(Continued from p. 204.)
SECOND: We now come to consider the second part that Christ is the way to the Father. “No man cometh to the Father but by me.” In our alienated state through the fall of Adam we know not God. We “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God unto an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things” (Rom. i. 23). “Every man is brutish in his knowledge: every founder is confounded by the graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them” (Jer. x. 14). We are by nature without God, and we live without hope, and die in a state of sin and misery whether born in “the land of the Bible” or in the centre of heathen darkness, unless quickened by the power of the Holy Ghost, and translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God’s dear Son. Our natural notions, ideas, and opinions about God, and a hereafter are intensely dark, and ignorant. On the altar of our worship is written “to the unknown God.” Some may be devotedly religious like the Greeks in Paul’s day! And all the time without God in the world. In Christian lands millions may call God “their Father” who may be as ignorant of God as their Father as the very heathen in Asia, or Africa. No sinner can understand, know, or believe that God is his Father who is not born again.
It is through the Lord Jesus that the believer can come to the Father—”If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” It is absolutely essential (according to the Word of God) to know the Lord Jesus savingly before any man can know the Father—”no man cometh to the Father but by me.” “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Rom. viii.). Is it not presumptuous for any man to say, and lay unwarranted claim that he is a son of almighty God, and at the same time, and breath deny any knowledge of or interest in the Person, and work of the Lord Jesus? It is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus in the soul that enables the believer to look to God as his Father (see Luke x. 22; John v. 23-26). Before we can say “Abba Father” we must be in possession of the spirit of adoption, otherwise it would be mockery, and deceit! The general teaching to-day is that God is the “Father” of all, and that we are His children” without the least regard to the Word of God. This is Arminianism running riot! “Universal redemption,” which according to the Word of God is “universal deception.” The Election of God is to the Arminian “uncharitable, unworthy, and to be rejected with all the powers of the learned rhetoricians of the school of the agnostics! What will happen to those who reject the Word of God, and resist the gospel, and deny the election of grace? We know what happened to the prophets of Baal in the days of Elijah (see I. Kings xviii. 40). Men who wickedly interfere with the revelation of grace must suffer the consequences of their presumptuous arrogancy! God the Father calls His beloved Son, “mine elect in whom my soul delighteth.” Yes, and according to Prov. we read, “I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.” “Rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.” (8, 23 and 31). If Christ had not been elected by the Father from all eternity, the Church could not have been elected in Him.” (See Isa. xlv. 4; lxv. 9; Mat. xxiv. 22; Mark xiii. 22; Luke xviii. 7; Rom. viii. 33; Col. iii. 12; II. Tim. ii. 10; Tit. i. 1; I. Pet. i. 2. and ii. 6; Rom. ix. 11; xi. 5, 7 and 28; II. Pet. i. 10). The Father elected them in Christ, Christ paid the ransom price for their redemption, the Holy Spirit applies it to all the elect of God! It is our part, and privilege to make our calling and election sure under the glorious gospel invitations, and accept what is offered to us in the gospel, which is Christ and Him crucified, “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things ye shall never fail.” (II. Pet. i. 10). For Christ is the way to the Father, to glory, holiness, and quietness forever. All who reject, and deny Christ can never come to the Father. “I am the way,” to the Father and to glory. The Lord’s prayer begins with, “Our Father which art in heaven,” but, was that heavenly prayer given as an example to the un-converted at large, or to the Lord’s people? It was given to the Lord’s people, and to none else, for no one could say, “Our Father” but those who were His children by regeneration.
Christ mentions the Father twenty-nine times as “My Father” in the gospel according to John. The Lord’s prayer is given by both Matthew and Luke—Mat. vi. 9 and Luke xi. 2. Mark and John are silent, not that it was omitted on purpose, but that the Holy Spirit saw it only necessary to repeat it twice, the first a Jewish writer, the second a Gentile writer. Paul mentions “our Father” some nineteen times in his epistles to the Church of God. But nowhere known to us in the Bible, Old or New Testament Scripture is there any occasion that an un-converted man, or woman addressed the Most High God, as “Our Father,” or which is more frequently, “Heavenly Father!” The Lord Jesus revealed, and introduced the Father to the Church, to believers, to “born again” sinners, but never to un-believers that reject, and continue to reject Christ in the gospel. “That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him.” (John v. 23). If sinners honour not the son, how can they honour the Father? If they never came to the Son, how can they come to the Father? The only way to the Father is through the Son crucified in the gospel, as all believers come to the Father in Christ and know Him in Christ, and taste of His electing love in Christ Jesus as the Holy Spirit enables them to receive it in the Word of God.
Unitarians who assert the unity of the Godhead (as opposed to the Trinity of Persons) addressed the Most High, “as our Father,” or “Heavenly Father,” maintain in their godless creed, that God is their “Father” and at the same time reject Christ in His Deity, Person, sacrifice, and mediation between God and guilty sinners. It is obvious to all thinking people that this is the trend of present day religion of most of Protestant ministers. Some of them say, “We ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,” which is only a blind, like the Jesuit Priest that preached a wonderful sermon on the B.B.C. on justification by faith. It is well known that (not all) large numbers of the Protestant ministers deny the Deity of the Redeemer and the physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Some of them speak about “their brother Priests,” and the power the priests have over their people, as the Russian Communists keep their people together by the sword, death and torture of mind and body. It is as clear as noon day that Protestant ministers have lost their way in the wilderness, and that is how they “admire” the priest and his soul destroying religion. Many years ago large numbers of them fell into the mire of Unitarianism: to save face with the people, the next move is into the slough of Episcopal Ritualism and the final step will be to prepare their “golden calf” to meet the high priest of the Vatican on his own terms. But some will say, “Oh, that will never happen?” When men depart from the Word of God, their wanderings are meaningless, aimless and hopeless. The church at Rome was as pure a church as there was once in the world. The greatest letter Paul ever wrote was written to the Church in Rome. In it he takes in the condition of both Jews and Gentiles which truly covers the Christian Church to the end of time. If the Roman Church had remained, and continued to this day in the doctrines laid down in that Epistle, the Roman Church would be to-day the purest Church in the world! What is the Roman Catholic Church in Rome and Italy to-day? A cesspool of immorality, squalor, poverty, ignorance, and illiteracy. It is towards this bubonic plague that the Protestant Churches are shaping their course, and steering their people as if it were to sure and certain destruction? “For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth a snare; they set a trap, they catch men.” (Jer. v. 26).
Is the heart of man changed from the days of Jeremiah? Not in the least! Free Presbyterians read carefully your Bibles and pray that the Holy Spirit would lead you to understand the mind of the Lord to establish you in the truth of God. Bear in mind that the present Church of Scotland, the Free Church, and the other Protestant sects that have departed from the Word of God, and are departing from God’s Word will not help you on your way to eternity. They would flatter you, deceive you and lead you astray from the path of truth and righteousness. You must stand aloof, and separate as your fathers did in 1893. If they say that you are Separatists, and Schismatics, Pharisees and use other fanciful epithets pay no attention to their sneers for their false charges are better than their deceitful praise! It is at least safer for you. You have no friends among them, for the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman cannot unite. The Lord’s people who are associated with these bodies and sects should not be among them—”And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God has said, I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. And I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (II. Cor. vi. 16-18). The apostles warning to the Elders of the Church of Ephesus is as applicable to us now as it was to them—”Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers (or Presbyters, or Bishops, or Pastors) to feed the Church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood. For I know this after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” (Acts xx. 20-30). From the time the late Rev. Allan Mackenzie separated from our Church to the more recent separations the same spirit prevailed in each case, “to draw disciples after themselves.” How some (we hope not many) look on such ungodly and arrogant divisions with a tolerant eye is really carnal! The Macqueen and MacKenzie separations un-Churched themselves and their followers. They claim to be the “Free Presbyterian Church of 1893,” or We are “the relief Free Presbyterian Church.” “Relief” from what? From the Courts of the Church of God, from the ordinances of the Church of Christ on earth: and “Relief” from the discipline of God’s Word. No Courts, no Church of Christ: no ordinances, no Church of Christ: and no discipline! It is not even an organisation like the Plymouth Brethren. The Brethren have inner circles and dozens of outside circles, but the inner circles can exercise some form of discipline on their disciples, but those who left the Free Presbyterian Church through pride, and ignorance cannot exercise any form of discipline if need be because they have no courts. If this is the nature of their “Relief” it is extremely chaotic! Turn back to the Church of your fathers and seek earnestly grace to crucify self, and submit to the laws, rules, and government of the Church, for why should you remain un-Churched because of sinful carnal pride?
No man can come to the Father but through our Lord Jesus. When His poor children sin, the glorious Lord Advocate is with the Father, and if you put your pride and selfish-carnal wisdom into His hands He can crush it and save your soul from the power of the devil. Satan is the author of confusion, divisions, and strife. “This man receiveth sinners,” and the door of the Free Presbyterian Church is wide open to receive sinners, the chief of sinners—let back-sliders and prodigals come to its door and if they acknowledge their sins and promise obedience in the Lord, and to the Courts of His Church within the pale of our Church they will be received, according to the Word of God. Christ is the way to favour, to God in the Person of the Father and to all the blessings of the covenant of grace. If Christ frowns upon you, and turns against you there is no hope for you according to God’s Word! My beloved friends within the Church whether at home, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Rhodesia, your Church is resting firmly, and sure on the glorious foundation of Prophets and apostles, and the great and glorious Head of the Church, Lord, and King within its borders. Young men and women adhere faithfully to your Church in the face of all opposition, sneers, and satanic mockery that you may meet with in a world of sinful men that are rushing head-long to destruction, if God will not prevent it. May the Holy Spirit fill your hearts with divine love to blessed Jesus, His cause, Word, and people? “He followed Jesus in the way.” You do likewise, “I am the way.”
May He bless His Word to our souls. Amen.