THE TESTIMONY OF GOD
P.H.Buchan
1 Timothy 2: 4-6; 2 Timothy 1: 8-10
It is on one's heart, as the Spirit of God may afford help, to call attention to the testimony of God as it is presented in the glad tidings; for what God is going to display in all its glory in the world to come, He first presents in testimony to men, and that in view of their blessing. It is a wonderful thing to think of this testimony going forward in our time; it is the only thing that can meet the needs of the human heart. So you can understand the importance of the testimony of God being presented. Someone may ask, "What is the testimony?" God's testimony stands related to a blessed Man in Whom He has found absolute satisfaction and Who affords Him infinite delight - unalloyed delight God has found in one Man. And in that Man, all that He has in blessing for man is available. Wonderful to think of that! "Our Saviour God … desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. For God is one, and the Mediator of God and men one, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, the testimony to be rendered in its own times." And we are in a moment when the Spirit of God is presenting in testimony all that is available in blessing for men, all that is in the heart of God! Think of the blessedness of it.
As we reflect on who God is, the incorruptible, invisible, only God, Who, it says, "only has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen nor can see," 1 Tim 6: 16. Think of the infinitude of the blessed God. Think of who He is in the glory of His own Being, the eternal God. "Heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee," 2 Chron 6: 18. God is a Spirit and as a Spirit He is everywhere. Think of eternity, think of space. As we think of these things, how small the mind is - incapable of taking it in - but God bounds space, He bounds eternity. So everything is under His eye. We cannot evade having to do with God, the eternal God. Such a God is a Saviour God - wonderful thing! - dwelling in light unapproachable and as to His essential Being we will never be able to fathom who He is, for God, as to the glory of His own Being, will ever remain in inscrutability. But the wonderful thing is that He is a God of love and He desires to be known in all the glory of His own love. While we cannot approach God in absolute Deity, He has approached us in a Man. That is the testimony God is presenting to men, a Saviour God. Oh, think of it - "This Man", think of the greatness of it. "This Man receives sinners," Luke 15: 2. Thank God for that. "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God," Rom 3: 23. On account of the sin of one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin; thus death has passed upon all men for all have sinned.
Did you ever raise the query in your mind, Why do we die? Death is God's penalty on account of sin, and sin is lawlessness and that - the assertion of my will against God - demands the necessity of that penalty. Think of what sin is. We may trifle with it, but sin is no light matter. It is not merely an ugly word on page of scripture. Sin is a vile reality and the punishment, the penalty, of sin is death. How is all this to be met? Just in a Saviour God. God has devised means by which His banished one may not be expelled and the glad tidings is the means. I can understand Job saying, "Oh that there were arbitration for a man with God as a son of man for his friend," Job 16: 21 - one "who should lay his hand upon us both," Job 9: 33. Job says there is not an umpire between us; but that is just what God has provided. He has come in in a Man. Think of that. "Our Saviour God desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, for God is one, and the Mediator of God and men one, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself." Is there anything more attractive than that a Man should come out from God, as to His Person none less than "over all, God blessed for ever," Rom 9: 5, but coming within our range in manhood, just to take up the whole question of our guilt and responsibility, bringing in in Himself all the moral excellence requisite for taking up all that we are vicariously, and discharging it in a way in which God has been absolutely glorified in relation to sin. Is it not worthwhile knowing such a Saviour? Oh how attractive Jesus is! I can well understand these persons saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them". Think how near, how very near, God has come as Saviour God.
Just look at Him in Luke 7. There is a woman there, a sinner of the city, who knowing that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, came in behind Him, carrying an alabaster flask of ointment of myrrh and, it says, she began to wash His feet with her tears and she wiped them with the hairs of her head. She kissed those feet and she anointed them with the myrrh. Do you think that the Lord was indifferent to that woman's need. Think of the attraction of the Saviour. Only He can meet the needs of the human heart. He alone can meet the whole question of sin and that woman, instinctively, I believe, as the result of the work of God, says there is no other who can meet my need. And she ventures into the heartless atmosphere of the Pharisee's house, and there, behind Jesus, those tears fell on those blessed feet. What a refreshment to Him! This is not mere history, dear friends. I call attention to it because this is the way God is working out subjectively the truth of the gospel. Have we come into the gain of it? Think how that woman valued those feet. And there is Simon, quite indifferent; he says, If this Man were a prophet He would know what character of woman this is, for she is a sinner - think of that - if this man were a prophet. "The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus," Rev 19: 10. Think of the blessed Holy Spirit of God here, bringing forward in testimony and in grace and power the truth that God has come in in a Man in Jesus, just to meet us in all our need . So turning to Simon He says, "Seest thou this woman?" Simon, just look at this woman, He says. I. entered into thy house, thou gavest me no water: this woman has washed my feet with tears. Thou gavest me no kiss, but she from the time I came in has not ceased kissing my feet. Thou didst not anoint my head with oil but she has anointed my feet with myrrh. For which cause, He says, her many sins are forgiven. Oh precious thought! Her many sins are forgiven; for she loved much.
The gospel is to secure a personal living attachment to that blessed Man Who has come in on behalf of God to save poor sinners such as you and me. I am very much concerned about our dear young ones, that they may have a personal transaction with Jesus. He is just as available tonight as He was then and He is prepared to meet us in all our need. This is vital because it forms the informal link with this glorious Person, but that link, once established develops an affection for Jesus that can never be broken. There is a link established in love that goes through to eternity. That is what the gospel is for - to secure an answer to the way God has come in in Christ in the salvation of man. How precious that is. I love to reflect on this because scripture says she loved much, but he to whom little is forgiven loves little, Luke 7: 47. Have you some sense of the immensity of what you have been forgiven? I think I can align myself with Paul. He says "Faithful is the word, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first," 1 Tim 1: 15. Can you ally yourself with Paul in that? I can understand why Paul was such a lover of Christ because, once this initial link is established in the conscious sense of forgiveness, there is a love promoted that can appreciate the glory of the Man who has met us in ail our need. There were those present there who said, "Who is this who forgives sins?" That is God's prerogative to forgive sins.
But Who was there? Little did they realise that He who is over all, God blessed for ever, has come within the range of man. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to them their offences, 2 Cor 5: 19. Not that they are not recorded, because all those sins I have committed have already been recorded in heaven but I can look to the blood of Jesus as the means by which my sins are gone for ever. They are gone for ever before God. You can understand then the infinite preciousness of the blood of Christ; it will never lose its eternal value and efficacy before God. It will ever remain eternally the basis on which forgiveness of sins has been based. That is a wonderful thing. Now we can understand how important this initial link with Jesus is. They say, "Who is this who forgives sins?" Little did they realise God was there.
But I was going to remark, "What about those sins?" If they have not been met they are recorded in those books above. Perhaps you did not realise that God keeps records in heaven. All those sins are recorded. He is not imputing them, thank God. It is not the day in which God is imputing sins, but they are recorded and they will stand as a witness against you in that day if you appear before the great white throne. Why not then have this personal transaction with a living Man and have those sins removed in the value of the blood of the Lamb? I love to think of that. He has gone to Calvary. He Himself has borne our sins in His own body on the tree, One who was infinitely perfect. Think of the perfection of the Man. He who knew not sin, God made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Think of what was entailed in that transaction. Was it a light matter that He who knew not sin should be made sin? Think of the absolute perfection of Jesus. Think of the stainless perfection of a Man who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, and yet He became the sacrifice for sins to meet the whole sin question and remove it before God. Forgiveness is available for everyone here tonight, even the youngest. Oh, dear young ones, I plead with you. Just have a personal transaction with Jesus. It becomes infinitely delightful. I can speak from experience. Nothing has afforded me greater joy than from early childhood to know personally a living Man whom I can address freely and to know that love from which I can never be separated. Oh what a friend we have in Jesus. Having gone into death, having been delivered for our offences, He has been raised for our justification and now a risen Man is the witness to the settlement of the question of our sins for ever. Think of being justified before God, and being justified, we have peace with God. You see the blessings that are available, not merely forgiveness, not merely justification, but the blessedness of conscious peace with God and the gift of the Spirit; for, "this Jesus has God raised up ... having therefore been exalted by the right hand of God … he has poured out this which ye behold and hear," Acts 2: 32, 33. Think of the Spirit of God here as witness and affording testimony in the consciences of men to the fact that there is a Man in heaven, Who is being presented tonight in testimony.
Now Paul says to Timothy his child, "Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me His prisoner but suffer evil along with the glad tidings." Are you prepared to identify yourself with the testimony of God? What a privilege! There was a young girl who got blessing on her death bed and while perfectly happy in the consciousness of forgiveness she turned to her sister and said, 'I have one regret that I can never be identified publicly now with the testimony of Jesus. ‘Oh', she said, 'cleave to Christ'. That is it. Cleave to the Man. "Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me His prisoner." Are you prepared for the limitations that this may imply. The question of separation from evil constantly comes up, but do you recognise the Lord's authority? Are you prepared to come now under the authority of One Who has complete rights over us? He has established those rights. He has rights in creation but think of Him going into death to establish rights in redemption. The knowledge of that secures a person eternally for His pleasure and as we are subject to the Lord, we will have one desire and that is to be found here, giving place to the Spirit so that there are reproduced now the moral features that were seen in Jesus. It may be in suffering. "Suffer evil along with the glad tidings according to the power of God who has called us with a holy calling, not according to our works," oh no! It is pure, simple grace that God has taken us up for eternal blessing. "Called you to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, when ye have suffered for a little while, Himself shall make perfect, stablish strengthen, ground," 1 Peter 5: 10. You want to be in the gain now of what ,God has in blessing for us, "not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which He has purposed in Christ Jesus." The Holy Spirit is engaging us with Christ in His present position there, a glorified Man in final conditions, and God is operating to conform His people morally with that glorious Man. I can see the importance of being found here in the testimony, simply setting forth the glory of the Man Who is exalted above. That is soon to come out in public manifestation in the world to come. Presently the testimony is in suffering but oh the blessedness of enjoying in fulness what God has available to us in the glad tidings.
So it says here, "given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages of time but has been made manifest now by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ who has annulled death, and brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings." What fulness there is. "Who has annulled death." Some of us have had to race the reality of death, a very solemn and affecting thing, but this blessed Person has complete control over that domain. Christ died and lived again in order, it says, that He may rule over both dead and living, Rom 14: 9. There is a Man in complete control of the domain of death. If we are called to face the actuality of death, and some here have experienced that, think of the blessedness of only passing out of time into the immediate presence of One who has loved us, to share the blessedness in His very presence and the consciousness of that love that was witnessed in going into death. Wonderful thing! "Who has annulled death and brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings". All this has in view a system of life. God has life in view for man, not judgment. Think of the fulness of the glad tidings -"brought life and incorruptibility to light by the glad tidings", because He is going to have a system marked by love and what is morally incorruptible.
That is working out today in a vessel that loves our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption. Oh may we have some insight into the greatness of what is available to us in blessing in the glad tidings that, as identified with the testimony here publicly, and as giving place to the Spirit, we may know something of the reality and the blessedness of a system that is incorruptible and in which there are incorruptible affections operating. God is going to secure this in His people because He must have an answer to Him who has glorified God in death.
May it be so for His Name's sake.
Grangemouth
22nd April 1973