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this is the voice of wilbraham

the eastern christadelphian bible school presents a series of bible addresses

recorded at the 23rd annual convocation

of the eastern christadelphian bible school

brother edgar willey of dudley england is the guest speaker

many know brother willie through his writings in the christadelphian and as secretary of glad tidings

he is also organizer of the annual oxford conference in oxford england

during his first visit to wilbraham in august 1969

brother willie chose as his theme

the apostles doctrine and fellowship

we hear brother willie now

as he begins his first address

upon the subject

truly our fellowship

is with the father and his son jesus christ

good morning brothers and sisters it's certainly nice to be starting on this series

can you see the board if you can't you'll have to do an inspection later

but all the week

this left hand board

my left hand

coupled with that one will be the center themes that i'm dealing with this is as it were my program and i'll be having those up each morning so that we've got something that we can fix our minds on now i'm going to start straight in my object this week is to ask ourselves the question what is the center of the gospel where does the very heart of the gospel lie

and

having got the very heart of the gospel which of course is none other than jesus christ and him crucified and risen uh then we want to move on into a little bit of greater depth

on some of the power of the gospel and finish up the week with what it does to us

as you remember those seven rules that we had yesterday it's all got to do something to us

well now um

just giving you a summary in a little bit greater depth

today and tomorrow where's my program uh

because

i'm one of those people that can never keep to a program i'm told i've got to keep to time and i said oh well see i do that

but

if you've got your program

uh item number three and four are coming up to be numbers one and two so i'm going to start really with no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved what peter preached rolled in with according to my gospel what paul preached so that'll be the area of the first two talks and in these

you won't have to work too hard in fact you might even say well we know all that i don't know why he spent all that time going through that but this is laying the foundations this is looking in a very simple way at what the apostles taught preached as the simple gospel

then having got the simple gospel as they preached it and then going on to what i would call their teaching i'm even putting a little distinction between preaching and teaching preaching is what they said to those outside that's the way i'm going to use the word preaching that's our first two talks that's

the lectures as it were that they gave to people who hadn't got the truth both jews and gentiles and then once people have got hold of the truth they taught them in letters and

in little circles the various towns

and so then i move on in greater depth to the teaching and my three themes are number one on your program truly our fellowship is with the father and his son jesus christ which is going to aim at exalting jesus showing how great he really is showing the god side of jesus

and then my fourth talk which is number two on your program will be the blood of jesus christ cleanseth us from all sin this will be the man aspect of jesus in which he was totally involved in our sin and sorrow for our redemption

this will also move on to the resurrection of jesus

and then chapter number five will be number five of the talks abide in him the fruits of the apostles doctrine and will aim at showing that although the lord jesus may be thought of as being at the right hand of god and therefore you might feel a trillion miles away yet in fact he dwells in the believer if the believer will open up to him abide in me and i in you and then we shall finish off by showing how this abiding presence of jesus now

transforms

our attitude to behavior

and instead of us trying hard in our own strength to achieve

we trust to receive

and having trusted and received the grace of god in christ jesus for all our mortal days

there is the consummation

when that fellowship shall be eternal and all sin and sorrow and sadness and weakness and failure a thing of the past

so in other words i'm going to aim to put the lord jesus christ in the very center of our faith

now in order to establish uh where we go

first we ask where do we look for the essential gospel the essential good news of salvation and you could say well surely it starts in the old testament and you would be absolutely right you can't understand the new testament without the old and you might say won't be tied anybody at wilbraham who belittles the old testament i know we have in the world

quite a lot of new testament christians who don't take any notice of the old testament at all and it's a job to know how they can even understand matthew one verse one jesus christ the son of abram the son of david so you see we must have the old testament and yet without in the slightest belittling the old testament if we want to know the full gospel for our time we really have to go to the new testament and understand it in the light of the old similarly we must understand the old testament in the light of the new

without the old testament without the new testament if we only go as far as malachi in our main studies we're still left waiting

we're still left with the feeling he is coming one day

god's provisions are going to be made at some time in the future

when we come to the new testament the message that rings through the voice of the apostles is he's here he's calm

now that doesn't mean to say that everything is fulfilled we still await the consummation the kingdom of god was inaugurated in individuals in the coming of the lord jesus christ in the preaching of the apostles but it wasn't consummated

we were translated into the kingdom or the rulership of his dear son

but the kingdom of god in all its fullness lies yet in the future

so that when we say that the message of the new testament is one of fulfillment he's here

he doesn't we don't mean to say it's all fulfilled we still await the consummation we're still conscious of sin we're still conscious of weakness

so really you know just as yesterday we had three elements so here again we can use the platform as our visual aid we've got the old testament which says one day he's coming we've got the new testament which says he's

here then we've got the future when he's really here fully finally and completely and everything's going to be marvelous in that day when the glory of god in christ will fill the earth as the water covers the sea

so there we are he's coming he's here and then finally he's even more here so that's the picture now the new testament starts in fact

with the message from jesus i don't know if you have proof texts in sunday school in um the united states and canada many sunday schools do in england and i when i was moving house the other day and trying to throw away as much paper as possible particularly the argumentative sort of paper uh i got rid of a real lot i can tell you

never had so many bonfires in my life

but

i came across my first sunday school proof book

and

the first proof i had ever had to learn was that jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom of god

and it ran after that john was put into prison jesus came

into galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of god i think it's about the only verse in the bible that i've got word perfect there it was and underneath was a little tick and five out of five because i said it right um well you see that then goes on mark 1

verse

14 goes on into what he actually said in mark 1 15

the time has come the kingdom of god is upon you

repent and believe the gospel

that was the message that jesus came with and the very first words in the greek of that are fulfilled is the time got it fulfilled is the time and so the whole message of the

teaching of christ was fulfilled

right through he says i'm the one the old testament spoke about and the apostles come on and they explain that jesus in many respects fulfilled what the old testament talked about in an unexpected way so you see if you really want the full gospel you must include the new testament this is why the jews still lag behind for a full gospel you must go to the new testament against the background of the old i mean we can't understand what's fulfilled unless we've got the knowledge of the old and this is the wonderful contribution to understanding that our christadelphian community makes most other church people when you talk to them they seem to know very very little about the old testament at all we've got to be careful that we don't go to the other extreme and have it all old testament and forget that the heart of the gospel is jesus himself

of course also how you present the gospel sometimes depends upon the kind of people you're dealing with i mean if you're in mormon country where most people seem to if you you would say in utah where i understand there's still a lot of mormons about then your gospel would have a certain slant

if you're in an area where everybody's very very keen on believing in the immortality of the soul and a future destiny which is going to be sitting upon a cloud playing a harp forever and ever then you give them the more solid realities that the good hope of israel offers but whatever the emphasis you have to give because of the time you live in and the people in the midst of whom you live that emphasis must never displace the lord jesus christ from the center he is the fulfillment and so it is that the old testament scriptures on their own

are not able to make you wise unto salvation in this present time

you all know that other proof text

which runs from a child

what is it well i'm not going to tell you what it is because i don't want you to look it up from a child that has known the holy scriptures which are able to make the wise unto salvation now don't look at the passage got it from a child that has known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation hands up those who can finish it

can finish that verse

from a child that has known the holy scriptures which are able to make the wise under salvation nobody finish it

now that's what goes before it he's got the grandmother lois spit come on who's gonna from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make the wise unto salvation that just proves it doesn't it

through faith which is in christ jesus that's how it finishes in other words the old testament scriptures because that's what he was talking about are able to make you wise under salvation now

through faith which is in christ jesus so when you see the old testament scriptures in the light of christ that then the old testament scriptures make you wise under salvation so this is the the great theme of scripture well now um

there are

other scriptures which convey the same thought and perhaps i'll just content myself with one other hebrews chapter 1

which relates the old and the new testament i'm going a little bit to town on this because i want us to see the relationship of the old testament to the apostolic preaching i'm reading here from my little pocket new english bible lots of people have said where can you get them well i can only say you can get them from england and that'll be good for our export drive

i should think you'd get them about um three dollars and two and a half and it fits very nice in your handbag well i don't have a handbag i i keep them in my pocket uh but it's very nice when i'm driving on our subway you we call it underground in london and i've got three stations to go i can whip it out of my pocket read 10 verses and i feel a little bit better and when i get to the next business appointment well i'm less tempted to do the things i shouldn't do because i've had a little read on the train uh hebrews 1 then says when in former times this is in the new english bible god spoke to our forefathers he spoke in fragmentary and varied fashion through the prophets

you see there was a bit here and a bit there it doesn't mean to say that the fragments are lacking in truth but you know so often when you're reading the prophets you get 10 verses they're quite isolated from the next 10 verses it's just a little fragment and yet in that little fragment you have a little note of hope that something that's gone wrong then is one day going to be put right we saw that in some of the wonderful fragments we had from hosea yesterday so in fragmentary and varied fashion yes varied because there were men who prophesied there were men who did great deeds there are bits of poetry there are wise sayings god speaks all kinds of ways in these fragments that we have which when we see them in the light of the lord jesus christ are able to make us wise under salvation and so hebrews goes on to say but in this the final age

he has spoken to us in the sun

so god's final word is in the sun and the word was made flesh and he dwelt among us john 1 14

what god had been saying through prophets through the experiences of israel through the deeds that he performed for israel he now said in the most perfect and complete way in a sun

and so our gospel when we come to consider the apostolic doctrine and fellowship

is the message of the son

now there's one other thing that i want to say having got the relationship with the old and the new testament i want to go back to this relationship between preaching and teaching

the whole of the bible consists both old and new testament but we're particularly concerned with the new testament with two great strands

sdr a nds you know like somewhere inside this wire that's tying me up there are presumably two or three strands of wire well there are two or three now two main strands that i want to mention here it's what i said just now about teaching and preaching there is that strand of truth which is clear and unmistakable

there is the basic first principles of god's working that go right through

there's really no arguing about them they're that clear so it seems to us that they really hit us in the face and these are what the apostles preached

and the beauty of the great truths of our salvation is that they are not theological propositions they are not complicated uh creeds like the creed of athanasius there are straightforward facts about acts the acts of god here not the acts of the apostles god is a god who does things and the things that he's been doing are the basis of the gospel facts everybody can understand that god went forth to deliver israel

from egypt for example everybody can understand that the lord jesus christ came from god they might not quite understand what way he came from god and certain confusions often arise even in our minds about the mode in which god was represented in jesus but the fact is there that god was in christ then you come into the facts

that jesus died as a representative of the sinner

and however you might get into complicated difficulties when you try to explain why

yet the plain fact that he is the sinner's representative who died for us

and was victorious over sin and victorious over death

and that we can share his victory those are simple facts

some of these facts that we've got on the board here those simple facts don't need you to be a genius of exposition don't need you to be in the slightest bit clever they're there all you've got to do is commit yourself to them

and so it is with the fact that he is at present in heaven presiding over affairs so is the fact that he is at present in you and me if we'll only open the door those are simple facts mind you it's not always easy to open the door because somehow the door gets stuck and it's not always easy to open it to the lord jesus christ and similarly it's a very simple fact of gospel preaching that he's coming again to take over the whole government of mankind those are simple basic gospel facts but more of the bible is occupied with what i would call growth material teaching what i've just been talking about is preaching the basic facts now we look on teaching

you can't really justif i'm making these definitions i'm making my own rules up in a sense i'm saying i'm going to call preaching that which concerns those basic facts and i'm going to call teaching that which concerns the growth material because if you're baptized for example shall we say at the age of 16 and you lived to the age of uh 96 as uh we've got one or two uh what do they call them no nigerians here people who lived to the age of 90 beyond and how wonderful it is to meet them well you might be

uh a christian a christian alfie and a brother in the lord jesus christ for 80

years

well you've got to keep be kept fed all that time and you can't just keep going on the same facts in the same way as they were originally preached to you've got to build on them and so there's got to be this growth this material this material that enriches you

so we need the teaching of the apostles to give us this growth material so we have old testament and new testament old testament say he's going to come new testament saying he's here and we have teaching material which gives you the basic facts about the lord jesus christ in relation to human salvation preaching material then we've got teaching material which builds us up and i've got a passage already written out for me to save me looking out here which

tells you in ephesians 1

i pray that this is the new english bible ephesians 1 verse 17 i pray that the god of our lord jesus christ the all-glorious father may give you the spiritual powers of wisdom and vision by which there comes the knowledge of him i pray that your inward eyes may be illumined so that you may know what is the hope to which he calls you and we had a bit about the word no yesterday didn't we what the wealth and glory of the share he offers you among his people in their heritage and how vast the resources of his power open to us who trust in him they are measured by his strength and the might which he exerted in christ when he raised him from the dead when he enthroned him at his right hand in the heavenly realms isn't that lovely

i mean it's lovely in the or the king james version but because this brings it up to date a bit i i'm thrilled with that how vast the resources of his power open to us who trust in him and so these resources are available direct from the lord jesus but one of the great means whereby these resources of his power are open to us is by listening to the teaching building upon the preaching now first then the preaching what was the apostolic gospel what did the apostles preach about

well just using my little new english bible here let's have a look at these simple essentials

and find what they have to tell us

well uh acts chapter two is the day of pentecost isn't it you remember the circumstances remember our seven rules yesterday and so all through my talks i'm going from time to time to see pictures and i'd love to see this picture of all this hubbub and noise occurring

so that in the big areas just outside the center part of the temple there were little groups gathered around maine

and if you'd have been in that group over there

who were listening to somebody speaking in the median tongue

over there that had been somebody else one of the apostles talking in the cappadocian town if you'd have been on the edge of the median crowd you could understand that you were pretty marveling at the fact that that man who was just an ordinary man suddenly started jabbering in in the median language but your other ear might have heard somebody i'm holding all of them over here and you wouldn't have understood a word of it because he was speaking in the cappadocian language

you know everybody thought this was a real sensation if there'd been a jerusalem post it would have been the main headline fishermen suddenly start speaking every language well they've had a better headline than that the great the great jesus sensation or something they'd have had i suppose as the headlines because these men were preaching jesus

well of course there's always the disbelievers and so a great argument started how on earth was it that these men managed to speak in all these foreign languages although they'd never been to university and never learnt these other languages somebody says oh they're drunk

and so peter comes in with all this noises you couldn't hear yourself think and peter comes in and he lifts up his hand he says man and brethren

he evidently got a loud voice

perhaps perhaps i've borrowed it from him

and

he uh he manages to get uh get silence

this is verse

14 peter stood up with the eleven raised his voice now you see you never thought of that perhaps what's it say in the authorized version the king lifted up his voice you know lifted up his voice now we do we don't say that nowadays we say raised his voice don't we the moment you get that picture you can hear him shouting to get them quiet that's seeing pictures you see so he raised his voice and addressed them fellow jews

and all you who live in jerusalem mark this and give me a hearing let me speak

these men are not drunk

as you imagine for it's only nine in the morning

that's real martin isn't it it's only nine in the morning 9 20. you see now none of us have really had time to get drunk have we

not even on that lovely orange juice and those cups of tea and milk

i've had three cups of tea but

that doesn't make you drunk well there you are it's only nine in the morning public houses the inns aren't open yet so they haven't had a chance to get drunk that fits in doesn't it with peter's practical sort of way he's always right on the ball in a practical sort of way

then he goes on straight away to tell them that what you are seeing is fulfillment

you are seeing the fulfillment of the prophecy of joel now i can't go back to the prophecy of joel but for the bible students can i give you a hint in the prophecy of joel against the background of a great tragedy that occurred in israel's history when the locusts came and decimated the whole land and ruined it when they turned to god then things began to be better and god's spirit was poured out upon just ordinary young people and old men and even the servants god's spirit was poured upon them and that happened once in israel's history and was taken hold of by the prophet joel as a prefigurement of what was going to happen in the last days now when did the last days start did they start here when jesus and the apostles were at work or are they going to start up here when jesus comes back well in one way the last days started when jesus was in the earth fulfilled is the time the last days were inaugurated

when jesus was in the earth the last days are consummated there when jesus comes back this is important to realize this and so this explains why so many kingdom passages passages which we say yet lie in the future like the wolf lying down with the lamb passage in isaiah 11 even the apostles get hold of it and they say this is now being fulfilled you look at it and you say well it doesn't some people even say apostles misquoted of course they didn't misquote when the apostle said this is now being fulfilled

he meant that he was being inaugurated the fulfillment was starting and of course we standing where we stand say

it's still got to be fulfilled he will come again so it has been fulfilled it will be fulfilled as it was with the prophecy of joel

when the spirit was outpoured

upon ordinary folk fishermen and ordinary folk in this day of pentecost then this was a fulfillment of the last day prophecy of joel the fact is it's going to be poured out again when jesus comes back so that just in passing a little bit of exposition which i can never resist the temptation of doing because there's an important principle there whenever you see these green flags as it is written this is that which was spoken then you will usually find that the two beginnings the beginning of the work of christ and the beginning of his future fulfillment are both incorporated in the same set of words in the prophets

well having dealt with that peter i something come to the light here peter begins in verse 22

to

set forth the great preaching facts

i think you know sometimes when you come to bible school you might feel a bit overwhelmed with some of the information that brethren throw at you we'll all be doing it we're trying to stretch all our minds to the maximum keep in mind all the time that the basic gospel facts are simple men and brethren listen to me verse 22 i speak of jesus of nazareth a man singled out by god and made known to you through miracles portents and signs which god worked among you through him as you well know

when he had been given up to you by the deliberate will and plan of god you used heathen man to crucify and kill him but god raised him to life again setting him free from the plans of death because it could not be that death should keep him in his grip that's the start of peter's gospel preaching

and you have there the first four of these facts that jesus came from god a man sent from god

later on in address number three of this series we're going to expand that

came from god this is why i've switched round one and two and three and four because i thought if we got the simple facts first and then plunged into a little more depth this might be the best way of doing it then it went on didn't it talking about the signs and portents and the miracles he performed this is the ministry of jesus for three years he ministered to men and these are parts of gospel preaching in our lectures even though we've got a hammer away at man mortal and hammer away against the mormons and the jehovah witnesses from time to time we must never lose sight of the fact that in our environment our preaching must nevertheless run along parallel lines with that of peter and the paul so jesus seven facts about jesus i've called these came from god ministered to men and then he comes on and you took him and you crucified him died and i've put in a bit here from paul 1 corinthians 15 died for our sins we should be going into that later on this week

and then he says but it wasn't possible for him to stay there

god raised him from the dead it wasn't possible that he should be holden of death in the king james version raised and i brought in there a little bit from the apostle paul for our justification and get the word justification clear right from the start the word justification simply means

to be put in the right we're all in the wrong with god but through sharing the victory of christ we're put in the right with god that's all justification means to be put in the right

now that's as far as peter goes in this first bit he gives us the first four facts

and then he goes on and quotes from the psalms another one of the passages which he's able to see new light in he's able to read the old testament through faith which is in christ jesus you remember when nobody was willing to put their hands up and finish it able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in christ jesus that's why the apostle used the old testament brought to bear upon it faith in christ jesus and it reached its real meaning and fulfillment

so in verse 32

peter goes on after quoting the several psalms

the jesus we speak of has been raised by god as we can all bear witness

exalted thus to god's right hand

he received the holy spirit from the father as was promised and all that you now see and here flows from him

so he now moves on not only was jesus raised from the dead

you know i mean lazarus was raised from the dead

and even elijah and elisha raised people from the dead but he ascended to the right hand of god

so fact number five is the follow-up of the resurrection that he ascended to the right hand of god and what peter means and he's there now 2 000 years ago he was there and today he's there ascended to the right hand of god

and so from that lofty place he is our mediator he's the one we go to through whom our prayers are mediated to god we have in the inner councils of the almighty one who has shared our weakness and if we find it difficult to believe that god could understand our problems we know that jesus can understand our problems because he's been through it all tempted in all points not just some points tempted in all points as we are yet without sin

so we have jesus

ascended to the right hand of god that was fact number five which he brings out

he mentions that as ascended to the right hand of god jesus has in his hand as it were the holy spirit

then he makes an appeal

let all israel then accept a certain that god has made this jesus whom you crucified both lord and messiah

the jesus who was crucified is the one who was spoken of right through the old testament and he is the lord and the messiah he is the fulfillment peter is always talking in terms of the old testament pointers to christ

do you notice those little words

whom you crucified

because here is another great element of gospel preaching and we ought not to miss it out of our preaching of the gospel

everything that peter said we can say today our brethren here who give lectures who speak everything that peter said it's still appropriate isn't it but could you stand in front of an audience

in united kingdom or the united states or canada and say jesus who you

crucified you might say of course i couldn't because i couldn't because they didn't

but you see we did

there's that uh spiritual isn't there where were you when they crucified my lord the plain fact is we were there in principle

where were you when they crucified my lord you see because ringed around the council chamber of the high priests

and of pilate

and around the cross was every form of sin in which we can engage you think about it sometime i can just draw your attention to it there were there were the sadducees who were the people who said look if we let this man go this jesus the romans will come and they'll take away our job they'll take away our good place for from us and we don't want that

so he'll have to go to the wall we'll have to get rid of him

in other words they put human comfort their own comfort they put their own material position before the things that ought to have been first

straight away we know well i never thought i was like the sadducees before we say but we do just that and it was that attitude of putting self first in a material sense that caused the sadducees to bring christ to his cross and there were the very religious people the pharisees the traditionalists who because he didn't seem to say things the way they were used to it they said he's got to go we can't have that they were intolerant now although we must stand up for the standards of christ

intolerance that kind of attitude which nearly hates somebody be it a brother or somebody outside who thinks differently from us it was intolerance that nailed jesus to the cross so that when perhaps in our ecclesial life we show intolerance of a brother who's got a different slant on something or other i've got to stand up for the principles of the truth don't misunderstand me but a brother has a different slant it might even be a seriously wrong slant we've got to show loads of patience we're not always ready to do that now was the fact that they hadn't any patience with this man that came along with what seemed to be some new ideas the lord jesus christ that caused the pharisees to nail him to the cross

and of course there's the self-righteousness that went along with it and we sometimes share that don't we as we look down upon others and say i thank my god i'm not as other men are

and then there was pilate there he could have let him go but he too didn't like to make the decision because it was an awkward decision to make there are times in our business ecclesial and private life when we don't like to make an important decision and we pass the buck i i think that's an american phrase as well is it we all know what passing the buck is it isn't giving somebody a dollar is it it's passing the buck letting somebody else make the decision and take the blame and pilate brought jesus to his death by passing the and these are things that we all do every day of our lives or attempted to do then who else was there well there were the there were the um there was a crowd wasn't there

the crowd did one thing today and another thing tomorrow the crowd is fickle

they brought jesus

to his death by shouting crucify him because fast operators got to work upon and our television sets and our radios and our newspapers and our acquaintances at work and at school and college get to work on us

and turn us so often into the way of the world

when we are turned into the way of the world we are joining the mob who cried crucify him and what about the believers themselves the disciples

who ran

who were cowards when they should have spoken so you see somewhere other than there were some other people around the cross of jesus and around those council chambers every kind of human sin met round the council chamber and the cross your sin and mine met there

the

whenever we sin in a sense we're sharing a little bit of the blame for the crucifixion of jesus

that's what happened when man met god because jesus was god's representative and he was our representative and when man met god manifested in jesus then man tried to kill god's representative and in killing god's representative was trying to kill god and every time we sin that's really what we're trying to do and so the cross of jesus shows up the enormity of sin and it makes you say oh dear what can i do and that's just what happened

when they realized that's why bringing over the conviction of sin to people is an important thing in our preaching by all means give them the doctrine of sin and explain to them about genesis and explain to them about adam and eve and explain to them the sorry story of israel's history but when you've done all that you've got to bring it right home and we must always include ourselves in it must say who you crucified is whom you me too crucified we're all involved in this general sin of human nature which brought jesus to his death

so immediately they said

friends what are we to do

they were really smitten with the consciousness of sin what are we to do

and then peter told them those are over on the other board their response repent let's turn round take a new line

commit yourself to a new power and be baptized every one of you in the name of jesus the messiah for the forgiveness of your sins

so repent and be baptized

this was the way in to reorient themselves as we say today repents a much better word indeed you imagine reorient and be baptized it's much better repent and be baptized that's what it means get yourself sorted out and in a new direction committed to jesus because it's repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of jesus the messiah

and then you immediately start getting gifts

you don't have to wait till then

when he comes back

that's the fullness

but even right now you start getting something do you remember edward said last night brother edward whittaker that he didn't like though our pilgrimage betrayer he just wanted it there and for those who felt that way if our pilgrimage be dreary well i know what he meant it doesn't matter what troubles you have it doesn't matter what your problems if you're in christ

then you have the peace of god

and you have the knowledge that although you're a sinner you know and how awful we all felt when we thought that in some way we were mixed up in the crucifixion of jesus yet we have forgiveness of sins

immediately we have that sense not of presumption because we know we can drop back we have that sense of amazing behold the amazing gift of god you know sometimes i think we put all our emphasis on being saved from death

when i was a youngster first came into the truth i have a feeling that i tended to look at the truth as a kind of eternal life insurance policy i didn't want to die therefore i wanted to take out my eternal life insurance policy so that when i died it would be all right

but uh that isn't really it is it

straight away we get something and that something we get is salvation from sin in its first stages and right through the apostolic preaching and teaching the emphasis lies on deliverance from sin now remember that brethren who prepare lectures get that in your lectures deliverance from sin

and then because you're delivered from sin then there's deliverance from death wouldn't be much good being delivered from sin if after a few years you died and that was the end of it so obviously the deliverance from death follows but the apostles always start with deliverance from sin [Music]

and so our preaching first has to get people realizing they are sinners and then showing them the antidote the deliverance from sin so forgiveness of sins and then it goes on and you will receive the gift of the holy spirit for the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far away everyone whom the lord our god may call now you can say that's a bit difficult and i wouldn't hope in two minutes to put it right but can i just suggest to you that the word holy spirit in the new testament is used for the total resources of god in christ being made available to men i'll try and say that again the total resources of god in christ being made available to men and they were made available these resources of power this holy spirit in the first century in many miraculous ways

so that men had supernatural knowledge so that men could work miracles so that men could give messages that they had received from direct from the lord jesus christ that was supernatural but the effect of it was to bring christ right home into the believer and so we still have the holy spirit at work in our day

not because we can work miracles because we know we can't but because the effects

of the working of god in christ jesus

through the bible

through the answers to prayer through the ways of providence where god works in our lives through the angel of god that encamps round about us through all those ways god still works in our lives and that is the holy spirit of god at work and i know we're frightened of the term but we've really no no need to be when you explain it like that and so although peter had in mind particularly the special gifts of the first century yet we can say with paul if any man have not the spirit of christ he is none of his i think that's fairly simple isn't it but i've avoided here the use of the word the holy spirit because it can be confusing and i put seven facts about jesus he dwells in the believer over here i've been a bit bolder and i've put the spirit within and i was asking brother russ in new york do you think that might um uh give rise to a bit of misunderstanding and when we talked about it we agreed that as long as it was properly explained it needn't give rise to any misunderstanding in fact it can give joy to us that but we haven't got to wait till here for everything we've got something now the spirit of christ dwelling in the believer it's a real power and a real force that transforms our lives and gives us peace and joy and his like as brother ted said yesterday a dynamo working within

so that's fact number six now just got three minutes in which to just get in fact number seven i'm very glad i had those extra five minutes

um well now um acts chapter three is the next speech and i shall have to skip my little picture because i could never read acts chapter three without seeing that that poor cripple's face you know when he was sitting in the gate called beautiful and as he stood there i don't know what he held out whether he held his cap out or what he held out but he sat there

and peter comes up and says silver and gold are by none poor man's face went like that nothing coming

but what i have got i'll give you oh what's he got his face lights up he didn't realize what he was going to get in the name of jesus of nazareth stand up and walk and he didn't walk he ran and he danced and he was full of joy and then there was another crowd scene everybody came to oh look there's the man that used to sit there he's running he's walk let's go see what it's all about big crowd comes and peter has to go forth and meet them he says now now just a minute just a minute and you read about this in acts chapter 3 as they come running peter saw them coming verse 12 acts chapter 3 and met them with these words men of israel why be surprised at this why stare at us as if we'd made this man walk by some power of our own the god of abram isaac and jacob the god of our fathers has given the highest honor to his son jesus so he started his preaching this time with fact number five

and then he went on and told them how they crucified him again how god had raised him from the dead and how god had awakened faith in the heart of this man by the living jesus

then he tells them to repent

verse 19. so that their sins may be wiped out then the lord will grant you a time of recovery and send you the messiah he has already appointed that is jesus he must be received into heaven until

the time of universal restitute restoration comes time of restitution of all things you've got in the king james version so he finishes up this gospel preaching with the fact that what he had done in the power of god in healing this man was something that was going to be seen on a universal scale at the day when jesus would come back so fact number seven came out he will come again in the later talk peter was able to say he is the judge of the quick and dead he will come again to restore all things he will come again to be the judge of the quick and dead so that was the great seventh fact about jesus which was the gospel preaching so there it is we've seen just in a couple of speeches from peter the seven great facts about jesus

man's response and the results because when jesus comes again then eternal life will become a complete fact and not only a partial fact already there is the life of the age at work within the believer in whom christ dwells but it's partial when jesus comes again this eternal life of god will be complete in the believer so he came from god he ministered to men if you want to know what god is like look at him ministering to men he died for our sins crucified through our sinfulness he was raised for our justification his victory we can share he ascended to the right hand of god and from the right hand of god he controls all things he is our high priest and mediator and dwells right in you and i if we will open the believer that we will open our hearts he dwells in the believer and the end of the story he will come again

and all things will be made new and perfect well there we are that'll have to do for this morning we've got our introduction uh tomorrow we'll have a little bit more about peter we'll have a little look at what paul preached and then we'll go on to the teaching and look at it in its deeper aspects god in christ reconciling the world to himself

Transcript

this is the voice of wilbraham

the eastern christadelphian bible school

presents a series of bible addresses

recorded at the 23rd annual convocation of the eastern christadelphian bible school

brother edgar willey of dudley england is the guest speaker

we hear brother willie now

as he begins his second address

upon the subject

the blood of jesus christ cleanseth us from all sin

i like being first you get a few extra minutes

um just waste one or two of them and not really waste them um

and mention the uh translation that was just read those who were in ron abel's discussion group last night will recall that we talked about tongues and you'll notice that all the newer versions do take it for granted that they were tongues of ecstasy rather than foreign languages that doesn't prove anything at all because when you translate

a part of the bible you translate it according to what you understand that's why there's things wrong with the king james version where they all believed in some kind of hellfire torment and translated accordingly i just thought i'd better make that clear that i didn't have that red just to present the opposite view to edward uh on that particular subject

on singing i chose that him or david kind of let me choose it because really all our seven facts about jesus are there in that hymn i have a hunch that brother edward will be knocking us into shape a bit more about the way we sing that hymn

because

i was waiting for that

thy praise shall never

never fail throughout eternity you know if you were

going to leave the country and never see if you're a young man your favorite girl again you'd say i'll would you say i'll never never forget you or would you say i'll never never forget you well it's obvious which one isn't it anyway well that's edward's job and he'll say i'm poaching on his preserve that's right though isn't it edward yes he he approves um

well now back to our subject then

and anybody who comes in isn't really coming in late it's just that i've started early so don't feel bad about it um

remind us first of what we were trying to do yesterday we're trying to get the simple foundation you could almost say to me well it's so simple that you know we know all this the simple foundation of the apostolic preaching

if you want to know what the basic gospel is then it is to the apostles you go

because when jesus himself preached he preached as it were an emerging gospel you remember how we used this platform and we said you've got the old testament and then comes jesus fulfilled he says fulfilled is the time and i noticed that today's wayfarer has got the point that's the inauguration of the kingdom and then you come to the consummation of the kingdom that we're still waiting for and therefore that is especially the burden of our message so we have the old testament giving us the foundation and the preparation of one who should come the new testament is the message of the one who has come he's here it says and then when the lord returns fact number seven he's here again to finish the job well that's really the whole of scripture revolves around that and that is how jesus is the very center of the whole of the bible and that is how christianity is christianity

that's what it is isn't it christianity we can't put jesus out of the center of christianity so we we related the old testament in the new testament the old testament with its

emphasis on human need

god kept on moving to save israel but each time they had been saved they needed saving again you get it in the book of judges you get it right through the period of the kings again and again god moves to save israel

but there comes a time when jesus is in the earth when he creates that sacrifice as a result of which god wouldn't have to do anything more to save that was the salvation although of course it has got to be applied to all mankind during the thousand years so the old testament leads us and promises the way of salvation the new testament says here is the way of salvation and so we have a completion in the new testament so that we can read the old testament in the light of christ and then those holy scriptures of old are able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in christ jesus you remember the verse that we weren't able to complete through faith which is in christ jesus the old testament as well as the new can then make us wise unto salvation now the other distinction that i made was between

preaching material and teaching material now of course unless any should be a bit worried about that there is no clear cut hard and fast line of division between these things but there are certain elements of the gospel which are appropriate in preaching initial preaching to the unconverted and then once they have been converted then there is the rest of the bible as an open field in which to graze and draw pasture and that's a lifetime's work to graze in that pasture

well now yesterday we started off with peter's speeches in acts two and three and as well as seeing pictures of what was happening

we also saw

the way in which this message about jesus was emerging that everything that peter preached was jesus centered and we came out with these seven facts that the origin of jesus was in god which we're going to talk more about tomorrow that he showed what god was like in the things that he did among men we shall talk about that as well tomorrow

he then in spite of his divine ancestry his divine origin though rich yet for our sakes he became poor even to the extent of dying on a gibbet or gibbet and how you pronounce it here which was the translation here in this new english bible

and to complete that sacrifice and triumph as we've been singing of triumph he was raised from the dead as i say we'll talk about that uh on

thursday god willing

having been raised from the dead he ascended to the right hand of god where he's in control of everything and yet at the same time from that seat of power he dwells in the believer we're going to talk a lot about that later on in the week and then to

crown it all he's going to come again and apply the results of his work to all mankind

and this very simple message emerged from peter and there were really four points

that we had in mind there and that is that um

when peter was speaking and this is true of the other apostles of whom we're going to talk he they don't work in the usual human way and the 20th century way different ages do things different ways of presenting a series of theological propositions for intellectual ascent you know now we very definitely tend to do that and probably rightly so as long as we don't for forget

that here is a saving converting message but this struck me last night that we're having a most fascinating session on rested scriptures

but one can if one's not careful in seeking to get people's knowledge accurate on the mortality of man and whether jesus personally pre-existed or whether there is a place of hell-fire torments whether the book of mormon is a valid part of scripture you know all the funny ideas as we say it that other people have got we can so concentrate on that i remember when i was working in agriculture in farming during the war instead of going into the forces

and there was a whole crowd of us

digging ditches to drain off the excessive rainfall which i thought only applied to england until i came here

and um as we dug these ditches i told some of you this before and i'd probably forget what i've told who so if i get it like an old man repeating myself you'll forgive me but

as we dug these ditches there were the pentecostals and the baptists we'd even got a catholic there and then there were the socialist party of great britain who won't fight and uh there were five christodelphians and you know as we dug away so you get texts slinging up the ditch

uh somebody say ah but what about to depart and be with christ and somebody'll say ah but what about the soul that's in it it shall die and i i call it spiritual ping pong you know because uh for for every text that a pentecostal gave we'd always got another one to lob back at him uh we don't really get far that way because as we were learning last night in our session you've really got to sit down and

quietly discuss the the whole background of scripture in order to get a proper valid understanding but i remember the occasion when one a new christadelphian joined the gang who were digging these ditches and and somebody said well what what do you christadelphians believe to this particular chap he was the one that was asked and remember him saying well we don't believe you go to heaven when you die we don't believe that you've got an immortal soul we don't believe in the trinity we don't believe that hell is a place of flaming torments we don't say just a minute what do you believe no what don't you believe you know so there is always this danger isn't there of being too purely negative now the negatives are important and incidentally the negatives vary from uh generation to generation i was speaking to some young people the other day way back in england and they were saying we ought to be very strict about the statement of faith i said yes very good uh particularly the positive part

i wondered however whether the negative part of the statement of faith they they necessarily would understand of course we do i said right oh doctrines to be rejected you tell me what a free life is they had all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas and then i had to tell them you know why that was there and what truth it was seeking to preserve well so it is that creeds and statements of faith and propositions have their place but we must remember that they are really a clearing of the ground in order to enable that gospel which converts

me and turns them from uh darkness to light

that's the object of gospel preaching so if we don't follow the example of peter and creating people from the word of god a sense of sin

a sense of need to be delivered from sin and then present them the antidote in the lord jesus christ if we don't do that and then the grand hope of the completion and consummation of all things then we are not really preaching that gospel or good news which converts and this is partly why i chose to speak on these things because i do think we need to keep our positive drive

of a message which converts

and so this we learned yesterday and we'll continue to learn today now yesterday i also in this connection you remember pointed out that the great message of salvation as peter presented it was salvation from sin rather than salvation from death though if you are saved from sin then you will be saved from death

in that connection therefore the forgiveness of sin was never absent from any of the preaching that peter and paul did and should not be absent from our preaching

also one noticed that in the first preaching of peter there is an absence of what you might call theory he simply says jesus died and triumphed over that which holds us in its grip if you really think about that like that is it and of course half our trouble in life is that we have to spend a lot of patient time getting rid of ideas

hacking away through the jungle of undergrowth so that we can get back to that simple message that jesus came fully into our situation that he might triumph over it and lead us out of it because here when we have to discuss the nature of jesus and his complete association with us we have to do that in order that we may realize that he has come into our problems that he may deliver us from them well now

the first passage i want to go to today is acts chapter 8.

and in acts chapter 8 philip is our preacher and in his preaching uh we have

uh two or three phrases which will show us where the shall we use the phrase center of gravity or or or if you're if you're balancing things you have a fulcrum which is the center point upon which everything hinges

what is the center of gravity of phillips preaching well verse 4

i'm reading from the little new english bible i've got here

as for those who had been scattered they went through the country preaching the word

philip came down to a city in samaria and began proclaiming the messiah to them that means to say he began to say that the one that was promised in the old testament has come

the crowds to a man listened eagerly to what philip said when they heard him and saw the miracles that he performed for in many cases of possession the unclean spirits came out with a great outcry and many paralyzed and crippled folk were cured and there was great joy in that city and that's what christianity gives us this is what the gospel gives us as several speakers have said joy so that we're not a long-faced community and this is one of the beauties of these schools you don't see many long faces about well then you get the

question of simon uh brought in so that later on you can uh learn about the way in which he tried to buy the ability to pass the holy spirit unto other people and we have our famous proof text

uh verse 12 of acts 8

when they came to believe philip with his good news about the kingdom of god in the name of jesus christ they were baptized men and women alike and that's one of our key verses in the old declaration and in many other of our publications could i in passing

just stimulate you to thought and suggest that what we used to do i haven't heard it done so much but i think it is still do it done

we usually say that the things concerning the kingdom of god

are the things about when jesus comes again to restore the tribes of israel and fulfill the promises to abraham and the things concerning the name of jesus christ are the things about his sacrifice his death and resurrection

i would doubt but by all means in later sessions today disagree with me whether when philip spoke he'd got the truth cut up into two pieces one that talks about the kingdom and the other that talks about the sacrifice of the lord jesus christ because you see the word kingdom in the new testament is a greek word basil

which means the kingly rain

now obviously when christ is in the earth that's the fullness of the kingly reign of god but insofar as men and women get hold of the message of christ then as some of our hymns says he he reigns us king right now now you see you might say oh brother edgar's gone off the lines there he's preaching the reign of grace in the heart as the kingdom of god well i think most of us have come to realize that when people teach that the kingdom of god is a reign of grace in the heart right now or is the church right now they're not entirely wrong where they are wrong is they say it's only that and they forget about the fullness of it that lies in the future so that as paul says writing to the colossians chapter 1 we have been translated into the kingdom of his dear son

uh alfred norris does a little pamphlet on it the kingdom of god red cover in the book room there are some more trade for the book room uh but um

this is therefore what philip was teaching he was teaching the kingly reign of god

which could begin to be tasted then and there by men and women who came into this covenant in christ and then of course the great hope to those who were ground down with sorrow that one day they would share the resurrection of christ they would share the throne of god in christ and enjoy the beauties of the fullness of the kingdom now there's a big study there that's a whole week's study the kingdom of god but i've just given you a couple of sentences of it because i think you might like to follow that out so when philip preached the things concerning the kingdom of god in the name of jesus christ that incorporated the whole purpose of god to redeem men in christ and bring them into the perfection of the kingdom now as you go through the acts of the apostles i hope you're noticing these little

subsidiary addresses you're getting 10

addresses for the price of one and they're all free

it's interesting when you read the

act

to notice and our subject is the apostles doctrine and fellowship the way in which there is a movement right through the acts you start with all jews being preached to and all jews coming into the church and accepting jesus as the messiah you finish with fewer and fewer jews and more and more gentiles coming into the church and as you move so you move through the acts of the apostles away from judaism towards the universal appeal of the gospel that when you start all the preaching is done in the temple when you finish you're in rome we have a poem in england about one of the napoleonic wars how they brought the good news from gaunt to a i don't know if you know it robert browning or somebody

they jumped to the stirrup and galloped or something that i can never remember poetry some of you might know it but how they brought the good news from ghent to a it's called now i reckon you could say that the acts of the apostles is how they brought the good news from jerusalem to rome now that's the actually apology you want one phrase for the acts of the apostles it's how they brought the good news from jerusalem to rome it's not a biography of paul

it's not a biography of peter it's a story of the outward movement of this gospel and you see already in acts chapter 8 because of the persecution that arose about stephen we've already left jerusalem and we're there in samaria and jews would have no dealies with samaritans now this outward move takes a further step and the jerusalem church gets involved in the work of peter in preaching to a complete gentile he wasn't a proselyte he was a god fearer

now a god fearer was a man who liked he often really don't you who feared god in the acts of the apostles a god fearer was a man who who liked the jewish religion thought it was great compared with the uh dissolute and immoral ways of the heathen but he didn't want to become a complete jew even as far even as to be circumcised so he'd go along to the reading of the word and listen to the expounded law in the synagogue without completely committing himself and cornelius was one of these god fearers but he was a gentile

and here peter is sent

to learn that god regards all men as equal and that the jews although they had been the channel of god's purpose were not a cut above everybody else but god is calling men into his glorious purpose and so that passage that we had read from acts chapter 10 where peter in verse 34 began i now see how true it is that god has no favorites i like the way that's translated what is it in the king james version god is no respecter of persons that's lovely language but when you just hear it as god has no favorites it's just got that bit of a bite on it hasn't it but that in every nation the man who is god-fearing that's that little play on that word cornelius was one of the god-fearers you see who used to come to the synagogue every man who is god-fearing

and does what is right is acceptable to him now then he outlines this gospel verse 36 he sent his word to the israelites and gave the good news of peace through jesus christ who is lord of all so when he says who is lord of all he is reminding his hearers of the lofty origin of the lord jesus christ no mere man although a man

and then i need not tell you what happened lately all over the land of the jews starting from galilee after the baptism proclaimed by john you know about jesus of nazareth how god anointed him with the holy spirit and power he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed with the devil for god was with him and we can bear witness to all that he did in the jewish countryside and in jerusalem so that's fact number two he really goes to town on that ministered to men

so that it is not to be excluded from our preaching we should include in our preaching a vivid picture of the lord jesus christ and the things that he did when he ministered among men we shouldn't get so bogged down in what we might call the purely doctrinal issues that we can't find room to to show to men what god is like by telling them what jesus did

so a good crystallizing lecture ought to be a blend

of the facts about what jesus actually did with the interpretation which is the doctrinal part of why he did it what it meant and how it affects you and me

i think that would make quite a difference to some of our lectures now i don't want the other extreme where somebody just gets up and tells a nice story about jesus and that's all there is to it there's got to be a bite there's got to be a therefore there's got to be a men and brethren what shall we do about it and so

peter then moves on in his orderly way to the next fact about jesus fact number three

he was put to death by hanging on a gibbet

i like that translation i don't know whether you ever in this country were ever so barbaric as we were in england but where i've just moved from cherry tree cottage that it talks about in the uh

program

unfortunately for the writers of the program i'm not there anymore in fact when you get the

august glad tidings on the back you'll find edgar willey box two canik staffs

horrible isn't it

but you see the main thing is i must have that money out of all of you for glad tidings

so i mean if i put cherry tree cottage you might say isn't that a lovely address but i might not get the contributions which i hope are going to double this year that's the first plug i've made for glad tidings there are many others to follow um but um seriously this word gibbet

cherry tree cottage stands on a hill it's a white cottage of the old-fashioned kind

no modern conveniences that's partly why after 10 years of no modern conveniences we've decided perhaps we better have a bit of this affluent society and some of these modern conveniences and so on but and a smaller house

it looked down on two lanes that went in two different directions and the one that wasn't made up

you know with tarmac or whatever you call it

was um called gibbet lane

the main road from yorkshire

to bristol

used to run just about a mile from where we are passing gibbet lane

so that the high women ancestors of edward who used to come from yorkshire

would sometimes get caught in the midlands as edward sometimes gets caught in the midlands

and um

you know i've got to really have have my gentle revenge on him for one or two things

but we're great friends edward and i um anyway they'd catch these high women and they would string them up on a gibbet until there wasn't anything left off

there was a terrible business now when you have in your local history stories about gibbets and here we really are serious and you think of that nasty word associated with the lord jesus christ you see crosses are respectable people wear them as kind of lucky charms around their necks and they put them up very nicely carved outside their churches and you don't get the full horror of what jesus underwent for us

from the word across always or even crucified

well that comes a bit nearer to it what do you think of that ugly word gibbet and those high women being strung up there haman was hung on a gibbet then it's terrible and when you think of the lord there for us you know i we had one or two hot days before i came away from england and there were quite a lot of flies about and you know you kept on doing that to get rid of the flies while i was doing that one hot day that very same day i happened to read a book which was called whom ye crucified so now you know where i got my idea yesterday about us all being involved in the crucifixion of jesus it suddenly occurred to me that as he lay there mangled and bleeding for us one of the most torturing things he must have had to have endured was a a massive flies around him it makes you feel horror-stricken doesn't it of our lord enduring all these terrible things for us

and maybe the darkness which came down was a bit of a merciful relief from that particular agony that he was enduring

well i only mentioned that in passing just to illustrate the the absolute horror of the death of the lord jesus christ right down to a little detail like that of swarms of flies around him as his body still bled suffered and bled for us you know love so amazing so divine which i'm sure we shall sing at some stage during this week so it was peter brings to their notice the fact that he was put to death by hanging on a gibbet and then the note of joy but god raised him to life on the third day and allowed him to appear not to the whole people but to witnesses whom god had chosen in advance to us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead and he commanded us to proclaim him to the people proclaim him that's what we're doing when we're preaching however we do it and whatever we have to talk about whatever our ask correspondence course is dealing with in the end it has one objective whatever glad tidings is talking about in any particular month because those are our two i think as i see it the two main prongs for preaching the truth today and it's gradually getting over to england that the ask correspondence course is a fine way where anybody whether they're orators or not can can go into people's houses and get things moving uh the ask course and then glad tidings is a regular magazine to follow it up uh is a fine way of preaching the truth but all the time we must remember we're aiming to bring the lord jesus christ into the center of people's lives so he may stay in the center of their lives not only in this life but eternally in the day that is to come and incidentally i'll make a deal with al pride and all of you that if if you'll plug glad tidings over here i'll go back and plug ask

uh it's already coming in england uh brother charles semaine is going about england trying to get the brethren sisters doing the ask system well now

in

in this address then proclaim him to the people and affirm that he is the one who has been designated by god as judge of the living and the dead so here the particular aspect of his coming again you remember we had universal restoration now the particular aspect is judge of the quick and the dead

then we go on and paul is our next preacher our next

worker in the advancement of scripture knowledge in those days and we get paul in acts chapter 13. i'm obviously in spite of my extra 10 minutes going to have to get my skates on a little bit if we're going to

do all i want to do this morning in the remaining 25 minutes

in acts 13 i just want to pick out one or two verses to show you the same seven facts

you see if you think about these seven facts anybody who want to follow this system is a lecturing brother you can take any one of them give the facts then explain any difficulties like the mortality of man that might interfere with the understanding of it and then go back finally to the to the appeal

so we have a lot to learn from the apostles well now uh paul in acts 13 started with the problems that existed

he he started with the need that a people with a wonderful heritage of history like the jews among whom god had been working had now put the top stone

on his work of salvation through israel and so he he tells them verse 26 my brothers you who come of the stock of abraham and others among you who revere our god we are the people to whom the message of this salvation has been sent

and it goes on then to say that although this message of salvation right through israel's history had been given yet when the one who was foretold by all the prophets actually came they condemned him they fulfilled the very scriptures they had read by condemning him and they asked pilate to have him executed verse 29 when they carried out all that the scriptures said about him they took him down from the gibbet and laid him in a tomb but god raised him from the dead every time there's that note of triumph and we ought to feel that note of triumph it isn't just a a doctrinal fact that god raised him from the dead because it's a living fact he's a living lord jesus because he was raised from the dead to die no more and then in verse 31 the second half of it speaking of the apostles he says they are now his witnesses before our nation verse 32 and we are here to give you the good news

that's the spirit of the preacher that god who made the promise to the fathers has fulfilled it for the children by raising jesus from the dead then he goes back to psalm 2 you are my son this day have i begotten you and he shows how in the very promises that god made to david that there should be a messiah raised up who should be the son of god this in the resurrection of jesus and his elevation to the right hand of god was being fulfilled

it's rather strange isn't it that that peter should use a passage in the old testament that talks about the throne of david which we know is going to be in jerusalem when the kingdom of israel is restored and yet he says for the moment the throne of david is in exile and christ is sitting at the right hand of the throne of god and so he uses throne of david passages to describe jesus sitting at the right hand of god you can see how the orthodox churches can find verses which get them mixed up because they think that because jesus is on the throne

already that that's where the throne is always going to stay instead of recognizing that fact number seven he's coming back and the throne of god which is at present in heaven shall be with man all there's lots of things in these green flags these quotations between the old and the new testament then he goes on having spoken a little bit more about the promises to david and how they had been partly fulfilled and fulfilled in a sense in the things that had happened in the death and resurrection of jesus he then goes on having got jesus raised verse 38

you must understand my brothers that it is through him him again that forgiveness of sins is now being proclaimed to you forgiveness of sins see i know i'm laboring it i'm saying it again and again forgiveness of sins is there as part of the key message and he goes on to say of course that in christ

there is a lifting of the load of sin

and the burden that oppresses

there is a sense of joy and lightsomeness instead of a sense of oh i'll never get into the kingdom see that we often find brother and sisters getting depressed and saying that

that's when your pilgrimage gets dreary when you start saying i'll never get into the kingdom fear not little flock it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom i know there's the other side of it we mustn't just get too confident because we haven't got there yet in all its fullness i'll talk about that uh one of the later mornings god willing this theme of grace and the mercy of god well then i i must dash over into acts chapter 17

following paul now

into the gentile territories and he's no longer talking

to the jews he's speaking to gentiles

in acts chapter 17 having preached to the thessalonians

i am proclaiming to you the messiah

having been accused of preaching another king one jesus because there are political implications in the gospel if we serve another king one jesus then he's our king and no human king or president has our undivided allegiance this is really one of our basic reasons for objecting to military service it isn't only that we object to the use of violence this is an important principle of christian living but also we serve another king one jesus that's in acts chapter 17 and then you get that occasion when the uh oh i've jumped ahead acts chapter 16 i i meant to mention i'll mention it from memory when that earthquake occurred in the prison remember when paul and silas sang hymns with the understanding

and with great feeling i imagine as they sat there in the stocks and then there was that earthquake

and the poor jailer he was going to commit suicide

and that very night he was baptized and that often occasions difficulties to people but you see

basically that that man he had a bit of instruction that night there was just one thing as far as he was concerned he learned that night that there was a mighty power in the earth the power of one jesus whom paul had been preaching for several weeks after all and he'd read about it in the uh

in the philippi news or whatever newspaper they had there he knew all these things that were happening and then he saw it first hand

and here he was in a great problem and just about to commit suicide

and his needs were met by a man paul who in the strength of another one jesus had got the power to control the whole situation he says my word that's it i'm going to give myself heart and soul to that one when somebody's prepared to give himself heart and soul to jesus he's got a child mind and he's he's prepared to be sorted out on all his complications well the main complication for a man like that was a that he probably lived a pretty violent and dissolute life

and b he probably went along from time to time to whatever temple it was to worship idols once he'd seen the supremacy of the power and the moral supremacy also of jesus then what must i do to be saved i want that power

believe on the lord jesus christ and thou shalt be saved and they had a bit of a chat and his whole mind and his whole thinking was reoriented and there he was baptized that very night now in acts chapter 17 the situation is rather different because um he's in the university city he's in yale or harvard or yale and harvard and what's the other one princetown

doing my homework you know

and oxford and cambridge uh all rolled into one athens that was the university city and uh there he was preaching

preaching two gods they thought he kept on hurting he heard paul say

an anastasis

and jesus that was a man's name an anastasis that was a lady's name you know so that was the gender of the word anastasis and there were ladies around who were called anastasis or anastasia

and oh he's got two new gods a man god and a lady god we must hear about this but wait a minute has he got a license to preach you see because in athens anybody could preach but they had to go up to the court to get their license a bit like here and in england you have to have a license for all sorts of things don't you have to have a license for fishing perhaps if you're going to fish in certain parts of the country here you had to have a license for preaching as long as you've got your license i don't think there was a fee then you were all right but you've got to go to the court of the areopagus and this is you don't get this point clearly in the king james version and so

he would appear to be they said a propagandist for foreign deities this is verse 18 because he was preaching about jesus and resurrection yes and anastasis so verse 19 so they took him this is acts 17 verse 19

so they took him and they brought him before the court of ariopagus and said may we know what this new doctrine is that you propound you are introducing ideas that sound strange to us and we should like to know what they mean

now the athenians in general and the foreigners there

had no time for anything but talking or hearing about the latest novelty i reckon that's a great translation isn't it because we know a lot of people like that

talking or hearing about the latest novelty in fact sometimes we're tempted to be like that even in the brotherhood aren't we um then paul stood up before the court of the areopacus and said

men of athens i see that in everything that concerns religion you are uncommonly scrupulous what does it say in the king james version

superstitious doesn't it you see and now here's another hint from the apostles as to how to preach you don't go before people when you know you're in a town where there's a lot of episcopal people you don't go up there and give you a lecture and say now you know the episcopal church it's a synagogue of satan you might think that and you might be right but you don't go and say it you don't hit them over the head same paul never did in fact one of the things he was able to say that he never blasphemed their deities so there is christian wisdom following that's a don't mistake me there's a time for a bit of hard hitting but you don't start that way

and so um men of athens i see that in everything that concerns religion you are uncommonly scrupulous not superstitious they were very conscientious about their religion what he meant was they were so scrupulous that they were a bit bothered that they might have left one of the gods out because they believed in the lot like people do today they say we're all going different ways to the same place don't they what's that they were like in athens

he said now that god that you've put an altar to the unknown god the one you don't know about that's the one i preach now that was a very very subtle and a very proper way of introducing the thing and then he has to start with god and so before he can get onto the facts about jesus he's got to go to the fact before god now i want to draw a deduction here about our preaching in relation to getting over to men and women that god is a lot of people just don't believe there is a god or or they don't know if they don't believe there is a god they're atheists if they just don't know their agnostics and most people nowadays are either atheists or agnostics really and they ask you to prove there is a god

now you can't

you can bring some very useful points you can bring points about you know paley's watch where paley in the two centuries ago said if you saw a watch in a field you'd never seen one before and you opened it up you'd say well somebody must have made this you couldn't have a watch without a watchmaker so you couldn't have the wonders of nature without a god who made it all that's a very good argument but if you don't want to believe it won't convince you and i was telling the brethren and sisters down at washington and i don't think i've mentioned it here forgive me if i have i was in a restaurant in london the other day where two lads were talking one didn't believe in jesus and the other did and he was trying to prove

just by a logical sequence of arguments that god existed and the more he went on the more the other chap was winning the argument because he was a quite a clever university chap

well they were at the next table to me and they was they were speaking pretty loud and i couldn't you know resist it i had to join in in fact

one or two things i've done since i've been here i mentioned to you the other day about amos the prophet who came from the two tribes to the ten tribes and didn't mind his own business and they sent him back one or two people started nicknaming me amos

the brother who doesn't mind his own business because i tell people how far to stand away from the microphone

but um anyway i couldn't mind my own business on this occasion and i joined in this little chat at the next table

we have a saying in england which i think some of you have picked up from me that if you want to find out what something is like you suck it and see every time some strange american dish comes onto our table they tell me well you'll have to suck it and see when i ask them what it's like

well i went i joined this conversation i said look you will never convince your friend logically he's got to try it out he's got to suck it and see well he's very quick this friend of the man who was defending christ he said oh i see i've got to suck the christian lollipop am i i said that's right you suck the christian lollipop well what about the hindu lollipop and the lollipop is that that's right you suck those as well if you've got time but i've no doubt which one you'll find most satisfying but mind you you've got to do it properly you've got to not only read what you say you've got to put it into practice i suggest you start with matthew because you'll agree that jesus christ was a very good man oh yes yes he'd agree that most people do sometimes they add if he existed but at least they think he's a good it's a good idea jesus christ nobody ever runs him down so i said well skip the bits you don't like early in matthew but it won't be long before you come to the sermon on the mount and you'll find that fine i know you will and

then you'll come to various things but if you're going to suck it and see you've got to try it out

so when you come to as you would that men should do to you you've got to try it out

you've got to do it

yes he said that's fair enough i said well you'll find you don't do it for five minutes

you'll find too that before long you don't even want to do it

and then a little bit later in the day you may even find that you're kidding yourself that you do do it uh and you might even end up saying well perhaps it doesn't matter and there's no need to do it you'll have all sorts of problems but if you face up to that verse as you would that men should do to you do you even say to them you'll make a great discovery on the first day of your reading of the bible you'll discover you're a sinner and then you'll have a need and when you've got a need then you may realize the the fact that that need has been met in other words you just send them away to suck it and see that's biblical isn't it oh taste and see that the lord is gracious send them away and say well either you'll have a go or you won't and all the arguing in the world you know and so it is that the apostles simply asserted god who made the heavens who created mankind asserted it and you take it or leave it this isn't to say that you shouldn't for certain types of minds try to help them with the um understanding of the fact of god but conviction won't come unless they sample it

well now we're getting quite a lot about our preaching this morning aren't we a lot of tips from the apostles about how to handle things and of course in this acts chapter seven when he was before the court of the areopagus the apostle paul

uh finishes up but god's overlooked the times of ignorance verse 31 acts 17

but now he commands all mankind everywhere to repent

then he brings in fact number seven acts 17 31

because he has fixed the day on which he will have the world judged and justly judged by a man of his choosing of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead we all know who that man is he's fixed the day in which he will judge the world and judge its righteously that means judgment and rulership the second coming of jesus is where he finishes in acts chapter 17.

now i've got about another half hour down here on my notes but um you'll have to be compressed into five minutes because i resolved that one little crime i wouldn't commit would be of overstepping the time which i have been known to do

well now i would like to move on for this last few minutes into one or two bits in the epistles you see i'm talking all the time about what the apostles preached

to unbelievers not what they taught to believers but you can get a lot of hints in the epistles about the way in which they preached

now theme is the apostles doctrine and fellowship

now the way in which they preach often comes out by the apostle referring back

for example in romans don't turn it up there's time this gospel god announced beforehand in the sacred scriptures through his prophets it is about his son

it is about jesus christ our lord so straight away you learn the kind of gospel that paul preached it was about jesus christ our lord again in romans 1

by preaching the gospel of his son those kind of phrases you constantly get romans 2 a day when god judges the secret of human hearts through jesus christ so my gospel declares so he included the judgment seat in his gospel god is going to judge the secrets of human hearts and in romans 10 he sums up the the total power of his gospel although he took it all sorts of different roads although he's quite prepared to discuss detailed things yet the sum total of what he was aiming at in his gospel was that which he speaks of in romans chapter 10.

romans chapter 10

he's referring back to the words of moses speaking of justification by faith what does it say

verse 8 romans 10

the word is near you it's upon your lips and in your heart this means the word of faith which we proclaim so their gospel preaching was the word of faith

if on your lips and here's the word of faith is the confession jesus is lord that's all the truth in those three words

let's never forget it in all our various argumentations that we have to carry out in all our correspondence courses in all our articles in glad tidings in all our discussion with our friends never never never forget that the object of it all is that message that we keep on singing about in our hymn book we get so near to the lord jesus christ the object is christianity is about christ jesus is lord if on your lips is the confession jesus is lord and in your heart the faith that god raised him from the dead then you will find salvation everything's locked up there because i know some people think if you just say jesus is lord you're there well you've got to understand what you're saying obviously that's the depth of commitment you see we we quite rightly have an interview don't we and and i i can remember way back 40 or 50 years ago in england the interviews for baptism they used to go all through

it's good thing in a way

you know the kings and then what king came next and then what king came next and they go through all the whole of the declaration and the christian instructor and before and unless you answered all those questions you hadn't passed your examination it used to be said you see well now that i think is the wrong phrase because it gives the idea that you're sitting a university examination in bible knowledge now all that knowledge is uh at various levels to different mentalities necessary you've got to have your background but you mustn't in seeking to get that wealth of understanding into people's heads just stop there with an intellectual understanding the most important thing about an examination for baptism i did say they're still court examinations or interviews or chats or conversations call them what you will and actually robert roberts had got this point in the good confession which was his little specimen interview their most important point is to make sure that that person is aware that when he goes into the waters of baptism he or she goes into the waters of baptism they are aware of the total commitment to the lord jesus christ in which they have engaged

so if in your heart the faith that god raised him from the dead then you will find salvation for the faith that leads to righteousness is in the heart and the confession that leads to salvation is upon the lips as it is written in the scriptures verse 13 everyone who calls upon the name of the lord will be saved and so the total message the total message of the apostles can be summed up in two words

jesus

christ because in those two words is the whole purpose of god jesus

yahweh the savior

christ

the anointed one promised through all the prophets anointed to what to be a king to be a king in men's hearts to be a king on the throne of david in the great millennial reign

jesus the savior saving how by his death by his resurrection by his triumph over all the things that hold us in their grip jesus christ it's all there and often while you're carving that path through the jungle of human ideas to get there never forget that this is the object the object is to teach men that they are sinners who need forgiveness who must repent who must allow christ to take over the complete direction of their lives christianity is christianity if we get hold of that then i'm sure there will come as we move towards the kingdom in these exciting times and we look forward to him being actually in the earth there will come if we take this positive aspect a new dynamic into our preaching may god grant that we learn something from the apostles and that as we go forward from this school to carry on with the round of proclaiming christ to mankind we may feel that it has been good to be here and that we've learned something from the apostles and that we're going to fellowship their activities as we proclaim christ to men

Transcript

this is the voice of wilbraham

the eastern christadelphian bible school presents a series of bible addresses

recorded at the 23rd annual convocation of the eastern christadelphian bible school

brother edgar willey of dudley england is the guest speaker

we hear brother willie now

as he begins his third address upon the subject no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved

what peter preached

got a lot of notes today because it's a difficult subject

it's a beautiful one though

but i'm going to ask something very special of your brother and sisters

you wonderfully sympathetic listeners

i want even more sympathy this morning because i have before me the actual notes

that i used at a certain gathering in england

where i attempted to explain the divinity of the lord jesus christ

and as brother edward knows i got myself in quite a bit of trouble well of course you always learn by your experiences so i'm using the actual same notes that i had there i'm

hoping that i'm wiser

but of course whenever you talk about the lord jesus christ he is so far above our concepts that how to find words to express the lofty thoughts that scripture gives about him well it just beats you that's why i'm asking not for your sympathy to anything wrong that i say if i say something wrong you you put me right because that's all i want

but nevertheless let us all recognize the limitations of human language to to

really plumb what the apostle paul calls the mystery of godliness

so i'm sure that we'll all work together because i i'm going to work you and i'm actually going to call up from the dead as it were brother roberts and

dr thomas i don't know why we call him dr thomas brother thomas i'm going to call them up as witnesses but the things they're going to say

are really going to ask you to put your thinking caps on and if as a result

we leave you with

a determination to see god in christ as well as man in christ then that's all i'm seeking to do today

that hymn that we had for example i think brother edward was pointing out the other day him 99 is our trinity him

not the athanasian creed which so confuses and darkens men's minds when they bother to read it which not many people do nowadays but the bible sort of trinity

which you get for example at the end of um paul's second letter to the corinthians

you've got a very very three-fold sort of phrase there and i don't think it occasions as any difficulty at all

2 corinthians

13

verse 14

the grace of the lord jesus christ

and the love of god

and the communion of the holy spirit be with you all

amen

when you and i were baptized

the brother

said

in you are baptized or i baptize you into or in the name of the father son and holy spirit and some brethren have tried to get rid of that phrase and say it wasn't in the original but that won't work it it was in the original

so that we have father son and holy spirit portrayed for us in the very last words of jesus in matthew and we have this grace of the lord jesus love of god and communion of the holy spirit presented in 2

corinthians 13

and it is of this but in the next three talks i want to speak

and this is really amplifying as i say we've been doing the preaching so far where the apostles just preached the basic facts

that jesus came from god and ministered to men died and was raised ascended to god it dwells in the believer and will come again and these facts group themselves together really in

three or four groupings today we're looking at this first one that he came from god and ministered to men

tomorrow we're going to look at minister to men again died for our sins and raised for our justification then we look at him ascended to the right hand of god and dwelling in the believer and finally we look for his reappearance so we're now going from preaching into teaching where in the epistles the apostle paul particularly but also peter and james dive more deeply into things i say particularly paul but i've forgotten one haven't i the apostle john who is perhaps the deepest of them all and remember that matthew mark luke and john are the basic material which were used in the early church after the first few years when things began to get written down there they got their basic material about the life of the lord and john's particularly giving this exalted picture of the one who came from god and yet got involved totally in our situation and i think what happens in this topic is that we get one side or the other out of balance this is the problem how to stay in balance and this is why i asked for your sympathetic listening and if at any stage i get a bit out of balance well i'll try to put it right in the next talk because this morning's talk is out of balance there's no doubt about it but very virtue of dealing with one subject at a time you get out of balance i'm going to stress

the divine origin of our lord

and as the will abraham wayfarer says this morning that when men saw jesus they saw god now that's the emphasis there's going to be this morning

and that's why we had him 99 with the heavenly father then the savior and then the grace at work in the hearts of the believer

now

plenty of scripture then this morning

and first i would like to just

read you a few verses

from the new english bible rendering of first john 1. and perhaps i'd rather you didn't turn your bibles up for this so if you want to i mustn't dictate to you whether you do or not but i'd like you to imagine you've never heard the epistle of john before and you're way back in the first century and you have a visit from the apostle john

and this is what he says to you

he starts his exhortation on the sunday morning like this it was there

from the beginning

we have heard it

we have seen it with our own eyes

we looked upon it

and felt it with our own hands

and it is of this we tell

you what's he talking about what is this it that he's touched and felt when he goes on our theme

is the word of life

this life was made visible

got the idea of something called the word of life and that something called the word of life that was almost personal in its power because it was linked with god

became visible

we have seen it and bear our testimony we here declare to you the eternal life which dwelt with the father and was made visible to us so there's something called eternal life and it isn't the same word as immortality there's something called eternal life that's the quality of the life of god you know we tend to use the word eternal life of the quantity of life that we hope to have immortal is really the right word there and sometimes the word eternal is used in the bible to mean immortal but here he's using the word eternal of the quality of the divine life

and that divine life it dwelt with the father it was made visible to us

what we have seen and heard we declare to you so that you and we together

may share in a common life

that life which we share with the father and his son jesus christ and we write this in order that the joy of us all may be complete i think that's lovely

you know there you've got it you've got that eternal life which was with the father that's the first stage of the right sort of trinity that eternal life which was with the father made visible in the lord jesus christ and then passed on to us so that we share it too by the grace of god in christ jesus those are the three aspects

came from god

died for our sins as a man

dwells in the believer all to be made perfect when he comes again if only we can have these lovely

concepts

then a lot of the problems of pre-existence passages that kind of thing they go

but i recommend to you the new english bible translation of those first few verses of john it's all there you know i almost need not say anything else but i will

well now let's think

about why it's important

that we should get the god side of jesus clear

well it is important because flesh human nature

is so constructed that it can't save itself

human nature is of such a character that it always tends toward the earth

and requires lifting up toward the heavenly things now man can't lift himself up or he can go to the moon and he can do all sorts of wonderful things

but when in washington uh about a week ago i gave a lecture from earth's orbit to heaven's orbit

and although men can get out of earth's orbit into moon's orbits i can't really get into heaven's orbit on the spiritual level by their own efforts this is why god is the source of salvation and that's why it's so important to recognize that as 2 corinthians chapter 5 verse 19 puts the whole theme of redemption 2 corinthians 5 19 i've been asked to say my passage is loud and clear so that anybody who wants to note them can do so

2 corinthians 5 19

to wit that god was in christ

reconciling the world unto himself

not imputing their trespasses unto them and have committed unto us the apostles the word of reconciliation god was in christ

and then he goes on to speak of the way in which

this manifestation of the eternal father

descended as brother john carter used to say he came down into the evil from which he came to save us

for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that's he who was in heaven's orbit as it were comes down into earth's orbit that we might be made the righteousness of god in him to lift us up to what god is

jesus was sent down into what we are

that's why it's important to see the heavenly side and this is why of course paul writing to timothy in his first letter chapter 3

and verse 16

on timothy 3 verse 16 says and without controversy great is the mystery of godliness about which there's been more controversy than any other one subject

paul didn't mean that it means there's no argument that it's a great secret

as we'd say in england you can say that again without controversy great is the mystery or the secret of godliness god was manifest

in the flesh and this is where we get our christian healthy and phrase god manifestation from god was manifest in the flesh

justified in the spirit seen of angels preached unto the gentiles believed on in the world received up into glory now i know there are other translations which say just he was manifest

i think we usually tend to favor the king james version here but if you do you've got the situation that god was manifest in the flesh god was justified in the spirit god was seen of angels god was preached unto the gentiles god was believed on in the world and god was received up into glory when you've really got a problem haven't you

obviously we have to expand our understanding of the word god

not only speaking of the eternal great uncreate himself

usually denoted in the old testament by that hebrew word el

ale but we have to recognize that the word translated god in our bibles takes in all the various manifestations of god even down to jewish judges

which as we had yesterday morning psalm 82 i said ye are gods

the very word god branches out and as we study our bibles we come to realize that even we are called to

deification

that's just staggering that ordinary men and women like you and i are called to become partakers of the very divine nature and the way this happened was that god involved himself

in human nature in the person of his son that we might ultimately be involved in the divine nature

so the theme is the theme of the lord jesus christ

and i think of the lord jesus christ

in three aspects

i think of him divine in origin

two i think of him as the sin bearer

and three i think of him as indwelling the saints

you know i saw a very beautiful phrase in the writings of

bishop gore i know some brethren don't like you to refer to where you got an idea from because they think you're encouraging people to read a lot of things that might lead you off the line but i think in all honesty i ought to say where i got this phrase from

and he portrays

this was strange i mean he believes i don't know what he does believe quite or he's dead now but you know some of his chapters when i read them they seem so near to our understanding of god manifestation i found myself going along very happily other bits i wasn't quite so happy in when he tried to just explain how the athanasian creed although it was a muddle and he admitted it was yet somehow said the truth

but leaving that aside he put jesus in three phases

speaking of the divine origin of jesus he said we have christ in front of us and above us

and then he says speaking of jesus as a man we have christ for us

and then speaking of jesus by the spirit in the believer we have christ in us

so it's christ above us

beyond us and above us this is the god side and then we have christ for us dying for our sins

and then

we have christ

in us

above us for us in us i think that's that's very lovely that you see often we speak of jesus as our example and of course peter said that leaving us an example and yet in a sense jesus is more than an example because we cannot attain

and yet we've got to to to let him work in us to lift us up a little bit to what he was

but he is above us and if we think that the only purpose that god had in sending jesus was to give us a good moral example well then we really are in trouble because we'll never make it and i think it's because we think sometimes that he was just a good moral example that we've got to copy and if we don't will be titus

that we sometimes get some of the worries where we feel we'll never make it he is above us he will remain above us but he's lifting us up a little bit all the time

now i want to speak of his greatness i want to speak of when he came from god and ministered to man without turning up a lot of passages i want to for just 10

minutes reminds you of his greatness

i want you to go back to the first century there to when he walked among men

let us stand with his disciples

let us be one of the twelve if you like and let us think of how at first they would have thought

well john the baptist says this is the lamb of god we will follow him remember how they went come and see he says come and see brother roberts in nazareth we visited says how we'd love to have been there

went to peter and john it was said was it peter and john well whichever two it was come and see and they went and spent hours with him and they were really immediately drawn to him they wouldn't have realized that they were really talking in a manner of speaking to god walking among men or as dr thomas would have put it the deity tabernacling

in the son of david's daughter that's how dr thomas used to put it in those old phrases which come ringing down with such uh beauty even if we don't always quite understand some of those long phrases that he uses and there they were talking to god walking among men they didn't know it but little by little it would dawn on them that there was something remarkable something greater than john the baptist john the baptist said i must decrease he must increase he spake as one having authority he could say it was said of old time but i say unto you you can understand how the jews were puzzled by him if i said to you this morning it was said in the new testament so and so but i say unto you that'll be the last time i spoke at will abraham

that word wasn't it and rightly so but the lord jesus christ suddenly standing in the midst and saying it was said of old time but i say unto you and somehow the authority came over

and we read again and again you start ticking them off in your bible the number of times that it says they were amazed and what manner of man is this that even the winds and the waves obey him and how casually and it is this casualness with which the lord jesus says these things that that is is simply staggering he'd say in that day many will say unto me

lord lord i will say unto them

nobody ever thought well some people said he has a devil but the disciples never did they just took it in their stride it seemed so natural for him to say things like that many will say to me in that day he was the judge all judgment is committed unto the son his message all the time pointed to himself

that they were to trust in him as their unfailing guide

as their never ceasing resource

and all his words to them were training them to put their total trust in him have you ever thought

i know i let myself go a little bit last night and i wondered whether i was quite right afterwards i started talking about me

well i only did it to kind of share experiences with one another but if i'd done any more of it you'd have began to say to yourself i wish he'd stop talking about himself

do you realize that the lord jesus christ talked all the time about himself

and never sounded conceited

he said i'm the bread of life i am the bread of life

i am the truth and i am the resurrection and the life

and yet nobody really felt who got any sympathy with him

that this was contradictory when he said you'll be humble

so on the one hand he was somebody who talked about himself all the time and he said to other people you'll be humble and it didn't sound a bit contradictory there was a man looked just like a man who who said abram rejoiced to see my day

this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears

come unto me

all ye that labor and a heavy laden

again and again particularly in the gospel of john you have it portrayed that to believe on him was man's main duty and not to believe on him was man's chief sin

quiet assumption just taking it for granted that he was

something more than a man came over all the time

and it hurts me anyway and i didn't say it hurts you when you sometimes hear brethren and sisters in their eagerness to correct men's errors swinging right over the other way and almost making jesus appear merely a man and i would recommend great care when sincere

people who really are seeking to serve christ although they are in air are on various things when they come up to you and say do you believe in the divinity of jesus be careful how you answer it don't just say no

they think that you think he's just a mere man and i can understand them being a bit horrified can't you so find some words or say yes when they ask do you believe in the divinity of jesus say yes but i'd like to have a bit of a chat sometime so that we can sort out just what i mean when i say yes i don't say no otherwise you will convey a very unchristian sort of approach there were the direct claims of jesus jesus who called himself the son of man jesus who said my father my father and there were the indirect claims where he forgave sin something that god only could do where he said i will bestow life something that god only could do where he said i will judge the world something which god only can do

all together above us above us

and yet for us and finally in us

which of you john chapter 8 verse 46

which of you convinceth me of sin

in verse 29 i do always those things which please the father

they're just we're used to those words you just think if you could manage to get through today even in the wonderful fellowship of wilbraham if you could manage to get through today without one thought that was just a little bit not quite right

you'd think it was a marvelous triumph of christ dwelling in you wouldn't you

you've probably already thought some little thought or done some little thing that's not quite up to standard don't let it oppress you don't let it depress you this is what we are but here was somebody who while all other men needed saving he himself was the savior without sin

other men were sheep he was the shepherd

all other men were dead he was the life other men were in darkness he was the lights

other men were hungry he is the bread

no consciousness of sin yet such a sympathy with sinners no sense of moral failure at all

contrast with us

oh what a great one the lord jesus was

and yet

not superior

not a crank

not eccentric have you thought about that there's nothing odd about jesus

you know when people when people try hard that's a danger of course trying hard try hard to be like him sometimes they somehow turn out as cranks and eccentric

no self-importance

and yet his teaching was self-centered but the self that he centered on was god

and yet not up there in the clouds play with the children knew all about their playing at weddings and funerals the friend of lepers and harlots and sinners

is it any wonder

that after he had been raised from the dead thomas said my lord and my god

i want us to feel without feeling any necessity for explanation that we do

can come to the feet of jesus and say as we sing some of these hymns

my lord

and my god and we know just what we mean without explaining it

jesus was and is divine

he was also human i was going to say was and is human and if i said that i would mean that he took back to heaven with him and you know how i used the word back in inverted in quotes wasn't say inverted commas in the states we have to say quotes don't we that he took back inverted karma's quotes to heaven with him the experience of having been human that's why he as we shall see tomorrow is able to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but he was and he is rightly called god

you know those passages such as when paul is writing to the hebrews he quotes from psalm 45

in hebrews chapter one

god who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken to us by his son

goes on to speak of how the sun was the brightness of his glory the express image of his person goes on to speak then unto which of the angels said he

eventually in verse 8 but unto the sun he saith thy throne o god

then of course if you go back to psalm 45

you'll find that god in psalm 45 and also god in isaiah 64

because he goes on therefore god even thy god hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows so there in verse 9 is a god who has got a god

so jesus is a god who has a god so there is unity and yet in one sense there is separateness this isn't too deep for us is it

god it says that jesus is god i've been asked by orthodox friends do you believe that jesus is god i say well hebrews 1

tells us he was

also john tells us that he says my father is greater than i great is the mystery of godliness and and i sometimes get into a little bit of difficulty because i i'm so thrilled with just what it actually says about jesus that i don't do enough explaining and this is so so much open to misunderstanding but i think we're all agreed aren't we that in jesus we have no mere man you you look at luke chapter one

you look at luke chapter one

and verse 68

when the old man zacharias

holds the baby jesus in his arms

oh no that's that's a bit later i've got the wrong wrong one there yes zacharias did hold the baby jesus in his arms and he knew that he held the lord's christ and he said mine eyes have seen thy

salvation that's in luke 2 thy salvation but the one i wanted was luke 1 the other zechariah simeon was the one i was talking of there now zechariah the father of john the baptist when he held his own baby in his arms john the baptist he started off in verse 68

and this is um uh one of the some of the churches the orthodox churches use this as one of their regular pieces that they recite

don't they call it the benedicte i'm not very well up on all that

blessed be the lord god of israel for he hath visited and redeemed

his people visited

when jesus was among men there was god on a visit to israel god on a visit to mankind in the person of his son

now i suppose we have something in the direction of a bit of explanation of this great and marvelous thing in luke chapter one

and please don't anybody say well this isn't quite fair because it gives jesus an unfair advantage over us if he was god walking among men then of course he couldn't sin don't forget that he was in the flesh that's the other side and therefore he was tempted in all points like us and he had greater problems than we have he had more to fight than we have

but it isn't a matter of being fair jesus was god's arm god saw there was no arm no man

isaiah 59 therefore his arm brought salvation

you know it is it's all of god this work so it isn't a matter of saying well jesus had a chance that we didn't have he had problems that we didn't have as well but god didn't give him to us to just do the things that we can do but to do something that we can't do and that's why he had no human father and we read in luke chapter 1

verse 31

thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son luke 1 31 and thou shall call his name jesus jehovah which of course is is bad hebrew yahweh we know

yahweh the savior the he who shall be the savior

probably the word yahweh doesn't only mean the he who shall be but really means that he who was and is who and will be has past present and future in that great name of god so that when you come to the book of revelation you have who is and who was in his coming past present and future all wrapped up in the lord jesus christ yahweh the savior

they who is who was and is coming

so there was mary now those of you who are mothers

just think how she must have felt

with this strange salutation

you are going to be the mother of the one promised

what a thrill our heart must have lept

if the babe in the womb of elizabeth left how must mary's heart have left

he shall be great and shall be called the son of the highest the lord god shall give unto him the throne of his father david and he shall reign over the house of jacob forever and of his kingdom there shall be no end you mary are going to bear in the normal process of childbirth

that one

then said mary unto the angel how shall this be seeing i know not a man i'm not married

the angel answered and said unto her the holy spirit shall come upon thee and then hebrew parallelism saying the same thing a different way the power of the highest shall overshadow thee

therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the son of god and i think we have a glimmering of the explanation but it's only a glimmering there

in ordinary human birth there is substance from the father goes forth to cause the germination process to commence the child that is conceived begins to grow in all holiness and purity of thought power from god

went forth and operated upon the substance of mary to begin a new life

a new life that was directly connected with the god who sent forth that power so that god really did extend himself

in producing this son but he extended himself more than we human fathers do why we can't even say well we've got two boys let's have a girl this time we can't say that in japan they're trying to experiment to see if they can't control the sex of the child that you have

how about if we could say now we'll have another child

little john is old enough now we'll have another child we'll have all your good qualities dear and we'll have all my good qualities and none of our bad ones

and we'll wipe out all grandfathers bad qualities and grandmother's bad qualities and you know we just can't do it can we

but in all reverence when god himself is the father he can ensure that right balance of qualities

potential in the child

that will respond so that it's it's no marvel that at the age of 12 he was able to say didn't you know i must be about my father's business

i think you begin to just get a glimmering but but it's only a glimmering because you see

human children have a kind of sympathy with father if they get on well together a sort of feeling for father well that's only a dim reflection of the feeling that jesus had for his father quincy at the age of 12 saying wistia not that i must be about my father's business

yet he was a child and he grew grew in favor with god and man there were times when he played and there were times when he he went that a little bit further and became a little more mature always perfect at the stage of his development the explanation well the explanation we've seen it in luke 1 we see it in micah chapter 5

as translated in the revised standard version

micah chapter 5

where we have about that one that was going to be born in bethlehem

thou micah 5 verse 2 jot it down if you can't find it quickly those minor prophets are always a problem just to drop on aren't they micah 5 verse 2

thou bethlehem ephrata though thou be little among the thousands of judah yet out of thee shall he come forth to me that is to be ruler in israel whose goings forth it says in the king james version whose origin

has been from of old from everlasting so jesus originated in god from evolved from everlasting can we get that his origin was there in god not saying anything about him having an eternal consciousness but once he came

then somehow there was in him a never had that feeling i've been here before you know that feeling i've been here before

well there was something about jesus that when he thought of god in heaven he got that feeling i've been there

he can't understand it can't explain it but but i think that just gets a little bit near to what jesus meant when he said in john chapter 3

in john chapter 3

was it jesus that said it

and verse 31

well it wasn't actually jesus who said it it was either john the baptist saying it or it was john the gospel writer saying it doesn't matter anyway for our present purposes john chapter 3 verse 31

using that little example of where you feel you've been somewhere before and yet you know you've never been there before they call it a perception or something well jesus had a divine not only a perception but a perception that is a perception of what goes before

he who comes from above

is above all others

he who is from the earth like john the baptist belongs to the earth and uses earthly speech

he who comes from heaven bears witness to what he has seen and heard

yet no one accepts his witness

now it is true that jesus right through his ministry was in daily contact with god he used to go up into the mount and learn new things from god each time he had that wonderful communion and when he'd learnt some new things from god he'd teach his disciples new things as he drew upon his father's reservoir as strength and power but somehow in addition to that and beyond it we you've got to face up to these words that

he who has come from heaven bears witness to what he has seen and heard

so there was in the consciousness of jesus a sense of things that went before that almost as as it were seemed to have been implanted in him by the fact that his origin was of old so that he he when he said before abram was i am

he had a sense of a feeling for the eternal past i'm struggling for words because i know not how to say this without being misunderstood but i don't think anybody is misunderstanding me we're trying to get that feeling of this this divine

eternity that was somehow built into the person of jesus so that he had a sense of having been involved in the creation of all things

because god was his father was the eternal pre-existing deity his father was and that god as brother thomas puts it tabernacled in jesus don't you see the greatness of jesus don't you see the explanation of his uniqueness

let's just look at one or two more passages in john just to get this this idea

and i know not how to explain them and when i read them privately as part of my personal devotion i don't try and explain them i just thrill to them as i'm sure you do

john chapter i've got little marginal notes gm god manifest by the side of them look at john 3 13

which may be a comment of john's or maybe actually what jesus said bishop temple in his readings from john's gospel which is one of those writings which i think one could safely recommend there are a few things that are not quite right in it but rather fewer than most orthodox books

he comments on this

you remember what the verse is no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven even the son of man which is in heaven and bishop temple or archbishop temple i think he was it doesn't matter what he was he he said that jesus said those words and although jesus was on earth

yet while on earth he was able to speak that he was in heaven

because heaven was his home the source of his life mind you that carries on when christ is in the believer then according to paul in ephesians we too are in heaven we're here on the earth

and yet this week as we talk about the things of god we have a sense of being with god at home in god sitting in heavenly places in christ jesus as brother john thomas put it in eureka on earth bodily his thinking concentrates beyond the veil where christ is it's a lovely phrase isn't it speaking of the saints on earth bodily his thinking concentrates

within the veil beyond the veil where christ is we get little glimmerings of this don't we as we talk about these joyous things and so there it was jesus was on the earth and in heaven at the same time you see when we talked about this at oxford one sister uh brought up in discussion that sometimes we're too space conscious and we're too time conscious and i think several of you have said this to me in conversation during this week when we've talked about we we do bother to get now did jesus pre-exist before he was born and obviously in one sense no and we were so concerned with getting the time factor right and then we were saying was he in heaven before he was born on earth and then we're concentrating on the space factor

but once you wash time and space out and get into the heavenly things once you've done that then you can say yes to both those questions

because to gods times just nothing and space is just nothing to him ignoring time and space

jesus is an eternal presence but i don't understand what i mean really when i say that neither do you because we're out of our depth when we try to do without time and space

we don't really know what we mean but jesus obviously as he talked was was oblivious to time and space and before abram was i am that is the memorial name being worked in there translated i am there but perhaps it ought to be i was am and will be

oh yes john 3 we've had john 3

john [Music]

john 5 23

all men should honor the son even as they honor the father that's john 5 23

john 5 26 as the father hath life in himself so if he given to the son to have life in himself that eternal life which was always with the father which became visible

moving on john 6 just to give you the flavor of it i somehow get criticized for using that word flavor but don't die edward yes

but that's the only word i know if you just sit down and try and draw up a few cold propositions on this subject you're soon in chaos you get the feel of it

verse 38 john 6

i came down from heaven

forget space you see

just think of his divine origin and what it felt like to be jesus i came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him that sent me

you're in no problem are you none of us are we're all together on it we're in this context of sitting at the feet of jesus we know just what it means even if we couldn't explain it and when we come to

chapter 6 51

i am the living bread which came down

from heaven

we don't need to explain it we can sense it we can feel with jesus

and what about verse 62 of chapter 6

what and if you see the son of man ascend up where he was before in god his father there he dwelt as it were from all eternity whose origin was of old and yet of course as i completely knew being

dwelt among men

there are the two that the complexity of it there he was the lord jesus christ born like a baby and yet as he walked among men he had a sense of his eternal antecedence you know that word antecedence his before comings that's what antecedents meant and he had that sense of it in his very own being oh well you know all the rest of these passages don't you john chapter 8 23

ye are from beneath

i am from above

and all those phrases where he keeps on saying the father sent me he got the feeling almost as if god had said to him that feeling i have been there before he got that feeling in such heightened form that it was almost as if god had said to him my son i want you to go forth and become a man now we know that's how the orthodox people put it and and we feel they've got it crude and and badly put we don't accept that but jesus felt like that he felt as if god had said i want you to go on a mission to man and god in heaven the eternal father was so with jesus

like abram you know he spared not his own son that when jesus hung upon the cross god felt as if he was there with him that's the unity of the father and the son we can only just touch on it we we can't grasp it all fully and you know all those passages then in john 8

where he he says

verse 42

the middle of verse 42 but jesus said unto them if god were your father you would love me for i proceeded forth and came from god i proceeded forth i went on a journey i left heaven i came from god and i came to you that's the words

now we know that we mustn't understand them crudely we've got to understand them in terms of this feeling for the father that the son had and this feeling for the son that the father had a unity that we are being taught little by little to sharing

now i'm going to really do this last minute or two that

puts you into

problems

of understanding what our pioneers said can you understand this now in the light of what i've just been saying this is nazareth revisited if you haven't got it there'll probably be some brisk business in the book room

now he's been speaking of the glory that i had with thee before the world was he's been trying our usual explanation of in the mind of the father and that's partly right in a sense that's what i've been saying isn't it i mean i've been trying to fill out just not just that god had a purpose but there was a feeling for each other that seemed to leap over time and space

and having explained it as in the mind of the father then brother roberts goes on but this is not necessarily inconsistent with the other view to which dr thomas was always inclined to accord weight and prominence and which it is impossible to dismiss with a full regard to the grounds on which it rests

it is not an alternative view but one that may rest coordinately with it namely that jesus being what he was the word made flesh

the manifestation of the god of david in the seed of david and therefore david's lord it is impossible this is page 481 for those who want to go and read it for themselves nasa 3 visited it is impossible to disconnect his mentality from the eternal power in which he was rooted

got that

impossible to disconnect his mentality from the eternal power in which he was rooted and that although as son of david and the man christ jesus his existence dates from his conception of the holy spirit

the consciousness within him

whose foundation was laid by the holy spirit

may have reflected previous relations

in a way

of which pure earth borns like ourselves have no experience

his consciousness may have reflected previous relationships in a way of which pure of earthborns like ourselves have no experience

the facts stated in the words i and my father are one and the words that i speak are not mine but the fathers who dwelleth in me would necessarily carry such an idea and involve a state of mind

requiring expressions like that to describe it that could not be applicable to us there was just no other way for jesus to say how he felt to the father but these expressions you see of pre-existence

then he goes on

page 482

only on such a principle does it seem possible to attach a natural meaning and we do a lot of wriggling on this subject don't we

a natural meaning to the statement he makes in his prayer

they the disciples have known surely

surely after our chat today we know surely

that of jesus i came out from thee and they have believed that thou did send me and again i came forth from the father and am come into the world

again i leave the world and go unto the father and again jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the father jesus knowing that he was come from god and went to god also the expressions i came down from heaven before abram was i am and his question what and if you shall see the son of man ascend up where he was before now you listen to this sentence

i think we can just get a glimmer of what brother roberts meant

all these expressions

imply reminiscence

of the pre-existing relation of things

reminiscence of the pre-existing relation of things that idea i've tried to express i have been here before i have been there before that was the feeling built into jesus as a result of god dwelling in him

all these expressions imply reminiscence of the pre-existing relation of things which cannot be surprising if we realize that all wisdom and knowledge and memory are stored in the eternal father spirits

of whom jesus

was the expression

it may be there is an ingredient of it in the allusion to the glory

god had with the father before the world began

the father element in jesus must always be kept in view in judging the expressions

that came from his lips

now brethren and sisters i don't think we've misunderstood any of that have we we've been really in the deepest waters that it's possible to swim in in the divine waters of life

we've been lifted by these scriptures

so that we have indeed sat in heavenly places in christ jesus we have seen our lord in all his loftiness

we've seen that he came from god

we want to go on to see although he was rich

heir of all things

came from god whose origin was of old

yet for our sakes he became poor

that we through his poverty might become rich

and that's what we're going to talk about for the rest of this week and may our consideration of our lord fill us with love and reverence for him so that a little of his greatness just a little may rub on us

and that we may dwell in him as he dwells in the father

Transcript

this is the voice of wilbraham

the eastern christadelphian bible school presents a series of bible addresses

recorded at the 23rd annual convocation of the eastern christadelphian bible school

brother edgar willey of dudley england is the guest speaker

we hear brother willie now

as he begins his fourth address upon the subject

according to my gospel

what paul preached

we sang brother and sisters a hymn that once i was full of prejudice against

because it was an orthodox hymn and because

in the third line in the orthodox version it speaks about the gate of heaven

when do i think now i could nearly sing about the gate of heaven with the understanding that paul had as sitting in heavenly places in christ jesus

however it's obviously better to remove ambiguity and we have the gate of life

but that hymn in its second verse really says what we're going to try in some small measure to talk about together today

we may not know we cannot tell

what pains he had to bear but we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there we're going to just try and make a little progress in understanding a little of the

depths into which the lord jesus was plunged for our sakes

now so far this week to give you the usual early morning recap revision we've seen the way in which the apostles preached about facts

we've summed them up in seven facts and there was a response and there was a result

the facts about jesus were the heart of the gospel so that christianity is christianity

they told men how that jesus had come from god to minister to men

had offered himself as a sacrifice for sins and been raised from the dead and triumphed over the grave and ascended to the right hand of god and yet while so far away was yet so near and could dwell in the believer

that the believer in whom christ so dwelt could look forward to the coming again of the lord whom not having seen he loved

and so the final hope of the believer is to be reunited and completely one with the lord

having heard these mess these messages this message from paul and from peter men and women were led into the way of repentance

manifested that repentance in the waters of baptism received here and now the wondrous forgiveness of sins so they could walk in peace and in unity with god with christ with the spirit of christ dwelling within them with the very life of god at work within them that eternal life which was with the father which was made visible and available and that eternal life which in quality they begin to have now they look forward to having in quantity and in perfection in the day that is to come

so that was the simple message the simple series of facts which we have on our notice board and then we moved from preaching yesterday to teaching to the deeper application of these things we went back to our first two facts

and in reverence and love before him we tried falteringly to glimpse some of the greatness some of the majesty of christ we tried to see how he was in origin divine

how he came from god how he was sent from god and how there was within jesus a sense of linkage with the eternal things and the eternal one who had gone before

so we saw christ above us we saw christ in all his majesty we saw christ

in the words of thomas my lord

and my god

if we left it there we should be unbalanced

if we only had yesterday's study then we should have only got part of the story because we should be left with a kind of gulf between us

the great lord jesus christ the manifestation of the eternal god

so we hinted at the end of our talk yesterday

on the

way in which

the lord jesus christ those so high in glory

although he was rich

the son of the proprietor of the whole universe yet for our sakes he became poor

we want to look at the lord jesus in his days of poverty against the background of his greatness we want to consider

the way in which he humbled himself

and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross as paul puts it in philippians 2.

of all the chapters that we might have chosen we thought that perhaps 2

corinthians chapter 5

was most expressive we should go back to it several times as our brother was reading it i looked at it in my little new english bible here and there were one or two phrases which help us to see that when we are discussing the sacrifice of the lord jesus christ

we are not discussing an academic theory

in fact one of the sad things about men in their studying of the lord jesus christ is that they have forgotten what his sacrifice is to do to them

and all too often

in the church in general the various orthodox churches and alas in our own community in discussing the death of the lord jesus christ we have shown an attitude that has been exactly opposite to the spirit of the master who we've been discussing now i've got to know the brethren sisters here well enough to know that whatever we discuss this morning about the death of the lord jesus christ will be in reverence and in love and if there should be any little ways of putting it that are not quite right even you will understand that we are seeking we are grasping once more to find human words to express thoughts to lofty for mere earthborns

that we are grappling with something that has

bothered and been found difficult by some of the noblest minds

in christ

in all ages something that has caused faithful saints to ponder deeply

and in 2 corinthians 5 as rendered in the new english bible we have this phraseology in verse 15.

his purpose in dying for all

was that men while still in life

should cease to live for themselves and should live for him

who for their sake died

and was raised to life that's the purpose of it all

that men while still in life

should cease to live for themselves and should live for him who for their sakes died and was raised to life

now if it doesn't do that for us you remember those seven rules of bible study let it do something to you then our study is in vain

later on that same chapter says in telling us what the purpose of the lord's death was

and i'm avoiding the use of the word the atonement not because it isn't a good phrase but because it's become perhaps a bit too technical among us and we think of the atonement as an it

instead of a he who died for us however the phrase the atonement in its very english form at one month in its greek form a covering is a very beautiful phrase

so it is he implores them in verse 21

in christ's name we implore you be reconciled to god christ was innocent of sin

and yet for our sake god made him one with the sinfulness of men

so that in him we might be made one with the goodness of god himself there it is god made him one with the sinfulness of man so that in him we might be made one

with the goodness of god himself

it is that being made one of christ with us

that we might be made one in him with god that is the purpose of our discussion this morning

and it is quite definite that you cannot go to any one place in the new testament or the old of course which prepares the way and find what i would call a nice little knee package

and say well there it is it's all settled there there is the sacrifice of the lord jesus christ all set out one two three four five six that's it learn that often you know all about it

rather instead of giving you neat little theories about the sacrifice of the lord jesus christ

there is power as one old hymn said wonder working power in the blood of the land now i know you can go too far in that kind of approach but let us not be frightened of this wonder working power that we can experience and let us recognize that whatever way you might like to put it or i might like to put this wondrous work of the lord jesus there's always another way of putting the wonderful theme

now remember brother tom barling you know fred barling many of you tom barling is his slightly older brother you know as edward whittaker is to harry whitaker so tom barling is to fred barling well you know i don't know whether they'd agree with that but uh that's the age relationship anyway well tom barling was introducing one afternoon at the oxford conference and by the way can i uh as well as inviting you all to come to the oxford conference whenever you're in england

can i just get rid of the idea that some of you seem to have about the oxford conference that it's an eggheads conference it's just a bible school the same of this the only thing is we're tucked away in a small college

we can just about squeeze 120 in so we're not quite able to take whole families in any way it'll be a bit of problem to know what to do with them in the afternoon because we haven't got playing fields that's the only difference really it's just will abraham perhaps the other thing is if we have to work hard on our bible studies here because we can relax and i've really enjoyed this relaxing i think i've had more shall we say good honest fun and recreation in a week here than i've had in two years at home i feel years younger but

at the oxford conference because we can't do this we tend to fill up most of our afternoons and all our evenings as well although we have plenty of fun with more study and more study until you nearly stagger out at the end of the week so you know if you do come i warn you well there's no it isn't a snobs gathering it's just the same ordinary brethren and sisters like all of us with all kinds of understanding we just get together and we study the word for a week so there you are open invitation find you you have to pay unless you're one of the speakers

um

well now uh what i was saying oh yes brother tom barling gave us an afternoon and he said that one of the great problems of discussing the lord's death is that people think that the particular avenue down which they look is the only one if we want to get the most out of his redemptive work we have to think of the cross of the lord jesus and you understand the sense in which i'm using the cross not as a symbol not as a piece of wood but as the phrase the apostles used to sum up the whole work of jesus there in the middle is the cross of christ and you're walking around and you're looking down this avenue through this window and then you walk around a little further and you look down this avenue and you see this vista and by the time you've been right round and look down 15

different avenues through 15 different windows or more then it begins to get hold of you

and then 10 years later you discover yet another 10 avenues down which you look in order to get looking down these avenues at the cross

you have certain basic ideas to get clear

you have certain basic errors to avoid but we shouldn't spend all our time getting rid of the basic errors we should spend our time letting the love of christ constrain us

but now to just get rid of some of the jungle that enables us to start looking down these avenues on the cross

there have been theories men can't rest content unless they've got some theories and so right down the ages men and perhaps you will know the names of some of these great churchmen like anselm who was archbishop of canterbury abhillard

the man that they do films about because although he was a monk and not allowed to marry he had this famous love affair with eloise

and all his spiritual torture it was brought upon him really by a false concept forbidding to marry abelard he had a theory and then later on you get um various great names

uh those who've dabbled in this will know names like the american mcleod campbell of the last century and mobily and uh in england or other scotland dr james denney and all these great theologians

of wrestle with the great subject of the lord's death and if you were to pile up all the books that have been written upon this subject even this room could not contain them perhaps even what john says even the world could not contain them it's amazing isn't it it just shows the tremendous ways of god that men write all those books in trying to understand them and here i am just for 45 minutes trying to just talk a little bit about our lord perhaps not with the wisdom of this world but with the foolishness of the cross as paul puts it in one corinthians 1.

but all these theories that men have talked about in their endeavors to explain why jesus died really probably get themselves sorted out into three or four main areas

there are the legal views

there are the example views and there are the representation views

and there are variations under those views

and we in our community and all these terrible divisions and controversies that we've had we haven't been doing anything new we've just been coming along and having one or the other of these particular views and putting all the emphasis on one or the other just looking down one avenue instead of looking around because there's an element of truth in all these views now the legal view way back in the days of anselm round about the year 1000 that talked in terms of god making a payment of the sacrifice of jesus to the devil to buy the devil off now that was very very very crude

and so of course it later became

in evangelical theology around about the time of wesley that jesus died as the sinners substitute to appease the wrath of an angry god he came along like sydney carton in tale of two cities

and said look you i'll die instead of them

now that view is not generally held lecturing brethren usually unless you happen to know you've got a particular kind of audience all the theologians today disapprove very strongly of this view that there was a kind of a division between god and christ how can there be after what we was thought we were talking about yesterday god was and brother edward whittaker pointed out to me you can read that verse another way god was comma in christ

reconciling the world to himself i'm happy with or without the commas there but god was in christ reconciling the world to himself so the two were hand in hand together and you just cannot have if you believe in god manifestation if you believe in the divinity of jesus in the way we were talking about it yesterday you cannot believe in any clash in an angry god and a merciful jesus

that is out but nevertheless even brethren have come along and have had an element of legalism so that there were these catch phrases of the last century and even over here in the states one still hears echoes of them in certain quarters catchphrases like adamic condemnation and racial alienation you won't find them in the bible

and these are the idea that we were all held in some kind of legal

uh grip

that god had said we'd got to die and so here was a law and somehow god had got himself into almost if we might reverently say it into a fix where he didn't know how to escape from his own laws to show us mercy

the strange thing is it's just a grain of truth in that not that god couldn't escape from his own laws but because he is righteous because he is just he isn't a god who can just ignore sin but may have made it mechanical and legal and we must never be mechanical when we think of the lord jesus christ and so there was an attempt in these legal views to preserve the holiness of god and his law but it became too legal

then there is the example view the exemplary view as it is called of the sacrifice of the lord jesus christ where he is regarded as just a martyr

well almost it wasn't by the predetermined purpose of god it wasn't it pleased the lord to bruise him but that the lord jesus came into touch with wicked men and they did a wicked thing they killed him but his attitude in putting up with it was an example to us and by his example we are saved

now there's a grain of truth in that leaving us an example says peter that we should follow in his footsteps it's just that grain of truth there but if the only purpose of the death of jesus was to give us an example

i'm afraid that instead of saving us it would condemn us because none of us can rise up fully to that example so there must be something else

and then the third great group of views is the representation view where jesus stands as the sinner's representative that we are in him and that when he died upon the cross as it were we died there with him in his death our sins are dead as an anthem bread of the world in mercy broken puts it in his death our sins are dead that that when he died we died there with him all humanity died there with him and that becomes operative when in the waters of baptism we pledge ourselves to him and we make his death ours so we have died to see say a bit more about that aspect one of the other mornings but that's the general concept that he's our representative that we're in him at the time that he dies

now some make that legal say oh yes we were in him and he was in us because he came under the sentence of death the original sin of adam jesus

legally because he was born of a woman legally inherited that sin and had to die for that sin

that's a bit too mechanical others have said yes he was our representative and he substituted for us now generally that's unsatisfactory and in our statement of faith we reject it you know i have read a book where james denney in his book the death of christ

the way he explains what he means by substitution

is such that i could say well if if that's what he means i wouldn't argue with him so you see when you discuss this you don't start throwing texts at one another and phrases

you have to explain what you mean by your phrase and if you find in discussion of the lord's death such a holy ground you're treading upon that you've got a phrase like racial alienation or you've got a pet text like declare god's righteousness that is proving an impediment to understanding and say we won't use that word let's find some different words work at it in love do you find that all sorts of misunderstandings go if only we could do that in the whole of our community then some of our regrettable divisions would disappear

well now in the uh dealing with the representative view which i think is the one that uh preserves most of the truths

even there you have all kinds of aspects to look at

sometimes we are told that human nature is depraved

but in one way it is

we all know the sin and the plague of our own heart and yet there must be something in human nature that is re responsive when touched by the appeal of christ so be careful that we just don't treat human nature flesh as a total mass of ugliness

incapable of responding there's something there god said let us make man in our image after our likeness that touched by the lord jesus christ can respond doesn't usually that's why we say tend to say it's deprived depraved but you see there is one view under the representative view that thinks of the lord jesus when he came in the flesh

that he too then was an ugly mass of depraved flesh

and sometimes brethren in trying to explain it have said and when the lord jesus hung upon the tree the devil was there condemned and that's right in a certain way but the language is perhaps not too happy that this was the condemnation of sin in the flesh another biblical phrase but they're almost in the kind of words they use bring jesus right down until there's a kind of stigma of unwholesome uncleanness attaching to him and yet he did share our whole situation with all its uncleanness and its weakness but try and understand the other brother's point of view when he shudders when he hears christ being spoken of

in such terms that it seems that he's being made unclean in character as well as sharing our poverty-stricken nature just always bear in mind how the other person is thinking about it well now that's just general terms to try and get rid of some of the

the jungle that seems to impede proper understanding and now we want to move on to various aspects

i'm going first to look down the avenue upon the cross over which is written the phrase

voluntary

jesus was defined jesus was holy

jesus was the was the son of god the heir of all things

and we must preserve the truth that it was a free and voluntary and willing offering so that we may preserve our love of christ and our love of god we get this in john chapter 10.

john chapter 10

where

in verse 8 verse 17

therefore doth my father love me because i laid down my life that i might take it again

no man taketh it from me but i lay it down of myself

i have power to lay it down i have power to take it again this commandment of i received of my father

power to take it again power to lay it down it's a voluntary offering now sometimes we have a catch phrase jesus had to die because he had seen nature we say he had to die the moment we've said had to

then we've got away a bit from the voluntary aspect that he wanted to now i know why we say that we say that he was in human nature and human nature is something which is condemned to the dust and so he came into our situation and we're frightened of getting him away from our situation he must be totally involved with us in order to die for us

perhaps it would be better to say he shared our nature that he might be qualified to die for us then we'd get rid of that ugly little phrase had to which we know what it means we know what it's trying to do

but it isn't a matter of jesus just saying well you know i've got to die i'm human and that's that that isn't the approach the approach is i have power to lay it down i have power to take it again and it isn't profitable to speculate what might have happened if jesus had been the only one involved could god have given him eternal life without him having to die if he'd been the only one involved that's unprofitable because you can't think of jesus other than the fact that god provided him as the sinner's lamb so you've got to think of him in the context of saving me and therefore you can say that he had to die in the sense that it was totally essential for our redemption that he should voluntarily lay down his life they all got involuntary and inevitable at one in the same time and peter in one peter two gives us the same i have that pet word flavor because i do think that we don't just have so many catch texts and catch phrases we have to get the whole thread as i put in rule number one and in one peter 2

we get this

voluntary kind of

thought and the example one here which of course links us up with isaiah 53

even here unto verse 21 of 1 peter 2

were we called because christ also suffered for us

leaving us an example that she should follow in his steps who did no sin

neither was guile found in his mouth as we saw yesterday who when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered he threatened not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously

even here unto verse 21 of 1 peter 2

were we called because christ also suffered for us

leaving us an example that she should follow in his steps who did no sin

neither was guile found in his mouth as we saw yesterday when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered he threatened not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously who his own self bear our sins

in his own body on the tree the emphasis is not in him bearing some sin of his own

although the nature that he shared

wore over it the word sin

came into that situation bear our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead to sins they are in whose death our sins are dead should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye were healed

a voluntary offering for

us

that's where the accent ought to be

there are senses in which we can say that having received a commandment of his father he was involved

therefore having received the commandment of his father to lay down his life for us it was vital for his own entry into glory that he should obey the father's will therefore sometimes we say it was for himself that it might be for us but we've got to be careful there that we don't get it out of balance and make it sound as if it was a an offering that he was looking after himself he was looking after us

that was the object it was for us though in sharing our situation in having this commandment of the father it was necessary that he should

go forward with it he would not have been our lord and savior if he had taken those legions of angels and drawn

back

and so it is that this altruism i seem to remember hearing some tapes of brother fred barling of several years ago speaking in this very place will abraham where he used this word altruism that means for others this is the emphasis of the cross this altruism is in that passage that we had though he was rich

he got a divine heritage yet for our sakes he became poor for those who want to note that that's two corinthians eight i'm not turning it up you'll have to find the verse for yourself two corinthians eight god i'll help you two corinthians eight i could hear somebody saying go on tell us verse 9 you know the grace of our lord jesus christ that though he was rich yet for your sakes he became poor that ye through his poverty might be rich you notice how it keeps on like he came down to you that you might come up to him that's the picture all the time he shared our situation that we might be lifted up to his and then philippians 2

that wonderful hymn and do you notice how that these expositions these avenues upon the cross

they spring out of an exhortation paul doesn't say now look the sacrifice of the lord jesus means this and this and this therefore now he works the other way around he says brother and sisters you ought to be generous and do you know why he says you ought to be generous because look at the generosity of christ who though he was rich gave it all away for our sakes that we might be made rich so he works from the exhibition to the theory and if we want to get the theory we sometimes have to work backwards from the exhortation to the theory so we learn of this altruism this doing it for others that comes out in that particular avenue of the cross and so in philippians 2

what he's saying is don't argue

don't be nasty with one another be lowly

think of others all the time

why should you think of others all the time and this is how the apostles use the cross of christ throughout let this mind be in you

which was also in christ jesus who being in the form of god we had that yesterday his divine status

thought it not something to be grasped at to be equal with god he didn't like adam and eve seek that uh equality during his human period

but made himself of no reputation emptied himself repudiated the very heritage that he had

and took upon him the form of a servant that links you up with isaiah 40 to 55

the great servant chapters of isaiah took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man

and

this is that from heaven's orbit to earth's orbits

and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross he was great becomes little for our sakes that's the message there he's altruistic he's not thinking of himself he has no interest in his own personal and selfish interests he's thinking solely of us and he he willingly and voluntarily goes without

what he might have thought was his could he not have said father i am your son i am your heir need i do this will it not be enough if i just give them a good example but no not a thought of himself willingly he becomes obedient even unto the death of the cross

so there we have this great avenue on the cross of for us

not once does he complain he goes straight forward to create this new center of righteousness

so that we can indeed share his sacrifice and make his crucifixion ours so that in the words of paul i have been crucified with christ yet i live

and of all the avenues on the cross moving on to the next one which springs from that one just going around the circle as it were one more avenue to look down at one more window to look through the sin bearer one particularly impresses me it's not complete none of these are complete on their own it's difficult to find words to describe it but if only in the remaining 20 minutes we can just get a little flavor a little feeling of that uh what it meant to jesus to bear our sins now we just seen he bore our sins for with his stripes we are healed

let's take them from isaiah 53 isn't it isaiah 53 on the basis of the law i speak to those who know these things to some degree remind you stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance you know that uh sin bearer in the wilderness that the animal symbolically went into the wilderness taking the sins of israel with him against that background we then have a human sin bearer in isaiah 53.

and how beautiful these words are how how solemn how holy is the ground on which we tread he is despised verse 3 and rejected of men a man of sorrows

and acquainted with grief

here is the complete involvement of jesus in our woes

and we hid as it were our faces from him we thought he was a leper

he was despised

and we esteemed him not

surely he hath borne our griefs how often the word our occurs there and carried our sorrows yet we did esteem him stricken

smitten of god and afflicted but he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities and the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed

yet verse 10 it pleased the lord to bruise him he hath put him to grief when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin he shall see his seed he shall prolong his days and the pleasure of the lord shall prosper in his hand he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied it's all for a purpose that out of this birth pang of the new creation a new child a new multitude of children might be born for god's glory

but what travail we cannot know we cannot tell the pains he had to bear now how was he the sin bearer how was he in the words of 2 corinthians 5 our reading how was he made sin for us who knew no sin

he shared brethren and sisters our whole situation

now we usually tend to restrict that to the fact that he bore our nature this is the platform this is the start yes he bore our nature he was therefore in the words of hebrews tempted in all points like us though he was so great although he was the son of god although he was divine in origin though he could say at the age of twelve wish you not that i must be about my father's business yet side by side and one or two mentioned this yesterday there is the inescapable fact that he knew just what it was like to be human because he was human

he was tempted in all points

not just some there isn't a there isn't a little bit of our natures he might not have been in the exact situation but in principle there isn't a temptation that we can have that he hasn't known the pull of it because he shared these basic impulses of human nature you know if you think of all the impulses we've got hunger thirst

uh sex

love of children determination ambition

but they're all quite neutral there's nothing good there's nothing bad about them and god's law restricts them and says you mustn't go over the line if you go over the line that's transgression

we do go over the line

men for example say yes it's all right to drink and then they drink too much and they become drunkards they go over the line

but paul says whatsoever you do in word or deed do all to the glory of god join the line don't go over it look at sex for example what a power that is and how it's beautiful within the line within marriage and it's ugly when it goes over the line and gets outside marriage but jesus had an even straighter line within that field in that marriage wasn't for him at all you know he mingled with these

lovely women and some of them not so lovely well they became lovely under his influence and yet not for him was the joy of married life added temptations a greater burden than we have to bear than it all tempted in all points yet without sin so we cannot to strongly emphasize that by having our nature with all its impulses

but he could desire this and that so he could want to go beyond the line but always said no not my will but i will be done

but not only did he share our sin situation as i would term it by his nature but he shared it by being in our environment

not half the trouble isn't it you're surrounded by evil there is temptation within and there is temptation without and into the ugly human situation mingling with men not staying on the mountain top all the time though he had to go there to renew the divine power yet mingling with men there he was sharing our environment and perhaps thirdly you could say he was made sin for us by choice

by the things that he did

not only did that then behold him to be made like unto his brethren to share our nature but also there was the deliberate choice

where he could have avoided it do you remember in luke chapter 9

where we read that although he could have gone north

or east

or even deep south

yet when the time was come luke 9 verse 51

this is jesus

deliberately choosing to be the sin bearer

luke 9 51

we've got john

you read these words and it came to pass when the time was come that he should be received up he

steadfastly

set his face toward jerusalem steadfastly set his face

he chose to go the disciples said look don't go there lord they'll kill you he took himself to the cross no man put him there he went

if you go through the gospel of john the gospel of john just a hint for further study is the record of five visits to jerusalem and each visit he deliberately says things in contending with the jews which bring him a stage nearer to his cross in john 5 there was the occasion of the man that he healed on the sabbath when he goes there about six months later instead of forgetting it all he says now you remember last time i was here we had an argument

because he starts it all up again he brought the cross on himself because when god and man coming to clash

a clash which he could have avoided when they come into head-on clash then

man wants to get rid of god that's what man tried to do when man crucified jesus so there was this deliberate acceptance that deliberate judas for example with all that knowledge that he could have got he could have easily dealt with judas

he could have gone somewhere else when he knew where judas was taking him and how lovingly he gave judas the opportunity not to go ahead with it right up to the moment when he gave judas that honor of sharing the sock with him

you read those wonderful words

and judas went out

and it was night

wonderful those words and it was night

judas having been given that last opportunity

went out into the night and as the door opened as bishop temple puts it as the door opened the disciples would see out of the light of that room into the darkness outside and they would see the figure of judas

receding into the darkness of night

oh it's almost touching episode and jesus knew from that very moment that it was settled now

it was settled now

and yet knowing what was going on

knowing that he was come from god and went to god as it puts it in john 13 he took a towel

gained this voluntary humility and washed his disciples feet and spoke those wondrous words of 14 15 and 16 of john and that wondrous prayer of john 17.

yes brethren and sisters we must see how he identified himself with us how he went all the way with us

you couldn't go any further in sharing our sin situation

than by going to death where he voluntarily and freely accepted in total the consequences of human transgression

perhaps one simple avenue of looking at this accepting of the consequences of human transgression just another avenue as we move down is that simple one that brother roberts puts in the blood of christ where you have three courses open to god faced with human sin one destroy them all two let them all off

neither of those are very good we destroyed them all god has failed if he lets them all off then he's an indulgent father with no moral principles so what does he do god provides that's why we emphasized that yesterday god provides the one who sharing our full situation yet triumphs in the strength of god

over that which slew us

and so you see one one one member of the human race

has gained a victory where all others has failed so god is not then saying oh well i don't worry about sin

i'm ignoring it and god has not failed and saying well i'll have to destroy you all uh instead of that god is in that situation where he can point to the to the one who has triumphed and says you come under his wing

you share his victory if you come to me in his victory i will receive you you see there that's the point of a sin bearer

he's the one under whose wing we come he is the one who has done what no other man has done that's why it's so important to see him as totally involved with us that's why it's so important to see him not as a demigod

but that although divine yet he was totally human and if you still have problems with these two sides of the lord jesus christ then just go on thinking about them and as time goes on they come closer and closer together until you can see these two beams of light the divine and the human in jesus you could see them at the same time

we want to leave this lovely solemn topic

of jesus making himself so much one with us with us sinners as to plunge into the very shadows of the divine judgment which rests on sin we want to leave it not with theories we want to leave you with a few pictures

of this identification

of jesus with us

we bring before you jesus in the waters of baptism

thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness

that was the occasion when to use the isaiah 53 phrase for the first time jesus numbered himself with the transgressors john said look i need to be baptized of you cometh thou to me

jesus goes ahead with it he is one with us all these sinners coming to be baptized and jesus shares it he proclaims himself one with the total situation of sinners who were coming for a baptism of repentance and he who had no sins to repent of yet joined

the baptism of repentance

then you have him in the temptation still still stripping himself of the glory that might legitimately have been his we see him being tempted to be a bred king a messiah who would dole out material benefits

get there behind me satan we see him and that's a none of us could be a bread king none of us have the power to turn stones to bread see how much greater were his temptations we see him being tempted to be a a mighty wonder worker who would just get people gasping and get the throne that way

we see him saying get there behind me satan we see him being tempted to be a politician and fall down before satan's ways and get the kingdom that way we see him saying get thee behind me satan at every step he is repudiating glory and accepting the path of shame

we see him involved with our sorrows

in that wonderful verse in matthew chapter 8 where he quotes from isaiah 53

and there's some little idea there that when he healed men and cured them of their evils virtue went out of him

he felt drained

he felt weakened he felt the burden

you know as we say you do certain things you feel like a wet rag particularly at the weather last weekend

after activity now now jesus without high temperatures around felt absolutely drained

and i don't think it was just a physical draining

he felt so tenderly

he felt so keenly the sorrows of those around him and the greatest sorrow is the sorrow that slays us all the sorrow of the sin which leads to death and so you get it when the evening was calm

at him that brother edwards talked about once or twice they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils and various sick folk that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by isaiah the prophet saying himself took our infirmities and bear our sicknesses yes not only in his death even before his death he was being touched with the feeling of our infirmities in the sense that he really felt one with us so lofty was his mind so great was his awareness of the divine things that he he felt bitterly the load of human suffering if you felt like that

in relation to the load of human suffering in relation to sickness

how did the sinless one feel when he shared the judgment upon sin when he came and shared that consequence of god's judgment upon sin he who knew no sin

and yet who knew how god felt upon about sin

made sin for us who knew no sin

and somehow it is in the garden of gethsemane that one sees the sinless one they're

feeling with all the power of his very being

what sin means

what sin has robbed us of how hateful sin is to god

and when he sweat as it were drops of blood

do you think it was just because he was frightened of dying lots of people have died mind you don't belittle the agony and the terror of his death the whipping the crown of thorns

the torture of being upon that cross don't belittle the physical agony but the moral agony the spiritual agony we can only dimly glimpse it that he was perfect stood there

as our representative in our situation groaned under the load of our sins or doesn't it constrain us doesn't it move us doesn't it pull out of us that that longing desire that we will not let him down

there

as it were drops of blood as he feels the weight

of god's judgment upon our sins and as he bears our load

father if it be possible let this cup this cup of bearing our load of sin of bearing the divine judgment against sin of declaring god's righteousness of condemning sin in the flesh that birth for one who was in complete accord with the father's mind it it brought him to breaking point in a way that we can scarcely grasp

and he shares

in our load of sin i have a baptism to be baptized with how i am straightened

till it be accomplished oh we can this is the greatest avenue of them all when we just dimly begin to apprehend what it cost the lovely lonely perfect lamb of god

to carry upon his shoulders the birth of humanity's sin humanity's rebellion triumph over it move it out of the way and rise again the third day to the fullness and the gladsomness of light and joy

well brethren and sisters there i fear we must leave it

god entering into human life

in the person of jesus and think of it brethren sisters while this great sorrow is upon the shoulders of jesus

so close are the father and the son that god too is bearing the burden with jesus

so that we read it please to the lord to bruise him he spared not his own son like abraham and isaac he spared not yes god was involved in it god has feelings god was giving jesus was giving and we were receiving brethren and sisters the love of christ constraineth us

when we see our lord

upon that cross

writhing in the agony too terrible to describe

how can we let him down

the love of christ constraineth us

so in the rest of these talks brethren and sisters we will seek to see how with this

wonderful message before us with all these avenues upon the cross of christ before us we can allow

his death and his resurrection to become a mighty transforming force in our lives so that constrained by the love of christ we will

not only accept the benefits but we will fill out the measure of his sufferings

and ourselves

die daily for others that at last we may live

everlastingly in the joy and fellowship of god

with christ in eternal glory and share the travail of his soul now that we too in that day of glory may see the fruit of present travail and be satisfied