...I have spent a very enjoyable, and I
believe profitable, three days and a half in
the city of Rochester, New York at a
meeting held in the Baptist Temple, which corresponds
to the Methodist Temple in this city, down
in the, we would say, the loop, and
I thoroughly enjoyed preaching to various churches.
They said there were sixty taking part, and
we all got happy together and hardly knew
what we belonged to.
A Plymouth Brethren was chairman of the publicity
committee, a Pentecostal brother was chairman of the
meeting one night, a Baptist brother led in
prayer, Presbyterians were there, and Independents.
We were just one in Christ.
Occasionally you could tell where somebody had been
to school by his prayer.
One brother prayed that all whom the Lord
had chosen unto eternal life might believe, and
I think I know where he had been
reading, but we all had a good time
in God together.
It's been very wonderful to mingle with all
the denominations, and after the first night, forget
what the denominations are, preach to them just
as I do to you here.
Now, in 1 Peter 7 and part of
8, I talked last Sunday morning about the
appearing of Jesus Christ, and in verse 8
it says, continues, because there is merely a
colon between Jesus Christ, whom having not seen,
ye love.
Now, I don't think we'll get any further
than that, so we'll not read any more
than that.
We've had our Bible lesson this morning.
So Peter says, Jesus Christ, whom having not
seen, ye love.
Now, I can't get by that name and
that rich, resonant pronoun, whom, in our English,
which refers back to Jesus Christ.
Peter didn't use the term Lord there, but
he could have and did very frequently.
It's Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Now, this can be varied and called the
Lord Jesus Christ, or Christ Jesus the Lord,
or Jesus Christ the Lord, or sometimes Christ
the Lord.
The point is that there are three major
names or titles here, one being a title,
the other being a name, the other two
being titles, and one being a name.
Jesus is the name, but it's also a
title, in that it means Joshua, Jehovah's Saviour.
And Mary was told, I shall call his
name Jesus, because he is going to be
the Saviour of the world.
And then he went to the Jordan River
and was anointed of the Holy Spirit, and
he got the title, the Anointed, and that,
in our English, is Christ.
So we have Jesus Christ, Jesus the Anointed
One.
Then he rose from the dead the third
day and took precedence over all creatures, heaven
and earth and hell, and all the beings
that are therein.
And that gave him the title, Lord.
And Jesus means Saviour, Christ means the Anointed
One, and the Lord means just what it
means in English.
It means one who is over, who has
dominion.
And Peter says, this wondrous one is the
one whom.
Now this whom is what the creation is
about.
I don't suppose in this day of busyness,
when everyone is hustling to keep out of
the way of passing automobiles, that very many
people stop and ask, what's this all about?
Men used to go out and lie down
under the stars and gaze up and say,
what is man, that thou art mindful of
him, but you can't see through the smoke
now.
But maybe occasionally somebody will wonder what the
creation is about.
Was it an accident?
Was God capricious and did it just out
of whimsy?
Or what is the creation about?
And the answer is that this is what
the creation is about.
Whom?
Jesus Christ the Lord.
Now I think I have in the Old
Testament a wondrous illustration of this.
And since the Old Testament and the New
are one, and who preaches faithfully, one preaches
the other too, I want to go back
to a chapter in Ezekiel, the first chapter,
and look for a little at this chapter.
And show how Jesus Christ is the purpose
of God in creation.
Jesus Christ is the setting forth of God,
and that it was for his sake that
God created and made all the things that
are made and created.
Now the man of God said, I saw
heaven opened and I saw the end of
God.
Then in verse 4 he says, I looked
and behold a whirlwind came out of the
north and a great cloud, and a fire
enfolding itself.
And the brightness was about it.
And out of the midst thereof was the
color of amber, out of the midst of
the fire.
And also out of the midst thereof came
the likeness of four living creatures.
And this was their appearance.
They had the likeness of a man, and
everyone had four faces, and everyone had four
wings.
And their feet were straight feet, and the
sole of their feet was like the sole
of a calf's foot.
And they sparkled like the color of burnished
brass.
And they had the hands of a man
under his wings on their four sides.
And they four had their faces and their
wings, and their wings were joined one to
another.
They turned not when they went.
They went every one straight forward.
As for the likeness of their faces, they
four had the face of a man, and
the face of a lion on the right
side.
And they four had the face of an
ox on the left side.
They four also had the face of an
eagle.
Now these living creatures, coming out of the
mysterious fire which enfolded itself, stand, it seems
to me, for a heavenly and visible representation
of their creation.
Why did God make the moon and the
sun and the stars?
And the answer is that there is one
whom.
That one who was with the Father, and
who was God, and who is God.
And who was given the divinely bestowed commission
to set forth the mystery and majesty and
wonder of the Godhead.
And in order to do this, God gave
his creation.
And so that the creation, therefore, sets forth
the glory of God.
And it is more than an accident that
the New Testament, or the Old Testament and
the New, the whole Bible, it's more than
an accident that it combs heaven and earth
for figures of speech, for similes, to set
forth the wonder of God.
And it calls Jesus Christ, almost by every
name in creation.
It calls him the Son of Righteousness with
healing in his wings.
It calls him the star that shone on
Jacob.
It says that he comes forth with his
bride, clears the moon.
And it says that he comes down as
rain upon the mown grass, as showers that
water the earth.
It tells us that he is like a
great sea.
It tells us that he is like a
rock.
It tells us that he is like the
strong cedars.
And it literally goes over the earth, looking
down and seeing the wonder and the beauty
of the lake.
And the river and the rock and the
mountain and the plain.
And it says this is like Jesus Christ.
This is like Christ Jesus the Lord.
Jesus Christ existed, or these things existed to
set forth the Lord Jesus Christ.
Creation is the setting forth of Jesus Christ
the Lord.
That's what it's here for.
So that we ought to be always in
the sanctuary.
We ought to remember that a sanctuary isn't
a building on a corner.
A sanctuary is the entire creation.
And it is the supreme shekinah of God.
Not quite the supreme shekinah of God, for
the human heart is the supreme inner chamber.
But it is part of the shekinah of
God, part of the shrine that sets forth
God.
So that instead of going to church to
meet God, bidding God goodbye at the door
and saying, I'll see you next Sunday.
We ought to take our shrine with us
and carry our tabernacle like the turtle on
our back and always be in a holy
place.
So that then there will be no unholy
ground.
There will be no unholy days.
There will be no secular thinking or secular
living.
But everything will be sanctified because we realize
that God has made his creation as a
garment to show forth the Lord Jesus Christ.
Men wonder what it is that holds the
world together.
And they crowd and probe into the mysteries
of it.
Now, I don't claim to know too much
about science.
I'm not going to be terribly modest about
it.
I know as much as the average.
I read the Reader's Digest once in a
while myself.
But I'm not a scientist and never studied
it except for my own confusion and amazement.
But I believe that we'll never know the
mystery of creation until we admit that there
is one whom, and that one is the
one who holds together the universe.
It coheres in Jesus Christ, so it says
in Colossians, that in him all things cohere.
He is the magnetic one who holds together
all of the world that there is.
So this one, this Jesus Christ, our Lord,
whom we have not seen, he is the
one that creation is about.
And those strange creatures out of the fire
show forth in some large measure what our
Lord Jesus Christ is like.
It says that he had one of them,
they had on their one side the face
of a man, and the face of a
lion, and the face of an ox, and
the face of an eagle.
Years ago it was called to my attention
that this fourfold division of the character of
Jesus corresponds to the four Gospels.
That as a man, Luke set him forth,
and as a lion, Matthew set him forth,
and as an ox, Mark set him forth,
and as the high-flying eagle, John set
him forth.
Now, Jesus Christ had the face of a
man, and he is a man, and indeed
is a man.
And then he had the face of a
lion, the king of beasts, the fearless king
of the forest, and Jesus Christ, the fearless
one, walked among men.
And then the face of an ox, the
one that worked, the simple laboring one, and
Jesus Christ in Mark is set forth as
the one who labored.
He is not given there any history at
all, and they do not tell where he
came from, it just says the gospel of
Jesus Christ, and then plunges in and tells
how he labored.
Then John goes way back of Luke, who
goes back to Adam, and Matthew who goes
back to Abraham, and John goes back to
the beginning and says, In the beginning, God.
So that he antedates all biography and all
chronology and goes back to the beginning.
So that we have him set forth here.
And I believe that the time will come.
Now you will indulge me in a fancy
that I can't prove, but I believe the
time will come when it will be seen
that all the laws of nature, and all
the beings that are in nature, and all
the beasts that walk on the earth, and
the fish that swim the sea, and the
birds that click the air with their wings,
and even the tiny hoppers and creeping things
that list their pitifully weak little note on
the night breezes, I believe it will be
shown that it took all of them to
set forth even a little of the wonder
that is Jesus Christ, our Lord.
So that the caterpillar on the leaf, instead
of being something we shudder at and withdraw
from, we must thank the Lord God for
the fur-coated caterpillar as he chews on
the leaf.
He is necessary too.
The Lord said about the little donkey, say
the Lord hath need of him.
And even the little sad-faced, comical, long
-eared donkey was necessary to set forth the
glory of Jesus Christ and call forth Hosanna
from the admiring multitudes.
Now I didn't intend to say this, but
I might as well make the application, and
not that there is any relation between the
little beast and us particularly, but I want
you to love yourself more than you do,
that is, I want you to think more
of yourself, and love yourself not at all,
but love Christ, and then love yourself for
Christ's sake.
Because you are very important, you are important
to set forth the glory of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
God has created you not by accident, and
he has redeemed you, you are a Christian,
not by accident, but that you also might
tell forth the wonders of the one whom.
And that one is needing you, that you
also might set forth his glory, so that
there aren't any big people nor any little
ones in the kingdom of God, but we
are all alike.
The mountains skip like rams, but the little
hills skip like lambs, and the lambs that
skip certainly tell forth the glory of their
Creator as well as the larger rams that
skip.
So the little hills that skip are small,
but they tell forth the glory of God
as well as the ponderous mountains so much
larger.
So some great man we have recently, and
I thank God for it, received in the
city of Chicago one of the world's great
preachers, now pastor of Moody Church.
I am delighted, literally delighted, that Alan Redpath
has become pastor of Moody Church.
He was raised as one of the apostles
of the modern day, one of the great
men of the day.
But brethren, you are just as needful as
he is, and you are just as important
in the total scheme of things as he
is.
Just as important as the greatest church leader
or religious leader living today, the Lord has
need of you too.
When you are with these strange creatures with
four faces and six wings coming out of
the fire, mysterious beings, they exist to set
forth Jesus Christ our Lord.
That's what they exist for.
Now, that not only is what creation is
about, but that's what the Bible is about
too.
You would be perfectly free to go to
your Bible and find Jesus Christ any place
you can find him there, and know that
in doing it, you are not reading anything
into the scriptures.
For where he does not stand out tall
and beautiful as a pine tree against the
sky, he may be hidden behind a lattice
stretching forth his hand.
If he is not seen as the sun
shining in his strength, he may be seen
as the gentle rain that falls from heaven
upon the place beneath.
You will find him all through your Bible.
Read the book of Psalms.
Don't be frightened out by those who say
we mustn't read the Old Testament.
The Bible is a unit.
You might as well say, I don't believe
in anybody from the waist down.
If you didn't have a man from the
waist down, it would be very difficult to
have a man from the waist up.
And the Bible is two parts of one
organic revelation, and it's divided in the middle
so that the Old Testament is the Bible
from the waist down and the New Testament
is the Bible from the waist up.
And if you allow them, thus awkwardly to
put it, you have one organic Bible, and
when we cut it in two, we bleed
it to death.
So don't let's kill it by cutting it.
Let's read it, and wherever we find Jesus,
that is Jesus.
For the Bible is about Christ.
From that chapter, that early beginning that says,
In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth.
Let us make a man in our image.
That is the plural of unity, the plural
of the Deity, and we have there the
Trinity.
So the Bible is about Jesus Christ.
And men who can preach the Bible without
finding Christ there are blinder than I dreamed
it possible for anybody to be.
For Jesus Christ, the Lord, is the Whom
about which the Bible is written.
And not only that, but Jesus Christ is
the One about whom the Church is.
He is the One the Church is about,
the Church of Christ.
Now I mean when I say the Church
of Christ, not Reliance, nor do I mean
any other particular one denomination.
I mean the Church of the Firstborn, which
he purchased with his blood, the twice-born
believer who has been inducted into the kingdom
of God by an act of the operation
of the Holy The Church of Christ, about
which we sing sometimes.
The Church.
That's what the Church is about.
That's what the Church exists for.
In Acts 13 we have an example.
They had met together, they ministered unto the
Lord and prayed.
That's what the Church is for, to minister
unto the Lord.
The problem of which denomination is no problem
at all.
The problem of the Church is a bigger
problem than that.
It's the problem of wherever Jesus Christ is.
And wherever you find Jesus Christ, the Lord,
there you'll find the Church.
Jesus and the company of his people, that's
the Church.
They used to say about an old educator
that if you put that man on one
end of a log and the boy on
the other, you had a college.
And it is true that if Jesus Christ
meets with two of these people, you have
a Church.
You have it without any upkeep and without
any overhead and without any elections.
You have a Church where you have the
Lord and a company of people surrounding him.
And that's what the Church is about, my
brethren.
The Church is about the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what we're here for.
Not about a doctrine, though the doctrines necessary
to the understanding of Christ.
But the Church is about Jesus Christ, our
Lord.
And I'd like to go on and say
that's what this Church is about.
And that's all it's about.
Jesus Christ.
This Church is dedicated to the showing forth
of the Godhead.
And Jesus Christ is the word who utters
forth the Godhead, and we're dedicated to the
honor of him who shows forth the Godhead.
That's why we're created.
If we fail to do this, we have
no right to exist as a Church.
None whatsoever.
Going through the ecclesiastical motions means absolutely nothing
at all.
Jesus Christ in the midst makes the Church.
And that's what this Church is about.
I suppose 20 minutes after I'm gone to
Heaven or some other Church, there will be
changes made, and people will say, we couldn't
do a thing while Joseph was here, because
he was old-fashioned and didn't believe in
the modern things, the hep things, the things
that are up to date.
I hope I'm too pessimistic, maybe I'm just
feeling low.
But I'm worried about such things sometimes.
But whether that's so or not, I insist
that this Church be dedicated to the high
honor of the one whom Peter says, having
not seen, we love.
Only those activities can go on and only
those objectives can be pursued that biblically point
to the Lamb of God that takes away
the sins of the world and that minister
to the eternal welfare of man.
Now, he said, whom having not seen.
Let's go on to that thought.
And so that Peter here would have been
expected, you might have expected him to say
that, because Peter had seen him.
Peter's eyes had looked upon him.
Once he was helping along the shore of
the sea, and a quiet man went by,
a man with a marvelous magnetism, a luminosity
about his face, a wonder about him.
And he took his pleasant finger at Peter,
and Peter jumped up and followed him.
And he saw him for three years.
And then after he saw him on a
cross, he saw him again and wept bitterly.
And then when he had risen from the
dead, he saw him, and he came forth
and put his hand on Peter's head and
forgave him.
The Bible leaves the impression with us that
he was the first one to whom Jesus
appeared after he had risen from the dead.
So Peter saw him after he had risen
from the dead, and then Peter saw him
going into the glory.
And Peter had seen him before that in
the glory, a preview of the glory, when
he saw him on the holy mount.
So Peter had seen Jesus in the flesh.
And Peter writes to the strangers scattered abroad,
the Christians of the dispersion, and says, Whom
having not seen, ye love.
Now, does that recall to your mind a
passage that says, Blessed are they that see
and believe, but blessed are they still more
who have not seen and yet believe.
So our Lord set his stamp of approval
upon those Christians who would believe and yet
never see him in the flesh at all.
Oh, we sing, I think when I read
the sweet story of old, how Jesus was
heard among men, how he called unto the
children as lambs to his fold, I should
like to have been with him then.
Now, I agree that's a nice song, and
I wouldn't hesitate at all to sing a
sour bass on that sometime.
I don't mind at all not objecting to
the song.
But the song contains a plaintive, pensive longing
that has no biblical authority at all.
You know Jesus better now without having seen
him than Peter did when he saw him.
You can know him better now at least
than they knew him when he walked on
the earth.
For Peter saw him with the eyes of
the flesh, but you're seeing him with the
eyes of the heart.
Now, I'd like to point out that you
can love one that you have never seen.
There are mothers who never saw, and they
marry and bear children and never see their
little children.
Therefore, they feel their little faces, but they
never see them.
But they love them just as certainly and
as much as any seeing mother possibly could.
You can love one whom you have not
seen, but you cannot love one whom you
have not experienced.
Now, let's get that straight.
It's totally impossible to love anybody whom you
have not experienced.
If you are unfortunate enough, as some of
our friends are, to be born totally deaf
or to go deaf so that you cannot
hear at all.
I do not assume anybody here listening to
me is in that state, but I'm speaking
generally of the human race.
That if we are born without ability to
hear, we may see our friends and love
them because we see them, we're experiencing them
through our eyes.
If we're blind, we may hear their voices
and learn all the sweet cadences of affection
and love them through our ears.
If we, like some, are deaf and dumb
and blind, and there have been some, we
can learn to love people by feeling their
faces.
That little deaf and dumb lady whose mind
slips may not be blind, deaf and dumb.
Helen Keller, I read her life years ago
and often think of her.
She's still living, and she's something of a
Christian.
I don't know how much, but she leads
praise and believes in Christ.
Well, when she heard the great tenor, the
great Caruso, she couldn't hear him.
So she said, Would you allow me to
put my fingers on your chest bones?
And he stood up, great, big, happy fellow
as he was, and buried his chest, and
she put her sensitive fingers on his chest
bones, and he went into those tremendous high
notes of his, and she stood transfixed.
She was hearing him through her fingertips.
If we can't even see and can't hear,
we can still experience people.
No doubt Helen Keller and others in her
condition have held babies on their laps with
shining faces.
They felt the warmth of the little cheeks.
They felt the snug little warmth of the
baby there.
You can love people you haven't seen, but
you can't love anyone you haven't experienced.
It's a total impossibility for me to find
any emotional response toward anybody that I have
not experienced.
Abraham Lincoln is dead.
I respect him, I admire him, I believe
he was a good and great man, but
I feel no emotional response, except as I
might in imagination respond to an idea or
an ideal.
But there's no such thing as personal human
affection for that one that you have never
experienced.
You can fall in love with somebody by
mail, it's done.
But you're experiencing them through letters.
You get the pulse of them through the
things they write, and your imagination pieces it
out, and pretty soon you'll love somebody through
a letter.
I've never seen Alan Redpath, but he's written
me, and I love the man through knowing
about him.
Well, you can love people you haven't seen,
you can love people that you haven't heard,
if in some way in your mysterious being
you can experience them.
Now, Peter said, Whom have Jesus Christ whom
having not seen ye love?
But he didn't say, Whom have ye not
experienced?
One of the most hopeless tasks in the
world is to try to drum up love
for a man or a Christ that they
have not had spiritual experience for.
I do not understand how it can be
that churches that do not teach the new
birth, do not teach redemption through the blood,
do not teach the need of the Holy
Ghost, can ever try to drum up any
love for the Lord Jesus.
Because no one can know Jesus except the
Spirit of God makes it real to him.
No one can say Jesus is the Lord
except the Holy Ghost enables him to do
it.
No one can experience Christ without he believes
in Christ as the Lord and Savior.
So how in the wide world it could
be that a church could ever love a
Savior whose very Saviorhood is denied from their
prophets, I cannot imagine.
Here we are dedicated to the glory of
the one whom we have not seen, but
the one whom we love, having not seen.
And that is the sum of Christianity, to
know him and to love him.
This is eternal life, that they might know
thee and might know me, Jesus said.
So the knowledge of God is eternal life,
and the knowledge and setting forth of God
is the business of the church.
That's why we're here.
And that's the whole business of the Christian,
to know him, to love him, and to
love him because you know him, and know
him better because you love him, to cultivate
his love and his knowledge, to grow in
the knowledge of him, and while you grow
in the knowledge of him, grow in the
love of him.
Anybody that you really love, it's a pleasure
to do things for.
And the Christian that loves the Lord really
loves him, never finds anything irksome in the
service of the Lord.
I find certain irksome features in the work
of the Lord, but they're never the Lord's
work.
They're always something somebody has added on.
The only thing in the ministry that I
don't like are the things I don't find
in the Bible.
People have decided that, and so we've got
a little organization and we have to do
this and do that, and I don't like
to do it, because I don't find it
in the scriptures and it irksome.
But everything that is scriptural and that tends
to the glory of the Son of God
is a delightful thing.
Why do people carry their children's pictures around
in their billfolds?
It's getting awful.
I guess wherever I go, somebody pulls a
billfold on me and wants to show me
the newest one, or how his has grown
up, how big she is now.
Well, it's always a pleasure, and it's never
irksome to set forth the praises of somebody
you really love.
Mr. Joss of the Rochester Lions Church.
Friends drove in from outside the city, and
the pastor there said, Did you see that
couple?
He said, Aren't they nice people?
Isn't that a delightful wife?
And Mr. Joss said, You haven't seen my
wife recently.
It's all good natured.
But I found out the man really felt
that way about her.
He took me to the train.
He even asked me her age in her
presence.
And I said, I'm too cagey for that,
brother.
I'm not telling you.
And I didn't.
And then she told us her age, and
I said, I would have thought you were
seven years younger than that.
That was the right thing to say.
But the point I'm trying to make is
that if you love anybody, you're likely to
want to talk about them.
And to know him and to love him.
Now I close with this idea.
That there are two levels in which we
live.
We Christians.
Animals have one level.
Angels have another level.
And you and I have the two levels.
We're crossed between angels and beasts.
We have bodies like the animal.
We have souls like the angels above.
God has made us a little lower than
the angels.
But he's made us a little higher than
the animals.
So here we are with the body of
a beast, of an animal.
You will take this kindly now.
You there in love with your bodies.
Remember that if you were to throw a
piece of your body somewhere, it would take
a doctor to tell whether it was human
or belonged somewhere else.
You have a body that came from the
earth.
It's the body of an animal.
But in that precious human body, like of
which our Lord carried to a cross, you
have also a spirit like unto the angels
above.
And even beyond them.
When it says he made us lower than
the angels, he didn't mean he made our
spiritual part lower than the angels.
He did not.
He made that higher than the angels.
For that was made in the image of
God.
He only made us and cast us down
here between heaven and earth, so to speak,
lower than the angels.
And so with these two levels of our
being, we look at Jesus this morning.
And these eyes of ours have never seen
him.
These eyes that gaze out like the deer
gazes out of the thicket, like the dog
gazes or the horse.
These eyes that look on like we've never
seen him, but we love him.
And why?
Because there's another level, another part of us.
The invisible, the eternal, the inward, the spiritual.
And with those eyes we have seen him.
With those eyes we have looked upon him.
And with those eyes we have beheld him.
And with those ears we have heard him.
And the sheep hear his voice.
And they don't see him with their animal
eyes, but they hear him with their spiritual
ear and see him with their spiritual eyes.
So Peter was perfectly right thinking about the
human side, whom having not seen, we love.
But he didn't mean to say that we
were to be forever without a knowledge of
what Christ is like.
Because with the inner eyes we gaze upon
God, and see Jesus and believe in his
name, and look upon him and behold him
and love him with the eyes of our
understanding being enlightened.
Now that's the glory of the Church, and
that's the purpose of the Church, and that's
the purpose of this Church.
We exist to show forth the honor of
God in Jesus Christ our Lord.