PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD

Gaius Napthine

1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11; Romans 5: 1, 2; Hebrews 13: 20-22

I feel I have had a word from the Lord as to peace and I would like to challenge you tonight as to whether you are enjoying peace with God. It is a real question, a real challenge for me, as well I hope as for you, whether you are enjoying peace with God. You will not find peace in this world in anything that this world has to offer by way of entertainment, persuasion or distraction. You might be able to forget the misery of your sin, the misery of your sinful history for a little while. You might be able to put to one side for a moment the thought of having to do with God, but in the glad tidings God is urging you to turn in repentance to Himself and faith towards His well beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. How simple the glad tidings are because you know from the youngest to the oldest they are applicable. Are you feeling your responsibility before God, is your conscience speaking to you? Is it guilty? Do you know the guilt that belongs to those who do not know Jesus as their sin bearer? I do not apologise for being very straight, the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword (see 1 Heb 4: 12), it penetrates. It penetrated my soul and I realised that I was not fit for the presence of the holy God, I needed a redeemer, and I needed to be made clean and to be made fit. Who would make me fit for the presence of God? Who would be able? I realised I had nothing to offer, everything was tainted, everything was spoilt. If as a sinner I was to offer anything to God it would be useless, even to offer my own life, not only because it was spoilt but because in the glad tidings we are told that the offering has already been made. I commend Jesus to you as the blessed Offerer, the One who was the offering Himself for our sins, our iniquities, our lawlessnesses. Praise His Name! Praise God that He gave Jesus for you and for me. How wonderful He is. Do you know Him? He is my peace, is He yours? I tell you that you will find peace nowhere else but in the person of Jesus, in faith in Him and in the appreciation that His shed blood covers you, shelters you from all the judgment of God that is about to come upon this world and upon mankind – a solemn matter that another had to take it upon Himself and is Himself God. He had to come if you and I were to come into blessing and enjoy God’s mercy. Are you enjoying mercy tonight, are you enjoying mercy and grace realising that you know that you can sit there and you can walk out of the room, maybe different from how you walked in. You can certainly sit there and walk out of this room tonight justified by faith, counted righteous by God. Your sins washed away in the blood of Jesus and everything settled. I speak simply on account of my own simplicity and on account of the children, and on account of the urgency of the time that we are in. There may not be another preaching of the glad tidings, maybe not another outgoing of God’s word, but now is the well accepted time. You might say not only is now the day of salvation, but for those who are in this room, including the preacher, now this very moment is the well accepted time, a time when God is not imputing sins, not condemning anyone in here, or anywhere else, He is commending His love.

You cannot help but read this scripture in Thessalonians. I read it when preaching elsewhere after the terrible tragedy in Asia on Boxing Day last year, and one would be led to read it again. You hear of events in other parts, terrible matters that come upon men, maybe attributed to what is naturally occurring in the earth and in the world, but affecting men. Has the incoming of Christ, the incoming of the Son of God into this world affected you? I would challenge you as to that. I am sure it has, how has it affected me, how has it affected you? Has it caused you to cry to God in thanksgiving that another took your place and bore the judgment that was justly due to you and me? Do you truly thank God every day that there was One who loved you and gave Himself for you? Blessed Jesus! I commend Him to you. Think of those persons dying in their sins. You will die in your sins without Christ, you will die in your sins without the Saviour. You may fear God in a sense, you may believe in the Almighty, you may even reverence God, you may recognise that you will have to do with God, but dear friend there is One mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus who gave Himself a ransom for all. That is the reality that we could never have to do with God on our own terms. Young people who have worked for me over the years think that their good works will outweigh their bad, they hope that they will win God’s favour, that they will earn God’s merit. Do you not feel your need of a Saviour, of Jesus? His is the alone Name that is given under heaven, given among men whereby we must be saved (see Acts 4: 12). He is not just a prophet, He was not just a good Man, He was the Saviour of sinners, the blessed Mediator of God and men. It has been said that the world is like a theatre, that it is like a battleground, and there is man on the battleground. Satan wants to rob God of the souls of men, God in His glad tidings, in His mercy and grace is seeking to attract persons to His blessed Saviour, to Jesus. What has Satan got to attract you that will give you lasting peace? Nothing. There is nothing that this world can offer but there is a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who once lay in death, who once suffered in our stead, who is on high now tonight, and He can give you peace with God and He is available for you. You are not excluded. Whatever you have done, however your conscience troubles you, Jesus is able to save completely those who approach by Him to God. Do not pass the message by, do not think that you can have to do with God on your own terms, when they may say peace and safety and then sudden destruction comes upon them.

I know these scriptures I have read are addressed to believers but I have read them as seeking to raise exercise with each one of us as to whether we are enjoying peace, whether we are enjoying present salvation, because that is what God wants us to be in the gain of. He wants us to be encouraged. He wants us to be those who are alert, alert as to His feelings and desires that He might have us for His pleasure. Are you here for His pleasure? We spoke a little in the reading as to the enjoyment of Christian fellowship and that involves the remembrance of the Lord with one another as we did this morning. Dear friend, I just bring that into the gospel, I think it is right to do so and remind you that the Lord Jesus has a claim over you. No one has a claim like Him, a blessed incontestable claim and His desire in that claim, as asserting His rights as the blessed Redeemer who shed His blood for you, is that you might be here for Him and have a part in being here for Him. I believe what is involved in being here for Him is to begin each week as putting your hands to the loaf and the cup and remember Him and giving Him His rightful place. You will know when the time is right, the blessed timing of God is perfect. I think of the time when I was converted, maybe you can cast your mind back, perhaps you can remember a time when you wept for Jesus, when you shed tears for that blessed Lamb of God who in meekness and lowliness yielded to the will of God and laid down His life for you and for me.

May it sober us, may it cause us to be sober in the present time, but may it cause us to rejoice, rejoice in the knowledge that we have “peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ” as Paul brings out in Romans. We know these things, maybe we know them well that we have been justified on the principle of faith and that we have “peace towards God”. But I believe that the divine intent is that we should be in the present reality and enjoyment of these things that we might know that everything is settled, every liability met, everything settled. Where was it settled for you? You might say everything was settled when I was on my knees and I confessed my sins, I repented and I sought forgiveness and I know that I am forgiven. But do you know where everything was settled? It was settled at the cross of Calvary, for God the whole matter of sin has been met. Oh the greatness of Jesus! The greatness of the Christ, the Messiah of God that He alone was able to meet everything that stood out against man and the question tonight is whether you accept Him as your own sin bearer.

I read these scriptures that we might be refreshed and that God may have His portion that we might be those who are boasting, “boast in hope of the glory of God”. What does that involve? I believe it involves the anticipation of standing before God and giving an account of ourselves. That is what the scripture says we will have to do, each of us shall give an account of ourselves to God and not only that but standing before the judgment seat of Christ and learning what it is to see everything in its place and everything according to God. Maybe there are questions hard to solve in your history. I might just bring in something as to that – I was speaking to someone close to me and there are things that cannot be undone, things that you might have to live with things or that I might have to live with, and you say how can I enjoy peace if I am having to live with the knowledge of things that I have done in the past and perhaps the effect that they have had? I heard an interesting thing said recently, God does not judge a person immediately they have died, He does not put them in hell, an unbeliever, because the effects of what they have done in their lives continue. Think of persons who have lived, wicked unbelieving persons and the effect of things that they have done in their lives continuing. So God’s timing is perfect. He will usher in a day of judgment but that day has not arrived and the eternal day has not arrived yet. That is why we are here still and I believe that each of us is to recognise that everything that has happened, anything that is lingering on your mind, anything that is weighing you down, you need to take to Jesus. Take it to Him and He will bear it for you. He is the blessed bearer of burdens. Has He borne your burden? Have you found what it is to have a great release as you just cast your cares upon Him, because He cares about you?

The God of peace, we read about Him this morning, He desires and will see to it that those who have believed are “perfect … in every good work to the doing of his will”. Beloved friend, it is a good and acceptable and perfect will, that is the will of God. Your will and mine is a wicked will, it is marked by selfishness, the great contrast is the will of God, selflessness seen in Christ. Is He not attractive to you? The blessed One who shed His blood for you to redeem you to God, the sinless One, He is appealing to you tonight:

The person of the Christ,

Enfolding every grace (Hymn 132)

Think of it, He died, but He is alive tonight, He is alive for evermore and wants you to live and be in the enjoyment of life and in the enjoyment of having to do with God and having God as a Father. The Spirit would give you to know that peace tonight as you call upon God for mercy and grace and for His forgiveness, for His Spirit to indwell you. God would give you His Spirit that you might be in the present enjoyment of peace and rest and you can go on your way rejoicing. You can enjoy your life now, you can start the responsible week in the knowledge that everything is settled. You name is written in the book of life, God is for you. May you be in the enjoyment of these things and have Jesus as your personal Saviour without whom there is no hope: you are lost without Christ. But God is appealing to you tonight in wondrous fresh mercy and grace that you might come; come to the supper spread, enjoy what He has prepared, what He has prepared for those who love Him. Has it entered into your hearts? I believe it has not fully entered into my heart what God has prepared for me. I love God and I trust you can say that tonight, that you love God, that He has first loved you and therefore you love Him. You love Jesus, you love the Father, you love the Spirit. What a blessed God, how He has delighted to make Himself known because He saw us before we were even born, saw us in all our need. As another has written:

He saw us ruined in the fall,

Yet loved us notwithstanding all (Hymn 107)

What a wonderful God we have to do with, He dwells in light unapproachable who no man has seen nor can see, but He has been fully revealed in Jesus Christ, in none other; the effulgence of God’s glory and the expression of His substance. May you in faith afresh, if not for the first time, lay your hope upon Him. To God’s glory and for His Name’s sake.

WEST NORWOOD

23 October 2005