“COME, SEE A MAN”
Sylvain Perret
1 Timothy 2: 4-6 (to “for all”)
Acts 17: 30-31
Matthew 8: 27
John 19: 5 (from “And he says …”)
John 4: 29 (“Come, see a man”)
In thinking about the gospel at this time of year, it is quite solemn always to think that such an occasion is the last one to be held in a particular year. I suppose the assumption of men is always that, as they come to the close of a year, they will go on to see another one; they come to the close of a day and they are going to see another one. But we can never make that assumption. Maybe it is because of God’s patience and long-suffering in His love, that has allowed for this dispensation to go on for so long, that you think that there will be another day; because there has always been another day so far, but we just do not know. There are a few things that we do know.
My simple impression tonight, dear friends, was to speak to you about “the Man”. It is good to start the occasion by stating the desire of our Saviour God, which is that all men should be saved. One of the most wonderful things about the gospel is that it is an invitation. Have you thought about that? God Himself, the Creator, in whose hand alone the question of whether we can see another day is held, invites you. He invites you to take up what He has to offer to you. What a God! He would reassure you by the fact that He is a Saviour God. If He goes on in patience it is that all men may be saved.
Maybe He has gone on in patience just to make sure that you are included, dear friend, in those that are saved; I do not know that, but God does. He sees each one of our hearts; He knows each one of our hearts; and He has worked in each one of those who are present, otherwise you would not be here. The only thing to say about that is to let God work, for it is for your blessing. He is a Saviour God who desires that all men should be saved, but He has a way to salvation. And the way to salvation is through His Man, the One that we read about here. That is the thing that will always set you right, to see that everything for God is in Christ. It does not matter what stage you are at, or where you are, it always is true that whatever there is for God it is in Christ. And so it is stated here; “God is one, and the mediator of God and men” - “men” includes all of us, men, women, children - “one, the man Christ Jesus”. The word “men” is in the plural but “the man” is alone.
I read in the Acts because we see there that Paul speaks of the Lord as “the man whom he has appointed”; God has appointed Him “to judge the habitable earth in righteousness”. Now that is a solemn point, dear friends, but it is one to make us realise that God has given Him that place, and it is by Him that He will judge the habitable earth. We do not know if we are going to live another day. We do not know if we are going to see another year, but we do know that there is a day coming in which God will judge the habitable earth, and He will do so by the Man whom He has appointed. And if you turn to the end of the book of Revelation you find that day: a very solemn day. I was struck by the fact that when the apostle speaks of resurrection some mock him, Acts 19: 32. And I am sure that there are still people who would mock the idea of resurrection, but in that day all will be raised.
And the other thing you find if you read it is that it says that there are books, books written. And if the scripture had stopped at the fact that there were books written we would all be without hope. But it says there was another book, and that other book is the book of life. And that is the urgency of the gospel, dear friend. It is what you find where it says, “if any one was not found written in the book of life, he was cast in the lake of fire”, Rev 20: 15. The privilege that you have now is to make sure that your name is written in the book of life, and to come to know for yourself the Man that He has appointed, God’s Man, dear friend. But it is a very solemn matter, and if you have not had to do with God about your sins, now is the time. Now truly is the time. Salvation, forgiveness, are available; your guilt can be removed from you now. I do not know about tomorrow; I do not know even in about an hour’s time, but I do know that now it is available. What is written in these other books will not save you; the one thing that will matter is if your name is in the book of life. It is a blessed matter that there is another book! What has entered into your history, what is to be found in these other books, will not condemn you if your name is in that book. God will do all that through the Man whom He has appointed to that end. You can come to know Him now.
That is why I have read a little in the gospels, as I would desire to speak to you a little about that Man. It is a subject that we never tire to contemplate, the way that God Himself came down. It is such a wonder, the wonder of the incarnation, the wonder of the fact that God chose to make Himself known in this way; through the Person of His Son. The circumstances in which He came are most affecting. You go over His life and the circumstances of it, how affecting they were. He started in life in the same way that we all started - except perhaps that it was in much more modest circumstances. There was no interest in His birth with most around, but I can tell you there was the greatest interest in heaven. There was the One by whom all God’s purposes were going to be fulfilled. The message that filled heaven in that day was peace with men. And peace with men on account of that little Babe that was there. What a wondrous thing that is; the One who was there. We are reminded that the joy in heaven then was greater than when earth’s foundations were laid, God being able to rest finally with man because of the One who was there. His circumstances were modest. There was another instance where men could say, “Is not this the son of the carpenter?”, Matt 13: 55. There was nothing that would distinguish Him particularly.
It says, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey?”. Again, Mr Darby has a wonderful turn of phrase as to that:
We see the Godhead glory
Shine through that human veil
(Hymn 188)
It is as if, although He was Man there, the fact , of who He was as God as well was shining through. When faced with the circumstances, when faced with the suffering and the difficulties of man, He intervened; after this passage you see Him facing demons! You see Him facing disease; you see Him facing death: all three circumstances, circumstances which no one had been able to meet. And it is one of the marks of the Lord Jesus, of “the man Christ Jesus”, that He can meet what no one else can meet. The question of your sins is something that no one else can meet. There is nothing that you can do, no acts of righteousness, of bravery, of valour would ever be able to atone for your guilt. It is too great, it is too big, and remember only Christ satisfies God; only He satisfies God. But the Lord Jesus is able.
We could have thought that He could come here and just accomplish the work that was ahead of Him, but He lived a life before that. What benefits men had from His presence. Think of the countless numbers that came to Him with illnesses, with problems, and He was able to meet them all; there never was a man like Him. There never walked here a man like Him; He stands alone. And God would work in your soul that you would come to appreciate something of that, what we refer to as these moral glories, the qualities of the Man. What shone through what He did and what He said was who He was. And the men that were with Him there were beginning to wonder at who was there. They were beginning to realise that He was no ordinary man. “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” The One who was there was the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the One through whose word the worlds rose, who had such power as was displayed when the earth and everything that is around it were made. This was shining through, but He did not come in that power, He came here to be the Man of sorrows, the One who was acquainted with grief. What shining out; what glories belong to that Man.
He did not just come to the earth to display what Man according to God is. He did that, and as such He has also shone a light on every other man. If you were to compare any man’s life with His from God’s standpoint, you would see that every other falls short. And that is true of each one of us. But God’s heart of love would not have been told out if the Lord had just come to display what manhood according to God was. The Lord Jesus came so that the manhood that was displayed in Him, the kind of man that was displayed here, would be secured in myriads of men. And God wants to include you in that. He desires for you to be saved and to belong to Him, and to know Him, and to be near to Him. What a God He is.
I read at the end of John’s gospel, and no doubt the man we find there, Pilate, did not measure in any way the words that he was using. He did not appreciate who was there, and you get the sense that he felt that the sooner the whole thing was over the better he was. But those words have been allowed to stand nonetheless. And how precious it is that he says, “Behold the man!”. The Saviour was about to suffer. It is a subject of contemplation that, despite the fact that He knew exactly everything that He was going to face, it did not make Him turn aside in any way. He went on as the hymn writer says,
Thou chosest still, blest Saviour, to obey.
(Hymn 318)
What a wonder that is. There He was about to go on and to suffer, to be put on a cross. He was about to suffer at the hands of men, terrible sufferings, but He was also about to suffer from God. There He was made sin, that very thing which had never ever entered into His soul - that is something that we cannot understand; we cannot comprehend that at all. Sin and everything that goes with it, and the whole system of sin, never influenced Him in any way. It says that He was “undefiled, separated from sinners”, Heb 7: 26. What a wonder that He was made sin. We cannot measure what that means; we cannot measure what that meant to Him, but we can come to the blessing of it. For the blessing of it is that, if you believe in Him, and if you put your faith and your trust in Him, you can say that your sins were borne by Jesus then. And you can be entirely and fully relieved of any guilt. Christ has removed the distance which sin had introduced between man and God. The distance at which I was at because of what I had done Christ has removed, and He has removed everything that would hinder me from being with God.
You see it is a wonderful thing to grasp in your soul that everything has been settled there. It is something that we come to again and again, because it is essential that we may be at liberty to lay hold of the fact that everything has been met there. And it is Christ who has done it all! He suffered during those three hours of darkness, and then He died. He was in perfect control, again a subject of wonder; for He could commit His spirit into His Father’s hands. He entered into death. We were speaking of “the Man”, and it was as Man that He suffered and died. Maybe sometimes, at least it is my experience, the way that my mind works means that I think, ‘Well, I am used to the story’. We are used to thinking of the Lord Jesus as Someone who stands apart and somehow, maybe, we think that these things were not quite as much as they were; but He suffered as Man; He went into death as Man. He knows what it is; He has been in the heart of the earth, and the domain of death. This was the first time during those hours of darkness when that communion that He had with His God and Father was interrupted. Blessed matter that at the end of those three hours of darkness He could speak to the Father. He knew that the work that He had been given was finished. The whole question of sin is fully settled to God’s eternal satisfaction. And it can be the same for your sins; all that God asks you to do is to believe. God could not have made the salvation more accessible and simple than it is; He just asks you to believe.
Maybe it is so simple that sometimes we struggle, but there was someone who said to the Lord, “help mine unbelief”, Mark 9: 24. Even that is available, dear friend: “help mine unbelief”. You can speak to the Lord in this way, “help my unbelief”. The Man Christ Jesus has done everything else; you only need to believe. What a Saviour God! He not only desires that all men should be saved, but He has worked to the end that every man, every person can be saved. Sometimes, people wish for certain things, or they wish for certain things for other people, but they do not have the means to make them to happen. God has certainly done everything, and He has done everything whilst we were all still afar off. The writer to the Romans tells us that “God commends his love to us” (chap 5: 8) in this way. It was whilst we were still afar off.
I read finally, in John 4. It is a remarkable experience that this woman went through. And what she says is quite different. It is, “Come, see a man”. And in some way, it is what the preacher would seek to do, to draw you to this Man, to say to you, “Come, see a man”. It is not just a matter of wondering who He is or beholding Him but, “Come, see a man”. Come and know Him for yourself. It is what the people of the city say to this woman afterwards as well, v 42. They have come to know Him for themselves. God desires for you to know Him. In the new covenant in Hebrews it says that no one will teach his brother, “Know the Lord; because all shall know me in themselves, from the little one among them unto the great among them”, Heb 8: 11. Think of the closeness that God desires to have with you.
We spoke of the Lord Jesus entering into death, but the blessed matter is that He triumphed over the power of death. He came out of it. He could say that He had authority to lay down His life and to take it again, John 10: 18. And He did that. And God was pleased also to raise Him, and not just to raise Him but to exalt Him. And the Man that we speak about now, right now, He is in heaven. The Man that we have contemplated in His life down here, He is now in heaven. And He stands before God, and that fact means everything to you, to me. If He stands accepted before God, it means that you can stand too if you belong to Him. And this woman is drawn to an appreciation of the Man. The Lord Jesus is the only one that can truly satisfy you. The knowledge of Him by faith is the only thing that can bring peace and satisfaction to your soul.
We often think that our satisfaction and happiness depend mostly on circumstances. We do not like to think that it might depend upon us, but we prefer to think it depends on the circumstances; if something is wrong, we think maybe if circumstances could be changed, then things would be better. It never works out like that. This was the experience of this woman. How often had her circumstances changed in the pursuit of happiness, but she never found it until she came to meet the Man. And the Lord Jesus is still waiting as He was then at Sychar’s well. He is available in the same manner as He was available to this woman. He is available to you that you may turn to Him and come to know Him. Speak with Him. She asked Him questions. She wanted to know more; that is what the Lord Jesus wants from us in simplicity, that we have a desire to know more of Him. And He tells her about quite remarkable truths, blessings that God has in mind for you. He tells her about the Holy Spirit who is available. What a wonderful thing it is that God has been pleased, and He is ready, to give you of His Spirit that you may have a new power in yourself to walk in newness of life and to be able to enjoy divine things. And the Spirit works in your heart as well. If you have come to Christ He has worked in your heart, but maybe you have not quite appreciated yet how He dwells in you, how He is always with you. You see in the Old Testament, in the previous dispensation, the Spirit acted at certain points through certain people. In the present time He desires to dwell in you. “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in world”, 1 John 4: 4.
He speaks to this woman too about the Father and the Father’s desire. What a wonderful thing it is that God has come to be known in this way. The Son was brought to light first, but He was the Son with the Father. And what the Lord Jesus would like to take you to is a knowledge of the Father. He speaks of the Father in most affecting terms, of the care of the Father. Maybe the simplest way in which we come to prove the way that He is our heavenly Father is in the way that He cares for us. It says, “Or what man is there of you who, if his son shall ask of him a loaf of bread, will give him a stone?”, Matt. 7: 9. He cares for you in many ways; recognise it in your life. It is a blessing but more than that what this woman is led to see is that this Man would like to bring you to the Father’s presence to be a worshipper in His presence. You need to have your eyes open as to what God is doing: what His purpose is, what His plans are, the place that He has for you, beyond everything of this scene.
“Come, see a man”. What an experience. We have often noted that she leaves her waterpot behind. I like to think that every time that she went to this well, she proved that the well was deeper; it would satisfy her that little bit less, but she came to find the One who satisfied her fully. And that Man is available in the same way today. He is the Man that God has appointed in view of the day of judgment. He has given Him, and He will see to it that every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He will secure that testimony, that in the scene in which He was rejected, in which none cared His name to know, all will have to acknowledge who He is.
But the blessing is to come to know the Man now. What a Man He was in His life down here; how precious that is. What a man He was in being ready to go and face the whole question of sin, and may you ensure that the question of your own sins is included in that too. Do not go out of this room without having settled that matter. It is settled for eternity if you have settled it. But the whole end in view is for you to come and appreciate the Man. Come and have a relationship with Him and be able to say in those simple terms, “Come, see a man”.
May we all be drawn to Him for His Name’s sake.
Edinburgh
26th December 2021