CHANGING AND CHANGELESS
Jim T Brown
Genesis 22: 14
Joshua 4: 8 to “had spoken”, v 9
Judges 15: 18-19
We spoke last night after the prayer meeting about the rapidity with which the Lord Jesus can effect change in us. When He comes at the rapture, what changes will take place in the dead and the living. The dead in Christ, millions and millions of them down from Abel, all bought by the precious blood, will be raised in glory and incorruptibility. But the living too, those who are His, will be changed. These frail, mortal bodies of ours, will put on immortality. Think of the swiftness of it all: “in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye”, 1 Cor 15: 52! What mighty, irresistible divine power will effect it all. Those who have been in their graves, some for thousands of years, will for a brief moment, stand on the earth, such is the power of resurrection. What a triumph! Who else could do that but the One of whom we sang in our hymn, “the blest incarnate Word” (Hymn 11)?
How glorious a Person He is! It should really lay hold of our souls, that we are connected with a blessed Man who is able to effect such change. We live in a time of change, but when we are changed at the rapture, we are ushered into a scene that is changeless, which never can be affected by death again. Can we better appreciate what immortality means? A deathless, ageless condition! How miniscule is man’s tiny span, but we are to be changed into a condition that death can never touch; it defies comprehension. It fills my heart with wonder and appreciation that I am destined to have a condition that is immortal, and that we shall forever dwell in a timeless, unchanging sphere. Not only that but we will be like Christ. When we see Him, we will be like Him; how wonderful that is! This body of humiliation will be transformed into conformity to His body of glory. We have a sorrowing family among us here, as bereaved - and indeed we all sorrow, but what a comfort that the power of death has been broken as a consequence of the work of Christ, and this blessed prospect is before us. Whatever may intervene in our circumstances or in our lives, we have the assurance that all is well.
So we live in conditions of change but there are certain things for the believer which never change. The Lord Jesus never changes: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come”, Heb 13: 8. We have an anchor for our souls. These three scriptures I have touched on often affect me because they refer to things, though spoken about and experienced in Old Testament times, which reach on in their bearing and fulness to the present day. They are still as current as the time to which these verses refer. “Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh; as it is said at the present day, On the mount of Jehovah will be provided”. So that whatever our need in this changing world, it can be met by the Lord Jesus as we look upwards to “the mount of Jehovah”. Our hymn touched on it:
Our hearts are led to Him above,
And we with Thee are blessed.
Colossians tells us to have our minds on the things which are above, and thus to elevate our sights, chap 3: 2. The mount of Jehovah suggests a sphere of heavenly blessing and divine resource; that is where Jesus is. What comfort and satisfaction are there. If we need food, spiritual food, we find it in Jesus. He is the Bread of life, and he that comes to Him shall never hunger, John 6: 35. If it is consolation we seek, and how much we need it currently, we find it in Jesus, our great High Priest, who is fully able to sympathise with our infirmities as having been tempted in all things in like manner, though sin apart, Heb 4: 15. How blessed and plentiful the resource we find in Jesus. But at what a cost. These words, so well-known to us, can hardly be taken in: “Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slaughter his son”, v 10. Isaac, of course, was spared: what a comfort for Abraham that must have been. Yet God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all (Rom 8: 32), that these blessed things might be made available to us. What it meant to the Lord Jesus! What it meant to the Father! We had reference in our hymn to the blessed relationship which existed between the Father and the Son. Oh, the affections of the Father for Jesus! Think of the Father’s feelings as He saw those wicked men drive the nails into the hands and the feet of the Lord Jesus. Think of what it meant to the Father as that soldier pierced His side with a spear. Think of what it meant to God to be without the Lord Jesus during these three days and three nights when He lay in the heart of the earth. So what divine expenditure there has been that these blessed things should be made available to us, but there it is, “as it is said at the present day, On the mount of Jehovah will be provided”. Whatever our need, we will find it met in Jesus. His sympathies are as real as when He was on His pathway here, though He is now in heaven. What a comfort that is.
When we come to Joshua and the crossing of the Jordan, what a scene of victory unfolds. At the Red Sea, Israel were brought to believe in a God who would deliver them from Egypt and bring them to Himself. How wonderful that is. The Lord Jesus has died for our sins to deliver us out of this present evil world; we can sing redemption’s songs. But the crossing of the Jordan connects us with a heavenly land. How very fine to think of that. There are two remarkable aspects. First, twelve stones are taken up from the bed of the Jordan, by divine prescription, from the place where the priests’ feet stood firm, and laid down in the lodging place on the other side - glorious testimony to Christ’s triumph over death. But then, what Joshua himself did is worthy of note. We might say it was really his own exercise: “twelve stones did Joshua set up in the midst of the Jordan”. It was as if, when he saw the ark of the covenant and the flowing waters retreat irresistibly before it, his impression, typically, of the mighty power of Christ in annulling death and raising us up in life with Him was so great that he placed these stones in the bed of the Jordan. And they are there to this day. How very fine that is. Right to the end of his pathway, Joshua would have that reminiscence that the stones that he had placed in the Jordan were still there. For us, it would be a perpetual current remembrance of the power of Christ in annulling him that has the might of death, and indeed that death itself has been annulled. For the believer in Jesus, faith asserts that death has been abolished. I suppose the casual observer, even the next day, would look at the Jordan and would see no difference. The waters had come back again; it would seem as if nothing had happened. And, to the world, I suppose, believers are in that sense a bit mysterious, men being unable to comprehend why they have no fear of death, baffled by the certainty they have that the power of death has been conquered by Jesus. What comfort for our loved ones who are sorrowing at this time that death has, for faith, been abolished. Our dear brother is with Christ, and what a day it shall be when the Lord comes and that body of his, weak and feeble though it was in latter days, will be raised incorruptible. He is with Christ actually; his spirit is with Christ; he is with Him whom he loved! He is absent from the body, present with the Lord. He awaits that final, perfecting divine act, when the Lord comes and he is clothed with a body of glory like Christ’s own.
Well, the stones “are there to this day”. Our brother knew the certainty of that. The believer reaches the end of his life with the unfailing assurance that the death and resurrection of Jesus for ever ensures that the power of death has been broken. What a comfort for us all.
Finally, in Judges, we have this reference to Samson. Sometimes we get a little jaded and weary; we may even seek to do things for the Lord, and yet become a bit disconcerted and discouraged if there is no obvious immediate outcome. And here was Samson, just an ordinary person like you and me in one sense, although distinctively the subject of divine workmanship and prominence in another. And here he was, taking issue with the circumstances in which he found himself after a mighty exploit. Effectively he was saying to God, ‘Are things really to end like this?’. He says here, “and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”. But our God does not operate in such a way. He is the God of all encouragement, 2 Cor 1: 3. So God clave the hollow rock. Think of God’s solicitude and care for His own. In Exodus 17, Moses was instructed to strike the rock with his staff, alluding to the sufferings of Jesus in order that the Holy Spirit should come, but this scripture brings in more the side of God’s compassion for His own. God clave it. Think of God coming so closely into Samson’s circumstances to cleave the hollow rock in order that Samson’s thirst might be appeased. What a God we have!
In 1 Corinthians 10, we learn that “they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: (now the rock was the Christ)”, v 4. Think of the Lord Jesus following us in our Christian pathways, meeting our needs, refreshing our spirits. The rock followed them: the weakest, the most infirm among them, would benefit from the following rock. These blessed divine resources are available in undiminished supply today. It says, “Therefore its name was called En-hakkore”, or, as the note says, ‘the caller’s spring’. Thus we can call on that heavenly spring, whatever the need. When we feel down or weak or in need of consolation, we can call on that resource.
Well, these things are very affecting. We live in a changing world but there are certain things made available to us which are changeless. As we look upwards, we see Christ there, seated at God’s right hand, and able to meet our every circumstance. His triumph over death was complete, and its efficacy remains. We have the abiding testimony to His victory in these stones in the midst of the Jordan, which “are there to this day”. And then we have the caller’s spring. At any moment of our day, any time of our lives, we can express ourselves to God, to Christ, to the Holy Spirit, and ask for a fresh supply to satisfy our thirst and meet our need. What an encouragement for us all in this gathering at the present time.
For His Name’s sake.
Word in meeting for ministry in Edinburgh
13th July 2021