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GRACE TRIUMPHANT

^[p. 62] GRACE TRIUMPHANT

I should like to bring before you four things which are strikingly presented in these chapters, viz.:

GRACE PROCLAIMED
GRACE ILLUSTRATED
GRACE REJECTED
GRACE TRIUMPHANT

First of all, it is my earnest desire that our hearts may be attracted by the glories and perfections of the One who is the Proclaimer of Grace. In Chapter 3 we see how He was sealed with the Holy Spirit as the object of God’s delight. The whole of His matchless life from the manger to the baptismal waters of Jordan was covered by the Father’s “well pleased”. It could not be otherwise, for from His conception by the Holy Spirit He was the true meat offering, the “fine flour mingled with oil”. In connection with this I may say that there were three distinct forms in which the meat offering was prepared; Leviticus 2. It might be “baken in the oven”, or “in a pan”, or “in the frying-pan”. The increasing severity of the tests to which the personal devotedness of the Lord Jesus would be subjected seems to be indicated thus. The first might cover the thirty years of His private life; the second might apply to the three years and a half of His ministry; while the third might have reference to that last awful time of trial in which the personal devotedness of that blessed One was tested to the full — that dreaded hour of the power of darkness preceding and including the cross. How blessed ^[p. 63] to know that in every way and at every point that precious Life was “a sweet savour” unto God! Every test only served to display the divine excellence and perfection of that Holy One; and, as we have seen, God sealed Him as the One in whom He was “well pleased”.

Then in the wilderness He meets the Tempter, who plies all the arts of his evil wisdom in vain. Foiled at every point, the enemy retires. The “strong man armed” who had so long kept his palace, was at last bound by a stronger than he. Grace has come into the world in a Person whom Satan cannot touch. What a glorious thought! Responsibility came into the world in connection with a man whom Satan could touch, and who fell, I may say, at the first touch, dragging down all his race with him into ruin and death. GRACE has come in connection with a MAN who stands invulnerable and invincible before all the assaults of Satan, who retires vanquished and weaponless from the conflict.

Let us dwell, beloved brethren, with adoring hearts on the glories of the Person who is the Proclaimer of Grace! It is a Man who is the beloved Son of God, who is sealed with the Holy Spirit as the Object of God’s delight, and who has met and silenced the whole battery of Satan’s wiles, who stands up in the synagogue at Nazareth to proclaim that the day of grace had begun. HE was there — the delight of God’s heart, the Vanquisher of the devil — there to proclaim the riches, the consolation, the liberty, the unfathomable wonders of the grace that resided in His own Person, and to throw open the heavenly treasures of that grace for the use of poor, sorrowing, captive, blind sinners. Never had words so sweet fallen upon human ears before. No such Preacher had ever before been heard at Nazareth or anywhere else. No marvel that they “wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth”. At last the Preacher was here of whom the prophet had said, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of HIM that bringeth good tidings!”

How sweet it is to see, too, that the grace which He proclaims is all wrapped up in His own Person! It is not blessings only which are presented, but a BLESSER. He says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon ME”; “He hath anointed ME”; “He hath sent ME”. Let me put it to your hearts, my brethren! Do you think of, and rejoice in, your blessings more than the Person in whom you have them? If you only think of blessings there is a wonderful charm about them when they are new, and they sustain the soul for a certain time, but when the first joy of them passes away, a settling-down process commences. Every new bit of blessing may seem to put a new bit of life into you, but it gradually loses its lustre and power, and you become what I fear I must speak of as an ordinary Christian — you make no progress. It is as we take Christ by faith into the affections of our hearts that we make spiritual progress. It is as HE occupies an enlarged place in our affections that we get on. The devil often deceives us by filling our heads while he empties our hearts. The head may be filled with theological information without producing one spark of heart-affection for Christ, and the soul remains in a state of spiritual starvation. All the blessings of the dispensation of grace are wrapped up in a Person, and we make progress as our hearts learn to find everything in Him — the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.

I can only touch briefly at present the fivefold blessing of grace which is here proclaimed.

1. “To preach the gospel to the poor”. We were poor indeed. We were debtors to an enormous amount and we had “nothing to pay”. God has expended the riches of His grace to meet our need. Rich men spend their riches in different ways: God spends His riches in clearing away ^[p. 65] everything that stood against the poor sinners who believe on His Son. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace”. Ephesians 1: 7. And not only does that grace meet all our need, but it enriches us with eternal blessings such as only the heart of God could think of.

2. “To heal the broken-hearted”. Here is a man broken-hearted! Why? Because everything that his heart was set upon has been blighted. He says, ‘I set my heart first on one thing and then another, but something has come in to spoil it all, and my heart is crushed and desponding’. The grace of God would bring healing to that broken heart. There is everlasting “consolation and good hope through grace”, and by faith in the Son of God it may be yours. There is a Person who can save you from all your sins, and sympathize with all your sorrows, and support you in all your weakness, and make His love the portion of your heart. Is not such a Person worth knowing? Oh, the comfort and the joy of knowing that God is for us: that His blessed Son has been here and subjected Himself to every indignity that He might tell us of eternal blessings, and secure then for us by His own death! The blessings which Jesus gives to those who believe on Him are connected with a world that never knows any changes or any disappointments — a blessed world of joy and peace and glory — and Grace would bring the things of that world into your heart, and it would be bound up and healed.

3. “To preach deliverance to the captives”. Every person on this earth out of Christ is a captive. Some have very rough iron chains, and others have beautiful golden ones, but all are captives. A man may say, ‘I am not a captive; I do just as I like; I am my own master’. Yes! you are the slave of your own will, and behind that will is all the power of the devil. If you desired to live a holy life you would soon find what a captive you were. The chain which ^[p. 66] now hangs so lightly would become awfully galling if you tried to escape from it. It is only by obtaining life in Christ Jesus, and having the Holy Spirit as the power of that life, that you can be free from the power of sin.

4. “Recovering of sight to the blind”. How many blind people there are! The grace of God shines upon them; His beloved Son passes before them; salvation with all its blessings is put before their eyes; but they cannot see these precious things, because of the blinding power of sin. The grace that brings the blessing has also to give the sinner eyes to see it.

“Else, sweetly as it suits our case,
The gift had been in vain”.

FAITH is spiritual sight. It enables us to see things which to nature are invisible — the riches and the glory of the Grace of God. We were once blind to these things: for ever let us praise the Saviour who has opened our eyes!

5. “To set at liberty them that are bruised”. These are the captives who have lain in the dungeon so long that the irons have eaten into their flesh, and they are helplessly maimed — worn out in the service of the devil. Anybody else but the Son of God would give them up, but there is grace in His heart for them. One day George Whitfield said in his preaching that the Lord Jesus would receive the devil’s castaways. Afterwards some of his lady friends objected to the expression, but while they were talking about it there was a knock at the door; a woman was asking if she might see Mr. Whitfield. He went to her; she stood before him trembling — a poor, utterly wasted creature from the London streets, worn out in the devil’s service. Through her sobs and tears she said, ‘Mr. Whitfield, I heard you say that the Lord Jesus would take in the devil’s castaways, and I am one of them. Will He receive me?’ The preacher and the penitent knelt together before the God of all grace, and He spoke peace to her troubled conscience on the spot. Oh! how ofttimes we limit the grace of our God by our cold-hearted unbelief!

All this wondrous blessing is proclaimed in the dispensation of grace, which is here called “the acceptable year of the Lord”. What an unfolding of the Grace which has come into this poor fallen world in the person of the Son of God!

But it is not enough that GRACE is PROCLAIMED: it must also be ILLUSTRATED. These sinners at Nazareth could appreciate the doctrine of Grace, and “wonder at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth”. A sermon about the grace of God in general would be tolerated anywhere, but the Lord Jesus did not leave the matter thus. He would have them to know what the character of GRACE really was, and on what terms they might receive it. So He brings forward from the Scriptures two illustrations of Grace. Some people do not like illustrations, because they often come home to the heart and take a grip on the conscience, while doctrines fly over the head. These people at Nazareth did not like illustrations, especially when they made it so plain that Grace would bless a poor Sidonian widow or a Syrian leper if it chose to do so, without considering that the widows and lepers of Israel had any previous claim. These people were not prepared to allow God to be gracious when His grace was shown in its activity. If the children of Israel had fulfilled their side of the covenant they might, indeed, have claimed much from God, but their whole history had proved them to be as bad as their guilty neighbours, and more criminal, because of having more light. GRACE can only act on the ground that all are alike in deserving nothing. A religious Israelite could only have the blessings of Grace on the ^[p. 68] ground that he deserved nothing; and if that was so, how could he find fault if God blessed a poor Sidonian widow or a Syrian before himself? It was purely Grace for all alike, and surely Grace had the right to choose its objects where it would!

Let us look for a moment at the illustrations. Volumes of grace and blessings are bound up in the histories of the Sidonian widow and the Syrian leper. I have no doubt that we have here — brought into the compass of three verses — an epitome of what Grace will do for its objects.

You remember the condition in which the prophet found the widow — reduced to extremity — brought down to a handful of meal and a cruse of oil! reduced to a point when there was nothing between her and death but that which typified Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is a blessed thing to be reduced to that point. David was brought to a point when he had to say, “There is but a step between me and death”. Have you been brought to realize that if Christ and the Holy Spirit were taken away there is nothing between you and death? When you reach that point you will find that you need nothing more. Christ known by the Holy Spirit as a Saviour is all you need. The Lord God of Israel said, “The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth”. The time of famine and need is the time of Grace, and that grace will never fail its objects until the famine is over. By and by there will be a dispensation of righteousness, when the earth will be mown by the scythe of judgment, and then the King of glory will “come down as rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth” (Psalm 72: 6), and until then the meal and the oil neither waste nor fail. Christ as a Saviour, and the Holy Spirit to make Him known, is the provision of Grace for the famine of souls.

But the widow must learn that Grace goes deeper still ^[p. 69] because her need is deeper still. She must learn that Grace will not only save from death, but through death and out of death. Her son sickens and dies. Depend upon it, brethren, we never really learn the depths of Grace until we find ourselves under the power of death. Our sin has brought death upon us in the twofold character of the power of Satan and the judgment of God, and Grace would fail to meet our case if it did not remove us from the power of death and give us a life which death cannot touch. How this is accomplished we see in figure in the case of the widow’s son. First, he was laid in the prophet’s bed. Sleep is a figure of death, and the child was identified with the prophet in the place which was a figure of death. The prophet was a type of that blessed Saviour who has been — not in figure only, but in actual fact — in the place of death, and each believer has been identified with Him in His death. We have died with Christ: God has seen us identified with Christ’s death, so that all that we were as children of Adam has gone out of His sight in the death of Christ! This is a glorious truth, my brethren! God has seen you laid in the prophet’s bed — identified with Christ in His death. Have you seen yourself there? Have you entered into that of which baptism is a figure — that you have part in Christ’s death? Have you by faith eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of the Son of man, so that you have identified yourself with His death, and it has become part of the faith of your soul that you have died with Christ?

Then the prophet stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried to the Lord, and the soul of the child came into him again. The same striking action was repeated by Elisha in 2 Kings 4, in connection with the Shunammite’s son, and I think it answers, as a type, to the action of the blessed Lord in John 20. Having passed through death, He came into the midst of His own, and breathed into them, saying, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit”. In the old creation God breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life, and he became a living soul. In John 20 the Son of God as the last Adam associated His brethren with Himself in the possession of a life which death can never touch — a life which is in Himself, and which He gives to all who believe on Him. Have you by faith passed out of your old life as a child of Adam by having died with Christ, and entered upon a new and eternal life which is beyond all the power of death, and which is in the Son of God? This is the glorious end of sovereign grace; for we read that “where sin abounded GRACE did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord”. Romans 5: 21.

But another illustration is needed to complete the picture, and it is furnished by Naaman, the Syrian leper. The question might be raised, does Grace work such spiritual wonders for our souls, and do nothing for our bodies? We have bodies with the seeds of corruption in them. It has been said that we no sooner begin to live than we begin to die. It is part of the heritage which sin has bequeathed to us that we have mortal bodies, carrying within them the seeds of disease, decay, and death. This condition of things was strikingly exemplified in Naaman. His body was corrupted by a disease which perhaps more plainly than any other stamps the body as being ‘mortal’. The leper sees his members eaten away until they drop off; his whole existence is a living death; he manifests plainly the condition to which sin has reduced man’s body. Is there to be no remedy for this? Is Grace going to bestow infinite blessings on the soul and leave the body to be the spoil of corruption? Never! Seven times plunged beneath the waters of Jordan, and the flesh of the leper becomes as that of a little child. His body was rescued from the ^[p. 71] corruption which attached to it through faith in that which typified the death of Christ.

Let me assure you that the triumph of Grace will never be complete until our bodies partake of the efficacy of Christ’s death, and are entirely freed from what Scripture calls “the bondage of corruption”. This will be when the Lord returns. The bodies of God’s saints which have been sown in weakness and dishonour and corruption during the last six thousand years will be raised in power and glory and incorruption. As for us who are living when the Lord comes, the power by which He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself will be put forth upon us, and in the twinkling of an eye we shall be changed. These vile bodies will be fashioned like unto His glorious body, and as we rise to meet Him in the air “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. The “many brethren” will be fully conformed to the image of the Son of God — Himself the First-born among them. And, remember, GRACE does all this. You will find all that I have spoken of attributed to God’s “own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1: 9, 10), according to which death has been abolished and life and incorruptibility brought to light by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

If blessing is on the ground of grace it could not be admitted that the privileged Israelite had any more claim to it than a condemned Sidonian or “a Syrian ready to perish”, and God chose to vindicate the sovereignty of His grace by blessing these outcasts, and He does so still. He passes by the pretensions of men and blesses the needy. He fills the hungry with good things, but the rich He sends empty away. Is this the Grace that you delight in? or do you think that God should have some respect to your goodness, your morality, or your religion? Alas! man’s goodness and religion always make him hate grace. I will venture to say that these sinners at Nazareth had not too ^[p. 72] much religion, but they had enough to make them hate Grace.

GRACE PROCLAIMED and ILLUSTRATED becomes GRACE REJECTED. When Grace is set before the natural man he hates it. He cannot understand why God should bless the Sidonians and the Syrians — the publicans and sinners of society. The respectable man can see that they have no claim upon God for anything, and, deceived by his own heart, he will not own that he is as bad and as undeserving as they, and he hates the Grace which will not acknowledge his goodness in any way, but will bless them in spite of their badness.

That synagogue at Nazareth was a little picture of the moral and religious world. They were all “filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong”. What were they so angry about? Grace. What were they rejecting? Grace.

The scene on the brow of that hill was a foreshadowing of another scene which occurred on the brow of another hill three years later. Calvary is the religious world’s answer to Grace. Man reasons thus, ‘If these poor, wretched outcasts are to get God’s blessing and I am to miss it, all my goodness, morality, and religion go for nothing’. Exactly! ‘Why’, says the religious man, ‘that is preposterous. Away with such doctrine. The man who preaches that doctrine is not fit to live’ That is what the religious world thought in the first century, and the religious world thinks so still in the twentieth. Let me ask, are you a poor, needy, sinful receiver of Grace? Is Grace the sweetest sound that ever reached your ears? Or are you a moral, respectable, religious hater of GRACE? Sad is the condition of the man who is too good for Grace!

As we have seen, the natural man will not have Grace.

^[p. 73] When examples of its activity are set before him he hates it. There is not one responsive echo in the heart of man to Grace. We were all in that condition by nature. Then how does it come to pass that any are saved? It is only by the glorious triumph of the very grace that man rejects, and in Luke 5 we have a fourfold picture of GRACE TRIUMPHANT.

1. First, we find Grace convicting a man of his sin. A great many fish were caught that day, but the triumph of grace was that the fisherman was caught. A great miracle had been wrought in his house before; he had also heard a sermon from the Lord Jesus, but neither of these things appears to have reached his conscience. Luke the physician might have seen the finger of God more plainly in the healing of the sick woman, but the fisherman must be caught in his own net. Grace adapts itself to its objects.

Probably no two persons have been converted in exactly the same way. Marvellous and varied are God’s ways in producing conviction of sin! There might seem to be very little connection between a draught of fishes and a sinner’s conscience, but Grace made the connection and Simon found himself at once in the presence of God. Immediately we have a striking contrast from the previous chapter. There the natural man is full of wrath and casts Jesus down; here grace touches a man and he finds out that he is full of sin, and he casts himself down before Jesus. He is convicted of sin.

Look at the delightful inconsistency of this man. He is crying out that he is utterly unfit for the Lord’s presence and saying, “Depart from me”; and yet at the same moment he gets as near to Him as he can. Grace was drawing him with a magnetic power that he could not resist. The very grace that shows us we are full of sin attracts us to the Saviour. There is always attraction along with conviction.

It may sound like a paradox, but no man ever really turns ^[p. 74] to God until he has learnt that he is utterly unfit for God.

2. Simon’s condition — full of sin — is immediately illustrated by that of a man “full of leprosy”. Such a one needs cleansing, and there is grace to cleanse as well as to convict. You observe that the leper had a doubt on the subject. He did not question the power of that Blessed One, but he had a doubt as to His grace. How many there are who put an ‘if’ before the Saviour’s grace, if not before His power. Doubting soul, listen to this royal word of Grace triumphant — “I WILL; BE THOU CLEAN”. This is the voice from Calvary. For thy cleansing this blessed Saviour was there made sin, and poured out His soul unto death. There His precious blood which cleanseth from all sin was shed, and Grace makes all the value of that death and blood available for thee. The Saviour crowned with glory at the right hand of God is the triumphant Witness to the value and completeness of His own finished work, and both the cross and the throne re-echo that precious word to every sinner who believes on Him — “I will; be thou clean”.

3. Next we have a man who is cleansed — the Lord Jesus pronounces his sins forgiven — but there was no evidence of it to the people round about him, and they did not believe that he was cleansed. The Lord says, “That ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins (he said unto the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house”. The grace that cleanses confers power upon the cleansed sinner to walk to the glory of God, and his walk becomes the evidence of his cleansing to others. After a person believes in the Lord Jesus for the remission of his sins, he receives the Holy Spirit (Acts 10: 43, 44), who empowers him to walk to the glory of God. In the case of this man the very thing which was the witness of his weakness became the witness to his power. The point in which a man’s weakness was most apparent in his unconverted days is the point which will most markedly show the power of the Spirit of God when he gets deliverance. People may deny that our sins are forgiven, but they ought not to be able to deny that an unaccountable change has taken place in us, and thus our walk would become the witness to the power and reality of the Grace that has reached us.

4. GRACE convicts, cleanses, and confers power, and when we are thus personally displaying the power of Grace we are morally fitted to minister it to others. Grace does not fully triumph until its subjects are brought into communion with its own thoughts of blessing for others. Levi the publican — saved by grace — is found in the communion of grace. He is so delivered from himself that his heart goes out in love to others, and he is found doing on a small scale the very thing that God is doing on a large scale. He makes a feast for sinners, and in doing so he makes a feast for Him who is the Friend of publicans and sinners. Levi was in concert with the gracious One who was — may we not reverently say it? — well pleased to be his Guest. I venture to say that Grace could not have a greater triumph than this. It has brought its subject into communion with itself. This is the deep joy of the Father’s house ... . “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad”. Alas! for the cold, selfish heart that is outside the circle of this joy. Every believer will be the subject of this grace, and in communion with it for ever in glory. But why should you not taste its deep blessedness now?

Do not the music and the dancing awaken a responsive echo in your heart? Does not your whole soul kindle with desire to minister to some other worthless sinner the grace that you have known for yourself? Grace must be active in a world of sinners, and if you are in communion with it I am sure that in some measure you are following in the ^[p. 76] steps of Levi and seeking the blessing of others. May God give us to know more of the communion of Grace!

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