BRINGING CHRIST IN

N. J. Henry

Acts 13: 23, 24, 45–48; 2 Kings 11: 1–3 (to ‘years’), 4, 13, 14; Revelation 3: 20; 1 Samuel 16: 11, 12

The great subject of the glad tidings is what God has done by bringing in Christ. It says that, “God brought to Israel a Saviour, Jesus”. Is that not beautiful? You could not bring a Saviour in, no man could. God has done it. He says that, “Of this man’s seed according to promise”.

He was promised; God had this One in mind from eternity. It was not an afterthought—He has never had an afterthought as to Christ. He had to start again with men as He did after the flood. He started again with Noah and his household, but as to Christ He has never had an afterthought about Christ. He has had one constant line right through time, from eternity. Moses said, “from eternity to eternity thou art God”, Psalm 90: 2. Moses on the mount saw Christ. That must have, you might say, confirmed what he said in the psalm, “from eternity to eternity thou art God”, because the One that was there was from eternity.

This Person is not just a good Man. He is far more than that, friend, far more than a good Man. He did good works, but what was here was a divine Person in manhood. That is a cardinal truth about the glad tidings. Here in Acts 13, “according to promise has God brought to Israel a Saviour. Jesus”. He had brought in saviours before in the time of the Judges, who sought to recover Israel to what God wanted out of His earthly people. But here is a Saviour through whom you can receive the forgiveness of sins and be right with God. We must experience the needed word from the Lord Jesus. The woman in Luke 7, she came; she had tears; she felt things; but what she wanted and needed most were the words from the lips of the Saviour, “Thy sins are forgiven” (Luke 7: 48). When you sins are forgiven, it is absolute.

Every sin of your responsible life is forgiven of God. Is that not wonderful? That is what is offered by God. Here it is, “God brought to Israel a Saviour”.

Time does not affect God or change His thoughts; He does not weaken. We may have great aspirations and thoughts and after a few months they are diluted, they are changed, but God’s thoughts never change with time. It is not because of weakness, but it is the power of God to forget the sins of those that come to Him in repentance because of the Saviour’ work. He has His ways with the earth and these ways are sure. You think of the three days that Christ was in the grave, you could say, Well, was it not sufficient just to go into death, be buried and be raised again immediately? God has His unerring timetable. After Israel had spent its strength trying to do good and failing, eventually God “brought to Israel a Saviour”, and in view of their easy reception, God sends John the baptist first, is that not fine? That is the grace of God, because he knew how hard Israel was. He said, I will send a forerunner, “prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths” (Matthew 3: 3), and he says here in Acts 13, “John having proclaimed before the face of his entry among the people the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel”.

Is that not a remarkable expression, “the face of his entry”? Come in through the incarnation, God manifest in flesh, but the entry here is evidently in public. Your mind goes to Luke 4, and your heart goes out to that blessed Man; standing up in the synagogue, reading, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach” (Luke 4: 18); think of the words coming out of the Saviour. That is the type of Person that is presented, not the heroes of the world, but a lowly, blessed Saviour, that had proved Himself impregnable against sin from the devil himself; he proved Himself impregnable. He is the only One that was faced by the devil personally. Satan has his emissaries, there are the demoniacs and others that are referred to in the Scriptures that come to tempt us, but Satan himself came to the Lord Jesus and he found that he could not break into that perfect, holy Man that was the Saviour of mankind; not only the Saviour to Israel, but the Saviour of the world. That is what it says in John 4, “the Saviour of the world” (John 4: 42). He is impregnable to the temptations. The devil brought every temptation to Christ, every single thing; he tried to test Jesus in His relations with God. His power to turn stones into bread; by the human glory of the world which he said he would give, temptations by everything, but He never departed from dependent manhood.

That is why He came—to be here as a dependent Man doing the will of His Father. It says in Acts 13, that persons, “were filled with envy”, that is the reaction of man as away from God, contradicting “the things said by Paul, contradicting and speaking injuriously”, and then Paul said, “It was necessary that the word of God should be first spoken to you”. That was the privilege of the Jew, the word was first spoken to the Jew, “but, since ye thrust it from you”, in other words—here it was not that God took it away from them, they thrust it from themselves.

They proved themselves that they were not accepting the word of grace and he says, “lo, we turn to the nations”. Thank God that He has turned to the nations; that is what God has done; He used Paul for it. Glad tidings have gone out to us that had no hope and were without God in the world.

Do you want floods of grace pouring into your soul? I remember when it broke into my heart, and I trust every person here knows what grace is, that pours into your own heart. I cannot experience that for you, nor you for me, but I know what it was like. There was nothing like it, when the burden of sin went, all my history that would have pushed and pushed me down, and Satan whispering in my ear that condemned me and made me apparently beyond the reach of grace; but when grace broke in, what relief! As Paul said, “mercy was shewn me”, 1 Timothy 1: 13. That is how personal it is. So it says, “lo, we turn to the nations; for thus has the Lord enjoined us—I have set thee for a light of the nations, that thou shouldest be for salvation to the end of the earth”. What glad tidings! That is why Christ came in, to be Saviour. Wonderful matter—blessed Saviour!

Now, I want to refer to 2 Kings 11. I am not going into the detail of the king. I cannot think for the moment that there is any king that was perfect in the Old Testament. Not one. There were failures even in the greatest who was David. I suppose the nearest might be Joseph because he sets out purity, but even he was not a king; he was below as to the throne. Pharaoh says, “only concerning the throne will I be greater than thou” (Genesis 41: 40); so Joseph was not a full king. I think kingship only belongs to Christ—He is the King; He will come as the King. He is the Saviour presented to you, and if you accept it, you will be amongst those that surround Him as the King. It has a separating effect. I say to you now that the presentation of Christ separates. There are the saved and the lost. You cannot be in between. Those that are enlightened and those still in darkness, is it not separative? This woman Athaliah was a murderer. The same spirit that existed when Christ was born is the spirit that is here; the spirit of murder surrounds the presentation of Christ, this Saviour. I wanted to draw from the type because at the beginning Joash is a type of Christ in that he is hidden.

That is the position, dear friend, that at the moment I cannot show you Christ. I can bear testimony, the proof I have in my experience with Christ, but I cannot show you Christ. He is going to appear yet, but this person was hid. It is rather like Moses when he was up the mount. The people said, “we do not know what is become of him!”, Exodus 32: 1. They must have seen him going up. Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and seventy elders went up and then Moses went up from there and then the people said, “we do not know what is become of him!” Forty days, it was not long for them to depart from the height of God’s ways with them in taking them out of Egypt, being saved from judgment with the blood on the doorposts and lintels, and breaking the power of the world at the Red Sea and taking them out. You might say, they have all hope before them; they are going towards the land. In forty days they had dropped from what was for their blessing to utter idolatry and in their minds, scrapping all God’s ways that had taken place up to then. They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of what was corruptible (Romans 1: 23). This king was hid, not visible, Jehoiada the priest had to do with that.

The Lord Jesus Christ is not visible yet, He had finished His service to the world; then He was crucified, He died and His blood was shed, after that He was buried; the world never saw Him again. In principle I think Joseph of Arimathaea was a priest (Luke 23: 50–53). He handled the body of Jesus with respect because that body would be needed again in resurrection, so that He could be with His own, lovers of Christ. I want to ask you, friend, are you amongst them?

I say simply, you might come to the meeting, but are you among the lovers of Christ who are in the secret of His risen life? There was no repentance with Athaliah, but she saw the king surrounded with all these persons that were making everything of him. It says that the “princes and the trumpeters were by the king; and all the people of the land rejoiced and blew with trumpets”. What celebration is in the hearts of those that love Christ! Are you in it, friend? You need salvation for your sins, that has to be, but I wonder, Are you among those that are in the secret of the exultation of Christ? In principle that is what we did this morning, we were surrounding the King; the world does not know. Someone said if the world knew they would stop it, because in the Lord’s supper what we celebrate is the overthrow of the world.

That is what we are doing, we are no longer held by the power of the world, we have been saved out of it and we surround the King. He will come out shortly, if you read down the chapter, the king comes out shortly to the people, but Athaliah was finished. You might say, that is not grace, but that is why I said the gospel has a separating effect. If light comes to you and it is accepted, you come into salvation, but if you reject it you will prove something of the darkness that marks the world that is going on to judgment. That is a solemn thing. The king is in the midst of persons that appreciate him. He is brought out and there is a covenant made. We want to be loyal to Christ. I do not want to be disloyal to Christ in the world, I seek the help of the Spirit not to be. It says that Jehoiada “made a covenant with them, and took an oath of them in the house of Jehovah, and shewed them the king’s son”. I think that is a lovely thought to think of Christ. He is going to come out shortly to public celebration, “when he brings in the firstborn into the habitable world, he says, And let all God’s angels worship him”, Hebrews 1: 6. The world, who had sought after the man of sin, the hero of the world, will eventually find there is a greater than he; a greater than he is about to dawn in the face of the earth and He will rule in equity. But at the present time your loyalty to the Lord is demanded to be shown to the King.

Now, when you come to Revelation 3, He says, “Behold, stand at the door and am knocking”. Now, He is expressing His desire to come in. In the incarnation nobody could stop that, the great power that was there, Herod wanted to stop Him. They could not stop His being shown to Israel, manifest to Israel. They thought that it was all in their hands to put Him on the cross and say, “When will he die, and his name perish?” (Psalm 41: 5), but it was all in the divine calendar. Who could stop His resurrection?—even the guards “became as dead men”, Matthew 28: 4. Who could stop the coming of the Spirit?—all timed when you think of it; seven weeks plus one day. Everything is divinely timed. God holds the strings of time, that is what He does. Now the Lord Jesus is standing at your heart door and knocking. That is if the door is closed. It is often said that the handle is on the inside and the request is, “if any one hear my voice and open the door”. What will He do, does He come in to rebuke? He says, “I will come in unto him and sup with him”. If you maybe have an anxious heart, there is nobody like Christ to meet an anxious heart, a troubled spirit. “I will come in unto him and sup with him, and he with me”. What ease in the presence of such a great Person. If I was in the presence of the Queen I would feel awkward, but this Person who is the King of kings has the greatest place in the universe given of God; He says, “I will come in unto him and sup with him, and he with me”. What an invitation! How can you resist? Why have a troubled heart, a troubled conscience any longer? I would invite you to open the door to Christ. He comes, He is there and He is knocking. He has taken that place; it is a place He has taken at your heart’s door. It is a personal matter and He wants normal relationships with Himself.

Now, finally, when we come to 1 Samuel 16, Jessie “sent and brought him in”. That is another responsibility; that is your responsibility, friend, to bring Him in. Who is coming in? He is the One who is feeding the sheep, caring for them, guiding them and leading them to pastures. There is nobody like Christ, He loves His flock and He is the One that is brought in. Here is a very fine type of Christ; there is nobody quite like David setting out features of Christ. He was accused that he had left the flock unattended to, unguarded; Eliab did that—that was envy. He says, “I know thy pride and the naughtiness of thy heart”, 1 Samuel 17: 28.

David never had that; how much rather the antitype, the Lord Jesus showed His heart of grace, sympathy, feeling for men and women that put themselves in the position they were in through their wilfulness and lawlessness and sin. He has that grace and the word to all of us is to bring Him in. That is a responsibility. You can say, I will sit on the sidelines; I do not need to do anything. You might even say, Well, I am a sister, I do not need to do anything. Bring Him in! Whatever your quiet conversation in the house or wherever it may be, bring Him in.

When David comes in, it says, “he was ruddy”. It is wonderful you get these typical expressions of the moral beauty of Christ. Every time Christ comes there is something fresh. I think that is what is going to make eternity so interesting for the redeemed. Every time you look at Christ you get fresh reason to pour out your affections. The world goes off their heroes, they find someone else they think is better.

The Spirit of God is given to make everything attractive to us; a great gift in the preaching is the Holy Spirit, and you will find an area where the Spirit of God is free, and time after time you will find fresh impressions of Christ coming into your soul. From the dearth of the life we knew before conversion and before the reception of the Spirit you come now into the wealth and fruitfulness that is in the assembly. That is where you are brought into, “the Lord added to the assembly daily those that were to be saved”, Acts 2: 47.

Wonderful grace! That is why there is this presentation of Christ, and I trust that every one of us will feel exercised, because only God can convict a person and only God can convert. The preacher can do very little, but I point you to God and His grace, that if need be He will bring in conviction. He will bring in assurance into your soul and help you in your pathway until the Lord come. May it be so, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Grangemouth
18 March 2007