THE LORD JESUS INDISPENSABLE
David A Brown
John 15: 5 (from “for without me”), 7, 8, 15 (from “but I have”), 26, 27; 20: 10, 11 (to “without”), 16-18
Not long before the Lord took our sister home to be with Himself, my wife and I went to visit her in the care home in Linlithgow. Just before we left, she turned to me and said, ‘David, what would we do if we did not have the Lord? I would therefore like to say a few words about the indispensability of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to challenge every heart in this room as to whether the Lord Jesus Christ means anything to you. When our sister said that to me one of our gospel hymns came into my mind, one which we have in our hymn book:
I could not do without Thee,
O Saviour of the lost,
Whose precious blood redeemed me
At such tremendous cost!
(Hymn 220)
These words could surely be sung by our sister as knowing the precious, redeeming blood of the Lord Jesus Christ for herself! She knew Him, that blessed Man, as her glorious Saviour, and she had trusted in Him. She knew Him for herself, and was moved to commit herself to His testimony and interests. Through all her difficulties, all the pressures that she endured in her life (and many here know full well what suffering she went through), I do believe that she found Christ indispensable to her. It says in chapter 15 of this gospel at the end of verse 5 (which we read yesterday in our reading meeting) “for without me ye can do nothing”. As we read that passage what our sister said to me in her room came back to me.
Linking on with that thought of the indispensability of the Lord Jesus, I would like to touch on three features that are referred to in chapter 15. The first one is as to becoming “disciples of mine” (v 8 ), and I think we have seen something of the features that are referred to. A disciple of His simply means a follower of the Lord Jesus. I read recently that a great deal of exercise and suffering is gone through in becoming a disciple of the Lord Jesus, and I think we could certainly say we have seen that. “That ye bear much fruit”: what fruit is borne as a result of discipleship. Chapter 15 of John’s gospel is a wonderful fruit-bearing chapter.
In chapter 6 of the same gospel, there is a reference to other disciples. They said, “This word is hard; who can hear it?” (v 60), and then the scripture goes on to say, “From that time many of his disciples went away back and walked no more with him”, v 66. In that same chapter we have His own disciples with Him, and He raises a question with them “Will ye also go away?”, and Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal; and we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God” (v 68, 69); not only “believed” but “believed and known”.
In the next verse which we read it says, “but I have called you friends, for all things which I have heard of my Father I have made known to you”, v15. How wonderful it is to be a friend of the Lord Jesus! Can He call you His friend? Being a friend means you can receive the secrets of the divine mind. That is a very blessed matter. When you have a friend, you can confide in that friend, and his or her concerns become your concerns, your interests. Consider one such as Abraham: “he was called Friend of God”, Jas 2: 23. Think of the wonderful disclosures that Abraham received from Jehovah Himself! Such therefore is the portion of a friend of God. “For all things which I have heard of my Father I have made known to you”. How wonderful it is to have these precious disclosures!
And then at the end of the chapter in verses 26 and 27 the scripture speaks of a “witness”. I know that the reference in this chapter is to the witness of the apostles, apostolic witnesses, but I have in my mind that our sister was a witness. I remember taking her to the hospital in Musselburgh many years ago to visit her husband, and what a witness she was to those who cared for her husband during those difficult times. The Lord too bears witness, “because ye are with me from the beginning”. Well, our sister has continued faithfully and despite all the suffering and sorrow in her life, she has continued until the end of her pathway here.
I thought of Mary of Magdala as displaying something of these three features. Chapter 20 is a wonderful, triumphant chapter, because Christ is out of death and for the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ we have a wonderful hope (as we have sung in Hymn 152), and what our brother has said in prayer, and that is that our Saviour is out of death. Death could not hold Him. He -
Burst the portals of the grave
(Hymn 414).
How He vanquished death! Scripture says, He “has annulled death”, 2 Tim 1: 10. That means to make it of no account. I thought that Mary was a wonderful disciple. If you think of the other disciples it is said of them that they “went away again to their own home”, but it says of Mary, “But Mary stood at the tomb weeping without”. What a disciple she was, a follower of the Lord Jesus! Love held her at the tomb of Jesus. She thought that everything had gone and the One whom she loved had gone, but she was to realise that the One who had gone through death was now a risen Man before her.
Later we read, “Jesus says to her, Mary. She, turning round, says to him in Hebrew, Rabboni, which means Teacher”. I think that when the Lord said to her, “Mary”, He was seeing right into the depths of her heart. She was indeed a friend of the Lord and as a result He was about to give her the wonderful message. How wondrous were the disclosures of His heart to her! “Jesus says to her, Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God ”. What a message, dear brethren! Think of that blessed Man, now in resurrection with the glory and stability that brings to the soul, and now about to be received up in glory. She witnessed to others what He had said to her. It says, “Mary of Magdala comes bringing word to the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her”. What confidence the Lord Jesus had in Mary, and I trust that we can each say in our own measure that the Lord can have confidence in us.
As I finish I would like to raise the challenge with each one of us again, is the Lord Jesus indispensable to us as He was to Mary in John 20?
May the Lord encourage us here and particularly the family of our dear sister that we might be comforted together, for His Name’s sake!
Bo’ness
15th July 2024