WHAT IS PRECIOUS TO CHRIST
John 21:15-17; 20:17; Luke 22:14,15;
The scriptures we have read all refer to the Lord’s own words. I would like to say a word about what is precious to the heart of Christ. The first thing I would say is that what has been handed down to us, what we enjoy, is infinitely precious. I wonder if you value that. I do not know if I value enough the preciousness of what has come down to us. Firstly, we have come to know the Lord Jesus. I trust the Lord is precious to you. When Peter writes his epistles, he writes as a man who has been taught of the Lord, and has come to something substantial in his own soul. Peter refers five times in his first epistle to what is precious. Last night, our brother reminded us of the first of those five things, “the proving of your faith, much more precious than of gold”, 1 Pet.1:7. The faith that you have is precious. I trust that you value it. It is not the portion of all. There are persons in the world, and I am sure you may have spoken to some, who say to you, ‘I would love to have your faith’, but it is not the portion of all. Faith is a precious matter because it gives you a link with heaven; how blessed!
Then Peter speaks of the Man that is precious. You find that in chapter 2, “Behold, I lay in Zion a corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believes on him shall not be put to shame” (v.6). How precious is Jesus to you? He is infinitely precious to God, He has done everything for God, and He has done everything for me. The glad tidings have come without cost to us, and from our side we have come into blessing without cost; but from the divine side the cost is immeasurable. I remember hearing the story of an evangelist called D.L.Moody. He was concerned as to the soul salvation of a manager of a coal mine who, when the gospel was presented to him, said, ‘No, it is too easy, there must be a cost’. The evangelist said to him, ‘Did you go into the pit today?’ He said, ‘Yes I did’. Moody said, ‘How did you get into the pit?’ He said, ‘Well I pressed the button and the lift came up; I got in, I pressed the button and the lift went down thousands of feet’. The evangelist said, ‘That was all you did, just pushed a button?’ ‘Certainly’, the man replied, ‘the mining company have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds to sink the shaft and construct the elevators, but all I had to do was push a button.’ But it cost him nothing! It is a blessed matter that although the cost to divine Persons is immeasurable, the gospel comes to us without cost. Is that not precious? Is that not blessed? My concern is that we might come into things very easily, but what is precious needs to lay hold of us, and what is precious to the Lord Jesus needs to be precious to me. If it is not, it will affect the way that I think, it will affect my judgment as to things. What we have come into is precious and its value cannot be calculated.
I want to speak firstly about the words of the Lord to Peter; He says, “Feed my lambs”. I wonder if you are conscious, dear young friend, that the Lord has His eye upon you. I hope you are one of His lambs; and have come to know the care of the Shepherd. There is no one like Him. John 10 tells us that the shepherd knows his sheep by name. The Lord is interested in the detail of your life. Are you conscious that you are precious to Him? You have cost Him His life. John 10 also tells us that the good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. Do you know Him? I trust you are conscious of being one of His lambs. It is a blessed matter to know the Shepherd; He cares for you, He loves you, He is interested in every detail of your life. It has often been remarked that when you go to Psalm 22 you see the good Shepherd, the One who lays down His life for the sheep. In Psalm 23 you get the great Shepherd; “Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want” (v.1). How blessed He is. When you come to Psalm 24 you get the chief Shepherd; how glorious. Read these psalms, dear young brother, dear young sister; they will affect your soul. The One who laid down His life for the sheep is the One who is the King of glory. He is the chief Shepherd who is drawing persons to Himself. The Lord Jesus says to Peter, “Shepherd my sheep”. What is precious to the heart of Christ needs to be precious to us. We need to value the sheep; they belong to Him.
It has often struck me that in the parable in Luke 15 which the Lord told, it was not a lamb that went astray, it was a sheep – a sheep which belonged to the Lord Jesus. Our blessing and our salvation and safety is in being near to the Shepherd. It is for our blessing, and it is where the Shepherd wants us to be. Being a shepherd is a constitutional matter. I do not think that if a shepherd applies for a job, the employer would be looking at his academic abilities. What is in your heart for the sheep? I refer to Psalm 78; it shows the character of the shepherd expressed in the heart of David. It says, “he chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds: From following the suckling-ewes, he brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. And he fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and led them by the skilfulness of his hands” (vv.70-72). That is the Shepherd, He has a heart for the sheep. The poet wrote:
‘T’was a sheep not a lamb that strayed away
In the parable Jesus told.
A grown up sheep that strayed away
From the ninety and nine in the fold.
Lambs will follow the sheep, you know,
Wherever the sheep may stray:
When the sheep go wrong, it won’t take long
‘Till the lambs are as wrong as they’. (C.C. Miller)
There is salvation in staying near to the Shepherd. It is a solemn fact that we are all an influence for good or for bad. The persons who stay near to the Shepherd know His heart, they know His mind and they follow Him. When Paul writes to the Ephesians, he speaks of “shepherds and teachers”, Eph.4:11. It is one gift and I think that is why the Lord says to Peter not only “Shepherd my sheep”, but also “Feed my sheep”. The shepherd has something to feed to the sheep with, and for us, where does that come from? It comes from the Lord Himself. We have proved, have we not, over these past two days, the food that the Lord provides.
His brethren are precious to the Lord. We have had a reference to Saul on the Damascus road. The Lord and His brethren are inseparable. The Lord Jesus said to Saul, “why dost thou persecute me?”, Acts 9:4. What belonged to Christ was being persecuted, it was Himself. Who are these people? The Lord tells us in Mark 3. Before the question is asked in verse 33, it says “a crowd sat around him. And they said to him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren seek thee without. And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother or my brethren? And looking around in a circuit at those that were sitting around him, he says, Behold my mother and my brethren: for whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother, and sister, and mother”, Mark 3:32-35. They are the kind of people that the Lord is pleased to call His brethren. These are His brethren on moral lines. What a privilege to be the Lord’s brethren. I trust that affects your heart. We have not chosen one another; the Lord has set us together and we belong to Him. Those who do the will of God, those who have been sanctified – the Lord is not ashamed to call such persons His brethren. How blessed.
I did not want to go into the detail of what the Lord said to Mary in John 20, but He said, “Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. His brethren were now to know Him in a new relationship which has been established because the Lord Jesus is out of death, ascended and glorified, and we also can now be associated with Him as His brethren on the other side of death. They are precious to Him; I trust they are precious to you. When was the last time that I prayed for all my local brethren? There are dear older sisters and dear older brothers in our localities who are occupied in praying for their brethren. Why? Because they are precious to them and precious to the Lord; the Lord’s brethren. I wonder if you have ever assembled for the Lord’s supper and looked round the circle at those who are among the Lord’s brethren. You take account of each one, take account of the Lord’s dealings with each one of them, the sorrows and the burdens being carried in the spirits of the brethren. The Lord knows every one of them. His brethren are very precious to the Lord Jesus and, as we see in Acts 9, when they were persecuted, the Lord Jesus came in by His own action and stopped it. That is how precious His brethren are to the Lord. It would affect the way that we speak about the brethren. John tells us, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren”, 1 John 3:14. One of the ‘oughts’ that John writes is, “we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives”, 1 John 3:16. Why? Because they are the Lord’s, and they are precious to Him and should be precious to us.
I desire to touch on Luke’s gospel because I want to speak briefly as to fellowship. While the fellowship that we speak of began when the Lord ascended into glory and the Spirit came, I wondered if we get a touch of the appreciation that the Lord Jesus had of the fellowship that He had with His disciples. He says, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer”. The Lord appreciated the company of His own. You can see that throughout the gospels, the way that He cared for them. Even in situations that were too great for them, His love and care still extended towards them. But then as among them, you see in chapters 13 to 16 of John’s gospel the blessed character of what the Lord enjoyed as among His disciples. The fellowship is a very precious matter; I trust it is precious to you. Paul writes in the very first chapter of Corinthians, “God is faithful, by whom ye have been called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”, 1 Cor.1:9. That is precious to the Lord Jesus. He has called us “into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ”; that is God’s side, that shows the character of the fellowship. But then it says, “our Lord”; that is our side. The glory and preciousness of the fellowship is that it is very precious to the heart of Christ. It is not our fellowship, but we have been called into it, and the principles of the fellowship are very precious too. I trust they are not onerous to you; they are very precious to the heart of Christ. Those that belong to Him and desire to be separate would desire to be among those that, because they are associated with Himself, would own no other association.
It is a great privilege to be in fellowship, to own the claims of the Lord. It frees you from bondage. You might think otherwise, but the fellowship is a refuge from lawlessness. That is what the fellowship is, because if we are left to our own thoughts and our own desires, where would they take us? The brethren will forgive me for using an analogy from the business world, but I would like to speak simply for the help of our younger brethren. If a person wants to have a franchise, whatever that might be, he agrees to the terms and conditions laid down by the management. What would happen if, after that was accepted, the person decided that he did not want to do things a certain way or that it did not suit his lifestyle or way of working? What would happen would be that the franchise would cease to be what it was supposed to be, and he would lose the support of the company. Now I know that is a feeble illustration, but there is only one will in the fellowship of God’s Son Jesus Christ our Lord – one will. That means that my will has to go; and as we take up our part in fellowship, we are saying that our wills have to go. There is one will, and it is a blessed matter to come under the will of Another and prove the support of the Lord Himself. It is not automatic. We cannot go on what may have been in the past. The Lord’s support is on moral lines and He looks for what pleases Himself in those who find that what is precious to Christ is precious to them. In Matthew 18 He says, “For where two or three are gathered together unto my name, there am I in the midst of them” (v.20). I have heard it said that that is a promise. I am not sure that it is a promise, I think it is a consequence; “where two or three are gathered unto my name, there am I in the midst of them”.
In closing, I just want to touch on the assembly – “my assembly”. The Spirit is working in order that what is pleasurable to the heart of Christ will go through to the very end; but think of the Lord’s feelings in relation to His assembly. He says, “And I also, I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my assembly, and hades’ gates shall not prevail against it”. Now, for the sake of the younger brethren, the rock is not Peter. The Roman system would claim that, but it is error, it is not according to the truth. The rock is the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God. How blessed! Nothing can stand against that; “my assembly”. Where is that worked out? The truth of the assembly is to be worked out in our local companies. As has been said, we cannot claim to be the assembly. Who could do that? But I trust that what is precious to the heart of Christ may be precious to us. Think of that pearl of great value; He sold whatever He had (Matt.13:46). That is what it has cost the Lord Jesus. Is it not precious to Him? I trust it is precious to you, and that in the time that is left to us, what is precious to the heart of Christ may become increasingly precious to us. I was thinking of Naboth with his vineyard in 1 Kings 21. He is like a brother in a locality who found that what was precious to the heart of Christ was also precious to him. No matter what the threat, no matter what the temptation was, it was never enough to make him give up the vineyard because what he had laid hold of was precious. The vineyard would speak of what would be for the heart of God.
I trust that what I have said is according to the truth, and I trust that what is precious to Christ may be precious to us. May the Lord bless the word.
Address at 3 day meetings, Birmingham
29 October 2016
T.R. Campbell