LOVE FOR JESUS THE SON OF GOD
John 1: 35–39; 6: 67–70; 9: 35–39; 20: 15
I wanted to speak of the strength of our attachment to Jesus the Son of God and bring out, as this gospel does, the peculiar quality of that attachment that is to mark the closing features of testimony in reality and substance in this dispensation. It has often been remarked that this gospel is to make believers of believers; it is to get deeper than the profession of being a believer, to be in absolute consecration to the One who alone is my object. You will notice that where we have read the Lord asks questions, such as, “What seek ye?” He is entitled to ask questions. He would direct them personally because He knows the need of each because of who He is; He knows our hearts, the heart-knowing God. We do not know one another’s hearts, we would not presume to think we do. God knows the heart; He knows my heart and He knows your heart infinitely; He knows it better than you know it yourself, and it is His right to raise questions with an objective in view.
Ah, how He longs for hearts consecrated in devotedness to Himself—attached to Him. Where we were reading earlier He probes Peter thrice; why does He do that? It shows how intense it is, how important it is, “Lovest thou me more than these?” … “Art thou attached to me?” (John 21: 15, 17), and it brings out what Peter says, “Lord, thou knowest all things”, and so He does. What a comfort that He knows our histories, He knows our propensities, He knows the influences we are under, He knows everything. Think of Him probing us, as maybe He will in this meeting, to get right down to the foundation of how we live in relation to Himself. You know Him as Saviour; thank God, you have acknowledged and confessed Him to be Lord; what it is just to enter into the quality of the committal that He is your all, you could not live without Him. We will come to that in the last scripture where the Lord raises another question, even with that beloved woman, “Why dost thou weep? Whom seekest thou?”
But here it is that these disciples follow Him, and it says, “But Jesus having turned, and seeing them following, says to them. What seek ye?” In one sense, dear brethren, we are always under test, and we should not mind that. The Lord is wanting to bring out the quality of His own work, and He does that because it is His own work. Ah, that any one of us should even be here is His own work! Let us never forget the sovereignty and mercy that reached out and secured us when we had no right to it; undeserving we were, but the mercy He keeps for thousands has reached even to us. Ah, how dependent and humble it should keep us in our spirits to think of that and remember it. So every movement towards Himself is to bring out something of His own work, and He tests us by questions, “What seek ye?” These disciples show they are following Him because of the effectiveness of John the baptist’s speaking of the Lamb of God, not “who takes away the sin of the world” here, it is the Lamb, the Person.
Beloved, I am assured that one thing alone will keep us in these closing moments of testimony; it is our attachment to the Person of Jesus who is the Son of God; I am convinced of it. Oh let those committals deepen today, that what we have been saying today may lead you to follow Him. That possibly is the last scripture written, “Follow thou me”, John 21: 23. You need not look over your shoulder to John or anybody else; my obligation, love’s obligation, is to follow the Master. If I walk alone, I will follow the Master. If I can find another who is following the Master we will walk together; it is as simple as that, but it is profound. Oh the joy attaching in its very essence to what Christian fellowship is. You see, John does not speak of these things in their terms, he speaks of them in life. We in some measure have known the terms; perhaps we have, perhaps we have not; but we have come to a time now when we have to look behind the terms and let the Lord search us but as to whether there has been a corresponding answer subjectively, wrought by the Spirit, to the truth to which we have been recovered.
John the baptist is a very effective minister because in what he does he leads to Christ, and anyone who does not do that is no minister at all. Alas, we have seen it that men lead to themselves, make to themselves disciples. Let us beware of it. A true servant leads to Christ. And it does not say they left John, as we often misquote; they heard John speaking about the Lamb of God, that Person, in His attractiveness, how He walked. Ah, beloved, let the four gospels be constant food for the Christian—how He walked. If you are not sure what to do in a situation look at how He did things; He is the great Teacher. It is set out in the four gospels—how He walked—particularly in this gospel, but in all the gospels. Every word that Jesus uttered is cardinal truth and it is food and direction for the Christian, for He has left us here a Model that we should follow in His steps. So John the baptist goes out of sight to make way for Another. Oh that that spirit in some measure should mark our service, to leave an impress upon each heart of the glory of the Lamb of God, and He is Jesus the Son of God. Paul exemplifies it; you wonder at it that he so quickly and immediately preached Jesus that He is the Son of God; his centre immediately was transferred from the things here below to the centre of another world.
Let us see that we do not belong here; you beloved younger brethren, you do not belong to this world, you are not of this world. The Lord said, “I am not of the world” (John 17: 14), and if He is not of the world my interests should not be in the world but in His world. Indeed, no devoted heart can stop short of reaching its object where He is; soon we shall see Him as He is. How effective John is, and as he speaks they do not leave John, it does not say that, they would respect him, but the effectiveness is in that they followed Jesus, and He turning round says, “What seek ye?” He is testing out how steady their walk would be, what their motive is, what their objective is. How He would search us out today. What is your inward underlying motive as to how you live? He knows; let us face it honestly. Do you want to know where He abides? “Where abidest thou?” How simple the language, the simplicity of the Christ. Christianity is not complicated; we made it that way, but it is not that way; the simplicity of the Christ, “Where abidest thou?” He says, “Come and see”.
Beloved brethren, we can have as much of His company as we want; it is what our dear brother said in the reading as to communion with Him; the more you know it the more you will want to know it; we can have as much of His company as we wish to have. Then “they abode with him that day”; I think we could safely say that right down the dispensation there have been those abiding with Him; let us be amongst them. Where else are we safe? Where else are we secure? Where else do we know love as we should know it if it be not in the presence of Jesus, who loves us and has washed us from our sins in His blood? They abode with Him that day; join the Lord and those who love Him—it is good company, it is the best of all the societies. You will not want the world as you know the company of Jesus; it says, “and they abode with him that day”.
Now, how are we going to live here? That brings me to John 6. We could go right through the gospel; it is remarkable how Jesus won persons for Himself. He lifted that beloved woman in John 4 out of the degradation of sin and a sinful history to be absorbed in Himself. “Come, see a man”. Oh that He would do that today! What histories some of us have had! In some sense we do not forget them, and yet the blood has covered it all—and they will never come up again. What an advantage to get our histories behind us that I should become absorbed in another Man outside myself; we could not, and cannot, rest until we find Him where He is.
I go to John 6 because we need the food of John 6. We know it is a chapter of reduction, beginning with the multitude He fed and satisfied, coming down to His disciples at the end; but some are going away. Think of that—some are going away; they say the word is hard. How can He give us His flesh to eat? What does it mean? We do not understand this exactly from the books; I am not discrediting the books; thank God for the great ministries of the recovery which are reliable because they are based upon the word of God; cleave to them; they are a life-line that will preserve us. But we need to penetrate behind that and find that there is a food that builds up a constitution morally that is equal for the closing testimony of the dispensation. Oh what going away there has been! What scattering! What divisions! The position publicly, if anything, is a heartbreak. To quote beloved Mr Lyon, I remember him saying to a young man, Come with us and share a broken heart. Let us enter into the spirit of that, dear brethren, it will bring us into the greatest possible things.
Peter immediately rises to the question the Lord raises and says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal”. Let us see that our life is bound up with a risen Man. We live on account of Him; how He lived was on account of the Father, “he also who eats me shall live also on account of me”, John 6: 57. Think of the soul, the heart, of a Christian so wrapped up with that risen Man that its source of existence is because Christ lives. You say, The standard is high; it is, I know no other; I want no other, and you want no other. If we knew this it would meet every question of separation in this world. We would meet it positively, in a positive affection, it would make this world appear to us as it is meant to. I do not think we would ever reach separation from this world by way of a compliance ministry such as we tried; I do not believe we would. Now I am not disregarding the commandments of the Lord, we need them; as long as we are in the wilderness we need to be under authority; but if the thing does not stem from an inward affection for my Object, it is, shall I say, of little worth. Let us rise to it, “To whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal; and we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”.
Now I come to another question, which is raised in John 9. This remarkable man was cast out not because of sin, not because of history, it was because another Man was in his heart, a Person had come into his affections; he was morally too great for Judaism, he could not remain there, they cast him out. I love to think of even one person moving here in devotedness to Christ as too great for the world’s system, too great for Christendom. In a sense it will demand its overthrow; one person moving in true separation from the world means its overthrow, it must be so. God will presently implement it, now it is our privilege to rise to this, dear brethren, and each to be here as a worshipper of the Son of God. How did this man come into this? His eyes were opened. Who of us here have not had to have our eyes opened? Maybe many of us need to have them opened a bit more too, till we find an exclusive object in the Person of Jesus who is the Son of God. How did he come into it? On the principle of obedience. We do not receive the Spirit apart from that; not exactly that that is treated of here, but it would involve it. When the Lord put the mud on his eyes He said, You go and wash, and what did he do? He went, he obeyed, and he washed; that is, he appropriated what typically was the mystery of that humanity laid down in death. Who can compass the mystery of the humanity of Christ? But he appropriated it in his measure and then he came in love’s appreciation to the fountain-head from which that blessing came. That is the point I want to leave, I trust, on the spirits of the dear brethren; come back to the fountain-head of blessing in the Person of the Son of God.
So He finds him, but the man had to go through the pressure, as we do. I would say again, there are no short cuts in Christianity as I see it; they usually prove a long way round, as some of us have found to our sorrow. Let us keep on the King’s highway; let us go by the signposts; they are reliable; they all lead in one direction; they lead into heaven; they are leading out of this world to the world of the Son of God. Oh that our hearts may be more attached to Him in the strength of bonds that can take the strain of every test, every storm, every wind, every obstacle. The strength of your bond with that Person will sustain you; you dig deep and get your feet down on the rock, and when the storm comes you are not swept away, but you are held there because you are established on the rock of devoted committal to the Person we are speaking of
Now that is this man; he is not blown about in the wind of criticism and unbelief. He says, “One thing I know”, John 9: 25. “One thing I know”—he stood by his conviction, but he was cast out, he was morally too great to remain in Judaism. But he had to go through that exercise in order to be found by the Lord who disclosed to him that He is the Son of God. I believe, dear brethren, a worshipper is a safe person, because he has an object outside himself. Oh how self-indulgent we get! Do we not know it? We would not make rash claims that we are free of it either, but let us judge it and never trust the flesh, have no confidence in it. But a worshipper is occupied exclusively with his object, and that is where safety lies.
Now I want just to refer to this last passage where another question is raised in a very affecting section. The Lord says to Mary, “Woman, why dost thou weep? Whom seekest thou?” She was held in devotion by that empty tomb and as she had once known Him would have resumed that relation—but she was safe. Do you know why? Because her affections were just a little ahead of her intelligence, and that is where safety lies. “Why dost thou weep?” There was no need to weep. There is a place to weep; it may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning, see Ps 30: 5. This morning had dawned, the resurrection morning. Here is the blessed Man, the Victor, the Conqueror, who has annulled death and brought to light life and incorruptibility, and He is speaking to this person saying, Why are you weeping? Blessed to think, dear brethren, of how faith links us with a deathless scene.
Really, Christianity begins with a risen Christ—we are justified in a risen Man; that is Romans. Roman teaching; it sets us up superior to the world’s system around us. The weeping belongs to what is here below in this world, and as valuing those assembly tears God keeps them. Let us not be ashamed to shed tears; maybe we should shed more, bear the burdens of others, carry one another’s burdens; let us see that it draws us near to one another in the strength of a bond we so need in these difficult days. But we face all that because we have been introduced into a deathless scene where the shadow of death can never ever come. The Lord is instructing this beloved woman; Why are you weeping? He will put all those tears away presently. What a moment it will be when all those tears are wiped away, but by faith now we can know a link with a living Man on the other side of death—not to resume the relations in which He was once known, for Paul says, “Yet now we know him thus no longer”, but rather to know Him in a new condition, see 2 Cor 5: 16. He is beyond death now so He says, Why do you weep? Whom seekest thou? How appealing it is, and it brings out in Mary the quality of a love that could not live without Him. Supposing that it was the gardener, she says, “Tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away”. Oh how affecting that is! Oh for that quality of devotedness! What a quick learner she was! The Lord immediately answers and says, “Mary”. He must do so; love answers to love, and love to Him is the fruit of His love for us. What is in view is the assembly in substance and reality. Then He immediately says, “I have not yet ascended to my Father”, as much as to say, You know Me now in a new condition, a new condition out of death.
Dear brethren, I did not want to extend this, but just to bring out the quality of affection seen in the personnel of the assembly in attachment to the Person of Christ who is the Son of God. This alone will sustain us in the difficult days of the fast-approaching apostasy of Christendom which publicly may get worse and worse. Let us value the circle of our beloved brethren where we can be together in bonds formed in the divine nature, and by the Spirit maintain a testimony to that blessed, ascended Man until we hear His call—
The summons that calls us to heaven
(Hymn 131).
Well, may it be so. Let us join the cry, “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come” (Rev 22: 17), for His Name’s sake.
GRIMSBY
1st May 1982
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