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THE BLESSINGS OF THE GOSPEL

Gordon McKay

Acts 3: 26; Galatians 3: 6-10, 13,14; Revelation 20: 5,6

I would not simply like to preach, as it were, a subject. I have a theme in my mind, but I would like to be sure that I preach the gospel, and preach Christ. He is the great theme of the glad tidings. But perhaps you have noticed that these scriptures allude to blessing, and I would like to speak to you about the blessing that is in the glad tidings. It is really in Christ. Everything that is in the glad tidings is in Christ and through Christ, through Him and through His work, through the shedding of His blood, what we were singing of: "atonement made". God has wonderful blessings under His hand and in His heart and in the preaching of the glad tidings, in the sending out of the glad tidings, He has all these blessings in His mind. I do not know what you have in your mind, whether you are interested, I suppose you are. You may have your thoughts as to what you would expect from the glad tidings, but I would like to tell you that God has very wonderful things in mind for you in them. He does not have limited thoughts as to what He wants to do. He wants to bless you according to His own heart and His own thoughts. Some of the blessings you might think of that you would like and would covet to be in the gain of - well, they are in the glad tidings. You might want peace of conscience, and a sense of security as to the time to come. Much is in the glad tidings, but God would bless you according to His own heart and He would like to bless you richly. He is just such a God, our Saviour God. He would love to embrace you with is love and secure you for Himself, bring His love into your heart, install Christ in your heart, the One who is installed in heaven the One that fills God's heart. He wants to find a pathway into your heart and mind and install Christ in your affections so that He is the One that you believe in, your Saviour and your Lord too because that will be for your salvation, that you should acknowledge Jesus as Lord. He desires that you should find out what a wonderful Saviour you have and what a wonderful person Jesus is, and how worthy He is of the place that God has given Him, and Just discover the joy of having Christ; not only the benefit of His work, but that you should have Him, Himself, for yourself. One of the gospel hymns says:

I could not do without Thee

You cannot do without Jesus: you really cannot. You cannot do without Him as a Saviour, to save you from your sins and from a lost eternity, you cannot do without Him at all for your present satisfaction or whatever you wish to set forward whether it is your pathway, your circumstances, or whatever it might be, you cannot do without Him. God has arranged things so that everything is for you in Christ. He has graciously and blessedly set forth a Man in whom is everything for your heart and affections and through whose work you can be completely cleared of guilt and sin, and your history can be dealt with. He has all these things, and now He wants to find an avenue into your heart and mind so that He might bless you and bless you according to His own thoughts, not according to your own thoughts. Whatever your thoughts are, God has greater thoughts and He wants to bless you. But He has to find an avenue in, He has to find access to your heart. If there is access to you, to your heart and the depth of your being in the glad tidings, one of the routes that cannot be bypassed is your conscience. It is a very pointed thing. I am speaking in, I trust, appropriate terms of the blessings that God has in His heart, and what He has in mind for you. But if there is going to be this blessing that will descend on your soul, God has to find an answer in your conscience. He has to reach your conscience. It does not matter who you are or how far away you are from God or whether you have faith or not, you have a conscience, because God gave man a conscience. It is a link that He still has with man. I know that men's consciences can become seared, they can become so hardened that their consciences hardly work, as if they are shutting up that avenue, and the devil would do that, shut up even that avenue, and cut off even that link with God. But God would touch your conscience and would move your heart. He wants to turn you to Himself, He wants to affect you.

That is why I read this verse in Acts 3. The first blessing in the glad tidings is that God would turn you from your wickedness. Your wickedness? Your wickedness, turn you from your wickedness. It says that here, "turning each one of you from your wickedness". You have to turn, there has to be a turning point in your life. There has to be a moment of repentance. I say a moment, but it is a blessed point that is reached, and God would deepen it. He would reach your conscience as to your sinnership, as to your wickedness. You say, I am insulting you. I do not think so, because each one here that has come under the shelter of the blood of Christ has had to come to their own wickedness, that they themselves were sinners. This is not an abstract thing; sin, what separates from God, is not an abstract thing. It is a real thing, it is recorded in all these sins you have committed. They are done, you cannot undo them, there they are, they stand. You can forget them, you can cover them up, you think they are lost and forgotten and never to be raised again, and yet God knows about these sins and He has provided for them, that if you turn to Christ in faith they can be covered by the blood of Jesus, there can be covering for them, and cleansing for you. Sin is a real thing. These sins that you have committed are real, and there they are until they are covered by the blood of Jesus as you have faith in your heart. Do not think that they will ever go away just by forgetting; they will be there. God requires that which is past. He will bring it up with persons who refuse the glad tidings. They will eventually face Jesus as a judge on the great white throne. All these matters will come up.

There is something else to touch your conscience, and that is that not only have you a record of sins, as we all have, but you are a sinner. You say that is the same thing. It is not really, for you have these sins recorded, but you are a sinner. Where did these sins come from? They came from you, and therefore you are a sinner. "God be merciful", says one man in scripture, "to me the sinner''. That is what you have to come to, you cannot bypass things. If there is to be an entrance into your heart and affections, your conscience has to be touched and I have to try and speak a little of this, trusting that God will reach your conscience, if for the first time in your history; or perhaps if you have already been touched in your conscience something deeper might be done so that God might find a fuller way, Christ might find a fuller place in your heart and affections. Tell me, are you going on in sin? Are you a sinner? We know what we are as belonging to that fallen order of man, Adam's race. But then what is your course? Could you guarantee me that you will not sin tomorrow? What a thing it is that comes into your heart and mind: not only have I committed sins, but I am a sinner, and I cannot even stop. I do not have enough power to stop sinning. It speaks somewhere about the man who corrupts himself, goes on in corruption, that is he is so wicked and corrupt that he cannot stop sinning. You might say, is that me? Well you can answer the question. Is it you? Apart from the divine grace and what the gospel does, you are not only one who is marked by sin, but you are a sinner and you cannot even stop sinning. What a state to be in!

When God begins to work with you, He alerts your conscience as to this, and things that you had forgotten begin to come up in your soul and you begin to realise that this has to be settled, and I tell you it has to be settled. This matter of your sins has to be settled. You cannot bypass this. You say, I would like to receive Jesus. You can receive Jesus as your Saviour, but you cannot bypass the matter. God is not going to bypass this matter, but thankfully we can say that He has provided a remedy. He brings up the great issue of your sins to solve it in your heart forever. It does not actually take very long. If you are honest and listen to the glad tidings. God can do it quickly, but it has to be done. Has it come up? Has this great moment in your life come up and the question of your sins and your position before God come to an issue, a point where you have to make a decision, you cannot bypass it any more? God eventually says, I am going to hold you now. Have you ever felt that in the glad tidings? Many of us have, that God would say, I am going to hold you now. You cannot get an escape, the word of God comes in and you cannot escape, you have to face up to this issue of your sins. Then as you are broken by that, there is a surrender in you, and you turn to God and you find, even perhaps in distress of your soul, that He has brought up this question, not to condemn you but to save you, just that the whole matter should be solved. It is a blessing that God turns each one of us from our wickedness. He sent Christ to the Jews for this. This whole section is a preaching to the Jews. It says "To you first God, having raised up his servant, has sent him". That is a preaching to the Jews, but the Spirit of God through the preacher, puts in the word "first", that is that others are going to come in too. It says that in Romans, that the gospel is preached, "both to Jew first and to Greek", and so it comes to us as well. That word "first" is inserted to show that God is wide in His affections, for He has not only His earthly people in view, but He has the nations in view. He is broad in His affections and His thoughts towards men. It is embracive of them, "To you first". God would desire to embrace you, not to exclude you from His thoughts, for He wants to bring you into the blessing. Are you going to stay outside? I would say in all earnestness, Do not stay outside one blessing that God has in His heart for you, do not miss any of it. Do not be satisfied with relief from your conscience and then go away. Do not miss any of · the blessings. God's heart is full towards you. But you have to make a start in this path in repentance.

So, blessing comes in "to you first". Did not Lady Powerscourt mention that there was a single letter in scripture that she was very thankful for because it let her in? It was a relief to her to find that it says in Corinthians as to the Christian calling, "there are not many wise ... not many powerful, not many high born". Her problem was that she was high-born; she said that she was very thankful for the letter M - it does not say 'not any' high born, but "not many". So you have to see that God wants to include you. He is not out to exclude you: you can exclude yourself, He wants to include you. Tell me, are you excluding yourself from any of God's blessings? Are you excluding yourself in your thoughts or in your path, or even in your committals, from any of the blessings that God has in His heart for you? He has a place for you, He has thoughts for you, thoughts that are heavenly and blessed. He will bless you in Christ, and He will have you before Him eternally. He has thoughts for you now for your present salvation and blessing and enjoyment, and thoughts for you too that He might take you up for His testimony. He begins with this blessing, that He turns you from your wickedness, and each one who is saved is turned and experiences that great blessing. What a God! Have you ever thought this: What if God just let me go on my own path, my own will? Thank God I can say, He did not just let me go, He turned me. Have you been turned? Has the point been reached in your soul?

Where we read in Galatians there is another blessing mentioned and it is connected with Abraham, an Old Testament saint who has great influence in God's ways, because in him first the principle of the gospel was shown. It says, "Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." That is an allusion to what happened in Genesis 15, that God spoke to Abraham and Abraham believed God. That was a moment in Abraham's history. No doubt faith marked him from the outset in some sense, but the glad tidings is announced, and who receive the glad tidings; they believe in Jesus, they believe in His work, put their trust in His shed blood, and what was accomplished at Calvary: they rest in that. Have you stability in your soul, are things established in your soul? From God's point of view things are established, established in the work of Christ. He has signalised Christ by raising Him from the dead and by highly exalting Him and giving Him glory at His right hand. He has indicated to the universe His pleasure and satisfaction in Christ, and now Christ is beyond this scene. He is in heaven at the right hand of God and we can point to Him a glorious Saviour. Everything is established there at the right hand of God. You could not think of anything more powerful than the right hand of God, and that is where Christ is and through Christ God is acting in the glad tidings to bring in stability to a soul. Have you faith? Abraham had faith. God spoke to him and he believed. Not only did he believe the glad tidings that God brought to him, but his faith was tested too, and the more Abraham was tested the more his faith came out. Features began to appear with him that show the characteristics of this line. One of the them was obedience. God spoke to him and immediately he obeyed. Another thing is that he was asked by God to take his son, his only son. God spoke to him feelingly, "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest", and he told him to sacrifice him. Abraham took him on the journey to the mount, took the wood and the knife and his son and proceeded in view of the sacrifice. He even bound his son and laid him on the wood, he even put out his hand to take the knife to slay his son. God did not allow it. But what scripture teaches as to that is that Abraham was moving in faith. Faith is a wonderful thing in your soul. It reaches beyond everything that is natural. I am not going to try to convince you as to the glad tidings through signs; I do not believe that what is set out in the gospel and in the Scriptures contradicts facts, or reason either, but I am not basing what I am saying on this, I am basing what I am saying on faith. When Abraham acted like that, he trusted God so much he believed that if he sacrificed his son, God would raise him from the dead. He believed in resurrection.

That is another thing in the glad tidings, not only to believe on the work of Christ and the Person of Christ, but to believe that God raised Him from the dead. Have you thought of such a Christ? We were speaking in the reading of the different aspects in which we can know Christ and His blessed features, the ways which we can know Him. In what ways do you know Him? Do you know Him as your Saviour, the One who was a sacrifice for you - your Substitute because you believe in Him, the One who bore your sins, the One who actually went into death for you and broke the power of death for you, to relieve you of the fear of death? Do you know Him as the risen One? Have you faith in a risen Christ, a living Christ, and an exalted and glorified Christ? You can know Him in different ways. It is best to seek to know Him, as we were saying in the reading, in every way. Find more out about this blessed Person in the faith of your soul. When you reach resurrection, everything is established. That is what Scripture teaches us, solidity for your soul rests in Christ risen from the dead, His work complete and the satisfaction of God with His work, with His Person, attested by the fact that God raised Him from the dead. How could Christ have been raised from the dead by the Father if the work was incomplete? The work was done. It is not a question of works, as Galatians points out. You cannot add anything to the work of Christ. Nothing can be added. Even your faith does not add to the work of Christ, but you just lay hold of the work of Jesus. You cannot add to it. You can try, for our natural instinct is to try to add something, something of ourselves, in some way to merit blessing. But we just have to submit in the obedience of faith, and understand the glory of the work of Christ.

How blessed this is then that there is a gospel preached. It was announced beforehand to Abraham, and there is the idea of being blessed with believing Abraham. You become one of the line of faith and you come into blessing. There is a curse, of course. We are speaking of blessing and the Jews were very much acquainted with this thought of blessing and cursing. It is in the Old Testament. Are you going to come in for blessing or come in for cursing? The curse is attached to the law, as Paul brings out in Galatians. Persons like the Jews who were under the law, and bound under the law, and did not keep the law, therefore came in for a curse. "Christ has redeemed us out of the curse of the law, having become a curse for us". He bore everything, he dealt with every situation that lay upon man. If it is a question of your sins, He shed His blood, so that your sins should be forgiven, so that God had a righteous basis to justify you. If it was a question of your state, He died and went out of sight in the grave to remove even that from the sight of God, so that you might be in God's view, not in Adam, not in a sinful order, but that He might view you as in a risen Christ, He might see you altogether differently. Indeed a believer is authorised by Scripture to reckon himself dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus, as he apprehends a risen Christ. How precious these things are! And then, if it was the law, if that was what burdened the Jewish conscience, a broken law, Christ died for that too. That was a severe thing, that the nation so blessed of God, favoured by the divine presence, and given the oracles of God, and given the law should have brought on themselves a curse. How dreadful! Christ became a curse for them on the cross. He did that! It says in the scripture, Cursed is everyone hanged upon a tree, so Jesus was hanged upon a tree, hanged on a cross, and he bore the curse of a broken law. He bore things, He bore our sins in His body on the tree. Things were dealt with in every aspect of our dreadful condition, everything that would burden and hold us down and keep us in bondage in conscience and heart, He died to remove it, to remove it eternally, to take away the guilt of your sins. Are they gone? The guilt, has it gone? Your sins gone? Without you doing anything, you just repent and believe in the Lord Jesus, and your sins are gone and you have peace in your heart. You can sleep at night, you can waken with a fresh mind and heart and conscience, because your Saviour is the same and His work is eternal and abiding, and He is a living Saviour, and your sins have actually been dealt with. You can say with other believers that our sins were borne. He bore our sins in His body on the tree. Where are they? He bore them and they are gone. You say they called for the judgment of God - yes they did. Christ bore the judgment, He exhausted it. It has been said that all that God is He is against sin, and that was all poured out on the head of Jesus on the cross. The work has been done, and now no curse for us, but blessing.

We drank this morning of the cup of blessing. That is one of the blessings of Christianity. Those that break bread, they drink into the cup of blessing. That very experience at the Supper is an avenue into a greater sense of divine favour, and relationship too: not only the covenant love of God, and the settled relationship in that sense, but a consciousness of a relationship with Christ as His brethren, blessed heavenly and eternal relationships with Christ and with the Father. These things in God's heart are all poured out to us and as we drink into the cup, we see the origin of everything in the death of Jesus, in the pouring out of His blood, and we drink the cup of blessing. A Christian knows blessing. I do not know who else really does. How can anyone else outside Christ? A Christian is marked by blessing. According to Scripture he is so full in his soul of divine blessing, that he is himself a kind of blessing. You meet him and he does not get you down, he does not damage you, he does not depress you, he is a blessing. It is said of Abraham, that he would be a blessing, not only that through him persons would blessed. You find too, that what marks the believer is that he blesses, because'\re have been called to this, that we should inherit blessing". How precious these things are! Heaven has been opened. There is a scripture in Malachi where God says to His people in the old dispensation "Prove me now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I open not to you the windows of the heavens, and pour you out a blessing, till there be no place for it'. That is how great the blessing is. He will pour out a blessing that you could not contain. Think of heaven having windows, and these windows looking upon the earth, and God pouring a blessing out of these windows. ln Revelation 20 we have an allusion to those who have part in the first resurrection. I want to speak about this because it would give opportunity not only to add to this suggestive list of the blessings that are ours, but also an opportunity for a warnin7777g. We have here an allusion to the first resurrection. There are two resurrections, a first resurrection and another one. There are two deaths - you may not have thought of this – but there is death as we commonly speak of it, and there is the second death. What this scripture says is, "Blessed and holy he who has part in the first resurrection". The believer is looking for the Lord Jesus to come, and He will take us out of this scene without seeing death at all. That is what we look for and hope for and desire and believe that the Lord Jesus will come and will take us entirely out of this scene all together. On the other hand, for some of us - or who knows, for all it might be - we might be allowed to go the way of death, we believe that this is just the closing time m this dispensation of grace. But we cannot tie God down to that, we cannot say it is going to be such and such a year, or such and such a time. God has His own rights and His own thoughts, and He has extended this day of grace out over all these hundreds of years. People speak about the millennium, two thousand years, as if things must finish there. It is in God's hands. He will lengthen the day out until He has the full result that He has in mind. We long for Christ to come, we believe we are just in the last and closing days, but we do not know exactly, because God would lengthen out the day. Where we read yesterday in Joshua, where the sun stood still, it was about a whole day. It is a bit indefinite. That is what it is like in this dispensation, things are just a little bit indefinite as to time. God is working to His own thoughts and He is extending out this day of grace. The question might arise as to death, and as to resurrection. It says that there is a first resurrection and blessed and holy he who has part in it. These are those who die in Christ, these are believers. They have part in the first resurrection. What a comfort to our hearts when we think of believers who have gone, and relatives who have loved Christ and have been taken. What a comfort for older brethren, for any of us who might face death, that there is such a thing as the first resurrection. We read of it yesterday, "the firstfruits, Christ; then those that are the Christ's at His coming" (1 Cor 15: 23). The persons described in this paragraph in Revelation 20 come in a little afterwards, because they go through the time of tribulation and are beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus, but then they will still have part in the first resurrection. It is a wonderful thing to have part in the first resurrection. It is described as the resurrection of life. The rest of the dead did not live until the thousand years were completed, and the resurrection, if you can speak of it, of the wicked dead. It is a most solemn thing, to have part in the second resurrection; it means that you are going to have part in the second death. That is a dreadful thing. The second resurrection is of those who are unbelievers. It is hardly a resurrection to life, but they are called out from death to face judgment, and the judgment that they face is described in one sense as the second death. This is the second death - the lake of fire. How solemn that is! How blessed to have part in a living company. What it is going to be, to be among those who are redeemed and are in a living company! Whether we die, or whether we are taken to be with Christ when He comes, as among the living who are changed, we will be part of the same blessed living company. Most would be persons who have come out of the first resurrection, a living company out of death. The living that remain and are changed at the time of the Lord's coming, when death is swallowed up in life will be part of a living company. Our bodies will be changed, incorruptible, and we will be living with Christ and reigning too, according to this scripture. reigning for the thousand years. How blessed it is to have this in your soul, so that you are not afraid of death. Men fear death because of what lies behind and beyond death. If death was the end they would not fear, but they know in their souls and consciences that something lies beyond, and it does.

What blessings we have, and I would urge you again, do not miss out on any of them. The scripture we read in Galatians spoke of the blessing of Abraham, and went on to something else which I would just like to finish with. It says, "that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Christ Jesus". I understand that the blessing of Abraham in its essence involves eternal life. Then it says, "that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith". I should really have given greater prominence to that, but I am thankful to bring it in, because it is one of the greatest gifts that God has, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Have you the gift of the Holy Spirit, "the promise of the Spirit"? That is to make it attractive. The Lord Jesus at one point speaks about the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit. It is to attract our hearts to make us understand the preciousness of what God has in His heart for us, that He would love us so much and bless us so much that He would give us the Holy Spirit. God Himself in Spirit dwells here in the saints, and we have a divine person dwelling within, the Holy Spirit. We sang too of the Holy Spirit, His guidance and love and care. He is spoken of as the Comforter. He is the power for enjoyment, for a living link with Christ. It is a very blessed thing to have the Holy Spirit. Let us not miss out any of the blessings, for His Name's sake.

BIRMINGHAM

15 March 1998

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