RECEIVING AND STANDING
I wonder if we carefully searched our Bibles, we could find verses such as these into which so much is compressed? It is not that the whole of the glad tidings are here, but the foundations are here. “Christ died for our sins”—the indisputable authority—“according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he was raised the third day”—again, the infallible authority of scripture—“according to the scriptures”. There is more—indeed everything—encased in the glad tidings: He was received up in glory, and the Spirit sent from a glorified Christ, and the testimony that He is coming again a second time for those that look for Him. Will you be numbered among them; that look for Him a second time without sin for salvation? He came a first time to save sinners. It is wonderful to think of that, His coming into the world, not to save the righteous but sinners. What peace you find in putting yourself in the place of a needy sinner, and all the wealth of the work that has been done to save you.
What we want to say this afternoon will bring us again to the cross, that scene, and those who stood round it; and before we are through you will know what group you are in. I hope so. And that scene there at that burial: “there … they laid Jesus”, John 19: 42. And then the power and witness of that resurrection; it is not that we could exactly penetrate what happened because the Father was there first. The witness was from the angels at the empty tomb. It is a very serious thing that the resurrection of Christ should be called a myth. Why? It is not just doctrine, it is fact; above five hundred saw Him, five hundred witnesses to the fact of a man out of death. These belong, beloved, to the glad tidings. We can only touch them briefly, fleetingly, but I trust effectively for someone. Paul announced them, but I trust there is something of the feet of those that announce glad tidings of peace, Rom 10: 15. We would love to adorn the gospel. “I announced to you, which also ye received”: have you received the Saviour? You say I have accepted His work, thank God. God determines the terms for the acceptance of faith, but I want to stress the word “received”. It will change your moral bring, it will change your outlook, it will change your life; from one of self-seeking to satisfaction, and peace, and joy in believing. I trust there is someone with faith to trust and receive the Saviour this afternoon.
Then you stand, and you need to stand. If you have received Jesus, you will find that the tests will come, and the need is to get your feet down on to solid rock, where the storm cannot dislodge us, where your anchor will hold. Beloved, it is a wonderful thing to be a Christian! We would all say, would to God we would be a better one! It is wonderful thing to be in the consciousness of faith active to receive the finished work of Jesus on the cross for sin and sins, and to receive the forgiveness of sins. I trust we may be helped to take as it were a fresh stand beside the cross, if you want to be sure that your feet are on solid ground. Storms are coming, they have come; the dreadful storms and clouds of apostasy are sweeping the western world—the whole world. Beware of them, lest you be caught in their darkness and swept away in a tide no human ability can stay! Me are seeking for somebody to stay the tide. God is over all; it is a wonderful thing to have your faith in God, and unshakeable faith in the Man at His right hand who has resolved every storm. Ah, those waves and the billows went over His head (Ps 42: 7 KJV); He resolved on the cross in suffering love every issue of good and evil; and the efficacy of that work is being presented for the obedience of faith. Do not stay on the outskirts, come right into the circle and receive the Saviour as your own personal Saviour that you need, and receive the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then you will sustain the storm! Do you know when it comes, when a test comes, when a temptation comes? You have given your heart to Christ and everything seems to overwhelm you. I know many here would endorse what I am saying, we know what it is: you confess His Name at school and you are ridiculed; what do you do? Flee into the safety of that strong tower and you will find the power of heaven on your side; and in the experience, the sweetness of the Saviour’s love. That is how formation takes place in our histories while we are left here. You wonder sometimes why we are left in this kind of world, a wilderness—I trust that it is a wilderness to you; it is the cross that makes it a wilderness, ‘a wilderness wide’. It has often been said that the wilderness is not part of the purposes of God, it is part of His ways. That converted thief never went through it—he did not face the wilderness, he went straight to paradise. We cannot say much about that, but that is what is in view, paradise: the presence of God, apart from anything and everything extraneous to dwelling in the love of God.
But let us value what it means to be left here in the testimony of our Lord, and to stand firm—“quit yourselves like men”, 1 Cor 16: 13! When the storms come, you have dug deep. You are not on the sand, the shifting sand of this world, you have got your feet on solid rock. The rock is Christ: the rock that followed them was the Christ (1 Cor 10: 4); get your feet there, and then you are saved—beautiful. You say you thought you were saved by the blood of Christ, so you were, saved for eternity, nothing can ever undo it. God puts His seal to it: you can never be lost, sheltered by the precious blood of Jesus. But if you do not have your feet on the rock, you might be lost to the testimony. Think of the history of all those carcasses strewn in the wilderness; they had been sheltered by the blood, sheltered from judgment, saved from judgment, saved from the world through baptism through the sea. What a history! Beloved, we are no different according to flesh; but they are to remind us and to teach us that the one highway here is the way of faith and the way of the Spirit.
So I come to this verse: “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures”; that was on the cross, the holy, spotless Victim hung there, nailed there by wicked hands. He endured the cruellest death that wicked men could devise, “even the death of the cross”, Phil 2: 8 KJV. Why did He go that way for you? Because there He bore our sins one by one—may I reverently say. If we could measure it, but we would not be equal for it: they were heaped up and He took them one by one, and bore the judgment of God in unmitigated wrath that I should have borne. Why do we not love Him more, and serve Him better? Let it appeal to us! How many stood there, around that scene; never has the universe witnessed such a scene, and yet—as we have been saying in these meetings—in those second three hours, there came darkness over the whole earth. I would think that would mean the whole globe, would it not—the whole earth? When that transaction between a holy God and a spotless Victim was effected in absolute righteousness, upholding the glory of God’s throne. Why did He do it?—for the sinner, for you and for me, beloved. He hung there, He “endured the cross, having despised the shame”, Heb 12: 2. They heaped every ignominy upon Him, that is what men did “reckoned with the transgressors” (Isa 53: 12), a thief on each side, to bring out the ignominy, the shame of the cross; He endured it. What a Saviour we have! I say again, when he was made sin, I think it is beyond our comprehension, save to bow our hearts in adoring love, that He did it and established divine righteousness in the very place of sin.
For us, it is to believe on the Lord Jesus and be save. They did not all believe; there were those there who taunted Him: “He saved others, himself he cannot save”, Matt 27: 42. Would you be in that group? Have you ever been in that group; and if so would you stay in that group? He could have come down; He could have called upon all those angels. Little did those taunters know the stream of divine love that held the blessed Saviour there, to save the sinner for whom in that very hour He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23: 34. There were those soldiers there, I suppose under orders; they drove those nails. The centurion was there who ordered it, I suppose. What happened?—“Truly this man was Son of God”, Matt 27: 54. He may have witnessed countless deaths but not one like that; there was a witness, a testimony: He died in power. According to John, no one took His life from Him (John 10: 18), He gave His life; he had authority to lay it down and to take it again—O, what a Saviour we have to speak about! What a message; and he did it for you, He went that way for you. He could have gone back alone, but He would not go back alone. What held Him? Love held Him. We have “the grain of wheat falling into the ground” (John 10: 24); that is not exactly a suffering figure, it is an agricultural figure, but it brings out that He wanted a generation of His own likeness and order in a scene free of sin, free of guilt, free of darkness, free of distance. What created the distance was our sins; He measured and removed the distance in love that would brook no distance. He wants you to know the Saviour’s heart, and your committal to Him in the light of what He has done for you. Much could be said—Oh, what a Saviour! Oh the cross—“bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet 2: 24.
I want to tell you about another group, those women; they had come with Him from Galilee and ministered to Him. Have you ever done anything for Jesus—have you? Is He not worthy for you to do something for Him? One of the gospels said they stood there—what a scene; for one of them, a sword pierced her soul. What we can say as to that, except to take by faith a stand in that group, and witness the sufferings of the Saviour for you and for me? Have you an abiding committal to be with Him and for Him, and ultimately to be with Him and like Him, and see Him as He is for ever? What a gospel! I do not remain there long, I could not.
The next phrase is “and was buried”. What happened in the three hours met the whole question of sins and sin, and removed the man that sinned in His burial. What a scene it was! “There … they laid Jesus”; there was no crowd at that burial. There was Joseph and Nicodemus, two of them; and then according to Matthew and Mark, two Marys—four persons. Why was that? He “he was with the rich in his death”, Isa 53: 9. God saw to that: “Not a bone of him shall be broken” (John 19: 36; Ps 34: 20); Scripture is protecting Him. The power of God is protecting Him, and at the scene of His burial, He is in loving hands. Think of the courage that caused those men to demand the body; it was irresistible: it was the power of love that not even a Pilate could deny. Oh that our testimony should be more powerful, and effective, and nullify the enemy’s power. What a scene: “There … they laid Jesus”!
His body was incorruptible, He needed no embalmment: “neither wilt thou allow thy Holy One to see corruption”, Ps 16: 10. We see that His burial was essential to the removal of the man that sinned; it was vicarious in that sense, and we need to see that that kind of man. In Himself, of course, He was infinitely spotless, He had done nothing amiss; He took our place to terminate and remove that condition of man for ever before the sight of God. He was the spotless Victim—nothing amiss; He was unique in that. There is not another human being from Adam on of whom it could be said, he has done nothing amiss. We have done plenty amiss.
Have you let that load of sin roll away yet; is it on your conscience? Have you put of this hour of decision long enough? May this be that hour. Come to the Saviour who hung there for sinners and put in your claim; and become a believer, and a confessor of Jesus as Lord: “shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead” (Rom 10: 9), if you confess Him as Lord, there is an unqualified promise: “thou shalt be saved”. Is that too hard for you?—it has been brought within the reach of the simplest. Maybe the intellectual may miss it, someone who if they did some great thing would do it. But the cross of Christ is the only way for your safety and your blessing.
Now, he “was raised the third day according to the scriptures”: there is the witness in the word of God. Do you have your own Bible; do you read it? Habituate yourself to reading the Scriptures, “the living and abiding word of God”, 1 Pet 1: 23. Let it become your book of life—why? It leads you to Him who is life. The “originator of life” (Acts 3: 15); the life of men (John 1: 4); the Man Christ Jesus. As I said before, the witness of His resurrection was connected to His power first: think of what it was for Him to lay there for three days and three nights, in the reality of death. Each day like a thousand years: think of what it meant, part of His vicarious work; and perhaps come to understand a little more deeply so as to refuse the man that he judicially removed and put out of sight.
The angel sat upon that stone. The stone was not rolled away to facilitate His resurrection; no, it was to give witness to it, and he sat upon it. The guards trembled, and they still believe the lie they were told: He was not stolen away, He was raised by the glory of the Father, Rom 6: 4. The infinitude of love entered into that tremendous transaction. As He lay there among the millions of the dead, He was selected—may I reverently say—in the infinitude of the Father’s love and raised by His glory. So we have a witness to the fact that there is a Man out of death, and we are justified by faith in a risen Man. What a gospel!
This scripture finishes here, but it is not all the gospel. He was here for forty days, mingling with them, teaching them, instructing them. Then He was taken up to the right hand of God, and that is where He is right now. We are here, needy sinners; the next move is from heaven. There may be dramatic things in this world, they get worse—worse and worse. The troublous times are here, we are told, perilous times: perils for souls if you do not have your feet on that rock! The next move is from heaven: at the Father’s word, He will rise up to take His own throne. Now He is earth’s rejected King. Take your stand alongside a rejected Saviour; commit yourself to the testimony of the Lord, do not be “ashamed of the testimony of our Lord” (2 Tim 1: 8), that is what it is. There is no vindication here until He has His, and we shall share in the vindication and the glorifying of Christ, when he comes to be admired in all those—that would be all—believers.
Let me leave that word with you: are you a full believer in the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ? That is my message, very simple, it is the glad tidings. The time is very, very near, when He will appear “to those that look for him the second time”, Heb 9: 28. Are you ready now; would you say you need a little time? It can be effective now, it is wonderful what has been put within our reach: “now is the well-accepted time”, 2 Cor 6: 2. There is no assurance of tomorrow: “now is the well-accepted time”. Oh, receive the Saviour; do not carry that burden a moment longer, come to the cross. Come to the Saviour, see that burden roll away in the efficacy of that precious work, and become a committed lover for the rest of your life. And find the comfort of having received of His Spirit, among those who look for Him. Ah, “the anxious looking out of the creature” (Rom 8: 19); did we catch it this morning at the Supper, feeling His absence and rejection. Maybe we have broken bread for the last time, maybe we have: I believe every time at the Supper it is, ‘it is the last time’, it is “until he come”. Be ready, join the company of those who look for Him, not those who look to the world. Look back over the surface of the waste, learn its lessons, but the land is before us, Christ is before us. It is attraction that will get us into heaven; we need authority here; but it attraction: “When ye see the ark … go after it”, Josh 3: 3.
Well, may God bless the word to us, beloved brethren, for His Name’s sake.
REDBRIDGE
3rd November 1985
This script has been taken from a recording, lightly edited and not revised by Mr Deck
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