It would
be a very wonderful thing if we could spend some time in
seeing God's line right from the beginning up to Christ.
There were many generations which came to an end, and in
one place there is a large summary of what came and what
finished. It says 'So-and-so lived, for so long, and he
died.' That is said about a long list of people - they
lived and then they died. However, right through there is
one line that is the living line, continuing straight
through history up to Christ. You can follow that line
quite clearly, although, at times, it seemed to go
underground.
At a
certain point in that movement of God, we find ourselves
in the presence of His beginning with Israel. It has
moved from individuals to the point where the nation
comes into view. Up to then the movement had been with
individuals - Abel, Enoch, Noah. Then, when it reached
Abraham the nation came on the horizon, that is, the
Israel of history, of this earth.
We are
going to note how God began with Israel, and how the
principle of that beginning is transferred to the new,
heavenly Israel in Christ. It is very impressive to find
that the beginning of the first Israel is in the New
Testament, in the Book of the Acts. Note that, for it is
a significant thing. The Book of the Acts is the link
between the old and the new: the focal point of the
transition from the one to the other is there.
Interestingly enough, it is in the discourse of the
martyr, Stephen. The new Israel received a great impetus
by his death.
The
first thing that Stephen said to the old Israel was: "The
God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he
was in Mesopotamia" (Acts 7:2).... "The
God of glory appeared." That was the first
movement toward the old Israel, and that is exactly the
first movement toward the new Israel: and we find that
beginning in the New Testament.
We turn
again to the Gospel by John: "In the beginning
was the Word... and the Word became flesh and tabernacled
among us": now note! "and we beheld his
glory" (John 1:1-14 - R.V. margin). Then turn
again to the Letter to the Hebrews: "God... hath
at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son... the
effulgence of his glory" (Hebrews 1:1-3)...
"The God of glory appeared... and hath at the end of
these days spoken unto us in his Son... the effulgence of
his glory."
First of
all, then, God is breaking into human history. That is
how it was with the first Israel. Away there, in Ur of
the Chaldees, a pagan country with two thousand other
gods, the God of glory broke in and changed the course of
history. Thus He took His first step toward the securing
of Israel.
The
first chapter of John shows the God of glory breaking
into human history in a new way.
That, of
course, is in the Bible, both in the Old and New
Testaments, and you may have taken it in mentally,
viewing it in an objective way. But you must just take
hold of that and let it apply to you personally, because
it relates to you and to me. You and I are called by God
to be the companions of Christ in a heavenly calling and
this belongs to all of us. The very beginning of our
history as God's heavenly Israel is His intervention in
our lives. Perhaps it was just as unexpected to some of
us as it was to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees. We were
living our lives in this world, were mixed up in the
course of things here and were ruled by the god of this
world. We were just there, one in a great crowd... and
then God broke in. When God breaks into a life there is
no doubt about it. It is a turning-point in our history,
and the nature of the change is that we no longer belong
to this world. We have become members of a new Israel, of
a heavenly people with a new spiritual nature. It may not
have been with us just as it was with Abraham, but it is
essential for every one of us to know that God has
entered into our human history. In the first place it was
not something from our side, but it was from God's side.
He took the initiative, perhaps in a wonderful way, or in
a very simple way. It may belong to a moment in time, or
it may belong to days, weeks or months. However, the fact
is that God came in where we were. How did God come in?
How should we put it, if we wanted to put it into words?
Well, it says here about the old Israel: "The
God of glory appeared". Could you put it like
that in your experience?
These
words in the New Testament explain that. God came in
Jesus Christ, and in Him is the glory of God. And as we
have seen Jesus Christ, so we have come into touch with
the God of glory. In the words of the Letter to the
Hebrews: "God... hath... spoken unto us in his
son". All those who know that Jesus Christ has
come into their lives really do know that the God of
glory has come in. And so John, after saying that "the
Word became flesh and tabernacled among us", says,
"and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the Father".
And what
is the glory? John goes on to say "full of
grace and truth". You will notice that in
the New Testament grace and glory always go together. If
you want to know what is the glory of God, well, it is
the grace of God, and if you want to know what is the
grace of God, it is the glory of God. It is the glory of
God to be gracious. He glories in being gracious, and
when you know the grace of God, then you know the glory
of God. The glory of God will always come to us along the
line of grace, and so, because of grace, we shall be able
to say: "We beheld his glory".
Perhaps
you know that that word 'glory' is one of the big words
in John's Gospel. If you have never done so, I advise you
to go through the Gospel and underline that word.
(Now,
just a little word to the young Christians who have not
yet done a lot of Bible study. I had not thought of
saying this, but perhaps it will be helpful. I do not
profess to know a great deal about the Bible, indeed, I
know very little of it, but I will tell you how I started
to study it. I bought a box of coloured pencils and a new
Bible. I started first with John's Gospel and I gave a
certain colour to the same word through the Gospel. Of
course, I always put green where the word 'life' is
found! You see it all around - green speaks of life.
Wherever the word 'glory' appears I put blue - that is
the colour for heaven. I put red whenever anything to do
with the blood or the Cross appeared - and so I went on.
I had a wonderful result in the Gospel of John when I had
finished! That is only a suggestion, but I hope that you
may find it a helpful one. There are a lot more colours
than those three!)
We are
saying that 'glory' is one of John's great words, and all
the references in his Gospel to Christ's glory are
related to His super-natural person and His super-natural
power. When John wrote "We beheld his
glory" it was many years after the Lord Jesus
had come and gone. John's Gospel is one of the last books
of the New Testament. All the other Apostles had probably
gone to the Lord when John wrote it. So he was looking
back over all that history and putting his impressions
into words, and as he thought of the Lord Jesus, His
life, His work, His teaching and everything else about
Him, he summed it all up in this: "We beheld
his glory".
How did
John behold the glory of the Lord Jesus? He did so on
many occasions and by a whole series of humanly
impossible situations.
(That is
another line of study for you! Go to the Gospel by John
and see how many impossible situations you can find.)
The
Gospel is just full of impossible situations. There is
the marriage in Cana, when the wine failed. Humanly, that
is an impossible situation. Then there is Nicodemus and
what is it that he is saying? "How can a
man be born when he is old?" (John
3:4). An impossible situation! Think of the woman of
Samaria. She had tried everything to find satisfaction.
An impossible situation! And you can go right on like
that. In all these situations Jesus came in and turned
the impossible into actuality. Thus it says at the end of
the account of the marriage in Cana: "This
beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested his glory" (John 2:11). That was the
principle which governed everything. It does not always
say so in those words, but if you went back with that
woman of Samaria into the city and heard her shouting to
all the people: "Come, see a man, which told me
all things that ever I did: can this be the Christ?"
(John 4:29), you would conclude that she had beheld
His glory.
So you
go right on to Lazarus. Jesus said: "This sickness
is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son
of God may be glorified thereby" (John 11:4).
And in the difficulty being faced by the sisters, when
they could not altogether accept the fact that their
problem was going to be solved at once, and they said: "I
know that he shall rise again in the resurrection
at the last day" (John 11:24), Jesus replied: "Said
I not unto thee, that if thou believedst, thou shouldest
see the glory of God?" (John 11:40). You see,
the glory of God in Jesus Christ related to what God
could do that no one else could do. It was the
supernatural person and power of the Son of God.
That is
the glory of God: and that is why we sometimes have such
a difficulty in getting through. Perhaps you have often
been troubled because of the difficulty some soul has in
getting through to the Lord? It almost seems as though
the Lord does not want to save them. They go through
difficulties, sometimes for days, weeks or months, and
all the time they are arguing and bringing up their
problems, but nothing seems to happen. Then, at last, it
does happen and they come through. Why is that? God is
emphatically saying: 'This is going to be of Me, and
not of yourself,' No man or woman can save himself or
herself, even with all the goodwill of other people to
help. The salvation of a soul is an impossible thing but
for God, and He sees to it that it is put upon the
supernatural basis. He very often does not come in until
we have come to the point of despair - but He does come
in then.
And what
is true about salvation is so often true about our
spiritual history. Again and again we are brought to the
point where situations are quite impossible where man is
concerned. We find we cannot solve that problem
ourselves, or change that situation. If we were people of
this world we might be able to do it, but somehow or
other, because we are the Lord's people, it just does not
work. All our cleverness fails. Naturally there is no
reason why we should not get on, but the fact is that we
just do not. We try everything and are greatly perplexed.
We are being brought more and more to despair, and
finally to the point where we say: 'Well, only the Lord
can do this!' - and that is exactly what the Lord has
been working for. When the God of glory appears, He
appears as the God of glory. Do you see the point? Well,
I said that the word 'glory' in John's Gospel is
connected with the supernatural power of Jesus Christ,
and we can only learn who Jesus is by coming up against
situations in which He is the only one who can help us.
The more we go on to learn about the Lord Jesus the more
impossible will life be, and situations become, on this
earth.
That is
the beginning of the God of glory.
Note the
next thing: God's glory in Abraham reached its climax in
sonship. There were many things in the life of Abraham
when the God of glory needed to come in and so we read
that in different situations 'the Lord appeared unto
Abraham'. However, the peak of all God's appearances to
Abraham was in connection with Isaac - that is, it was
bound up with this matter of sonship. The covenant of God
with Abraham was going to be realized along the line of
sonship, and all God's purposes in him were bound up with
Isaac. Of course, at the beginning Isaac was an
impossibility, but at the end he was a still greater
impossibility - "Take now thy son, thine only
son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, ... and offer him
there for a burnt offering" (Genesis 22:2). All
the promise and covenant are wrapped up in Isaac, who is
to be slain with a knife. This is an impossible
situation! Isaac to die? There is no possibility of
another Isaac, indeed, I doubt whether Abraham would have
wanted another. It was a matter of life or death to him
and is a quite impossible situation if Isaac lies dead on
the altar. But you know what happened! And you know what
the New Testament says about that: "Accounting
that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from
whence he did also in a parable receive him back" (Hebrews
11:19).
Has
anyone but God ever raised someone from the dead? Man can
do a great deal in prolonging life, and he thinks he will
reach the time when he will raise the dead. Well, we have
not reached that time yet, and we shall see whether God
will surrender His own one prerogative - that is, to
bring back a departed spirit into a dead body. That is
God's act and is resurrection and not resuscitation.
I was
saying that the glory of God reached its climax in
Abraham's case along the line of sonship. Later on we
shall have to look at this more closely in connection
with Lazarus, but let us come back to our beginning.
We turn
to John again - "We beheld his glory". How
do we behold His glory? "He came unto his
own, and his own received him not. But as many as
received him, to them gave he power to become sons of
God" (John 1:12 - A.V.) - He gave them the
authority to be sons. That is our history. We are able to
say: 'By God's intervention I am a child of God.' Then
you notice how John analyzes this: "which were
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13). We are
children of God by His intervention and by a direct act
on His part. We are born from above and are made children
of God. The glory of God is revealed in Jesus Christ in
sonship.
Are you
glorying in the fact that you are a born again child of
God?
This
same John, many years later, wrote these words, with a
very full heart: "Beloved, now are we children of
God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We
know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like
him; for we shall see him even as he is" (I John
3:2). And connected with that, John said: "Behold,
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called children of God" (I
John 3:1).
It is a
wonderful thing to be a child of God! John said so, and
he knew what he was talking about.
The
glory, then, is in sonship. And it is at that point that
Israel comes into view: Abraham's seed through Isaac. It
is the nation that is coming into view and, as we have
said, God said to Pharaoh: 'Let my son go.' That word
'son' was a comprehensive word, meaning the whole nation.
God saw that nation as one son and would not surrender
one fragment, because sonship is such a complete thing.
Pharaoh said 'Well, let the men go. Leave the women and
children and the flocks and herds'. but Moses said: 'Not
one single hoof of one single animal shall be left
behind.' God had said 'My son', and that included the
nation.