GOD’S PLAN
Neil C McKay
Genesis 3: 1-19
Psalm 22: 1-3
1 Peter 2: 4-8
Luke 22: 54-62
I have been thinking a little of God’s great thoughts and of man’s weakness and inability. It is a wonderful thing to see that God has great plans and is not going to deviate from them - nothing that He does needs to be undone or changed. Everything that God does, as Ecclesiastes says, shall be forever, chap 3: 14. Every single thing that God does works towards to His own end. The intrusion of sin into the world appeared to hinder or deny those plans, but it only served to bring out what God was.
The mystery of God has meant that God has allowed sin to operate in the world. It could never have operated in the world had God not allowed it. God has allowed sin to operate in order to bring out who He is and the greatness of His plans. They involve the salvation of men. The initial thing for you is the salvation of your soul: that you should be part of God’s great plan. God does not desire that any should be lost, but “that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”, 1 Tim 2: 4. It does not say that God willed that, because if God willed that all men should be saved then all men would be saved, but He desires it. That is, He has left something to you. He will be justified by persons who have been deep in sin, yet acknowledge that God is right and that they are wrong. Part of God’s plan is that you should come to it that you have been wrong and you have been a sinner, that you are lost in your sins and that God has been right all along. If you repent before God, and come to an acknowledgement of your sins, you will come to God’s way of salvation; that is what God desires.
We read in Genesis 3 about the incoming of sin through the serpent - when sin entered into the human race. We also see God’s answer to the whole matter: in everything that entered in through Adam we see the answer in Christ. The world is so accustomed to sin; it has been extant since its inception in Adam when sin came into the world, and every man, woman and child is affected by it. People think that it is normal, that this is the way the world should be, and that what we should do is to make it better. God does not have that plan at all! He does not intend to improve persons, living in a condition of sin which brings about illness, sadness, grief, corruption and violence. He has no plan to make it a little less violent or sinful, but rather to remedy the whole situation by bringing in - not Adam - but Christ. Adam was set in the garden, in the most beneficial conditions. There was nothing that Adam needed that he did not have. He had one commandment - that he should not eat of the tree in the midst of the garden. Adam had to be given that restriction otherwise he would not have been in responsibility; God could never have accomplished His purposes in man as apart from responsibility. God wanted man in intelligence, to understand God and be intelligent and responsible. He could have kept man as a creature without responsibility, but that was not His mind. One thing Adam was given to keep, and that one thing he failed in.
And so God sent another Man. That is, He sent Christ from the waters of baptism. God sent out His Man, and in contrast to Adam, He was put in the most difficult of conditions, and in these He wholly obeyed God. He was perfect - another kind of Man; that is, He was God manifest in flesh. “In him” 1 John says, “sin is not”, chap 3: 5. Satan came to Him immediately after the waters of baptism and said, ‘Does the scripture not say?’. He called God into question. But this Man was absolutely perfect in answering that. Can you see how God had brought in the answer to everything in man’s failure ? In Christ there was the answer to everything in which Adam fell.
So the serpent said to Eve, “Is it even so, that God has said, “Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”. The serpent said, as it were, ‘It appears that God is withholding something from you. You may say He has given you everything but He has not given you that!', as if to say, ‘How can you trust a God who does not give you everything?’. You think of that. How awful that Satan would put that seed of doubt in God’s goodness into Eve, and thereby into Adam. As if man should doubt the goodness of God! How wonderful therefore that One Man came in entirely in accord with the grace of God. The scripture says grace and truth subsists through Him, John 1: 17. That is, He came in with all the goodness and grace of God and showed that forth to men. In all man’s weakness, need, illness and frailty the Lord Jesus exemplified the goodness and grace of God towards man.
“And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, and ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.” There it was! God’s righteousness, God’s authority: who God is was contained in that. God had said to Eve, ‘You shall not do this one thing’, and Eve did it. She slighted the majesty and the rights of God; she denied that God was God. She went against God in what she did, as if to say, ‘I do not care if God told me not to do that thing. I am going to do it anyway’. What a matter that someone, the creature that God had just created, should stand against God and say, ‘I am going to eat of what you told me not to eat’! That is man; that is man in the world. Man would say, ‘I do not care if God sees us or God does this. I do not even know if I believe in God’. God is to be believed, friend! God is God and man is man. It is the most frightening thing that man in the world today is going on in denial of God and who He is; it is awful. And those that believe in the Lord Jesus know how serious it is. Men do not realise the severity of it, but God will not be mocked. It is terrible that man can go on in the practical denial of who God is.
“And the serpent said to the woman, Ye will not certainly die”. That was not true; history has shown death to exist ever since it happened. “But God knows that in the day ye eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and ye will be as God”. 'You will exalt yourself. You will have intelligence beyond what you have now.' That is what man wants, he wants this intelligence; he wants to be as God. He wants to be great, and in the end that will be the man of sin’s great downfall; he will set himself up to be as God, 2 Thess 2: 3, 4. At that point, when the ultimate sin has been committed, God will come in in judgment, v 8. What a time that will be!
“And the woman saw that the tree was good for food” - she saw that it was good - “it was a pleasure for the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to give intelligence”; and she took of it. Everything that she thought was good, all the pleasure; she thought, ‘I am just going to have that right now. That is me. Everything that is good and pleasurable that is what I want. I do not want to wait for it; I do not want anything that has been denied me; I am going to have everything that I want, immediately, for myself, for my own pleasure’. That is what Eve thought, and that was sin because it was going against God's command, acting for her own gratification, and not pleasing God.
Now Christ has come in: wonderful matter! Christ wholly upheld all the truth of God, everything that was due to God. He looked to God for everything; He was absolutely dependent on God. Psalm 22 and many others speak prophetically of the dependence and the holy manhood of the Lord Jesus. He came as a Man, a real Man, and obedience and dependence were what was suitable for man before God, to be dependent and obedient and acknowledge fully his place before God: “Preserve me, O God: for I trust in thee”, Ps 16: 1. That is typical of Christ; He looked to God to preserve Him because of His implicit trust in God.
Psalm 22 speaks of Christ in the ultimate place of extremity. Christ was there, dear friend, on the cross, suffering for sin and sins. He Himself was perfect and sinless, but He went there for my sins and my sinful state. “He shall bear their iniquities”, Isa 53: 11. He took them on Himself as a holy, perfect Man, and yet in that place where He met the whole matter of sin and sins, where God laid judgment upon Him, the sinless One, sins, even when He was forsaken of God, because of God’s holy nature and the matter of dealing with sin, even then Christ trusted in God. Is that not wonderful? It is the most striking thing to me that in the very place where Christ was abandoned of God, and where God poured His utmost fury and wrath against sin on His body on the cross, at that very time, Christ says, “My God, I cry by day, and thou answerest not; and by night, and there is no rest for me”. He trusted implicitly on God; He justified God: “And thou art holy”. There was nothing except perfection in Christ. He wholly glorified God in the very place of sin. If you are a believer, then God had to deal with your sins, and He dealt with them in Christ in His body on the cross - in a Man who completely justified and glorified God. God met those sins in Christ’s body on the tree. And, friend, if you have been to God in repentance and acknowledged your sins before God, repented of them and accepted Christ as your Saviour, then your sins are forgiven: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven”, Ps 32: 1.
Also, as is stated in Corinthians, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in Him”, 2 Cor 5: 21. The matter of sin has been met too: “he has made sin for us”. Christ was made sin so that the whole matter of sin, as well as the matter of sins, was completely met and dealt with on the cross. What an undertaking that was. Everything depended on the value of the person of Christ and His suffering on the cross. All that He was - that holy perfect Man that was here - all depended on that sinless Man. But that transaction on the cross, friend, was a most amazing matter, that Christ came in and met every single matter that was due to God - the holiness of God, the righteousness of God - and God glorified in regard to the whole matter of sin. Then Christ established man’s place before God again forever by going into heaven .
So what we see is that the matter of Adam’s sin was not simply met, but God was honoured and glorified in what Christ had done. I often wonder if someone was to say to God, ‘Look at the whole history of the human race - they have all gone against you’, God could simply say, ‘Look at Christ. If nothing else, look at that blessed Man: see what I have got. One Man glorified Me when you tried everything against Him. The whole of mankind was against Christ, and did He let Me down one bit? Absolutely not!’ He effectively said those words on the cross: “Thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”. What a man! How God has been honoured and glorified by that Blessed Man.
So there is no sweep up operation. In war men may regain ground that has been bombed, and where many people have died. That is not God’s way; God has achieved a victory in Christ. He has persons who were deep in sin but are now before Him in the worth of Christ.
So it says in Genesis that she gave the fruit to her husband and he ate and the eyes of both of them were opened. They sewed themselves fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. They tried to hide their nakedness and begin to excuse themselves. “Where art thou? … I heard thy voice in the garden, and I feared, because I am naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou art naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree … ? And Man said, The woman whom thou hast given to be with me, she gave me”, immediately excusing his sin. Eve said, ”The serpent deceived me, and I ate” - she excuses her sin. It is in contrast to Christ, the One who was lifted up on the cross in whole public view, firstly in the Jewish council and then in the place called Pavement, the Roman court, the public court, where Pilate condemned Christ, then publicly at Golgotha where Christ was crucified, raised up between heaven and earth. There was no excusing of our sin in Christ's death; sin is never excused by God. God met the matter publicly, fully and honourably in the Person of Christ. God never tries to lessen sin: He never mitigated His judgment against sin on the cross; He did not lessen that judgment because Christ was His own beloved Son. It was required that that judgment was meted out on His own beloved Son, because to do so showed the love of God. It showed who God was in its fulness.
I know there is a lot of doctrine in this preaching, and I do not apologise for that because the truth is so wonderful. The truth as to what Christ has done is liberating; it frees you. And if you are a believer already it frees you from concerns about your past sinful history, because Christ met them all. He met your sins, friend; if you believe on Him, He met your sins and He met your sinful state and He did it as a holy, blessed, dependent Man.
“Behold, I lay in Zion a corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believes on him shall not be put to shame. To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”. There are persons coming to the appreciation of the preciousness of this blessed Man. Man has a system and they took this Stone, Christ, and found that He could not fit into their system. Now, if Christ had acceded to their flattery, or to the world in any way, He could have fitted into man’s world. They would then have gladly made Him king, or given Him some place in government, but God has done away with the world, friend. Man’s world and God are wholly opposed; they are against each other, and there was nothing in Christ that would ever conform to the world or to sin - nothing that could ever fit into the systems of men. But God has made a system, a system which has a Cornerstone, and that Cornerstone is Christ. As everything in a building takes reference from the cornerstone, so in Gods world everything takes reference from Christ, and He gives character to it all.
God had the whole thing in mind; He has the whole thing in mind. He knows what the whole building is going to look like. The building is going to be exactly like the Cornerstone, exactly like Christ. Everyone who comes to Christ, friend, is going to be made like Him. It is not just a matter of forgiveness of sins; God has everything to offer you. Satan’s lie was that God would withhold something, but God is not withholding anything from man. God’s greatest thoughts are centred on man and He is giving great things to man. The forgiveness of sins is the first and most important thing. Without that you can know nothing of what God has in mind for you. Without faith you can know nothing of these things.
God can speak to persons even if they have not faith. There is a very interesting letter of Mr Wigram that I would recommend to you. It speaks of how God spoke to him in a tent shortly after the Battle of Waterloo. He knelt on his knees - because he had been taught to do so as a child - by the side of his camp bed in the tent and he felt a presence there that was more powerful than ever he could imagine. He felt that while it was true and it was right he felt that that presence was not against him.. But he felt the presence of God there in that tent. God can do that, but God looks for you to have faith.
The next thing that God gives us consequent on our salvation is the gift of the Holy Spirit. He gives It to those who believe and those who ask. It is a separate transaction to the forgiveness of sins because the gift of the Spirit is so great. It is tremendous that God should give of His own Spirit to man that man might understand how God feels. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, if you are saved God has a plan for you, and you are part of that great plan of God’s. God’s plan is this building. It involves the assembly; persons are being built into the assembly now. Christ is building the assembly and nothing else. The world system is going on, man carries on, but Christ is day by day building His assembly. That is the only thing He builds; He does not build any denomination; He builds persons into the assembly.
The scripture in Luke speaks of Christ, the blessed Man we are talking of, and He has not changed. We know that He did not change from boyhood into manhood. He has not changed now in glory. He is the same Man and He takes cognisance of our condition and our difficulties. He takes cognisance of our failures, and Peter fails here.
The Lord was going on to the cross; He is in the palace of the high priest and being accused by the Jews. The Lord is moving on in the will of God to the cross. And in those circumstances, does He consider for Himself as Adam did? Never did Christ consider what was for Himself or for His own will. The Lord Jesus had said to Peter, “I have besought for thee that thy faith fail not'. ‘Whatever happens’, He says, ‘your faith is not going to fail; you are going to come through, but you are going to deny me thrice’. Peter said, ‘No, I am not going to deny you. I will go with you even to death. I will die; I am not going to deny you’. Then Peter denies him three times, the cock crows, and the Lord turning around looked at Peter. He did not say to Peter, ‘I told you’; that is not what the Lord Jesus is. Who was the first person that the Lord Jesus appeared to in His resurrection? Peter, Luke 24: 34. He appeared first to Peter, and they had a transaction between themselves alone. It is not recorded in scripture what the Lord said to Peter on that first day; it was between Peter and the Lord.
That is the kind of Man the Lord is. Everything can be sorted out between you and the Lord: your sins all forgiven, every matter met, everything clear before God, and a living link with a Man who lives for you and succours you. He knows that failure can come in but He will be for you and be with you all your life. It begins with the salvation of your soul, which we might say is the greatest miracle of all, that a sinner can be saved from their sins. God is doing that tonight and He is doing it to souls all over the world. God can save.
May you be one of them, for His Name’s sake.
Linlithgow
11th September 2022