I'd like us to look at a glorious
phrase that our Lord Jesus Christ used in this last confession
of his, this good confession before Pilate, and he spoke of
the power from above. I've really enjoyed studying
that phrase. It's not used many times in the
New Testament scriptures, but I pray that we might come to
know something of it and that we might, as the Lord Jesus Christ
has given us example, we might know when to speak, and how to
speak, and when to be silent, and how to be silent, and that
he would continue to raise up a witness for himself, for his
glory in this world, and that we might be used of him, just
like that servant in Exodus chapter 20 that Simon mentioned. If you
ever get a chance to go and read Exodus 20, 21, sorry, it's just
such a beautiful, beautiful picture. of how you come to God. You don't
come to God on steps. Just after giving the law, he
said, you don't come up to God on steps. This is not a progressive
thing at all. You just come up and you don't
touch the rocks. You just leave them exactly as I've made them.
You come to me on the basis of the Lord Jesus Christ and don't
come at all. And for all of his servants,
the Lord included, We serve in love, because we love our Master. And we love Him being Master.
And we love our wife. We love the Bride of Christ. And we love His children. Therefore,
I don't want to go free. That's what the boring through
is and that's what the glorious picture of the Lord Jesus Christ
going to the cross is revealed in those verses. But he says
to Pilate, he says, Thou couldst have no
power at all against me, except it were given thee from above. Pilate was claiming some earthly
power over the Lord Jesus Christ, just as the Jews were proclaiming
an earthly power over him when they were crying, crucify him,
crucify him. But the Lord Jesus Christ says
you can have no power. When it comes to me, men do not
have power. All power belongs to God. God has spoken once, twice I
have heard this. that power belongs to the Lord.
All of it. Don't you love it? I love that.
I want, I love, I just want, but I also just love the fact
that our God is supremely, supremely powerful. Somewhere in the forests
of this land and throughout the world is a sparrow, some little
bird falling to the ground. It doesn't fall except God ordained
its fall and rules its fall. I've had a haircut this week.
The very hairs of your head are numbered. I lost a few this week
probably. They were numbered perfectly
before I lost any of them and they are numbered now. The wisdom and the power and
the knowledge of God is infinite. Anyone who speaks of a God who
wants and tries and attempts and offers all of the things
that we hear of him just doesn't know God. Omnipotence is essential
to God. It is his nature. A weak deity
is an absurdity. We cannot have a right conception
of God unless we think of him as all-powerful as well as all-wise. He who cannot do what he will
and perform all his pleasure cannot be God. as God has a will to resolve
what he deems good, so he has the power to execute his will. The power of God is that ability
and strength, says Charnock, whereby he can bring to pass
whatsoever he pleases, as holiness is the beauty of all God's attributes,
so power is that which gives life and action to all the perfections
of the divine nature. How vain would it be, would the
eternal councils be, if power did not step in to execute them. With power his mercy would be
but feeble pity, his promises an empty sound, his threatenings
a mere scarecrow. God's power is like himself,
infinite, eternal incomprehensible neither can it be checked restrained
or frustrated by the creature don't you love that that's exactly
what Ephesians 1 is saying what's Paul's prayer for the church
for us as his church in this world that the father of Ephesians
1 17 that the father of The God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of Glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom
and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding
being enlightened by God and done in such a way that God cannot
undo it. That's what the original word
means. It's an extraordinary word. Being enlightened that
you may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches
of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. We're his inheritance,
we're co-heirs, joint heirs with Christ. And listen to this, and
what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe. How do we believe? according
to the working of His mighty power. Isn't that a remarkable
verse? How do we believe? According
to the working of His mighty power. That's what we believe. What an extraordinary exhibition
of power it is for people like us to simply believe God. Our God is all-powerful. You can have no power except
it be given thee from above. All of God's glorious acts are
the revelation of his power. Habakkuk says that when we see
powerful acts in creation, they are, as Habakkuk 3.4 says, and
the brightness was as the light. He had horns coming out of his
hand and there was the hiding of his power. What we think is
the exhibition of his power in this creation is but the hiding
of his power according to God Almighty. Redemption is the work. Of our God, you might recall
from the gospel accounts, the Lord Jesus Christ just spoke
and he had power. He had power over demons. He
had power over the wind and the wave. The leper came to him exactly
how you would have come to him. Lord, if you will, you can make
me clean. And he just spoke a word. He
came to Lazarus' tomb and he just spoke a word. Lazarus, come
forth. One day he'll speak a word and
every grave will be emptied that ever was on this planet. How different is our God, the
God of Scriptures, compared to what we normally think of him.
I'm embarrassed to think how puny I think of God so often. Power delivered the Lord Jesus
Christ into the hands of these men. Power, the omnipotent power
of God ruled all the activities of these men. And it took, as
we said earlier, it took the omnipotence, it took all of the
mighty power of God Almighty to endure the wrath of God. What
power when he gave up the ghost. What power when he made an end
of sin. What power for him to bring in
everlasting righteousness. And he reigns and rules now as
the great high priest of his people. And I love what Hebrews
7 says of him. He has all this power. The power of an endless life. What power is that? He's alive now, exercising his
power over all things for the salvation of his elect. It's a creative power. God to cause us to believe. It's nothing less than a resurrection
from the dead and what power to conquer grace. The scriptures
you can go and look up in your concordance and look at the number
of times that it says he is able and if you go and search them
all out you'll be amazed. We sing it at the end of our
service. He is able. He's able. That's the power of
God. He's able to keep. But I want
us to look briefly at this particular phrase and I've really rejoiced
in seeing what I've seen from it. It's only used a few times
in the New Testament Scriptures, this power from above. And you
might recall that in his conversation with Nicodemus he says, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again. That means
to be born from above with all of that power that we've just
been talking about. You cannot see the kingdom of
God. You cannot enter the kingdom
of God unless God exercises his almighty power. Don't you love
the fact that our God commands? He says, believe on me. And with his power of his command, that's our warrant
for coming, and it's our warrant for looking, and it's our warrant
for pleading, and it's our warrant for Lord help me. Lord, create
faith as a creator. Sustain that faith. Show me the
object of faith. You must be born from above.
There must be power from God on high. In John 3, 31, this
phrase is used again. He says, and it's on the lips
of John the Baptist, He that cometh from, John 3.31, he that
cometh from above is above all. He that is of the earth is earthly
and speaketh of the earth. He that cometh from heaven is
above all. The heavens do rule. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
is saying here to Pilate. That's his good confession. You
can have no power at all against me except it were given thee
from above. You don't have power in your
hands, Pilate. You don't have power in your hands, my brethren.
Power belongs to God. It's in his hands. But I love
the other descriptions of it in the scriptures. It says, as
the Lord Jesus Christ was dying on the cross, as he gave up the
ghost, the veil in the temple was rent in twain from above
to the bottom, from the top to the bottom. Who tore the veil
in the temple? They say it was a huge veil.
I forget the dimensions of it, but some people have said that
it's about that thick. An enormous thing, weighed tonnes
and tonnes and tonnes, and it was woven with the glorious,
glorious pictures of salvation and redemption. the blue at the bottom and the
red at the top and the purple in the middle, and it had cherubims
on it. It was a picture of how you come
into the very presence of God woven on that curtain. Picturing
those cherubim in Genesis chapter 3 that guard the way to the Tree
of Life, they were pictured on that veil. And it was told God
tore it open. He said, Now In the death of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the way into the Holy of Holies is not
through all of that Jewish sacrifice and not through all of that law.
We come directly into the presence of God Almighty, to the very
mercy seat of God, where God promises to meet with his people
in mercy. We come directly there. And woe
to us if we put something between the Lord Jesus Christ and his
people, something that must be done. That's just works. And if there's any amount of
works, it's all works. You can read about it in Romans
11 chapter 6. It was torn from top to bottom. We'll look at it in the next
little while. Lord willing, over the next couple
of weeks. But the soldiers in John 19.23, if you're still there
in John 19, and the shoulders when they had crucified Jesus,
they took his garments and made four parts to every soldier a
part, and also his coat. Now this is the robe of righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. His coat was without seam, And
it was woven from the top throughout. It was woven from above to the
bottom. What a glorious picture of the
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a glorious picture
of the robe of our righteousness. We're robed, we're one with him
before the foundation of the world. We're robed in that glorious
righteousness. It is the righteousness of the
saints. The veil was torn by God from
top to bottom. The robe of Christ's righteousness
comes from above to the bottom. It comes from heaven and it reaches
to earth. It is the very righteousness
of God, but also in the Lord Jesus Christ it is the very righteousness
of God before man and before the law of God. It touches this
earth. Job said, is there a daysman
between us, someone who can touch God? and someone who can touch
me, and such is the Lord Jesus Christ, woven from top to bottom. But I want you, as we finish,
to turn to James. We've talked about the wisdom
of the Lord Jesus Christ in our previous time, but in James speaks
of a wisdom. Christ is made unto us wisdom. So let's get right about who
wisdom is. Wisdom is the Lord Jesus Christ.
To be wise. I'm looking at some people who
are so extraordinarily wise. This world is full of intelligent
people so they think. But oh, to have this wisdom. James chapter three, verse 15. I'm sorry, we just have to drop
into these verses, but I trust that you'll go away and look
at them. Let's read from verse 13. Who
is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Let him
show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envying
and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth from above. This wisdom that's full of bitter
envying and strife in your hearts and lives is not from above. It is earthly, sensual, and devilish. For where envying and strife
is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that
is from above, this is the work of God's wisdom in the hearts
of his people. The wisdom from above is first
pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full
of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Nothing other than the power
of God Almighty can bring that into us and cause us to look
and see these glorious attributes of our Lord Jesus Christ, aren't
they? It's pure. No wonder David cried,
creating me a pure heart. creating me a heart that comes
from above, a heart that is endued with power from above to simply
look to the Lord Jesus Christ and to believe the Lord Jesus
Christ and to trust Him for all of my righteousness, to trust
Him for all of my purity. How pure must you be? We read
about it in Psalm 24. How pure must you be to be in
the presence of God? As pure as the Lord Jesus Christ. How do you get into heaven? No
one comes to the Father but by me. And that word by means with
or in him. That's the purity, isn't it?
We want to live lives of purity and decency in this world. And
may God help us to do so. But it's first pure, and then
peaceable. I want to be at peace. I want
to be at peace with God, and I want to be at peace with men.
And if Christ is our peace, then
we're at peace with our brethren. peace with others. Anyone who
doesn't seek peace is just a fool to themselves, aren't they? Also,
they're acting in a carnal way because they think that by some
powerful and wonderful argument they can bring, they can win
people to their cause. We've preached He who is our
peace. He's made peace by the blood
of His cross. That's what He's going to the
cross. I love what Isaiah 32, 17, write it down and go and
meditate on it when you get home. But the work of righteousness
shall be peace. And the effect of righteousness,
quietness and assurance forever. Isn't that a wonderful verse,
Isaiah 32, 17. It's God's work of righteousness
to give us peace with God. And if we have peace with God,
then the storms of this world will come and go and I pray that
the storms of this world wash us onto the rock that is the
Lord Jesus Christ. Peaceable, gentle, What a glorious
picture of our Lord Jesus Christ is in the wisdom that comes from
above. It's gentle. It's not proud and arrogant and
self-righteous. It's easy to be entreated. That means to be teachable, to
be humble. What is it to be a disciple?
The very word disciple means a learner. If you've got beyond
the point of learning, I'm very sorry for you. I'm still learning. There's so much that I need to
learn. There's so much that God needs
to teach me. God opposes the proud and gives
grace to the humble. I don't want God to oppose me. I do want God to intervene in
my life and hedge my way with thorns. Pure, peaceable, gentle,
easy to be entreated, full of mercy. Where's mercy? He's the
mercy one, isn't he? And he brings us to the mercy
seat and shows us where all of his mercy is. Full of good fruits. All those fruit of the spirit
in Galatians and in Ephesians. The fruit of the spirit. The
fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith. It is one fruit. and it comes
from one spirit because of the work of one God on our behalf. If you have one of them, you
have all of them. Long-suffering gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance, against such there is learn all without
partiality. Not favoring one over another,
no respecter of persons, Without hypocrisy. The word hypocrisy
means just to wear a mask. Don't wear a mask. You're not
impressing God, I promise you one little tiny bit. And if you
ever impress any man, then you have just been a fool to yourself.
Without hypocrisy. Not wearing a mask. We're sinners,
brothers and sisters in Christ. We're sinners saved by grace
and not by our works. We've got nothing to boast in.
The Great High Priest. May the Great High Priest bring
power from above and to give us the wisdom that's from above
and cause us to look to the one who came from above and is above
all. He tore the veil in two. He wore during his earthly ministry
a robe, a seamless robe, that came from above and touched the
earth. And onto that earth he shed his
precious blood to wash away our sins. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we do thank you and praise you for your word, and we thank you,
Heavenly Father, for the way you have promised to lead your
people into all the truth and to guide your people into the
truth. And we thank you and praise you that the blessed Holy Spirit
is the revealer of the Lord Jesus Christ in his glory. Oh, our
Father, we pray. that you would be merciful to
us and forgive us our sins, that you would cause us to come before
you with all of those attributes of wisdom that are the glorious
work of the Lord Jesus Christ in the hearts of his people.
Help us, our Father, as we go from here, to love one another,
to walk in this world, knowing that this is a world where everything,
every little thing, is ruled and controlled by our great God
and Saviour, that He might draw us to Himself, that we might
come to the foot of the cross again and again. and see the
wonder of redeeming love. Make us your servants. Make us
to love you. For Christ's sake we pray and
in his name. Amen.