepted by the whole universe which will be conscious of His greatness and will yield glory to Him. What a day that will be for the earth! The prophets speak about it. They could not have had any idea how it would come about – all the violence taken away: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb … and the calf and the young lion and the fatted beast together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the she-bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the adder ... They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain”, Isa.11:6-9.
What a day it will be for the earth. But today is a greater day. For today we have the opportunity of maintaining what is for the heart of Christ in a scene that is contrary to Him, where He is rejected. We can maintain what is for the heart of Christ until He comes. Beloved, what a great privilege we have! Until He comes we are “awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us”. He gave Himself for us! I often think of that when I am at the Lord’s supper – “This is my body which is given for you”, Luke 22:19. Sometimes I think that the Lord is saying to me personally, ‘this is My body which is given for you’. It is for us, and how personal we can make that. He “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all lawlessness, and purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous for good works”.
We see the good works in Him. The good works were fulfilled in the life of Jesus, and we are to follow in His steps. As we have read in John’s epistle, we shall actually be like Him: “if it is manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. We have not yet seen Him as He is and we do not know His present condition, it is a heavenly and glorious condition. But soon we will see Him and when we see Him in the condition in which He is, we shall be like Him. Let it fill our hearts! We are going to see the Lord Jesus, we are going to see His face. We will actually see His face and there will be no sense of fear or strangeness or anything like that, because we will be like Him. We will even have bodies that will be like His body of glory. He has the power to bring that about. Philippians tells us that: “who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity to his body of glory, according to the working of the power which he has even to subdue all things to himself”, Phil.3:21. Beloved, when we see Him, we shall be like Him: it is a marvellous prospect.
Let us go on to where we read in Revelation. I feel limited in what I can say, but the brethren appreciate hearing and speaking about the Lord Jesus, and His coming. I would emphasise these words: “hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown”. The crown speaks of the greatest, most precious and most exalted things and thoughts: “hold fast what thou hast”. What do you have? Every one who believes has forgiveness of sins: hold fast to it. Every one who has faith has been justified: hold fast to that. We have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit: do not grieve Him (Eph.4:30) or you may lose the power of that wonderful gift. And we have been given one another: let us hold fast to one another. The saints are precious in the sight of the Lord. Let us hold fast what we have. We have the assembly, we are part of the assembly: let us never relinquish assembly truth. It is the most precious and exalted thing. And the Lord Jesus says: “I come quickly: hold fast what thou hast”. When He comes, will He find us holding fast? Will He find us treasuring the greatest things that He has made known, heaven’s store, the things that He values so much; will He find us treasuring these things and holding them fast? Let “no one take thy crown”.
Beloved, that is my message. The Lord Jesus is coming, and we rejoice in it. The brethren rejoiced to sing that hymn at the beginning of this meeting, but it is our privilege in the time until He comes to hold His things precious and not to relinquish any of them at all.
For His name’s sake.
Address at Edinburgh
17 June 2023
Andrew Martin