The Transforming Power of Seeing Christ Where He Is
Table of Contents
The Transforming Power of Seeing Christ Where He Is: Part 2
ACT 7:54-60BUT we must look at the other side. The second characteristic is—THE POWER OF CHRIST WHERE CHRIST IS NOT.
Stephen is not only associated by the Holy Ghost with Christ in glory; but by the Holy Ghost he has the power of Christ down here. The Holy Ghost is not only the bond of union with my representative up there; but He is in me, as the power to represent and reproduce Him down here. I have association with my Savior where my Savior is, and I have the power of my Savior where my Savior is not. What is the principle on which the efficiency of this power depends? How is it rendered operative? By looking. Nothing could be simpler. You get an illustration in the case of Elisha with Elijah (2 Kings 2). Elijah is ' about to be taken up, and Elisha asks for a double portion of his spirit. Elijah replied, " Thou halt asked a ' hard thing, nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee." The condition was, that he should see him taken, that he should fix his eye upon him as he went up. This is how the power is realized in us practically. The principle is, just open your eyes and look, dear friends. It is beautiful in its simplicity. You know that water always rises to its level. The same law holds good, here. Whatever you see of Christ you possess. The point at which you see Him is the point to which you are raised. If you are looking at Christ at God's right hand, that is the height of your elevation. He, from where you view Him, is the measure of your power. It transpired that Elisha did behold Elijah taken, and what happened? His mantle fell upon Elisha while witnessing the ascending Elijah; and what, let me ask, was the first thing he did on getting it? Some one will answer, Ike crossed the Jordan! No, that was the second thing. Read it more carefully. He laid hold of his own mantle, and rent it in two pieces. He does not want his old clothes; he can dispense with them, he has got something better. He is the possessor of Elijah's mantle, and in this new power he now walks. He can do what is supernatural: He crosses the river. How did he obtain it? Through simply looking at the taken Elijah. To make it still plainer, turn to Matt. 14:13-33. We have (1) the martyrdom of John the 'Baptist, and its bearing on the Lord. If they have dealt thus with His forerunner, what can the Lord Himself expect, but to share the same fate. If John has been put to death, what will they do to Jesus? He is apparently moved by it, and retires under the sense of anticipated rejection to a desert, where He (2) feeds the multitude. This is ministry; and I say we have this, and thank God for it. I was once at a reading where a certain clergyman read this chapter down to the end of verse 21St. It was evident what he read it for, because it referred to ministry. I said there is ministry, we are all thankful for it, divine ministry through instruments for the spiritual nourishment of the saints; but I said let us read the rest of the chapter, and we shall see another thing (3) the man of faith and power that leaves the ship to walk on the water. A path of pure faith and power, with no ship, no boat, nothing external or human. It is to this I invite your attention for a' little. But you may say, " You do not expect us to do such an extraordinary thing as to walk on water." I reply I do. I maintain it, and I hope to demonstrate it, that it is tl only kind of walk suitable to the new power, which characterizes Christianity. It is not some high attainment of a saintly few. Many would like that very well, because they know, if they admit that this is the thing for a Christian as such, you have a pull on them if they do not exhibit it. This is all very fine you say; but if " I attempt to walk on 'water I will be sure to sink." Your flesh will, and a very good thing if it does; but I tell you this for your encouragement, there is one consolation, you never can be drowned. How do you make that out? Because your Had is above everything, and you never can perish with the power of Christ ever ready to support you. What do you mean? Where is your Head let me ask you? At the right hand of God. Do you think you would be afraid to take to the water now It is an immense thing, you see, to get hold of where your Head is, to begin with. Peter leaves the boat; and what is the boat? A boat is the natural contrivance of man to prevent him fromsinking in a fluid element. The boat is sense and sight, not power and faith. Anyone could cross a lake in a boat. There is no power other than what is natural to any man, whether he' has faith or not, in doing that. Do you 'call that Christianity? Listen to our Lord, " Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy; hut say unto you love your enemies, bless them that curse you.... For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father which is in. heaven is perfect." Christianity claims a great deal snore than the boat. Peter's epistle tells the same tale. I admit the difficulties, I do not ignore them; but what I find in Christianity is, neither the removal of the difficulties nor the resort to human expedients to shirk them; but power to surmount them when they are in full force. It is power to walk on water in short. I grant it is above nature and above sense; but I deny that it is contrary to either. It is certainly supernatural; but any man of sense, not to mention a man of faith, can, see that all that is required to enable a man to walk on water is power. He may not see where the power is to come from; but given the power, there is not much difficulty in conceiving the accomplishment. It simply resolves itself into the question, is there power? I affirm that there is, and I am going to prove it. Look at Peter, and observe as to the actual walking, it is a matter of personal, individual faith in the Lord Himself. "If it be Thou, bid me come unto thee on the water." If it is not the Lord, there is no use attempting it for no power but His can enable you to do it; but He can and does enable Peter to do it. He says, ‘" Ha walked on the water to go to Jesus:" Do knot you say it is impossible, then. So long as he kept his 'eye on the Lord he walked 'as well as the Lord. Was that not power." the power of Christ? How could Peter walk on the water without the power of His Master?
You get, besides, the principle of its operation, how it is actually made good in you, as an efficient. Realized once, viz., by beholding an Object outside you: as we have remarked already, it is by looking. But remember, the moment the eye is off, the Lord, you are in no laceat all for man to walk. It cannot be done-in any over of man, only by the power of Christ. Peter began to sink. He looks at the difficulties, gets occupied with the surroundings, and while his eye is on them, it cannot be on the Lord, and immediately he feels himself going down. Peter could have no more walked, on a smooth sea than on a rough one without the power of Christ; and with that power he could walk on a rough sea as well as a smooth one. It was a question of faith and keeping his eye on the Lord, not of the sea whether boisterous or calm. Even though he was sinking he was a great deal better off than those who had never left the boat. He experienced the power of the Lord which enabled him to walk while he looked, and when sinking he knew what it was to feel that arm lifting him up, the blessed grace of the Lord giving timely help, as well as learning from, the rebuke, the secret of his failure.
Well, I see it is possible, says some one, to walk on water; but can it be done without sinking? I reply, of course it can. As long as Peter looked on the Lord there was not a symptom of sinking. Well but is it possible for any one on this earth to look so constantly as not to sink? I answer it is, and now I take you to Stephen to prove you that also. I am sure every one of us is conscious of how little he is up to it; but I will show you how it has been done; and moreover that it is characteristic of the Christian's walk now.. You cannot say Stephen was in smooth water anyhow, for perhaps never has it been the lot of man on earth to pass through a more tempestuous storm, where the waves seem as if they had been running mountains high, and dashing in fury over him; yet, he sinks not, for his eye is never for a moment off his Savior in glory. “He, being full of the Holy Ghost looked steadfastly up." This is the difference between him and Peter. No looking at the boisterous waves here. There is undivided occupation, with an Object in glory; a fixed, unvarying, unflinching gaze on Jesus at the right hand of God, and there is nothing he is not competent for. He possesses the very power of the One he is looking at, by the Holy Ghost, and he is not only superior to everything, but he is the practical exhibition of Christ Himself down here. See how wonderfully like his Master Stephen is when we take Psa. 22 and note how much of what the Lord went through there is confronted by Stephen. There, are seven things in that psalm the Lord met. The first is sin; as to suffering for this of course Christ stood alone. The forsaking of God none but Christ could endure. He exhausted the judgment, and for Stephen all is brightness Godward. He looks up and sees everything clear, without the shadow of a' cloud. Sin is completely gone, and the One who bore it is seen at the right hand of God. The second thing is " the reproach of men," " despised of the people." Stephen was surrounded by his countrymen, the people among whom he had lived, the elders and scribes whom he had been accustomed to look up to and revere; can he stand to be reproached and despised by them? Can he face that wave? Yes, by the power of Christ he can rise above that. The third point is the " bulls." " Many bulls have compassed me." Those religious magnates, arrayed in council to judge him, and gnashing on him with their teeth. Is he equal to that wave? By the power of 'Christ he can walk on that wave, too. Bodily weakness is the fourth thing in the Psalm. Christ said, " I am poured out like water, all my bones are out of joint." As regards Stephen, what about his poor body? His body is battered with stones, but, by the power of Christ, he is superior to it all. Then we 'get the " dogs " as the fifth thing. They were the 'Gentiles. In Christ's case the Jews delivered Him to the Romans. In Stephen's case there were no Gentiles, and this does not apply. The sixth point is " the lion's mouth." Satan. All his power and wiles are brought to bear on Stephen to divert his eye from the Lord. He tempts him in this way and that to give it all up. By the power of Christ he fears neither man nor devil. Lastly, we get the " horns of the unicorn," supposed to represent the pains of death. What could be grander than the manner in which Stephen meets death.. A man on this earth, exposed to all the fury and rage of the multitude, gnashing on him with their teeth and knocking the very life out of his poor body with stones; yet borne, by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, in the power of Christ, so astonishingly superior to everything and everybody, and so like his Savior that he actually spends his last breath in praying for the very people who are murdering him. So carried above all the abuse, shame, contempt, pain and suffering that man can heap upon him or inflict, that he forgets his suffering and pain, and even himself, to think of others. He knelt down and cried with „a loud voice, “Lord lay not, this sin to their charge. Having said this, he fell asleep." There is walking on water without sinking, because looking with a gaze that was unflinching on that blessed One in the glory of God, and filled with the Holy Ghost. I do not expect you all to be Stephens, God has not called us all to pass through such circumstances or suffer martyrdom; but in all the trials you have in your daily life you want 'the power of Christ to walk above them. Be it the tempers of your children, or anything else, you are not to be overcome by evil, but to be superior to it, to rise above all trials by the power of Christ? Re it -evil attractions, afflictions, sufferings of any or every description, and in every situation, what Christianity presents is not the exercise of power to remove these things out of your way, but allowing them to come upon you with unmodified force, supplies a power, the power of Christ down here, with whom you are associated up there, which makes you superior to them all, while you look steadfastly up to that blessed Object in glory.
The Transforming Power of Seeing Christ Where He Is: Part 1
ACT 7:54-60As in the thief on the cross I get the model sinner—the pattern illustration of grace, so in Stephen I get the model Christian—God's pattern specimen of a saint on earth, linked with Christ in heaven. I show you a man of like passions with yourselves, going out of the world, and yet superior toeverything in the world, before he goes out of it. If Moses of old said, " I will turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt," we may well occupy ourselves for a little, with the wondrous nature and extent of proper, distinctive, Christian position and power, as exhibited in the Scripture I have read. We behold a poor, feeble creature like you or me on this earth, mark, in the midst of the most trying circumstances in which you could conceive a man to be placed, subjected to the uncontrollable fury of religious bigotry, issuing from the masters in Israel—the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries in the land—the victim of the ungovernable rage of a cruel and excited mob, thirsting for his blood; yet grandly borne by a power not his own, so entirely and magnificently above and beyond the whole concentrated strength of the opposition of the nation, that his very enemies have to own they see his face shining like that of an angel. Could anything exceed this-beloved?
But what fills his vision all this time? On what is his attention rivetted? Is it on anything on earth? No; an all-absorbing, unparalleled object meets his entranced and delighted gaze, as he looks through the opened heavens. He sees the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Full of the Holly Ghost, his eye is steadfastly, undeviatingly, and unflinchingly fixed on this great, this stupendous sight, and lie is equal to anything, surmounts every obstacle, and is carried in triumph above every opposing element around him, He is lost in the contemplation of a Savior in glory. Does this exempt him from suffering, or make an easy path on earth? Let the gnashing of teeth, and the stones answer. Does the suffering or the persecution turn him aside from beholding Jesus, or divert his eye from that allengrossing heavenly object? Assuredly not. His occupation is undistracted and uninterrupted; and that, too, in spite of the most formidable, difficulties against which it' is possible to contend. Nothing moves him. He is commanded and controlled by what he is beholding, and he practically reproduces on earth what he sees in heaven. Now, I ask you to mark this model, It is a picture you ought to have in every one of your houses. I do net mean materially, but you ought to have it before your minds. I direct your attention to a wonderful fact, in connection with what is before us, and press it. Heaven was never opened to a mere man on earth before. Enoch was translated, and Elijah went up in a chariot of fire.. The heavens opened on. Jesus when here; but He Was more than man. But never till this did heaven open to a man like you or me down here in this World, and, beloved friend it has been open ever since. From that moment to this it has never been closed. It is no longer what the angel said to the disciples in the first chapter, " Why stand ye gazing, up into heaven?" Then, the earth was not done with. In answer to the, prayer of our Lord upon the cross, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," God, in the riches of His mercy, gave the nation a further opportunity of receiving their Messiah in glory, even after they had rejected Him on earth. Alas, we know how they treated this additional token of 'God's long-suffering patience, this lingering over them in love, and compassionate reluctance to give them up. They refused Christ in glory, as they had refused Him in humiliation. They would not have Him on earth, neither would they have Him in heaven, and Stephen is the messenger, they are about to, send after Him, to say: " We will not have this man to reign over us."
But God had something in reserve. Failure hag succeeded failure in every dispensation in whichman has been placed here, but after each failure God has brought out some further blessing. To this very messenger, the sending of whom seals the nation's doom., and leads to the definitive setting aside of earth, as a place of blessing for the present, heaven is opened before he goes, and the unfailing One is presented in an unfailing place, and, instead of it being said, " Why stand ye gazing up into heaven," that 'becomes the very thing for the Christian to do, for we read: " But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked 'up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." Earth is closed, so to speak, heaven opened, and this is henceforth to be the Christian's occupation. The remarkable change in the dealings of God in Acts 7, as contrasted with chap. it is of the utmost moment to note, if we are to answer to the thoughts of Christ about His, people now. I get even-a further thing in Paul still. In Stephen get heaven opened 'to a man on earth, who is going out of it, superior to everything in it, yet going out of it; but in Paul I get a man, who is caught up to the third heaven, and then sent back again to the earth to communicate to us the wonders of the place. Not only heaven for a saint going to die; but heaven for a saint going to live; and as to going, there are three states of soul, which I will enumerate, and give an example of each. In Simeon I find one who is ready to go; in Stephen, one who is happy to go; and in Paul, one who longs to go. I am anxious every one of you should clearly apprehend, that what we have here is the introduction of a new dealing of God. It is an inauguration scene. It is the opening out of what is distinctive. We always get the special features of a thing at the time of its inauguration. There are two characteristics which I desire to bring before you at this time, as taught here:—I. Association with Christ, where Christ is. II. The power of Christ, where Christ is not.
Let me try, by God's help, to trace for you first, the former of these two characteristics, viz.,