⬇ EPUB

GOD CALLING ATTENTION TO CHRIST

D. Robertson

I believe God has great pleasure in taking the opportunity wherever the glad tidings are preached to call attention to Christ. It would be true to say that, while God addresses men universally. He has only one Man to speak of and that is Christ. As Paul says, it is the glad tidings of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 1: 1–4). God has great delight in speaking to men of Christ, calling attention to Him. That is why I read this passage here, “Behold”, that is God’s language in the glad tidings. “Behold”, that is, He would arrest your attention. God is not casual in the announcing of the glad tidings, God’s feelings are in it, His heart is in it. It is a deliberate matter with God. He is saying, “Behold”. He wants your attention, He has something to say to you, He wishes to speak to you of Christ. It says, “Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth!” God wishes to speak to persons, to ourselves, about a blessed Person who is precious to Himself. It is most affecting language, “in whom my soul delighteth”. Think of God speaking that way! He is the almighty God, infinite, supreme, immortal, the Creator of the worlds, beyond our ken as creatures, and yet He is speaking of “my soul”. God is speaking in language that you and I would understand, as He says, “in whom my soul delighteth”. What a precious touch that is.

God is not presenting, I say reverently, someone who is inferior or substandard. He is presenting His best. He is presenting to you and to me the One who fills His soul. It would indicate the feelings of God. It is not exactly His heart here, it is, “my soul”, that is, God’s feelings are in the preaching of the glad tidings. One would long, beloved hearer, that we might have some

sense of God addressing Himself to us feelingly in the glad tidings. This is His language and it is meant to affect us. We have been speaking today of Christ here as Man under the eye of God, and it is a wonderful contemplation. I doubt if any one of us understands in very great measure what it meant for God to have Christ here on this earth. There had never been a man like that before, a perfect Man, a Man whose every thought, whose every action, whose every word pleased God, a Man who was unaffected by sin; He was sinless. He was untainted by the corruption that sin had brought into the world. He lived here in a perfect way, every moment of His life occupied in the pleasure of God. He was the point of complacency in this dark world, a world that was alienated from God because of sin.

Most here are well acquainted with the record of Scripture. Take a scripture like Genesis 3

where God came down to commune with man in the garden and found that man was no longer available to Him because he had been marred by sin; how God felt that. We also know from the record of Scripture how it says, just prior to the flood, “Jehovah repented that he had made Man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart”, Genesis 6: 6.

Think of the depth, of God’s feelings. It says, “the wickedness of Man was great on the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually”, Genesis 6: 5. That was man under the eye of God and it grieved God. Think of God being grieved to see His creature under the oppression and under the effect of sin, and unavailable to Himself. And so on right through the history of the Old Testament. God tried man in various ways, under law, under kings, under prophets, and the end result is the same, that God had grief of heart. There was nothing there that God could rest with absolute delight in. His eye did not meet with anything that was entirely complacent to Him.

But think of the wonder of this, that God Himself should stoop into manhood. That is the wonder of the

incarnation. It says, “God has been manifested in flesh”, 1 Timothy 3: 16. No wonder the poet says, ‘O wonder of His universe!’. Does your heart thrill with the thought of it, that for the first time in the world’s history there was a Man who was here in absolute perfection?

And as we have been taught, He became the point of reconciliation. The eye of God could rest there with infinite delight, it never needed to turn away. Think of those thirty-three and a half years from the babyhood through boyhood to the manhood of Christ. Luke is a wonderful gospel, and as I say, what was there under the eye of God was something that was without offence, a blameless life, a sinless life. But it was more than that, it was not only that these features were absent, but there was a life pleasing to God, devoted to the will of God.

That was the life that was under the eye of God. No wonder God says here, “mine elect in whom my soul delighteth!” We were reminded of that today, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”, Matthew 3: 17. The Father was pleased with all that Christ did. He was pleased with all that Christ said; but oh, dear friend, He was pleased with what was in Christ, those holy motives, how the Father could discern them, we may say speaking reverently, how He could observe that every action and every word was governed by purity of motive. That was Christ here in manhood.

In every one of those days of Christ’s life down here, what He was doing was proving that He had a right to live. Every other man’s life was surrendered because of his sinfulness, he had no right to live, the sentence of death lay upon every other man, including ourselves. Sin had come in and death came in as a result of sin; but I want you to think of the life of Christ, and those of you who love Christ, I want you to feed on it. I want you to think of a life here that was sinless, it was blameless, and no death could be attached to it. The Lord Jesus had an unforfeited life, He established His right to live. That is a most important thing. The gospel could not be preached unless we could preach that. If there had

been one flaw He could never have been the Sin-offering. If there had been one word of rebellion, one act of disobedience, even though it had been a small one, it may have been merely an act of omission, as men say. He would have been disqualified from being the Sin-offering. But that blessed Man proved in those years of His life, not only the fact that He pleased God, but He proved that He alone had the right to live. And when He had proved that (I trust each heart will be affected by what I am about to say), He gave up His life in death.

What He gave up was a life that was unforfeited, a perfect, blameless life, a sinless life, a life that was absolutely pleasurable to the blessed God. And this is God calling attention to it, He says, “in whom my soul delighteth!”

God’s soul delighting in it, appropriating it, is a wonderful matter. Think of Luke speaking of it, he says, “one of the days of the Son of man” (Luke 17: 22), only one of them; but think of all of them and every one of those days perfectly acceptable and perfectly delightful to the soul of God. It is most affecting language, “whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth! I will put my Spirit upon him”. One of the beloved servants of God said it was like God putting the gold on the ark. There was the ark of acacia-wood, speaking of the humanity of Christ, and it was so pleasurable to God that He covered it with gold. Think of God clothing Christ, we may say, with the gold. He says, “I will put my Spirit upon him”. So the Spirit comes down from heaven as a dove, a witness of the complacency of God as to Christ. These are wonderful things. It is food for the believer, and it is not only food for the believer, but it is essential to understand in the preaching of the glad tidings because, as I have said, if the Lord Jesus had had one flaw He could not have been the Sin-offering.

So in Isaiah 53 we come to that. It says, “Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him”. This is language that never ceases to amaze my heart, “it pleased Jehovah to

bruise him”. God’s pleasure was in it. I trust we are affected by this, “it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he hath subjected him to suffering. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see a seed ...”. Although He was absolutely forsaken, Christ was never more pleasurable to God than when He was made sin. It is a wondrous fact, a fact that should arrest our attention and cause us to think. You think of those hours of agony when Christ was forsaken by God. I wish to speak of them by the Spirit’s help, three hours when darkness covered the whole earth. There had been the previous three hours when He hung on the cross, when He suffered at the hand of man, when His moral dignity shone in its brilliance as it had never shone before. The dying of Jesus was the period when He left the mount of transfiguration and came down to the cross. Think of that journey, when there was a display of moral glory such as this world had never seen before, the splendour of it, the dignity of it.

Think of Him amidst the passion of the judgment hall when man’s unholy feelings and the malice of his heart were flowing, we may say, freely. You study that, young brothers and sisters, those of you who love Christ; study those closing moments, those closing hours of the Lord’s life and get an impression of the moral dignity of the Man. And there He hung on the cross during those first three hours, a spectacle of shame as far as men were concerned.

Then in the second three hours He was abandoned of God. Those three hours were the hours of abandonment. This involves infinitude, the three hours of darkness when God abandoned Jesus, “When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin”. Paul says elsewhere, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us”, 2 Corinthians 5: 21. These last two words are important, it was for us, it was vicarious. The Lord Jesus could not be charged with any personal guilt. He could not be charged with any personal sin. The abandonment was a vicarious matter. He says, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46), the important word is

“me”. I understand the emphasis is on that word “me”, that is, the Lord is calling attention to the fact that He was abandoned. I can say, as one who has put my trust in Jesus and in His finished work, He was abandoned on my account, and I trust everyone here in this room can say the same. It is a touching matter, the abandonment; we speak of it, but it is intended to reach into the depths of our being. It is infinite, no creature can fully understand it. It is beyond the creature capacity, it is not intended for the intelligence of man to pry into, but it is intended that the repentant heart should worship because of it, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Think of the holy anguish that came from the soul of Jesus. We have been speaking of the soul of God, but think of the holy anguish that came from the soul of Jesus and think of the unbroken communion that He had experienced in that holy life. God’s delight in Christ we have been speaking of, but think of Christ’s delight in God. Think of those years of holy communion. He could say, “ye ... shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me”, John 16: 32. But it comes to a point when the Father is no longer with Him; it says, “My God, I cry by day, and thou answerest not”, Psalm 22: 2. He says of others, “They cried unto thee, and were delivered”, Psalm 22: 5. If you are a believer, you have cried and there was an answer. God is ready to answer the sinner, and answer you immediately. He has salvation in mind for you. He has eternal blessing in mind for you. He is ready to answer your cry of need; but Christ uttered a cry of need and there was no answer. And who did not answer? The God He had trusted in, the God with whom He had had communion! Oh beloved, may we have a deepening impression of those three hours of darkness. No wonder Mr.Darby says—

‘I pause—for, in Thy vision,

The day is hastening now,

When, for our lost condition,

Thy holy head shall bow.

O day of mightiest sorrow,

Day of unfathomed grief;

When Thou should’st taste the horror

Of wrath, without relief’.

It was unmitigated suffering. God did not mitigate the suffering. You say, He did not mitigate it and it was His Son who was suffering? Yes, “it pleased Jehovah to bruise him”. I think there is infinitude in that statement, His pleasure was in it. What we are speaking of now was a divine necessity. It was divinely necessary that the Lord Jesus should be abandoned; it was necessary because God wished to bring His creature into blessing and secure him for Himself. It was the only way that divine righteousness could be satisfied, and every claim of God’s throne could be upheld; the righteousness of God is satisfied and the holiness of God maintained. The work has been carried out in the light of the holiness of God. It refers prophetically to the Lord Jesus saying, “And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”, Psalm 22: 3. I trust that the blessed Spirit of God will give us some vital impression of the holy suffering of Jesus, what He undertook vicariously, “Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he hath subjected him to suffering. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see a seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand”. Wondrous matter!

Well, the judgment of sin was borne by Jesus in those three hours of darkness when He was forsaken by God. The vicarious work was not finished then, there was still another judgment to bear, and that was the judgment that lay upon man, the man who had sinned. There was only one thing that could meet that judgment and that was the removal of the man. Not only was sin dealt with, but the man who sinned and all that attached to him had to be removed, and that work was undertaken vicariously when the Lord Jesus went into death. As I said, abandonment was completed in the three hours of

darkness on the cross, but more had to be done; death as the penalty of sin had to be borne and the man who was offensive to God had to be removed out of God’s sight; so the Lord died and He was buried. It is a solemn matter that the Son of Man should lie in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. We must understand that vicariously, for to think of it other than vicariously would be erroneous. He was there vicariously in the grave so that the man under judgment might be removed from the sight of God; He lay there that period of time.

Then you see the pleasure of God was exercised in taking Him out of death. Think of that remarkable word of Paul, “Christ has been raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father”, Romans 6: 4. As we have been taught, it was a selective matter, God’s eye was on Him. One of the Lord’s servants said, so very touchingly, the Father was without Christ for those three days and three nights in the sense of what He had been here in His life. But the Father’s eye was on Him, the Father’s interest was there, and when the moment came, we may say, He made no delay, He raised Him from among the dead by His glory. The glory of the Father is an expression of power but more than power an expression of affection. The Father’s glory was in it involving both power and affection; He raised Him from among the dead, and more than that He gave Him glory, that is. He is now at God’s right hand. It is all part of the great vicarious work that was carried through by Christ, involving that Christ established for man a place beyond death and in glory. I can say to you that Christ is not only my Saviour. He is my Forerunner, and His place up there is my place. He has taken my place under the judgment of God that I might be given His place in the presence of God. What a Saviour He is! This is God’s Man, He is God’s Elect, the One in whom God’s soul delights.

God’s soul not only delights in the fact of what Christ was down here but His soul is delighting in Christ at this very moment, Christ is filling God’s heart. He is filling God’s soul with pleasure. It says again, quoting Paul, “in that he lives, he lives to God”, Romans 6: 10. He is living at this moment, a living Saviour—how wonderful! We may think of it abstractly, but He is living in reality in the presence of God. There is a Man there, a living Man, and He is satisfying God’s heart at this very moment, He is filling it. God intends that that blessed Man should fill your heart and mine. That is God’s intention. He is proposing blessing to men, blessing which is centred in that Man. God has vested everything for man in Christ. So if you need redemption, it is redemption in Christ Jesus, it is redemption in Christ where He is. God has set Him forth as a mercy-seat, that is Christ where He is. Think of God coming out to the universe because the work of Christ is so divinely adequate, and the glory of His present position is so satisfactory to God, that God is bringing Him out and presenting Him to the universe as a mercy-seat; as it says of the type, “there will I meet with thee, and will speak with thee from above the mercy-seat”, Exodus 25: 22. Think of God speaking to men from the standpoint of a work completed and a Man in His own presence.

That is God’s great thought for us, dear friend. It is not only that we might be relieved of the burden of our sins but that we might be conscious of it by the Spirit, because that is God’s great proposal in the glad tidings that man might receive the Spirit. It is the greatest of all blessings that you might receive the Holy Spirit so that you might understand that your place is there before God in Christ. Some preachers say that we are justified, and they say it is just as if we had never sinned. Well I must confess I do not think the glory of the truth is expressed by that. The truth of justification is that you are set up before God in righteousness even as Christ is before God. That is the full truth of justification. So the sinner is forgiven, he is justified, and he is also brought into reconciliation.

What Luke has in mind is a reconciled order of man, “good pleasure in men” (Luke 2: 14); not men in sin, not men in corruption, not men in depravity, but men delivered from sin, delivered from its effect, men in reconciliation. What does reconciliation mean?—There is an old hymn that says—

‘O the love that drew salvation’s plan

O the grace that brought it down to man’.

That is fine is it not? but the next part says—

‘O the mighty gulf that God did span

At Calvary ...’

I do not like that bit, that is not the truth. God did not span any gulf. He removed it by Christ going into the distance! Christ went into the distance to remove the distance, and the glory of reconciliation is that you are brought into perfect nearness to God, as the word says, “we have been reconciled to God through the death of his Son”, Romans 5: 10. What a God, what a gospel, and what a Saviour! May we all learn to love Him more, and may we all know what it is by the Spirit indwelling us to serve Him better.

If there is one who does not know the Saviour in a personal way, may it be that the Holy Spirit might speak to you now. You need a Saviour, and if you do not have Christ you have no Saviour. You think of that debacle at an assembly of religious dignitaries when they could not agree to the fact that there was only one Saviour. They could not agree there was only one Saviour! They decided by vote that they could not say there was only one Saviour. I trust there is no one here who thinks that. There is only one Saviour, and there is only one work that accomplished atonement. And I will tell you something else, there is only one opportunity to accept the blessing. If you do not accept it in this life there will be no second chance. We are dealing with eternal realities, and if there is one here today who does not know the Saviour I would appeal to you, and those around me who have faith would join in the appeal. We would say, You need a Saviour and there is a Saviour, a divinely appointed Saviour, a Saviour who has accomplished the work of redemption, a Saviour who has vanquished the power of death, a Saviour who is now living in the presence of God and He is available to you.

The Saviour has very simple language that you can understand. He would say, “Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest”, Matthew 11: 28. May every heart know that rest. May the faith of every heart be resting on the glory of accomplished redemption and have settled peace. Other things may crop up in your life, other concerns may have to be faced, but one matter is settled once and for all when you put your faith in Christ and in the glory of His accomplished work of redemption, and that brings settled peace into the soul. God has a great blessing in mind for you. These blessings I went over, the forgiveness of sins, justification, reconciliation, and sonship, we have not time to speak of them now, but the greatest of all blessing is that the believer in the Lord Jesus should be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. God is prepared to give you the Holy Spirit. It says, “how much rather shall the Father who is of heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”, Luke 11: 13. As having the Holy Spirit you have a link with the glorious Man up there. That is the link the believer has with the Man up there. Soon we shall be there actually, but at the present we have faith in Him, and we have a link with Him, a perfect link by the Holy Spirit of God. I trust God will bless this word, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Dundee
13 February 1994

← Previous 3 of 4 Next →