PERSONS GOING ON THEIR WAY

J. Mitchell

Numbers 22: 22–32; Acts 8: 26–39; Daniel 12: 13

You may have noticed that each of these passages refers to persons going on their way. We have been together over these three days and some this evening, and certainly more tomorrow, will be going on their way. The Spirit of God would raise the question with us, On which way are we going? I have read of Balaam to show the patience of God, and the care that God had for the soul of Balaam. The sad thing is that God had to say to Balaam, “the way thou walkest in is for ruin before me”. That is a very sobering thing. Is there anyone here that falls into that category, that the way in which they are is for ruin before God? Now Balaam clearly did not see that and he was not much concerned. We are told elsewhere about “the error of Balaam for reward”, Jude 11. He had a certain objective before him and sad to say that objective was not God, nor what was due to God. It was not even his own soul; but while Balaam was committed to a way of ruin he did not go on that, way without adequate warning. That is the blessedness of God Himself who would warn anyone. In His feelings for men, in His feelings for you and in His feelings for me, if we are on such a way God would bring in a warning to us. It was a wonderful warning that He gave to Balaam. Balaam was unable to see the Angel of Jehovah there with his sword outstretched but that was the end of the road on which Balaam was. The end of the road, as with all of us, is that we have to do with God, and God is righteous in everything that He does. Balaam was a man who corrupted the things of God, he took his own way and he pursued that way relentlessly. But God in His grace has brought in His warnings for us.

Here He brought it in through a dumb ass. It was very sobering that the ass knew better than Balaam himself; think of the faithfulness of that ass. There are some men in scripture who are determined on a certain course, and yet God gives them persons who do everything in their power to help them in the right way and He did that with this ass. The ass saw the Angel of Jehovah in the way with the outstretched sword and she protected Balaam; three times she did this, and Balaam’s anger was kindled each time. He must have had a tremendously hard conscience that even the action of his faithful ass could not appeal in any way to his conscience but he pursued his way. I wonder if there is anyone who may be in this character amongst us today who might be committed to pursue his or her own way, no matter what may happen. I would say, God is feeling for you and He uses instrumentalities that you might be warned that the way you are on is for ruin; Balaam was warned by his ass. You think of her faithfulness; she says, “was I ever wont to do so to thee?” Had she ever acted like that before? Should not Balaam’s conscience have been touched? Should he not have enquired why the ass took that action? But the sad thing is that he did not, but nevertheless God was patient with him and He appeared to him. God justified the action of the ass by showing him that He was against him on that way, which was “for ruin before me” and yet Balaam continued on it. The result is that he perishes (Numbers 31: 8). I would appeal to anyone on the wrong way that God is concerned about you and wishes not the death of any; He is not in this dispensation on the line of judgment. That is in the day to come when He takes up the sword in judgment. Then God will judge everything that is in this scene, but at the present time we are in the day of grace.

The reference to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts is beautiful. God saw what was working in this man. There was nothing working in Balaam’s conscience but there was something working in this man. He had a real desire after God but he needed light. He came to the place where he thought he might get light, he came to

Jerusalem but Christ, the great vessel of light, had been crucified out of Jerusalem, there was no light there and he was returning in his chariot. One good thing about him is that he is reading the Scriptures. I commend that to our younger ones here to read the Scriptures. You might not understand them; this man did not understand what he was reading. Philip said, “Dost thou then know what thou art reading of?”, and he said, No, he needed a helper, an interpreter. Philip was prepared to interpret for that man. Now think of the way God had ordered things. He took Philip from a fruitful gospel field and He sent him down to Gaza: “the same is desert”, in view of one man, one soul. Think of the length to which God would go that He might secure one soul, and that may be your soul today. God does not exactly work in multitudes, He works in individuals and here He has a concern for this one soul.

This man, as he was proceeding on his way homeward, likely rather disconsolate, was reading the Scriptures and he could not have been reading in a better place. He was reading, “He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb is dumb in presence of him that shears him, thus he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment has been taken away, and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answering Philip said, I pray thee, concerning whom does the prophet say this? of himself or of some other?”. O, dear friends, I need hardly tell you it is of “some other” and what Another it is. He was speaking of Jesus. I suppose the eunuch would never have heard of or come in contact with a Man like this. He was a Man that would accept the suffering; the way of the Lord Jesus when He was here was a suffering way. He was reading a chapter in the Old Testament that deals with the sufferings of Christ (Isaiah 53), and the great thing is, dear friends, that that suffering was for you and it was for me. That is the truth of the glad tidings, and that was what this eunuch was reading. “And the Spirit said to Philip, Approach and join this chariot”. Philip ran and joined the chariot and the man welcomed him up and he sought some help about the scripture. Then it says, “And Philip, opening his mouth and beginning from that scripture, announced the glad tidings of Jesus to him”. What glad tidings they were!

No doubt Philip would have told that eunuch how the Man of whom the prophet speaks went to Calvary. He took on the sufferings, He suffered for sin, the sinless One; how wonderful the gospel is, the way that God has taken in the glad tidings, that the One who knew not sin should be “made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”, 2 Corinthians 5: 21. You think of the sufferings of Jesus; I never fail to be impressed as I think about them. Think of what He bore in those three hours of darkness on Calvary’s tree, what the Lord bore as a Man here. His life was a life that was marked by suffering all the way through, but the sufferings that He had as a Man here at the hands of men would pale into insignificance compared to those sufferings in those three hours of darkness on Calvary’s cross. Have you ever thought about them, thought of what is involved in that? In the garden of Gethsemane, when the pressure of what it was to be made sin pressed in upon the spirit of the holy Jesus, we get some impression of what these sufferings really were. You think of what His feelings were; “My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me “(Matthew 26: 39); not that He was unwilling to go forward with it, but the holy Person of Jesus cried out against this awful matter of what it was to be made sin, “Him who knew not sin”.

I think we little understand what it really involved for Him to be “made sin”. The thing that He hated, the thing that was so obnoxious to God and, as obnoxious to God, it was obnoxious to Jesus, but it says that He was “made sin”. I often think of that illustration; illustrations are helpful but generally they all come short of the real thing, but Ezekiel was told to bake his bread with dung that comes from a man; you can understand to a holy Jew that was an obnoxious thing and he cried out against it. He said he had never tasted that which had been defiled, and God had mercy upon Ezekiel and He brought in some alleviation, and He said to him that he could eat his bread baked with the dung that came from cattle (Ezekiel 4: 12–15). But there was no alleviation whatsoever for Jesus. The thing had to be faced and faced in its totality, faced in its awfulness, and there in those three hours of darkness He was made sin. You think of that, the holy Person of Jesus, that character of manhood that was seen in perfection in Him, but made sin and as made sin the holy wrath of God fell upon Him, the unmitigated wrath of God upon sin. I say this because we should be affected. You say, Well I know Him as my Saviour.

I am thankful for that but nevertheless I still press the sufferings of Christ as He became the Sin-bearer because in the world in which we are sin is made very, very light of. Indeed in the country from which I come, and I suppose it is not much different here, it is in a certain sense a reproach not to go on with sin; a terrible character of things with which we have to deal.

Even among the so-called clergy, the persons who are seeking to give men a lead, they are making very little of sin. It is nothing nowadays, it is an acceptable thing, it is acceptable to society.

Let us face this, dear friends, sin is obnoxious to a holy God, and to put away sin really involves the deep sufferings of Jesus. That is what they involve; He cried in these hours of darkness, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Matthew 27: 46. What a cry, there has never been a cry like that before. Thank God there will never be a cry like it again, but it was a cry that was unanswered. At the time it had no answer; He provided the answer Himself, “And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”, Psalm 22: 3. The holiness of God demanded the thorough dealing in righteousness with sin, but the Lord Jesus was able for that and He bore the judgment. So He went through

those three hours and at the end of it He said, “It is finished”, John 19: 30. The whole matter had been thoroughly gone through, alone with God in all that it involved for Him in the depths of His sufferings, what He felt in His own soul. Psalm 22 gives us a deep insight into what the holy feelings of Jesus were as He was made sin; he was there as the Sin-bearer in order that you and I “might become God’s righteousness in him”. He went through with that in its fulness and came out of it. He did not succumb under it. He was not overcome by it. He went through it in totality. He dealt with the whole matter of sin and removed it from the sight of a holy God. Apart altogether from you and me, sin had to be removed from the sight of a holy God, and He undertook all that.

Then He died; “Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures”, 1 Corinthians 15: 3. His death was necessary because the penalty was such, “dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return”, Genesis 3: 19. That was the penalty that was pronounced when sin came in. It involved death but then Jesus died. He “died for our sins, according to the scriptures”. Do you ever allow that to come home to your affections, come home to your spirit, into your soul so that it might have its own effect upon you? Then it says, “he was buried”. It says, “Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that he was buried”, so that man that sinned should be removed entirely out of God’s sight. Think of what He undertook vicariously.

Vicarious is a big word and some of our younger persons may not understand it, but it means that He took it upon Himself for others. What do we owe to Jesus? Let us just stop for a moment and think about it. What do we owe? We owe everything to Him; that is about all that you can say, that what He undertook for you and for me involves that we owe everything to Him.

So He was buried and the Scriptures say He rose again the third day. He is now exalted at God’s right hand and is set forth as a mercy-seat through faith in His blood. So that anyone, any sinner, can come to Jesus in faith and put his faith, not only in the work of that Man, certainly in His work and in His shed blood, but put his faith in His Person in the knowledge that God has accepted the Person of Jesus. The very fact that He is on high is the proof that God has accepted Him; not only that but there is an added proof with the coming of the Spirit; He is justified in the Spirit. The scripture tells us that; the coming of the Spirit is the proof, if anyone wants proof, that He has been accepted by God on high. He is a wonderful Saviour in the presence of God, appearing there before the face of God for us. What a Saviour!—Not only a Saviour for your sins, but a Saviour every day. That is the Person that Philip would have spoken of to the eunuch.

Then it says, “as they went along the way, they came upon a certain water, and the eunuch says, Behold water; what hinders my being baptised? And he commanded the chariot to stop”. It does not tell us that Philip said anything to the eunuch about baptism, and I do not think he did. What he did was he presented Jesus Christ to him in such a way that that man was so affected, that not only did he put his faith in Christ, but he said, If that Man went out of the world that way I must go out the same way. There is only one course for me. And I tell you this, my friend, there is only one course for you and that is to go out of this world the same way as Jesus went out of it. We go out of it in baptism which really means, as far as you are concerned, you are finished with the world. I appeal to our young people here that they come to that in their souls. I believe that is a point in your soul history that you have to come to. If your Saviour, the One to whom you owe everything, went out of this world by way of death there is only one way for you and that is to go out of it the same way. That is what baptism means. I suppose most of us here were baptised in the faith of our parents. But that is in view of your coming to it in your own soul experience, that you have no place in this world, and no desire for any place in this world whatsoever. You want to go the same way as your Saviour went; as far as you are concerned you are finished with it entirely. Now that is what the eunuch came to. It says of the eunuch that “he went on his way rejoicing”.

What a way that is. I trust that everyone goes from this hall today rejoicing in the way that the eunuch rejoiced. He had to go and fulfil his responsibilities and carry out the office that was his in Ethiopia, but he went back a totally different man; he went back a man whose heart was filled with joy. As he took up his duties, whatever they may have been, I have no doubt his colleagues would say to one another, There is something changed about that man. Could your colleagues say that about you that there is a change come about in you? Would they say he or she is different from us all? It should be so, dear Christian friend. You should be different for you belong to Christ, He has His claims, His rights over you and you belong to Him. You no longer belong to yourself, you now belong to Him, He has purchased you with His precious blood, what a cost it has been. The word is, “Do ye not know ... ye are not your own? for ye have been bought with a price”, 1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20. Do you ever think of that as you go about your way? You say, I am going to do this. Do you ever think that you are not your own, you have been bought with a price? Would you not rather follow the way of this eunuch and say that as far as I am concerned I am finished with this world and all that is in it?

In practice we have to carry out our duties, but we carry them out in a totally different way. When Christ went on high the Holy Spirit came here, and He is available to you and to me and to every one who has put their trust in Jesus. I have no doubt that this man who went on his way rejoicing had the Spirit because the Spirit brings the joy of salvation into your soul.

Salvation is in Christ, no one can ever change that, it can never be taken from you; it is for time and for eternity, but the joy of it can be known in the Spirit. The Spirit will give you the joy of it and the happiness that comes with it, and He will help you too in these practical matters that arise through being finished with the world altogether, and now being connected with another Man in another world.

This is what is for you in the glad tidings, and the Spirit of God would help you to be engaged, not only with Christ who has been here—we certainly need to have that Man in our affections, the Man who has been here and died for us—but to have in our affections the Man who is up there. That is a great thing in this dispensation and that is what will preserve you from this world and all that is in it, all the sorrow, all the suffering that is the result of sin in this world. Sin is not for the blessing of men but for their destruction. The Spirit would engage you with a Man in another scene altogether, and He would fill your heart with that Man. Well, you can understand why the eunuch went on his way rejoicing. That is what is in mind in the glad tidings. It is not in God’s mind that anyone should leave this room in misery or in disappointment. So if you have not realised that you are to be subject to Christ, dear friend, give yourself to Jesus and know what it is to have the Holy Spirit. He is available to you for the asking, and having the Holy Spirit you will go on your way rejoicing. That is really what is in the mind of God for you.

Now just a touch on Daniel who was a remarkable man. Even the young children know something of the story of Daniel; what a man he was, a man who was determined that he should maintain Jerusalem in his affections. He opened his windows three times a day towards Jerusalem. You might have said, Daniel, why are you troubling? Jerusalem is nothing but a heap of ruins, that is all that it is, having been set on fire and razed to the ground. Here he was miles away from it. The simple thing would have been to fall into the milieu in which he found himself and find his life there, but Daniel said his life was related to Jerusalem. I would just like to ask you this question, Is your life related to Jerusalem? You say, What do you mean by that? Just simply, Is your life bound up with the assembly?

Typically that was Daniel’s life. He had companions with him and they are remarkable companions. They would not pollute themselves with the king’s meat, they would not fall in even with the direst dictates of the king; they were even prepared to give up their lives. At one point they said that God was able to save them from the hand of the king, but if not, even though God did not save them from the hand of the king, they would not go against what was in their souls in relation to God. What men these are! Where I read, the word to Daniel was, “But do thou go thy way until the end”.

Now what a wonderful thing that would be if the Lord was to say to every one here, “go thy way”. He was a trustworthy person, he was a person like the eunuch. The eunuch could go down to Ethiopia and he was absolutely trustworthy; he went on his way rejoicing. The word to Daniel here is, “But do thou go thy way until the end”. What a word for us, and it says, “thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days”. Well that comes home to me, if I should be able to stand in my lot to the end of my days. Much comes in day by day, by way of the enemy’s enticings and his pleadings, but the question is whether we are able to stand in our lot and whether we might have the divine voice, “go thy way until the end”. May the Lord help us in it, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Vancouver
18 August 2002