EXTRACT – CREATION
First with regard to creation. Lost in reasonings, and not knowing God, the human mind sought out endless solutions of existence. Those who have read the cosmologies2 of the ancients know how many different systems, each more absurd than the other, have been invented for that which the introduction of God, by faith, renders perfectly simple. Modern science, with a less active and more practical mind, stops at second causes; and it is but little occupied with God. Geology has taken the place of the cosmology of the ancient civilisations. To the believer the thought is clear and simple; the mind is assured and intelligent by faith. God, by His word, called all things into existence. The universe is not a producing cause; it is itself a creature acting by a law imposed upon it.
It is One having authority who has spoken; His word has divine efficacy. He speaks, and the thing is. We feel that this is worthy of God for, when once God is brought in, all is simple. Shut Him out, and man is lost in the efforts of his own imagination, which can neither create nor arrive at the knowledge of a Creator, because it only works with the power of a creature. Before, therefore, the details of the present form of creation are entered upon, the word simply says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". Whatever may have taken place between that and chaos forms no part of revelation. It is distinct from the special action of the deluge, which is made known to us. The beginning of Genesis does not give a history of the details of creation itself, nor the history of the universe. It gives the fact that in the beginning God created; and afterwards, the things that regard man on the earth. The angels even are not there. Of the stars it is only said, “He made the stars also” – when, we are not told. “By faith we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God”, Heb.11:3.
J N Darby Synopsis Vol.5 p241
HOW GOD HAS USED TIME TO SECURE HIS OWN THOUGHTS
Mark 14:32-43,46,53,63-65; 15:1,12-34,37-39
One of the things that we are very familiar with is the concept of time; it regulates our lives in many ways and we make our arrangements according to its passage. It is remarkable that God, who, as the scripture says, is “from eternity to eternity” (Ps.90:2), has brought time into being in order to accomplish His own great thoughts in purpose. Conceived in eternity but worked out in time, His purpose is to the end that He should secure what is serviceable and pleasurable to His own heart. Consider the wonder of it that God, being who He is in all His greatness and glory, all sufficient, having no need of any other, has purposed in love that He should have a response, and that from His creature, from persons like ourselves. Time has been brought into being in order that that might be secured. It has involved the creation, including the creation of man, the top stone of God’s creation, so that persons such as you and I might be secured for His pleasure and be responsive to Him.
In the Scriptures we have references to different periods of time. There are years, months, weeks, days and hours. It is interesting that hours are the shortest period of time recorded. The references to time generally relate to one of two aspects. When a number is given, like one day or forty weeks or forty years, it is normally a measured period of time. Often, when there is no quantity given, it refers more to the character of a period of time. For example, Scripture speaks of “the day of the Lord” (1 Thess.5:2) that is coming. It is not a single day, it is a period, and you will often find that throughout the Scriptures.
In these scriptures that I have read, each refers to hours. I hope that might interest you. Each period of time in the Scriptures usually has certain characteristics, and the character associated with hours is, it seems to me, largely one of intensity and pressure, and sometimes urgency too. I read these passages from what is sometimes referred to as the ‘pressure gospel’. In the references I have selected, I desire to speak of what is presented in them regarding the closing hours of the life of the Lord Jesus in flesh and blood condition here on earth, those of the One who came from the heights of divine glory to secure those great thoughts of God to which I have referred. He took a bondman's form. This gospel presents the Lord Jesus as the Servant, the One who came to serve by taking a bondman’s form, “taking his place in the likeness of men”, and “becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross”, Phil.2:7,8. I want to speak of what that involved for Jesus.
These passages in Mark’s gospel bring out something of the enormity of what He suffered and endured in the hours that are referred to. In the first passage, the Lord Jesus is seen in Gethsemane. In this gospel, we get presented the intensity of what He suffered in His spirit in Gethsemane. He was facing suffering and death. Men fear death; it is the wages of sin. Jesus
never feared death, but the awfulness of death – despite it having no claim upon Him, for He was sinless – pressed upon His spirit; He felt the horror of it. He was about to go into death, not on His own account, but in order that through His death and resurrection, God’s purpose in love to secure persons for Himself might be accomplished. I trust you are among them; I trust you are conscious of that and know what it is to be someone who has been secured for God’s pleasure and service. If you are, may it affect you that it required the Lord Jesus to suffer and to go into death to make it possible. I will seek to speak in a moment of His sufferings at the hand of God that were necessary in order for you and me to be secured for His pleasure and service. But in Gethsemane, something of the awfulness of that which He was about to face was pressing upon His spirit, and He was in communion with His Father about it.
There were three disciples, as this scripture records, who were with Him but they could not sustain the experience; they could not even remain awake. They would perhaps have observed the Lord Jesus for a little while: it is recorded that He became amazed and oppressed in spirit, or as the translator’s note indicates, ‘deeply depressed’. Sometimes persons suffer depression on account of the weakness of the flesh, and we feel for them. That was never the case with Jesus, but what is recorded of Him in Gethsemane brings out the depth of His feelings, and He said it Himself; “My soul”, He said, “is full of grief even unto death”. We cannot fully comprehend that. But it is recorded for our contemplation, that the Lord Jesus, in considering what lay before Him, could say such a remarkable thing.
The Lord Jesus was a man of sorrows. The scriptures bring that out; “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”, Isa.53:4. He entered into the sorrows of mankind, all the sorrows that sin had brought in. The Lord Jesus felt that; He felt it as no one else could
for He was without sin. What sorrows were His! Consider the intensity of what He felt here; “My soul is full of grief”. He spoke to His Father and asked that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from Him. The hour was not a literal hour here, but Jesus referred to that which lay before Him. He said, “take away this cup from me ...” but it was not possible, and He accepted the Father’s will. It brings out the depth of His feelings. And it seems from this scripture that He prayed for one hour. He came to the disciples and said to Peter, “Hast thou not been able to watch for one hour?”. That was an actual hour, but they could not sustain it, and no doubt neither would we have been able to if we had been there. What His prayer brought out was not only the depth of His feelings but the holy, perfect character of His manhood. He prayed, “take away this cup from me; but not what I will, but what thou wilt”. There was nothing, not even the intensity of all that He was passing through in His spirit and soul, that could deflect the Lord Jesus, for He had not come to do His own will, but to devote Himself in obedience to the will of His Father.
We are often reminded that had Jesus expressed His own will, it would have been perfect, but He did not come to do His own will, because He came into this world with the express purpose of doing the will of God. “Lo, I come to do thy will”, Heb.10:9. That is why the Lord Jesus came into manhood and took up that path of obedience, fully seen throughout His life including at this point of great pressure. What intensity of feelings must have entered into the soul of Jesus in that one hour in prayer. What was the conclusion? “Not what I will, but what thou wilt”. Oh, what holy, perfect Manhood. And then He told the disciples to sleep on and says, “It is enough; the hour is come”.
Then I read of what the Lord Jesus experienced at the hand of His earthly people. They laid their hands upon Him and seized Him and led Him away. You might
say, ‘How dare they do that to the Lord of glory’. But the Lord Jesus allowed Himself to be taken. You may ask why. Because the hour had come. The Son of man was to be “delivered up into the hands of sinners”. He allowed that to happen; they were powerless were it not that the Lord Jesus allowed them to take Him. Then the religious hierarchy of the Jews mocked Him; they had no room for Him. What it must have meant to Jesus. They mocked Him, they spat upon Him, they struck Him. The chief priests and the Sanhedrin sought to bring accusations against Him but they could not find anything against Him. They brought in what was false and finally they accused Him of blasphemy. What irony! They accused Him of blasphemy, the One in their very midst who in His Person was God manifest in flesh!
And then in chapter 15, the Jew and Gentile combined against the Lord of glory, and the outcome was that in the first three hours of that momentous day, Jesus was taken out to be crucified. The Roman authorities, the Gentiles, had their full part in it. There was weakness with Pilate, and yet if he had fulfilled his responsibilities properly, he would have let this glorious One go free, this One who did no harm, who did no sin, in whose mouth guile was not found (Isa.53:9). Jesus was innocent of everything of which they accused Him, but Pilate released Barabbas to them instead. That brings out the real character of the world, and it is unchanged. The world would rather have that which is abhorrent in the sight of God, that which is of sinful character, than to have the Lord Jesus. What a terrible judgment was reached. We sometimes sing that:
‘This world’s judgment stands recorded’ (Hymn 404).
In that mockery of a trial, Jew and Gentile combined to form a judgment which has remained unchanged to the present day, and then they led the Lord Jesus out to be crucified.