THE LORD JESUS PRESENTING HIMSELF LIVING
J. D. Gray
This scripture came to me in giving thanks for the emblems, “to whom also he presented himself living, after he had suffered, with many proofs; being seen by them during forty days”. In chapter 16 of Luke’s gospel there was a rich man and there was a poor man called Lazarus. I do not think it gives the rich man’s name—but they died. The scripture draws aside the curtain for us to see that there is another world. What it shows us is that Lazarus is in the enjoyment of Abraham’s bosom; that sphere for us would be heavenly things. The rich man was in torment and there was a chasm fixed. That is a position that is fixed, eternity brings in fixity. None of us is in the position of fixity yet. It is conveyed through the rich man that there is no way to come and go between those two places. He is concerned about his brothers who are still alive, and he appeals to Abraham that someone raised from among the dead might visit them and tell them of what is behind the curtain of death, you might say—
Another world, the unseen world where persons that are Christ’s enjoy the presence of the Lord. Persons that are not Christ’s do not enjoy that presence, they are left with their guilty conscience. So the word comes to him, “not even if one rise from among the dead will they be persuaded”, Luke 16: 31.
I am about to speak to you about a Person whom came back from among the dead—the Lord Jesus Christ. But He was not presented to the world. You might say, ‘why was He not?’.
They would not have believed anyway; that is what Abraham says to the rich man, “not even if one rise from among the dead will they be persuaded”. Here is a blessed Man who has come back from among the dead; the Lord Jesus Christ after He had suffered was raised from the dead.
He does not go into Jerusalem to preach again. Those days are finished, the days of the Son of Man are therefore finished, but He seeks out companionship. I am speaking actually of what happened. He sought out companionship, and that companionship was in persons who had formed a link with Him in the days of His flesh, “But ye are they who have persevered with me in my temptations”, Luke 22: 28. He sought out sympathetic persons; that was the divine intent. How could He present Himself to the world again when they had rejected Him.
He could not present Himself to the Jewish nation again without repentance. He took up the matter of sin and sins before a holy God; He was lifted up, men lifted Him up out of the earth.
He did not die on the earth, He glorified God on the earth; but He was lifted up out of the earth and He died on that cross. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, He was made sin, the transaction in which God was involved. “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”, John 3: 16. Consider the preciousness of the place that Christ came into; in coming into manhood, He came into the Father’s bosom, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”, John 1: 18. Was that disturbed in the forsaking? I think it was. Now you can think about that yourself. But that precious link that was there was broken for the time being, communion was broken. In the first three hours on the cross He could say,
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23: 34. They could taunt the Lord by saying, “save thyself”. One of the malefactors on the cross said, “save thyself and us”, Luke 23: 39. Christ could not save Himself. He was held there in relation to divine counsel. He had the sin question to undertake and that blessed, holy communion that was known between the Father and the Son for the meantime was broken in the forsaking. Who can fathom these things? God was prepared to yield that blessed One, His Son, in view of the matters that pertain to fallen man, and pertain to sin having come into the universe, being settled, because the new
heavens and the new earth are a sphere where sin is not, where there is no vestige of sin. At present even the heavens are not pure in His sight. So that the work of Christ on the cross in the forsaking exhausted the wrath of God; the wrath from heaven was upon the head of the Lord Jesus. When He comes into this section of scripture, that is behind Him. He had said,
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, John 2: 19. So you have a Man who is out of death, but He does not present Himself to the world. How could He? He was rejected of man, rejected of the nation. When He comes the next time, that is at His second coming. He will come without having to say to sin for salvation (Hebrews 9: 28). He will come to those who look for Him.
Here He comes and finds persons gathered together who love Him. Not only does He do that, He goes after them to find them too. In Luke’s gospel the Lord Jesus goes after the two on the way to Emmaus. He also goes after Peter, a man who denied Him, and He speaks with him in private (Luke 24: 34); we do not know what He said to him, but we know Peter was restored.
Here He gathers with His own. He had in mind that He should be testified to in the world, not by Himself coming immediately, but through persons who are witnesses of Himself, persons who had seen and heard Him after He arose from among the dead. How remarkable these forty days were when there was a Man out of death. To prove the reality of His being out of death, Luke tells us, He took of food and ate it before them. He did not require to do that for His sustenance because He was in a spiritual body, but He did it in regard to the weakness of their faith, to prove that as out of death, He was a real Man. It says, “ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth”. The name of this blessed Man and His fame, what He had undertaken on the cross would be preached in the whole world. He was not doing it personally, but He was doing it through persons. Think of the harvest that has been brought in through the outgoing of the glad tidings; this is the beginning of it, “... he presented himself living”, a real living Man.
He came in and went out among them in those forty days. John says in his epistle, “and the life has been manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and report to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us”. I have no doubt something of that was see in His life here, but the Lord Jesus said, “But I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened until it shall have been accomplished!”, Luke 12: 50. In the forty days there was a demonstration of a character of life that was eternal life. These dear brethren gathered in the upper room after His departure. They were Jews. Their thoughts of eternal life up to this point, I think, lay in relation to the world to come when Christ would rule; life on earth, that sort of life—that was Israel’s hope. Israel’s hope in the Messiah was that He would come and set up His kingdom here and deliver the people from the bondage of the Roman Empire, but the Lord had more in mind for them than that. Luke is concerned that we should grasp hold of His manifestation to them in the Acts, he writes to a man called Theophilus, and tells us that the apostles and others had an extended period of forty days when the Lord Jesus came in and went out among them. John tells us, in 1 John 1: 2, there was a manifestation of life, that was eternal life, and it was not related to this earth, and that is what is before the Christian.
The persons to whom the Lord came after His resurrection, if I may say so, were persons who had an established relationship with Him. It says in Isaiah 53, “by his knowledge shall my righteous servant instruct many in righteousness; and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53: 11). The note says there, ‘‘the many’, i.e. those that are in relationship with him’. That is the persons to whom He manifests Himself, not to the world, but to persons who are in relationship with Him, persons in whom there is repentance. In the beginning of the Acts, the preachings had in mind to bring about conviction and repentance and it was secured in many, they were added to the assembly. Peter even says that if the nation had repented, Christ would have come again at that time; but they rejected Him, they did not accept Him, so He did not come back. He is going to come back as Judge at the appearing, but in the meantime He has in mind that believers in Himself should come into the blessings of eternal life now.
So how do we come into that, how did it come down to us? John says here, “we report to you, that ye also may have fellowship with us”, that is with the apostles. But he said something more than that, “and our fellowship is indeed with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ”.
That is distinctive to the apostles. I think it was the fellowship that they enjoyed especially in the forty days, convinced as to a Man out of death, and that Man introducing them into a realm of life that was out of death. What a thing the Lord did in those days, helping them to become habituated to His presence and to have an understanding of what it was for Him to be there, no longer in flesh and blood condition, but to be there in a spiritual body, coming in and going out amongst them through closed doors. Who can fathom that? We accept it by faith. We accept it by the report that these things happened and that they enjoyed a sphere of life that he calls here “the eternal life”; that is not a person but it was seen in a Person, “which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us”. I think that was manifested particularly in those days. John says, “our fellowship is indeed with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ”, but he wants us to understand “that ye also may have fellowship with us”. That is a wonderful thing to think about. That is Christian fellowship.
Can you find that anywhere in the world, is there any brotherhood of men, or fellowship, that relates to a Man in heaven? That relates to contact with persons who walked here in those forty days with a Man who was no longer in flesh and blood condition, a Man who was out of death.
Could you ever find another fellowship like that, dear friend? It is not only the gospel of relief, blessed gospel it is, that Christ died for our sins, and my sins are forgiven, but having a relationship with Him I come into the blessing of what these persons came into in Acts 1, where the Lord says to them, “and, being assembled with them, commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to await the promise of the Father, which said he ye have heard of me”. Then, further down, verse 8, “but ye will receive power, the Holy Spirit having come upon you, and ye shall be my witnesses”, Acts 1: 8.
That was true, these persons were gathered together in the upper room and received the gift of the Holy Spirit, but there was more than that. That blessed Person, the Holy Spirit, was going to remain here on the earth until Christ should come again. These persons who received the gift of the Holy Spirit, those one hundred and twenty, have all gone, they have gone to be with Christ; but the testimony has remained. How did you come into fellowship, how did you come to Christ as your Saviour? We came into it through the report of the glad tidings. Where did you see the expression of Christian life? You and I have to say that we saw it in persons.
The principle of witness has come down the dispensation, “ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth”. We do not take away the distinctiveness of the initial witness, as John speaks of, “that which was from the beginning”, that is the beginning of Christ’s history here, the beginning of Christianity (not the beginning of John 1 when divine Persons were alone). It says, “after he had suffered, with many proofs”. He convinced them as to Himself.
What has affected me as leading a Christian life here is the proofs of divine workmanship in persons. I was struck in giving thanks by the fact that, as the Lord comes amongst us, there is a wealth of divine workmanship in the saints that is released at the touch of His hand, the touch of the One whom we know as Head. There is an organic link there that releases that precious substance in relation to Himself. I think Christians become the many proofs at the present time of the verity of the work of God and the results of the work of Christ. The testimony remains and you and I come into that and are affected by it. Here are persons whose lives have been changed. What changed their lives? Reformation? New Year resolutions are hopeless. Man’s human morality is hopeless. What changed their lives? What changed their lives was conversion.
Thank God that you have been converted, friend, that you have come to Christ as your Saviour and Lord, and have come into contact with Him and know the blessedness of being part of the body of Christ. Take account of believers, not only amongst ourselves, but believers that belong to Jesus, come in contact with them and you find that you have a link there, in the Spirit, and belong to the same body. What a testimony it is to the fact of what the Lord says, “to whom also he presented himself living, after he had suffered, with many proofs”; we come into the proofs, it has come down the dispensations, one witness after another witness, their generation passing on, not just by word of mouth, but in the power of the Holy Spirit who remains here and will remain until Christ comes. Christians, generation after generation fill out their day, and go to be with Christ, but the Spirit remains, what a thing that is. The Lord said that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit remains and remains to bear witness to Christ in glory, and it is seen in the lives of persons. I know what we are doing just now is proclaiming the word, speaking from scripture and that is right, but it is expressed in the lives of persons. What a poor thing it would be just to speak about scripture as a theology, and no expression of divine workmanship in me or in you and no change in our lives.
The verity of the work of God and the work of Christ in the soul, and the verity of new birth is that there is some result in the believer’s soul: in the souls of men and women, and boys and girls. Persons can see that there is something different about them. There is a way of life that is brought into the view of men and women, that is really the life of the blessed Man that was rejected, but is displayed now in human beings in a path that is akin to the path He trod. There are believers on the same path, working out their daily toils, their daily manner of life, how they express themselves, how they bear themselves through the toils of life. People say, What is it? It is a link with a Man in heaven. What a thing to have been brought into such a circle, “that ye also may have fellowship with us”, there is no other fellowship to be compared to the Christian fellowship. It says, “he presented himself living”, He has never ceased to do that, He still presents Himself living. The Lord’s supper is a special time for the manifestation of Himself living. The prayer meeting is also an occasion where you have a sense of the presence of the living God, and persons whose lives are bound up with that living God. The ministry meeting and the reading meetings are the same. It is not a theological discussion on the Bible that persons can have, but it is a speaking over things with a sense of and waiting on divine activity; conscious not only of a link with one another but knowing that the Holy Spirit is active in persons. That is the life of the believer. He has a link with a Man in heaven, he has the gift of the Holy Spirit, he has a bond with other believers, knows the joys of a fellowship, and he knows the pleasures of eternal life before the final day comes. It is also held out to the believer in the epistle to the Romans, “and the end eternal life”, Romans 6: 22. That is wonderful, but John says the test is that you can know something of it now.
Why not go in for this kind of life, dear brethren? Why not arrange our lives as we are capable of it in the scene of time and testimony, to make way for entering into the joys of an atmosphere and a place, where for a time the pressures of death can be lifted from the human spirit. What a thing that is! Especially in the service of God, for a time, you can prove that in the reality of it, the pressures of death are lifted
from the spirit and you are refreshed; I know we come back into that area. It is the same when we are gathered together in the week day, pressures of business upon the brethren are real, but where sacrifice is made to be in the area of the fellowship that John speaks about, “that ye also may have fellowship with us”, for a time you are in an atmosphere where those pressures can be lifted and you can prove the blessedness of the reality of a link with the Man in glory.
May the Lord just encourage us with these few words, for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Kirkcaldy
1 June 2008