PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD
Peter Mutton
Revelation 18: 1,2; 10-13; 17-19; Matthew 27: 45-54; 14: 23-33
I am sure we were all very much impressed by the savagery of the earthquake in Kobe in Japan, and this scripture came to me in that connection - in one hour great Babylon is fallen. Now, Japan is not fallen, neither is Kobe - it will be reconstructed - but it is the tremors which went out from Kobe that are of interest. As you will know, Japan is a vast industrial power. Its importance in the world of commerce far exceeds its physical shape and size, and there was immediate speculation as to what would happen, that those Japanese investors who had invested in Britain and in Europe and in the United States and elsewhere would be having to withdraw their money to fund the redevelopment of Kobe, the cost of which would run into billions and billions of yen. In one hour so much can happen unexpectedly and traumatically. Nobody was expecting to have an earthquake in Kobe and yet it came in its severity. The very buildings which had been designed to withstand it had never been tested. They could never be. And, of course, when the earthquake came, they revealed their fragility. We have all seen the pictures, I am sure, of the double-decker highway which was turned on its side, of the building, where the research was done into earthquakes, which lay across the road. Men are unprepared tor the severity of a little shake. I am not under-estimating the shake, but it is as nothing to what will happen where we read in the book of Revelation. The whole commercial system is represented for us in Babylon. You may say, Babylon is gone; it is finished. You may think it is but it is not. The great city Babylon represents commerce, commerce which is for the aggrandisement of those who trade, and you may not have noticed, but that is the philosophy of the world today. That is, what runs the world today is commerce, no longer social engineering and social ownership, but the free market. I am not preaching about the market: it is very boring, but sufficient to say that in one hour it will be over.
Dear friend, I will not be here and those who love the Lord Jesus and wait His appearing will not be here to see the great devastation. You may be, I do not know. You may be part of it, but if you love Jesus as I love Jesus, you will not be. The gospel is rescuing men from a certain calamity which is corning - in one hour. God in His goodness demonstrates the power of an earthquake. He has demonstrated it in San Francisco. He has demonstrated it in Kobe. But it is as nothing to the great collapse of the whole system which men have built.
We were reading the other weekend of Samson's death. It is a remarkable thing to read and to contemplate. Samson asked the little boy who led him to let him put his hands on the two pillars of the Philistine house. The Philistine would represent something else: the fleshly mind of man in the things of God, perhaps, the human intellect seeking to take ground which actually belonged to God's people, belonged to God and His own, and he felt the pillars and identified with them and he bowed himself and the whole structure came down. What were those two pillars? I believe those two pillars represent two things upon which the world is built, the whole structure of men's life which they have organised for themselves without God and without a future: one is lust and the other is pride. That is what it is structured on. And it will fall in one hour just as that house fell. They thought they had the man who for a time had represented God, the man of whom they were afraid, and they thought, we have finished with him; we have put out his eyes; we have cut off his hair; he cannot see and he has no power. Ah, but he strengthened himself in God and the whole thing came down. It will come down so easily. One man with a little power is sufficient, it is seen in Philadelphia: “thou hast a little power", Rev 3: 8. Thank God for the little power. We cannot talk about much, but it is sufficient.
I do not want to alarm you about the end but we need to understand that God is corning in in judgment upon the world. And what is the issue that God has against the world that He should do this thing, that He should finish the systems that are extant, both the commercial and the religious systems which will continue after the church has gone? What is the issue that God has? It is because His own Son was rejected. Often we hear about sins in the gospel and we have to do with God about our sinful state without Christ. God is interested in more than your sins. He is interested in you accepting His Son. His Son came to save the world and the world crucified Him. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do", Luke 23: 34. God is not holding you personally responsible exactly, but He is inviting you to accept His Son in the face of opposition, in the face of indifference, because God is not indifferent to Jesus. He has announced that there is one name given under heaven whereby we must be saved - dear friend, must be saved. It is imperative. It is laid upon me, it is my responsibility to tell you about the way that God has ordained that you must be saved. And how easy it is to close with the salvation, to close with the blessing that God is offering in Jesus.
We read of the basis of the gospel, the death of Jesus at Calvary. We have previously spoken about and contemplated the life of Jesus in His perfection, His names and His titles and His glories. But here in the gospel, I suppose, first, we present Jesus, Jesus the Man, Jesus the Saviour, the One who came "to seek and to save that which is lost", Luke 19: 10. He came to all and the majority rejected Him; "but as many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God", John 1: 12. Are you in that category? There are only two categories for mankind, those who have Christ and those who do not; those who have accepted Him as their Saviour and those who have refused, only two categories. And the outcome of those two categories is as clear. There is only one basis whereby we must be saved. There is only one revealed way, only one Name given. Do not be deluded! There are many people in Christendom who think they have earned a passage to heaven on the basis of their work. Maybe they built a hospital. Maybe they gave their life to charity. But there is only one name given. It is not the name of Peter Mutton; it is not your name; it is not the name of the biggest philanthropist in the world; it is the name of Jesus. Nobody could begin to do what He did. And God will not tolerate that suggestion or thought.
Here we see the end of the life of Jesus as a Man in flesh and blood. He says, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" There was no answer. Why had God forsaken Jesus? Why was there no answer? There had always been an answer. He could say "Father ... thou always hearest me", John 11: 42. The cry of Jesus was always answered. He had only to ask the Father and it would happen, not in an hour but in an instant. And suddenly it had all changed. For three hours there was no answer. There was no answer because He was made sin. The sins of the whole world were laid upon Him there, and God could not look. He could not answer because He is a holy, sin-hating God, and the face of a loving God was turned away from His loved Son as there He made a full end to the matter before God. And there was darkness, dreadful, appalling darkness. Dear friend, you may be in darkness. Do you feel it in your soul? Do you feel maybe you belong to Babylon, you belong to an order of things which God is going to judge. Maybe you feel God is out to 'get' you, to judge you, for your sins. Ah, no! Jesus was judged for your sins. God is not holding your sins against you. He just wants you to accept His Son in simplicity. You may say, well I do not understand some of the things that are talked about in the meetings. That will come in time. Just accept Him as the Man that God has appointed as Saviour, the name that has been given under heaven whereby we must be saved.
And here we see an earthquake. You hear His cry. The words are not given. In another gospel He cries, "It is finished", John 19: 30. What was finished? Some have attempted to say what was finished. Scripture does not say what was finished but so many things finished. Yes! so many things were finished, and so many things were begun in the death of Jesus and in His resurrection too. My sins were finished. When He cried, "It is finished", my sins had been dealt with and I am clear of them, the sins of the whole world borne there and God can be propitious towards men. The life of Jesus, in flesh and blood, was finished. It was over. No man took His life from Him. Men attempted to murder Jesus at Calvary. They crucified the Lord of glory but they did not kill Him. He gave up His own life. It was a loud cry. It was not the last groan of a dying man. It was the cry of a Man who went out in victory having said to the matter of sins and having endured the consuming judgment - but He Himself was not consumed. The bush burned, you will remember - Moses saw it - but it was not consumed, but the time of judgment was passed and the light appeared. There were three hours of darkness. Babylon falls in one hour, but there were three hours in which Jesus was made sin. Dreadful, dreadful time!
There were those who were there and saw it. There were those hardened men who had seen many a crucifixion. The centurion was one. He said, "Truly this man was Son of God". Truly He was. You did not need to be a Roman centurion at the cross of Jesus to know it. He was the Son of God. There was every sign and every miracle. Maybe you want signs; maybe you want miracles. Jesus has a word for you. He says, "A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and a sign shall not be given to it save the sign of Jonas the prophet", Matt 12: 39. What was the sign of Jonas? Do you young people know about Jonah? The sign of Jonah was that he was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights and at the end of it the miracle happened. Jonah came out on to dry land, spewed up by the fish, and there he was alive when everybody else thought he was dead. Jesus came out of death, the Victor. It could not hold Him because He Himself had done nothing worthy of death. If I brought my sins before God, if I had had no Saviour, if I had had no Substitute, I would never have survived, but Jesus, the holy Man, was the perfect sacrificial lamb. John the Baptist says, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world", John 1: 29. There is nothing wrong with Him. He was perfect. Every step that He took was perfect. You could dissect it and analyse it and you would find nothing. You read about men coming into high office and the newspapers start to look for all the flaws in their public life. If he is in politics, 'he must have done something shady' or if he is in high office, 'there must be something to be found' and surely eventually they find it, even if he did not pay his parking ticket or whatever. But with Jesus, nothing. They came to Him and said, What about the tribute money? He was under no obligation to pay it, but He paid it. Whatever He did, you could examine it and find no fault in Him.
Even the thief on the cross next to Him said, "This man has done nothing amiss". It came to him in a flash that Jesus was perfect and that he was not. And he says, "Remember me, Lord". Remember me. And what does Jesus say to him? 'You have gone too far', or, 'There is no hope for you'. He says, "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise", Luke 23: 41-43. He does not say anything about his sins. But He knew all about them. Jesus knew all about his sins, but he did not refer to them because the man himself had had a judgment about them. He had finished with his wicked history and he says, We are suffering justly, but the big thing was he had accepted the Saviour: "This man has done nothing amiss". "Remember me, Lord". Remember me. And that day he was in paradise. But Jesus went before. He was in paradise before him. He was preparing the way for the reception of that thief on the cross. There is hope for a thief; thee is hope for you, dear friend. There is nothing you have done that is so bad that you cannot be saved. Maybe Satan would suggest it. I have often said it, and I am sure others too - there are two lies that he uses. One is that you are so good you do not really need a Saviour. You have not done anything bad so why all this talk about salvation and saving you from your sins? And the second is that you are so bad that there is no hope. And they are both lies. He is the father of lies. He will do what he can to deceive you about your condition. You may be lost but there is no need to be because you can be found.
We read finally in Matthew. We have been going back and back in time. Here before the Lord's death, we have the Lord's life. It is maybe some comfort, dear friend, dear brother, dear sister, dear young person, you may know the Lord. You may have accepted Him as your Saviour. Peter had, and many others had. Peter it was who said "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God", Matt 16: 16. He had accepted Jesus and he had accepted his own sinful history. You remember, he fell down at the time of the miracle of the fishes he fell at the Lord's knees and he said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord", Luke 5: 8. But he would not let Him go. Do not let Him go, dear friend! He will not go anyway. He says, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord". If you have never said it, say it now. Say it in your heart to God, but He will not depart from you. He has come to find you. You will not need to go anywhere to find Jesus. He has come to find you. He has made the journey. That was why He was here as a man and He humbled Himself as a man to go even into death for you. It is He who has been looking for you. The search is over. Jesus was known to Peter. He had received him and he still had his doubts, still had his moments. Maybe you have been having a moment of doubt. We all have our moments. We are assailed by Satan, these doubts, these storms, these fears, these tempests. Maybe you have a tempest in your work, a tempest in your private life, a tempest in your conscience, a tempest in your relationships, a tempest in your home. How many things that come that unsettle us and frighten us. The first thing that frightened them was this apparition. They did not see the Lord in it. Peter and the others in the boat were afraid because the circumstance was beyond their experience and so many happenings in life are things we have never experienced before. Often the thing we have never done before is the thing that frightens us the most. But here they see Jesus coming to them. He wanted to come to them and to come into the boat and they were afraid. It may be that you are afraid of the commitment, of having Jesus in the boat. It is only because you misunderstand Him. It is only because you have misapprehended what He wants to do for you in your life. You may say, Well, if I have Jesus in my boat, what will my friends say? What will my colleagues say? If I start becoming spiritual and talking about Jesus and I am no longer interested in all the things they are interested in, I am going to have a rough time. It was not the case in this boat, of course they were His disciples. But we have all known what it is to be afraid of the commitment to having Jesus in our lives, have we not? We all have to be honest. We have all been there. But He says, Do not be afraid; it is I. He only wants the best for us. He wants to give you life. He says, "I am come that they might have life, and might have it abundantly", John 10: 10. He wants you to live in the life which He was going to enter into, His risen life. And more than that, He wants to empower you with the gift of the Holy Spirit. He is gone, but another Comforter has come to us. What He did in His death was for our good. What He did in His resurrection was for our good. And from His ascended place with the Father, after those intervening days, the Holy Spirit came and He is still here. There is only one way for the believer to live and that is in the power of the Holy Spirit. Have you the Holy Spirit? If you have been obedient, if you have answered to the call, I am sure you do. But if you are in any doubt, ask. To him who asks shall be given. If you are not aware of the power of the Holy Spirit in your life, ask! It will at least mean that you have a bit of exercise about it. You say, Well, how am I going to carry on? how am I going to survive? I am going to get a lot of brickbats, a lot of difficulties. I can see the problems. You need an indwelling power. Take the woman at the well in Samaria, the Lord did not go on to her about her sins. He said, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water", John 4: 10, water which springs up into eternal life. He was not threatening her. He was not warning her. He was saying, If you just knew the opportunity, you would have asked Me, asked Me for something I want to give you. There are things we have to ask for. God is saying, I want to see some desire, some interest. I have plenty to give you, but I want you on My side first. The things He has are very precious and He is not scattering them to people with no interest. Where there is an interest, He will warm that interest until it becomes an all-consuming interest.
Here He calls to them, and Peter wanted to go to Jesus: "Lord, if it be thou, command me to come to thee". The Lord is doing that. He is calling you to come, not exactly commanding you to come al though He is Lord. No! He is far too gracious for that. He never thrusts Himself on you. In another gospel it looked as though He was going to go by them (Mark 6: 48). What He is looking for is the invitation. Remember in Revelation in Laodicea He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and am knocking", Rev 3: 20. He says, I want you to hear the knock and to open the door. I want you to make that move. The Lord is not thrusting Himself on you. He is not forcing you into something you are not ready for. He is graciously waiting. God on the other hand commands men everywhere to acknowledge the name of Jesus. It becomes something which is obligatory. Every knee will bow to Him "of heavenly and earthly and infernal beings", Phil 2: 10. It will be so. God will have it, and He is justified in doing it. But Jesus in this day of grace, here He is, He is open to the invitation. And Peter says, "Command me to come to thee..." The Lord had the power to walk on the water, to be supported by something which is insubstantial in itself. He was superior to the circumstances and elements, and He is superior to the circumstances and elements in your life. Whatever the troubles are, He is above them. If you have the Holy Spirit, "greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world", 1 John. 4: 4. It is of Himself, that Spirit, the power for life. He is superior to the elements and Peter knew this and he said, "Command me to come to thee"; and I too can be superior to the elements. And, indeed, he could be; and, indeed, he was. And you too can be superior to the elements, the circumstances in which you are. In Christ you can be. Paul, you remember says, "If God be for us, who against us?" Rom 8: 31. No powers, no authority, not even life or death holds any threat to me because God is for me, for me in Jesus.
And so here we are. Peter steps, gingerly perhaps, out of the boat and he walks to Jesus on the water, superior to the circumstances. You may say, Well, it was all right to begin with. I was superior to the grief of my bereavement. I was superior to the problems at work. I was superior to being out of a job. I was superior to my friends taunting me about my new-found and newly-declared Christianity. And then suddenly I was aware of the difficulties. Is it a different Saviour? Is it a different Person we call to? No, it is the same Jesus. "Lord, save me". Have you ever cried that: "Lord, save me"? "And immediately Jesus stretched out his hand", and he was safe. What power there is in that outstretched hand of Jesus, and it is outstretched today in the gospel. The day of grace is with us, the hand of Jesus is outstretched. Close your grip on it! Cry to Him and you will find that He is on your side; He is there for you. You remember Paul in his agony in Romans 7, the converted Pharisee. He was trying to reconcile the law with grace and he knew what he wanted to be, knew he had a new identity in Christ. He knew that his sins were forgiven. He knew he was going to glory. And still he wanted to do all these awful things he thought he had finished with, and he was in the same condition of flesh and blood. And he says, ''who shall deliver me out of this body of death?" v 24. Like Samson he had identified the pillar of lust in himself. I think he had already had to do with the pillar of pride on the Damascus road. But he says the law came along and it slew me. It was not that I had done anything wrong, but I had these wicked thoughts in my heart and, he says, I cried out who is going to deliver me from this body of sin? He says, "I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord". Jesus, the anointed Lord, was there for him in his anguish. Sometimes we have to go these roads. Sometimes we have to feel the storm but it is the same Jesus. Do not doubt Him. Jesus says, Why did you doubt? I was there for you all the time. Do not look at the trouble! Look at Me! Dear friend, if you have never done it before, do it now! Look to Jesus! If you are still in your sins, look to Him and accept Him as your own Lord! If you are in difficulty in your life, look to Him as your own Lord! Do not doubt Him! Ask for more faith! There as a man to whom Jesus said, Do you believe? He said, "I believe, help mine unbelief", Mark 9: 24. He was realistic. He knew and he admitted that there was unbelief in his heart. He says, "Help mine unbelief".
May the Lord help us! Wherever you are in your soul history, there is more to go, but the Lord is on your side, He is there for you. Indeed, He says, "I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age", Matt 28: 20. When will the age be complete? Well, we read about the destruction of Babylon. That will be the beginning of the end, the end of this present age. Be clear in your mind about what marks the world's system! Be clear in your mind about the darkness, the oppressive moral darkness out there! You may not see it, but you need to trust those who can; you need to trust the word of scripture; and in one hour it will be finished. But, dear friends, over against that, in three hours the question of your sinful history was finished before God if only you will accept the Saviour. May it be so for His Name's sake.
KIRKCALDY
5 February 1995