GLAD TIDINGS AND GOOD TIDINGS
A D Munro
Luke 2: 10, 11; 4: 16-21
2 Kings 7: 1-5, 8, 9
I have in mind to speak about glad tidings and good tidings. That is the day in which we live; we live in the day of the glad tidings, which the Lord spoke of in Luke chapter 4: “the acceptable year of the Lord”. It is still running its course. Thank God for that! If we had read from Isaiah 61, and read the same passage, we might have gone on to say, “and the day of vengeance of our God”, v 2. Thanks be to God that that is not yet so. It will come: make no mistake! The Lord is the only One who could read that verse and stop where He stopped because He knew, because of the work He was going to accomplish, that that acceptable year of the Lord would run for a prescribed time. It is not known how long that day will be; I do not know. There is enough blessing and forgiveness and mercy for everyone. “Righteousness of God” is “towards all”, but it is only “upon all those who believe”, Rom 3: 22. It is not an amnesty. God is prepared to overlook sin because He has dealt with it in the Person of His well-beloved Son.
That is why I read in Luke 2. What a message to these shepherds! I have been reading a book of Mr James Taylor’s ministry, and it is suggested that Luke enlarges on the sympathetic conditions into which the Lord came. Vol 21 p147. The general reception to the Lord’s incoming in Luke is far more favourable than in the other gospels. There was still no room for Him in the inn, but there were Mary and Elizabeth and Zacharias and Simeon and Anna, and then there were these shepherds. They were persons who were in sympathy with heaven, with what heaven was doing. They did not know exactly what was going to happen, but they were prepared. And that is one of the other wonderful things about the gospel: the ground is prepared for the seed to fall into it. There is never anything wrong with the seed: the seed is the word of God. The problem lies in your heart and in mine because naturally they are barren: it is hard soil. But the Lord would work sovereignly and in His own way.
There is a wonderful verse in Psalm 65 which speaks about smoothing the clods: “Thou dost satiate its furrows, thou smoothest its clods, thou makest it soft with showers; thou blessest the springing thereof”, v 10. That is God working, preparing the ground in your soul and in mine to receive the gospel. It would probably be somewhat similar to the truth of new birth, which is mysterious. It cannot be defined, but you know when it has been working. Some of us have known it in our own experience when we were children, or perhaps later in life just before we were converted. We knew there was something telling us there was something missing in our life. We were pursuing this, and we were pursuing that, doing our own will and finding no satisfaction. There was a nagging ache that told you something was wrong, and what was that? It was your conscience. God has an avenue into every man’s heart via his conscience, and He would use that to stir up the sense in your soul that there is something missing, and that something is the knowledge of Jesus as Saviour. Without it you will never get satisfaction; you can try as hard as you like. There was a woman in the gospels who spent her living trying to get cured of her disease. She came and touched the hem of the Saviour’s garment and she was cured immediately. She found liberty in her heart; she found joy in her heart, Luke 8: 43-48.
There was a man called Saul of Tarsus who was the archetypal Jew, Pharisee of the Pharisees, who kept every iota of the law, as he thought. He probably did not really, but he was dark; and he was present at the stoning of Stephen, and what does the Lord Jesus say soon after? “Saul, Saul… it is hard for thee to kick against goads”, Acts 26: 14. I do not know if you know what a goad is. It is an instrument that a farmer would use, just a long stick with a slightly sharp end, and as the cattle are perhaps going the wrong way, he would just give them a little prod to make them go the right way. It is a bit like what Isaiah says: “This is the way, walk ye in it”, chap 30: 21. That is like a goad. It is not a vicious instrument; God does not operate viciously but He would operate tenderly to make you realise that you are on the wrong path. If you do not know Jesus as Saviour, my dear friend, I would not like to be in your shoes: your position is perilous. There was Saul of Tarsus at the stoning of Stephen, and he saw something depicted there that must have troubled his heart, a man accepting humiliation, accepting stoning, and not complaining. “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7: 60): that was the spirit of Christ coming out in Stephen. Two chapters later it came out in Saul. Saul was struck down on that Damascus road and all his credibility, and these letters to Damascus that Saul was carrying, were worthless. They were worthless anyway, but I think he threw them away. Why? Because he came under another Master.
The young man, servant of an Amalekite, in 1 Samuel 30 is another wonderful illustration of the grace of God to a person who had been constituted an enemy. He had been responsible for the captivity of David’s wives and his children, and yet the grace of the gospel reached out to that man as he lay dying, deserted by his master. Why? Because he was not fit to be in the army, as men thought; he became fit for David’s army. He was certainly one of these persons who came under David’s benign influence, and became a satisfied person, and he became a soldier in David’s army. David said, “Canst thou bring me down to this troop?”, v 15. He said, ‘Yes, but only if you do not give me back to my master’. When we were younger, we used to hear in ministry quite often as to ‘changing your man’, JT vol 38 p371. That man ‘changed his man’; from being a servant of an Amalekite, he became a servant of David. He came under new ownership; he came under new guidance; he came under the guidance, typically, of the Saviour of the world.
These shepherds were amenable to divine direction, and they got this wonderful message: “glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people; for to-day a Saviour has been born to you in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord”. What a message! Think of the change it would bring about in these men! Think of the comfort it would bring into their hearts! They belonged to a nation that was in captivity under Roman yoke, suffering under the righteous government of God, but a new day dawned in their lives, a light shone in the darkness: that light was Jesus, the Saviour of the world! Oh, dear friend, has the light of the Saviour dawned in your heart or are you still in the dark? Are you still turning away from Him? He is beseeching you. He is speaking to you tonight. His word would come to you in power, in grace, but in conviction.
So, when we come to chapter 4, the Lord in His wonderful grace goes into the synagogue. He knew He would not be welcome there, but He still went. He took the message of the gospel into the hearts of these persons who were entrenched in animosity and hatred against the word of God, and against the Saviour of the world. Jesus had been in the desert. He had overcome Satan in all his wiles; Satan had never met a man like this; he had never met a man that did not in some way yield to one of his temptations. He was rebuffed at every turn; he was rebuffed, defeated, humiliated, and in the power of that the Lord came out in public witness and public testimony, conveying the glad tidings to these poor benighted Israelites. What does He say? “He has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor; he has sent me to preach to captives deliverance, and to the blind sight, to send forth the crushed delivered”. Oh, dear friend, the world will crush you. It might not seem like it, but you will come under a weight that will suppress you. John Bunyan wrote in his treatise about the burden that was on Christian’s back, that was weighing him down. The burden rolled away when Christian saw the cross.
Dear friend, that is where the cost of your salvation was worked out, when the spotless, holy, sinless Lamb of God was there on the cross. At the conclusion of three and a half years of public ministry, the verdict of the world was, “Away with this man”, Luke 23: 18. “We will not that this man should reign over us”, Luke 19: 14. Did that change God’s disposition? Not a bit! Did that change the disposition of Jesus? Not a bit! What did He say? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23: 34. What words of grace! That was “the acceptable year of the Lord”, and it is still the same; the message has not changed. Covid-19 has not changed the message of the gospel, although I think we can say, in simplicity, it has enhanced the value of the gospel. It has magnified the glory of the Saviour that even in a world of such wickedness and such sorrow and such pressure “the radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ “ (2 Cor 4: 4) is still shining out towards poor, weary, sinful man.
Dear friend, it is indeed glad tidings. I trust everyone can say, ‘Amen’ to that: the message of the Saviour, the message of forgiveness, the message of salvation, the message of peace with God, the message of justification, the wonderful fact of reconciliation, all these things! “We being still sinners, Christ has died for us”, Rom 5: 8. We had no merit; we deserved nothing. I can say that for everyone, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”, Rom 3: 23. The gospel is marked by truth but it is also: “grace and truth subsists through Jesus Christ”, John 1: 17. How fair God is! He would give you every opportunity, opportunity after opportunity.
Saul of Tarsus laid hold of it. The man that Peter and John came upon as they went into the temple in Acts chapter 3 laid hold of it. That man had been waiting for that day; he did not know what he was waiting for. It is almost as though he had faith that one day someone would come along and his circumstances would be changed. Peter said, “Silver and gold I have not; but what I have, this give I to thee; In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazaræan rise up and walk”, Acts 3: 6. During the time when we were having no meetings at all, we were privileged to listen to some of the preachings from the past, and there was one which spoke about the hope that Peter and John brought into that man’s soul. In principle, the preacher said, they opened the doors of that temple. They had never been opened to him; the man was debarred from going in because of his ailments, but when Peter and John came along, they not only healed him of his disadvantage and gave him a link with the Saviour, not of the currency of this world, not the silver and gold of Israel or Palestine, but the silver and gold of heaven, the silver speaking of redemption through the blood of Jesus and the gold speaking about the purpose of God, the righteousness of God, the love of God. They can only be available to us when we avail ourselves of the work of salvation, the work of redemption. Our guilt has to be met. The price of our salvation had to be paid for, and the precious, holy blood of Jesus still stands. In the types in Leviticus 16 the blood was on the mercy-seat, but in the Old Testament the mercy-seat was hidden. Only the high priest could go in and that only once a year. But now Romans 3 is telling us of One “whom God has set forth a mercy-seat”, v 25. It is as though He has brought the mercy-seat out of the holy place and is presenting it. He is making it available to every man. Oh, dear friend, take advantage of it! Do not trifle with time! The only thing that is in short supply in the gospel is time. There is no shortage of mercy or grace or forgiveness or love or peace or righteousness; the list is endless. But there is a shortage of time. I cannot promise you tomorrow: I cannot really promise you the rest of today, but “now is the well-accepted time”, 2 Cor 6: 2.
I thought these four men in Kings give a wonderful illustration of persons taking advantage of their time of opportunity. This opportunity was given to them against a terrible background, a background when, as it says in the previous chapter, “an ass’s head was worth eighty silver-pieces, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung five silver-pieces”, 2 Kings 6: 25. Things that were worthless in man’s system were given a value. That is, sadly, more abroad than ever it has been, but here was a man, this captain, who says, “Behold, if Jehovah should make windows in the heavens …”. This man was a sceptic. He doubted God; he doubted God’s word; and he suffered for it; he suffered the righteous judgment of God. If you read the last verse, it says, “And so it happened to him; and the people trampled upon him in the gate, and he died”. We cannot trifle with grace. This man was unbelieving; he was a confirmed unbeliever; he was defiant. But, oh, these leprous men, I think they were humble. They say, ‘if they put us to death, we shall but die’. They accepted that their plight was inevitable. As the hymn says,
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform
(Hymn 307),
and He came in for these men. The camp of the Syrians fled. God made them hear the sound of horses and chariots. They thought they were being attacked, and they ran away, and all the wealth that they had accumulated, these leprous men were going to keep it for themselves. You do not need to do that. You must make it your own, surely, but once you know the love of the Saviour, the cleansing power of the blood in the gospel, you can tell anyone about it. It is available for all; it is, “towards all, and upon all those who believe”.
Sadly, when they came into the city and carried the message to the king, he disbelieved as well. He said, ‘Oh no, it is a plot of the Syrians. It is a ruse; they will come back again’. Oh, dear friend, there are no hidden meanings in the gospel; there are no doubts. The only question is, if you shall believe; the only doubt is on our side. With God there is absolute clarity; there is absolute certainty; there is absolute definiteness; there is total forgiveness; there is total salvation. May every one of us be in the gain of it! May we be like these four lepers! May we lay hold of the opportunity! May we lay hold of the grace of God, and lay hold on the mercy of God, lay hold of the compassions of God! They are towards us, without money and without price. It is like that hymn that we sang at the beginning! “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat: yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!”, Isa 55: 1. That is on our side: the price was paid by Jesus. He had to suffer; He had to die; He had to shed His blood; He had to be buried. Before that, of course, on the cross between the sixth and the ninth hour He had to endure the wrath of God, the righteous wrath of God against sin. Jesus paid that price, and He paid it in full, and He exhausted that wrath, so that for us now all that is left is blessing. The curse is gone; it is laid aside. Sadly, for those who disbelieve, it will come back. I may have quoted it here but many years ago in a preaching in Grangemouth a brother read two words, the last word of the Old Testament, which is “curse” (Mal 4: 6), and the last word of the New, which is “saints”, Rev 22: 31. He preached the gospel from that, because when you come to the New Testament, the curse has been taken away; it has been borne by Jesus. The price has been paid. For us there is the opportunity to become saints. What does that mean? Saved persons, saved by the precious blood of Jesus, empowered by the gift of the Spirit! That is another precious gift; you cannot overlook the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit makes things real, living and true in our souls.
May we all be in the gain of these things for His Name’s sake!
KIRKCALDY
13th September 2020