John A Brown
Luke 23: 39-46
Galatians 2: 20 (from “I live”)
Acts 20: 20, 21
Revelation 3: 19, 20
I have been affected in thinking of this gospel by the scripture, “the goodness of God leads thee to repentance”, Rom 2: 4. We get so used to the passage of time and to coming to this meeting, the gospel, every week; but I was freshly affected by why it is that God has seen to it that there should be another opportunity for the gospel to be preached. It is because of “the goodness of God”. It is not just because time passes that we are here again, a week after we last heard the gospel; it is because God has wished us to hear again the story of His love and how it brought Jesus into this scene.
The goodness of God leads men to repentance. I have been thinking about that and wondering; is it so, has it done that with me and with you - led us to repentance? We were reading on Thursday evening at the end of Genesis about the history of Joseph and his brethren. The brothers of Joseph did a terrible thing when they sold him into slavery in Egypt. It was marginally less terrible than what they were going to do with him, which was to kill him. They were going to do away with him anyway. They put him in a pit; they sold him into Egypt. We know what happened; it is an amazing narrative when you read these chapters. Twenty two years later - that was the time that passed between when they sold him into Egypt and when these “brethren went down to buy grain out of Egypt” (Gen 42: 3) - they came down because they needed Joseph. They did not know who he was at that time; they came down because there was grain in Egypt. There was famine in Canaan and in Egypt too, and they came because they needed him, and he worked with them. He spoke roughly to them at one point, he rebuked them, he disciplined them, and he put them in prison for three days before he sent them back with their money in their sacks. And then they had to come again and he speaks to them again. He still does not let them know who he is; he sends them again with their money in their sacks and he puts his own cup in Benjamin’s sack and then he has them brought back again. He goes on working with his brothers. You might ask whether he could not just have forgotten what had happened, twenty two years before. It almost seems that they had; after all that time they were going on with life as normal. The first time they came they explained that “the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not”, chap 42: 13. Imagine saying that: they must have remembered what they had done, but Joseph carries on working with them. Twenty two years have passed and Judah says on behalf of them all, “God has found out the iniquity”, chap 44: 16. In principle Judah came to repentance, and that was when “Joseph made himself known to his brethren”, chap 45: 1. Dear friend, I would like to ask you, what does that mean to you? You may say that the gospel is about believing in the Lord Jesus, and it is, that is the first step; belief and faith in the Saviour. If you believe in the Lord Jesus, that is the way to salvation; God takes you that way. But what I feel the need of for myself as believing in Christ, is that the next step must be repentance. Otherwise it is superficial - and I do not lay that on anyone here because I know it for myself. I have been brought up as you have been, most if not everybody here, in a Christian household, in a family of brethren coming to meetings like this, hearing the gospel preached in this room and rooms like it every week of my life. That is my history. I need this as much as you do, repentance, “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ” as that scripture in Acts speaks of. Dear friend, I trust there is nobody here who has never come to belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, but if there is, God would give you the opportunity and it may be like it was for this thief on the cross. It may be the last opportunity that you will have to put your trust in Jesus; the Man who the thief refers to as “this man”.
It speaks in these chapters in Genesis of “The man”, chap 42: 30. “The man, the lord of the land, spoke roughly to us”. The brothers speak about Joseph as “The man”, and the narrative speaks about him in the same way. The thief in Luke 23 says, “this man”. Dear friend, do you know Him, this Man that this thief came to know? How long had this man known Jesus? Only during the length of time it took to walk from the gate of Jerusalem to Golgotha, it would seem. It says in verse 32, “Now two others also, malefactors, were led with him to be put to death”. What happened during that walk to Calvary? He no doubt listened to what Jesus was saying; he would hear what He said to the daughters of Jerusalem, “do not weep over me, but weep over yourselves”, v 28. He would watch as Jesus was nailed to that cross, and these malefactors too were nailed to their crosses, and then the crosses were raised up and put in their sockets on the ground. This thief comes to something in his soul. I want to ask you, dear friend, have you come to what this malefactor came to? One of the malefactors was completely unaffected, and the other one was completely broken down by the Man who was beside him; “this man has done nothing amiss”. Oh what a wonderful thing it is to see the work of God in a soul. As the hymn says of this malefactor -
Redemption’s earliest trophy stood
(Hymn 145)
“But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost thou too not fear God, thou that art under the same judgment? and we indeed justly, for we receive the just recompense of what we have done”. What was that? Repentance - realising that we deserve this. Dear friend, I would ask you again, have you come to that in your soul? “This man has done nothing amiss”; “Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom”. This man’s experience in these minutes - because it may not have been much longer than that - this man’s experience with the Saviour encapsulates the gospel. He came in repentance to put his trust in a Man who he saw was more than He appeared to be, more than what they were. Three of them led out; two malefactors and One who “has done nothing amiss”. Oh dear friend, the appeal of the gospel, the appeal of God’s presentation of Jesus! May you answer to it, but may you answer to it in repentance: “we indeed justly, for we receive the just recompense of what we have done; but this man has done nothing amiss. And he said to Jesus, Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom”. This malefactor had to go that way, the way of salvation, and Jesus gives him the end in view, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. These three verses are the whole experience of a soul in microcosm; faith in Christ, repentance, blessing. Is that your experience? Belief in the Lord Jesus, putting your trust in Him; can you remember when you did that? This point in time would be marked out in heaven, when the first trophy of redemption was secured. There have been millions since, and I would ask if you are among them. You may be breaking bread, you may have been coming to meetings like this for sixty years as I have, but the gospel is for you and you are responsible to answer the question. Have you put your faith and trust in Jesus? I was greatly sobered by something I was told last summer of the brethren in a place in the south of England. This happened a long time ago. There was an old lady who had been breaking bread all her life, and at the end of her life, she told a preacher that she was not a believer in the Lord Jesus. Somehow she had come into fellowship, she was breaking bread, but she had no faith in Christ. I am not saying there is anyone like that in this room, but we come and need to be affected by the gospel every week. We know each other here, we have known each other all our lives in most cases, but God knows us better than we do. That is why God has secured that there might be a preaching tonight and that this appeal can be made; and I need it as much as you do. I also know what superficiality is. God would deepen us in our faith, living faith, faith towards God, faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, repentance towards God. It is not a static thing, it is not a position that you reach and then you stop. It is not that you say ‘Yes, I believe in Jesus; so I am going to be all right; I can do what I like; it does not matter; I am safe’; it is not like that, dear friend. The gospel brings you into an area of life, of living relationship to this blessed One who spoke to this malefactor, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. What Jesus was saying was that death is not the end, and in His case - blessed be His name - He went into death and He came out of it.
But before He went into death in these three hours of darkness He bore my sins in His body on the tree. That is why I read in Galatians. It is not just a matter of believing who He is, although we must start there. You cannot come to repentance without belief, because in the gospel God presents His beloved Son for your acceptance, for your faith, for you to believe in. As soon as you do that, you come to a different view point. You come to God’s view point of who you are and what you are and what you have done. You view it in the light of what it cost Jesus to bear your sins, what He took on in these three hours of darkness which it speaks of here: “there came darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour”. Oh, what Jesus had already suffered. The marks on His back would still be there as He hung there and spoke to this man. Jesus had just been scourged by the Romans. That was a horrendous thing to do to a person, the skin probably scourged from His back. “Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged him”, John 19: 1. The Roman scourging was an awful thing. So Jesus would have these stripes on His back.. Then He has to listen to the taunts of His own people. That was a different kind of suffering. The cruelty of the Romans, the brutality of man, was one kind. The enemy used violence against Christ. But then Jesus had to suffer in a different way as He hung there on that cross and listened to the jeers of those He had come to save. “He came to his own, and his own received him not”, John 1: 11. He listened to these Jews. He was a Jew and He had come to them to save them, but they mocked Him. How deep were the sufferings of Jesus at the hands of man and at the hands of His own people. But then infinitely worse was the forsaking, so much so that we cannot ever fully understand what He went through in these three hours when He was made sin. But what I can say about what happened then is that He went there for me and during these three hours all of my sins were taken away by my Saviour. I cannot even remember most of them, I can only remember a tiny fraction of the things that I have done that would have offended God, and condemned me had I not been a believer in the efficacy of the work that Jesus did there. In these three hours of darkness, He bore what I deserved to bear, and He bore it as the Son of God. Oh what a blessed Saviour! Come to Him tonight in repentance if you have never done that before. Do you know Him as your living Saviour? Not just Someone that you have heard people talk about, not just Someone that you have heard about, read about in the Scriptures, but Someone that you know that you speak to, Someone that speaks to you, Someone that you love; Someone that you know loves you. Dear friend, the relationship that you have with the Lord Jesus is the deepest and most meaningful relationship that it is possible to have and you need Him. You cannot do without Him. You have sung it; I have sung it -
I could not do without Thee,
O Saviour of the lost,
(Hymn 220)
Oh, come to Him tonight, put your trust in His precious Person, put your faith in Him, the Son of God. That is what defines you and me as believers; we believe that He is the Son of God. But as believing that, we come to repentance. That is what happened seven weeks after this. Peter was standing in Jerusalem, Peter who had run away, who had denied the Lord as He stood in the house of the high priest; seven weeks later, after Pentecost, he was preaching this crucified Saviour to the men who had crucified Him. How bold he was; he says “this Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. And having heard it they were pricked in heart”, Acts 2: 36, 37. Something got in.
Dear friend, can I ask you, have you ever felt that prick of conscience, which is where repentance begins? You may listen to a gospel preaching or someone talking about the Lord Jesus, and you know that you need Him and you know that you do not have Him. These men in Jerusalem were pricked in heart and they said to Peter and the apostles, “What shall we do, brethren?”. Peter is very clear: “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins”, v 38. I present to you the necessity of a living link with this risen and glorious Man. He is not in death now. He did die: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. And having said this, he expired”. Men hung Him on the cross, but “he delivered up his spirit”, John 19: 30. What power He had as He went into death. What a glorious Saviour. The Saviour that I know is the One who has overcome the power of death and has risen from it triumphantly, and so Paul can say, ”the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”. May there not be anyone in this room who has not had that initial experience that the malefactor on the cross beside Jesus had. You need it and I need it. You need Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Belief brings us to realise how awful the state of man is, because you see it in yourself, you begin to look at yourself from God’s point of view. You begin to see that what these men did when they crucified Christ, you and I would have done, if we had been there, because we are no better. I begin to see that the little lie that I told as a child, or maybe more recently than that, necessitated Jesus going that way of suffering and death. It has often been said - you have probably heard preachers saying it dozens of times - that if there had only been one sinner and only one sin, Jesus would have needed to go this way. What is a sin? It can be just a little lie. You are asked, ‘Did you do that?’ and you say ‘No, I did not do that’, although you did. That is sin. That is why Jesus had to go that way. Oh that we might see the awfulness of it, and then come to repentance. Not just to say, ’I am sorry I told that lie’, but to come to a deep and full judgment of what I am that causes me to be like that, and to realise that it does not have to be like that. You begin to understand God’s view of sin and the price He had to pay in the death of His well beloved Son, and in that blood which flowed from the side of Christ. He bore my sins in His own body; they were washed away. I thank God I can say that about every one of them: they are all washed away in that precious blood that flowed when the soldier pierced His side. As Paul could say, “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, and I can say too, ’the Son of God who loves me’, because it is current.
I want to turn to Acts 20, because here we see what Paul had preached to the saints in Ephesus, and I suppose to the population of Ephesus. He had preached much more than this, he had outlined the truth of the assembly, but here he is speaking about the truth of the gospel: “in every house, testifying to both Jews and Greeks repentance towards God”. Repentance comes from understanding the awfulness of the kind of man that crucified Jesus, from realising that that is what I am after nature, no better than that howling mob who chose Barabbas and wanted to crucify Jesus. They made that choice, and that is still man’s choice. That is this world’s choice. God has, I trust, for you as well as for me, brought us to a judgment of that kind of man, and to “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ”. Repentance is a current matter, faith is a living thing. Is it for you? It is not just belief in an article of faith. There is something called the Westminster Confession of Faith. Some people subscribe more or less to these articles of their church, they say ‘Yes, I believe that’, and they sign it and then they may think that is all they need to do. Faith is a living thing; faith is the entrance into everything. Dear friend, I ask myself, is my faith alive? If it is not, it is not faith. Faith has to be living, faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. I do not know if I am reading too much into these words, but every word of Scripture is divinely inspired. Every single word is there for a purpose. Paul could have said to the elders from Ephesus, ’faith in our Lord Jesus Christ’, but it is faith towards Him. Oh, that we might be kept living in our faith, and for that we need the Holy Spirit. God takes us along this way. We must start with belief. Mr Darby refers to Christian teaching in his day that emphasised the need for repentance as the first step, thinking that, if you come to repentance for what you are and what you have done, then you will believe. But it is not like that; you have got to start with faith. That is how the malefactor on the cross began. He saw Someone hanging beside him, Someone with whom he had walked to the cross, and his faith in that blessed One was kindled, no doubt through the sovereign work of God, and he put his faith in Him: “Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom.” How did he know that He had a kingdom, this man who had just been scourged by the Romans, and had been led out with them? What a wonderful thing is faith; it is living, it is operative. I challenge myself and every one of us in this room; is your faith alive? Have you spoken to the Lord Jesus today personally in the privacy of your room; have you been on your knees to ask Him for what you need, and to hear what He would say to you? A living relationship - that is not a label, it is not a form of words, it is a description of an experience. From that point of view, all of Christianity is experiential. There is truth and doctrine and we must hold on to that, it is in Scripture and we do hold it; but Christianity in essence is the experience of a relationship with a living Man in heaven. We shall spend eternity with Him. So faith leads into this relationship; faith, repentance, forgiveness. God is not going to forgive something that you are not repentant about. If you would like to be forgiven for your sins, you have got to come to repentance. There is a blessed pathway that God would take you along. I trust everyone here has come to faith in Christ; then you come to repentance, you come to the position that Job was in when he said, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”, chap 42: 6. God says, ’I can forgive a man like that’. Forgiveness is forgiveness for repentant sinners. What a blessed God He is. Full repentance leads to full and free forgiveness, and that is how you get peace. You know that God has justified you through the work of Christ and you come into peace, a wonderful thing. I remember when I did not have that; I believed in Jesus but I did not have peace. Have you got it? I believe that that malefactor on the cross got it; I believe that he died in peace. “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” He was in great pain and he was still alive when these cruel Roman soldiers came back and broke his legs to hasten his death. No doubt he died in agony, but I believe that he died in peace. “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” What a blessed thing is God’s plan of salvation; faith, repentance, forgiveness, peace.
Well, I just want to say a few words from Revelation. I know that this is an address to Laodicea, an address to a church that was going on only with outward form. These persons who the Lord was going to spue out of his mouth were not Christians, but outwardly they were going on with the profession of Christianity. Mr Coates said we must beware of the danger of Laodiceanism (Letters p16), every one of us who are believers. I just want to finish by speaking about these verses. “I rebuke and discipline as many as I love.” That is what Joseph did with his brothers; he rebuked them, he disciplined them, he spoke roughly to them, he put them in prison, but he loved them. You might ask why there is so much suffering. Why do believers have such terrible illnesses? This might be Jesus speaking, “I rebuke and discipline as many as I love; be zealous therefore and repent”. Here is a call to repentance. Laodicea was going on with cold formal nothingness. They thought they were rich, they thought they had it all and inside that crust of outward formality there was nothing. Jesus says, “I am about to spue thee out of my mouth”, v 16; He also says, “be zealous therefore and repent”. It was open to the Laodiceans to come to this too, and it is open for every one of us. I emphasise that I am not saying that anyone here is in the state that the Laodiceans were in, but nevertheless, the language of Jesus is very attractive, “Behold, I stand at the door and am knocking”. Have you ever heard Jesus knocking? It might be in circumstances that you go through; it might be in circumstances that people you know go through. I think the Lord Jesus is knocking just now; there has been illness, there have been several taken to be with the Lord, including young people. The Lord knocks, but it is not just the knocking we have got to hear, it is His voice. “I stand at the door and am knocking; if any one hear my voice.” What is He saying? Well, I believe He is saying, “be zealous therefore and repent”. I know the need in my life to be deepened in repentance continually. Then, “if any one hear my voice and open the door, I will come in unto him and sup with him, and he with me”. That is another way of describing the relationship that a living believer with the Holy Spirit has with the Lord Jesus. He comes into our circumstances, He helps us in them, but then He takes us into His circumstances. It is a wonderful privilege to know the Lord Jesus in this way, to know the personal intimacy that the believer can have with his Saviour, with her Saviour. Dear friend, I would ask if you have got this? You may be a saved Christian but do you know personal intimacy with this blessed One? He wants it, that is why He is knocking, that is why He is speaking. He would call us to the enjoyment of this, but to do it we need to believe in Him, we need to repent. Only in that way can we know the joy of forgiveness and the blessedness of peace and nearness to Him. May you know these blessings - that is why we did not sing the last verse of our hymn at the beginning, but we are going to sing it now - about these blessings that the hymn writer speaks of -
Peace, sonship, joy, the Holy Spirit giv’n,
Through Him are known,
(Hymn 123)
It is not in an objective way but in your experience. May it be the portion of everyone here to know Jesus in that way, for His Name’s sake.
Kirkcaldy
22nd January 2012