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PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD

Gordon C. McKay

I was wanting to speak about persons who in some way or other came to Jesus. We know, of course, from the gospels that great crowds followed the Lord Jesus and great crowds, at certain points, came to Him. On one occasion great crowds even came to Him up on a mountain and brought their sick and lame to Him that they might heal them. They were energetic. A large crowd came in that way wanting to get help and blessing from Christ. John does not give us that kind of thing so much. John gives us individual persons getting blessing and help. They are both true. Myriads have received blessing through Christ and He is available to all, but John would say, as it were, you have to come yourself, you have to have your own experience, you have to prove this for yourself. Of course, two of the persons we read of came together so there is some variety of experience in this, but the great thing about them all is that one way or the other, they found themselves in the presence of Christ, and each one of them got some blessing and some help. My desire would be that you might fit in somewhere, maybe not exactly into the history of any of these persons, but you have to fit in somewhere. There is a divine record being kept in heaven and persons are getting saved and blessed. They are being brought to Christ one way or the other. They are being brought to Christ and they are finding blessing there and it is going down in heaven’s records, each individual. Wonderful thing! Think of heaven’s history. Men write history books and they perhaps highlight the history of certain distinguished persons and certain examples that they might find, but they cannot write the history of everybody. Heaven records the history of every believer, every transaction.

And so this is one of the days in heaven’s diary, if I can use that expression reverently. This is one of the days when there is a record being kept as to persons who might hear the glad tidings and how they received it. You think of heaven noting what happens today, what happens in this meeting. Heaven is far more interested than you would ever think in what is proceeding now and what you are thinking and what is going on in your heart. We know that heaven keeps records. There are names being inscribed in the book of life. How precious that is, to think of heaven having such a book! And the deeds of men, too, are said to be recorded and in the end, even at the great white throne, books are opened. How solemn that side of things is, but how wonderful to think of heaven’s records! So do you have your name in that record? Have you found a place there, you might say, in the annals of heaven because you have come to Christ and found blessing?

It is individual, and so John points out that people come individually. John is interested in individuals. Peter preached and there were three thousand saved in one day. How blessed that is! But John wants to point out the wonderful quality that is secured in persons, in individuals, who come into contact with Christ. Of course, Christ found certain persons too. Some did not come to Him. He came to them. In fact, where we read as to John the Baptist in verse 29 of John 1, Jesus came to him. “On the morrow he sees Jesus coming to him”. John the Baptist was baptising the devout and godly in Israel that were responding to his preaching of repentance for remission of sins. He was preaching Christ; he was preaching repentance and he was speaking faithfully and looking for Christ to come in and then the time came when Jesus came to him and he said, “Behold the Lamb of God”. Jesus associated Himself in grace with these persons that were going to be baptised by John the Baptist. He Himself had no sins, the blessed, holy, sinless One, the Lamb of God, the One who was going to be the sacrifice for sins, the One who knew not sin. But He associated Himself with these persons. They were on the right path. They were going to be baptised and they came to John the Baptist confessing their sins. The Lord had none to confess but He lent a certain dignity and ratification to the whole thing; He associated Himself with these godly persons who were going out to John the Baptist.

What a thing that was that He came to John! John was taken aback, as the other gospels record, that he should baptise Christ. The Lord Jesus coming to John the Baptist to be baptised was really a figure of Him going into death. Baptism speaks of that and in the Lord Jesus coming to John the Baptist to be baptised there was an indication that He in fact was going to die. So He comes to John the Baptist and immediately there is this wonderful testimony, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” That He is the Lamb of God would suggest that He is going to do things sacrificially, but He is also going to do things in power. He is taking away the sin of the world through the sacrifice of Himself and He is going to take it away in power. Sin is going to go. We are very much occupied with what is in the world and all that side of things and all the sinfulness that exists too. It might oppress the spirit of the pious person to think of the sinfulness of the world, how awful it is, but it is going to go. Jesus is going to remove it. He is the taker-away of the sin of the world. That is how great He is. He laid the basis for it in His death, for removing the sins of believers and the sins of the rebellious. The whole of sin is going to be removed from the sight of God, so He is the taker-away of the sin of the world, and John delights to bring out His greatness. How great the Lord Jesus is! John was impressed by it. He said he knew Him not. He was not taking account of Him as someone who was related to him, as He was by nature. It says, “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and abiding on him”. Oh, the Lord Jesus is worthy of contemplation by us! This had never happened before. I know it speaks in the Old Testament of the Spirit of God coming on certain persons, Samson and Amasai and others, so that the Spirit of God has been active over the dispensations, as God Himself has been, to bring about a result for Himself, but never were the heavens opened nor did the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven and abide on anyone. Not only did it descend upon Him, but it abode there. What did that mean? What John brings out in what he says is the fact that the Spirit coming on the Lord Jesus was a testimony that this was the One who would Himself baptise, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit and he also bears testimony that this blessed One was the Son of God. The Spirit coming upon Him also was a great testimony to the perfection of His manhood. The Spirit came upon Him and it abode upon Him. Heaven’s complacency was expressed in Jesus at this point.

So He becomes a centre. I thought to read some of these sections in chapter 1 because of what we are often told, that section (I think it was Mr Raven that possibly first said it), is like a kind of astronomical system; and Jesus is the centre and everybody that moves moves in connection with Him. And that is what I would like to ask you: has He become your centre and in some way are you beginning to move in connection with Christ? He is going to be eternally the centre of God’s universe and everything is going to find its place in connection with Him, and everything outside of that is lawless and will go to its own place. And so the question is, have you begun to find your place in connection with Christ, your place, individually? Have you come into relation to Christ? Everything is going to come into relation to Christ. The whole universe is going to be governed by Him. He will be the centre and focus of everything for God. But then the point in the glad tidings is that you, poor sinner, should come into connection with the Lord Jesus.

These persons we read of may help us a little. One of the features that comes in verses 35 and 36 and 37 is that John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speaking” and they left John the Baptist and they followed Jesus. When he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”, this was the witness of John the Baptist. He was fulfilling a certain testimony; but when he says in verse 36, “Behold the Lamb of God”, he was not ministering, he was just speaking in appreciation of the Lord Jesus. It was just coming from his heart. How effective it was what came from his heart: “Behold the Lamb of God”. “Looking at Jesus as he walked”. It is just Jesus in His pathway here. There was something attractive about Him, something about His walk that had never been seen before. I know there were glimpses of the humanity of Christ in Old Testament saints, pre-figurings of what was going to be, but here was the Lamb of God Himself walking here in this scene of sin. He was going to clear that scene for God, and He was going to do it sacrificially. In Himself He was so attractive, the Lamb of God. How great He is! How attractive He is! Think of Him coming in sacrificially in view of securing us and securing you, I would say that, securing you for God, clearing you of your sins, taking away your sins. He is the taker-away of the sin of the world. Has He taken away your sins? That is how to get at it. Have I still got sins or have they gone? You have either still got them or they have gone. Well, if you put your faith in the Lord Jesus, then they have gone. He has borne them. He went to the cross to do that. He suffered the wrath of God to do that, to take away your sins.

Well, these two persons heard John speaking and they were influenced. Many persons have come into blessing in that kind of way. They meet someone who loves Christ and they become attracted. The beautiful thing about this is that they followed Jesus. It would be very sad if some gospel preacher came along and preached a wonderful gospel and all you could say afterwards was what a wonderful preacher that is! No, the great end in the glad tidings and the end that every true preacher would desire is that persons would go away and say what a wonderful Person Jesus is. How wonderful He is! And so these two persons followed Jesus.

Jesus noticed it. “But Jesus having turned, and seeing them following, says to them, What seek ye?” Now, are you going to make a move? They were beginning to move, in a tentative way, in regard to Jesus, they were following Him. It does not say they spoke to Him but they just turned in that direction. Are you turned a little in that direction? How is your life? What is there in your mind and your heart? Have you turned towards Jesus? Are you beginning to follow? It is all right if there are two persons together, it seems. Somebody else might encourage you. In the Old Testament you get four leprous men who get blessing and they talked about what they were going to do among themselves and came to a right decision and came into salvation. So you can speak to someone about it. Nevertheless, the matter, the transaction in your soul, relates to your individual place before God.

And so they came and Jesus speaks to them. He turns round and He notices. Heaven will notice today, Jesus will notice if you just begin to make a movement towards Him. He turns and asks them what they are looking for. “Come and see”, He says. He does not tell them where He abides, but He says, “Come and see”. He wants to draw them near to Him. Think of the Lord Jesus in His grace wanting these persons to come in and abide with Him and be near to Him and to find something, not only to find that He is the Lamb of God, not only to find that He could take away the sin of the world, but to find very wonderful things in His heart and mind. The rest of the gospel is needed to start to bring out some of these things that were in the heart and mind of Christ. “Saw where he abode”, how restful the Lord Jesus would be here as a man! We speak of His activity and Mark’s gospel brings that out, His blessed, continuous service, but here John says He abides. What peace there would be where Jesus is! He was abiding in the love of the Father. He was abiding in the sense of what He was going to secure for the Father. I suppose if you go into someone’s house you find out something about them, you get close to them and you begin to find out what they really have in their hearts. Think of the Lord Jesus wanting these persons to come in to where He abode so that He might disclose something to them and draw them into His own thoughts!

Well, these two persons clearly were attracted and one of them was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. “He first finds his own brother Simon”. As soon as he finds there is something precious there in Christ and that He is the Christ, he says, I will need to bring my brother into this. In other words, he is evangelical, and I suppose many have come that way too, someone that has found Christ has said, Look, I have found Christ. He is the Messias. We have found Him. You do not need to look any more. You do not need to wait any more. There is no one else to come; there is no other salvation to come; there is nothing else. It has all arrived in Jesus. He has come into this world and He has dealt with sin and death and He is available.

Simon came to Jesus as led by somebody else, and Jesus was able to point out to him that he was going to be something spiritually. Jesus looked at him. When you come to the Lord Jesus, you come in the sense of your need. How blessed to find the Christ, the One who does everything for God, removed the sin of the world for God, removed your sins, secured God’s pleasure. He is the Christ. He is the One that acts for God in wondrous power and yet also the One that suffered: “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?” Luke 24:26. But then, as coming to Him, Jesus looked at him. Jesus looks at you. What is He looking at? Your sins? No! If you are coming to Jesus as a repentant sinner, they are gone. He is not looking at your sins; He is looking at you, looking at you even naturally. He says, “Simon, the son of Jonas”. I know about your father, your parentage, Simon, the son of Jonas, but He says, there is going to be something else in your life, “thou shalt be called Cephas (which interpreted is stone)”. What He was really saying in a condensed way was that he was going to be part of what He was doing in the way of building something for God’s pleasure. What an attractive thought that Jesus would look for a person coming and would say, I see something in you potentially that is going to be for the pleasure of God; you are going to be a spiritual person. “Thou shalt be called Cephas”; Simon son of Jonas is often called Peter, but it is Cephas here. I understand that the thought is that he was going to become spiritual. This blessed One you are coming to is the One who baptises with the Holy Spirit. He is going to bring in what is for God’s pleasure. That is what it means. He baptises with the Holy Spirit. He is going to bring in a scene for God’s pleasure and He does it by baptising with the Holy Spirit, so there is nothing else to be seen as it were, everything else is overtaken by this, that Jesus baptises with the Holy Spirit. And so He gives the Holy Spirit and we can come into that and become pleasurable to God and we can become spiritual.

Well, the Lord Jesus is in movement in verse 43 and now He finds Philip. Sometimes in this gospel He finds a person. He “finds Philip, and says to him, Follow me”. There is nothing else said. That is all: “Follow me”. You might say it is a very, very brief entry in heaven’s record, but perhaps that is all that is needed. Things can be very simple in the glad tidings. Things can be very protracted, of course. You could spend endless nights, sleepless nights, over the question of your sins and you can kick against things for weeks or months or years if you like, but, you know, things can be very simple. You just have to surrender. That is all: you surrender your own will. “Follow me”, He says to Philip. Well, Philip was immediately taken on. He was enlisted, you might say,

And then Philip is from Bethsaida. It is interesting that these persons come from the same town. “Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter”. They came from the same place and, as far as we can understand, the kind of persons that were then in Bethsaida were feeling persons, it seems, and perhaps they were evangelical persons because Andrew found Simon his brother of Bethsaida and now Philip goes and he finds Nathaniel from Bethsaida too. There is something proceeding here, there are persons accumulating. People come individually but then something is accumulating, the persons are coming to Jesus and He is going to make something of them. And so Philip finds Nathaniel. Now, Nathaniel is a difficult case. He may be one of the hardest ones in this chapter in a way because he is so good and so religious and yet there was something very fine about him that Jesus identified. Philip finds Nathaniel and says, “We have found him of whom Moses wrote in the law”. You do not need to look any more. There is no question about it. There is no more delay: “We have found him of whom Moses wrote in the law, and the prophets, Jesus, the son of Joseph, who is from Nazareth”. They identified Him. And Nathaniel is sceptical. Now, that is one feature of the human heart. You might say, you are not sceptical, but it is a feature of the human heart, scepticism and unbelief. The human heart is not naturally marked by faith. It is something that God gives us in His grace so that we go against what would be natural to us in scepticism and in unbelief. And so Nathaniel said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It was a place of reproach to him and this is a thing that is going to arise too if you receive Jesus. “Jesus … who is from Nazareth”. Philip did not hide that. He said this blessed One whom we have found, that Moses wrote of, is Jesus and He is the son of Joseph and He is from Nazareth. That was a test to Nathaniel. I suppose Nathaniel was much concerned with the Jewish system and he was no doubt well taught in that. Nazareth, out there in Galilee, someone from there? There is a reproach attached to it, you see. And if you want to receive Jesus, you have to accept this that He is from Nazareth. He is the One that is under reproach here. He was not One that is distinguished by the men of this world and the institutions of this world. No, He is the One that is in reproach, “Jesus, the son of Joseph, who is from Nazareth”. So he says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Well, if you feel like that, here is the answer. Philip says, “Come and see”. You prove the thing for yourself. Come to Jesus for yourself.

Now, this involves exercise. You need to get on your knees. Have you ever been on your knees? You have to get to Jesus in the faith of your soul. It means you are going to have to come under some exercise. Well, Nathaniel came to Jesus – “Jesus saw Nathaniel coming to him, and says, Behold one truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile”. He was leadable. He was coming to Jesus and he was “one truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile”. That is something else as you come to Jesus that I might make bold to mention, that you should come without guile. Just come in simplicity. It is a kind of prerequisite for getting blessing. You cannot come with all your previous religious training or all your intellectual qualifications and all the rest. You cannot come with any hidden motive. You have to come in simplicity, “one truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile”. The way to that is through repentance. Persons come that way as they repent and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We need cleansed, purified hearts. It says in Acts that the hearts of the nations were purified by faith (Acts 15: 9), these dark, wicked heathens, indulging in terrible idolatrous practices and all the moral darkness associated with it. How could they come into blessing? Well, even then their hearts were purified by faith and they came under the shelter of the blood of Jesus. So it does not matter how bad is your history. God will take that up. Indeed He has taken it up in the death of Christ and He has dealt with it. In 1 Corinthians 6 it speaks about terrible people, fornicators, adulterers, covetous, drunkards, and so on, and then Paul says, “And these things were some of you” (v 11). Imagine actually saying that to the saints of an assembly! He says, you were some of these things, “but ye have been washed, but ye have been sanctified, but ye have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God”. How completely the work of Christ deals with state and guilt! The blood deals with guilt and the water that flows from His side deals with state. Persons are sanctified, set apart for God, “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus”. You understand the strength and the certainty of this as you become a believer and you are “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus”. What other name can arise against that? What challenge can arise? “Justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God”, that is, I take it, you receive the Holy Spirit and in that sense it is seen that you are a person in whom God has wrought, a person who is justified and a person who is marked by sanctification. And so we might become something like Nathaniel, “one truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile”.

Well, I could not go through all the persons who have to do with Jesus in John’s gospel, but Nicodemus came. He was an unusual case. It was really the Father drawing them to Jesus. Behind it all, it must have been. Certainly as to Nicodemus and these other persons, you can see something was drawing them. Do you feel a drawing power in your soul? That is what happens in the glad tidings. There is a drawing power, a divine drawing power, that you might resist. Do not resist it! Be drawn! Allow divine grace and the attractiveness of Jesus to draw you so that you might make the move and come to Jesus! Now, Nicodemus was afraid. He was a ruler of the Jews and he had much to lose if he was going to cast in his lot with Jesus. The Jews were very bitter in their persecution. They sought to kill Jesus eventually. Nicodemus was afraid and so he came to Him by night. Well, at least he came to Him. You might think it did not look a very honourable matter for Nicodemus to be afraid to come by day but he came anyway. Thank God for that! How is a person saved? I do not know how many different ways persons have been saved. Some persons will give you their testimony and tell you how they were saved, in different ways. The great matter is to get to Jesus. Thus he came and Jesus set him back. The Lord Jesus wants to deal with you in a real way. Nicodemus came and he told Him what he knew. He acknowledged that the Lord Jesus was a Teacher come from God. That would take him so far. God must be with someone who did such signs. And then Jesus set him back and He said, “Except any one be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God”, and Nicodemus could not understand it at all. What is the idea of being born again, being born anew? And so he has to be taught that God has to operate in him in a fresh way. There has to be something called new birth take place. There has to be a divine operation, a secret, deep divine operation, “born of water and of Spirit”, God working and operating to bring about a new state of things in a person’s soul. “Born of water” would suggest the cleansing character of the transaction that is in accord with the death of Christ and then the Holy Spirit too is operating. How wonderful to think of that happening in a person’s soul! Oh you almost bow your heart to think of that! The preacher can preach the glad tidings but only God can work – it just bows your heart to think of that – silently in someone’s heart, God is working. May it be so here now that God is working if He has never worked before or, we might even say, as He has never worked before, in our hearts. And so it happens that something comes about in a person’s life, a new birth so that they might see the kingdom of God and come into it and understand what the power of God is in His kingdom and what a realm of protection and blessing it is. So Nicodemus had to come. The point is you cannot come as man in the flesh. You cannot come equipped with all these natural things. If you come with man’s intelligence, come with all that side of things, then it is a closed book, but then, God has to work secretly in you and you have to understand that you have to be born anew. Thus you must give yourself up, what you are naturally, and you see that you are cast on God so that He might operate.

I thought we should not miss out this woman in John 8. She did not exactly come to Jesus. In a sense she did: she was brought in a most peculiar way, she was led as a sinner. She was led to judgment really, surrounded by judges and led almost, as it were, to execution by the Jews. What a terrible experience for her, poor sinful woman surrounded by persons that were pointing out that the law says such a woman should be stoned. There she is, brought in in the presence of Jesus. The scripture is quoted: “Moses has commanded us to stone such” and the question is put to Jesus, “What sayest thou?” She is in the presence of Jesus. She is a sinner and she cannot deny it either. How shamefaced she must have been! What a position to be in! And Jesus answers; He answers silently. He is not answering her; He is answering these accusers. It is quite easy to accuse and condemn: the law could do that and you can quote Moses and there it is, true enough, she was guilty of death under the law. The law had come in and it condemns us all. You say this was a terrible woman. What am I? What are you? We have committed sins; we are sinners; and the law is there. It says if we have broken one point of the law, we have broken it all. You say, Well, I have not done what this woman did. Is there any other point of the law you have broken? Well, you have broken it all. You have broken the law of God, God’s will has been rebelled against by you; the guilt has been incurred by you.

Well, there are the accusers, as Jesus calls them, and Jesus’ answer is He stoops and writes on the ground with His finger. And when they keep at Him, He lifts Himself up and He points out their own sinnership: “Let him that is without sin among you first cast the stone at her”. He addresses the conscience of everyone. That happens in the gospel preaching. Really the conscience of everyone is to be addressed. And so He again stooped down and He wrote on the ground. Moses could write. He could write what was right, the law of God given to him, inscribed by the finger of God, indeed (see Deut. 9:10). But the finger of God is here in this scripture. The Lord Jesus is stooping and writing on the ground and He has a new law; He is going to be bringing in a new covenant; He is going to bring it in on the basis of His own death and the shedding of His blood. He is going to bring in a new covenant on the basis of which there can be forgiveness of sins. How precious to think of the Lord Jesus bringing in a new order of things in which a person can be forgiven, He stooped into manhood and He stooped into death itself so that He might write and there might be a new legislation in which there could be forgiveness for a woman like this. “Has no one condemned thee? … No one, sir. …Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” Some of the scribes that copied the scriptures left this scripture out. They could not write it. They said, this could not be right, that a woman in such a condition could be treated thus by the Lord. They misunderstood the greatness of divine grace and they misunderstood what these stoops meant. The Lord Jesus’ work was providing the basis for the salvation and forgiveness of any sinner. Well, what a way to come to Jesus, but still she was there and she received a word from Him. I do not know if she fits in with the others, but certainly I can see this, it is a wonderful thing to be in the presence of Jesus. It is a terrible thing to be in the presence simply of the accusers. You know, Satan is the accuser. It is one of the things Satan does: he is the accuser of the brethren, and he will accuse you. When it comes to settling your matters in the presence of God, he will want to be there. These accusers were there. What a situation! When you seek to settle the matter of your sins eternally by coming to Christ and putting your faith in Him and confessing you are a sinner, Satan will want to be there to accuse you and point up the terribleness of your sins. He will want to turn you aside. But here the accusers all go out. You can settle your matters in the presence of Jesus alone and you can understand that there is provision in Him for salvation.

Well, may we be blessed in these things and helped in them for His Name’s sake.

EDINBURGH

1 April 2001

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