(Continued from page 254.) Preached at Glasgow by Rev. M. GILLIES, 26th April, 1935.
II. But now, He is to be honoured. He is expected.
You see Christ is expected. If He still lay in Joseph’s tomb He would not be expected. Our dear friend (Rev. Neil Cameron) who used to be with us on such occasions as this, we do not expect him to come into our midst. He, and all the glorified saints are now enjoying the fulness of joy before the throne, their bodies united to Christ rest in their graves until the resurrection. We do not expect them but we do expect the Lord. We ought to for He has promised to come. He has promised to come into the midst of His folk by His Word and Spirit, and His Church is called upon to meet Him and to honour Him. You find the Church saying here: “At our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.” Fruits of her own gathering and now she displays them, she lays them up to ravish His eyes, to please Him when He comes. You and I have no fruits. From old Adam, from the old nature we have no pleasant fruits. The grapes of Sodom are the only fruits that grow on us; but for all that in connection with the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of sinners, there are pleasant fruits that have to be laid up for Christ. The Apostle puts it like this—that we examine ourselves as to our knowledge to discern the Lord’s body. Knowledge to know Christ—the Lord’s body. That does not mean that we examine ourselves as to our knowledge to discern the body He had in His estate of humiliation. You see, the Apostle speaks about the ceremonial law and he says that it was “the shadow of good things to come; but the body is of Christ” and when we are to examine ourselves as to our knowledge in discerning the Lord’s body it means just His whole Person, the God-man, second Person of the adorable Trinity in human nature. It means also His whole work, the work He performed on earth in His threefold office; the work of humiliation, suffering and death; and the work He carries on before the throne in His office as Mediator. It means His fulness as a Saviour; the efficacy of His blood to wash away sin; the fulness of His spirit to sanctify and to enable us to crucify the old man. Yes, it says, “pleasant fruits, new and old.” We have one harvest after another. We will be no sooner finished gathering one harvest than we begin to prepare for the next. Thus, you see, regarding the knowledge of the Lord it is a pleasant fruit, both new and old. The sinner in the day that the gospel was opened up to him, he got to know Christ that day. He got to know the sufficiency of Christ as a Saviour that day and he thought, perhaps, that he had all the knowledge he required. That he had as much knowledge of the Lord as would bring him unto salvation. Some are like that anyway. They saw such a glory in Christ that they said:—”It is enough.” There is the old knowledge that the believer got of Christ in the day that he was enabled to close in with Him by faith.
But there is another harvest of knowledge than that—new knowledge! The believer goes on to know Christ, to know Him more and more and to know Him as he did not know Him before. What was the nature of the first knowledge that the sinner got from Christ. This was the nature of it. They got to know Him as a Saviour that would save from wrath and from the curse and from a state of nature and from the guilt of sin. They saw His fulness to meet their condition in their lost and ruined state. But are you getting to know Christ more and more in other ways? Do you need Christ now to save you from indwelling sin? Have you been digging into the inner chambers of your heart and have you been finding iniquity there that you did not expect there? Is your knowledge of Christ such a knowledge as this, that He is a Saviour for an evil heart and for unbelief and for an evil mind? Knowledge of the Lord, knowledge of Christ as a Saviour and that to meet the knowledge that the creature is getting of himself and of the devil and of the world; of the stratagems of the evil one; of the pit-falls that the enemy of his soul lays for his feet. Continually growing in knowledge, getting new knowledge. That is a very pleasant fruit—knowledge to discern the Lord’s body.
Then again, this is another of the pleasant fruits—faith; faith to feed upon Christ. You cannot separate knowledge from faith. You see, the grace of faith is exercised as the soul is illuminated by the knowledge of the Lord. Yes, faith is a very pleasant fruit. New faith, old faith. What I mean is this. A new exercise of faith along with the old exercise. There are some people in Glasgow and in other places and they exercised faith in the Lord Jesus once and it seems as if they never mean to exercise faith again. That is not the faith of the Bible, that was not the faith of the Apostle—he said that he lived his life by faith in the Son of God: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Faith in Christ is alive. It is the creature going with his new needs to the same Saviour who is able to meet these needs. When in Lewis sometimes I will be taking note of what the women have to do. They bring in the water on Saturday night and their pails will be very empty on Monday morning and before they take a little tea in the morning they are away with the empty pail to the well. They know that when the pail is empty the well is running over and off they go to fill them. Yes! that is the life of the believer and this is a very pleasant fruit in the eyes of Christ that you will come with your empty vessel, whatever way your vessel is left empty, to Him. There are hundreds of ways—yea, thousands of ways in which one finds himself a poor empty creature, but there is the fulness of Jesus to meet the emptiness. There is that well of love brimming over and faith knows if it comes with its empty vessel to this fulness that there is the very remedy for his need: “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Faith in Christ is a pleasant fruit and it is new and old. It is a case of exercising faith.
See you there is one way in which the Lord’s people are taught to exercise faith and that is in connection with Christ as He is King of the Universe and as He rules every providence. God’s people will learn that not only He is the God of grace but the God of providence, and faith will have its exercise in connection with dark providences as well as in the matters of salvation and grace in the soul. Faith new and old, pleasant fruits new and old.
Dear friends, there is repentance also. That is a pleasant fruit. Oh! how pleasant it is to Christ that His folk would have the fruits of repentance—evangelical repentance. New repentance as well as old. Ah! dear friends it is not one day that a sinner is to mourn for his sinnership; for his sin, but repentance is necessary during one’s whole life-time here. It is not a case of repenting once and having no need of the grace of repentance after that. But this is the pleasant fruit of repentance towards God—the sinner realising his shortcomings, his sinfulness, his vileness before the Lord and consequently turning unto God through Christ for cleansing, for sanctification. That is a pleasant fruit, and it is pleasant in the eyes of Christ. Take the new exercise of repentance along with the old exercise and the believer can never get as much of this exercise of repentance as he would wish. One of the divines said like this: “There is one exercise of grace that I will miss when I enter the portals of glory and that is the exercise of evangelical repentance. Many a time I tasted of the kindness of God when I was enabled to abhor myself and when I repented in dust and ashes before the Lord.”
Then there is love; that is a pleasant fruit. Love to the Lord. We were speaking about it. How cold and far back one finds himself in love to the Lord. Yet in spite of that, whom do you want to honour, whom do you want to have the glory? Is it yourself or Christ? Whose cause do you want to forward? Is it your own or is it the Saviour’s cause? Whose people do you want to honour? Is it Christ’s people?—”Thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.” Whose word do you want to stand? Your own or Christ’s? And so love to the Lord in spite of how little delight the creature himself can get, love to the Lord is a pleasant fruit.
Then there is new obedience. When Christ meets with the sinner; when the sinner is reconciled to God through the death of His Son, he is called to obedience and this obedience he puts before himself: “I in the land of those that live will walk the Lord before.” When you got the liberty of the gospel what did you do? Well, you became a mathematician and you drew a straight line between the point at which you were and the gates of heaven and you were going on this line without the least deviation until you finished your course in time—Walking in the love of God, in the favour of God, in obedience to Him, giving yourself body and soul to Him. Ah! but you discovered daily how you came short of obedience, how you have gone to this side and that other side, so that it has got to be a matter of new obedience daily. You have to call yourself anew daily to new obedience to the Lord and to His will. You have to go to the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness daily for washing, and you have to set before yourself, in the strength of grace, that you will give whole-hearted obedience to Him in dependence on His grace. These are pleasant fruits.
III. And now then the question arises:—Do we expect the Saviour to visit us?
Well then, will we now display these fruits in some little measure. Will we lay them up for Him, not at all to feed our lusts on. That is what we would like. We would like to have a lot of good things, a lot of love, a lot of repentance, a lot of faith, a lot of obedience, and we would spend them on our lusts if we had them. But the Church says: I have laid them up, not for myself, but for thee. They are mine; but they are thine: they are of grace. They are all of thy working: I have laid them up for thee. Just as David did when he thirsted for a drink of water from the well of Bethlehem and the Philistines were between him and the well and when the three valiant men broke through the hosts of the Philistines, he would not drink it but poured it out to the Lord. He would not own it as his although it was given to him at the peril of these men’s lives. I have laid them up for thee.
But where, where are these fruits to be laid up? Where will the Christian have his fruits: fruits for Christ? Where will He have them? At the gates, at our gates. You cannot have fruits for Christ without going outside the gate as He did: “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.” Where did He work out redemption? Outside the gate. He was expelled. He went out Himself, but He was put out. He separated Himself from all the ungodliness, and self-righteousness and self-complacency that was in Jerusalem and He went outside to suffer and work out salvation for His people. Do you think you will bear fruits to Christ and stay in the world? Have you pleasure in all the pleasures and the enjoyments in the ways of the world? No friends! “At our gates:” it is outside the gates that we have fruit for Christ. You have got to go outside the gates in forsaking your old sin and your old customs and old ways. You have to go outside the gates by forsaking your own righteousness, your own goodness. You have to go outside the gates in having no confidence in the flesh. If you are to know the Lord and to love Him and repent for your sins before Him and to render Him new obedience, it is just by turning your back on the world, the devil and the flesh which you served faithfully for many a day. It is outside the gates you will have the fruit. He says Himself: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
But then again: “at our gates” in another way. “At our gates” that means near at hand. In this respect it is the desire of the soul that he would have the pleasant fruits that Christ delights in. “At our gates”—He would have these fruits nearer to Him than anything else. Away with the working of sin and of the flesh. Let these be put far from Him. Near eye gate, ear gate, near all the gates of our faculties, let the pleasant fruits of grace be laid up for Christ; let all my powers of soul and body show forth the fruits of grace in which the Saviour delights: “At our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.”
But take the gates again as the means of grace—the private means and the public means and the Lord’s Table—all the means—at our gates. Do we expect the Saviour? Is He to be our honoured guest at the Glasgow Communion. Then let us lay up in the secret exercise of our soul, in secret prayer, lay up, lay up these pleasant fruits. Let us seek by the Holy Spirit that we would have this in secret—some knowledge of Him, some desire of Him, some outgoings of soul to Him. Let us seek that in private. Let us have the pleasant fruits stored up for Him and that in the privacy of our closets. Let us not treat Him with our vanity or with our indifference, with our carnality, with a mere form. It is so difficult oftentimes to compete with the world in secret. There is so much that distracts and draws the mind away when we go to our knees in secret, but let us seek through grace to have the pleasant fruits laid up in secret: in public, in the praise and in the preaching. Oh! let us seek in these public means that the pleasant fruits should be laid up and all for Him. And in commemorating His death, meeting Christ there, receiving Him as He is altogether sufficient and altogether indispensable to us. “At our gates” the Church said, “there are the pleasant fruits, and when thou wilt come, thine eye will be upon these pleasant fruits. They are thine own. If I happen to lay them up they are all for thee.” And, ah! dear friends, the Saviour does not come and meet with the soul on the ground of anything in the creature himself. But then He comes to honour grace where grace is, where He has put grace and where grace is in exercise, He comes to meet the needs of the creature. And thus then we are called upon even to expect Christ. He ought to be expected. Faith should be looking out of the window and expecting the Lord. Love should be expecting Him. Hope should be expecting Him—as at the feast in Jerusalem they spake one to another:—“What think ye? that He will not come to the feast.” He came. Faith says He will come. Open the door!—“If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” It is a pity if He will find a closed door. It is a pity if He will find your own door locked and barred against Him. Would it not be better that the door would be open and the fruits laid up at the gates for Him? The soul seeking to know Christ, seeking to cast itself on Christ, seeking to mourn for sin, seeking to delight in the Saviour, seeking to walk now in spiritual and loving obedience.
“I have laid up” these fruits for Him. What about yourselves? See that you will, through grace, expect the Lord and seek by the Holy Spirit to be stirred up in your soul in order to welcome Him, in order to receive Him, and may He grant that. May He grant you a visit from Himself, just His gracious presence, so that you might be able to say: “‘My beloved is mine.’ This is He who suffered and died in my room and stead and is my portion for time and eternity.”