DELIVERANCE FROM SIN
[p. 205] DELIVERANCE FROM SIN
Genesis 4:3,4; Genesis 5:21-23; Romans 5:5; Romans 8:2
Abel is the first man who found acceptance with God, and Enoch - the one who did not see death - is the first in full deliverance. We read that “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him”, Hebrews 11: 5. These two present to us the two great sides of grace for every believer. The first is acceptance with God, and the second is deliverance that you may enjoy the acceptance; you have liberty, you are free of all that is against you. These two sides of grace are very distinctly illustrated in the case of the prodigal son, and in the history of us all. The prodigal knew that his father had accepted him when he covered him with kisses, but he had to be made fit before he could enjoy the acceptance. He knew the Abel part, but until he was made fit he did not know the Enoch part; and so it is with a great many now. They know the gospel, but they do not enjoy the gospel. The one is God’s side, the other is our side. John’s writings are occupied with how we can enjoy the gospel. It is not God’s side that he sets forth so much as our side. Every believer knows something of the grace which comes from God, and that must be the first thing; it is God’s side; but it is our side that I want to bring before you tonight - how we are brought into the enjoyment of the grace.
I just turn to Hebrews 11: 4, 5 for a moment to show you the comments of the Spirit of God as to Abel and Enoch in the New Testament. “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because [p. 206] God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God”. What made the difference between Cain’s offering and Abel’s was that Abel’s offering showed that he had a sense, a right idea, of the nature of the distance between God and the sinner. By faith he offered; he saw that nothing could meet God’s claim but a victim not chargeable with the offence, bearing the judgment of the offence, and at the time of bearing it, revealing a personal excellency. Cain knew that God and man were not on terms, but he thought that by bringing the fruits of the earth he might repair the breach and restore happy relations between God and man. No doubt he got an idea from his mother that he was to be the restorer of the breach, for when Eve bare Cain she said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord”, but his offering was not accepted. “And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect”. We are not told in what manner Abel’s offering was accepted, but in some distinct, visible way, perhaps by fire, God testified of his gifts; it was known that his offering was accepted, and that Cain’s was not accepted. Abel had a sense of the nature of the distance between God and man, and therefore he offered a lamb. It is not said that he was told to do it; by faith he did it. He “brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof”. He saw that a victim not chargeable with his offence must bear the judgment of his offence, which was death; and the fat - the excellency of it - could only be got through death, and God accepted it. In other parts of Scripture we find that God testified His acceptance by fire. When Manoah offered a burnt-offering before the birth of Samson, we read “the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar ... And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God”. But she says, No; “If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he [p. 207] would not have received a burnt-offering ... at our hands, neither would he have ... told us such things as these”, Judges 13: 20 - 23. It showed the simplicity of her faith, to be assured that God’s having accepted an offering from them was a sure sign of His favour.
The first thing for us to learn is that there is acceptance with God. This is very often not learned, and people are trying to get happy about themselves. You will never get happy about yourselves while you are occupied with your own happiness (I am speaking now of those who are converted), until you begin at the right end; and that is not being occupied with your own feelings, but in learning how God feels about you. The real question for you is, How can I be accepted? Well, the first thing is, has God accepted Christ, and has He borne witness to it? In Abel’s case there was no mistake. God’s acceptance of his offering was what irritated Cain. It was palpable that Abel’s offering was accepted, and that Cain’s was not. In order to know your acceptance you must learn not only that Christ died, but that He is risen. Do you believe in His acceptance? Every one in this room would say that he believes in the death of Christ, but do you believe in His acceptance as a Man at the right hand of God? All who read the gospels believe that Christ was here, and that He died; but who believes, as the scripture says, “that Jesus is the Christ”? Who believes that He was the Sent of God, and that He is now accepted in the glory of God? God sent Him into the world to bear the judgment of man’s distance from God; and where is He now? He is at the right hand of God. You want acceptance, but you can have no sense of your acceptance until you see that God has raised Him from the dead; that the Man who died for you is the Man that has gone up, and who is now in the glory of God. It was a wonderful day to me when I first saw that. Why? Because the moment I did a witness was given to me.
[p. 208] And what is that witness? THE HOLY SPIRIT. Fire is not the witness now, but the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is the divine answer to faith in Christ risen, and the moment you believe in Christ risen you receive the Holy Spirit. If you only believe in Christ dying you are sheltered, but you have not the witness. “It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth”, 1 John 5: 6. The Spirit is the witness of His resurrection. You begin with the death of Christ. The water and the blood are two witnesses of His death, but the Spirit is the witness of His resurrection. Oh, what a day it is to the soul when it knows that witness! What a day it was to Saul of Tarsus when he not only had his eyes opened, but when he received a new power! In reading of it you may say it is beautiful, but how wondrous to know that it is true, and to know that it is your own actual portion. God’s Son was the Just who died for the unjust. He went down under the judgment that rested on man, and the excellency and perfectness of that blessed One was so proved in death, that it went up to God. He perfectly glorified God in death, and not only that, but He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and now He, a Man, is out of the judgment. Do you believe it? Is your eye resting on the One who is out of death and judgment? If so, you know that His acceptance is your acceptance, and the answer to your faith in Him risen is that you receive the Holy Spirit. You are accepted in righteousness if you believe in Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Why? Because He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. The Man who bore the judgment that is upon you, is the Man who is now out of it. Do you believe that? You may say, I believe in the Man that went into it. That is, of course, the first thing. If you do not know that, you do not know anything; but do you believe in the Man who is out of it? Is the eye of your soul resting [p. 209] upon Him, the risen Man? That is acceptance, and the proof is that the love of God is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit which is given to you. In Romans 4: 25 I find that He was “delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification;” and then in chapter 5, “being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand”. Do you believe in Christ’s death? You do. I thank God for it, but if that is all you are not established in grace yet; you have not the gospel yet, you have no acceptance. I have often related an interesting anecdote of a young man in anxiety of soul, who was speaking of going down on his knees to pray to the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, and a christian lady said to him, ‘He is not there now.’ It had a great effect upon him, because it is in the resurrection of Christ that you get acceptance. Therefore the apostle says, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins”, 1 Corinthians 15: 17. He gave Himself, the just for the unjust. He was “put to death in the flesh, but” mind you “quickened by the Spirit”. It is the living One whom you have to do with now. Do you see Him as the living One? Do you believe in Him alive? I do not ask if you believe in the doctrine of resurrection - every professor of christianity believes that - but if you know Him as the living One. It is a grievous fact that a great many who believe in the gospel have only a partial gospel, and therefore they do not enjoy the gospel. The prodigal son might have said to his father, It is wonderful that you can receive me as you do, and be so happy about me; but I do not enjoy it, because I am not fit for you. Well, the father says, I will make you fit. Now, I believe a great many are hindered from enjoying the gospel because they are so conscious of their own unfitness, their failure and sin; they have not liberty.
[p. 210] I turn now to Enoch. Now we come to our side. Enoch is the seventh from Adam, but before the seventh generation is allowed to pass away, God brings out the wonderful testimony that He will bring a man out of death - that a man should be brought to Him, and so brought to Him, that that man shall be above the penalty that is upon man, which is death. “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death”. As far as I can count the genealogies, all the fathers except Adam were witnesses to this. All down to Noah were witnesses of the man who was taken out of the scene of death. Now in Romans 8: 2 we read, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. That is liberty. That is what Enoch in figure sets forth, and that is in principle what the prodigal son received when the father made him fit for his own presence. He was already reconciled; he could not be on better terms with his father, and the one great impression that the father had made upon him was that he loved him. He knew the love, but he did not feel free to enjoy the love, because he did not feel fit, he was not free from himself. “I am no longer worthy”, he says, “to be called thy son”. This lesson is more difficult to learn than the first. In John’s gospel you get this side - our side of the gospel; and therefore it begins with the brazen serpent. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, John 3: 14. There is not a word there about the blood, or about the Red Sea, which sets forth what the gospel is on God’s side - what He has done. The brazen serpent was a long way on in the history of Israel as a redeemed people. The beginning of the gospel was set forth by the passover, the getting out of Egypt, and crossing the Red Sea; then they were brought to God. That is acceptance. All their enemies sunk like lead in the mighty waters. But they had yet to learn that they were unmendably [p. 211] bad, and this is what is learned in the brazen serpent and therefore John begins with it. God has done the work, He has done it Himself - that is the gospel; but John 3 and 4 are to bring your hearts into the enjoyment of the gospel. It is not setting forth justification or reconciliation, but that you may be able to enjoy the reconciliation that God has effected. Hence you find the Lord saying to the woman of Samaria, before He said a word about her sins, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4: 14. God is a giving God, and what He gives is so all-satisfying that it makes you independent of everything here. How thoroughly happy that would make a person! The point 1 want to press on you is that if you are not in liberty you do not enjoy your acceptance. Every believer is not in liberty. I think that every believer in this room must know that he knew that the work was done, and that he believed the work was done, before he was in the enjoyment of it. It was not that he did not believe that he was saved, but he was not in liberty. What brought the prodigal son into a sense of fitness for his father’s house, into liberty, was that the old clothes were taken away and he was invested anew. “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry”, Luke 15: 22, 23. He was put in an entirely new condition. It may be long before a soul comes to this, but what he has to learn is what we get in Numbers 21, that is, that he is unmendably bad. Mind you, this is not in itself the gospel. The gospel is acceptance, that God has put away everything in the death of Christ, and that He can accept you in the Beloved, and that the Holy Spirit is given you to testify of the perfection of the work. But still you may know all this, and yet not be perfectly happy, because [p. 212] you have the consciousness that there is still hanging about you a terrible load from which you have to be freed, and you cry as in Romans 7: 24, “O wretched man that I am I who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Are you delivered? That is the question I put to you now. Are you delivered from the body of this death? I am not speaking of the gospel now, but I am speaking of what is of the deepest importance in connection with the gospel, and where I believe souls are so hindered from enjoying the gospel, because the road is blocked; and my great object in these addresses is to set forth what really hinders them. They know the gospel; they can enunciate it, and they have an assurance that they are saved, but they do not enjoy it. Why do they not enjoy it? Simply because they are not free of all that would impede their entrance into the blessing into which through grace they are brought. In Romans 6 you are committed to Christ’s death, and in chapter 7 you are made sensible that sin is in you, and you come to the point - “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”, Romans 7: 18. What did Israel arrive at after thirty-nine years in the wilderness? That they were irrevocably bad. And what then? God sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people. This sets forth how you are made sensible of the sin that is in you. It is often a long day before people come to “I know that in me (that is in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing”, because they are trying to extract some good out of the flesh. If a man has a bad temper, he often spends many a day trying to improve it, and in doing so, however good his intention, he is only trying to improve the flesh. How can I improve the flesh if it is utterly bad and gone in the cross of Christ? Now in Romans 8 you have deliverance from it. The law of the Spirit of life has made you free of it. You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. I have sometimes said, in speaking of [p. 213] the prodigal son, how many have brushed up the old clothes, but he parted with them. Some might think that it would keep him humble to keep them on, and to look at them. No, he was glad to be divested of them, and to be invested with new ones. That is what liberty is; I am free of the old. It is not only that I am accepted, but I am free in the One who is risen out of death, and I have received the living water. In John 4 the point is to bring the poor woman into a condition to enjoy the grace of God. It is from not seeing this that so many find a difficulty in preaching the gospel from this chapter. Light came into her soul, but she could not understand the greatness of the gift which the Lord had spoken to her of. He says to her, “Go, call thy husband”. She is made sensible now that she is a sinner. She leaves her waterpot and is so deeply affected that she goes and tells the men of Samaria to come and see the Man who had searched her heart. She does not say a word about the gift, but “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did”. The light had exposed her own condition, and in order to deliver her from it, the Lord shows her the new condition in which He could set her up here, in the very place of her degradation.
Romans 5 gives us God’s side - the gospel side. The God whom I have offended is now satisfied, and I am in His favour. His love is shed abroad in my heart. Not only is the offence gone, not only am I saved from the Judge, but I am in favour. Now what was it that hindered us all so long from being in the enjoyment of this? The hindrance was that your eye did not rest simply on Christ as having removed the whole thing. We get the type of this in the brazen serpent lifted up. The Israelites were bitten by the serpents, but when they looked up at the brazen serpent lifted up, they lived. The brazen serpent had never bitten anyone; Christ who knew no sin was made sin; when our eye rests on Him lifted up, we [p. 214] are in His life. It was the serpent that beguiled Eve. You are sent back to the beginning to understand the origin of all your misery, and now where does your eye rest? My eye rests upon the Man who is lifted up, the One who bore the judgment of it, but who is now out of it - “that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”. “There is ... no condemnation ... the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. “He shall never see death”, is “passed out of death into life”. Death is ours. “O death, where is thy sting?” Death is abolished. He has annulled death, and brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel. You are either in Adam or in Christ. In Adam you are lost. The Adam man has gone in judgment in the eye of God, and the One who bore that judgment is risen out of it; before God I am accepted in the Man who is out of it, and I have received the Holy Spirit. The gospel is that there is love where there was wrath, and where death was there is life; that instead of being under the wrath of God, I am in His favour, and He loves me. That is the gospel. Do you say, I do not enjoy the gospel? Well, the Holy Spirit who tells me of the love is also the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which makes me free from the law of sin and death. When you come to that you will enjoy the gospel, you will be free from that wherein you were held. I have gone through it all, beloved friends, and I am pressing it upon you because I know what it is myself. I know the distress, and, thank God, I know the relief. The relief does not come by any improvement of the flesh, but by looking at the One who has ended it all. The very One who ended it all in death is the One who is risen, and in the glory of God. That wretched man who distresses you is brought to an end. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes you free of him. When you come to this - and God grant that you [p. 215] may - you are free. There is no bar to your enjoyment; you are the prodigal fully dressed; and the moment you are so, you are in; for we read, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him ... and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry”. He is brought into the house. And now you can know something of the blessedness of what Enoch entered into, out of death into life.
May you not only see the perfectness of the acceptance in which every believer stands before God, but the perfectness of your deliverance from that man that was ended on the cross; so that your heart may be enriched and blessed by the Holy Spirit in the enjoyment of the full grace of God in the gospel.