THIS MOMENT
I was affected this morning by the line of a hymn; we just sang verse 4: ‘God’s secret things long treasured up in heav’n’ (Hymn 123). How wonderful it is that God had secret things in His heart which were treasured there. God had in His heart something very precious and wonderful. What God is presenting to you in the glad tidings today are the secrets of His own heart’s affection; His wonderful favour. These things were never known in the same way before the Lord Jesus came here, although there was some inkling of them, of course. God created the world and it says that His eternal power and divinity were known in that (Rom.1:20), but His heart was not made known through the creation. His heart could only be known as it was manifested and given expression to by His only begotten Son. What a moment that was!
I want to focus on the moment for which God was waiting. It says “when the fulness of the time was come”. Oh beloved friend, what a time that was! Think of all the time that had passed before the Lord Jesus came here. God used angelic beings to bring in His word. He used Abraham as a man of faith and He gave the law through Moses. He sent His prophets, He acted through various persons. But then there was a moment, dear friend, when God saw that the time was right. It says, “God sent forth his Son”. The sending forth really relates to the Lord’s coming into public service; what a moment it was when God sent forth His Son, come of woman, come under law. We know the story, how He was born as a Babe in a manger, conceived by the Holy Spirit. But then He was sent forth; “God sent forth his Son”. I want to press upon us all today how suddenly God can act. It is not that things will just go on as they always have gone on. Men think that things will just keep going on as they are. But God acts; He works in the souls of men and women and children, and suddenly something happens. Think of the jailor in Acts 16. There is a reference to midnight. Up until that point, that man was a godless man, taking Paul and Silas and putting their feet in the stocks; he was doing all that a jailor could do. Then at midnight the earthquake happened; God intervened suddenly. God would do that for you and for me, to wake us up. Not from sleep; I am talking spiritually. He might give you a shake, give you suddenly to realise that you are in His presence. But He is not a God of whom we should be terrified. Certainly, if we are in our sins, we should be terrified, because God is of purer eyes than to behold evil, but He would come in and bring in the light of the glad tidings, as He did in the prison. This man had heard these prisoners, Paul and Silas, singing, and there was a testimony to God there. So the jailor was awakened to the reality of what he was and the enormity of what he had done. I want to just emphasise this matter of God intervening in a moment of time, which He can act in this way. He would change you, He would change me in a moment.
Dear friend, this moment is in one sense the most important moment in your life. You may not have another moment. You can read in the Old Testament Scriptures about how God can act quickly. Sodom was destroyed in a moment. One moment it was a thriving city and the next moment it was gone. God can act like that, in one moment. He is going to do it; what a moment it will be when He will come in judgment and deal with this whole scene of things. It says that a thousand years are as one day – just a moment in time for God. He is an eternal God, and we are finite beings. We think in terms of days and hours and seconds. God does not think that way. There was a moment when He came into time, into the condition, the state, the realm of things that we are familiar with and He has made Himself known in the person of the Lord Jesus.
Christ came into this world, a world that His hands had made and then there was this moment when the Lord Jesus was “sent forth”. The Father could say “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”, Matt.3:17. He walked here on earth ministering to men in their need. There was no need that Jesus turned away. The heart of God was made known. He was not there in severity; He said, “I am not come that I might judge the world, but that I might save the world”, John 12:47. That is what His heart was set on. God was not acting in judgment; He was acting in grace and favour, and He made it known in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He walked here, then He went to the cross at Calvary. What a moment that was! There is a reference in the Old Testament to the day in Ajalon when the sun hastened not to go down about a full day (Josh.10:13); there was never a day like it. Think of when Jesus was crucified on the cross of Calvary; what a moment that was. There He was, hanging on the cross. The sun did not give its light, the darkness covered the face of the land, and there was that cry that went up from Him when He was made sin. What an awful death it was. The moral implication of it should occupy us, that He was suffering for sin, and that He bore the sins of believers in His body on the cross. He suffered there for me, and if you put your trust and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can say, ‘He was there for me’. He hung there; what a spectacle. I do not think there has ever been a time like it, nor will there ever be another one like it, when God dealt with every moral issue. Such issues were all dealt with there in the death of Jesus. Not one was left unaddressed; God dealt with them all there, and then Jesus gave up His spirit, and He went into the grave. He was three days in the heart of the earth, but He is not there any longer. He has come out of death and gone into heaven itself. Of course there was the period of forty days when He was here amongst His own, but the point is that after His death, His burial and His resurrection, He was taken up into heaven.
We read this scripture in the Book of Acts. You almost get the idea that there was something pent-up. All these persons who had had to do with the Lord Jesus were there; one hundred and twenty people were sitting there waiting. They had been told to wait by Jesus. The feast of Pentecost was accomplishing, it was finishing its course, and then it says, “And there came suddenly a sound out of heaven as of a violent impetuous blowing.” The note says it was like hard breathing; it was intense. I think that it shows the holy emotions and feelings of God. The moment had come when the Holy Spirit would come and fill the house. The Holy Spirit Himself, a divine Person, came into this scene and sat upon each one of them as parted tongues of fire. And then the gospel went out from the house; wonderful glad tidings, with thousands of persons saved. What a beginning, beloved! But it started from heaven; is that not wonderful? It was God coming down here in relation to this scene and moving things. It was not a movement of men. It was a divine Person from heaven who came into the souls of persons and imparted something. That is what God does for those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in faith as the One who has gone up into heaven. He was here as a Man. He lived, He died, He was buried and He was raised. Then He went to the Father, and the Father poured out the Spirit. Think of the feelings of God and the suddenness of what happened. It is wonderful to see it, to have such a sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence; a manifestation of the power of God and that He can overcome any hindrance, any resistance to Him. Any barrier that could be conceived in man’s mind, God is able to overcome it, and He can do it in a very powerful way – suddenly.
Beloved friend, He can do that for you; bring you livingly into the sense of God’s favour. Think of God opening His arms and receiving you. He loves to receive us, and that is what the glad tidings are about. God would welcome us, as the hymn says:-
‘The heart of God is love,
That love extends to thee’. (Hymn 59)
What a message there is in the glad tidings!
May we be impressed with the intense longing and favour of God. Think of Him waiting for that long period of time for the incoming of Christ. But think of God waiting for you today. He would speak to you in the glad tidings and touch your heart in a moment of time, and bring you into a sense of divine favour and joy as your heart would go out to Him. God has done these things because He has seen the need of our hearts, but He wants what is for His own heart’s pleasure. That is why God acts the way He does; we read that “the kindness and love to man of our Saviour God appeared”, Titus 3:4. That is a wonderful thing; God would bring us into favour.
May we have a sense of that favour in our own hearts and souls, as leaning on the Lord Jesus Christ. May God bless the word.
Preaching of the gospel, Wheaton, Illinois
17 August 2014
J. Oberg