THE GLORY OF THE GLAD TIDINGS
Psalm 49:6,7; Luke 15:3-10,17-24
I thought to speak of God’s glad tidings and of their extensiveness. We perhaps may become limited in our thoughts about the glad tidings and think of them as only about the lost condition of man, about people in their sins and the forgiveness of their sins, and the relief from judgment that is available to all through the work of the Lord Jesus. Of course these things are certainly part of the glad tidings and we would speak gladly of them. I thought of the leprous men in the second book of Kings who were cast out of society because of their condition; they were wandering in their despair, and they went outside the city to the camp of the enemy and found the whole place deserted. They could not believe what they were seeing, and finally they said, “this day is a day of good tidings”, 2 Kings:7:9. As far as the city was concerned, it was besieged and there was starvation and deprivation in it. There is hardly a day when you turn the pages of the newspaper and do not see bad news, but I want to speak of good tidings, glad tidings. There was an old hymn in which the chorus said:
‘Tell it again! tell it again!
Salvation’s story repeat o’er and o’er,
Till none can say among the children of men,
Nobody ever has told me before’ 1.
All of us here, young and old, have heard the gospel many times but I want to speak about it again as glad tidings. The expression is extensively used in the Scriptures: you can look it up and there are over one hundred references. And it has been said that in the Scriptures, the glad tidings are illustrated in the four gospels, they are preached in the Acts of the Apostles and they are taught in the Epistles2. That is one of these sayings that you can hold in your mind and it goes back many years.
As you go through these references, you see the glad tidings expanding before your eyes. They contain illustrations of man’s condition, man’s lost state. How many instances there are in them of the ordinary conditions of life, of peoples’ experiences. Whether it was by their health or their circumstances or whatever it was, you will find that the glad tidings are illustrated. One of them comes to mind – the Lord’s parable about the man who “descended from Jerusalem to Jericho” (Luke 10:30), going down. Beloved, how true that is of persons away from God; the course of that man’s pathway was downwards. You may think that man with his technology is going up through his ability to deal with things, to create new things, to use things in new ways. He is reaching out beyond the boundaries of the earth, reaching into space – you may say that man is going up, but I tell you this – man as away from God morally is going down. In Luke 10, that man was going down. The Lord did not say why he was going down to Jericho, what his motives were, but there came a point when he was attacked and was left by the roadside half dead. He was helpless and had no way to meet his condition. And we know the story of how a Samaritan not only comes up to him, but is interested and has compassion for him. This is the gospel illustrated, beloved.
That parable of the gospel is still relevant today. It is a difficult day and people are moving away from God, but that has not changed God’s compassion for mankind. I do not go into the detail of the story of the priest and the Levite, but after them there was a Samaritan who came to the man at the side of the road with everything that he needed. The man had been robbed of everything that he had: he had nothing to offer. What an illustration of the sinner away from God. When it comes to his need for soul salvation, he has nothing to offer. The man in the parable was cured, he was carried and he was cared for. This is the glad tidings that God proposes in His gospel, and the parable illustrates it, and it is still being proclaimed at the present time to a sad and sorrowing world.
Then you can go to Acts 8 and see how the glad tidings was preached. Take the example of the eunuch returning from Jerusalem to Ethiopia. He was a man of renown and he had come a very long way; it was a tremendous journey in a chariot. He had been to the temple, and we do not know what he had found there, but he was reading the Scriptures. We read how the Spirit commanded Philip the evangelist to go and join the chariot, and he found that the eunuch was reading from that beautiful scripture in Isaiah 53. Philip drew alongside and entered into conversation with the man about that beautiful verse, “He was led as a lamb to slaughter” (v.7). The eunuch asked the question, “concerning whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or of some other?”, Acts 8:34. The work of Christ was not exactly presented there by Philip. We thank God for the work of Christ, done perfectly and completely, and finished at Calvary. It was the work of redemption done by Jesus to God’s satisfaction, but it was not presented to the eunuch in that way as the work of Christ, but he asked, Who is it that the prophet is speaking of? The preaching of the glad tidings is the preaching of Jesus. Philip preached the glad tidings of Jesus to him. You get the sense that the proclamation of the glad tidings was widening out from one man on the Jericho road in the parable, reaching out in its extent and fulness to speak of the Lord Jesus. The chapter speaks earlier of “the glad tidings of the word” (v.4), the glad tidings concerning the kingdom of God (v.12), and the glad tidings announced widely (v.25). You can see how they expand, but the most blessed thing in that chapter about the eunuch, is that beginning from that scripture Philip preached the glad tidings of Jesus to him. The salvation of God is in a Man, in a Person. The work He did on the cross was necessary, it had to be done, and the Lord Jesus did that work. He did it, He did it perfectly and He did it alone, so the preaching of the glad tidings really is the glad tidings of Jesus, God’s Man. That is God’s testimony to men.
When we read the epistles, we get the gospel taught in them. There you find the gospel expanded. The Epistle to the Romans begins with the glad tidings of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and then throughout the epistle, you get headings, as I might call them, as the glad tidings expand in their scope. There is reference to justification, to reconciliation, to forgiveness, and to salvation. All of these things are taught and they are leading the soul upwards. Even at the end of the teaching of the epistle (Rom.16:25), Paul brings out further and greater unfoldings, and it is all part of the glad tidings. We can go on through the epistles, to sanctification, to the purpose of God, and they are all part of the glad tidings, part of what God presents in Christ to man. It is part of the blessing that is available to you, part of the background to what I have read about.
There is one thing I want to speak about which perhaps we do not speak about enough, and that is redemption. Redemption is not only that a debt was paid, but redemption involves that we are reclaimed by God. Redemption really brings in the full glory of what the glad tidings is. The glad tidings are not only for the benefit and blessing of man, but the glad tidings involve that redemption is for the joy and blessing and delight of God. That is what redemption brings in. He made man for His pleasure, He made him in His likeness and in His image: He loved His creature. Then early in Genesis you find that sin came in and that which God had created and made for Himself, for His pleasure and His love, was lost to Him because of sin’s intrusion. That which belonged to God was lost to Him through sin. The work of Christ clears the sinner from indebtedness and meets me, a sinner, in relation to my sins, and the fact that I will never come into judgment is a very wonderful thing. But not only that, redemption involves that God gets back that which was His at the beginning. That which was encumbered by sin is brought back and His love flows out in all its joy because He has claimed back that which was His. That is redemption.
Redemption, if you look at a legal definition, is the restitution of an encumbered right, something that was yours and you lost, and it had to be bought back. By accomplishing redemption, the death of Christ not only clears me as I accept it in faith for myself, but gives back to God those who were His property. Redemption is a wonderful thing, beloved, and the love of God flows in all its fulness and blessedness. The fulness and greatest blessing of the glad tidings is experienced when you realise that the gospel is not only for you, but it is for the pleasure of God, resulting from His creature restored to His presence through the precious work of the Lord Jesus.
I read this scripture in Psalm 49. It speaks about mankind and the days of adversity and iniquity, men boasting in their wealth and resting in the abundance of their riches, rather like today. But then it says, “None can by any means redeem his brother … (For the redemption of their soul is costly and must be given up for ever)”. Ah, it is costly. What did it cost God? It meant the giving up of the Lord Jesus so that all who believe should not only have the burden of their sins lifted as they turn to God in repentance, but that God might have restored to Him, for the full expenditure of His love upon them, the creature whom He had never ceased to love. That is true, whatever men may say: God loves you, and redemption is available.
You may have heard the story of the boy and his boat which he had made. He sailed his boat and it sailed away and he lost it. Later he saw some boats in the window of a second-hand shop, and there was his boat. He went into the shop and said: ‘That is my boat’. But he was told that someone else had brought it in, and if the boy wanted it he would have to pay for it. He paid for it and brought it out of the shop, and he said, ‘I made you and I bought you; now you are twice mine’. Think of coming into divine favour like that, beloved. God would say, as it were, ‘I made you and I have bought you, and you are twice mine’. That is the blessedness of what redemption brings and that is the fulness of the gospel. The work of Christ restored that which sin took away. All the fulness and blessing of sonship, and all that is to be for God’s pleasure for time and eternity, is the result of the work of the Lord Jesus. So I say that the glad tidings bring in relief for me, they bring in blessing for me, they bring in joy for me, but abundantly more than all these blessings, they bring in the blessedness of being in the full favour of God, and enjoying the fulness of His house for His pleasure for time and for eternity.
I go on to Luke, to this remarkable parable of the Lord’s. There is very little said by Him about the defect or sin of the sinner. It is touched upon of course, but it is not concentrated on. What is concentrated upon in these three instances is that someone had lost something and they thought it worthwhile to go, whatever it cost, and recover it for themselves. In each case there is rejoicing when what was lost is found. This is redemption – I have found my lost sheep. But what a journey it was when Jesus came here to this earth. Those blessed feet that moved in humiliation from the manger to the cross and would not turn aside, but took up and met everything that would stand in the way of the blessing of God being expressed. Everything in man’s responsibility was taken up by the Lord Jesus. The hymn writer said,
‘But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed;
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through
Ere He found His sheep that was lost’.3
Let it appeal, beloved. We shall never know the fulness of that journey, we shall never know the depths and the darkness through which the Lord Jesus went. It is known alone to God, but Jesus went that way because that sheep was loved. You are loved of God and He has given His Son that He might regain you. In the parable, the Lord speaks of how He brings the sheep upon His shoulders, and He comes back with it to His friends and neighbours and says, “Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep”. Heaven rejoices because what was lost has been found.
Then the woman in the house represents a similar thought, although I suppose she speaks to us of the Spirit. I often think about this because the piece of silver is still in the house. It has been lost there, not upon the mountains so that no one knows how far away it is, but this money is lost in the house. You might say that it belongs to the house but is out of circulation for the time. Perhaps it is like you and me because sometimes the clouds close over our heads, but here is this woman who searches. Perhaps the Spirit is searching at the moment, maybe for you and me, sweeping in the house to find this piece of silver, and eventually finding it and rejoicing and saying, I have found the piece of silver that was lost. The Spirit is involved at the present time in the glad tidings and He is searching, searching by the word of God, and reaching out in order that He might touch your heart to let you know that God still cares about you despite the things that seem to close in on you. As we go through life, things might seem to hem us in and we might get out of circulation, but the Spirit would be working to bring God’s work to light and this is part of the glad tidings.
Finally, there is this younger son, and I do not go into all the detail except to say that finally he resolves to come back. There is a movement of heart, and perhaps there might be a movement of your heart today. The younger son had gone his own way, he had got what he wanted. He went in search of his own happiness as having taken what he thought belonged to him, but he began to be in want. He comes to himself but he was a long way off. It is very interesting that when he was a long way off, his father saw him. It has been said that the father’s eye had never ceased to be upon him. God’s eye has never been off you and never been off me. The son says, “I will rise up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee”. That was repentance, a movement of heart. I do not think repentance is exactly a form of words. It may be expressed in words, but repentance is a movement of heart and the son in effect says, ‘I will go back to my father and I will take whatever the consequences are’. But his father saw him while he was yet a long way off, almost before he moved. It is as though the father saw the movement of heart before there was the movement of feet.
I would say, beloved, that if there is the slightest movement of your heart today in relation to your present condition, know this: the Father knows about it and before you are aware He will be there to greet you. It is as if He brings the house with Him. He says, “Bring out the best robe and clothe him in it” – that is reference to the worth of Christ – “and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry: for this my son was dead and has come to life, was lost and has been found”. The glad tidings – who can tell their fulness? They go out from the heart of God to the individual lost and away from God in sins, and open up all the blessings that are available.
We could speak about reconciliation, forgiveness, sanctification, the purpose of God and all these wondrous things, and they open up and open up until He has you in His presence with Christ. We had that in a hymn this morning,
‘For Thou hast brought again to Him
More than by man He lost;’ Hymn 431.
Another hymn speaks about ‘redemption’s scope’ (Hymn 268). It suggests that God is gathering all in for His own pleasure, and for the enjoyment of a love that has never changed and never will.
Beloved, I commend the glad tidings to you, and may they be an encouragement and help to us for the Lord’s name’s sake.
Preaching of the gospel, Colchester
29 August 2021
Ron D Plant