Edwin Mutton
THE EFFECT OF HAVING LEARNT THE CHRIST
Ephesians 4: 17-32; Luke 10: 30-42
Our brother in his prayer at the beginning of the day confirmed a line of thought when he said that Friday was a gospel day. I suppose every day is a gospel day and I want to say a simple word as to the effect that the gospel has had in your life and mine, whether it has had an effect and whether that is a continuing effect. I think God's dispensation, if it is to be furthered, will be furthered in the same way as it has come forth, and the gospel is the way that God has come out to us, not only generally but individually. The verse that is burdening me is this one in Ephesians 4: "But ye have not thus learnt the Christ", and I would like to raise two questions with every heart here: How have you learnt the Christ? And, what effect is that learning having in your life and your testimony?
I read the whole passage because it gives us the context of what is bad and what is good and what the gospel can do. It is amazing what the gospel can do. Perhaps some of us who are younger have not seen the effects of what the gospel can do. Time was when there were demonstrations of the power of God to turn a man or a woman living in debauchery into something that represented what God was and what He can do. We do not get that kind of dramatic change, especially in the circle in which we move, but it does happen, and every conversion, whether you have been brought up in a Christian household or whether you have been brought up in depravity, is as dramatic as that: "turned to God from idols", 1 Thess 1: 9. Every one of us who has had a conversion has learnt the Christ. That is the question I should like to consider in this address: how have we learnt the Christ? If you had asked Paul, the writer of Ephesians, that question (we get the record in Acts more than once) he would tell you that he learnt the Christ from a voice that said, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest", Acts 9: 5. What a distinctive conversion Paul had! It did not happen all at once, of course. He tells us that too. He tells us that the Lord had been speaking to him before. He had learnt the Christ in the persistence of those goads that the Lord had put in his way and which Paul had kicked against. He had learnt the Christ in Stephen. What a testimony Stephen was! If men are to learn Christ it is in demonstration in individuals. The testimony now by the Spirit is in men and women like Stephen. Paul had that distinctive touch of a light out of heaven. As he heard that voice and said, "Who art thou, Lord?", he was expecting judgment. He was expecting to learn Christ in the way of judgment. You can almost see him cowering in the road: "Who are thou, Lord?" But the return message was, "I am Jesus". So if you had asked Paul how he had learnt the Christ, he could tell you. If you had asked Peter how he had learnt Christ, no doubt he would have said, I learnt Christ when that hand came out to save me from sinking. I learnt it when I saw His look in the palace of the high priest. Peter could tell you how he had learnt the Christ. If you had asked the jailor in Acts 16 how he had learnt the Christ he would tell you among other things that he had learnt it in two men with bleeding backs who were praising God in singing in that prison. But these persons had learnt the Christ and it had remained with them, and my concern, beloved brethren, for myself and for us all; is that we do not leave the gospel behind.
I do not know if you have noticed the tendency in your life to leave the gospel behind. You perhaps think you are beyond it. But everything that God has - we have been speaking of the way God has come out in this wonderful dispensation - comes to us in embryo in the gospel. Why do you think it is that God allows us to hear the gospel every week? It cannot just be for unconverted people because we get so few into our rooms. It must among other things be that we are kept in the current of how we have learnt the Christ. I wonder whether each of us can identify how we have learnt the Christ. It would be different in every case, the same blessed Man, but every saint has a differing impression. As we sang in our hymn, that is the great end that God has in His dealings with us that we should be like Christ, and there are going to be all these different rays of the glory of the glory that is in that blessed Man. God has Him in His presence now.
'No trait is lost, each beauteous grace we see,
All brought through death to shine eternally' (Hymn 229)
I believe it is right to say that every feature is going to be reflected in some saint; even in the little ones. Think of the myriads of young children who have died and are with Christ. Someone told me the other day that one child under the age of five dies every five minutes in Africa. What is God going to have from them? Think of those hidden years of the childhood of Christ. Do you think God is going to have that shining and reflected in eternity? I think He will. There will be something secured from all this sorrow and sadness and famine that men would call a waste of life. God is going to secure something from it, the rays, the features of Christ, reflected in everything that God has done. God is not a God of waste. God is not going to waste anything that is of Him.
We have been speaking of Christ and the assembly, that wonderful concept of divine purpose and counsel, and every bit of the work of God has its place in it, wherever you see it, wherever you come across it, if it is the work of God, it is assembly property. There is nothing else being formed for God at the present time. What a richness there is in what God is securing in this dispensation which is in faith!
But how have you learnt the Christ, beloved saint? How have I learnt the Christ and is it doing anything for me? Remember the man who learnt God by being forgiven and he went out and throttled his brother. He had learnt the Christ but he had not put it into practice. If we soberly considered many of the things the enemy brings in among us, it is a lack of an understanding of how we have learnt the Christ that causes us to falter and stumble in the way we act in administration. Administration is not primarily getting things right; it is keeping things right. Things are kept right in the power of the gospel operative among the people of God. There is nothing outside the gospel. Everything that God has to say to man is contained in the gospel. I suppose you could say the gospel is "all the counsel of God" which Paul said he had unfolded to them at Ephesus (see Acts 20: 27). But then they had not only heard it from him, as we were saying, but they had seen it in him, seen it in the way he had learnt the Christ. I think it would be right to say that Paul was so distinctively helped because he was kept so constantly in the way that God had met him. We read this morning: "of whom I am the first", 1 Tim 1: 15. I do not think Paul just said that for something to say; I think he meant it. What is more, it may well have been literally true. There must be very few that have been converted from such a history as Paul's. I suppose Paul would have gone into a meeting and he might have had to sit down with a brother or a sister whose relatives, if he had not murdered them, he had caused to be put to death. What a test of the fellowship, to sit down with a brother like that. There is nothing in our brotherly relations which the gospel cannot meet. Think of those brethren in Damascus who had been warned of what was coming and then they see Saul walk into the meeting! I know what I would have done; I would have been very careful about having Saul come into the meeting. I would have wanted a long inquisition. But the power of God in the gospel is self-evident. You cannot mistake it. If a brother is converted, if a sister is repentant, if a young person suddenly gets a touch from the Lord, it is unmistakeable. It has its own credentials. We often say that about the truth. You can speak the truth, it has its own credentials. You do not have to argue about it. You do not have to put your weight behind it or your teaching behind it for your learning behind it. The truth is the truth. As it says here: “the truth as in Jesus". You will notice these references - it says, "if ye have heard him and been instructed in him" - not about Him - "instructed in him". It is all in the Person. How have we learnt the Christ? I turn now to Luke 10, a scripture we often use in the gospel, and we often apply this Samaritan to the Lord Himself and rightly so. But I want to apply this scripture to show the effect of someone who has learnt the Christ, treating the Samaritan as someone like you or me. The Lord sets it out perfectly. He gives this parable. It may even have been something that actually happened; it does not say it is a parable. It says, "A certain man descended from Jerusalem to Jericho". Such things have happened, beloved brethren, these half- dead states, whether they be in individuals or in localities. They test us. This situation tested three people. It tested the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan and it tested them as to how they had learnt the Christ. The priest came by and passed on on the opposite side. He did not want to know. He did not know how to handle the situation of a half-dead state. Then the Levite came along. You will notice that he was an official man, a Levite, capital 'L'. He was a man who was curious. He would come and see. He would have let everyone know who was in trouble, but he could not do anything. He passed on on the opposite side. Beloved brethren, sometimes the Lord allows things amongst us, a half-dead state, a person who has been stripped and wounded, and maybe not just an individual, but life ebbing out in a locality. Have we what it takes to deal with that? If we have not learnt the Christ, if we have not carried the gospel forward in our experience, we will have to pass by on the opposite side. We will be helpless. Have you ever felt helpless in a situation? I have. Have you ever felt helpless when trying to talk to a soul, someone at work, maybe, who has lost a relative? Have you ever felt helpless, perhaps even felt like passing on on the opposite side? I was in Scotland last week and we were walking along the road and there was a man lying there, obviously completely drunk and helpless, and my inclination was to walk by. My colleague went up and asked if he was all right, to make sure there was life in him. My natural tendency is to pass by on the opposite side. Why? Because the compassions of God have obviously not taken hold of my heart as they should. Let us apply that to what we find within the fellowship, let alone what we find outside. If we find a state that needs dealing with, are we able to do it or do we just pass by on the opposite side or take a curious interest as the priest and the Levite did? Beloved brethren, the line of what is merely official is a very dead line. We naturally love what is official. It does something for us, gives us an official position. But in the things of God it is an absolute hindrance to things being done.
The Lord made Himself of no reputation. That is the way the Lord served, sat down with taxgatherers and sinners; not the attitude of "I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men", Luke 18: 11. That is something too that tests me. I am sure it tests all of us. You go out into the world and see the depravity that is there and sometimes in your heart comes this feeling: "I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men". The Lord Jesus came “to seek and to save that which is lost", Luke 19: 10. This is relevant, beloved brethren, to helping each other, helping our fellow-men. This could be you or me in the half-dead state. What is there in the locality that is able to meet it? Thank God there is always the Samaritan. As I say, although it is the Lord Himself, I wonder if we have learnt the Lord in this aspect. But then can I be the Samaritan? Can I be moved with compassion and come up and grapple with the situation? Have I the oil and the wine?
Have I the resource to bring in what is needed? Am I prepared to become identified with it? You say, if I do that, it might be thought that I am part of this condition. Well, that is what the Samaritan did. It says he bound up his wounds. You cannot do that at a distance. Paul could not get the truth vitally into the Ephesian brethren at a distance, by staying in the synagogue or the hall they may have hired for meetings; but night and day, in their houses, binding up their wounds, bringing in encouragement, meeting their difficulties. Some things are hard to be understood. Peter said that of Paul's ministry. Paul would make them as easy as he could in the circumstances in which the saints were. He would find their difficulties. That is another thing we need help on sometimes, actually to be free to express our difficulties and exercises to one another. Apollos preached, and Aquila and Priscilla did not suddenly stop the meeting and say, Look, this is not the full truth. It says, "having heard him, took him to them", Acts 18: 26. Sometimes we do not handle one another as God has handled us, not the way that we have learnt the Christ. It is a very good rule of thumb, beloved brother and sister - at least I find it so - that if you want to do something and represent the Lord, you say, now how has the Lord done this with me? How has He treated me when I was in a halfdead state? How long has He waited for me to come round to His thoughts? How many times has He had to put me right? How many times have I failed again on the same point and the Lord has served me? O, beloved brethren, let us not go out and throttle our brother! Let us think of how we have learnt the Christ and how He has dealt with us!
This Samaritan obviously had learnt the way that God had dealt with him. He did not worry that this was a Jew. He did not take any forethought for his own reputation. He poured in the oil and the wine and put him on his own beast. God has given you something, beloved brother or sister, some understanding, some ability, some gift in shepherding or even as a help. Make it available to those in need! "And having put him on his own beast, took him to the inn". It is a wonderful thing to think there is somewhere we can take persons in a half-dead state, bring them back to the company like Paul did with Eutychus, held him in his arms! That was a very similar circumstance. The brethren there obviously either did not want anything to do with Eutychus or else they could not recognise that his life was in him. They took him up for dead. What a sad thing that is, to leave a brother or a sister for dead. Paul went down and enfolded him in his arms. He would say, I know the way that Christ approached me when I was going on a headlong way. Maybe Eutychus deserved what happened. Maybe he had been sitting by the window and getting further and further away and suddenly he found himself falling out and the brethren could not handle it. Beloved brethren, if we know how we have learnt the Christ we will be able to handle whatever situation God puts within our locality and handle it in a way that will reflect God and will bring in life. The great exercise in Christianity is to revive persons, to revive life in you and me, to further God's dispensation. God's dispensation was furthered in Eutychus by Paul bringing him back to the company where he belonged. Where he had been useless, where he had been a spectator, where he had been sitting by the window, now he was brought back into the company to enjoy the great things of God. That is what God intends in Christianity, that a person should be in life, more territory gained for God, and this is the way it is done. The Samaritan brought him back to the inn and he still had not run out of resource and he was able to leave money there so that he could be taken care of.
Now, the sting in this scripture is in the tail: the Lord says, "Go, and do thou likewise". I think in the following paragraph Martha had the "do", Mary was concerned about the "likewise", how she had learnt the Christ. She was concerned to learn the Christ so that she could go and do likewise. There is a lot to be said for going and doing. There is a lot to be done. There is even more to be said for going and doing likewise. If God's dispensation is going to be furthered through you and me it must be as we have learnt the Christ in our own experience, not in someone else's. We can read the books, and the books are very helpful, but what about getting that truth, that light, that experience yourself of the Lord Jesus? It will not conflict with the books. The books will confirm it. The Bible will confirm it. I think it was Mr Raven who said that he received his impressions from the Lord and went to the Scriptures to have them confirmed, and that is the way round. It is the same if you are asked to preach, you young brothers. Get an impression of Christ; the Scriptures will confirm it. The Lord will give you the scriptures. What you need is an impression of Christ. Prepare yourself and the Lord will give you words, He will give you scriptures, but get an impression from the Lord Himself and do not forget the way you have learnt the Christ!
Well, beloved brethren, "Go, and do thou likewise". How have you and I learnt the Christ? If we have any sense - and every believer must have learnt the Christ in some degree or other-then let that remain with you that your testimony and your efforts to further God's dispensation will be on the same level as the gospel that has come to you in the person of the Lord Jesus. May it be so for His Name's sake.
MALVERN
27 August 1993