We finished our services for
many years talking about and singing about the glory of our
great God and Saviour. Now unto Him that is able. That's one of the great declarations
of the Gospel and the Scriptures. Now unto Him that is able. Able
to do what? Everything, absolutely everything
he wishes to have done is done. He is able to save to the uttermost. He's able to keep you from falling
and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory
with exceeding joy. I don't know about you, but how
often do we actually think of God sort of frowning upon us?
And how seldom do we think of God looking upon us and being
joyful? That's exactly what he says,
isn't it? He looks at his people and he sees them in the Lord
Jesus Christ and he loves them. He loves them. As only a holy
God could love a people who are holy and blameless. To the only
wise God, what extraordinary wisdom God has shown, what extraordinary
wisdom he shows and brings in bringing his gospel. And we can
hardly fathom the depths of the wisdom of God. Whenever we talk
about how wise God is, we're lost again, aren't we, in a sea
of just wonderment at how great and glorious that is. The power
of our God and the wonder of our God and the rule of our God
over all the things that go on. The only wise God, our Saviour. Don't you love declaring that
the Lord Jesus Christ is God? He is God. Jesus Christ is God. To the only wise God, our Saviour,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Amen means truly. Lord, do as you have said. Don't you love that David was
offered those remarkable promises in 2 Samuel, chapter 7, and his
response was, well, I'm completely unworthy, and then he turns to
God and says, just do as you've said. We wait and we rejoice
in a God who, to go back to our text in John Chapter 14, he says,
I go and come again. I want to just briefly, in this
short time before we close, I just want to look at what it is to
him to come again. But he goes away that he might
come. He goes away with a purpose that he might come. He goes away
in humiliation and he comes again in glory. He says in Hebrews
2, Wherefore, seeing we are all so compassed about, with so great
a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the
sin which does so easily beset us. What is the sin that besets
you, child of God? Unbelief. Unbelief. We read that he's able, and then
we look around and think, no, no, unless I add my hand to it,
he can't do it. God does all of it. Salvation
is all of him, isn't it? Let us run with patience the
race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher
of faith, who for the joy that was set before him, Now text
in John 14, 28 says he's going, you'd rejoice if I was going.
If you love me, you would rejoice. I go away and I come again, and
if you love me, you'd find this rejoicing. Who for the joy that
was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and
is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Don't you
love that? He's sat down. He is at peace, and he looks
upon his children. And it's hard to believe, isn't
it? I see such a small, insignificant
amount of the sin that's in me, and it's enough to give me the
horrors on a continual basis. And yet God says, God says, he
looks upon his people, and he looks upon them with joy. Ben reminded me that in my notes
was 1 Peter 1. I'd just like you to turn there.
I want us to look at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is the coming in bringing... He comes only to his people. He comes only to his people at
his time of love. He comes to his people in power. He comes to his... It's the thought
that God Almighty could wish to do something and it not be
fulfilled, could try to do something and not come to pass, is a nonsense,
isn't it? It's just a denial of the deity of our God. He says, verse 3, Blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according
to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again into a lively hope,
a living hope. by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and
that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you. What's the
inheritance? He's the inheritance. Being with
Him forever is the great inheritance. We will inherit a universe, but
the universe without Him is a meaningless bit of dirt, isn't it? We inherit
a new creation and we'll inherit new bodies, but all of that is
just wrapped up in being with Him. Being with Him. to this
inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, that fade another way, reserved
in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith
unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time, wherein you
greatly rejoice. Though now for a season, if need
be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the
trial of your faith being much more precious than gold that
perishes, even though it be tried with fire, might be found under
praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ,
whom, having not seen, you love, in whom, though now you You rejoice with joy unspeakable
and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the
salvation of your souls. We speak of him going, he says,
we haven't been redeemed, verse 18, for as much as you know that
you are not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold
from your vein, your empty way of life in this world, received
by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, Who verily
was foreordained before the foundation of the world what was manifest
in these last times for you? Who by Him do believe in God? Where does faith
come from? By Him. believe in God, that
raised him from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith
and hope might be in God, seeing you have purified your souls
in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, See that you love one another with pure heart
fervently, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth
forever. For all flesh is as grass, and
all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withereth,
and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord
endureth forever. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached unto you. How do you come to believe in
the sovereign work of God declaring Himself as the Gospel? And I love the fact that the
Gospel is good news. It's not good advice about what
you must do. It's good news about what He
has done. Religion is full of getting people
to be busy, getting people to look at themselves and look at
other people and look at the pastor and look at the wonderful
things that he's done and not look at from a church service and you
haven't had your eyes fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ and you're
looking at what you must do to complete or bring into being
or bring into power what he has already promised to have done. Comfort my people is the command
of God. To me and to Norm and to Simon
and to Ben and to others who speak here, he's coming again. He says, I go away and I come
again. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ comes
again in many, many ways in the scriptures. He appeared in eternity,
He appeared in the garden, He appeared in the scriptures, He
appeared in all the promises, but He comes in particular ways
to His people. And he comes, as he says here,
he says, I go away, I'm going to the cross, I'm going to prepare
a place for you at the cross. I'm going to prepare you for
a place to be with me in heaven at the cross. And I'm going to
do it all by myself. Which is why this night was a
night of such extraordinary trials for these people, where they
would feel the weight of sin around them, the weight of sin
in them. and the weight of the fact that the Lord was going
to go and come away. It's all so that we will see
that salvation is entirely by grace, that He does it all. All of the hope of all of my
salvation, all of the hope of all of my peace with Him, all
of the hope of all of my rejoicing with Him is in what He has done. He lost his place in heaven. Philippians 2 describes the Lord
Jesus Christ in such glorious terms. If you know the verse
as well. Let this mind be in you which
was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought
it not robbery to be equal with God. but made himself of no reputation,
and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the
likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of
the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly
exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
things on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father. What love, what humiliation,
what joy, all mixed up in the extraordinary events of the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He can only come in resurrection
power and He can only come in His saving glory and grace to
people post the resurrection because of what He has done.
All of his people were saved in him in exactly the same way,
in the covenant of grace, in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That lamb that was slain from
the foundation of the world, that's such a significant verse,
Revelation 13. The lamb literally having been
slain from the foundation of the earth. Everything, everything
that happens in this creation, everything that happens in believers,
hangs on the glory of who our God is. But on the cross, it
was as if he went before the Father in his holy justice and
the judge, and he went before his Father, the judge, in the
sacrifice of himself. We think and feel so little about
sins. that we commit and we think and
feel so little about the sin that we are. And the Lord Jesus
Christ was made sin. The Father took all of the sins
of all of the elect children of God and laid them upon the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he endured infinite wrath
for infinite sin. He says, my God, he called him
my father. He says, I go to my father. And
he called him my father, my father, my father, until he comes to
the cross of Calvary. And then he cries out, my God,
my God. It's as if he went to his dwelling
place and got turned away at the door, the place of his communion. His father turned his face of
love and communion away from his dear son. Our God is of two
purer eyes than to behold iniquity, which is why that sky was darkened. Part of the reason was that there
was an extraordinary transaction going on between God the Father
and God the Son in that darkness. And we see the light in that
darkness only through the light of God revealing himself in the
scriptures. Everything about the Son on the
cross was loathsome and repulsive to the Father. He forsook him. Zechariah 13.7 says that he took
the sword of his justice and he plunged it into the very heart
of his son. He, who was heaven's darling,
gave up that position that we rebels might be made sons. And now he is an exalted and
glorious son, but now still he wears the emblems of that sacrifice. Those wounds of our sins have
marked God incarnate forever. He's gone to prepare a place
for you. He would have gone to heaven.
He's gone to the cross and he's gone to heaven to prepare a place
for you. He said to that thief on the cross, he said, today
you will be with me in paradise. I can't help but think when that
thief finally closed his eyes, he had, as Stephen did, when
Stephen says, He looked up into heaven as he
was dying, Acts chapter 7, and saw the glory of God and Jesus
standing at the right hand of God and said, Behold, I see the
heavens open and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of
God. What rejoiced Stephen. and what rejoiced our Lord in
the glory of his sacrifice repulses the religious people that think
they have to do something to make it work for them. He says,
and if I go, and the if there is not an if of any doubt, it
says really since I go, I will come again, I will come again. He's gone to prepare that place,
that place where there's plenty of room, as Henry Mayer said,
and there are no vacancies. There are no cobwebbed crowns
in glory. There are no empty rooms. There's
plenty of room, but no vacancies. He comes again. He comes again
unto you. He shall appear a second time
without sin unto salvation. There is a glorious coming of
the Lord Jesus Christ. When all of this universe will
have finished its work and all of the things of this earth will
have no further purpose for God and he'll wrap it up. And there'll
be a new heaven and a new earth. The home of the righteous. but
he comes as a preacher of his gospel. He comes to his people. When the gospel came to you with
power and peace and rejoicing and love, It was a person, wasn't
it? The Gospel is a person. We declare
the Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty, Saviour of sinners. He comes
as a preacher. He's the preacher. He comes as
a witness to the gathering of His people. His coming is a present
day reality for His people. He comes and He reveals Himself
as the Saviour. Christ as a substitute. He comes
in that time of love and reveals Himself to have been an absolute
sovereign over all of the events of your life, over all of the
circumstances of everything that moves in this universe is being
moved exactly according to the divine, eternal purpose of God
that He will have His sheep in His fold. See, the new birth
is Christ coming. He lays hold of that sinner for
whom He's made that place in heaven. And we rejoice. God's children rejoice
in what He rejoices in. And God's children find glory
in what He finds glory in. Paul said in Galatians chapter
6, God forbid That's strong language from an apostle, isn't it? God
forbid that I should glory, that I should boast, that I should
have confidence in anything but the Lord Jesus Christ and Him
crucified, the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot preach
the gospel without preaching the glory of the finished and
successful work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.
God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ. And listen to what the result
of that is. By whom the world is crucified
unto me. The world is a crucified thing
as far as I'm concerned. It's a dead thing. I live in
it, and I'm caught up in the enticements and the covetousness
of it all, but it's been a crucified thing. The world is crucified
under me, and I'm a crucified thing as far as the world's concerned.
The world has no use for a bit of trash like me. We rejoice, we glory. He gathers, as we said, he comes
to his own and he gathers his own to himself in death. Believer, these are some words
I got from J.O. Terrell. Believer, your death
is nothing other than Jesus Christ coming for you, that he might
take you and receive you unto himself, that where he is you
may be also. He's made a place. He lost his
place to make us a place. And he comes, he comes to gather
his people to himself. He's coming back. He's on his
way back. To whom? Coming, Peter says. Our eternity and all between
now and then is in his hands. It's safe and secure. You can rest, brothers and sisters
in Christ. Heaven is being with Christ. Heaven is being conformed to
Christ. If you're like me, I get tired
of what I am in this world. forward to him coming. I'm looking
forward to being with him forever. But his rejoicing is in his love. Our great and sovereign God gets
reciprocated love. We love him because he first
loved us. I love how he began that upper
room, the evening with those disciples in John chapter 13.
Just turn there for a minute with me and it's just a lovely
picture of what we've been looking at this morning in terms of him
demonstrating his love. He said, at the end of verse
one, he says, he was going to depart out of this world. He
knew that this hour has come that he should depart out of
this world under the Father. Having loved his own which are
in the world, he loved them unto the end. He loved them completely. He loved them utterly. He loved
them to the end. And supper being ended, the devil
having now put in the heart of Judas Iscariot Simon's son to
betray him. In the midst of all of that,
Jesus rises from the supper. If you love me, you will rejoice
in me going away. He got up from his place at the
supper and he took off his outer garment and what is left in that
inner garment was the garment of the slave. He took off his
outer garment of honor and glory. It's a picture of him coming,
a picture of him serving, a picture of him dying, a picture of, this
is a picture of him loving, a picture of him going back to his place. He took off his outer garment
and he took a towel And he bound that towel to himself, and then
he went, he took that basin of water, and he washed the disciples'
feet as a servant. What was on the towel when he
finished? All of the defilement and dirt
of them being in touch with this world. And then, having done
that glorious work, he put on his robe and he went back to
his place. He says you'll understand later
on. He was God, he was with God. He took off his robe of glory
and he emptied himself and he put on his glorious dress of
heaven. He went back and put on his glorious
dress of heaven. It's his place. You can read
about that prayer in John 17. Father, glorify me with the glory
I had before the foundation of the world. Glorify me with your
glory. them to the end he loved them
in power I will I will come again when it come to pass I accuse of the brethren is cast
down they overcame him by the blood of the lamb what powerful
blood to drown our doubts and our fears and our troubled hearts
I do not exist They are on that towel bound to him and it's been
cast away. Don't you love that there is
not one word of us doing in all of this? I get so tired of people
who preach 95 or 99% of the gospel and then turn around to people
and say, well, you must do this. For all this to be effective,
you must do. Quit your doing. Quit your doing. Your doing and Christ's doing
are not equivalent before God. Brothers and sisters, God accepts
Christ's doing. He's done all this on this night
when they would all fail him that we would know that salvation
is all of grace. the night of works. We rejoice
and we have peace because he who promised is faithful. He prepares a place for us, he
prepares us for a place and he comes and works a new birth in
us to give us spiritual life. It's just a natural thing for
a child of God to believe as it is for a natural Life, spiritual life, believes.
It sees the invisible, says Joe. It hopes in things that it does
not have. It relies on one whom they have
never seen. No wonder the world calls it
foolishness, but we trust him because we see things that other
people cannot see. We know things that others who
aren't born again don't know. We hope in things that other
people can't imagine. He's done it all and He doesn't
wait on us to do something or give Him permission to do it.
The work of our Lord Jesus Christ is a work that causes His people
to rejoice, to have peace. Do you see the Lord Jesus Christ
as the mighty, victorious Saviour? Do you cry out with all the believers,
Lord I believe, help Thou my name. May God give us hearts prepared
to meet him when he comes to gather us again. May we find
ourselves with the joy and peace of believing now unto him. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we thank you that salvation is all of Christ, and your people
are the glorious recipients of his finished work. And we praise
you, Heavenly Father, as you take us through this world where
we will have trials and troubles and tribulations. and we'll have
many causes for many anxious thoughts. We pray, Heavenly Father,
that you'd give us the joy and peace in believing that you are
a God who is working all things for the good of your people,
that there is now in our Lord Jesus Christ no condemnation
for those in him, and there is no separation. Oh, our Father,
we thank you for the glory of the gospel. We pray for the Lord
to come to us and amongst us and to remind us again and again
of how glorious he is and how complete and perfect the finished
work is.