Nicholson, J B: CMML Conference 1994-03 ~ Devotional - Be Ye Holy Series

Thank you, brethren, for your help, and thank you for your questions, and we'll turn the balance of the activity over to our chairman. Our half hour to a close with a devotional, and really our topic today has been very devotional, but as we, uh, come to this hour, we're going to ask our brother J. Boyd Nicholson back to the microphone and to, uh, give us what's on his heart. Boyd. I'd like to read from the Old Testament this evening, uh, this afternoon for a few verses in First Samuel chapter sixteen. We mentioned this morning that God has used every device of language to present his son and all his mighty works and glories, and by using these pictures or types or figures or emblems, he makes it easier for us to understand the great doctrines of the New Testament. Among the types, there are personal types, individuals. There are types that are happenings, the Passover. There are types that are objects, the rock, the serpent on the pole. There are types that are, as we have said, persons. Moses the prophet, Aaron the priest, David the king, Melchizedek the royal priest, and so on. I'd like to read a little bit about David, keeping this in mind now, that here we have a very beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus in his loveliness. For Samuel sixteen, we'll just select a verse or two, beginning at verse, uh, 11. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and behold, he keepeth the sheep. Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him, for we will not sit down till they come hither. And he said, sent and brought him in, and now he was ruddy, and with all of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the Lord said, arise, anoint him. Well, this is he. And Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brethren. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. Verse eighteen, then answered one of the servants and said, this is said to Saul, behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord was with him. God will bless the reading of these few verses tonight. Adolf Sapphire, in his lovely commentary on Hebrews, says in the introduction, in every age of the church, the renewal of strength, the rekindling of love, the deliverance from languor and sloth can only proceed from a fuller and deeper knowledge of the Lord and his truth, from a renewed beholding of his countenance and glory. The writer to the Hebrews puts it this way, consider him, lest you be wearied and faint in your mind. The scriptures clearly teach that the contemplation of Christ is a balm for the weary mind and a comfort to the aching heart and an inspiration to the flagging energies of the believer. This holy exercise will restore the radiance to lives that have lost their glow. It is the devil's masterpiece today to distract and divert the people of God away from their occupation with the Lord Jesus. He doesn't mind what they're occupied with. Of course, the world, certainly sin if he can do it, but more subtly, even holy things can distract us and divert us. For holy things are still not him. Peter found that out on the Mount, didn't he? As he stood with James and John, beholding the blazing Christ, he said, it is good for us to be here. It's one of the times where God interrupts a speaker. While he was yet speaking, God the Father spoke to Peter and said, in effect, Peter, I didn't bring you up here for an it, not even a holy it. I brought you up here to be occupied with my beloved. Brethren and sisters, we may be diverted by the world, the flesh, and the devil. We may be diverted and distracted by, as we have heard, even good and rightful things. It is possible to do a good thing in the wrong way. Saul found that out. He offered a burnt offering on the wrong day and in the wrong way, and he lost the kingdom because of it. And so we are called in scripture to refocus our heart's attention on the person and the enjoyment of the person of the Lord Jesus from day to day. This is one of the beautiful pictures that we have of the Lord Jesus, pictured here for us in David. His name, of course, means the beloved. Three times in the New Testament, the Lord Jesus is attested as the beloved one. At his baptism, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Here the Father was attesting to his beloved Son as the perfect man, and this was accompanied by the Spirit of God in view of his ministry as a prophet, declaring the mind and will of God. When the Pharisees sought to kill him and hated him, the testimony from the word of God comes forth, thou art my beloved son. And this is the confession or the conviction of God regarding his beloved son as the righteous servant. And this was accompanied, as we have said, by the Word of God. And then, at the Transfiguration, the voice came from heaven, this is my beloved Son. And here the Lord Jesus is seen in a prefiguration of his kingdom glory, where they spoke of his victory that was soon to come in his exodus. He was seen beloved for what he became. He became a man. He was seen as the beloved for what he's now doing, his present ministry. And he was seen as the beloved for what yet shall be revealed in his future glory. And we should love him for those very same reasons. We should love him for what he became. Think of the Son of God. Now, this is all the life that we have ever known, living in this world, subject to time, bound by this body, wasn't all that he had ever known. He came out from God. He took upon himself the s- the servant's form, became in the likeness of men. We cannot even imagine what it must have been for God, the Son, to leave his clean and holy heaven and walk the dusty streets of Nazareth, eat food prepared in the back kitchen of a house in Bethany, to touch the leper and rub shoulders with sinners and ever the impeccable and incorruptible and undefiled. We can't even begin to imagine what it must have been for him just to become a man, and that's why his humanity is identified with the emotion of sorrow, the man of sorrows. It was a sorrow for him just to become a man. We should love him for what he became. We should love him for what he's doing now. As there in his present ministry, he advocates for us. He intercedes for us, ever living to intercede for us. He hears and answers our prayers. And we should rejoice and love him for what he yet shall be seen to be, King of kings and Lord of lords. David was the beloved. He came from Bethlehem. His city was Bethlehem. He was a Bethlehemite. Bethlehem, of course, means the house of bread. It speaks, of course, of the fullness and the satisfaction that is to be found in the Lord Jesus, the bread of life who came down from heaven. Satisfied with thee, Lord Jesus, we read or sing, satisfied with thee. I like the old hymn that we used to sing in Sunday school. I tried the broken cisterns, Lord, but ah, the waters failed. Even as I stooped to drink, they fled and mocked me as I wailed. Now none but Christ can satisfy. You know, there's absolutely nothing in that desert world out there to satisfy. When you look at the lost men and women around us, spending their time and energy and life and everything to get all that they can, and they know it's not satisfying them. We used to buy, and go into a toy store in our shopping malls. I say, as our grandchildren multiplied, so did our investment in the toy store multiply. And we got to be quite friendly with the lady who lived, who worked in the, uh, the junior department downstairs, who's a nice lady, just a very worldly, middle-aged woman, but very friendly and helpful to us. And I often had occasion to give her a tract or speak to her about the Lord. And, uh, one time I was rushing in at closing time about five o'clock on Friday, and I, as I came downstairs, she looked up at me and said, oh, Mr. Nicholson, please, please, don't preach at me tonight. I've had a bad day and a rough week. Well, I said, I wasn't necessarily going to preach at you tonight. Well, she says, I made a decision. I said, what's that? She says, I've decided this life is all the hell I'm ever going to have. Well, I said, I won't preach at you. I'll just correct your mistake. If you die without the Lord Jesus, this life is all the heaven you're going to have. Beloved, let's never forget that. This life is all the heaven the lost are ever going to have. If that doesn't melt our hearts to tears as we look out on this old godless world, I don't know what does. That's a desert out there. There's nothing. Nothing. But oh, in Christ, oh, the fullness, oh, the abundance, oh, the marvelous provision in Christ. Blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Can you measure that? I can't measure it. All of them. The greatest number. Spiritual, the highest quality. In heavenly places, the noblest locality. In Christ, the greatest person in the universe. Why do we complain? Because perhaps we're not appropriating what's already there for us in the bank. He was anointed by Samuel as God's representative. He was anointed by the men of Judah. Three anointings. So if we come to the Lord Jesus, we would expect to see that he had three anointings, and he was. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit, with the Holy Spirit by the Father, in view of his prophetic ministry. He was anointed by Mary as she broke that beautiful box of ointment and poured it upon him, but that was in view of his sacrifice. And he is anointed with the oil of gladness by God in view of his supremacy and his sovereignty. The threefold anointing of the Lord Jesus. He was a shepherd. So different to Saul. Saul, before his anointing, was looking for his father's asses that he had lost. And when they said, where's David? Oh, he's keeping his sheep, keeping his father's sheep. What a difference. He was taking care of his father's sheep, and Saul was looking after his father's donkeys he had lost. He's a shepherd. This is a beautiful picture, isn't it? The Good Shepherd, we all remember these outlines. The Good Shepherd laying down his life for the sheep, and the chief, the great shepherd imparting his life to the sheep, and the chief shepherd reviewing the lives of his sheep. We should enjoy this beautiful aspect of the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Very precious to me, as it is to many of you in Psalm twenty three, the Lord is my shepherd, particularly because I was saved by the grace of God through the last verse, or at least God used the last verse to bring me to that place of salvation. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It's a beautiful ministry of the shepherd when we think of each of ourselves as a sheep. Many years ago, I was in Alamosa, down in the San Luis Valley, a beautiful part of southern Colorado, surrounded by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I was staying with a brother who had two thousand sheep and twelve hundred new baby lambs to take care of. He was a busy man, day and night. He said to me one day, do you want to come out to the, the fold with me where the lambs are being born? I said, sure. So I went along and I had a crowd, a sea of gray wool, and as I tried to make my way through, those sheep just scattered and fought to get away from me. You see, I was a stranger. They didn't know me. I stood at the other side of the fold and watched them, and out of the barn came the old shepherd, an old New Mexican fellow, not a Christian at all, but he was a real old character, old cowboy hat bashed on his head, bow legs, and he made his way towards me. And when he started to walk through those sheep, they didn't even lift their heads. He had to push them with his knees to make a path through the sheep. Now, what was the difference? Well, of course, I was a stranger, but he was the shepherd. And he talked to them, and they knew his voice. As we stood talking, there was a wee lamb over there, and he was bleating and bleating away and shivering, a newborn lamb. I said, what's wrong with that little fellow? He says, he's lost his mother. I looked over that sea of identical sheep. To me, they were identical. I said, how will he ever find his mother now? Oh, said the shepherd casting his eye over them, he says, there's his mother right over there. Now I said, just a minute. How do you know that sheep is that little lamb's mother? He says, just wait a moment. As we stood there, that particular sheep, because I watched to see, she lifted her head and looked around at the wee shivering lamb, and she said, bah. And that wee lamb took off right into that mother, snuggled its head into her wool, and she turned her head and gave him a little dunk, much as to say, now don't run away again. I said to him, how did you ever know that that was the mother of that little sheep? It was almost a look of reproach he gave me from under his old cow. Mister, he said, I know my sheep. He picked that verse right out of John chapter ten and he didn't know it. I know my sheep. And as you're sitting here today, dear brother, dear sister, he knows you. He doesn't just know your name and address and phone number or fax number. He knows every nerve and every muscle and every corpuscle of your body. He knows every ache of your heart, every longing and desire, every hope and fear, and every sin and every failure, and he loves you anyway. The Good Shepherd. But there's something said about David, we just have to hurry through this beautiful portion. I trust you might read it yourself. A few things said about him in verse twelve. He was ruddy, he was of beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. Ruddy of countenance. The word ruddy comes from the same root as the name Adam comes from, and tells me of the real humanity of the Lord Jesus. Let us never rob him of that, his humanity was real, impeccable, sinless, but it was real with feet that walked and hands that worked and eyes that wept. He felt the emotions of humanity, touched the feelings of our weaknesses. He knows, he loves, he cares. Nothing this truth can dim. He gives the very best to those who leave the choice with him. Fair of eyes. It says a beautiful countenance, but literally the Hebrew words mean fair of eyes. Beautiful eyes. The eyes are the window of the soul. And as we look into the eyes of people, we can tell a great deal about them. Fair of eyes speaks of the inward purity of the Lord Jesus. I love the threefold testimony of the apostles, don't you? Peter, the man of action, said of Christ, he did no sin. Paul, the great thinker, said of Christ, he knew no sin. And John, who leaned on the breast of the Son of God and heard the very pulse of heaven, said, in him is no sin, and the threefold cord cannot easily be broken. It says that he was goodly in bearing. Literally, the word means good looking. Did you ever wonder what the Lord Jesus looked like? I'm sure he does not look like what the artists have painted him to be. They're all a disappointment, but anyway, how could an artist with pigments of clay paint the light being in all his loveliness? He was good to look to. Isn't it true that there are some people we love that when they come into the house, just to see them does you good. There's something about their presence, and I think that's what attracted those men. That day when the Lord Jesus stood on the shore, and there were the fishermen, uh, plying their trade, and he said, come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men, and on that word they left everything. Would you have done that? Do you know, I think you would have, because there was something so beautifully, radiantly attractive about the Lord Jesus when they saw him. They were impelled to follow him. His beauty is a beauty that excels all others and stands the test of scrutiny. You see, ours is a little different than that. The more we get, or the more people get to know us, the more they discover our flaws and our failures. That's what divorce courts are made of. But the more you examine the life of the Lord Jesus, the more his beauty appears. You remember the woman at the well. She takes a cursory glance at this man leaning wearily on the well and says, a Jew. She takes a closer look and she says, sir. She looks a little more closely and she says, a prophet. And at last she gets her eyes open and looks at him and says, the Christ, is this he? You remember the Ethiopian eunuch? Philip gets up into the chariot. Understandest thou what thou readest? How can I accept some man to me? Of whom speakest the prophet of himself, or of some other man? That's all he knew about the Son of God. He was some other man. Philip opens the scriptures to him, and at last, when he gets, uh, desires to be baptized and he's asked the question, if I surely believe, I believe, listen to what he's learned now, that this some other man is Jesus. He's the Savior. Jesus Christ is the anointed of God. Jesus Christ is, he's not dead at all, he's living. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He's divine. He says, baptize me now. See, the closer we look at the Lord, the more his beauties appear. It's a beauty that's la- that lasts, it stands the test of time. Well, human beauty fades, doesn't it? Shoulders stoop, the wrinkles come, the hair changes color, and if we don't need to go into all the other details of collapse. But human beauty fades. What about the Lord Jesus? This same Jesus, which you've seen taken out from, shall so come in like manner as you've seen him go. Two thousand years in the glory has wrought no change in my blessed Lord. For when he comes, it'll be the very same that went away. Beauty that lasts. And it's a beauty that is imparted and never diminishes. As he gives of his beauty to his people and imparts his loveliness to the saints, his own beauty is never diminished by giving it and giving it and giving it to his own. His reputation is in verse eighteen. He excels in some things, and one of them is in music. He was skillful in music. Oh, beloved, as no one can draw music out of the heart like the Son of God. It's been my privilege to stand on the banks of the Zambezi River and listen to our dear African brethren and sisters lifting those most musical and harmonious voices in praise to the Lord Jesus who delivered them. It's been my privilege to visit many, many lands and hear the song of the Lord. Isn't it a marvelous thing that God has taken us out of the pit and he's put a new song into our heart, even praise unto our God. I was in hospital many years ago, and uh, my nephew, who's now in the glory, but he had a beautiful tenor voice, brought up his ten-string guitar to my room, and uh, we spent a whole hour singing the songs of Zion. I'm not a singer, but I kind of joined in with him. He sang beautifully, and I joined in, and we sang all the hymns that we could remember for an hour, and he left. The nurse came in, the door was shut because I told him to close the door, and the nurse came in, she says, did you see us? I said the door was closed. Oh, she says, I thought maybe you'd see under the door. We were all standing outside the door listening to you singing. She says, that young fella coming back tonight? I said, I think he is. He said, we'll tell the next shift. So that night my wife came, my father-in-law, who has the voice of a gentle foghorn, myself, my nephew, we all gathered. Now tonight, I said, let's leave the door open tonight. We sang the songs of Zion for an hour, and they all went home in the nurse came in to fix me up for the night. She leaned on the end of the bed. She said, Mr. Nicholson, I belong to such and such a religion all my life, and I've been a very faithful churchgoer, but I have no song in my heart. Tell me, sir, what is the secret of your song? I was so happy to tell her. He was the secret of my song. Gave me a new song, because no one can make music like the chief musician of heaven, skillful in music. Mighty in valor, David killed three enemies, the lion, the bear, and the giant. And the Lord Jesus dealt with three enemies at the cross, the world, the flesh, and the devil, and he did it alone. What the whole human race could not do, from its first to its end, what they could not do, our blessed Savior, the victorious conqueror, went into the dark, and he did it alone. What a Savior. Says of David, he was a man of war. Man of war. We don't think of this one as the man of war. Certainly the world doesn't. They see him as an effeminate looking man with long hair and effeminate features, my friend. Don't be deceived. Read Revelation chapter nineteen sometime. And that's how the world will see him next, when he comes leading the armies of heaven to make war, and he won't need an air force, and he won't need a bomb. He has a weapon, and that weapon will come forth from his mouth. One single word, and his enemies will be destroyed. A man of war. Good thing to be on the right side on that great day. Is there someone sitting here today and you are not saved? I call upon you, bow the knee, bow the knee, and do it speedily while he will save you. Prudent in speech, no one ever spoke like the Master. A word of pardon to the guilty, a word of power to the weak, a word of provision to the needy, the word of peace to the troubled. I wonder what the sound of his voice is. You ever wonder how he sounds? We'll hear that voice one day. The golden voice will welcome us to glory. Comely of person. Very attractive. How beautiful is the Lord Jesus? Well, you just think of all the lovely Christians that you know. Think of them. There's lots of them. With all their warts and wrinkles, they are still the beautiful of the earth. It's been my privilege, too, to walk into some villages in the heart of Africa, and some of the most beautiful countenances I've ever looked into were the faces of dear saints transformed by the grace of God in the heart of Africa, radiant with the loveliness of Christ, India, the Orient. Think of all the lovely Christians you know, and then think of all the beautiful Christians who ever lived. All of that beauty, if it was all gathered together, is but the faintest reflection of the beauty of the altogether lovely one. Constant in communion, the Lord was with him. There never was a moment in the life of the Master when he was out of touch with the Father. They came to get him that day in Gethsemane at night. It was dark. His body was bathed with the sweat of his anguish. A traitor's kiss upon his cheek, and Peter draws the sword to take off somebody's head, and he was a fisherman, he wasn't a swordsman. All he got was an ear. The Lord says, put your sword up. Listen to this. Think you that I cannot now pray? You know, the only center of true peace on the whole earth was the heart of the Son of God right there in Gethsemane. Perfect communion and absolute peace at all times. He has enraptured our hearts. He has won us forever. We are his. Can we say with Jonathan, as he said to David, whatsoever thy soul desireth, I will even do it for thee. May God help us to be able to say that to our beloved Lord as we walk out of this place today, for his name's sake.