THE INFLUENCE OF CHRIST
N. T. Meek
Song of Songs 2: 3; Genesis 18: 1–8
I wanted to speak about being under the influence
of Christ in enjoyment and also in service Godward. In the scripture in the Song of Songs, He is the apple tree, He is distinctive in the woods. I suppose that is one thing we can never emphasise too much, that Jesus is distinctive. I do not know whether you have found it to be such, whether you have ever taken time to think quietly of the uniqueness of Jesus. I am not thinking only of His work, which is unique, of course, but I am thinking of His Person. There was never a man so attractive as Jesus, and there has never been found a man under whose shadow it is so pleasant to sit. This writer says, “In his shadow have I rapture and sit down”.
She has come under the influence of Jesus in type; come under the influence of Christ, we may say, the One whom God has anointed, the One whom God has marked out in distinctiveness, and it is open to you and me to sit under His shadow.
It means that I take time to deliberately sit down, consciously under the influence of Christ.
We have to be quite definite about these things, dear brethren. Most of us lead fairly busy lives, there are a thousand things to do, but it is part of the Christian’s inheritance that he should spend some time under the shadow of Christ; that he should learn to abstract himself or herself from all that is around. If you have a Bible or a book of ministry, all well and good, but make sure that it leads you to Christ where you are reading, and then stop reading and just contemplate the One you have read about. You will find what this sister found, that she had rapture, and you will find too, dear brother and dear sister, that this kind of thing gets easier the more you do it. It becomes habitual. There was a sister, when the Lord Jesus was here, named Mary, of whom it is said she deliberately sat at His feet and heard His word. This is not exactly hearing His word here, it is rather being occupied with His Person. But the Lord Jesus commended what Mary did. He said, she “has chosen the good part”, and He said it will not be taken from her (Luke 10: 42).
You say, Mary is gone now. That is true, she has gone to be with the Lord, but the good part has been left for you and me, and, dear brethren, therein lies a peculiar source of strength and a peculiar character of growth and development; it has come from simple occupation with Christ. There is Christian knowledge to be gleaned from the scriptures, of course, and from the books, but make sure that it leads you in your affections to Christ. You sometimes go to the Scriptures or to the concordance to find a certain train of thought maybe and see how a subject is presented in Scripture; that is the work of the student; to sit in His presence is the work of the lover. She goes on to say, “his fruit is sweet to my taste”, and the Lord would feed such a one in their souls, “his fruit is sweet to my taste”. It is in a different setting, but you remember that Boaz reached Ruth parched corn (Ruth 2: 14). The Lord notices such persons who are prepared to leave other things for a moment and be occupied with Himself. I do not know, dear brethren, of any more rewarding occupation. You could not put a price upon it!
The most precious thing that any of us will ever take to heaven will be the knowledge of God, and you learn it in the presence of Jesus. I would just encourage us to be definite about this. I do not want to put anybody under legal obligation, but one finds that one has to be definite and allot a certain time of the day, in principle make a vow that you are not going to be just a nominal Christian, you are going to be one that feeds on Christ. That is the way you will be like Him. There is no surer way of being like Christ than feeding upon Him. There was a monk who wrote a book called ‘The Imitation of Christ’, but he missed the point really. You do not become Christ-like by seeking to imitate Him outwardly; you will become like Him by feeding on Him, growing in your soul in appreciation of Him. Now just work it out, dear brother and dear sister, work out some part of your daily timetable where you can spend twenty minutes, ten minutes, five minutes, and ask the Spirit to help you to
be occupied with Christ. I think you will find the Spirit will be very ready to help you in that; there is nothing He likes more than to glorify Christ, and He will be very pleased to help you.
Now I read the scripture in Genesis 18, and we have a reference to a tree again. I am not referring to the oaks of Mamre. There is a tree in verse 4, and I take it the same tree in verse 8. Here is Abraham, the great Abraham, a remarkable man, the scripture says he is our father because the element of faith was in him. But he gets this divine visitation, really it is God Himself has drawn near. His immediate concern is a right one and that is to provide some refreshment for God’s heart, to serve Him. So he proposes that he will fetch certain things that God may be served, that He may be ministered to. I suppose that is one of the great objects of God coming out, that He might be ministered to; He said, “Let my son go, that he may serve me”. Exodus 4: 23. I suppose that is one of the great objects in life, to serve God. I mean by that to worship Him, to minister to His heart and to His affections, to speak to Him about Jesus, and to thank Him for the myriad blessings that He has in mind for His people.
We were speaking the other day about Joseph’s coat of many colours, that refers to the glories of Christ. How wonderfully bright and pure those colours were. You could speak about one of those colours to God, the freshness that always marked Jesus in His service, how fresh and green it always was. Brethren come together to break bread, and having broken bread they engage in God’s service, and what do they do? They serve under the influence of Christ. I think that is what this tree refers to. Abraham stood under the tree and he served from that point.
That is what believers do rightly, they serve under the leading and influence of Christ. All that passes through the hands of Christ is acceptable to God. The Lord Jesus is the great Priest. I may use expressions which are imperfectly formed, I may even say things that
I am not in the good of, but they pass through the hands of the great Priest. He discards what is unreal, but He passes on what is real, and that is what reaches the Father’s heart. So we need to serve consciously under the influence of Christ, and we would like to know more about it practically on the Lord’s day morning. The Lord Jesus comes to us in the breaking of the bread and we address Him as present. Do I give out a hymn under the influence of His presence? Am I conscious of being there, so to speak, under His shadow? How the Lord would help us in these things! One of the most encouraging things I think is this, that God knows our hearts, and whatever weakness we may feel ourselves. He knows what our heart is registering; He knows, so to speak, the way it beats, and it is pleasing to Him accordingly; I mean in the reality of it. He appreciates reality. We have been together these two days, and if the Lord will we shall be together again. What a matter it would be if we could gather more consciously under the influence of Christ.
Well may the Lord encourage us, dear brethren, because this tree is a wonderful tree to be under. And dear young brother, if you are going to preach, make sure you get under the influence of Christ and go and preach from that vantage point. May the Lord help us in these things, for His name’s sake.
Address at Endbach
22 October 1988
THE GOSPEL OF GOD AVAILABLE FOR ALL
J. A. Gardiner
It is a very fine verse of Scripture. John chapter 3 verse 16. There will be many, many people in heaven
who have come to Christ through that verse, and the blessedness of it is that it opens the door for every one. No person need elect themselves out of the blessedness of salvation in this day in which we live, indeed, in this whole dispensation. That wonderful word “whosoever”
means every one in this room, it includes me and it includes you. It says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son”; He could give no more, nothing that was dearer to His heart than His only-begotten Son. He gave Him, so that “whosoever”—what a word that is!—“that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”. We have read in these two chapters, which, I suppose cover the whole spectrum of the social scale in humanity. There is Nicodemus, a teacher in Israel, probably outstanding as a sample of human propriety, and at the other end of the scale we have a woman who has had five husbands, probably looked upon as most depraved in humanity, but “whosoever” includes them both. And “whosoever” includes all between, the whole range of men, because it is the desire of God’s heart, not only that some men, not only that some races, not only that the ethnic majority of some races, but that all men might be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
You will know that death lies on the race; you have never seen anybody yet who has lived for ever; no matter how old you may be, or may become, there is a day when you die. That is the divine sentence that was passed upon man when he refused to be regulated by the will of God. God says to man right at the beginning, in the garden of Eden, You have everything that you could desire. There was one restriction, “Of every tree of the garden thou shalt freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt certainly die”, Genesis 2: 16, 17. It does not say you will pass away, it says, “thou shalt certainly die”. That was God’s word; God said that. It would have been the fulness of wisdom to listen to God’s word, and to have paid attention to it and to have obeyed it. But then something else happened, somebody else had something to say in contradiction to the word of God; in the subtlety of satanic influence and insinuation, the serpent said, Hath God said so? Is it really true (see Genesis 3: 1)? Maybe Satan is saying that to you now. Is it really true that I should listen to what is being said? Is it really true that it is the word of God? You begin to doubt, Satan puts a doubt there. Then the serpent says to the woman, “Ye will not certainly die; but God knows that in the day ye eat of it ... ye will be as God”. So the woman took the fruit of the tree and ate, and gave it to the 96
man and he ate. Then their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked, and man was driven from his place in the garden of Eden.
God’s heart is toward you and the fulness of divine blessing is yours for the taking, but there is this matter you have to do with God about. So we have here this man, Nicodemus, he comes to the Lord Jesus by night. It would be a reproach for a Rabbi amongst the Jews to come to Him by day, so he comes by night, and says, “we know that thou art come a teacher from God”. The Lord Jesus says to him, You must be born again. You hear a lot these days about ‘born again’ Christians. It is a right expression, you must be born anew. You must have your beginning from another source, that is what it means; because all that you may be, you may be as good as Nicodemus, you may be better, but it is not going to help you or bring you any nearer to God. That included the woman in the next chapter. So the Lord Jesus could see all this in Nicodemus. He says, You are a teacher and you do not know these things, you are supposed to know them. How do you feel about being born again? You cannot do it for yourself, it is the sovereign action of the Spirit of God. “Except any one be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God”, John 3: 3. I am thankful that I can stand here and can see the kingdom of God in this room. What does that mean? I can see persons who regulate their lives by the word of
God. It involves that they have all come in the same way; they are amongst the “whosoever”, who have believed on the name of the only-begotten Son of God. They have come to the Lord Jesus in their sins, and have confessed their sins.
It does not take a great rigmarole to confess your sins, all that you need to say is, I have sinned. The man in Luke 15 says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee”
(Luke 15: 21), and that is it, he is forgiven. He did not have to say much more; he does say, “I am no longer worthy to be called thy son”. The father’s heart goes after him; he runs and falls on his neck and covers him with kisses, showing he was so pleased to see him. Are you going to be like that tonight? It is open to you. We used to sing,
‘The gates of heaven are opened wide,
At His Name all the angels bow;
The Son of man who was crucified
Is the King of glory now!’
That is the same Jesus. He has been to the place where you and I deserved to be. He has borne the judgment that was due to you and me. But “God so loved the world”, not the world as it is in its depraved condition, He loved the world of humanity, He loves man.
I can say to you without fear of contradiction, that God loves you, and He has no reserve whatsoever in His love to you, and He has no reserve whatsoever in His love to me. If there are any reserves, if there is any hindrance, it is from my side, and it is from your side. Are you going to answer to God’s love? Nicodemus is puzzled he cannot figure it out. I suppose he thought Judaism was the acme of everything, the finest in the world, and as a natural religion so it might be, but it will not bring you to God. You will not get into heaven by joining any church or anything like that. There is only one way into heaven, and what a blessed way it is, that is through Christ, that is the doorway to heaven. Would you like to have to do with Him? Nicodemus is puzzled
and he responds in a natural way; it shows the darkness that clouded his thoughts. The Lord Jesus goes on to say, “Except any one be born of water and of Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”, John 3: 5. No matter how refined, how educated, how developed the natural mind is, it is unable naturally to apprehend the greatness of God.
So the Lord Jesus goes on, and says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up, that every one who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”. That is a very wonderful statement, Jesus is saying that Himself. He is the Son of man, He was the One who was lifted up. Moses had to make a serpent of brass, put it upon a pole, and when the Israelites looked upon it, they lived. There was God, in figure, condemning sin in the flesh, that awful power, the self-will of man acting against the revealing of God. How terrible it is! God was condemning that in the flesh, in Christ. Do you understand what that means? The law could not do it for persons. This is a manifestation on the part of God, of the love of God. Going by rules and regulations, keeping the ten commandments does not take you to heaven, and the more you try to keep them the more you will find that you are unable to keep them. It only brings out the extent of the damage that has been done to you by failing to be regulated by the word of God; and even though you try to regulate yourself by it you will find you are unable to do it. So the teaching is that the law came in that sin might become exceeding sinful, showing the kind of hopelessness that is within yourself; the more you try to do it the worse off you are. God has removed the whole thing in totality in the cross “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up, that every one who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”.
Think of God giving us such a clearance that we might drink into the wonderful outshining of divine love and grace; the Son of man has taken upon Himself what was due to us, and in Him, in His own Son, God condemned sin in the flesh. He removed the man completely, altogether out of His sight. So in this gospel Jesus has a free hand, He does everything Himself, and He does it, as always, in absolute perfection; He has done it for others and He will do it for you. So He says the motivation for this begins with God. Are you conscious that you are in the presence of the manifestation of the love of God? God so loved the world! The devil says differently, he says God is against men and other nonsensical things. You go by the word of God, plain here in black and white, any can read it “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”.
Would you like life eternal? That is the gift of God. The wages of sin is death, that is what you will be paid if you go on in sin, death, but the gift of God eternal life. You would be a fool to refuse the gift; how foolish to refuse it. This scripture proves without doubt that God is for you, at the present time God is for you—“God so loved the world”—that is the extent of His love, and He gave the One dearest to Himself for it. It has been said that He judged the things He hated most, in the One He loved the most. Jesus has taken our place on the cross at Calvary, and God has made Him sin, and executed His fierce and unmitigated judgment against sin in that blessed holy Person. On the cross Jesus said, in the prophetic language of Psalm 22: 3, “thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”, and the whole matter of sin and sins was finished judicially for ever in the sight of God. When He died He bore the penalty of sin which is death; and in going into the grave the man who sinned was removed judicially. So there is nobody, from that point of view, in the sight of God but Jesus Christ Himself, the perfect Man, who wants to be your Saviour. He shed His blood, that is the price paid, that is atonement; and He went into heaven in the power of His own blood, the whole matter completed to God’s satisfaction.
Nicodemus, what are you going to do? You may be a religious person, maybe you feel that you are slightly off-mark morally besides other people, there is somebody who will pinpoint that. If your works are evil you will hate the light, but if you practise the truth you will come to the light. Are you going to begin to practise the truth tonight? What a moment it is to start practising the truth. You say, What do I do? Confess Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, that is practising the truth to begin with. You say, I really feel convicted but I do not feel equal to the presence of God; the holiness of God is causing me concern, and the judgment of God that lies ahead of me is causing me more concern, and I feel I am really in a ferment when I have to do something. What am I going to do? Listen to the word “whosoever”—practise the truth and come to the light. What an opportunity that is. “He that practises the truth comes to the light, that his works may be manifested that they have been wrought in God”. Would you like to work something in God at the moment? We would beseech you to do it, “wrought in God”, what a fine expression.
The next example, and one of the greatest examples in this gospel of a person whose works were wrought in God, is John the Baptist—he was a burning and shining light. He came to the light, and it was evident that his works were wrought in God. See the things he says about Jesus in the first chapter, and how his heart is thrilled, he says, “Behold the Lamb of God”, John 1: 29. There is such power in that expression that two disciples leave him and follow Jesus. Would to God that persons would start tonight following Jesus. You are not asked to follow men, and if anybody does that, asks you to follow a man, do not go. Follow Me, Jesus says, Follow Me.
Jesus is going through Samaria, and this woman comes out to draw water. It tells us the time she came as well. The disciples had gone away to buy provisions. It was the sixth hour—I think John gives the Roman time; that is the hour she came out of Samaria to draw water. Jesus asked her for a drink. Is that not beautiful? Jesus, God manifest in flesh, He made that water you know; no human being can make water. This blessed Man, the Word, who was with God, and who was God, Jesus, in lowly humanity, sitting at a well of Sychar, is asking this woman for a drink of water. I am sure He would set her at ease; many persons would have looked the other way, maybe felt it was very depraving to associate or even to pass the time of day with such a person. I doubt if Nicodemus would have even passed the time of day; but Jesus had come, as the hymn says,
‘Sitting, walking, talking with thee!’ (Hymn 112)
It speaks about how near He is. There is nothing to fear, you do not need to be afraid to have to do with God. Natural thoughts and ideas come into our minds as the preaching goes on which have their inception in fallen nature, that is where they come from; if you analyse and trace their influence to the source, it will be to the devil, who is the enemy of your soul.
The Lord goes on to speak to this woman about living water. She is telling Him about the well Jacob gave to them, he drank of it and his sons and his cattle. She can speak about our father Jacob and all that kind of thing, she has that kind of relations. Everybody naturally wants to make something of themselves. If there is a thief in the family they do not tell you about him, but if there is somebody who has made some progress, you will be told a lot about that, everybody would know. It is all to do with the natural pride of the heart of man. Jesus was not thinking about that. He is telling this woman, “Every one who drinks of this water shall thirst again”. What water are you drinking? What do you find your satisfaction in?
Everybody finds satisfaction in something. Life for many people is so aimless it is unreal, it is unbelievable. Do you know
where you are going and how to get there? God answers every question in His word. That line of things is a thirsty line, there is no satisfaction in it—“Every one who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever”. She had come out to draw water, which is a normal and daily call, and He takes up that question, and begins to speak to her about eternal life; speaking now about the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is wonderful what comes to us in the glad tidings, sins forgiven and the gift of the Holy Spirit; power in the soul to help you to regulate your life by the word of God, to attach you to Christ where He is in glory, and to give you an aim and an object in life, so that you will find fulfilment and satisfaction in your whole life. There is a lot said these days about fulfilment, job satisfaction, all these things; but this matter of your soul finding its rest and satisfaction in Christ is all important and essential, because apart from that there is no hope for your future whatsoever.
So Jesus goes on, He says, “the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. That is a process—“shall become”—it is springing up within the believer and leading to inward deliverance. You go through various concerns, brethren call them exercises, and you come to this point when you realise that you are a horrible, wretched man. You say, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?”, Romans 7: 24. The water has been springing up. It is not that you are not converted, it is not that you are not saved, it is not that your eternal salvation is in doubt at all, but it is that you need to get clear from this awful power of things in yourself that is hindering your progress. You are coming to a judgment of it, you are coming really to the new husband. The woman had had five husbands, none of them had afforded any satisfaction, but she comes to the new husband, that is Christ; “to be to another, who has been raised up from among the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God” (Romans 7: 4), is the divine objective. We are to be associated with Christ for ever, joined to the Lord, is what one is thinking. All that is in mind in the teaching here in this wonderful chapter.
She wants it and says, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst nor come here to draw”.
Jesus says to her, “Go, call thy husband”. Now this is what is called the moral question. It just means the difference between right and wrong. It would not be kindness for the Lord Jesus to pass by this, “Go, call thy husband”, He says, “and come here”. She has not got a husband.
He knows all about that. He can tell you all about your history, tell you things you may not even know yourself, things you may have forgotten. He knows all about it. He is not looking upon you with any condemnation. He is looking on you in grace, and love, and concern that you might respond to the appeal of His grace in the preaching.
Now she goes on to something else, she starts speaking about “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain”. I have been at this church, or I have been at that meeting, and so forth, some little family history in relation to it. Jesus says, “the hour is coming when ye shall neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth”. Are you going to be amongst them?
This is true worship—“worship the Father in spirit and truth”. Answer to God from a thankful heart, responsive to all the love and grace and service that he has extended on your behalf.
That is true worship, in spirit and truth. There is no legal liturgy, it is spirit and it is truth, it is in accord with the way God has made Himself known. Then He says, “God is a spirit; and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth”. The Father seeks such. Think of God seeking you, and seeking me, wonderful grace! He wants us to come and enjoy things with Himself as true worshippers, “the Father seeks such”. You get true worshippers I believe in Luke 15, when they are feasting on the fatted calf and enjoying the music and dancing.
May it be our portion tonight to know what salvation is, to have the blessedness of knowing Christ as our Saviour, and to be conscious that our load of guilt and sin that we have carried about with us all those years is lifted from our conscience, cleared completely and for ever.
Because if you are saved, if you belong to the “whosoever”, that is eternal; there is no such thing as being saved today and lost tomorrow, that is a false doctrine. If you come under the shelter of the blood of Christ, you are under the shelter of that blood for ever. May it be the portion of each one, and may the Lord bless the word for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Dundee
4 September 1994