PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD

 

Ron Plant

Genesis 30: 25; 2 Samuel 11: 27; 12:1-7(to “man!”); Luke 22: 54-62

I want to speak, beloved friends, of the greatness of that love that has been occupying us earlier. As to its extent and its glory, it will take us, I suppose, eternity to explore in its fulness. But there is one aspect of it I would like to speak about in the short while before we leave today, and that is that it is a love that will not let you go. These extended occasions, particularly as we come to the Lord's Day, have always a touch of sadness about them because we have to leave. We have to go in just a little while to our various places. We will never be able to put this gathering together again. What we have had in this three-day meeting and, I suppose, in all such occasions, you will never have again. Even though we may have taken a few notes, it will not be the same. What we said about the arrangements of the meeting are like the arrangements of His love. But what we have in it is a love that we cannot see. There is something there, God's presence is there, known in its warmth and its beauty, and it reaches into our hearts. The arrangements might not reach our hearts, but we cannot help but feel as we are amongst the saints and as the Spirit of God is free, that there is a certain warmth that is beginning to warm us up. Now we are going to separate from these meetings and we will never put it together again. The same personnel, the same arrangements, we will not see again. Life is like that; it is fleeting. Those of us who are older know that. We can remember times which we enjoyed and we would like to grasp them again, but they are gone. You find that almost before you have fully enjoyed it, it has gone and you are looking back on something that was fleeting. it may be that some of us will never see each other again down here. That is the solemn side. But while we are here at this moment it may be that God will just touch that heart of yours and change your life for ever because, while we have to go, there is a love that will never let you go. There is a line of a hymn that keeps coming to me today:

'O Love that wilt not let me go'.

Someone was telling me of a young man who was a believer who had grown cold in his soul and he thought he would change his whole life, get away from all his background and all that had marked him, get a complete change - you know that expression, have a complete change - and he obtained a job in the Falkland Islands. He went down there and on the second day his new boss told him that he was a believer:

'O Love that wilt not let me go'.

You could scarcely get any further away than the Falkland Islands. The Scriptures say, "If I take the wings of the dawn and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me", Ps 139: 9,10. How affecting these things are! Comforting too, beloved. Some of those whom we love and know are out of our reach, even physically. Some of them even though we may know where they live we cannot get access to them, but there is a love that will not let them go. These are very beautiful things, beloved. The gospel is for all. We often present it and rightly so for the unbeliever. There are not many unbelievers here tonight, I suggest, but there may be some. But there are many believers here and it is a very poignant word to all of us here who have known the Lord Jesus perhaps for years. All of us know what it is at times to get cold in our affections, but His love will not let us go.

I read about three men, Jacob, David and Peter, all of whom in one degree or another in the sections read had had to do with God, and what we see in them is that, when they failed, they were too precious to God for Him to let them go. I wonder if there is anybody here like that. Have you known what it is to feel that you are unable to go on? When things are rolling in upon you in your business, in our circumstances, in your family, things are coming upon you that I cannot cope with?

There is a love, beloved, that will never let you go. It is lovely:

'Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all!' (Hymn 272)

We had that lovely word in the last meeting that what He has begun in us He will complete unto Jesus Christ's day. You say, I do not feel very able, I do not feel very substantial in what I have. If God's work is there He will complete it and He will show it.

Think of Jacob. I suppose it may be an unusual verse to read in the preaching but it represents a point in Jacob's life where God just reached out to him and, as it were, said I am not going to let you go. He was a man whose beginnings were obscure. It is very difficult to find much on positive lines about Jacob as to his beginnings, but there were hints for us to see. Thank God for that! Those of us who are parents and older ones, let us not look for too much. There were hints. If there are hints in a person's life, you see something and you say, that is fine; there is something there. You say, Well, I would like us to see more progress, perhaps take more part to God publicly. Well, there are some other things beside that, beloved. Jacob was one who loved the birthright. He may not have realised why he did but he loved the birthright. It meant something in that day. The birthright went to the firstborn. The firstborn inherited everything. In our day God is ready to give you everything. Though Jacob may not have fully understood it, he had an appreciation of the birthright. Thank God if there is somebody here like that. There may not appear to be much else, but there is something that holds you in relation to divine things. The birthright for us, I suppose, involves what Christ is in the gospel. I have often quoted that God has given us a right to Christ. To every man, woman and child God has given a right to Christ. How many do not take it. Give them an inheritance, some money, and they would claim it. Jacob was one who had a love for the birthright but was mixed in what he did. He had come to a situation where all his circumstances changed for him and what was planned for him did not work out that way and he flees his father's house - we cannot go into all the details - but God interrupted that flight and gave him an impression of Himself. It was in a dream that he had an impression of God appearing to him. Jacob was sleeping with his head on a stone for a pillow and God gave him an impression of a ladder set up on the earth and reaching to the heavens and angels were ascending and descending upon it; that ladder was set up in relation to Jacob.

That is the gospel, beloved. It may be that the brethren in Malvern have arranged this meeting in the ordering of God that you might get a touch in the gospel of a love that will never let you go.

Maybe. It may be that most of us will never know it. It may be that when they put the chairs away and the meetings are over, they will never realise that they served something in God's ordering that touched a soul with the greatness of His love in Jesus that would never let them go. Jacob seemed to be a man who wanted to get away from God though He revealed Himself to him. He spent twenty years away, twenty years making his money, twenty years serving a master who was hardly fair with him and changed his wages ten times. Some body said, I do not suppose they went up! Jacob in his turn knew what it was to make money for himself in his own way. Perhaps there is someone here like that who has been in the environment of the blessing and has gone his own way perhaps for twenty years. One day, through a circumstance in Jacob's life, God reminded him that He was not going to let him go. I wonder if there is somebody here like that who has never been vitally in relation to what is for God, never really accepted and gone in for the fulness of the blessing that God has given you. You may have accepted some of the blessings that Christian fellowship conveys, maybe enjoyed the company it provides and enjoyed the benefits of it, even meetings like this, but never really grasped it, never gone in for it. One day, when this little boy was born, Jacob looks at it - you would never have believed it - and he says, "Send me away, that I may go to my place and to my country". It might not be that with you, beloved, but He can use and order your circumstances until a special moment in your heart. He might reach out His loving hand and touch you and bring you back to Himself:

'O Love that wilt not let me go.'

He wants you for Himself and He will finish the work that He has begun. With Jacob there were plenty of struggles ahead. There are plenty of things to be overcome, but Jacob is brought at the end to be a worshipper and he represents something very fine in the believer's history. But I like to think of a love that reached out after twenty years and said, I am not going to let you go. If there is somebody here perhaps who has walked in the shadows near the blessing for twenty years, it may be tonight that word would just come to you; I am not going to let you go.

David is in a different situation. His beginnings were clearer. Again we do not hear anything, as far as I know, of David's conversion. What we do hear about is that he committed himself early. He became affected by the ark of God at an early age according to Psalm 132. He said, "we heard of it at Ephratah, we found it in the fields of the wood" (v 6). You would remember the history of the ark. It had gone into captivity through the unfaithfulness of Israel and had been carried into the house of the Philistines' God. They had captured it. What a shameful thing that was! Scripture puts it so graphically: "And gave his strength into captivity and his glory into the hand of the oppressor", Ps 78: 61. They had the temerity to stand the glorious ark of God, speaking of Christ, at the side of an idol, Dagon, the fish god, and when they came in the morning, the god was fallen down broken to pieces. Finally the Philistines were driven, you may say, to send the ark of God back. Sometimes we think that everything depends upon us, beloved, but what the ark proved there was that Christ can look after Himself. And then, after it came back from the land of the Philistines, it was turned aside and put into the house of Abinadab on the hill and it was there for forty, maybe sixty, years or more, rather neglected. David as a boy had heard about it. Is there anyone here who has heard about the truth, heard about Christ? Perhaps you have seen something in localities, seen persons who take up the truth of Christ and maybe outwardly it is in rather a poor way. David saw it and he says, "we found it in the fields of the wood", and he committed himself early. What a thing that is, beloved! He committed himself to serve God in relation to the ark and he says, "I will not give sleep to mine eyes, slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for Jehovah", Ps 132: 4,5. What a committal, beloved! Have you done that?

Do not be a bystander! Do not just stand on the wayside! Do not just look for weaknesses among the brethren. If you want weakness, I can show you plenty of it. But if there is a heart for Christ, you will not be looking for weakness. What a thing it would be if some young person here would say, I am not going to listen any more to the things that make little of God's people; I am going to find a better place for God. That is what David did. He took up the precious things of God and every bit of his wealth he used to accumulate something for God, to build Him a better place. I wonder if you can do that. You say, My locality is small, it is not very big, there is not very much there, not much knowledge of the truth. O, beloved, commit yourself so that, in the measure in which you can, by the time you pass off this scene there is a better place there than there was when you came. That would be the effect of the gospel.

That was David's early life. But as the years went on he failed. This is one of his most grievous failures. He was a man who had laid his life out for God, a man who had devoted his property - "I have given of my own property", 1 Chron 29: 3 - not exactly the surplus wealth that he had but what was his own he gave to God. It speaks somewhere of part of what he gave as a thousand thousand talents of silver. Who could measure it? Yet there came this time when he failed, and so we see that even the most devoted person can still fail. He fails in the most grievous sin. He lusted after this woman Bathsheba and arranged and planned so that her husband should be put into the front of the battle in order that he would be killed so that he could marry his wife. That is what he did. You say,

How could a man who had devoted his life to God stoop to such depths? That is what we are, beloved. You say, Well, I hear things even amongst believers that seem to be very shocking. Beloved, there is nothing that could not be done by me, no sin that has happened given the opportunity. The flesh in me is the same. It says here, "And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of Jehovah". You may think you have arranged everything, beloved, so that no one will know what you have done. Do not leave God out! I do not go into the detail of the parable except that what I wanted to say was that it came as a word to him, not a circumstance now like Jacob, not something that just touched his heart, but there came a word to him. I wonder if you have ever had a word. The prophetic word comes in in such a skilful way here because it worked on the shepherd heart that lay underneath the hardness that David had allowed to build up. He said, ''the man that hath done this thing is worthy of death"; and the prophet says, "Thou art the man". O, dear friend, what conviction that was! What repentance it set on in David's heart but what it represented was a love that would not let him go. You say, He stooped almost to be a murderer, yes, but that love would not let him go.

Then finally as to Peter. Peter had had a conversion. There is no obscurity about Peter's conversion. He was a fisherman who had spent the night taking nothing. I expect he was a rough sort of man. He spent the night taking nothing. He comes in and the Lord Jesus goes into his boat and He says, "Draw out into the deep water and let down your nets for a haul", Luke 5: 4. Peter says, "having laboured through the whole night we have taken nothing, but at thy word I will let down the net" (v 5). Do you remember the history in the gospel, how the haul of fishes was so great that they could not pull it in? He had to call his partners over from the other ship and both the ships were filled with the fishes until they were sinking. It had a profound effect upon Peter because he says, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord" (v 8). Have you ever been convicted, beloved, as to your sinful state? It was through a haul of fishes that Peter was convicted. It does not have to be the gospel preaching. I always read out the first verse of the hymn in the preaching because I was first affected in the gospel by somebody who read out the first verse of the hymn. It was not the preaching itself. It can be that. It can be something someone says to you. It can be something someone at work says to you. Whatever it is God might just convict your soul as to your sin. Peter says, "I am a sinful man, Lord". What a lover of Christ he became despite his failings! He was a man who was brash and very outspoken in his protestations of love for Christ and what he would do for Him - "I am ready to go both to prison and to death", Luke 22: 33 - but when the test came as it may well come upon so many of us, beloved, he not only failed, he failed grievously. The gospel does not come to righteous persons; it comes to sinners. It brings sinners to repentance. Where we have read he denied the Lord three times. One scripture says he "denied with an oath", Matt. 26: 72. The Lord had said to him that it would happen. Yet in this lovely scripture here which I read is the culmination of it all "And immediately, while he was yet speaking, the cock crew . And the Lord, turning round, looked at Peter" . It was a love that would not let him go. The poet said:

'Tis that look that melted Peter,

'Tis that face that Stephen saw,

'Tis that heart that wept with Mary,

Can alone from idols draw'.

Beloved, the love of God is here tonight in a fulness that is without alloy, and which, as our brother says, is the life and atmosphere of heaven. In a world to come we will see the glory of a love that has come out in expression in our dispensation, indeed in all the dispensations, that has brought in persons from every part of His dealings, that will establish families on earth and in heaven from which there be a response to God for ever. How glorious it all is! And that love is the love that will not let you go. May we respond to it, beloved. Our time is over, but might that love, 'so great, so full, so free' (hymn 341) touch you tonight and retain you for ever for His Name's sake.

 

MALVERN

29 August 1993