PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD

Harold J.Glass

Luke 2: 8– 6; 5: 17–25

The epistle to the Romans tells us – it is a great book about the teaching of the glad tidings – that men gave up God in their thoughts. God in His word would turn persons, turn you and me, even though we may have known what it is to believe for a long time in His word, His glad tidings, He would turn our thoughts to Him. He came in for the need of men, He brought in His own way to meet it. Romans teaches us that the righteousness of God is, “towards all, and upon all those who believe”, chap. 3: 22. So it is a time to believe, it is a time to reach out for faith to believe in God and have God in your thoughts.

The verses we read first in chapter 2 bring out the wondrous way that God has moved. He brought in the Saviour. It says that in the angel’s word, “for to-day a Saviour has been born to you in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord.” What a matter! You know what goes on in this world, the pace seems to get faster and faster and it makes it hard to live in. This world has its heroes, heroes in a military sense, a religious sense, in a business sense and heroes in computers. It takes all this to keep the world going. But God brought in His Man, He brought in His beloved Son. He brought Him in as a babe: “ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and lying in a manger.” This is the way that God does things. He takes up the things of no account in this world and so He would appeal to our hearts to see the way He does things to bring in His Man, to bring in His Saviour, to bring in His beloved Son, to see that He approaches us through One who is so lowly and One who brought in His love for men, appealing to men to turn to Him, to have Him in their thoughts. So in the preaching today, He would do that afresh for us, to appeal to us to have Him in our thoughts in the way that He does things.

These persons in Luke 2 were greatly favoured, and men under the sound of God’s word are greatly favoured to be helped to come to what He has in mind, to come to know Him and to come into salvation. The apostle Paul speaks of that at the beginning of Galatians, what Christ has done in the giving of Himself. This is the Saviour that God brought into the world. He “gave himself for our sins”. That is what He did. This is the One, as we follow His lifetime and see where it ended on the cross, “who gave himself for our sins, so that he should deliver us out of the present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father” (Gal 1: 4,5). Oh what God has in mind in bringing persons to know the Saviour, to know what it is to find glad tidings, to find something that brings in joy as over against all that goes on in the world of violence, the world of sin, where men follow trespasses, follow what is against God! This is what happens when men elect not to have God in their thoughts. They get into everything that is against God. Thanks be to God, the teaching of Romans would bring us through to see what it is to be someone who is retrieved from that, who has been saved from that, who has been delivered from it, to be here as a satisfactory person before God.

These are very great things that God proposes in the glad tidings, to bring persons into salvation, saved from their sins, saved from themselves. You say, that is a funny expression, but it is a needful one to understand, to be saved from yourself and all that is in yourself. We know what it is to give ourselves over to the way of sin here. Christ died for our sins, our own sins, our individual sins, but He also died to put an end to the matter of sin. He did that in those three hours on the cross. Sin was condemned. Everything was put upon Him. He was forsaken there. Everything was put upon Him in order that men might find glad tidings and deliverance from that system that entangles them. It speaks about it in Hebrews, “who through fear of death through the whole of their life were subject to bondage”, chap 2: 15. That is what it is. Sin has brought in death and bondage. Men are in fear of death. Everyone without Christ is in fear of death. But God has brought in the Saviour: “for to-day a Saviour has been born to you … who is Christ the Lord”. One who can do everything. Well, this is what God wants us to come to know, that in this little babe He had everything. In time Christ would come into service for Him and come into service for men.

Well, I thought we might see the way that Christ serves the men in chapter 5. Persons got to know about Jesus. Persons get to know about Him today through the preaching and these persons got to know about Him. There were persons there, religious persons, who had other ideas and questioned Him. Think of the religious element there is in this world, questioning everything, questioning God’s ways, questioning His grace and mercy, questioning His righteousness, questioning what belongs to Him, His rights in love. All of that is questioned because they want things to go according to their thinking, but God has His own way of presenting His matters, His own way of presenting His Saviour, and so Christ came among men and it says here, His “power was there to heal them.” His power always there, always there in the Saviour, always there when the glad tidings are preached, His power is there to heal, to deliver you, to bring in what is needed for salvation and deliverance from your sins and from the whole sin system. It is there because He has died to meet it all. So the glad tidings are preached. God presents His righteousness in such a One, someone who is able to meet the need, able to glorify God in the scene where everything was against God. He had one Man, His beloved Son, who glorified Him in what He did. He bore everything in order to glorify God and to make a way through for you and me to come into salvation.

This is an unusual matter, to let a man down through the roof. I wonder what the children would think of that, a hole down through your roof to bring a man to Jesus. Quite a matter! But this is what they did. This is the kind of faith they had. Do we have this much faith when we pray for the glad tidings each time? Do we have this kind of faith, to pray that persons will come to know Him, will come in touch with the power that is in Him? All of this anticipates the power that is available now because Christ has laid down His life. This is all in the light of Him laying down His life. It took His life, it took His death, in order that the glad tidings can be preached that salvation is available. He is the One who says, “But that ye may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins.” He has been the way of suffering and death, a way of sacrifice, a way of giving up everything, in order that you and I might have this wonderful gift, the gift of salvation.

So here is this man in the presence of Christ and He says, “Thy sins are forgiven thee”. What a word! No-one else is able to say that. It was challenged but the Lord shows in what comes out that it cannot be challenged. That is the word in Romans: “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved”, chap10: 9. It cannot be challenged because Christ has gone the way of death. He has met everything for God. He has met everything for the sinner. He has glorified God in the way that He went because He was a perfect sacrifice and so it cannot be challenged. He says, “Which is easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?” Which is the easier? He challenged them. They were challenging what He did and what He said, but there is no challenge to it. There is a witness to the power that can be found in Christ, there is a witness to Christ having been raised from the dead; there is a witness to the power that is available. You do not have to put your trust in some theory, in some idea. You put your trust in the Person that has been raised from the dead.

So, what does He say to this man? He says, ”I say to thee, Arise, and take up thy little couch and go to thine house”. This is what is in mind in the glad tidings, that persons should be so affected by the truth as believing on the glad tidings that they are set up here for God. It says He died “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God”, 1 Pet 3: 18. It says also at the beginning of Hebrews, “For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make perfect the leader of their salvation through sufferings.” Heb 2: 10. God wanted to bring persons to honour Him, to be like His Son, but it required that the Sacrifice was made perfect through sufferings. All of this was needed and so when we speak about the Saviour, we must needs speak about the way that He suffered. He suffered from men, being spit upon, being stricken and having a crown of thorns. He suffered all that at the hands of men. But oh what He suffered as going to the cross to bear our sins! Peter says that, “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet 2: 24. These are very real matters, the way that Christ has gone to be a sacrifice for sins. He has borne our sins. Then He bore that time of being forsaken: “Why hast thou forsaken me?” Matt 27: 46. He said to His God, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” It was to finish the matter of the power of sin upon man – that is what it was for – and to glorify God so that we are to come into the good of that, into the appreciation that God has condemned sin, condemned the whole thing and put it on Christ. What a suffering that was for Him to bear! To go through death was no small thing for Him, to bear all that was needed to deliver man from the power of sin, from the power of Satan.

So I think we get it here in this man. He says to the man, “Arise, and take up thy little couch and go to thine house”. What does all that mean? You say, that is very nice that he can walk now. Well, think of what it means morally. You have a man who was paralysed, not able to do anything, not able to do anything satisfactorily here in a practical sense in righteousness in this world, but now you have a man who can take up his couch. He is able to do things and then he is able to go to his house. He is able to operate in his house and come under the regulation of Christ. These are great things in the glad tidings that persons come under Christ, the regulation of Christ. They are here in a different life – it is a different kind of life.

Romans teaches us that too, that we “walk in newness of life”, Romans 6: 4. So you come into the gain of the glad tidings and you can walk in “newness of life”. You are not someone here paralysed by Satan’s load upon you and the load of sin upon you. You are no longer in that. You are delivered from the power of sin to enjoy what it is to be here for God’s pleasure, to enjoy the Saviour. Think of it! – “for to-day a Saviour has been born to you” so you are to enjoy Him.

It says, “And immediately standing up before them, having taken up that whereon he was laid, he departed to his house, glorifying God.” I think we can read a lot into that. He is a man who became a subject man. Subject persons are given the Holy Spirit. They are given God’s gift of the Holy Spirit and they have power to live for God. This is a wonderful thing. This is what God has in mind in the glad tidings, to save us from our sins and make us live to God. I think we find it in this man, “having taken up that whereon he was laid, he departed to his house, glorifying God.” I think he is a man now who is in liberty. He is not under the bondage of sin any more. He is in liberty. He has the Holy Spirit so that he has power here to live for God. These are wonderful things that the glad tidings present to us. We have a Saviour who fills our hearts, One so great who has met everything, been to the cross, been there to bear our sins, been there to meet everything, to glorify God. So we have our trust in someone who has been that way and who has been raised. We have someone to put our trust in, someone to enjoy, someone in whom we know we are justified. God can assure our hearts that we are justified as believing in such a One that He has raised from the dead. So we can be like this man was, set up in our houses, set up in our circumstances, set up in the way we live in this world so that we go on here in righteousness and we go on under the regulation of Christ and find our part here in what is for God’s pleasure.

These are great things that are presented to us in the glad tidings and we find them in the Person of Christ. We find them in the way He has done it, but then you have to find the Person for yourself, find out that there is such a One. That is what the shepherds did. They went and found there was such a Person. Well, the glad tidings would bring Him before you, bring Him before us all so that we might find such a Person, find what He can do for us, find who He is and what He is and find the gift of the Holy Spirit, to be set up here in what we call Christianity, what there is here that honours God, what there is that is for God’s pleasure and what there is for our blessing. We were reading about the man that came in, Boaz. He came in with blessing. Well, here is the Lord Jesus, He comes in with blessing. He comes into your heart with blessing when you receive Him. He comes into your circumstances to help you to find blessing and to find what it is to live here in joy and to live in the love of God and to live as a person who can please God. That is what this man did. It says, “he departed to his house, glorifying God.” He did not just go back thankful to be able to walk. He went back with His heart filled with all that Christ had done for him and to glorify God for it.

Well, this is what God has in mind for us in the glad tidings. May it be our blessing for His Name’s sake!

Denton

6 February 2000