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Christian Unity By Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones

 If we are not experiencing this great fullness as is half of us, we are not only loving ourselves, we are loving God of something of His own glory.
We are loving the Lord Jesus Christ of something of His glory.
If He has come to offer us life and life's more abundant, and we are morassic, ill, shuffling along instead of being full of life and bigger than power in the spiritual sense,
well then I say we are dishonouring His great and holy name and this glorious salvation which He has come into the world to live, to give us.
So, for all the reasons, we've got to consider this and we've been doing this.
We have found in our investigation that He does indeed give us full intellectual satisfaction.
But we are now examining and seeing the way in which He gives us also full thought satisfaction.
And I'm very concerned to emphasize this. I feel that the heart is being neglected at the present time.
It is, in other words, the case in the realm of Christianity that there is such.
The poor people out in the world are constantly trying to find satisfaction in some wild...
and we are not interested in that.
But we are interested to notice that the gospel takes up the whole map, not merely the head, but also the heart and the will.
And if the whole map is not engaged, there is something very defective in our understanding of the Christian faith.
It takes up the whole map. Thank God it does. Our image shows that as well as the teaching of the New Testament.
Now, although he has this heart and affection, he seems to, of course, see the work of the Holy Spirit.
He assumes especially to do that.
And we have seen that he does it in two main ways.
One is that as we have said, as for example, on the day of Pentecostal revolution,
he came upon the people directly and immediately.
He did the same as they were meeting together in a room, as recorded in chapter 4 of the book of the Acts of Ephesus.
He did it on many occasions.
And he has done it on many similar occasions in all of the great revival in the history of the church.
That is what is meant by revival.
It is of the sense of the Holy Ghost.
It is another practice, another art, all over the spirit of God.
And it all will lead, as it did on the day of Pentecost, to the great acceptance of God.
Praise Him, God, and rejoice.
That's one thing, but it shouldn't be another.
We must always look for that.
We must always praise Him.
And especially in days and times like these, the greatest need of all in the church today
is the need of another visitation of the Spirit in that way.
And it is the duty of all of us as Christians to be praying for this, that God may be glorified
and the church may be lifted up out of the strategy of impotence
and be a mighty power in this land and in all the lands in these present-even towns.
But it's not the other way.
The other way is what we therefore describe as more indirect.
And that is, of course, through the work that He does within us, sanctification,
production of the fruit of the Spirit.
Call it what you like, the outworking of regeneration.
The development of the life that He has implanted in us in the act of the new birth.
But, and this is the thing we are hearing at this moment,
He does this in a very particular way through the stretch of it.
That's why the strictures are being given.
The strictures are given to us in order that they may give us the full satisfaction.
And the strictures are produced by the Spirit,
and it is here heard by His enlightening of our lives,
who can enable us to understand them.
And the most direct and sure way to an experience in the genre of salvation
is to understand the teaching of the strictures.
Now, this is the point we are dealing with, and I'm trying to get outside.
We must not look so much for some direct jobs.
Joy is generally a body problem.
You get it as you understand the truth also.
The Spirit has been sent to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.
He does that in every way, but particularly through the strictures.
That's one of the reasons.
Let's never forget this.
The Gospel, the Book of Acts, the Epilogue,
they were all written to come, to sing, to establish people in the faith, and to give them jobs.
Now, we tend to forget this, of course,
because we are so accustomed to our method of the men expounding the students and preaching the Gospel.
But, of course, there were the efforts.
But there was no New Testament at all.
There had been a church before the New Testament.
The New Testament came out of the church, in a sense.
Let's never forget this.
End of the sisters, where they were given in order to help the people who were ready to leave,
for whom, because of the answers of the devil and the difficulties of life,
were constantly tending to be as God does their job,
and to be losing something of this great salvation.
That's why they were written, and especially, of course, the epistles.
But it's equally true of the Gospel also.
What else?
The method of the spirit interest.
He holds the face to face with the law of Jesus Christ.
That's the way to get God.
That's the way to get peace and heaven.
It's all in Him.
God expresses everything in Him.
And it is as we take of Him.
Don't think about what John keeps on saying.
We spend many months in dealing with the sixteenth verse of the first chapter,
where John says,
Of His fullness of all we receive, and grace upon great health.
Now that's it.
That's exactly the purpose of the whole of this scripture.
So, what we are doing is that
we are showing how we get this heart satisfaction
from Him by knowing Him,
by coming into communion with Him,
and by understanding the truth of His concerns.
Now that is the whole of it,
of the whole of it in custom,
looking unto Jesus.
We've been trying to do this,
we've looked at Him in the glory of His glory.
Rightness of God's law in the express image of God's presence.
Very difficult for us to understand such terminology that is true
in the beginning of the world,
and the world was made dark,
and the world was lost dark.
There we looked, considered,
then we considered why we ever came into the world.
Isn't it an extraordinary and amazing thing?
There is nothing that gives us as comfort and consolation
as the realization of it,
that before the very foundation of the world,
God would heal me,
and put my name down on the above of life.
If that doesn't fill you with guardians,
speak of them full of glory, what can?
That the everlasting and eternal God
knows you, knows you in a very special way,
and has set His heart from His addiction upon you.
And the second process, the great movement of service,
in order that you and I might live in a family,
but for the way in which He came into the world.
The humiliation that has involved,
the self-evident gift,
the laying of signs,
of the signs in the mark of His eternal glory.
And then we looked again,
we heard in the very very tongue,
and the likeness of sinful flesh and false sins.
We saw Him and we ended up early morning looking at Him,
as He walked about the world,
with His eye of compassion.
We saw the people shoot without a shepherd.
He never missed a case of suffering.
His disciples often did that.
Often the monsters lived with Him,
because He was starting to deal with something.
What was an individual?
That's the world's way of thinking of an individual,
a block from a platform.
Throw a bomb on them, knock them down,
that's the world.
Not He.
He had an eye of compassion.
The individual's soul encountered,
encountered some mental issues with Him.
Well, let's go on.
This is the way to get happiness and peace and joy.
Not by showing some kind of psychological services,
with different coloured lights and particular music,
and everything worked out.
That's false, that's not true.
That's direct attack on the emotions.
And it's to be discounted, it's one.
The way to have the joy of the Lord is to know the Lord.
Rejoice in the Lord, Lord, Lord of the world.
And again I say, rejoice.
It's no part of the business of preoccupy,
just more of preaching,
to give people a temporary, comfortable, happy feeling.
That's a travesty.
No word, we've got to come back to the truth.
And as you noticed in the reading at the beginning,
in the fifth chapter of the Christmas of the Hebrews,
people become unhappy in the Christian life,
as those Hebrew Christians were unhappy,
and they were very unhappy.
Why?
Well, because they have failed to apply themselves
to the truth concerning Him.
So the antidote to Mississippi's unhappiness
and rejection in the Christian life
is to look for Him.
To look for Him in the strictest.
Those directly to Him are strengthened again.
And so you are restored, looking and facing.
It is always limited.
And it is said in do this that it hurts
for so much of our heroes and our prisoners.
Well, let's go on with this.
Let's look at Him.
Here He is in the world,
and He's walking about the world,
and He sees the need and He deals with it.
But look at what He endured.
Look at what He suffered while He was here.
Are you unhappy because of something you're having to endure?
Are you unhappy because you'll be set by temptation,
or surrounded by trials and by problems and by difficulties?
These are the things that make Mississippi temptation.
If it is peace, trials, circumstances,
these are the things that are so constantly
rubbing us of our time.
But He says,
He says, the drinkers and the mortals that I should give him
shall never live.
Doesn't matter what the circumstances are.
We are not to be victims of circumstances.
He delivers us.
Shall never, no, never, as long as the world, stand.
They shall never live.
Well now.
This, you see, is partly because of what He endured and suffered
while He was here.
And that's why we are told about this.
I say again, that's why we have just told them that we have written.
There were people, you see, who said,
Ah, yes, He's eternal God,
and He's only got a kind of floaty flesh.
He's only got kind of phantom body.
He never really suffered anything at all.
Now the Russians were partly written to establish the fact
that that is heaven.
He did suffer.
He was truly made of flesh.
He really did become man.
He added men with honor to His glory,
and He lived His life in this world as a man.
Now this is most important.
There is no greater comfort and conservation
than the realization of destiny.
James reminds us very roughly and very truly
that God not only tempted no man,
but God, as He says, cannot be tempted.
It is something which is impossible.
Let no man say,
Well, He is tempted and tempted of God,
so God cannot be tempted with ease.
Neither tempted He can emit.
By definition, God cannot be tempted.
God cannot last.
There are certain things which are impossible
because He is God.
The presence of needed in the mind of God
is impossible.
It doesn't think of it.
God is life,
and He is your God knows not all.
He hates it with all intensity of His eternal being.
God cannot be tempted,
but we look at the essence of necessary.
It is as we've seen that He has been tempted
in all points,
life as we are.
You read the account of the temptations in the wilderness.
There's only a specimen,
there's only an example,
forty days and forty nights.
Not some unknowns,
but the devil himself tempting you
at his most sensitive minds,
subject to temptation,
tempting you all points,
life as we are, sin apart,
without sin.
He didn't fall into sin.
Here He is,
not the poem for ourselves,
but He has been tempted,
that He has endured this.
Now don't do this,
look at the title of it.
Again what the author of the edition of the Hebrews calls
the contradiction of sellers against each other.
And if it is for us to realise what our Lord endured,
and suppose why He was in this world.
You know we tend to read our scriptures so superficially.
We tend to forget that these are facts.
We tend to read it as textual.
But it's all so true,
it's actually little to everyone.
And here He is,
Son of God in this world.
Look at the way He was treated,
the contradiction of sellers against each other.
You find His own mother understanding you.
He has interviewed you.
You find His own brother completely misunderstanding you,
and he may be talking during a recent chapter of this Gospel
according to St. John.
We have an illustration of this.
His brother therefore said unto him,
Depart him,
and go into good care,
that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.
For there is no man that doeth anything in secret,
and he himself seeketh to be known openly.
If I do these things,
show thyself to the world.
And John adds,
For neither is it brethren to believe on me.
You're probably in trouble.
You're having a hard time.
People misunderstanding you when you're prone to you.
And you're losing the joy of your submission.
You're defeated when you're done.
You wonder whether there's anything in Christianity after all.
You're thinking of giving it up.
What's the point?
The people don't seem to be so happy.
Is it true?
Ah, these promises too.
That's what you're feeling.
That's what the devil is suggesting to you.
Well, as only one ends, as you all know,
it is the look I've given you.
Who endured such contradiction of sinners against you in his life,
in his own family, in his own home,
or even worse was to come.
Here it is,
Here it is, he's chosen twelve men,
to be specially his pupils, his deciphers,
and he's paid much attention to his kingdom,
much teaching and instruction.
He's given them some very high privileges.
He's let them into secrets,
but the wise unproven know nothing about it at all.
He's given them more knowledge and information
than all the carry seasons clients have put together.
Here they were, the inner circle.
There was a crowd following, of course,
but this was the inner circle,
and all the trouble and the care he'd taken with them.
But at the end of the three years,
when the cleanse of the enemy comes to fruition,
what I'm told is this,
they all were sucking and flapping.
He's just left the room, for safety,
completely misunderstood,
even by his own innermost circle of knowledge.
And then, of course, the stopping,
and the jeering, and the mocking of the ignorant crowd.
My dear friend,
the Son of God has experienced this,
and has endured this.
Now, you see, this is the way the descriptors
give us comfort and consolation.
Consider him that endured such contradiction of silence against himself,
lest you beware of the faith in your mind.
You have not yet resisted the blood
that strived in his sin, even.
For the end of all that return
of taking and all the rest of it was
the death upon the cross.
Now, I mustn't stay with this,
because we could so easily,
we could deliver it all.
I'm trying to give you a method, a picture,
I'm trying to show you how you are to deal with yourself
when you tend to be losing your job.
And this is the method,
looking unto Jesus, the author,
and the finisher of our faith,
who to the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, its fighting, the shame,
and is set down at the right hand at the throne of God.
Do you do this?
When you are oppressed and drowned,
when the devil tempts you to your foundations,
and when everything for the else
seems to be against me for driving you to despair,
you just leave him?
Well, if you do, you see,
it's entirely your own fault that you're miserable and unhappy.
He says, you shall never drink of the water or the wine,
you'll give in, you shall never thirst.
How do you do that?
Well, this is part of it.
You just go straight with him.
You see what he went through for you.
And you realize you're not alone.
Indeed, you realize that you've been given a very great
and a very high children.
Peter works the work in these terms.
He is telling us to be obedient,
so that we can be the masters of all fear,
not only to the good and the beautiful,
but also to the poor.
For this is saying,
well, if a man comes in toward God,
in view of grief, suffering, wrongfully,
from what glory is it if when he is under the command of God,
he shall take it patiently.
But if when he do well and suffer for it,
he take it patiently,
this is acceptable with God,
for even general to when he's called.
Because Christ also suffered for us,
leaving us an example that he should follow his steps
who lived and sinned,
neither was guide or found in his mouth,
for when he suffered, he threatened not me.
When he was revived,
if I was not again when he suffered,
he threatened not,
but committed himself to him,
the judge of righteousness.
And if you do the same,
why, whatever happens to you,
you still have a joy unspeakable and full of love.
Well, there it is.
We're clever.
But wait a minute.
We must go on.
It all ended in the death and the trust.
Here, of course, is the central theme of the Christian faith.
But I was being dearest to say,
oh yes, I know about the cross.
I was that faith.
I understand exactly what the death and the trust is.
Isn't that our agenda, isn't it?
I replied that there is to listen
to what I said once tells you,
when I shall take the wondrous cross.
You can't take the hurried glance of the cross.
It's something to be looked at,
to be contemplated,
to be merited upon for the rest of your life.
You shall fail,
and you'll begin to see its depths and heights,
its breadth, its length.
There's no end to it.
It's the most amazing thing that ever happened.
Look at it.
And the more you do listen,
the more you'll find comfort,
consolation, peace, joy.
Everything you send is needed.
Oh, you will discover this.
That He came into the world.
You know the development.
Why will we be influenced by the thinking of the secular world
that has come so much into the Church?
The death of Christ was not an accident.
That's not pacifism.
He came from Him in order to die.
He came from Satanism.
The southern man, he said,
did not come to be ministered unto,
but a minister,
and to give his life to a grand assistant for many.
The son of man must be lifted up,
even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so,
must the son of man be lifted up.
Or, as you've got it again in the assistant to the Hebrew,
we see Jesus,
who has been a little lower than the angels,
for the suffering of death,
crowned with glory and honor,
that He, by the grace of God,
should taste death for every man.
The Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world.
This was in the eternal life,
as the only way of salvation.
But the thing I emphasize to you is this,
that He has come to do.
He offered his,
you'll find it again, sir,
that he was the first captain
of the great official to the Hebrews.
Wherefore, when he cometh into the world,
he said,
Sir, if I said unto you,
there wouldest not,
but above ye, sir,
that there's me,
in firm offerings and sacrifices for sin,
though it's more pleasure,
then said I,
Lord, who I come,
in the morning of the book,
it is written on me,
to do thine will all down.
He offered, he volunteered,
and he came.
And he went and did it deliberately.
He said his things steadfastly to those who drew him.
His friends tried to dismay with him.
They warned him,
that hearers and others were waiting for him.
But here he lives,
he has come,
in order to do less.
His object in other words,
would be estimated so a ransom for many.
So God came into this world specifically,
to take your sins and mine upon him,
to bear our guilt,
to receive our punishment.
And he has done so to the full,
he has paid the penalty,
he has made full satisfaction for sin.
And our sins have truly been dealt with by him,
once and for ever.
Now forgive me, you see,
this is to the Hebrews.
Its whole object is to tell these people,
who are becoming Nazism and unhappy,
and moving back to the Jewish temple,
and all its other immemorial ritual,
like so many are doing at the present time.
Oh, that is not Roman Catholicism,
there is nothing else.
It's just the first step,
let's look for him.
He has done it once and for ever.
This is the whole argument.
This man must be a rock of all sacrifice for sins for ever,
sat down on the right hand of God.
Here is one who was able to say,
it is fish.
Are you troubled and unhappy about your sins?
Tell me,
you who haven't got the joy of submission,
you who haven't got the assurance of submission,
what more do you want?
You who find yourselves when you're on your knees,
praying to God, uncertain and troubled,
and having to spend the whole of your time
in pleading for forgiveness.
Why are you like that?
You're not meant to be like that.
The son of God came from heaven to earth,
and did all he did,
especially the death and the trials.
You know that you may never be like that again.
He has one son for ever borne the punishment of your sins.
All sins are beloved.
They've already received their punishment.
There is no further,
no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
You'll never get your salvation and assurance
by just putting it yourself and examining yourself.
Of course you can't.
There's only one way to get it.
There is therefore now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus.
The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus
has made me free from the law of sin and death,
for what the law could not do
in that it was weak in the flesh,
God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh
and poor sins, condensing in the flesh,
that the righteousness of God might be fulfilled enough
for those who walk not after the flesh,
but after the spirit.
You have no right to be visited.
You have no right to be lacking in joy
if you have not got the joy of salvation this morning
and speaking to Christians.
If you have not got the joy of salvation this morning,
there's only one reason for it.
You are deliberately listening
to the devil in rather than to the word of God.
This clearly is correct.
You need a devil to look at him from the cross
and you must ask questions.
Was he doing well?
Was it accident or was it deliberate?
If it was deliberate, why didn't he do it yet?
What was the object? What was the purpose?
Listen to what he says.
He says, I came not the cause of righteousness
but sinners to repentance.
And he says, I can't be happy because I was ill.
But he says he's telling you to cause sinners to repentance.
They that are full of no need of a physician
but they that are sick.
You are denying his speeches.
By the light of God, you are denying his speeches.
You think perhaps it is because you are such a sensitive soul,
a physicist. It's because you are ignorant,
because you don't believe in the word of God,
because you won't exercise your senses.
You have as a Christian, I say, no right to be underfunded.
You are detracting from the glory of God's salvation.
He came not only to purchase fun and forgiveness for his people.
He did it in such a way that we might know it
and might rejoice in the Lord always.
And again they say, rejoice.
Oh, you see, you won't get it by trying to word up a people.
I often watch people in the communion service.
I can see them, they're struggling and agony,
they're trying to figure something.
Don't you do that anymore.
You let him consider who he is and what he has done.
That's how you get it.
Don't try to avoid those feelings.
It's a most hateful thing to do always.
Look down to Jesus.
Look at him dying in the cross and there is something
of the depth of his will and meaning.
Very well, you see, we could all get interested in that
and try to show you the method.
Then there he is, he dies and
they take down the body, they bury it in the grave
and the world was stolen, conceited and put so used to dying.
But you and I wouldn't be here this morning if it had stopped until death.
You then begin to look at the glory of the resurrection
and it's here everywhere in the New Testament.
The Gospel is all recorded, of course it is.
There's been nothing to record but the death.
The book of Acts, what is the speech?
What is the preaching of the apostles?
He is the member of resurrection.
There were witnesses to the resurrection.
Rappers were so honest and so true
that they made it by telling their parents.
And all these apostles would have gone home
and given them to this Sabbath to the resurrection.
Peter, we are told at the beginning of the 21st chapter
in the Gospel of John,
was so miserable and so heavy as the death of our Lord,
he didn't know what to do with himself.
So typically the fisherman said, I don't appreciate it.
Because it would have been to do something to get away with it
and understood it, so he had to eat it.
The Lord didn't know what I expected.
But you remember what happened to him,
the Lord appeared, kept on appearing,
spoke to his daughter.
This law is a fact of the resurrection.
You see, there is something wrong with us, my dear friends,
and we know what it is, don't we?
It is then remaining in us.
And it's the innocence that is peace
and the lack of application.
If you and I are in the midst of the fight
of the fact of the resurrection,
we'd never be unhappy and miserable
because they were casted in.
The fact of the resurrection would be me.
World's meaning of God is endless,
it's first meaning is that God is satisfied.
That God has accepted the offering
made by his own Son.
He is indeed the Lamb of God.
He is able to bear all the sins and the scavengers.
And he's finished dying.
Dying once and forever.
Dying no more, for an enemy.
God is fully satisfied.
He was difficult for our offenses,
ready again for our justification.
And that is for us.
God is conditioned, publicly as it were,
in order that we might have the joy and the comfort
and the assurance of it all.
But you see, for us this means this.
It means, as Paul puts it in Michael and Timothy,
that he has brought life and immortality
to life through his past.
You and I need definite skeletons.
You and I need not definite,
we have cult sciences so-called which are not sciences.
We've now, he wrote in the case of heaven,
he's brought life and immortality to life,
we've got this certain cure.
But not only that, you see,
we know this, that he has conquered all our enemies.
Every one of them.
He conquered the devil that he tempted him to.
But the last enemy
that shall be conquered is death.
And he has conquered the last enemy.
He's taken the sting out of death.
It's no longer there.
To the Christian young girl.
And you see, in the white vistas,
as the apostle again puts it in writing to Timothy,
in the second epistle,
and in his first chapter,
you see again,
I think what we need is to know how to study our scripture.
Timothy again was this type of individual
who was always ready to be cast out.
Always wondering what was going on.
Couples in the churches, people misunderstanding him.
And now he hears the news that Paul is in prison
and that the emperor now has decided to put him to death.
And poor Timothy says the angel's come.
Paul's saying, what can we do?
Look at the church, if they're all young,
look at your positions.
If Paul is killing himself,
Paul says, Timothy,
Paul writes this.
And what he says, he says,
I should be in remembrance that I must stir up
the gift of God which is in me
by the putting on of my hands.
Call yourself the devil, then, he says.
Don't sit down and mope and whimper
and pry and commiserate with yourself.
Call yourself the devil.
God has not given us the strength of fear,
but of power and of love
and of a sound mind,
decisive, self-control.
And then he goes on with this tremendous assertion,
which is the essence of the Christian position.
For the rich cause, he says,
I also suck on these things.
You know, that's because he's preaching the gospel.
He is suffering and he's included
and he's faced with death.
For the rich cause, I also suffer these things.
Nevertheless, I am not ashamed.
For I know whom I have believed.
And I'm frustrated that
he is able to keep that which I have committed
unto him against that day.
Don't be worried about me,
Jesus, and commiserate with me.
Don't offer me a suit, I don't need it.
I am not cast out.
I am not ashamed.
I am not plenty,
because I am not in trouble at all.
I am ready.
Why should the reward go to so far
that so matter also?
Christ should be magnified in my body.
Well, it will be my life all by death.
Could it be that it is Christ who denies his gain?
But if I live in this place, this is the fruit of my life.
And yet what I can choose, I want not,
for I am a stranger.
It's true, having a desire to be
to be part and to be with Christ,
which is far better.
Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh
is more meaningful for you.
Well, now, this, you see,
is the way in which one obtains
this full of satisfaction from God.
I have never seen such circumstances.
This is a memoir, he taught very little to me.
He says, it's too fine.
I am ashamed of what I am not.
In fact, I must stop it.
We are rejoiced, even in the midst of tribulation.
And as we know it well,
this kind of thing is not composed
in the distant way of outstanding persons
like the abundant Paul.
It is true of the most ordinary first Christians.
These were the people
who counted martyrdom as the final crown of life.
These were the people
who considered it a great honor to suffer shame
for his name's sake.
These were the people
who had such a journey in the world
that nothing could come to them.
Have you got this?
Have you got this, John?
Have you been rid of fear?
Are you able to rejoice in the Lord only?
Well, you see,
look at the length of it.
Can't think that the fact realized
something of the content of its being.
But go on.
He rose from the dead.
He manifested himself
with what he did to chosen witnesses.
Then he ascended into heaven
in the presence of someone.
And where did he last?
This is the way you deal with these things.
I don't know what you feel, my friend.
The more I study these things,
the more wonderful they can become to me.
The less I feel I know about them.
Now, look at this, then.
This is your point.
This goes into the Hebrew.
This is the central method, you see.
If three verses can tell you everything
you can ever learn,
and then it goes on to the third main chapter.
Right.
You see what that means?
Well, you see, it means this.
You've got to know it all,
and then you've got to grasp it in portions
and bits and parts.
God who at sundry times and in divers men
and speak in time cast into the thousands
by the prophets,
has in these last days spoken unto us by history,
whom he hath appointed a little thing
by whom also he may dwell,
all being the brightness of his glory,
the expressiveness of his presence,
and upholding all things by the word of his power,
when he hath by himself heard from us him
sat down on the right hand of the majesty of God.
And this man couldn't get a load of it
because I could if he were really.
And we repeat it again in the tenth chapter.
He puts it like this,
therefore he says that this man,
after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever,
sat down on the right hand of God,
from heaven's most expected,
till his enemies be made his personal,
even 10th note and 13th.
So now this is something glorious and tremendous.
Here we are,
and from the beginning,
with the King saying,
War was in trouble,
fire criticism,
people worshiping,
silence and other drugs,
as I'm hoping to show this evening, God willing.
And we are cast down and we are wondering
how we can keep going at the church.
We're going to go on as the church any future.
What's the matter with us?
Well, the trouble with us is we don't know the truth.
Because if you feel like that,
this is the reply that is given to you.
There are a lot of words in the gospel
according to Saint Nebuchadnezzar.
And Jesus came and speak into them saying,
he's about to assess
all the power given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Come, Jesus, and teach all nations
for Christ's sake,
in the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost,
teaching unto itself
all things whatsoever I have commanded you,
and for I am with you all,
even unto the end of the world.
Isn't that enough for you?
Don't you get up on your feet and shout
as if I am all your enemies?
If you understood what that means to you,
I could never be cursed down again.
But there it is.
He is seated at the right hand of God,
which is the position of armor,
which is the position of power.
And he says that all power
is being given unto him.
It has.
God, as Paul reminds the Ephesians
at the end of the first chapter,
has raised him up
because of what he's done,
and this is what he says, I tell you.
He raised him from the dead
and set him at his own right hand
in the heavenly places,
far above all
principalities and powers
of might and dominion,
every name that is named.
Yes, NASA, Israel,
Soviet, Raqqa,
United States, Great Britain,
all these powers have been something
in his incident alone.
He's been set in the position
of all principalities and powers
and might and dominion
and every name that is named,
not only in this world,
but also in that which is set up.
And that's because all things under his feet
came into his head,
of all things to the church,
which is his body's fullness
and his pillar more and more.
There he is.
He's got it all,
and you belong to him,
and you're dear to him.
What's he doing?
Well, according to the Apostle Paul,
amongst the various things
that he's doing there,
he is doing best.
Paul is writing to the Romans
at this time,
and as they again are in great trouble,
the hotlings of this present night,
they've got them down.
This is how Paul puts it.
Who shall they meet
into the church of God's living?
It is God the first people
who will be the condemned.
It is Christ that died.
He is rather that is risen again
who is even at the right hand of God
who also maketh intercession for us.
That's what he's doing there.
His presence,
he is making intercession for us,
all against the order of the epistles of the Hebrews.
This is his great theme, isn't it?
He's contrasting, you see,
the whole dispensation,
the Jewish ritual,
temple ceremonial,
and the Christian faith in Christ.
It's a vital piece of his assurity
for them at this time.
They truly were many priests
because they were meant such to continue
by reason of death.
Your priests come and go,
your right priests come and go,
your folks come and go,
and all your lovely priests come and go.
But this,
because he continued with ever
at an unchanging priest,
wherefore he is able also to save them
to the utterness that come and develop by him,
seeing he ever was in the center of the intercession for us.
Not only can you pray to God,
he's present for you.
He's representing you.
He's your great high priest.
He's taking your sweet little cries and prayers
and he's transmitting them and transmuting them
unto God.
There he is seated at the right hand of God.
And he's there for you,
and for me.
Now, these,
another thing,
these are sheer,
solid facts.
These is the Christian faith,
the thing you think you know already.
But if you know it, why are you innocent?
Why are you unhappy?
Why are you defeated?
Why are you cast down?
Why are you filled with fears and portfolios?
And this is the way to have this joy
and this peace
and lots of affection.
So consider
what he has already done to you.
He's reconciled you to God.
You've got forgiveness of sins.
You have regenerate.
You've got enlightenment.
You've been adopted into the family of God.
You're special objects of God's concern.
You are heirs of God and joined heirs of Christ.
How did you go from the last week?
When you thought it might be the beginning of the Third World War,
how did you feel?
How do you stand up to these possibilities?
The Christian is a man who sees beyond all this.
He's an heir of God
and a joined heir of Christ.
He says the sufferings of this present time
are not worthy to be compared
with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
Do you only care for you?
Do you only see literal countries in a material sense?
Or do you see beyond in all to the glory?
This is the question.
But you are still in this world
and you are still fighting the world
and the flesh and the devil.
But remember who is that.
He starts through the feeding of your infirm members.
He's been through it all.
He became man.
He knows that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest.
He did it all in order that he might sing about you.
He understands.
He's been through it.
There's nothing that happens to you but that he's been through it.
Go to him. Look to him.
He is a living creature.
As he conquered it all, he may have been to conquer it.
You know, remember, he is willing.
He is able to suffer them that are tempted.
Having been tempted himself, he is able to suffer them that are tempted.
And he tells you this.
I will never leave thee nor for safety.
Never.
Remember this.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Look at him in the last one.
See his empathy, his understanding, his tenderness, his humility.
He's still the same yesterday, today and will always be.
He cannot fail.
Because it is eternal nature.
And all that he suffered and experienced here in this world is still there.
He is now in your heart.
And he looks down on you.
And he's ready and willing to help you and to serve you in all your needs.
And lastly, there is what he has done for you.
And there is what he has done for you.
What he is yet going to do.
Yes, is this then?
In the end of Hebrews, He has sat down on the right hand of God.