Christ – The Centre of God’s Purpose

[00:00:00] I want this evening just to bring to you some thoughts that are in my heart at this time. [00:00:09] Not always easy to speak at such times, but I know we're all relying upon the Lord himself, and I'm sure you will bear with us. [00:00:20] But I want to speak this evening about the Lord Jesus as the centre of all God's purpose. [00:00:34] I think we in the west are inclined to have a mentality which naturally belongs to the west, mentality of technicalities, and, on the whole, of machinery, a more mechanical, technical approach to everything, whereas the yeast is so often very different in that way, in its appreciation of man and of life. [00:01:17] And that is perhaps one of the greatest difficulties with our western mentality. When we come to the word of God in an understanding of the timeless and supernational presentation of God's revelation. [00:01:42] God you will, I'm sure, agree with me. There's not one for technicalities, nor for the mechanics of things. [00:01:54] He is one who is a realist. And the Bible is sheer realism. [00:02:01] We have come right down to things as they are. [00:02:06] When we read the Bible and we find that God has come down to things as they are, and God is working from that ground of things as they really are, not things as they ought to be, but things as they really are, the Lord always begins just at that point. [00:02:32] And the Lord Jesus is the summing up of all God's purpose, of all God's desire, and of all God's thought. [00:02:44] It is as if God has not given us a blueprint or a book of regulations, as many people think Christianity is. [00:02:57] He has given us a person, and the person is God's thought and purpose and desire and everything. Everything is just when we simplify it and analyze it. A question of coming into a relationship with that person and then that relationship being maintained and developed. There is Christianity. Anything less than that is not Christianity. It is spurious, its counterpeace, the substitute true Christianity is that which has been produced and created out of a relationship between human beings and a person, the Lord Jesus. [00:04:01] We, of course, talk about such terms as justification and sanctification and many other theological terms, and unfortunately, we get bogged down and we wonder what they are. We get all worked up with the details, the natural fact. What is justification? What is justification? Justification is just simply coming for the first time into a relationship with God's Christ. [00:04:31] And the moment we come into a relationship with God's Christ, we are justified. That moment. [00:04:39] What is sanctification? It is just simply the development of that relationship. The development of that relationship. That's all sanctification is just. The development of that relationship established, a beginning with Christ. [00:04:58] What is not of Christ shown up and exposed and dealt with, what is Christ brought in, produced, developed, increased. [00:05:11] What is glorification? What is glorification? What is the glory that is yet to be, of which we have only the foretaste? Now, now and again. What is the glory that is to be the glory is the wonderful consummation of that relationship in the glory of God's only son. [00:05:35] And what is glory when it comes to us merely mortals? It is just that which issues and results out of a relationship with God's Christ. It ends in glory. I could not possibly stand here and say that anything of Lambert is ever going to be glorified. [00:05:58] Nothing of Lance Lambert will ever be glorified. [00:06:02] Only that which is of Christ's in me is going to reach the glory. The rest. [00:06:09] The rest is nothing. [00:06:14] And so when we turn to the scripture, we find that Christ is the center, the centre of all God's purpose, of all God's desire, all God's delight. [00:06:26] He is the life of God. And I want you just this evening with me to look at one or two things that we find in the scripture. First of all, I want you to turn with me if you wish to. Otherwise I'll read them to you. John 114. And we read this. The word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. The word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. And then in revelation chapter one, and in verse two, we read this. [00:07:06] Revelation one, I'm sorry. And verse eight, I am the alpha and the omega. [00:07:14] The word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. I am the alpha and the omega. [00:07:26] Then if you look at Hebrews five and verse twelve, we find this. [00:07:37] The writer is speaking to christians who have not gone on as they should have gone on. And he says, for when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God. Now I want you just to underline the word rudiment, rudiment of the first principles or the beginning of the oracles of God in chapter six. And in verse one, you get the beginning of Christ or the first principle of Christ. And if you turn back to colossians two and verse eight, you get take heed, lest there shall be anyone that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiment of the world, and not after Christ. [00:08:39] I want to speak just for a little while upon Christ as the language of God. [00:08:51] Christ is the language of God. [00:08:57] God has no other language. Christ is his language. [00:09:03] If you want to understand God, if you would really see into the heart of God, if you would come into a knowledge of God, you must understand the language of God. [00:09:21] What is language? [00:09:24] Why do we have this thing that we call speech or language? [00:09:30] Language is being given to us for communication, that you might communicate with me and that I might communicate with you. It has been given for intercourse, it has been given for fellowship, for sharing. It has been given for expression. How do I express myself? I express myself through language. If I am angry, I use angry words. If I am quiet and peaceful, I use quiet and peaceful words. If I am faithful, I convey it with words. [00:10:08] Language is something which expresses us. It expresses us when we are in a foreign country. Whilst we can understand a little of what's going on by gestures and looks and appearances. Oh, how we long to be able to understand what they're saying. What are they saying when they're jabbering at one another and talking very quickly and somehow seeking to convey things? It's only when we listen to a language which is not our own and we don't understand it that we realize the real value, the essential value of language. We understand that for a person to express himself to another, he must speak and there must be understanding. [00:10:52] Language is for communication. [00:10:55] Language is for expression. [00:10:57] Language is for understanding. [00:11:00] Language is for fellowship. [00:11:04] The Lord Jesus is the language of God. [00:11:09] God has no other language. [00:11:12] If you would communicate with God, you must speak God's language. [00:11:17] If you would understand God's, you must understand God's language. [00:11:23] If you would understand how God is expressed, what God is like, who God is, what he's after, his purpose and everything else. You must learn the language of God. [00:11:38] God's language is Christ. Christ is God's language. [00:11:45] Title the word, what does it mean? It does not, of course, mean just simply language. It means far more than that. [00:11:53] Some things defies even the definition. [00:11:57] The word of God we can say it is the mind of God. [00:12:05] The very thought of God is God's mind incarnate. [00:12:18] Christ is God's thought and thought in flesh and blood. [00:12:26] Christ is God's heart, declared to us, revealed to us, expressed to us in a body, in humanity, in terms that we can understand. [00:12:40] Christ is the language of God. [00:12:45] What is this word? Alpha and omega. All of you, I'm sure, will know that it is the first and the last letter of the greek Alphabet, the a and the z. [00:12:56] Christ is God's language. [00:12:59] God has no other letters. He has no other Alphabet. Christ is the a and the z of God's language. [00:13:12] The way he builds up his words, the way he puts them together, the way he constitutes them, the way he forms them, are all Christ through Christ. In Christ of Christ, God has no language outside of Christ. He has no Alphabet outside of Christ. He has nothing else outside of Christ. Christ is the a and the then the beginning and the end, the first and the last. [00:13:40] Christ is the circumference of all God's purpose, of all God's thoughts, of all God's mind concerning us. This is the infinite greatness of God's Christ, the incomparable greatness, God's Christ. Beyond searching past, finding out God's language is not limited. [00:14:07] When we get the glory, we shall find we've only learned the abc of God's language. [00:14:17] There is a lot more questions for this word rudiment, of which evidently there has been such difficulty in translation, if you look into it, can be just simply in the colloquial way described as the ABC. [00:14:39] Paul wrote, or the writer to the Hebrews wrote and said, you have need of learning the ABC. These are the first principles of the articles of God, the ABC. We all know what an ABC is. We all know what it is to talk about the ABC. But there is an ABC of Christ. [00:15:03] That is why Paul, when writing to the church of Colossi, said, don't be destroyed by the ABC of this world, rudimentary principles of this world, but learn the ABC of Christ. [00:15:26] Christ is God language. Oh, what we could say about that. Do you want to understand God? Come to Christ, get to know Christ. [00:15:36] Do you want to see? Not just understand, but see into God's heart. [00:15:42] You all must come to Christ. You will never find God's heart anywhere else but in Christ. You will find the godhead. In the natural creation. You will find God's omnipotence and all mightiness displayed in the heavens. But you will not find the heart of God anywhere else but in Christ. You will not find the mind of God anywhere else but in Christ. Do you want to know why we have this creation? You must come to God's Christ. [00:16:11] Do you want to understand your own heart, understand your own life? [00:16:17] Do you want to understand what this life is about? Do you want to understand what lies beyond this life? Do you want to understand what the purpose of the whole thing is? [00:16:28] You've got to come upon. [00:16:32] Christ is God's language. [00:16:37] Christ is the living word. And here we have the written word but you know, there's a link between the written word and the living word, a very wonderful link between what is written and Christ. [00:16:51] I say it reverently, but Christ is this book. [00:17:01] It is this that is written in flesh and in blood. [00:17:09] No longer regulation, no longer. So many thou shalt and so many thou shalt not. [00:17:17] But there it all is, lived out in a life I can never understand, when people have come to the Lord Jesus, why they quibble about all kinds of things. [00:17:33] For all we have to do is to search in the written word, in the presence of the living word, and find out about these things, what you should do, all kinds of things. You'll find it in the word. The word of God can govern us in every way. Christ is the language of God. [00:17:53] What is the school of God? The school of God is Christ. The moment we come to the Lord Jesus, we are in the school of God. [00:18:03] And the one who is our great lesson is the Lord Jesus. [00:18:08] We have to learn the ABC of Christ in the school of God. We have to unlearn all kinds of things. We have to unlearn all that we've grown up with and all that has come to us by natural birth. It's all got to be unlearn. The school of God takes up a lot of time. The Holy Spirit takes up much time in the school of God in just disclosing what we are like. [00:18:35] And then when he shows us something of what we are like, the ABC of this world, of this age, then he shows us the ABC of Christ, what Christ is, and what God can make Christ in us to be, how he does it, what he will do, and what his end is. [00:18:58] Christ is the language of God. [00:19:04] I trust that if there's anyone here who wants to know God, you will understand. [00:19:11] But there is no other way but through God's Christ. [00:19:15] And then I also want you to notice that Christ is not only the language of God, but Christ is the testimony of God. Now let us look at this. At revelation, chapter one and verse two, we read these words. [00:19:37] John, who bear witness of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ. [00:19:46] The testimony of Jesus Christ. And then in chapter twelve, to select just another scripture, chapter twelve and verse 17, we read this. [00:20:00] And those that hold the testimony, testimony of Jesus. [00:20:06] Dragon making war with those that hold the testimony of Jesus Christ is the testimony of God. [00:20:16] What is a testimony? [00:20:18] What is a testimony? Do you know what a testimony is? A testimony means that two things must of necessity be there. First of all, you cannot have a testimony unless it's a testimony of something. [00:20:40] You always bear testimony of something. [00:20:43] And secondly, you always bear testimony to something. [00:20:48] For instance, if I have a. If I have seen a very, very beautiful garden that has filled my heart with delight, I don't go and shut myself in a room and bear testimony to it. Talking to myself about that wonderful garden that I saw, how beautiful it was, and all the rest of it. [00:21:09] I don't do that. [00:21:11] If I bear testimony to something I see, I bear testimony to others, I tell them, I speak to them. [00:21:20] That's what we do when we bear testimony. First of all, we have something that we are testifying to. We are speaking of, we are witnessing of. [00:21:30] And then we have those to whom we testify, those to whom we witness and speak. Christ is God's testimony. [00:21:44] There is no other testimony in the world but Christ. [00:21:51] Christ is God's great testimony in this world. [00:21:58] Now, what is it of Christ is the testimony to all that God is. [00:22:10] He not only expresses what God is in language so that we can understand, but he bears testimony to the basic reality of everything. What did the Lord Jesus do when he came into this world? From the moment that he was born, he was a testimony. He was the testimony of God. [00:22:35] Wherever he went, particularly in those last three years of his life. He was, as it were, bearing testimony to God, to the reality about everything. [00:22:46] He was always stripping things and revealing what they really were. You come to this great, colossal edifice of religion, all the trappings around that religion, all in the name of God, all in the name of his word, the Lord Jesus comes into it. He is the testimony of God. He is the testimony to what God is like. He is the testimony to how God should be worshipped. He is the testimony to true understanding and knowledge of God. And he takes hold of that thing and he strips it. [00:23:24] And immediately people can see the things for what it is. A Dana seeds. [00:23:32] Just a Dana see? [00:23:35] Sheer hypocrisy, a form of godliness, an empty facade. [00:23:44] What has happened? Is it that simply a man has come into something and stood up and said some paltry, negative kind of words in criticism that all this is not what God wants? No, someone has come in who himself is the testimony and is so dynamic that he was the end of the temple. It was the destruction of the temple. It was the termination of Judaism. [00:24:24] Ah, the Lord Jesus was the testimony. [00:24:29] When it comes to this world, what do we find in the Lord Jesus? [00:24:33] What is God like when it comes to the person who is in the meshes of perversion? [00:24:43] What is God like when there is someone who is utterly immoral. [00:24:49] What is God like when there's a life that's been broken and smashed beyond repair? Humanly speaking, Christ is God's testimony into the situation. He comes right into the person's life, right alongside their circumstances. [00:25:11] And lies are changed, lives are touched, lives are revolutionized. [00:25:18] That's the testimony of God. You don't find the Lord Jesus eating and supping with those that are righteous in their own sight. We find him with publicans, with sinners, with the down and out, with the social outcasts, with the people that the religious would not dream of touching. [00:25:36] There on one side was this great realm of religiousness. And by the way, if you read the latest research into the religion of the Lord's day, you will find out that there was a tremendous amount that was good and decent and upright. [00:25:58] Pure motive in many ways, very much like our own days. [00:26:06] Very much like our own days. [00:26:09] But where was the Lord Jesus in that? No, no, God is not found in that. [00:26:18] God, we find is found where lies are broken, where lies are smashed, where sin rains. That's where Christ is found as the testimony of God. [00:26:36] How does God react when someone very much loved dies? [00:26:47] He cried. [00:26:50] That's what God is. [00:26:53] How does God react when a people who all down through the centuries he has sought and worked upon and revealed himself too, finally turn their back on him? He comes to the brow of the hill and he sees the city. He breaks down the dawn. [00:27:16] That's what God is like. [00:27:19] Christ is the testimony of God. [00:27:24] Ah, far removed from theological rectitude, far removed from that distant kind of religion, as I've often said to you, that gathers its skirts around it and the smell of tobacco. [00:27:43] There is no essential difference between the smell of tobacco and the smell of Lapidus. [00:27:52] 1 may be more obnoxious than the other. There is no essential difference. [00:27:58] No, I'm not saying that you should smoke, but I can't understand it when christians cannot bear it and have to gather themselves around as if, as if Satan himself was in the womb when there was the whiff of the bank. [00:28:22] I don't think that's right. That's not the testimony. Jesus. That's not the testimony. [00:28:29] That's something which is the product of traditionalism, something which is just parasitic. In the 20th century, nothing less than, nothing more than a parasolution. In the 20 centuries, the devil has done his greatest and his greatest inroads into the testimony of Jesus in his people by just divorcing them from this world. So there they are in their little communities, there they are in their little meeting places. They don't know the world. They don't understand the mind of the world. They have no idea how the world lived. They just drink tea and chatter. Theologically, what good is that? What is it that? What good is it? There's no good in it at all. It is neither of use to man nor to God. [00:29:19] The only thing that is of any use to God is that which pulverizes this world, gets right into this world and is like dynamite in it. Dynamite in it goes up, just goes up, turns it upside down. [00:29:34] That's the testimony of Jesus. [00:29:37] That's the testimony. [00:29:40] He comes into a situation and he'll touch an immortal life, and that immortal life will know at that touch that she or he has met the answer. [00:29:51] This isn't religiousness. [00:29:54] This isn't even what is right in a condescending, superior way, where you are wrong and how you might be put right. [00:30:04] This is goddesse. [00:30:07] This is what God is like. This is how God touches life. [00:30:15] You know, when Christ went to the glory, the testimony of Jesus was vested in the church. [00:30:26] It was vested in the church. [00:30:31] What Christ was on this earth is what his people should be. [00:30:36] Oh, how far along we are with our conventions and our conferences and our meetings and our endless routine of religious observance and our doubts. With this world. [00:30:53] We have a dying world around us, world that needs God. Oh, I sometimes wonder, what is God's reaction? What is God's reaction to a world that he loves and he understands and he has redeemed? [00:31:10] That is the testimony of Jesus. [00:31:15] I know you'll bear with me if I say one further word on this. [00:31:20] You know, in these days, when the candlestick has been removed from so many movements and places and paths, which signifies that the testimony of Jesus is no longer held, we ought to take careful note of what it means to be incorporated into the vessel that bears the testimony of Jesus. [00:31:56] No child of God has ever had any part in holding the testimony of Jesus that has not paid for it with his or her life. In one way or another, this is the explanation of so much mysterious, inexplicable suffering. [00:32:22] We know something of it this very weekend. [00:32:27] Why? [00:32:29] Why? [00:32:30] Why should it center upon those who really want the law? [00:32:42] Why should they so cruelly suffer when everyone else gets off seemingly scot free? [00:32:53] Why? [00:32:55] Because this testimony is a testimony that comes out of reality. [00:33:01] Reality. [00:33:03] And we only reach reality through pain. [00:33:09] We are made in such a way that our old natures don't know what reality is? They're built on deception, on deception, on a lie. [00:33:23] And only by the things that we suffer deeply can we learn what reality is. [00:33:32] Oh, how careful the Lord is over his testimony. [00:33:36] And how careful he is to make sure that this world will never be able to turn around and say, well, you sweet, innocent bunch of kids. [00:33:50] You talk about testimony. You talk about God being the answer. You shout about Christ as the answer of God to everything. But you don't know. You don't know what it is to be divorced. You don't know what it is to have a broken home. You don't know what it is to have terrible problems in your personality. You don't know what it is to have suffered mysterious, inexplicable things in your life. You don't know what it is to have domestic trouble. You don't know what it is to suffer all these things. And many christian people don't. [00:34:25] They don't. [00:34:28] But whenever we come into touch with the testimony of Jesus, we come into the realm of reality. [00:34:37] And so together we walk away, in which we taste in a very full way what this life is like. [00:34:51] That God may have that testimony of Jesus held in the eyes, not by people who are brash and arrogant and superior, but people who have suffered the same things, who know what it is to go through the mirror, who understand what this life is made up of. [00:35:15] That's the testimony of Jesus. [00:35:19] And I want you also to notice that Christ is the salvation of God. We, I think all of us will know this, but he is the salvation of God. [00:35:32] If you look in one corinthians one and verse 30, you will read just these things. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who has made unto us wisdom from God, with righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that he that according as it is written here, let him glory in the Lord. [00:35:53] Christ is the salvation of God. The very name of Jesus just means that. [00:36:03] The name of Jesus means savior or salvation. [00:36:10] Christ is the salvation of God. [00:36:14] What is it to be a Christian? [00:36:18] A Christian is someone who has Christ inside. [00:36:27] That's all. [00:36:29] What is not a Christian? [00:36:32] Anyone who has not Christ inside. [00:36:40] That's the way God measures. It's God's standard. [00:36:44] If you have the Lord Jesus inside, then you have the wisdom of God, the righteousness of God, the sanctification of God, and the redemption of God. You have the Holy Spirit to work it all out if you want it in human sight. [00:37:02] But if you haven't got him inside, you might be very religious, you might be christianized, you might have everything else, but you are not, according to the word of God, a child of God. Of course, there are many people who think they're Christian, but Christ is on the outside. [00:37:21] What is a Christian? Someone who has the life of God in Christ inside of. [00:37:30] That's all. That's a question. [00:37:33] John summed it up when he said, he that hath the life, he that hath the son hath the life, and he that hath not the son has not the life. [00:37:46] That is all. How simple. Yet people get into the most amazing difficulties over whether they're christians or not christians. [00:37:56] Is the Lord Jesus inside of you by the grace of God? [00:38:02] I know many people that are natural scoundrels, but Christ is inside and they are children of God. [00:38:13] I know many people who are so decent and naturally good, but Christ is not inside. They're not Christianity. [00:38:24] Christianity is not that. Some people are good naturally, and some people are bad naturally, and those that are good naturally christians and those that are bad naturally are not. They're sinners. That is not Christianity. Christianity is simply that God says, all of us are sinful and that the Christian is someone who has Christ inside. [00:38:52] To as many as received him, to them, gave he the right to become the children of God. [00:39:01] Is that not wonderful? Oh, listen to me. If there's anyone here in this room tonight, and you know you are not a child of God, you may have quite a lot of understanding about christian things, but you haven't got Christ inside. [00:39:18] Well, just open your heart, just open your eyes. [00:39:24] Just receive Christ as God's salvation and then you will find that suddenly inside, you won't feel it, but inside a person, a new person. [00:39:43] And God looks upon you as justified. [00:39:48] And then you will find that God begins to deal with you and he will change this and he will change that. [00:40:01] And you won't have to keep it up. [00:40:04] You won't have to keep it up. [00:40:07] You will just have to trust the Lord Jesus inside. [00:40:16] And whatever he shows you, do it. [00:40:21] And do you know what the end of that will be? [00:40:26] The end of that will be long. [00:40:30] Well, I think I must end there because I think you'll all be asleep very soon. But I would love to have spoken to you about Christ as the new beginning of God. [00:40:45] I find that in deute 517, any man is in Christ. There is a new creation. That is the right way. There is a new creation. Any man be in quest. There is a new creation. And in Colossians three, I think it's verse 14. [00:41:09] Having put on the new man. [00:41:14] And then in Colossians 115, the firstborn of creation, and verse 18, the head of the church, which is his body, the first born from the dead. [00:41:32] Now, what does all this mean? I will tell you what it means. [00:41:36] In all this theme of carnage and misery and perversion and unhappiness, God started all over again. [00:41:50] He has begun all over again. [00:41:55] And Christ is the new beginning of God. [00:42:02] It's the new beginning of God. [00:42:05] And you know what's going to happen? Well, first, God has his new person, only one. [00:42:11] Then after the cross, God has a new man, a people, the church. [00:42:18] And then there's coming a day when there's going to be new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness and a new Jerusalem. It's all new. It's all new. Everything's new. Where did it all begin? It began with Christ. [00:42:36] Christ is God's new beginning. [00:42:39] Christ is the center and circumference of God's new creation. If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation. [00:42:50] Where? Where are you tonight? [00:42:53] Where are you? Do you belong to an old creation and an old man and an old heaven and an old earth? [00:43:03] Or do you belong to a new creation, a new man, a new heaven and a new earth? [00:43:15] Where and what do you belong? [00:43:21] Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we await our saviour. [00:43:31] Ah, may there be those others of you who really come to him tonight and receive him as the salvation of God and as God's new creation. [00:43:50] Now, dear Lord, into thy hands we commit all this and pray, beloved Lord, that thou make true these worms of thine in all our hearts and blot out anything which has not been of thyself. [00:44:12] We ask it in the name of Jesus. [00:44:15] Amen.