Luke 3: 21 - 22
1 Peter 2: 2 from “desire earnestly”- 4, 7 to “preciousness”
1 Chronicles 11: 1 - 3 to “to Hebron”; 12: 18 - to “helps thee”
Acts 3: 1 - 8
We spoke in the reading just now about the way in which God’s love is the operative power in the divine realm. What I have in mind to speak to you about in this meeting is what brings about a response in our hearts to that love, and by that what I have in mind is the personal attractiveness of the Lord Jesus.
I would like to speak first of all about how attractive He is to His Father. That is why I have read in Luke 3. We often say that the Lord Jesus is the Centre of God’s universe, and that is true. Eternity will all be centred in that blessed One. We shall never see the Father except as we shall see Him in Jesus. Everything that God has done He has done in that blessed Person. He is the Centre of God’s universe. Then I have to test myself, ’Is He the Centre of my life?’. I believe in Him. I have grown up believing in Him. I have grown up saying ’Yes’ in answer to those who asked me, ’Do you love the Lord Jesus?’. And I do, but then I ask myself, ’Is He the Centre of my life?’. That is a more difficult question to answer than, ’Do you love the Lord Jesus?’. It seems to me that being able to answer the question ‘Is He the Centre of my life?’ depends on how attractive He is to me. Mr Raven used to speak a lot in his ministry about how the solar system is an example of what we mean when we speak in this way, see eg vol 2 p43. The sun is not just the centre of the solar system. Everything else in the solar system revolves round it and is tied to it, in this case by the invisible force called gravity which keeps everything in its place. Mr Raven used that analogy very effectively in speaking of Christ as the Sun and Centre of God’s universe. I find it very blessed, but I have to ask myself, ‘Am I revolving round that Sun? Am I attracted to Him?’. Gravity is an attractive force. The young people will have learned about this in physics - if you put two masses near each other, there is an attractive force of gravity. That is how gravity works. In the case of two masses that you can hold in your hand it would be a force that you could hardly measure, but with the masses of the sun and the earth it is a very powerful force. It is a force, and it works, and I have to ask myself, ’What does it mean for me? Is the Lord Jesus attractive to me?’. Well, I thank God that I can say He is, but I think that maybe you could say the same as me; He could be more attractive to me.
I wanted to start in Luke 3 where we see this blessed Man, after thirty years of obscurity, about which we know almost nothing, coming out into public service, and the Father acknowledging Him. But more than acknowledging Him, the Father expressing the preciousness in which He held that blessed One, in which He held the Lord Jesus, “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”. These words are so familiar to us, we have heard them quoted so often, but imagine what it meant for those around, because this was heard. There were other times in the Lord’s history where the Father spoke to Him and people said, ’What was that? Was it thunder?’, and someone else said, ’No, an angel must have spoken to Him’, John 12: 29. But people heard this voice, “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”. “I have found my delight”; what was the Father referring to? He was referring to the way in which He had found in Jesus all that He ever wanted from man, and He had actually found it in these thirty years about which we know virtually nothing. At the age of twelve He was able to talk about “my Father’s business”, Luke 2: 50. Even as a boy He was there for the pleasure of His Father. What a blessed Man He is to speak about. What I am speaking about is the essence of initial experience with Christ. We can never afford to lose that. We must always, I believe, have in our hearts the precious attractiveness of the Lord Jesus to the Father, and then grow in our appreciation of Him. I speak carefully and reverently, but the Father did not say this at the incarnation. Heaven was moved at the incarnation. The angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men”, Luke 2: 14. Heaven was moved when Jesus came in. But now, after thirty years of perfect manhood, precious manhood, manhood according to God and manhood pleasurable to God, the Father can say, referring to these thirty years of perfection, “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”. There is a hymn that speaks of this -
And to know the blessed secret
Of His preciousness to Thee
(Hymn 277)
I wonder, dear brethren, if we could just get a deeper sense in our hearts this afternoon of that preciousness in which the Father holds the Lord Jesus.
So Peter in his epistle speaks of coming to the Lord Jesus, desiring earnestly the pure mental milk of the word. This takes us from initial experience with Jesus as Saviour, to growing up to salvation. That does not mean to say that we grow into our eternal salvation, but as putting our trust in Christ, we grow into the experience of what it is, the practical day by day salvation of having the Lord Jesus as our Saviour, and tasting that He is good. That is a test even as I say these words, because, as a believer in the Lord Jesus, my tastes must be different from an unbeliever’s. Again I ask myself, ’What is it that interests me, what do I find myself being attracted to?’. This blessed One is so precious to the Father, and Peter speaks here, “To whom coming, a living stone”. “To whom coming” - dear friend, have you come to Jesus? Do we ever stop coming to Jesus? It is an initial thing, surely, but then it is to be a continuing experience every day of our lives, coming to Him, “To whom coming”. There He is, the Centre of God’s universe and the Centre of our lives. Oh, what a blessed, precious, attractive Man He is, “To whom coming”!
A scripture I often enjoy thinking about is Hosea 11: 4, “I drew them with bands of a man, with cords of love”. Now the context of that verse in Hosea 11 is a gospel context. What is the gospel anyway? It is the presentation of the attractiveness of Jesus, the Saviour. He “drew them”, it says. Jehovah is speaking of Israel, of course, “I drew them with bands of a man, with cords of love”. But the exercise I have, dear brethren, is that even in this meeting we might know what it is to be freshly drawn by these cords of love and bands of a man. Not just saying, ’I remember that initially when I came to put my trust in Christ’, but constantly proving the drawing power of the Lord Jesus. What a wonderful thing it is! “To whom coming, a living stone”, and then Peter says, “cast away indeed as worthless by men”. I have spoken of the preciousness and the perfection of the Lord Jesus as He was there at the side of the river Jordan coming up out of the waters of baptism, and the Father’s voice, “Thou art my beloved Son”, speaking to Him, and then these three and a half years of public service. Then, as Peter says, “cast away indeed as worthless by men”. Worthless! Did men find Jesus attractive? Some of them were impressed by some of the things He could do. Some of them were very impressed by the fact that He could feed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes. Some of them were even more impressed, these Jews at the grave of Lazarus, when He called into that tomb, “Lazarus, come forth. And the dead came forth, bound feet and hands with graveclothes”, John 11: 43, 44. But were they attracted to Him? “He came to his own, and his own received him not”, (John 1: 11); “Cast away indeed as worthless” by men. That is a terrible word, “worthless”; not worth anything. That is man’s judgment of Jesus, this blessed One whom we love and whom the Father loves, the Centre of God’s universe, the Centre of all that is worthwhile for us too; and men cast Him away indeed as worthless. He says in John 12: 32, “and I, if I be lifted up”; men did reject Him, men did crucify Him, these Roman soldiers put Him on the cross and the Jews, to whom He had come, His own, they rejected Him and crucified Him and mocked Him. But, “I, if I be lifted up … will draw all to me”. Oh the drawing power of this blessed One! I desire, dear brethren, that as I speak simply and humbly of the preciousness of Jesus, that He might become more precious to every one of us, that His personal attractiveness might shine into our hearts. It is really that which causes response to the heart of God, “cast away indeed as worthless by men, but with God chosen, precious”.
So Peter knew what he was talking about. Do you remember that time in John 6 when the disciples were going away? There had been persons who had followed Him, not the twelve but others who had followed Him, and it calls them disciples. They went away, He no longer attracted them. They no longer followed Him, “Jesus therefore said to the twelve, Will ye also go away?” Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal”, John 6: 67-68. Peter failed later, but he knew what it was to be attracted to the Lord Jesus. When he said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal”, he was expressing not only the truth; not only, you might say, a truth that stands the test of time and eternity, but he was expressing the result of his attraction to this blessed One who meant so much to him. It was in the power of love that he said that, love for Christ, and I believe that the Lord Jesus appreciated it. So as far as Peter was concerned in writing these words, he had got the gain of that experience, so that he can say where we read in verse 7, “To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”. He had said, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”. There is no-one else. The Lord is the only One who shines in all the precious perfection of His humanity. That humanity in all its holiness, in all its perfection, in all its fulness; everything that was for God’s pleasure, was there in that Man, and He laid down His life, a precious, perfect Offering for sin, “who by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God”, Heb 9: 14. How precious He was to Peter! Peter had known the bitterness of failure. Who of us has not known that? Peter had known the agony of even denying the Lord, and then weeping as the Lord turned to look at him. It was not a look of reproach; it was not a look of anger. It was a look of love, and it was that love that reached into Peter’s heart there in Pilate’s judgment hall, “And he went forth without”, it says, “and wept bitterly”, Matt 26: 75. All of that experience and many others, Peter with Him on the mountain, Peter being asked, “Will ye also go away”, all of that comes flowing into this letter of Peter’s and he says, “To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”. So what the Father thinks of Jesus is to be shared with those who love Him.
Now, I know that the Father’s appreciation of His beloved Son is unique and precious, and there is that in that relationship which the human mind can never ever penetrate into or contemplate. Yet something of the character of the Father’s appreciation of Jesus in all the personal attractiveness of His beloved Son as He was at the Jordan, and especially as He was on the cross, is to affect us. It is often said that Jesus was never more attractive to the Father than when He hung there as a precious, perfect Offering for sin. Think of what that means, the Father’s love for that blessed One, as He offered Himself a precious, perfect, spotless Offering, “To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”. Dear brethren, may the preciousness of Jesus grow in our hearts! May the link every one of us in this room has with Him grow in our hearts! In essence it is the gospel message, but I just feel it laid on me because I feel the need of it for myself. Is Jesus precious to me every hour of every day? Is He growing in preciousness? I can look back on fifty years of spiritual experience in my own life, and I would challenge myself, is Jesus growing more precious to me as the days and the years go by? That is what God has in mind for every believer, that we might be increasingly and constantly drawn in a response to the personal attractiveness of this blessed Man who is there, the Centre of His universe. Mr Raven used to speak about attraction, attachment and affection, vol 3 p68. Attraction is that power that draws you, “draw all to me”. We know that in the gospel, there is a bond which the Holy Spirit creates. You know you have it with the Lord Jesus. First of all you are attracted and then you are attached to Him, and then that love that He has for you is answered to in love which grows. As I speak about the attractiveness of the Lord Jesus, I have all three of these things in my mind. Mr Raven ministered about that, and it is very good to read it - I commend especially the address in volume 20 p217. I trust that every one here has been attracted to Christ - then attached, that bond of love which nothing can break, and then the growing of love for this blessed One.
We read in Chronicles of David. Mr James Taylor says in a very simple and beautiful statement in his ministry that David is a type of the personal attractiveness of Christ, vol 17 p390. I enjoyed that. You get these nuggets in ministry. You can read ministry in all sorts of different ways. You can pick up a book and read it right through; that is good. You can have an impression of Jesus, and then you need an index to follow it up. You follow a thought and you get a touch from it. Or you might just open a book and you get a sentence of somebody’s ministry that is living and it goes right into your heart and you say, ’I know what that means’. Ministry is living. It is good to have the books on our bookshelves, but to have ministry living in your heart is a wonderful thing. The living character of ministry that has come out over a hundred and eighty years is marvellous. Brethren sometimes say Mr Darby’s ministry is difficult to understand. Some of it is, but some of it is not. You go to the Evangelical volumes, to some of these gospel preachings, and marvel at the fulness of love and life there, feed on it, bathe your soul in it. Well, Mr Taylor said that David is a type of the personal attractiveness of my blessed Saviour. That is who I am speaking about, my Saviour and Lord. We never get away from that -
Blessed Man, and yet divine!
We rejoice as now we prove
Consciously Thy wondrous love
(Hymn 147)
“And all Israel assembled themselves to David to Hebron, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh”. That was an unusual way to put it. They could have said, ’Thou art our king’, or they could just have gone straight on to say, “Jehovah thy God said to thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel”, but they say to him, “Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh”. I suppose in the literality of it they were acknowledging that he was one of them racially, but there is far more in it than that. “Even aforetime … thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel”. Oh what a wonderfully attractive Person He is, this blessed Man that I am speaking about, and He has the power to attract a whole company round Him. We see that as these chapters unfold. So Amasai, chief of the captains, said, “Thine are we, David, And with thee, thou son of Jesse”. I have a sense of the drawing power of David as a type of the Lord Jesus, and how Israel gathered round him and declared their attachment to him. Really, what they were declaring was this attachment that they had. They were saying, ’You belong to us and we belong to you’. That is what it is. The Lord Jesus belongs to us. We can lay claim on Him. He is ours, and we belong to Him. This relationship forms the basis of everything that we enjoy in Christianity. It is what we call reciprocal, two way, going in both directions; the love of God for us and then our love. He loved us first, but then we love Him. So here these persons, Judah and all Israel, say, “Thine are we, David, And with thee, thou son of Jesse: Peace, peace be to thee! And peace be to thy helpers! For thy God helps thee”. So we have the sense now of David gathering persons round him. That is what we find in our spiritual experience. I am speaking of things that I am sure every one in this room has experienced. I feel for myself that I would like to experience it more, the power of attraction in the Lord Jesus Christ to hold my soul in relation to Him, and then as we come together, something being worked out collectively, so that He is the Centre of a circle.
I want to speak of the Christian circle. We do not find it first and then find Christ. No, we find Christ first. These persons had David as their object and then, as gathering round him, “all Israel”, could speak; “all Israel … saying, Behold we are thy bone and thy flesh”. But first of all they had gathered round him. So we do not find the Lord Jesus through the company. We look for Him and we find Him; we prove what Mr Raven meant when he talked about attraction and attachment and affection, and then we find others there.
In Acts 3 Peter and John were exemplifying the Christian circle. Think of the experience that these two men had. They were going up into the temple together, it says, at the hour of prayer. There was something demonstrated in the lives of these two men. Think of the history of John, who had known what it was to sit at table with the Lord and to be in His bosom. What a marvellous place of nearness to Jesus. That is how we are drawn. When we are drawn to Christ we do not stay where we were, we move nearer to Him. John knew what it was to be in the bosom of Jesus. We have already spoken of Peter, and they are going up together. Great things have happened. Peter had preached his first gospel preaching a little more than seven weeks after the crucifixion, after he had denied the Lord. What a denial was Peter’s in Pilate’s judgment hall, ’I do not know Him’. Think of the power of divine love. These seven weeks later he is out there on the streets of Jerusalem preaching the gospel that chapter 2 records, “And … they were pricked in heart, and said … What shall we do, brethren?”. And those who had accepted his word were baptised, “and there were added in that day about three thousand souls”, Acts 2: 37, 41. Every one of these souls was being drawn to Christ; not to Peter, to Christ, but Peter was there as a faithful exponent of the love of God in his own life. A man who seven weeks before had denied the Lord, but then he had got the benefit; he had gone through that experience. The Lord had tested him about whether he loved Him, and he was able to preach the gospel. But now he is going up into the temple with John, and this poor man was being carried. He had no power in himself, he was “being carried, whom they placed every day at the gate of the temple”. He was helpless, but then, when he asked for alms, “Peter, looking stedfastly upon him with John”. My impression is, dear brethren, that there is something very attractive about Peter and John here. Now, I do not want to be misunderstood, because what they represented was the attractiveness of their Lord and Saviour. But they do not say to him, ’Look on the Lord Jesus’. Peter says to him, “Look on us”. There is something seen in what is worked out in the hearts and souls of those who are attracted to Christ. Features of Him begin to appear in those who are attracted to Him. That is what the Christian circle is. It is marked by the characteristics of the blessed, attractive Person who is at the Centre of it. And so Peter says, “Look on us”, and this transaction takes place, “what I have, this give I to thee: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaraean rise up and walk”. Now, we can use this in the gospel, but it is not my intention to speak of it in this way, because all of us here know what it is to answer to the love of the Lord Jesus. What I had in mind was, “And leaping up he stood and walked, and entered with them into the temple”. You see, this man who was lame is now being attracted; he had to be carried, but he is now in movement, “walking, and leaping, and praising God”. Why? Well, Peter and John had come up to him. Peter had said the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaraean, and told him to “rise up and walk”. This man now had something in his heart, a link with the Sun and Centre of God’s world, and it puts him in movement. He is no longer lying at the gate of the temple. He is not just healed - it is not just that his feet and ankle bones have become strong. “And leaping up he stood and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God”. So what I have been speaking about results in praise to God. Hearts that are affected by the attractiveness of this blessed One are hearts which can worship, which can respond to the God who purposed all of this. It is a wonderful thing to come to Christ and experience this: “Was not our heart burning …?”, Luke 24: 32. This is all in the purpose of God. All that God’s heart desired, He found in Christ and He finds it in those who are attracted and attached to that blessed One.
Well, dear brethren, these are just a few very simple thoughts, but I desire that we all might be freshly attracted to this blessed Man who is the Centre of God’s universe. Not only is He the Centre, but He always will be. This is what it will be in eternity, ‘myriads raised and living’, as hymn 380 says, all with Christ as their Centre, all responding to God for ever. We can know it now, we can feel that drawing power, these bands of a man, cords of love. It is a wonderful thing that we can enjoy now in character what we shall enjoy forever. It is all in that blessed Man in all His personal attractiveness to His God and Father who has purposed that these things should be. May we just be encouraged and blessed! For His Name’s sake.
Grimsby
13th February 2011