PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD

Ron Plant

Luke 19: 37-47; Jonah 2: 7,8; Luke 15: 14-20, 25-32

I know that we have all been very affected by the disaster in the Indian Ocean this past week, and I suppose most of us have a sense of not quite knowing what to say. I think it is right to remember in our prayer those who mourn and those who are in sorrow, and I am sure that that is something which many have done. One thing we do know about it is that the event that brought it about is an evidence of the almighty power of God. No other hand could have moved the earth in relation to that, and we must bow in the presence of His greatness. The outcome of these things we have to leave. I remember reading in the book of poems about a brother whose child was killed on a railway line, and he said, ‘Who know Thy heart, O God, can trust Thy hand’ (p. 18). And sometimes in life we have express ourselves in that way – ‘I who know his heart can trust his hand’. The mighty power of God is something that should affect us all. I thought about Job after all those long chapters where he had protested his innocence and his blamelessness before God, and his friends had sought to help him and had done rather the opposite, God intervenes personally and speaks to him, and He speaks to him on the basis of His almighty power.

I do not think you can leave out the mighty power of God in creation in relation to the way that He speaks to man, because that is the way He spoke to Job. At one point where Job says, he would put his hand upon his mouth and say no more; God speaks to him very strongly and says, “Gird up now thy loins like a man”, Job 40: 7. Then He says to him, and it has always affected me, “Hast thou an arm like God?” (v 9); tremendous expression in Job! I hope the young people will look into some of the details of Job. We have been speaking about pursuing certain things, and I think that one thing you can do is to become familiar with the scriptures and the richness of the expressions you get in the books life Job. “Hast thou an arm like God?” – is it possible that the events of the past week might reach out and God’s mighty arm extend even into this room today, arrest your heart at the power and might of the God with whom we have to do? He has always spoken in creation. Romans says, “the invisible things of him are perceived … through the things that are made”, Rom. 1: 20. If you look at those references in Job you will be impressed right now as to the one “who shut up the sea with doors, when it burst forth, issuing out the womb? When I made the cloud its garment … Hast thou entered as far as the springs of the sea? and hast thou walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed unto thee”, Job 38: 8,9,16,17. All these things are brought before Job to weigh upon the spirit of this proud man because God wanted him to change his mind, He wanted to save him.

The mighty hand of God was upon Job as He sought him and He draws attention to this power in creation; and tonight He would come to you in the power of His grace because He would love to make you change your mind. Maybe you are set on a particular course of things, or it may be that you are still a sinner in your sins. Or perhaps there is someone here who has never known what it is to have a transaction with God as to their sins. You might even have been brought up in Christian fellowship, you might have known and had the truth ringing in your ears for most of your life and yet never have known what it is to have a transaction with God, and time is slipping away. We sang that in our hymn:

Night is gath’ring quickly (Hymn 154)

I know there are brethren here who would say to me that what comes into the gospel is much stronger than changing your mind, but I want to just stay with that tonight. Perhaps you are on a course in opposition to God, and I believe that the glad tidings would come and speak to each one of us, that we might be prepared to change our mind. We are not speaking here in the gospel about the direct application of His mighty power, that is the background to this week, but the direct speaking to you is God speaking in His grace. The soft persuasive words of the grace of God are coming to you tonight, and they are as powerful as what He does through these actions in creation. The grace of God will be proved to be the greatest thing there ever was in the universe, the most powerful thing there ever was.

We read this morning in the house of the time at the end of the Lord’s life, in the house in John 13 where they shared that supper together, and the feet-washing that followed. The section we read about was where John leans upon the breast of Jesus to ask Him who it was who would deliver Him up and the Lord confides a secret to him as to who would betray Him, and He says, “He it is to whom I, after I have dipped the morsel, give it” (v 26). We were speaking about that for a little while. The morsel apparently was the best part of that meal, the Lord took it up and in the kindness of His heart He extended it to Judas. There you had a man who was already set upon betraying the Lord of glory, one who had companied with Him, who prophetically the Lord could speak about. He says, “For it is not an enemy … then could I have borne it … a man mine equal, mine intimate, my familiar friend …”, Ps 55: 12,13. Can you think of the Lord Jesus at that supper of those that He loved, when He had taken all their feet in His hands, and I do believe He would have washed Judas’ feet (because it says, when He had washed their feet (see John 13: 12)), then He extended the best part of the meal to Judas in the kindness of His love because even then he might change his mind. What a thing the gospel is, that even to a man who has set upon betraying him, the Lord Jesus in His grace at that time could extend such kindness to him. Think of man today who has turned away, and perhaps you have turned away, and perhaps many times the glad tidings message has come to you and you have spurned it. You may even in your conduct and in your ways be occupied in that which is dishonourable to Christ, I do not know. I do not know anyone here to that degree. But it may be that there is someone here who has gone to that extent, and he knows about it all. How those words should have convicted Judas as he was there when the Lord Jesus was washing their feet gently says to Peter, “ye are clean, but not all”, John 13: 10. Think of the feelings of the Lord Jesus towards you, even today, as He would say to you that the very best He has He has for you. He wants you to change your mind. It may be that you have had to do with Him long ago in relation to your sins, but I believe the gospel is not just for persons who do not know Christ, it is for all of us, because anyone who says they do not need the gospel after they believe does not know themselves. Very often we can in our Christian lives go on a course of incredible hardness, and you are determined that nothing is going to move you from it, and only the gospel can break you down. Perhaps there is someone here like that in these last days, before the quickly gathering night gathers completely. You can see it outside, you can still see a glimmering of the day, and that is like the gospel day. It may be tonight for the last time it comes to you, and He would extend the infinite goodness and blessedness of His grace to you. What does it say of Judas? As we noted this morning, instead of a change of mind it says Satan entered into his heart, and you almost get a picture of a man who goes out from the room almost seething with indignation. Satan had entered into his heart (see John 13: 27), and he goes out on that dreadful course that would lead to the betrayal of Christ. Beloved friend, he goes out and Judas becomes one of the very few persons in scripture of whom we could say, they are lost for ever. Very sad thing. I wonder if anyone here needs to change their mind. I wonder if just for a moment you could allow the blessedness of the appeal of Christ just to come into your circumstances and your life, and allow it to bathe your heart with its goodness, and to change your mind in relation to whatever it is before God that you need to change.

I read in Luke. I have always been affected by this section of the gospel. I have referred to it before. It is at the end of the Lord’s service in Luke’s gospel. You can trace His footsteps in Luke. This was the houseless, homeless Stranger, at the end of His journey of love, and He is coming back to Jerusalem for the last time. His life was coming to an end, and He was coming back to Jerusalem for the last time. His life was coming to an end, and He was coming back to Jerusalem for the last time. I understand from the geography of Jerusalem that the mount of Olives lies at the back, it looms over the city, and here you can see this description. He comes to the descent of the mount of Olives and He comes down the slope of the hill and there is Jerusalem before Him, and He stops, and then it says, “he wept over it”. Is that not affecting? You think of all the appeal there had been in Luke’s gospel, and particularly the appeal there had been to this city, and all the love that had been extended by Jesus, and all the sufferings that He had known, and all the way that He had been amongst them, and the way that He had been in their houses and He had healed the sick and He had raised the dead, had felt all their sorrows. The expenditure of divine love had been total in Jesus in Luke’s gospel. Now He is coming down to Jerusalem and He stops and He weeps over the city because they would not change their mind. It is a very sad thing. Beloved friend, I wonder if there is anyone here who is taking up an intransigent position. I know nothing of you, I can honestly say that, but it may be you are determined that you will shut your heart to the claims of God. It may be that you would shut out everything as far as the gospel is concerned, or it may be that in your life in some way there is something that is keeping you away from God, and we all know how strong things can be. Yet the grace of Christ would be bathing your heart tonight. He weeps over it. He says, “If thou hadst known, even thou, even at least in this thy day, the things that are for thy peace”. What wonderful words they are, the wonderful words that come out in the glad tidings upon you. The same God who has all the mighty power in His hand that we have spoken of and yet in Jesus there is the speaking in love in grace towards man, and tonight I believe it is towards you. He says, “If thou hadst known, even thou, even at least in this thy day”. Now this is your day, you will never have another. Sometimes we may look wistfully at the past and wonder about how things were then and whether things were better, and so on, but you did not live then, you are living today. Today is your day, and today is the day when the Lord Jesus in all the appeal of His love would express His feelings in relation to you. He was going into Jerusalem to die. He was going into that city that hated Him. He said, “They hated me without a cause”, John 15: 25. He was going into that city to be taken by the hands of wicked men. He was going to know the travesty of that awful trial. He was going to know the loneliness of total isolation when all forsook Him and fled. The brethren know I love Mr Darby’s poems, and he says of that time:

No eye was found to pity,

No heart to bear Thy woe,

But shame, and scorn, and spitting;

None cared Thy Name to know. (Hymn 190)

And He is that same Saviour on that last journey into Jerusalem, and He stops and weeps over people like you and me. He says, “If thou hadst known, even thou, even at least in this thy day, the things that are for thy peace”. What a thing it will be if you miss the things that are for your peace; if you miss, first of all, the knowledge of your sins being met through His precious work, if you miss the blessedness of what He can be to you as a Saviour and a Shepherd and a Friend and a Prophet, Priest and King, as the hymn-writer says:

Our Lord, our Life, our Way, our End (Hymn 54)

What a wonderful Saviour is Jesus! You may say it is a very simple sort of preaching. It is very simple.

I read Luke 15 last week and I recalled an experience I had at my work some years ago when my Director called me to give me some reports. I had known him as a hard-driving man as we would say. He had found his way to the top in a fairly ruthless way and he treated people accordingly. I knew he was not very well, but I did not know that in fact he was very ill. After I had reported to him and as I was about to go he expressed to me the fact that he had faith in God and that he was a believer on the Lord Jesus Christ; and I could not take in what I was hearing. I could not understand this, and we spoke for a little while, and he explained that he was one who had been brought up in a Christian home when he was a boy and he had gone away from it, gone away completely and found his own way in the world, and as many men do had driven his way to the top. Some of us here know a little bit about what is required to reach some of these senior positions and the kind of things that they have to do, and the way that ruthlessness can become part of their code of life. Yet here was a man who was saying to me that he had been recalled to his faith and he was a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I could not believe what I was hearing. He knew what I was and we spoke for a while and I said we must speak again, and he said he would like to do that after he had been to the hospital the next day. By 11 o’clock the next morning he was dead. You know, these things leave a mark on you. When you speak about the treading of the pathway and you speak about experience in divine things, it is not just a question of learning everything from books, because you learn a lot of things from life. My senior colleague was away on holiday, and he came back and he called me in. He said how profoundly affected he was by this sudden death, and he said to me, Did you know, before he died he had got religion? He said that before he had gone away he said to him, while you are away I want you to read the Bible and I want you to look up Luke’s gospel chapter 15. He said, I took no notice at all and went on my holidays; and then I heard he had died and I felt before I came back that I ought to go to church. He said, I went to church and do you know what they read? Luke’s gospel, chapter 15. He said, It has profoundly affected me. These men were persons, as I say, who were tough men who had found their way in business and all the single mindedness involved; and here was an instance where, as the writer says, through the foolishness of the preaching He can save those that believe (see 1 Cor 1: 21). He can reach into the hardest heart. This world will train you to have a very hard shell about you, and you might feel that you are proof against anything that God can do, but He reserves the right to the entrance into a man’s or a woman’s soul at any time. I only mention that because perhaps we regard Luke 15 as a simple scripture, and perhaps if I had just read Luke 15 you would have thought, well, I thought he would read something a bit different from that tonight, but it is the foolishness of the preaching, it is the simplicity of the word that might touch you.

My word tonight is, He wants you to change your mind. Perhaps there is something that you are thinking, perhaps there is something you are doing, perhaps there is something, there is a little voice in you speaking to you and maybe it is conscience. The love of Christ is appealing to you. The first thing is be sure you are right with God about your sins. You boys and girls here, you children here, if you are old enough to understand what I say, it is a truth that you have to learn that sin is upon you. It is not exactly initially because of what you have done, but because of the nature and condition that you are in as a man, or a boy, or a girl here in this human condition, born in sin. The form of it is there and very quickly you become a sinner too in practice, and God has an issue with the sinner. God has provided the answer to your sin and your sins in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary, God’s Son. God has provided the answer in Jesus to everything you will ever need. I wonder if you could simply believe that tonight. I wonder if you could. He wants you to know what it is to have a Saviour tonight. These things are very precious.

I read about Jonah because he was a man who knew God, and he was a man who did not like what God had indicated to him. He did not like what he had been told to do and he ran away from God. Have you ever done that? Have you ever run away from Him? “Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah; and he went down to Joppa”, Jonah 1: 3. Very striking, if you read this chapter and trace the course of Jonah’s history, you will see it is all downward. He went down to Joppa, he went down into the ship, and so it goes on all the way through the chapter because the course of a man, or a woman, in opposition to God is downwards. You might say the world in which we live is one in which man is going upwards, in his knowledge, in his technology, in his brilliance, in his medical research, now they even think that they have the possibility of cloning human life. You wonder how far things will be allowed to go; you do. All these things represent the brilliance of man’s mind. But go and ask the man in the street whether man morally is going up or going down. You will find he is going down. And you and I are part of that, and only God can arrest it, but He wants to come into the course of your life and change your mind; and He wanted to change Jonah’s mind and He was going to do it. He goes down into the ship. The children know the story of Jonah, how the sailors thought the storm was upon them because it was unlucky to have Jonah in the boat, and how they cast him into the sea, and how the great fish was prepared by God to swallow up Jonah. This story persists even today that Jonah represents something that is unlucky. That is how it persists. What the believer knows is that Jonah represents a man in whom God was working, and the storm and the fish were prepared by God in order that Jonah’s mind might be changed; and here in the belly of the great fish in the ocean you get these remarkable words, his prayer, and this one verse I have noticed before says, “They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy”. Beloved, life is full of vanities. One of the greatest vanities of all is that your own will and mind, and man’s mind, generally knows better than God and that you are better able to plan for your own future and your own way than God; and that you are better able to plan your own future and your own way than God could ever plan a way for you. It is the greatest vanity of all. We had a brother once, a preacher, who said to us, If you plan to please yourself then you have chosen the hardest taskmaster you will ever find, because you will never please yourself, never. Jonah goes all this way down into the belly of the great fish, and he says, If you pursue lying vanities you are missing out on mercy. He changed his mind. If you pursue the things that belong to man and the mind of man, then you forsake your own mercy, and the mercy of God is towards mankind at the present time. I wonder if that is something that affects you and appeals to you, because this is Jonah here and God went to great lengths with him to change his mind.

I read the final scripture in Luke 15, I have often been affected by it and I would like to finish with it because it is a very beautiful section and you should read it all. It represents, as we have been taught, not exactly man’s wilfulness in straying away from God, but the loss that God feels because He has lost His creature. He feels it. It says, “What man of you having a hundred sheep, and having lost one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost” (v 4). Very affecting. It is not stressing here man’s responsibility exactly, in the early part anyway, it is not stressing exactly man’s sinnership, it is emphasising feelings of the blessed God that something that He treasured and valued is for the moment lost to Him, and He expends all that He has to go and find it. What a lovely chapter it is. Heaven is waiting for the sinner to come back, and the angels in heaven. We were speaking about that earlier in the house. What great beings angels are. You know the angels were there at the creation of the earth, “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38: 7), the angels were there. When Jesus came in, the angels were there and the multitude of the heavenly host; and the angels were there when Jesus goes into death and in His resurrection. You can read that in the gospel, they go into the tomb and there is an angel sitting there, and it says, “his look was as lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled” (Matt 28: 3,4); the greatness of the angel is there. You will find them in Revelation, you will find them when it comes to the opening of the great seals of the book of God’s judgments, you will find the angels there in relation to that. What a wonderful thing it is that such great beings are rejoicing in heaven because one sinner comes back to God. What a thing that is. Then there is joy in heaven at the fact that one repenting sinner comes back to God. The heavens is a mighty thought. You have the atmosphere, heaven you can see around you, and you have the heavens where the planets are, you have the heaven where the angels dwell, you have the heaven where God dwells, you have the thought of the third heaven, you have the glory of the One who went beyond all the heavens, and here in this chapter you have heaven, this mighty thought, rejoicing because one repenting sinner comes back to God. Have you thought of that? Have you thought that these mighty beings and heaven itself could be affected by you today if you change your mind. This younger son did that. In a far country God brings him to a point where he changes his mind. Now you will say to me, it involves repentance, and of course it involves repentance. Luke 15 several times refers to repentance, but the first step of it I think is where God’s wonderful grace works with you to change your mind.

Beloved friend, I just leave these thoughts with you, along with that solemn warning of the older son who would not change his mind. It says of him that he, “would not go in”, and the father comes out and beseeches him. You may say, all the love of God is in the beseeching of the father for his older son, and maybe it is for you. The man’s refusal to go in is not the last word in Luke 15. The last word of the father’s beseeching; and the last word of this preaching, beloved, is not what you may say or think; the last word as you go out of the door is the word of Him who is beseeching you that you might change your mind.

May you know what it is to come into the love of God in the Lord Jesus Christ and accept the blessedness of His finished work in relation to your sins, and accept him as the One who is your Saviour, your Shepherd, your Friend, you Prophet, your Priest, your King, in relation to all of your life and everything in it, for His Name’s sake.

 

EAST FINCHLEY

8 January 2005