“THE COMING ONE”
Paul Martin
Matthew 11: 2, 3
John 14: 18-21
1 Thessalonians 4: 15-18
Revelation 22: 16, 17
I desire, with the Spirit's help, beloved, to say a word as to “the coming one”. Our Lord Jesus has always been “the coming one” and He continues to be “the coming one”. Right from the beginning of God's ways He looked on to Jesus. He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1: 26): that looked on to Christ. He made Adam in His image, but the full thought looked on to Christ. Adam was “the figure of him to come”, Rom 5: 14. What a glorious Person Jesus must be! You can trace all through the Old Testament inklings of where God was speaking of the One who was to come. He said to Abraham, His friend, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?”, Gen 18: 17. He showed Abraham, who was a friend of God's and who was prepared to sacrifice his own son, the One who was coming. He took Moses up the mountain and He showed him the pattern. It was not a blueprint, as the builders use or used to use; He showed him Christ as the Centre of everything for His pleasure, and Moses, from that view, built the tabernacle system and within the centre he placed the ark.
God was speaking of this glorious Person right down through the dispensations. Think of the psalms, looking on, and the prophets. Isaiah was speaking of Him when he wrote: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple”, Isa 6: 1. Think of the view that Isaiah had of what Christ is in the purpose of God, and then Isaiah goes on in his writing to chapter 53 to show the One who would be here in lowly humiliation, despised and rejected, but never detracting from the glory of the One who was always there in the purpose of God. What a glorious Person! Oh to get a fresh sense in the soul of the greatness of what God has done, centring everything in Christ, right from before time was. “He purposed in himself … to head up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth; in him”, Eph 1: 9-10.
When the Lord Jesus came, what acclamation from heaven there was, angels beholding Him. What a view they had of One they had never seen in that way before, but One so great had stooped into lowly manhood. What a Person! The woman in John 4 says, “I know that Messias is coming”, v 25. As a Samaritan, she had no right to the blessing, but she had some inkling in her soul that there was One who was going to be the answer to every problem that Israel faced, and she says, “I know that Messias is coming, who is called Christ; when he comes he will tell us all things”. In what wonderful grace the Lord says to her, “I who speak to thee am he”, v 26. She “left her waterpot”, v 28. She had finished with herself and her circumstances. Immediately she had a view of the coming One and she finished with everything that had occupied her, and she goes and renders testimony to One who was greater than any she had ever met before. What a glorious Person!
Here in Matthew we have John in prison. I do not speak critically of John. He was somewhat like Gideon; Gideon said, “Ah my Lord, if Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us?”, Judg 6:13. Here John raises the question. He says, “Art thou the coming one?”. That is the name, I think, by which the Lord Jesus was known by the godly remnant, the Coming One. I understand that early in this dispensation godly believers used to greet one another, 'The Lord is coming'; that was their greeting. It was not 'How are you?', though we are rightly interested in how the saints are, but they greeted one another by saying, 'Brother, the Lord is coming'. The Spirit of God, early in the dispensation, put that firmly and strongly in the hearts of the lovers of Christ, and it was burning in the hearts of such that the Lord is coming. John says, “Art thou the coming one?”. What a glorious Person He is, moving here amongst men in lowly humiliation, as we had in the reading:
God manifest in flesh, O wonder of His universe! (Hymn 400)
Outwardly “there is no beauty that we should desire him”, Isa 53:2. That includes me; I saw no beauty in Christ according to what I am by nature. I am dependent on the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit having drawn my soul to appreciate something of the glory of that blessed One. Yet in that lowly pathway there were those that came to love Him: Mary, who could stand by the tomb was one, and the only thing she was interested in was “they have taken away my Lord”, John 20: 13. I wonder, dear brother and sister, you will excuse me asking a direct question, but if the Lord Jesus was not alive today, would it make any difference to your life? I have to ask myself that. Would my life be different? Dear brethren, we have to face realities as to what the Person means to us, and for John he had waited for this moment, and he addresses Him thus as the Coming One.
That blessed One, beloved, is “living to the ages of ages”; He will never die; He has “the keys of death and of hades”, Rev 1: 18. “All power has been given” to Him “in heaven and upon earth”, Matt 28: 18. He came into manhood's condition and in a coming day will exercise that power as a blessed Man. In wondrous love He stooped into lowly manhood. Every movement of the Lord Jesus was governed by His love for His God and Father. What a wonderful contemplation for our souls! We shall come on, if we are helped, to the day to come, but even in that time “when he shall have annulled all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign”, (1 Cor 15: 24, 25) He will do so in love for His God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: “Then the end, when he gives up the kingdom to him who is God and Father … that God may be all in all”, v 24, 28. What love in the heart of our Lord Jesus, whether it is in lowly conditions, moving here amongst men, whether it is coming in and out amongst His own, whether it is, beloved, in coming for them as He will do at the rapture or whether it is in completing all God's ways in time, and folding all up, when He will present the kingdom to God because He loves Him. Oh what a Person!
I come on to John because the Lord Jesus is not here now. He is glorified but He is coming. This is the character of the love of Jesus now; not 'I will come to you'; He does not say that; He says, “I am coming”. Such is the character of His love. We desire to prove it as we gather together, especially on the first day of the week. He comes by the Spirit. How wonderful that is! At the breaking of bread, when we “announce the death of the Lord, until he come” (1 Cor 11: 26), He desires to come Himself by the Spirit. Would you want to miss that? I would not want for a week to miss that experience. Dear young people, I say to you from my heart, do not think the gathering together to remember the Lord is just a ritual; it is not. It is the response of lovers to His love and because there is love for Him and faithfulness to Him, He says, “I am coming”; how wonderful to prove that! We were local with an old sister many years ago and someone asked her why she always went to the Supper. She said, 'I sit with my eyes shut and nearly every week I have the sense that He is right next to me and if I opened my eyes, I feel I could touch Him'. That was how real it was to her. I trust, beloved that the Lord's coming in is real to each one of us. I would desire it may be more real to me, but from the longings of His heart He says: “I will not leave you orphans”.
Think of the awfulness of being here in this present scene where everything, as men say, is falling apart. It is not, you know! Everything is under control, but the awfulness of being here as an orphan without having a link with that glorious Man, who is exalted on high, and without enjoying the consciousness that in His faithful love He comes! He would come into readings by His word. His word has a quickening touch in the soul: “Send out thy light and thy truth: they shall lead me, they shall bring me to thy holy mount, and unto thy habitations”, Ps 43: 3. What is it speaking of? It is speaking of Him, the One who is the Centre of that scene. It says, 'Send it out; they shall guide me'. What a glorious Person Jesus is! How much He loves us! Not only how much He has loved us, but He loves us still, and He loves us so much that He is not going to leave His own here in the scene from which He has been cast out without the consciousness, freshly, week by week and day by day, of His love to sustain us in the midst of such a scene. How wonderful our blessed Lord Jesus is!
But that One, beloved, is coming again, and this verse in Thessalonians has affected me greatly recently, and I trust I can speak of it rightly. Paul says, “For this we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we, the living, who remain to the coming of the Lord, are in no way to anticipate those who have fallen asleep”. The Thessalonians may have been so enjoying their Christianity that they thought that those who had departed were missing something. Well, they are not missing anything. They are not thinking of us; we think of them because we miss them; but they are not thinking of us. Those who have departed have one Object and that is Jesus. They have gone to be “with Christ”, which is “very much better”, Phil 1: 23. He says we are not to “anticipate” them “for the Lord himself, with an assembling shout, with archangel's voice and with trump of God, shall descend from heaven”. Beloved, how wonderful that He should do that! In His power the One who is sitting on the Father's throne could say, 'Come', and no one could stay; every one would answer, but in His love He comes out of heaven. He “shall descend from heaven” into the created sphere to claim His own, to claim His assembly for Himself. Think of the love that lies behind that! He will not leave us to find our own way. No, He is coming to embrace us in the very scene into which He is descending, and He is going to guide us right the way in, and, if I might say reverently, settle us in the scene in which He is as those that belong there. How glorious, these bodies in which we are will be changed: “as we have borne the image of the one made of dust, we shall bear also the image of the heavenly one”, 1 Cor 15: 49.! How glorious that is, heavenly bodies, bodies of glory like unto His own. He will “transform our body of humiliation into conformity to his body of glory”, Phil 3: 21. How great these movements of the Lord Jesus! And God will “quicken your mortal bodies also on account of his Spirit which dwells in you”, Rom 8: 11. How one divine Persons are in all that they do, in unison with one Another, with one object in view, and that is that God should be glorified.
And the Lord Jesus will have His assembly complete and perfect and glorious for Himself throughout that short period of time. He will have her all to Himself, like Isaac took Rebecca into his mother Sarah's tent “and he loved her”, Gen 24: 67. She was to be entirely for Christ. She had taken the veil and covered herself, v 65. It is as if she had said, 'All that I am is for Him; it is for no one else to see'. The saints are not here on public display: Our “life is hid with the Christ in God”, Col 3: 3. The One who is coming to take us will take the whole assembly in its entirety, but not only the assembly but every one of the redeemed, going right back to Abel. Think of the joy that the Lord Jesus will have when the fruit of His work will be seen complete, those who have died in faith being raised. We may not be able to find their bodies, but He knows them. And He will have them with Himself glorious in that scene. As He says in chapter 14 of John, “In my Father's house there are many abodes … for I go to prepare you a place”, v 2. There are many abodes but the assembly's place is distinct, in the heart of Christ in the presence of the Father; and, dear brethren, He is coming out of heaven. He is almost on the way.
We make arrangements – and we have to make arrangements – but always have in mind that He is on the way: “I am coming to thee”, He says to Ephesus (Rev 2: 5). Ephesus lost the sense of the imminence of His coming when they left their first love. Oh, let us not do that, beloved. He says to Philadelphia, “I come quickly; hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown”, Rev 3: 11. He is coming; not, 'I will come quickly'. He does not say that to Philadelphia. He says, “I come”. Oh divine love that would not delay! “He that comes will come, and will not delay”, Heb 10: 37. He is almost on the way.
Oh may there be that longing as we have at the end of Revelation where “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”! How great that moment is. When will they say this? They are saying it now. It does not say, 'the Spirit and the bride will say, Come'. It says, “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”. Do I have my part in that? It is not only in the words that we use but it is in our manner of life. I understand this word “come” means 'come now'. If I was told that within an hour the Lord was coming, what difference would it make? The believer is looking for His coming. He is longing for it, that the One who died for us and lives for us, the One who has asked that the Spirit should come, the One who has quickened our affections, that blessed, divine Person, is going to come. It says, “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”. That call is going up now. It is not waiting for next year; it is going up now; it is going up from loving persons whose hearts have been won by the excellence of this blessed Person. He says, “I am the root and offspring of David”: everything derived from Him; everything owes its being to Him. How wonderful He is, “the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star”. Peter says that star has already arisen in our hearts, 2 Pet 1: 19. We do not have to wait, beloved; it has already arisen. “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come”.
Well, we may break bread together tomorrow, but we do so in the light of His coming again. We testify to the world that the One who we remember in the breaking of bread has been rejected wrongfully. He is worthy to reign, and He is going to reign. “For he must reign”, Paul says, “until he put all enemies under his feet”, 1 Cor 15: 25. “He must reign”, and in that reign there will be order where there has been disorder; there will be peace where there has been chaos; there will be healing where there has been sickness. What a Person! He will bring it all in in Himself, and all shall bow before Him, from the least to the greatest, acknowledging that He is rightly crowned with glory.
He is the One who is worthy to reign! Indeed! May He reign within our hearts 'without a rival', as the hymn-writer says (hymn 368), and may He fill our hearts with the greatness of His love. He is longing to come. He is not delaying, Peter says, “as some account of delay”, 2 Pet 3: 9. He is not delaying. He is longing to come and take His own.
May we be with the Spirit in saying, “Come”! May it be so for His Name's sake!
Edinburgh
24th September 2022