"THE FIRST AND THE LAST"
G.Allan Brown
Joshua 4: 4-9; Philippians 1: 21; Revelation 22: 13
The brother who gave thanks for the emblems this morning where we were made a reference to the fact that the death of the Lord Jesus appeared to be the end outwardly, but it was really the beginning for us. I just want to say something about that, if I may, because a great many people would like to make a new beginning in their lives and they have great resolves. They are absolutely genuine in their resolves. The New Year is a time when many people make resolutions as to what they will do and what they will not do and not many of the resolutions last beyond the first week of January at least that is my experience. People talk of turning over a new leaf. You can do that if you like; you can turn over a new leaf, and there it is all clean and blank, but it has not taken away all the leaves that were there before. They are still there. If our lives are going to be changed we have to get back to the death of Christ. There is no other way that lives can be changed. Not all the best resolutions and the strongest will-power in the world can change people basically and permanently. You have to come to the death of Christ. That is to be your beginning.
When Jesus died a great many people thought it was the end. Pilate thought it was the end. Herod thought it was the end. I suppose in some sense they were quite relieved because Jesus had been something of an embarrassment to them. Their careers, their politics, were all affected by this Man, and when they saw Him dead and buried they thought, That is the end, we can draw the curtains on this unfortunate affair. Even some of the disciples thought that too. Two of those who loved the Lord, in Luke 24, said, "But we had hoped that he was the one who is about to redeem Israel" (v .21). They thought He was going to take the throne of Israel and that the kings of the nations would all come and bow down to Jesus, and a new order of things would be set up on this earth. But now He was dead. Things had not worked out as they thought. This looked like the end. Many were quite discouraged. Even the devil himself, I believe, thought he had accomplished something when he saw Jesus dead. But Jesus did not stay in death. He went into death but came out of it, and that was the beginning of a whole new glorious system of things into which you and I can come tonight by way of His death.
Scripture speaks about many beginnings and we cannot cover them all. John in his gospel commences with "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". That, I think, is about as far back as our human minds are able to go. Genesis 1 says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". That is the beginning of the creation. Then in this epistle John speaks about the beginning of Christianity: "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; that which we contemplated, and our hands handled, concerning the word of life", 1 John 1: 1. These are all very interesting things. But what I want to come to, beloved, is the fact that, if your life is to be changed, there is only one place that that can begin, and that is in the death of Jesus. His death was not like the death of any other. His death was vicarious - what that means is, simply, that He died in place of us. He took our place. Death lies upon every one of us as the consequence of our sins: "For the wages of sin is death", Rom 6: 23. No penalty lay on Jesus, yet He died, vicariously. He died that we might live. Is that not wonderful?
There was a whole order of things that had to be ended. That is why the death of Jesus marked the end as well as the beginning. The whole question of sin and sins was what Jesus took upon Himself when He died upon the cross. How great was the load, the burden, that He took upon Himself! Think of it! We sometimes sing:
'O Lord, what burdens Thou didst bear!
Our load was laid on Thee;
Thou stoodest tor the sinner there
To bear all ill tor me'
(Hymn 415)
The One who was sinless became the sin-offering and in those three awful hours of darkness the unmitigated fury and wrath of a holy God was poured out on the head of the sinless One. In the Old Testament the animal offerings were brought and laid upon the altar and the fire burned and the offering was consumed. When Jesus died on Calvary's altar the fire was exhausted but the offering still remained. At the end of these three dreadful hours God had exacted every claim that His righteousness could demand. There came a point when God had no more to ask for, no more to demand. The poet puts it beautifully when he says,
‘Stern justice can demand no more,
And mercy can dispense her store'
(Hymn 357)
God was fully satisfied with the work that Jesus had accomplished. The judgment was finished and the man who had offended God was gone in the death of Christ.
Now, if your life is going to change, that is where it has to change. That is where it has to begin and nowhere else - in the ending of the man who has offended God, and in knowing that your sins are gone. It is a lovely hymn we sometimes sing:
'My sins - O 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!'
(No.238)
That is the glory of the gospel, that the work is finished, totally and completely finished, and God is fully satisfied, and now there is nothing but blessing for the repenting sinner.
I refer briefly to this passage in Joshua; I do not want to go into the detail of it. The Jordan speaks to us of the death of Jesus. There are different types, of course, and we just use them simply. The Jordan is the death of Jesus, but it is more than that; it is where we have to go. The Red Sea is a different thing altogether. The Red Sea is Jesus dying for us to take away our sins and to deliver us from the world, but the Jordan means that we go that way with Him. I understand that the Jordan is a tumultuous, tempestuous river that falls from a great height and its force and power are extraordinary. Yet when the ark of the covenant, which speaks to us of the Lord Jesus went there that water which was full over all its banks (see Josh 3: 15) defied all the laws of nature and rose up in a heap. What flowed down to the plain was cut off. The people went over on dry ground, it was not a muddy passage, there was not a trace of water left when the people crossed the Jordan. Such was the power of Christ in going into death.
Joshua was commanded to cause the twelve leaders of the tribes each to take a stone out of the bed of the Jordan and erect it on the other side, and they did that. But Joshua did something else that he was not told to do. He set up another twelve stones in the bed of the Jordan, and in the passage we read it says, "and they are there to this day". They are still there yet. What that means, I believe, is this: if we are going to prosper in our souls we can never afford to forget that this is from whence our origin springs - the death of Christ. Let us never, never forget that!
Then the waters of the Jordan came back again. After the people were over, the waters flowed on, it says, "as previously" (v 18). It was just as though nothing had ever happened. The people were on the other side and the Jordan still flowed on. What does that mean? I think it means that people still die. Believers die: unconverted people die. The power of death publicly is still unchanged, but you and I, if we have come this way, are on the other side and there are these stones standing up to remind us not only that our origin was there in the bed of the Jordan where, typically, Jesus died but you can see these stones. It says, "When your children ask hereafter, saying, What mean ye by these stones?", then you will be able to tell them. It is a wonderful privilege to be brought up in a Christian household because you will get the answers from your parents. They can tell you and they can direct you to the death of Jesus, the One ''who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree", 1 Pet 2: 24. In that great sacrifice which He offered, there was the end of all our sinful past; our shameful history is all gone and there is the new beginning. Would you like to make a new beginning? Get to the cross! Get back to the death of Jesus! Never forget it!
Then you come out and emerge on the other side. What a day it was when they reached that, because they began to enjoy life as they had never enjoyed it before. They had food to eat that they had never eaten before. That is a literal fact because, apart from two men, everybody who crossed that Jordan had been born in the wilderness. None of them had ever tasted corn or bread: they had lived on manna for forty years. None of them had ever tasted grapes or any of the wonderful fruits of the land, the heavenly inheritance. On the day they went over, the manna ceased, and they ate of the old corn of the land. They ate of corn that had been reaped by other hands. They drank the fruit of the vines and they ate of these grapes which they had not planted. They entered into all the wealth of a new inheritance and that is what Christianity offers you. Things are altogether different: instead of living like a pauper you live like an aristocrat, you live in plenty; the very choicest of heaven's store is opened up to you for your enjoyment and there is as much of it as you want. That land is a good and spacious land, the land that God has chosen for your blessing, and wherever you put your foot down, it is yours:
'Free, our peaceful feet may venture
In the paradise of God'
(Hymn 206)
Christianity is a great life! Would that more would understand it to be so! The world does not see half of what the believer has to enjoy. You come into a small meeting and you sit down together, perhaps only a few, and read the Scriptures and speak over them together: what wealth opens up! Think of the reading this afternoon: just a few verses of Scripture, a few simple brethren talking together. Was it not fine to be able to pluck of the grapes of the land? They ate of the old corn of the land. The old corn of the land is not Jesus down here exactly, it is Jesus as He is and where He is, enthroned in glory at the right hand of God, related to God's purpose and blessing for you and for me.
Paul was one who came that way, and I just refer to what he says in Philippians: "For for me to live is Christ". That was his beginning. I do not know if many of us could say that, but there is no harm in just asking yourself, Is that how I live? Paul was so captivated by the Lord who spoke to him out of heaven and broke down all his defences, he was so enthralled and captivated by the attractive ness, the glories of Jesus, that he says, From this time onwards ''for me to live is Christ". "And to die" - well, that is better still because he would go straight into the presence of the One who loved him and whom he loved - "and to die gain". "For for me", he says, “to live is Christ". While we are down here in the wilderness we eat of the manna in the morning before we face the wilderness, and then as we go through the day, perhaps we pick up something from the Scriptures or from the ministry, and then go on to a meeting at night and get something of the old corn of the land to feast upon. The grapes of Eschol that were carried between two on a pole are a foretaste of the heavenly land. You can have them now even while we are still literally in the wilderness, but then you can also have entrance spiritually into this glorious, heavenly land. That is what we enjoy, particularly on a day like this, the Lord's day. "For for me", Paul says, “to live is Christ".
Now, just a word on the verse in Revelation. This refers, no doubt, to the Lord Jesus Himself: "I am the Alpha and the Omega". I suppose we all know that these are the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. If you are going to have a beginning, it is with Jesus; if there is to be an end, it is in Him too. He will be able to see you through; not only will He give you a good beginning in your Christian life, but He will see you through right to the very end. He says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end". What that means, I think, is that God is fully satisfied with Jesus and everything that He has done, and the full revelation of God which we have now and which is presented to men in the glad tidings is complete. There is nothing to be added. People try to modernise the gospel and bring in new ideas and all that kind of thing. Beloved, remember your origin! Your origin is in the death of Christ. That is your beginning. And your end is also in Him. He is the first; He is the last. Man's only hope is Christ. How could it be otherwise? When men make addresses to others, quite often they have to be amended and altered, brought up to date. The gospel that is preached to men is the same gospel that has been preached for almost two thousand years and it needs no alteration, no amendment, because it is all in Christ, “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end".
That is the Christian life. There is, of course, the possibility that some might refuse God's overtures of blessing in the gospel. Do not forget that there is such a thing as the great white throne, "and him that sat on it" (Rev 20: 11); that is the same Jesus. It says, “from whose face the earth and the heaven fled, and place was not found for them". That is the final assizes, the final judgment; it is Jesus, the same Jesus, of whom the writer says:
'What will you do without Him
When the great white throne is set
And the Judge who never can mistake
And never can forget,
The Judge whom you have never here
As Friend and Saviour sought
Will summon you, to give account
Of word and deed and thought?'
This is the last and final judgment. It is not part of the gospel, but it is in order to mention it; it is the final thing in judgment. But today, to the believer, the great white throne holds no terror or tear. We shall never stand before that great white throne because our sins are gone, gone in that precious death that has secured so much tor God. I trust that every one of us here is standing on a secure and firm foundation, a basis that nothing can ever shake in heaven or earth or hell itself. Not all the machinations of the devil will ever be able to shake the faith of one who knows that his origin has been in the death of Christ.
May every one of us know it and be sure of it now for His Name's sake.
GLASGOW
14 February 1993