Lord Himself, which sense you had in those "former days," as Paul calls them, "in which you were illuminated," when, with brightness, He first manifested Himself to you? Alas! you are saying, "Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord? What you now want is a revival, not of truth, simply -not of doctrine, but of Himself, as in those "former days" you calmly and brightly saw Him. We want Him in a three-fold sense. We want Him as He was made known to Paul, who said, "God revealed His Son in me:" according to which, Christ was in him. And we want Him, not merely as being in us down here, but as one raised and seated in heavenly places. You remember the rest this brought to your mind when you first saw yourself (the old man, the natural man) slain with Jesus, and buried with Him; and when for the first time you knew your position, raised, seated, and accepted in Him in all His acceptance, and alive with Him in His risen life: we want Him in that sense. And we want Him, thirdly, not merely as associated with Him where He now is, in heaven, but as Paul knew Him when he said, " But the Lord stood by me.” Alas! how few know Him as Paul knew Him, or as the early saints knew Him. Retrogression, more or less, has been the history of the Church in all ages: taken collectively, the Church has lost the early sense she had of Him. She has grown dead since then; and, as with the Church collectively, so with its members individually. I feel it, and you feel it; and though all truth is blessed-prophetical truth, doctrinal truth, dispensational truth, all is blessed, for all proceed from Him-still I want, and you want what Paul and the first saints had, this brighter sense not so much of truth, (in whatever form it may be,) as of Jesus Himself. Such sense of Him is from God. The same with our desires. As rivers are laid by God for the sea, as for their source: so desires for Christ, they are not only from God, but they are for God. He it is, by His Spirit, who gives the power in the soul, causing it to long for Him. Desires for Him never come unsent; they are not of the flesh-they never come from your old carnal self; it is GOD who leads you to say, “I would see Jesus." And now I want, as the Lord may enable me, to preach to you this morning-" Jesus only." You have come saying, "Jesus!I long for Jesus-I want Jesus." And surely it would be a poor thing, if asking for bread, I gave you a stone. May the Lord give me wisdom that I may present to you, in all His own loveliness, the very One whom you desire. When I say I will speak of Him to-day, why I am always speaking of Him. I hardly think anything could be said of Him than what has been said, and yet what an inexhaustible fulness is there in Him; it is ever fresh, ever new. I think if that woman had gone on and on to look for the meal, she would have discovered that the barrel had no bottom! Thus is it with Jesus: the more we want the more there seems to be. Thus, too, when we commend Him to others, if we try to speak of Him, it is an ocean without a shore, a sea which cannot be fathomed; we may reach the surface, but we cannot find the bottom; we may skirt along the shores of His grace and His glory, but no foot can ever fathom their depth. To change the figure : He is an inexhaustible treasure-house, a boundless store; and in Him you will find what you never will find in the world, even though you gain all its riches, honours, and applause—namely, perfect rest and settled peace for your soul. Where would you see Him? For is He not every where? Would you see His mind? Oh! I would bring you to the time when the thought of man was as a sweet story or a loved image in His mind, before the stars were created, before the hills had been brought forth, before He had ever broken the silence of His own immutable counsels; for there never was a time when the Church was not in the eternal counsels. Our salvation was like a lovely story, a sweet tale; it was the thought cherished by God from all eternity. It was in the salvation of man God Himself was to be revealed, as He had never before been. Hence God did not say of man, as He had said of light and other creations of His power. He did not say, "Let man be, and man was;" but He said "Let us make man in our image"-the image of what the second man, the Lord Himself, was to be, wearing man's nature, for ever and ever. Hence He loved man; and when there was none other with whom to speak, He is found speaking with Himself, saying " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." God's delight was man, in whose nature God would eternally dwell. "His delights were with the sons of men, and His rejoicings in the habitable parts of the earth." Ah, who does not see Jesus, the everlasting Jesus, in this? And when woman is to be formed, I find Him saying, "It is not good for man to be alone." In other words, it is not good for the God-man to be without His Church. In this infancy of time I find Jesus bringing out His cherished thought of our association with Him as members of His body-in other words, our oneness with Him, even as the body and head are one—that He must have us who are His body. Hence He again communes with Himself saying, "It is not good for man to be alone." It is here one sees Him, communing with Himself about her who was the type of His Church-which is His body-" members of His body, His flesh, and of His bones." And when sin came in, I see Him bringing out substitution and atonement; and because sin put away is that which constitutes the Gospel, I see Him telling man what was in His mind-" The seed of the woman shall be bruised; but He shall bruise the serpent's head." Evil had come in, and must be atoned for. I see God in this; I see Jesus in this; God rehearsing to Adam the revelation of that victorious love which He was ages hence to display on Mount Calvary. And here, in passing, I see another beautiful truth. I see that in the reception of this Gospel, man is passive. I see that righteousness, salvation, was gratefully received by him; that he "toils not, neither does he spin." God said, "The seed of the woman shall be bruised, die, that man may live." Adam is calmly passive; he has a mind simply receptive: he believes God, and, already in the energy of the truth of God, calls his wife Eve, that is, "the mother of all living." I see in this not only Adam, but Christ; not man only, but Jesus. I see the Gospel which was in the mind of God from all eternity. But where do I not see Jesus? I turn to Abel; God had respect to Abel and his offering-He had respect to Abel on the ground of the offering-that offering was Jesus; I see His accepted blood; I see that atonement is made by blood; I see that without shedding of blood there is no remission. And as evil deepens, I see, in the deluge, the righteousness of God revealed from heaven against all who obey not the Gospel; but I see a full salvation from out of that wrath, for Enoch is delivered from the wrath to come. I see how evil man in himself, in his very essence, is that God says of him, "the end of all flesh is come." God no more strives with man, for the carnal mind is enmity against God. He therefore dooms him to death, which death Christ takes upon the cross. God thus brings in Christ, saves by blood-by death, which the flesh has merited, and gives life-a new creation, not the old changed, but a new one-in a risen Christ. I see Jesus in all this. I see that ere the floodgates of wrath are poured out upon the earth, the Church, as Enoch, having life and immortality, will be caught up at Christ's coming; for, "the dead in Christ shall rise first; and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air." And now, as hitherto, we have seen salvation on the ground of sacrifice; a little further on, in the ages, we see glory coming in. "The God of glory appeared to Abraham," not as He appeared to these Greeks, the humble one, the despised one, the abased one, "the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” but as "the God of glory;" for by-and-bye this humble one is to reign, but now, for the present, we see Jesus. Where, I ask, would you see Jesus? Would you see Him in His Person as Man? He came to Adam seemingly as a man; He spoke to Adam as "a man speaketh to his friend;" and He came to Abraham as a man-talked with him as a man. You find Himhow wonderful and blessed!-eating with him and telling him, as at Mamre, of His plans as to judgment on Sodom, without much reference to His glory. Byand-bye the picture will be turned: the glory will know no bounds-the King will have put on His beauty. But all through these ages you find Him coming as a man-not as one whose manifestation brought fear and terror, as was the case on Sinai at the giving of the law, but as a guest, a friend. These are only parts of His ways; you can trace them out at your leisure everywhere in the dawn of the Word you can find Him. But the shadows which fell on these early ages, were not those of His humanity only; deep shadows of the Godhead also fell gloriously and even dreadfully around. The Lord appeared to Abraham ; |