RECOVERY

Pieter van den Berg

Luke 24: 28-35; John 21: 12-14; Revelation 3: 19-22

I would like to say a few words on recovery. We are in a day of recovery, we are here as recovered persons, and God is securing His own thoughts in the way He is going on with His purpose. He has never deviated from it. Whatever may come in, whatever challenge there may be, God is going to have His own thoughts secured, and He will have them secured in this present dispensation on the basis of recovery. From the moment sin came into the universe the rights of God have been in question. There is what took place in the rising up of Satan and the judgment that followed in the scene which God had created. "The earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep" (see Gen 1: 2). It was a state of things that was there as a result of judgment. God operates in recovery, and the first thing He brings in is light and He eventually secures His thoughts in relation to man, the man and the woman. God has great thoughts in relation to man, and He will carry them through into eternity, the tabernacle of God will be with men, and God will dwell complacently with men, as the result of what He secured in the various dispensations in which testimony has been rendered. Failure has come in, but God has never deviated from His purpose. All things serve His might; God cannot be hindered in any of His thoughts, He will carry them through to completion. We can rely on the faithfulness of God, that what He has begun He will see through. The question for each one, for you and for me, is whether we are going to be with Him in it, whether we are going on with Him in His great thoughts for us, because very great things are on hand.

We can trace the history of things that have happened and see how failure came in, one thing after another, the way the flood had to come in, and other things, God took Abram up and eventually He took up David. Everything seemed to be lost at times, but God will see things through. He had David in mind, a man after His own heart, and God is going to carry the line of David through. He will carry it through: regardless of all the failure He will carry His promises through, through Abraham, through David. Even in the captivity the royal line was carried through and in the return from the captivity He took up Zerubbabel, and eventually everything leads on to Christ. God has one Man in mind and that is Christ-thank God for that! Christ, the Man of His purpose.

And so we are reminded in this present dispensation of David, the Lord presenting Himself as “the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star", Rev 22: 16. Paul says to Timothy, writing in difficult days, "Remember Jesus Christ raised from among the dead, of the seed of David", 2 Tim 2: 8. That is the line of things that will be carried through, the Lord is the One who has the key of David (see Rev 3: 7). The Lord has the key of everything, He has the keys of death and hades too and hades· gates will not prevail against the assembly. The Lord will see to that, He will stand by it. And so it is that God will eventually have what is for Himself eternally in spite of all that has happened, as the hymn says,

"Evil's challenge long permitted

Met by God's supremacy”.

God takes a way that is unsearchable. The way that God takes is just beyond us but God will have His own thoughts secured; He will see them through in perfection and not one item will have failed. He will have it according as He desired it, according as He purposed it, according to what was conceived in His counsels, and He secures it in the way He takes. So we have come to the fulness of the times, this wonderful dispensation of grace, when, as in every dispensation, there has been failure from the outset, but God is going on with His own thoughts.

In Luke's gospel we get a wonderful touch of the grace of the dispensation. Grace is reigning through righteousness unto eternal life (Rom 5: 21), and the priesthood of Christ is able to sustain us in priestly grace in relation to the calling of God. "The gifts and the calling of God are not subject to repentance" (Rom 11: 29), and God has provided in grace to see us through in spite of our failures, in spite of our breakdown. In Luke 15 we have a wonderful chapter of recovery and the way divine Persons are moving in relation to what is lost in order that it might be recovered, and you come to the height of divine grace there. The lost son is set up in the dignity of sonship in the Father's house. So I thought of Luke 24, how the Lord in His priestly grace drew near in conditions where there was a movement away from Jerusalem. There is need for priestly discernment and we can count on the priesthood of Christ to help us in relation to the present situation in which we are. The Lord is no stranger in Jerusalem; He knows things, He says to each of the assemblies in Revelation, "I know". He knew Peter too. Peter says, “Lord, thou knowest all things" (John 21: 17), and we can count on One who knows everything. You may not know even what is in your own heart; there are many things we do not know, but we can leave all to the Lord because He knows all things, and He assesses all things according to the shekel of the sanctuary. We see Him in His priestly grace drawing near to persons who were disappointed because of the things that had been happening, and the Lord joins their company and He has His own way with them, as He has with each one of us. Oh what a Saviour we have! What a Priest we have! One who is able to save to the uttermost those that draw near to God by Him (see Heb 7: 25). We need to be on kingdom lines to get the gain of the priesthood of Christ, because the priesthood of Christ is not for disobedient persons. The priesthood of Christ is for persons who are subject. If you desire to walk in obedience to the truth you find out your weaknesses, and the Lord knows all about our infirmities. His priesthood goes along with the kingdom, and if there are subject minds the Lord will in His priestly grace come in in aid of the weak and help in whatever need there may be, and give us a touch that would meet the situation. We may have certain thoughts in relation to matters, but the Lord would meet them with a manifestation of Himself. His priestly service is available in order that matters might be resolved for His own pleasure and for His own glory. And so it is that in Luke 24 they were moving away from Jerusalem and the Lord drew near. There was no happiness with them, they were downcast but the Lord came in in His own way, and opened the Scriptures to them. He gives them ministry, and what they needed was the manifestation of Himself. He would have gone on if it had not been for them asking Him to stay with the. The Lord is going on, He is going on in the testimony. If He is refused in one place, as the Samaritans did, He will go to another place, and they will have the blessing of His presence (see Luke 9: 55,56). The Lord is moving in His own sovereign way. In Mark it says that He would have passed them by Mark 6: 48). Did they really want Him? It is a question of our affections, Do we really want to have Him? And so the Lord in speaking to them, and they drew near to the village where they were going, "and he made as though he would go farther". This is a critical point. Are we going to miss the manifestation of Himself? It says, "they drew near to the village where they were going, and he made as though he would go farther. And they constrained him, saying, stay with us: for it i toward evening and the day Is declining. Their hearts had been burning, the Lord gave an opening up of the Scriptures, but they needed more than that, they needed to have their eyes opened.

In their affections they would not be without Him, and the Lord entered to stay with them and He took the house-father's place. He was the one they were now to be in relation to. You would not go to a brother's house and take the house-father's place. You would recognise his headship, but the Lord is here taking the house-father's place, and they were to be in relation to Himself. And then He broke the bread as only He would do it and gave it to them. It is not exactly the Lord's supper, it is the way the Lord would sup with us in our circumstances as He did at Bethany where He came into the circumstances of His own, weeping, going through the sorrow with them, loving them, allowing things to come to a point that was beyond any hope from their point of view. He felt with them as He does with us in our circumstances. It is all in view of our being with Him; that is the great thing the Lord has in mind. He is going to sup with us in order that we might be with Him. Maybe we have to have our thoughts adjusted, we may need to get another view of things. In the Song of Songs, the bride invites the north wind and the south wind to blow upon her garden, but that was not enough. What the Lord has in mind is that we might be with Him in His garden (see Song of Songs 4: 16). That is what the Lord reached in Bethany. They had attached Him to what they were going on with, and the north wind blew upon the garden. Exercises came in, death came in, corruption came in. The Lord has His own way. He stayed away deliberately to allow things to come to a point, and then He intervenes in His own power. He bore with them in His spirit, and then He acted in His power. The Lord is able for that. In the meantime He is bearing with His own, He is feeling with them in their exercises, in their thoughts, as He did here and then the south wind blew, "Let my beloved come into his garden" (chap 4: 16), you recognise that it is not your assembly, it is His assembly. It is not my territory, it is not for me to have my way there, it is His assembly, and it is a question of being with Him. I think that is the point we have to come to.

So the Lord gives them the manifestation of Himself. The Scriptures had been opened to them, and now their eyes are opened and they recognise the Lord, and they return and come to the company, they were recovered from this movement away from Jerusalem, and they came back to Jerusalem, and there they found the confirmation that the Lord had risen indeed and had appeared, and the Lord Himself manifested Himself in their midst and He opened their understanding. What an opening up you get in Luke 24! What an opening up we have had in the recovery! and the Lord is still opening up things to us.

When you come to the end of John's gospel there is another movement away under the leadership of no one less than Peter himself who was first amongst the apostles; he gave a wrong lead and the Lord in His own way comes into the situation. He does not interfere immediately, He allows them to come to poverty - they caught nothing. He allows things to go as far as they did, and then He came in. He stood on the shore and His word is, "Children, have ye anything to eat?", John 21: 5. Peter had been called away from the fishing, he was called to follow the Lord and what was he doing now? He was putting the fish-gate before the sheep-gate. The sheep-gate was built first in Nehemiah, in days of recovery, and we need to be concerned that the sheep-gate is there when we have the gospel. The gospel goes forth from the house. How rich Paul's glad tidings are, the mystery, the ministry of the new covenant meeting every need on our side, reconciliation. What a ministry it is. We need to be concerned to maintain assembly conditions, a ground for the sheep to go in and out and find pasture, prosperity in local meetings. The Lord is not failing us in giving ministry, and He has the key to every matter. The Lord is still speaking and He will continue to speak until the end of the dispensation. And so it is that the Lord's voice was there enquiring as to whether they had anything to eat. That is something we need to be concerned about. We may go through exercise but we need to recognise the Lord. The assembly is the Lord's matter, it is His assembly, Peter was moving away and there is the voice, and there is John. We have referred to it in the reading, John discerning the voice. We need to discern the voice. Where is the Lord in a matter? What is the Lord saying? Where are we? They had been heading for a Laodicean condition, and we may do that. With the light we may have we may be heading for Laodicea if Christ is not supreme. The Lord is to have the supreme place and He will have His own way in securing that. Christ was everything to Philadelphia, but He had no place in Laodicea with all the light that might have been there, whatever they might boast in. He had His own view of the matter, He stood at the door and He was knocking. He says, I rebuke and discipline as many as I love. It is not because the Lord is against us, He loves us, and He will love us to the end in spite of all that has happened. He is concerned in His love that He might have a response for His own heart from His own.

He is standing at the door and there is the voice behind the knocking. Everybody may be hearing the knocking, there are concerns, there may be sickness, other things in which the Lord has His way as in Corinth; the Lord has His own way in things because He is entitled to have the assembly. The assembly is His. And so it is that the Lord in Laodicea is standing at the door, and there is no suggestion of the Lord ever going away from that door. You might go away if people do not open the door for you. You ring the bell or knock at the door, and nobody opens the door, and you might be going away, but not so the Lord, He stands at the door - it is His present attitude. The Lord stations Himself in a certain position, as He did in John 21, and as He does here, He stations Himself in view of there being a response as to whether they would have Him. He says, "Behold I stand at the door and am knocking; if any one hear my voice..." Not, "if any one hears the knocking"; "if any one hears my voice". It is the Shepherd’s voice, the voice the sheep would follow, the voice that Mary recognised when the Lord said to her "Mary", the Shepherd calling her by name, the Lord’s own voice is there and He is appealing in order that we might open the door to Him. Not that He would open it, it is a door that we have to open and let Him in. He says, "I will come in unto him and sup with him". The Lord will come into your circumstances in His wonderful recovering grace, as He did in Emmaus He will come into your circumstances and He will sup with you, feel with you. The Lord is fully acquainted with all that is going on. He knows what is going on amongst the saints. Do we ever think of the present love of Christ in operation, in shepherd-service, in priestly grace, serving with the water of the word? These are activities that the Lord in His love for us, His love for the assembly, is exercising right now at this very moment. The Lord is concerned about the assembly, and He has the means to meet matters by His word, by His priestly grace, by His shepherd service, all in view of having us according to His own thoughts with Himself and He is able to meet everything on our side, H will sup with us, and He says, "and he with me". I do not think there is any greater privilege than to be with Him, to be with Him in His own realm. The Lord would come into our circumstances, but what He has in view is to have us in His circumstances. His desire is, in speaking to the Father, that those that had been given to Him might be with Him where He is that they might behold His glory, that they might be in the enjoyment of their heavenly privileges, their association with Himself, their being in union with Him, in the consciousness of it, in the reality of it, in the blessing of it, as it will be eternally, the Holy Spirit giving us this enjoyment now. We may grieve the Spirit in such a way that we are not in the enjoyment of it, but the Lord would come and help us, remove the obstacles as only He could do, roll away the stone from the well in order that the sheep may be watered; Gen 29: 10, in order that the saints might be prospered. That is what the Lord is concerned about, in order that He might have a full response for His own heart and for His own praise. And then He says, "He that overcomes, to him will I give to sit with me in my throne; as I also have overcome, and have sat down with my Father in his throne". What a promise that is! The Lord is now in the Father's throne. In this wonderful dispensation of grace He is sitting in His Father's throne. Soon the Lord will have His own throne, and we are going to reign with Him. The Lord says, ''to him will I give to sit with me in my throne". If we suffer with Him we shall reign with Him. What a portion that is, to be with Him, to be with Jesus. What a privilege! The Lord says, "if any one serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there also shall be my servant", John 12: 26. This is a great privilege, dear brethren, it is open to us all to serve the Lord and to be with Him. Oh that we may have intimate relations with Him, that we may have His mind about things, that we may feed on the breast and the shoulder of the ram of consecration, that we may have a sense of the love of Christ, the breastplate of judgment, that we may have a right judgment about things as being with the Lord in the nearness to Him in His love for the assembly. And so the final word is, "He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies". May it be so, for His Name's sake. ·

 

BARNET

12 February 1994

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD

Kenneth Robinson

Numbers 24: 15-17; Romans 5: 7-10; Hebrews 12: 2

I believe it would be right to say, dear friends and fellow believers, that one of the effects of the gospel is to open our eyes. There is a very interesting expression used as to Balaam on more than one occasion. He is described - and I think it is unique in scripture - as “the man of opened eye". I believe God's intent in the gospel is to open every man's eye in relation to His well-beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. What a precious privilege it is to speak of Him, in the gospel to draw your attention to Him! My desire would be that everyone here could be described like Balaam as a man or woman of an opened eye, a clear vision regarding what God has presented in Jesus, no doubts, no uncertainties, no blurred vision with you regarding Christ. Paul in the gospel is another who could be described as a man of opened eye. "There fell from his eyes as it were scales", it tells us in Acts 9: 18 and what you find immediately thereafter in the synagogue is that he is preaching "Jesus that he is the Son of God", v 20. He is now a man of opened eye regarding the glory of Jesus. What a precious thing it is to come to be like that!

I want to draw from these verses in Romans 5 to show how the gospel clears our vision, and our concern regarding our history. I would like you to look at Romans 5 as one example of a chapter in the Bible written by a man of an opened eye. He is boasting "in hope of the glory of God", v 2. He has peace with God and in these verses in Romans 5, he deals with Christ dying for us, justification, reconciliation, and the power of a present life that is great enough to save us while we are down here. Wonderful things these are: one thing "much rather" than another he is saying, and it is going on through the whole chapter. He is a man of opened eye bringing the gospel to souls. Oh, dear friends, first of all, "God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us". What a moment it is when you can write that across your history. You now see that God commends His love to you in that while you were just a sinner. We sang:

"All men have sinned and short of glory come;

The Scripture saith, None righteous, no not one!" (Hymn 275)

In the sight of God all men are sinners, away from God, and as far as God was concerned, these sins would never be by-passed. God is a holy sinhating God and His standard of righteousness required that one day He would judge these sins and take account of the personnel who had committed those sins, but oh the story, the wonderful news in the gospel, written by Paul as he brings it forth to these Christians in Rome, is that, "but God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us". What a view they were to have of their history! What view do you have of your history? Can you write across it, if we are to make it personal, 'God commends his love to me, in that, I being still a sinner, Christ has died for me'? We have a roomful here of people most of whom could say 'Amen’ to this verse. If you can say 'Amen’ to that, I commend to you that you are a person with an opened eye. You have a view in the sight of God of your history that it has been dealt with righteously and removed because of the work at Calvary's cross of Jesus Christ the Saviour. Go is not commending the love of anybody else. He is not commending the work of anybody else. There it is, the work of Jesus. His work on Calvary's cross is the sacrificial basis that has been laid. "Christ has died for us" is the One who did not need to die, the One against whom there was no penalty, the One who had never committed a sin, the One upon whom judgment never had to fall was the One in whom "God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us".

Do you believe that once you were a sinner? Do you have that feeling that, yes, you know you were a sinner, but through the gospel and the commendation of the love of God and the acceptance of that through faith, the judgment that was due to you has been borne by Another? And you look at Calvary's cross and the precious work of the One who was there and you can look at Jesus and the perfection and efficacy of all that work to meet the claims of a righteous and holy God and you can say, 'Yes, Lord Jesus, for me'. You think of the greatness and glory of Christ and His work and reach a moment in time when your vision becomes clear regarding your history, your history. May I press that upon you for a moment? Has God reached your conscience? We were talking about the heart in the reading and we will talk about the heart, but in the gospel, I think you aim at the conscience and exalt Christ, you aim at the conscience of a person and then provide Christ as a Saviour to meet the answer of the longing that is created. Once the conscience is reached, and the guilt felt, in the presence of a Saviour God, repentance is arrived at by God's goodness. When you realise you are a sinner deserving nothing but judgment, go into the presence of God with a heartfelt need. Saviour of you a sinner, whose conscience has been reached because of God bringing to bear upon you your state of a lost condition before Him and have been brought to the point where you are ready to give up. You feel your helplessness, like the tax-gatherer in Luke 18 who "smote upon his breast, saying, O God, have compassion on me, the sinner", v 13. What would the words "God commends his love" mean to such, in that while that poor soul, like you and me, was just a sinner, Christ died for me? It is an important point when you face up to your history! In the presence of God you face up to your history and it comes to you that God commends His love to you in the value of the work of Jesus. You get a view of Christ's work and what it meant for God.

Your soul goes out in adoration that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, has been shed and He is the propitiation for your sins "but not for ours alone, but also for the whole world", 1 John 2: 2. The basis has been laid for God to recover man to His own glory, and the blessing is there for every man, woman, boy or girl, irrespective of colour or place in society. The work of Jesus Christ is great enough for that. It stands there in all its glory. In the type of old the mercy-seat in Exodus 25 is placed in all its royal glory on top of the ark and God says, "And there will I meet with thee, and will speak with thee", v 22. What would He tell you? He will tell you that I commend my love to you in that my wellbeloved Son has died for you. His precious blood has been shed and placed on the mercy-seat as in the day of atonement in Leviticus 16. The blood was placed once on the mercy-seat and seven times before it. What a sight that was! God is now commending His love based on the righteousness of Jesus. In the value to Himself of the precious blood, God tonight is ready to say to every soul, I commend my love to you in that Christ died for you. Precious thing! O, dear friend, I trust that you are among the "us" in this verse. I trust we can go into this verse together, we may say, and come out of it together, that God has commended His love to us, "in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us". Whether you are ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, years of age, let us go into this verse together and come out of it together as having a shared commendation, based on a view with an opened eye, that you can look at your history and see it as covered because Christ has died for you and your faith is in the precious blood of Jesus.

Do you have a doubt? Has anybody here a doubt about their history? Is there any nagging doubt? Oh, I want you to be sure, before you go out of that door, to go out with an opened eye. You can look at your history and in the sight of God it has gone because your faith is in the finished work of Jesus. That is the only way you will have an opened eye, a "man of opened eye". God will never bring up my history again because my faith is in the precious work of His well-beloved Son. I trust everyone here can say 'Amen' to that. Hallelujah! what a Saviour! You are not cloudy, you are not muddled in your vision; you are not worrying about an event let's say, ten years ago, that God might bring back on you. You are not taunted by memory. Every time the enemy brings up something in your memory to cast doubt on that assurance, you have an opened eye, your faith is pinned upon the finished work of Jesus. If Jesus were to come tonight, there is not a soul here but is absolutely sure that they would go to heaven because their faith is in the finished work of Jesus. "and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, the living who remain..." 1 Thess 4: 16,17. There may be souls at a gospel preaching that will claim Christ as the gospel is going forth; the Lord could come and that soul would go to glory. These are the realities that are in the gospel! This is the word of God saying to you through Paul in the preaching, that "God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us". The precious blood has been shed. Christ has been into the grave for three days and three nights and "having been now justified in the power of his blood, we shall be saved by him from wrath". There is another company to whom Paul in writing says that they "had turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to await his Son from the heavens … Jesus", and he adds, "our deliverer from the coming wrath", 1 Thess 1: 9,10. After three Lord's Days and three preachings Paul is writing to these Thessalonians and describing them as looking for Jesus, their "deliverer from the coming wrath". It is important to have some sense that you have been saved from wrath, and saved from judgment. The type of old, the passover lamb, was shelter from the impending judgment that was going to go through every household in Egypt, and this shelter from judgment was to be the portion of every household where the blood of the sacrificial lamb was upon the door-post and upon the lintel. It had been put there by the head of the house. One may have done it in trembling faith, wondering what to do or whether to do it; another might have done it with greater assurance. What was the difference? As another has said they would both be saved because it is God that said, "and when I see the blood, I will pass over you", Exod12: 13. God has forgiven your history because of your faith in the finished work of Christ. It is because of what He thinks of the work of Jesus and the value of that precious blood. I trust, therefore, that all here have opened eyes regarding their history. You can look at it and know that it is gone:

"My sins - Oh the bliss of this glorious thought

My sins - not in part, but the whole -

Were borne on the cross, and are gone evermore.

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!" (Hymn 238)

"Having been now justified", he says, "we shall be saved by him from wrath". Think of the great glory of justification, in that Christ has been into death for three days and three nights, but then "raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father" Rom 6: 4. 1trust everyone here has an opened eye regarding the truth of the resurrection of one Man out of death. He has been "delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification", Rom 4: 25. My history is completely removed in His sight and God looks on me as He looks upon Jesus. Do you have that view of yourself? What a wonderful thing! What an elevating thing! You say you were talking a minute or two ago about me as a sinner and bound for judgment; now, you are talking about me being looked at in the presence of God as Christ. That is the gospel! That is the gospel and the glory and victory of justification is that my history has totally gone and in the sight of God He has justified me in another Man in view of another world altogether. Precious thing! The old story has often been told of the little boy with the two sticks. He tried to do better and better but every time he did something wrong his father said he would put a mark on that stick and a nail went in. When he was bad again another nail went in and this went on. When the little boy came back and said he was sorry, the father said he would take the nails out. Still the little boy was upset and when the father asked what was wrong with him, 'Ah, Dad,' he said, 'you have taken the nails out, but the marks are still there.' Justification removes everything. In the sight of God you are looked at as in Christ. You are looked at in the One in whom God's pleasure is centred and your whole history is gone. Oh would that we could open someone's eyes tonight a little to the victory and glory of justification!

In reconciliation you are reconciled to God through the death of His Son. We were enemies, enemies according to God, and the distance is there between God and man. Man is at enmity. How is God going to do it? Is He going to bridge it? You cannot remove the distance. God has removed the distance. God has not bridged it. He has removed that distance completely by the death of His Son and I have been reconciled. The younger son coming back is a fine example of it. The younger son saw a bridge between himself and his father. How was it going to be covered? The only way the younger son could see was, Well, get me back into the house and make me a hired servant. That is the only thing he saw. In the light of his history that was all he was entitled to. But read on through Luke 15. How is he received? What does the father do? As Mr Stoney said, love travelled faster than necessity. Necessity brought the younger son back; love took the father out and he ran and embraced him, "fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses ... Bring out the best robe and clothe him in it...", v 20,23. The younger son said, 'make me as one of thy hired servants", v 19. That would be his answer to the distance. God removed it and tonight is ready to invest returning sons in the good of reconciliation with the joy of the privilege of sonship and the retention in the Father's house for the Father's pleasure eternally.

What a gospel it is! this is Paul's gospel. This is Paul, you may say, preaching as a man of opened eye as he touches on the greatness of what God has done in the gospel for Gentiles such as you and me, for objects of mercy like Himself, "Pharisee of the Pharisees" - one brought up at the feet of Gamaliel and now he counts all these things loss. A man of opened eye says, "on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord", Phil 3: 8. Oh, to be able to open eyes! Oh, to be able to speak in some sense with a measure of conviction! I wish I could do it more, as a man with an opened eye having a view that the gospel has removed my history, giving me a link with a blessed Man now in the glory, and God having not only removed my history, but invested me with the truth of justification, reconciliation and sonship. So we can be "saved in the power of his life". Dear friend, let me tell you, Jesus is alive in heaven and in the power of that life above I can be saved down here in virtue of the power of the life of Jesus and my attachment to Him there as a result not only of the work He has done, but God being pleased to give us the gift of the Holy Spirit. I will never be saved in the power of my life, my own life. I am saved in the power of a link with a Man who is living in heaven. Christ glorified above, the Spirit indwelling the believer, sustains me day by day to go through in the power of another life altogether. What a thing it is to be sustained day by day as we go through. Mercies are proved from God the Father, but also the inward resource of a link with Jesus in the power of the blessed Spirit. We need present salvation. We need eternal salvation from our history but we need present salvation from the world that is all around and then finally we need salvation from place by the rapture that will take us out of this place into heaven. "Saved in the power of his life" is a conscious enjoyment of a precious link with a Man who is living in heaven.

And so to Hebrews 12 where the exhortation is to us all. "Let us also therefore, having so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, laying aside every weight and sin which so easily entangles us ... looking stedfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith...", Heb 12: 1,2. Then he stops. Then he describes what He has done, "who in view of the joy lying before him, endured the cross, having despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God". I want to leave you with this impression: "looking stedfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith". There is then a selah; there is a pause there, in one sense in case you run the whole thing together. The exercise, I think, is to keep our view on Christ. The next clauses are the description of what He has done and His present position, but it is the Person that you look stedfastly on. His work enhances what He has done, but the object for me and for every believer is Jesus, crowned with glory and honour in heaven, “the leader and completer of faith". And so Paul is exercised that these Hebrews really are looking stedfastly. To look stedfastly and, as the note says, look intently: to look away from other things and fix your eye exclusively on one involves opened eyes, clear vision, by faith, upon Christ. I trust everyone here has a personal link with the Man glorified in heaven and I trust everyone here by the power of the Holy Spirit will be sustained to look stedfastly on that One as an object for your life, an object through every exercise. His precious sustaining grace as the One who is now on the throne will hear you through sorrow, pressure, an anxiety, or a disappointment. Weight and sin will drag you down, make you look other ways.

And so to come back to Balaam, a man of opened eye, it says, "I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh". Very precious words, those, "I shall see him", by a man of another dispensation. "I shall see him, but not now". Everyone of us would say it in the assurance as being believers, with opened eyes that we shall see Him. We shall see Jesus. Eternally we shall be with Him. At the rapture “the dead in Christ shall rise first", as I said earlier, "then we, the living who remain, shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air". We shall see Him and we shall be with Him the One "whom, having not seen, ye love" according to Peter, 1 Pet 1: 8. The man of opened eye, the eye of faith, looks on to see Jesus crowned with glory and honour, and has that as a vision and a hope. I desire that we are all believers in the truths that are in the gospel and so have Christ glorified in heaven before us and the Spirit indwelling our hearts to sustain and help us to go through triumphantly in the daily path of this life. May these things just encourage us for His Name's sake.

 

KIRKCALDY

19 February 1995