S. The Ever-Living Christ

THE EVER LIVING CHRIST

TEXT: Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and the spirit-world. Revelation 1:17-18. Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and he made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father; to him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Behold, he cometh with the clouds. Revelation 1:5-7. (Revised Version.) This is a long text. The emphasis, however, will be laid upon one declaration, “I am the Living One.” There is much doubt about the exact dates of many of the events connected with our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not know the date of His birth, but we can determine with reasonable probability the date of His resurrection. We know that the Jewish Passover took place on a certain date in the month of April, and that Jesus rose from the dead on the Sunday after the Passover. There have been grave questions by many people as to the degree of evidence necessary to establish such a tremendous event as the resurrection of a dead man, but I submit that no two things are more susceptible of legal proof than, first, that a man dies, and, second, that a man is alive. If you can establish anything in the world by human testimony you can prove the death of a man, and in the same way you can prove that a man is living. It is constantly done in our courts. There was a murder trial in which a certain man was accused of having put to death by violence a friend who was last seen with him. The circumstantial evidence was very strong against the accused, but when the jury was about to make up its verdict, and it seemed certain that this man would be condemned, the supposed victim stepped into the court and stood there before them. There was no question of his identity. He was there, and he was alive. The evidence was so abundant as to both the identity of the man and the fact that he was alive, that it at once disposed of the case. The accused was instantly dismissed. A man cannot be tried for the murder of one proved to be living. In the same way it frequently, in our courts, is necessary to establish the death of a person. An insurance company requires such evidence before it will pay the policy taken out on a man’s life. The physician who attended the dead man usually gives his evidence: “I knew this man. I was his physician. I was with him in his last illness. I examined him and I know he is dead.” The undertaker gives his evidence: “I knew the man. I was called on to prepare him for burial. I did prepare him for burial. I did bury him.” Other evidence like this is introduced until the fact is clearly established that the death has taken place, and on that evidence the policy is paid. Now, it has been objected in the case of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ that nobody saw Jesus rise from the dead. But the evidence is very complete that He died. No evidence can be stronger than the evidence that Jesus Christ died on the Cross. The centurion who conducted the execution, and who in that capacity about answers to our present sheriff, gave his certificate that he carried out the sentence of the law, and he knew He was dead. He stood by until He was dead. The evidence of those who buried Him, the evidence of those who watched the grave after He was buried, the evidence of His disciples who witnessed His death and wept over His departure-if any fact in the world can be proven, it can be proven that Jesus died. So, on the other hand, by the most overwhelming evidence it can be proved that Jesus was alive after He died. His mother, His brothers, His sisters, who ought to know Him, saw Him, talked with Him, were with Him many days. His nearest friends and most intimate associates were with Him for forty days. They saw Him; they talked to Him; and more than five hundred witnesses testified to the fact that Jesus, “Who was dead is now alive.” In this text He says, “I am the Living One. I became dead, but I am alive to die no more.” In vital concerns the human mind is not willing to rest alone upon the historic evidence of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. That evidence is indeed complete and sufficient for academic purposes. But we now have much stronger evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If every man in Jerusalem, including all the officials, both Jewish and Roman, had testified that they were gathered about His grave, and saw Him emerge from the grave, and were to sign their depositions before notaries that they did witness it; and if the Emperor of Rome and all of his officers, even to the number of a million men, had gone before the courts of the land and certified that they saw Him after He rose from the dead, and all of that were to be upon record and we had that record before us now, it would not be half as satisfactory as the evidence that we of today have that Jesus Christ is alive. He says, “I am the Living One.” All historic evidence is remote. Nearly two thousand years have come between us and this old evidence. If, indeed, He rose from the dead there must be some fresh evidence, some continuous evidence. If He rose from the dead, He must be somewhere now, and there must be some signs of His life now. There must be some demonstrative proof of the fact that He is living today, and this proof must be not the evidence of dead men; not the evidence of people who have been sleeping in their graves for two thousand years, but the evidence of men and women of the present time. You might put this entire church on the witness stand to establish the fact that Jesus Christ is now, today, alive: And this is living and, therefore, more impressive evidence. Note carefully the words of our text. They are just as applicable to us as to the ones to whom the words were spoken. Let us see what these words are: The King James Version says, “Unto him that loved us,” past tense - but the revised version more correctly gives it, “Unto him that loveth us.” It is not a love that may be confined to the past tense. It is the outgoing of a heart now beating. Not merely He did love us a long time ago, but “Unto him that LOVETH us,” loveth us TODAY. We are the subjects of the affection of our Lord Jesus Christ as we sit before Him, or stand before Him this Sunday morning.’ “He loveth us.” Not only does He love us now, and the proofs of His love will be referred to in a moment, but “He loosed us from our sins.” That, indeed, is past tense. That may not be referred to as the time when He made His expiation for sin nearly two thousand years ago. There is necessarily a difference in time between expiation, which was once for all an ever recurring remission of sins, based on that expiation. So it was not two thousand years ago when the application of that atonement was made to your soul. You were nonexistent then. You must have gotten in touch with that forgiveness of sins since the time that Jesus Christ died on the Cross, and, unless somebody is alive, unless there is some living force in the world to apply the benefits of that divine transaction that took place on the Cross nearly two thousand years ago, then we cannot go before men and testify to the pardon of our sins. But many of us can look back to a certain time in our own lives and say, “On that day God, for Christ’s sake, forgave my sins. The One who once loved us yet loves us. I know that it is not merely historic love, that it is not merely a love for the human race in bulk. It is a particular and present love, because the application has been made to me as an individual, and made to me in my lifetime.” And just as that man who had been healed of blindness was able to stand up before the court and testify to two facts: “I was blind; I now see; I know both of these things to be true: I know I was blind; I know I see,” so some of us can stand up and say, “I know that date, a certain date, in my life, when I stood in my own consciousness, in my own heart, a condemned and lost sinner in the sight of God, but at that date I was loosed from my sins. The sense of guilt and condemnation that was oppressing my soul departed, and in the place of it came a sense of peace and rest. I was conscious of a reconciliation with the Father.” But while that was not so very long ago, I need not go back to the time when I was twenty-three years old, and God, for Christ’s sake, forgave my sins. I have been committing sins since that, and every time I commit a sin my conscience takes notice of it and reproaches me for it. Now, not only did He then loose me from sin, but He continues to loose me from sin. The transaction goes on. Every time the back-slidden Christian comes humbly before God and makes a confession of sin, God is just and faithful to forgive his sins. But that forgiveness cannot take place unless there be somebody alive, some advocate with God, who takes the case and pleads it before the Judge. He looseth us from our sins, now - not only then, but now; not merely an historic expiation of the sins of all His people, two thousand years ago; not merely my own case when I was first converted, but my case all along through my life, it may be seven times a day. The pardoning stream continues, and the dispensation of that pardon is based upon one fact, that “He ever liveth to make intercession for us.” So I need not go back to that old historic evidence that John and Peter and James and the five hundred brethren and sisters saw Jesus Christ alive. There is other evidence, today’s evidence, evidence of which I am both subject and witness, and can testify that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, and that Jesus is alive, because I get the application of forgiveness of sins through His loving intercessions. “He loveth us and looseth us from our sins.” Again the text says, “He hath made us to be a kingdom.” Here, too, we need not content ourselves with an abstract historical argument based upon the Book of Daniel that there was a Babylonic kingdom, followed by a Medo-Persian kingdom, and that by a Grecian kingdom, and that followed by a Roman kingdom, and that followed by the establishment of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is easy enough to submit historical proof that in the days of the Roman kings the God of heaven set up a kingdom. But this event of which I am talking, was in the year 95 A.D., and there was only one apostle living. It was in the reign of the Emperor Domitian, and it was during the persecution by that emperor that John was banished from Ephesus to Patmos, and he was then a very old man, and to him the revelation was made just as fresh as it was made when they cast their garments before Him and waved their palm branches and shouted, “Behold, the King cometh!” We do not now allude to those subjects, men, women and children who formed the procession that welcomed Jesus Christ when He entered Jerusalem. Let us rather consider a nearer kingdom. “He loveth us; he looseth us from our sins. He has made us to be a kingdom not kings. Now, can it be proven? Is it in evidence that today, not two thousand years ago, there are actually living subjects of the Lord Jesus Christ? Nero had no subjects after he died. Alexander the Great did not have any subjects after his death. It has been two thousand years, nearly, since Jesus died, and yet there is the affirmation of a kingdom of loving subjects of the Lord Jesus Christ. There has been neither change of dynasty nor royal person of the same dynasty. Whosoever has felt on his heart the handwriting of the Spirit of God, on whose soul has been breathed the breath of life, who has been converted, who has been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, is a living witness of an actual, existing kingdom a kingdom that does not go on without a king. Look over the map of the world today. Try to enumerate, if you can, the number of the subjects of Jesus Christ, those who do not hesitate to say, “He is my King; I am His subject. I am under His law.” He as King, sitting on His throne, is dispensing the affairs of the kingdom now. “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” “Whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things.” “Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion.” We want to keep out of the past tense. We want to refer to the present. Every individual Christian, being a subject of the King of kings and Lord of lords, is a witness that Jesus is alive. No king, no kingdom! If a kingdom, then a king! We cannot be under the dominion of a dead man. We cannot be under the sway of a scepter when the hand that held it has turned to dust. Empty thrones do not rule mankind. There must be an occupant of that throne. He must possess the powers. of a king. He must be able to demonstrate the supremacy of his sway or else he will have no subjects in the world. Now, He has made us to be a kingdom. And will you please notice the distinction in this text between the kingdom and the church! When you refer to the kingdom of Jesus Christ you mean by it those who have been really and truly converted. Whoever has been converted is a subject of the kingdom. He is a part of the kingdom. But now, when He comes to speak of the churches, He does not speak of them in the aggregate. He says, “To the Seven churches.” And He moves among the seven churches, and holds each church responsible to Him. Each church is an executive, business body in the kingdom, but now when it comes to the kingdom of Christ, whether we are members of the church or not, if we are God’s children we are subjects of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is alive. We belong to the kingdom. He has made us to be a kingdom, and He has made us priests unto God. I mean every Christian, whether he is a member of the church or not, is a priest, and offers sacrifices, but sacrifices are not offered where the oracle is dumb. When the Shekinah left the temple, when the Veil of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom, from that time, void was every sacrifice offered upon a Jewish altar. There is now no Jewish high priest. The temple has disappeared. And because there is no temple and no altar, there can be no priest in the Old Testament sense. But here we are made priests and the character of our sacrifices is defined. We do not offer bullocks and goats, but we offer the sacrifices of praise and of humility and of prayer and of contributions. These sacrifices are being offered now unto God by those who are God’s priests, and there is no distinction between them. It is not the preachers alone who are the priests. It is the people of God, whether they are even members of a church or not. If they are converted they are priests, and every time they praise God they are offering sacrifices, and every time they pray to God they are offering sacrifices, and every time they make a contribution for Christ’s sake they are offering a sacrifice. Now, to get the picture before you in its bearing on the fact that Jesus Christ is alive, let us consider the one sacrifice of praying. I kneel down to pray. and if the one to whom I pray is alive and able, He can answer me, and if He be alive and able and willing, and the request is a proper one, He will answer. If, therefore, the throne of grace be a living institution; if there be an ear that hearkens when pallid human lips plead; if there be an eye which sees when trembling human hands are uplifted; if there is a heart that feels when, with sighs and sobs and gaspings, the stricken and troubled ones here upon the earth pour out their woes; oh! if there be a heart that can enter into sympathy with their wants, then somebody is alive. When Christ died, the heathen oracles became dumb. Men quit making visits to the oracle of Delphi. Why? There was nobody to answer. No replies came. And in the two thousand years that have elapsed since the death of Christ, if there had been no response to prayer, no matter what the historical evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is, or might be, what would it count to us that He be alive if He does not hear us, if He does not answer us, if He does not sympathize with us, if He does not intervene in our extremity? So when we say that Jesus is alive we refer to the fact of a present love, of a present loosing from sin, of a present kingdom, of present priests who offer sacrifices of prayer, and who now get the answers to their prayers. Take another thought in connection with it. The historical testimony is that Jesus Christ entered into the realm of death. He was disembodied, and after awhile He emerged from death. What comfort is that to me? What present and powerful compensation is that to me, if, when I stand, as I did last Friday, a member of the First Church having died and a number of us went to Itasca to bury him, and. there was his wife, and there were the children and the grandchildren, and between 700 and 1,000 people out there in that cemetery. Now if there were a mere historical resurrection from the dead, with nothing heard from it since, oh! how could I comfort those stricken hearts that day? But when I read this passage of Scripture upon which I am speaking today, that He has the keys of death and the spiritworld; He now has the keys; He now can open; He now can shut; and no power can shut when He opens, and no power can open when He shuts. He will come again and raise the dead-that was comfort to the stricken ones. I refer to the present comfort that the Christian heart derives from the fact that Jesus is alive, and being alive, holds the keys of death. When we deposit the bodies of our loved ones in. the grave, that is death death to the body. Now, if Jesus has the keys not if He had them once, but if He now has them and when we know that this spirit has gone into its disembodied state, if there be no kind of evidence that this spirit meets the Lord Jesus Christ, finds Him alive, has such communion with Him that the soul can say, “For me to die is gain - When I am absent from the body, I am present with the Lord,” our comfort fails. But when we die, we, too, may hear the voice: “Today thou shalt be with me in paradise.” If Jesus is alive, then our dead ones are with Him, and He has the keys, and whenever He says the word, that whole realm of the spirit world will be destroyed. There will no longer be a disembodied soul. A voice will speak the word that will raise us from the dead, and bring our bodies out through that open door to die no more, so that we can say, “I am a Living One; I became dead, but I am alive to die no more.” There is the comfort that belongs to God’s people in the thought that Jesus is alive today. Where one is dead you cannot hope to get any benefit from him. Hope stops at death, if that death be complete. Jesus Christ is not only alive in the sense that He loveth us and we are now the subjects of that love, and that He looseth us from our sins, and that He makes us a present kingdom and present priests, and in our behalf holds the keys of death and the spirit-world, but more than that, the Lord Jesus Christ assures the heart at the present moment of a glorious hope. What is it? The text says, “Behold, he cometh; he cometh.” If He is dead He will not come back. If He is alive He will come back. If He is alive I may hope for His coming. I may not only desire it, but I may expect it. I may not only rest in a present love, in a present forgiving power, in a present comfort, in a present answer to prayer, in a present service as belonging to a kingdom, but I may rejoice in the fact that this Living One is coming; coming in the clouds of heaven; coming to wind up the affairs of the world. And He stands before my hope and causes that hope to become so keen of vision that it can penetrate the intervening mists, and behold the Coming One until He may loom up in visible form before the expectant eye, for the declaration is, “Every eye shall see him; and they also that pierced him.” Thus, brethren, I have presented to you Jesus Christ alive, as the lover of your soul, as the pardoner of the sins of your soul, as requiring of you a present service as a subject unto His kingdom, and as hearing your petition when you lift up your sad hearts to Him in prayer, and as holding the keys of death and hell, and as one who is coming, coming. Who looks for Apollo to come back to the earth? Who expects Jupiter to descend and occupy his ancient temple? Who expects the Neptune of the classics to reassert his power over the ocean waves? But the millions of Christians expect Jesus to come back. “Behold, he cometh, he cometh!” Now, is Jesus alive in this sense? If He is alive He knows about the future. He is a revelator. John saw a book the book of future events and it was sealed - sealed seven times and nobody on earth could open it. But if Jesus is alive He can break those seals. He can drive away the mists that hide the future from our sight, as one draws curtains that shroud a hidden room. And He may say, “Rise, make a record. I will reveal now the things which must come to pass. I will stretch out before you in panorama the coming events that touch ‘the church and the people of Jesus Christ, clear on to the general judgment, and the end of the world.” And as a revealer He speaks in this book. We, looking back after two thousand years have passed away, are amazed at the accuracy of this forecast. Paul had said, “Jesus will not come unless there first be a falling away.” Who expected such an apostacy as that? Who that looked upon the first triumphant march of the kingdom of God, when, under apostolic power, they took the capitals of the world and overturned idols where they were fortified in the hearts of the people; who expected that the brightness of that faith would be eclipsed, and that shameful impostures would take the place of religion? We look back at it now and we know that it did take place, but when this book was written no man could see it except the man unto whom God gave the vision to look into the years ahead. And here is the book that tells all about it. It tells of the decay of the piety of the churches. It tells of a formal religion taking the place of a religion of heart and of life and of power. It tells of the coming of a cumbrous system of rites and ceremonies, though they had been nailed to the Cross of Jesus Christ and banished. It tells us that they will come back and sway the world, and that only out in the wilderness where faithful witnesses have fled will there be true ones who will adhere to the simplicity of the gospel as it is in Christ Jesus. We know now that all this happened, but here it was put on record that it would happen, and some of it more than a thousand years before it did happen. So that we stand before Jesus Christ as a living revelator, and we hear His words: “The revelation is ended.” There will be nothing more revealed until Jesus comes, and whosover adds to the words of this prophecy, God will add unto him the plagues that are written in the Book, and whosover takes away from the words of this prophecy, God will take away from him any place in the kingdom of heaven, or any space in the Book of Life, which contains the roll of the immortal ones that shall reign with Him forever and ever. Finally, there are the churches. This is one. Is Jesus alive? Does He move among the churches now as then? Does His flaming eye take cognizance of every act of fidelity on the part of the pastor? Does He hold the pastor in His right hand? Does He know of the faithfulness of the members of the church, so that He can say to you, as He said to Ephesus and Smyrna and Laodicea and Thyatira, “I know thy works. I know thy fidelity or thy infidelity?” And, oh, sad to say, can He in His present state, in His omniscient sight, say to us, “I have somewhat against thee; thou hast left thy first love?” Or, “Thou hast substituted for gospel that which I never gave as gospel?” Or, “Thou hast become indifferent, neither cold nor hot, imagining thyself to be all right in the sight of God, when thou art all wrong?” Is Jesus alive in the church? If He is alive in the church, there must be some evidence of that life, and to the church that does not manifest the evidence of Christ’s being alive now He says, “I take away thy candlestick. If a tree has become so dead that, after winter passes, it will not put forth buds; if when April comes it will neither cover itself with foliage nor flowers; if when summer comes it will not bear fruit, then let that dead tree be cut down. Why cumbers it the ground?” The fact that these trees are cut down proves that Jesus is alive. The fact that dead churches become the subject of His chastisement is evidence that the Administrator of Justice is not a dead Man. And the fact that He gives His blessing to faithful churches is a proof that He is alive. Your own record is evidence. In four years’ time one hundred and fifty have been baptized upon a profession of faith. Now that proves that Jesus is alive. The pastor could not convert one hundred and fifty people, not even one. The church could not convert one. But the Holy Spirit, the living vicar of the living but absent Christ, can convert souls, and if the church is yielding itself to the monition and to the impulses of the living Son of God in heaven, then somebody is going to be converted; some backslidden Christian will be restored; some hypocrite will be unmasked and discipline will be administered. There will be power in the church if Jesus is alive. And I cite these arguments as greater proof that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead than the monumental evidence of the Lord’s Day. That is monumental evidence. He rose on the first day of the week, and from that time the date changes, and the monument stands - Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, and Sunday, the sacred day, instead of the seventh day. But stronger than monumental evidence is the presence of Jesus Christ in the churches, in their revivals. And now, brethren, you wish to present this house to Him. You act simply as stewards for Him in retaining control of the house. None of you occupies this house as a home. You have your own home. You say, “This is the Lord’s house, and we will meet here to worship and serve our living God.” That is what you mean. Then if that be in your heart I think I could say to you what the prophet said in the time of Joshua the high priest, and Zerubbabel: “The latter glory of this house shall eclipse its former glory, and this house shall be the abode of much peace, and unto this house the Desire of all nations shall come.” Jesus will come in spiritual presence and power to bless your services. There is a field for you here. There is room for you to do great things. Upon your enterprise I invoke the benediction of a Living Redeemer. I gave the first money that went into the little building where you first assembled as a congregation, and with the missionary at that time joined in the prayer that God would bless that humble beginning, and make it a signal power, and I continue my prayer for you today. The Lord bless you! Whatever may be the fate of the candlestick that once stood and held the light at Laodicea and is now gone; and, though marshes have taken the place of the harbor of Ephesus, where that other candlestick shone, God grant that this candlestick, supplied with heavenly light, may be a demonstration of the fact that Jesus is alive, by conversions, and restorations, and reconciliations, and prayers, and praises, and every other act of priesthood. May God’s blessing rest on you!