THE GLAD TIDINGS OF THE GRACE OF GOD

Nahum 1; Mark 1:14,15; Acts 2:32-47; 20:17-27

I was interested in this reference in Nahum to “him that bringeth glad tidings, that publisheth peace”. There are a number of references in the Old Testament to the glad tidings. It is good to go over them, and to consider what the glad tidings are. It is a wonderful fact that today there are glad tidings being preached to mankind, in the face of all the error that is spread in the world today – Satan’s great effort being to bring in error and discord, and to seek to nullify the preaching of the gospel.

Many people would say, ‘How can you reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament?’. ‘How can you speak about God, who is an avenging God?’. Has God changed in His nature? God has not changed, friend, but there has been a great change in the way God can be towards men, towards sinners. A tremendous work has been accomplished in the death and resurrection of Christ, a work that has addressed the whole moral question between God and man and is fundamental to God now being able to bring man to salvation. It is not the case that formerly God was indisposed towards man, He has never been against man, but there has been an immense change in the basis on which God can be in relationship with man.

In the passage in Nahum, we see two things. First, that “A jealous and avenging God is Jehovah, and full of fury”. We also see that “Jehovah is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble”. How can you reconcile these two things? How can God be both of these things? Well, He is. The gospel presents these simple facts. God is absolutely against sin. He always has been, and He always will be. God never compromises in the matter of sin, and He will never change in His attitude towards sin – He hates sin. Nevertheless, He is good, and a stronghold in the day of trouble. That is a wonderful thing. God is merciful and gracious towards all, and those who are convicted of sin and repent of it towards God enjoy that mercy and grace. They also are brought to understand the immensity of what God required to do to overcome sin. It has meant for God that He offered up His own Son on the cross as an offering for sin, and His own Son had to suffer for sin and for sins. He has met the whole matter to God’s complete satisfaction.

How much that meant to God, I could not tell you. I could not express the offence towards God that sin represented, nor could I express the suffering it entailed for Jesus to suffer for sins; I could not do it. It is too great – I could not comprehend the sin question before God. I can understand that my sins have offended God, but I cannot understand the fulness of what it meant for Christ to suffer for sins. But He did, and therefore I know God as a good God, because I have acknowledged my sins before Him, and I have accepted that Jesus has suffered for these sins. I asked God to save me from my sins on account of the work of Christ, and that alone. Habakkuk says, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on mischief” (chap.1:13). But there was One who took up the matter of sin, and glorified God in regard to it. Not only did He meet the matter, but He met it gloriously and upheld the glory of God. That is a wonderful thing. It means that the glad tidings can be preached – that sin and its consequences have been met and dealt with in the atoning sufferings of Jesus and in His death. It is wonderful that glad tidings can be preached now – if it was not for the work of Jesus, what good news could there be? What could man look for?

Having said so much in regard to God, and what is due to God, it is good to trace in the Scriptures the history of the glad tidings. It says in our passage, “Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, that publisheth peace!”. What did people think who read this in Old Testament times? What did they understand by the glad tidings? They knew that Messias was coming (John 4:25) and that he would establish peace on the earth. They knew he would settle matters in righteousness, and that Israel would be free from bondage and be a nation on the earth again. They also knew – as another prophet says – that every man would sit under his vine and his fig tree (Mic.4:4), in harmony with other men; and the fear of death and the bondage which men labour under would be done away with by the coming in of the Messiah. That was glad tidings! Men were waiting for that. Meanwhile, they struggled under the burden of sin and sins, and struggled under the oppression of their enemies and the lack of judgment and justice in the world. But there were glad tidings: the glad tidings were that they could look for their Messiah. “I know that Messias is coming”. However, that is not nearly so precious as to know that Messiah has come and has accomplished the work of redemption. God has not changed, but Messiah has come and redemption has been accomplished and has changed the whole landscape, you might say, for God and men. He can now offer salvation to men through the work of Jesus.

We read of that in Mark’s gospel. Mark’s gospel starts, “Beginning of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ”, Mark 1:1. After John was delivered up (v.14), a change of dispensation was coming, because John belonged to a dispensation that was passing, and preached repentance – preparing men for the incoming of Christ. Then “Jesus came into Galilee preaching the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn nigh.” He says as it were, ‘You have read about the glad tidings, you have read Isaiah 53, you know that Messiah is coming; He is now here!’. The glad tidings of the kingdom of God can be preached because God is here in a Man.

While the Lord Jesus was here, you could come to Jesus and in Him there was safety. There was complete safety in a Man here upon the earth, and if you took refuge under the wing of Jesus, if you followed Him and were with Him, no harm could possibly come to you. Every question was answered. Here was a Man who had compassion on you, who knew you. You did not have to hide your sins from this Man. You could not in any case – He knew all about them. He knew all about the sins of the woman at the well at Sychar – knew that she had had five husbands, knew that the one whom she was with was not her husband. The woman knew there was no point in trying to hide things from this Man. It was as well to have her sins out with Him.

That is the best way – to have everything out before the Lord Jesus, and make things clear. There is no point in hiding things. You need to come to Christ, and you need to recognise that the only way to salvation is in that blessed Man. Are you going to enjoy the company of Jesus, the One who was absolutely precious and sinless, and who was able to solve every question? No-one died or became ill in the presence of Jesus. Demoniacs were healed; where people suffered demon possession, the demons were cast out. Persons who were palsied or who suffered from other grievous illnesses were healed – “healing every disease and every bodily weakness”, Matt.9:35. Salvation was there – actual, practical salvation. ‘Go in peace’ – how often the Lord Jesus said that. People said, ‘Who is this that is able to forgive sins?’ (Mark 2:7). Think of the salvation that was there in a Man!

And yet, during the Lord’s life here, redemption had not yet been accomplished, and the Holy Spirit had not yet come. The full opening up of the gospel awaited the Lord’s death and resurrection. It is remarkable to think that, while things were so favourable and advantageous while the Lord Jesus was here in flesh, there was greater to come. The Lord Jesus was going on to the cross to meet the matter of sin and of sins, finally: so that nothing would remain outstanding, so that no-one could bring an accusation against those that believed.

When we come to Acts 2, we see a different scene. Jerusalem had crucified Christ. Pentecost was accomplishing, that is, seven weeks had taken place since the cutting down of the first-fruits according to the type in Leviticus (chap.23:10). That accords with the forty days that the Lord Jesus was with His own in resurrection (see Acts 1:3), and then ten days that followed His ascension into heaven. The feast of Pentecost was accomplishing and now Peter preaches the gospel for the first time since the accomplishment of redemption in Jerusalem – in the very place where man had cast out Christ, where the religious and political worlds had combined to crucify the One who had come to save them from their sins. That was what had been told from the beginning – “he shall save his people from their sins”, Matt.1:21. The Lord Jesus had gone to the cross – the Jewish council had questioned the Lord Jesus, and tried Him, and found Him to be guilty. Pilate said, “I find in him no fault whatever” (John 19:4), yet the mass cried out “Crucify, crucify him" (v.6), and Pilate gave Him over to be crucified, a terrible death. Men were guilty, every one of them. “He went out, bearing His cross”, as John tells us (chap.19:17), in all the dignity and greatness of His Manhood. He went to the cross, and allowed Himself to be nailed to the cross, and so suffered at the hands of men, suffered the indignity and shame of being crucified.

And more than that, into these three hours of darkness on the cross were compressed the suffering for sins and the suffering for sin. He was suffering for my sins, every one of them. If we are left here, we will commit more sins, but the Lord met them all there, He suffered for these sins and bore the wrath of God against my sins, He bore them there. And concurrently with that, in these three hours He bore the judgment of God against sin, the principle of sin which had so affronted God. It was an affront to God that man, His creature, had the audacity to sin against his Creator. It affected the whole of creation. It was an affront to God. Someone could say to God: ‘You have created man, and he does whatever he wants – he does not do what you want!’. How God felt that. Christ bore God’s wrath against that whole principle, the principle of sin. He dealt with it. Sins are forgiven, my sins are forgiven, but sin is judged, completely judged, never to be forgiven. It was judged and met before God for ever.

It may be said ‘yes, but the world continues in sin’ – but Christ will yet deal with every matter. Do not think that God will go on with sin for ever, friend, He will not. Sin in the world is coming to an end. Just as it was judged at the cross, it will be brought to an end everywhere: God will not go on with sin for ever. God will bring that matter to an end. It is as sure as night follows day, that God will bring the matter of sin and lawlessness to an end.

But now, the glad tidings of grace are being preached, and God is saving people as a result of the work of Jesus. It is a most amazing thing. The natural mind wrestles with it, men wrestle with it; but you will not find any loose end that God has not met in the death of Jesus. He suffered on the cross, His life was given up, the evidence of that precious life given up in perfect subjection to God was in the shedding of His blood. He went into the grave, He lay there for three days and three nights, and He removed from before God the man that had offended Him. He went into death to meet the matter of death; and He hung on the cross to meet the curse that was against man. He met everything, and then He rose again without any taint of sin or sins; He had cleared everything. And more than that, having been raised, He was taken up, the cloud received Him out of their sight (Acts1:9). It must have made a great impression on His own; they would say, ‘There is my Saviour, He has borne my sins and now He has gone into heaven’. What does that mean for me? It means that my sins are gone; but it means more than that, because my Saviour is the Forerunner, He has gone into heaven for me. The whole thing is one complete work. It says, “if Christ be not raised … ye are yet in your sins”, 1 Cor.15:17. His being raised is a wonderful thing and that is what happened. I trust that we are all confirmed in the truth of these things.

Peter stood up with the eleven (Acts 2:14) and preached to the Jews and those who were gathered in Jerusalem. There were people from different places, Medes and Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and Judaea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, both Phrygia and Pamphylia, and Egypt, parts of Libya – both Jews and proselytes. They had all gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish religious feast there. Many of those present were interested in God, they recognised that Israel had a God, and they gathered for the feast, hoping that blessing would come upon them as recognising God. God took account of that. The first preaching of the gospel went out to them. Peter lays matters squarely at the door of those who had delivered Him up – “ye, by the hand of lawless men, have crucified and slain” (v.23). They had slain the Messiah! Then Peter says, “This Jesus has God raised up”. Now the Jews had said, in effect, ‘That man on the cross was a sinner. We took him to our court, and we judged that he was a sinner. The Romans also took him to court, and they crucified him. He suffered on the cross for his own sins.’ That is what the Jews said. But Peter stood up and said, “This Jesus has God raised up”. In other words, he said, ‘You crucified Him; God has raised Him up; so who is the sinner? That Man was not a sinner. God would not raise a sinner from among the dead. That Man was raised by God, and now you are against God. That is the way things are.’ He says to the Jews, ‘You crucified the Man God sent. You cannot say He was a sinner if God raised Him’. The Jews were given clear testimony as to God’s judgement on the matter.

As a result of that preaching, three thousand souls were saved. Three thousand people said ‘He is right. What Peter is saying is absolutely right’. Peter goes on to say, “Having therefore been exalted by the right hand of God, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which ye behold and hear.” Peter was saying, ‘You are not listening only to me, you are listening to the Holy Spirit’. He says, ‘I am only a fisherman. I could not express this by myself. It is too great, the glad tidings are too wonderful. The Holy Spirit Himself is speaking to you. You can see it in me.’ Peter must have been glowing with the truth of the glad tidings of the grace of God. He says as it were, ‘You are hearing the Holy Spirit and you are seeing the effect of His speaking; and the reason for that is that Christ has sent the Spirit from glory’. Of the people who were listening, three thousand were convicted. There was something undeniable about that preaching. They were convicted that Christ was in the glory, because they could see that the Holy Spirit was in that man, in Peter, and they had never heard a man preach the gospel like that. Nor had they heard such glad tidings before. What were they to do? Peter says, “Repent, and be baptised”, that is, acknowledge publicly that you are wrong, “each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ … and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” It is wonderful! He says, ‘That is all you need to do, repent and be baptised for remission of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’. There are two separate transactions, we would understand – the gift of the Spirit is too great to be made part of another transaction; there are two transactions, the forgiveness of your sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, but what a wonderful matter that these persons could be saved.

The gospel was preached to these persons so that they would be saved. We are tracing the truth of the glad tidings, and further on, in chapter 3 verse 19, it says, “Repent therefore and be converted, for the blotting out of your sins, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord”. What Peter was saying to them was that, if you repent and believe in the Lord Jesus, He will come back to earth and establish a kingdom here. It was the gospel of the kingdom. Believers were waiting for the Lord’s return, which they had been told was coming. That was the glad tidings of the kingdom, that Christ was available for salvation for themselves and for the nation of Israel. They repented, and then they were characterised by what they had believed, and persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in breaking of bread and prayers. They were expecting the Lord’s return and many wonders and signs took place, and they were “constantly in the temple with one accord … received their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people”. What a perfect salvation that was! What a wonderful thing that glad tidings could now be preached consequent on the work of Christ.

In Acts 9 the Lord appears to Saul of Tarsus (vv.3-5). It has been said that He came out of heaven. Paul saw the Lord Jesus, a glorified Man. It was such an important juncture in the history of the testimony that the Lord came and met Saul on the Damascus road and broke him down. Peter did not see a glorified Man, but Paul did. The Lord said to Saul, “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest”. The Lord did not say, ‘I am the Lord of glory, Saul, and you have been against Me in persecuting all those Christians’. No, He says “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. But rise up and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do”. The Lord said, as it were, ‘You have seen me in glory, and that was for a reason. Now you are going to preach about the glorified Man’ – to preach that every believer’s place is in glory, with Christ and where Christ is, not here on the earth.

Paul’s glad tidings go beyond what Peter preached, although of course Peter received further light and accepted the truth that was given to Paul. Three years after Paul was converted, he went to see Peter (see Gal.2:2) and laid before the apostles his gospel, to make sure that he had not run in vain. He wanted to make sure that his gospel was aligned with and did not compromise the gospel that the apostles had been preaching. We are only going by what Scripture says. It is clear that Paul had a distinctive message to preach, and in Acts 20 he speaks of that message to the elders at Ephesus, the locality that represented the height of his ministry. Paul says, “how I held back nothing of what is profitable, so as not to announce it to you, and to teach you publicly and in every house, testifying to both Jews and Greeks repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ”. Then he speaks of going to Jerusalem, bound in his spirit, “But I make no account of my life as dear to myself, so that I finish my course, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the glad tidings of the grace of God”. Then, “I am clean from the blood of all, for I have not shrunk from announcing to you all the counsel of God”.

Paul’s gospel involved the full opening up of all God’s heart towards men. It was a most wonderful thing! It is not that you are being offered a nice life here, and that everything is going to be fine, although the Jews will enjoy life here in the world to come. Paul’s gospel was that the grace of God has opened up all His purposes to men. How can that be possible? As we read through Romans, we find that the righteousness of God is now ours. You look at the teaching of Paul. He writes, “But now without law righteousness of God is manifested, borne witness to by the law and the prophets; righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ towards all, and upon all those who believe”, Rom.3:21,22. That is, we get the righteousness that God supplies us with, so we are absolutely clear now and can be viewed not as what we are in Adam, but as what we are in Christ. That is, God views us in the same way as He views that Man. That is a glorious truth.

Paul immediately “preached Jesus, that he is the Son of God”. These are the truths that are open to us: not the glad tidings that were preached in Nahum’s time, or even the glad tidings that were preached in the Lord’s time on the earth, tremendous as they were, but the glad tidings that have come to us in the full light of the Lord’s work – His death, resurrection and ascension – the glad tidings given to Paul by the Lord in glory. They open up and make available to us all that is in the heart of God towards us. Every other man is set aside. Paul’s glad tidings involve that one order of man, the man who sinned before God, is set aside, and as believers we are set up in the worth and value of another Man. You will remember that when the Israelites brought their animal sacrifices, and they placed their hands on the head of the animal, then the transaction that took place was that the sins of the person making the sacrifice, my sins, were taken on by the bullock that was slaughtered. And the value of that animal, when it was washed and presented before God, was transferred to the offerer, to me. That was the transaction when an Israelite person offered a sin-offering to God. Now, as a believer in Jesus, I get all the value of Christ, and Christ took on Himself all the sins that belong to me. These two things happen, a most amazing matter; and therefore I am set up in all the worth and value of that blessed Man.

I could do nothing. It is a pervasive error at the present time, that I have to do something to save myself; but there is not a thing I can do. Some may preach a gospel that suggests there are works I must do to achieve salvation. The basis of it may be a lack of understanding of the difference between eternal and present salvation – people confuse the two. However, the truth is that your eternal salvation is absolutely sure because of the efficacy of the shed blood of Jesus, and having faith in that blood. It is not secured through any faith in yourself or anything else, but faith in the work of Christ. Present salvation is also spoken of, for example in the scripture, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil.2:12), but that is distinct from eternal salvation.

In Acts 20, Paul says, “so that I finish my course, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the glad tidings of the grace of God”. Paul was given the ministry of his gospel, the gospel of the wonderful grace of God, on which I want to touch briefly. The wonderful grace of God involves the truth of provisional reconciliation, that God holds all men in reconciliation provisionally – that is, in the present dispensation; and the glad tidings of the grace of God involve the full purpose and counsels of God that are available to us. Paul says here that he had finished that work at Ephesus. He was going on to Jerusalem with his commission completed. He recognised that at this point he had testified the full gospel that he had been given, and we have in his epistle to the Ephesians the full fruit and bearing of his commission.

He was not afraid to die, not afraid of death, he made no account of his life as dear to himself. He spoke of finishing his course, and the ministry he received of the Lord Jesus. He made sure that before he left this scene, he had testified that gospel to all in Ephesus (and elsewhere). He had testified what he received directly from the Lord Jesus Himself, which was the grace of God towards all men. All that Paul got, and everything that is available in Jesus, is all yours. That is glad tidings! We may become accustomed to hearing the gospel. Never forget that the glad tidings are the most amazing thing. Where would we be in this world if we did not have this message of hope; that through faith we are saved for eternity, and that our hope is to be with Christ for ever? You cannot overstate this, that the glad tidings have come out now in their fullest and best character to us – we upon whom the ends of the ages are come (1 Cor.10:11). The greatest and best things have been reserved for this dispensation, for this point just before the Lord’s return.

My exercise is that the gospel is preached fully, and that we recognise justification by faith, and not works. There is a further exercise, that increases with us as we grow older, that not only has our eternal salvation been secured, but that Paul presented a gospel which tells out all the blessing that is for us in Christ. The glad tidings include that you get from God everything that was in His heart for your blessing. The Holy Spirit is given to help you to enjoy these blessings; you get everything, and that is the full gospel of Paul. It is our gospel. The Jews got Peter’s initial preaching, the gospel of the kingdom, that the Lord would come back; and they rejected it. After that rejection, the gospel came out to us, to the streets and lanes and ways and fences (see Luke 14:21-23), and we have received the very best.

What glad tidings these are. I trust that no-one rejects them. The western world will reject the gospel, and God will be known then as an avenging God. Judgment will come upon the west, it will come upon this world because they will apostatise from the very best that God has, from the wedding feast. They said then, ‘No, we are too busy, we are going to enjoy ourselves’ (see Matt.22:1-13). May you not reject the gospel but enjoy and appreciate it. It conveys the fulness of God’s greatest blessings and grace.

For His name’s sake

Preaching of the gospel, Linlithgow

28 January 2024

Neil McKay