The 8 Aspects of Redemption - Part 5

And so we come to the last of the eight aspects of redemption, the coming again of the Lord Jesus. You will have realized that no attempt has been made to give a comprehensive presentation of any one of these aspects of redemption, but only to try to focus everything down upon a concise answer to the question asked about every one of them, and why this, why that. And impossible as it would have been in any one hour to have comprehended everything in connection with these respective phases of redemption, that is particularly true of the last.

And I am not attempting for a moment to cover all the ground of the second coming or the coming again of the Lord in this little time. Again we ask the question and focus our attention upon it, why the coming again of the Lord Jesus. The coming of the Lord is most commonly thought of as an event, something that is going to happen at a given time, as an item in a program.

It is just something that will take place. Well of course that is quite true, but it is quite important that we should know why it should take place. Why he will come again.

See God could effect all the things associated with his coming without his coming. I mean if it is a matter of taking Christians to heaven, he could do that without Christ coming to fetch us. And there are many other things like that, that God could do directly and quite independently.

But the scriptures show us that they are all bound up with and centered in the personal coming of Christ. And it is that fact which gives point to the question, why should it be like that? Why should it be a matter of Christ coming back again? Well very briefly let us try to answer that. And really the answer is found in all that we have been saying in these days.

The realization that the coming again of the Lord is just his own consummation of all that. He said as he went from them, I am with you unto the consummation of the age. I am with you with the summing up of the age.

In the summing up of the age. Well that is the meaning of the word. With the summing up of the age.

Then what is it in the age that will be summed up at the end? It will be all that we have been saying about him in these days. And let us very hurriedly pass our eye over it in order to see the summation in his coming. And the first and the final coming are clearly united in purpose and realization.

The first phase of redemption with which we were occupied was the incarnation of God's Son. His coming in man form into this world. And we indicated that there were three purposes in the incarnation.

One, the redemption of man by man. By man sin came. By man sin must go.

By man came the consequences of sin. By man those consequences must be destroyed and put away. It is the man aspect of things you see in the incarnation.

The very point of his becoming man. The redemption of man. The reconstituting of man.

To make him the kind of man that God intended him to be. But which he had so grievously ceased to be. And the perfecting of man for glory.

Those were the three things bound up with his coming in the first instance in man form. Just hold that there for a minute. The second phase was his earthly life.

We summed up the earthly life by saying that being here from infancy, from birth, to full mature manhood, through every trial and testing, fiery ordeal, right up to the last moment in the cross when the fires were seven times heated, he presented a body to God without a mark of sin or failure or breakdown. A body has now prepared me, he said. And he presented that back to God having passed through every possible kind of trial.

He presented it without any taint, without any loss of spiritual character. He presented it back to God a whole burnt offering, acceptable, well pleasing to God. He represented the man that God is after.

Living a life absolutely triumphant from beginning to end. Over all that which humanity has to meet. And so became the example man according to God's heart.

The man that God is after and is going to have. Briefly, there was one thing that I had no time to mention in that connection. I'd like just to throw it in here without dwelling upon it.

There was something of very great meaning in the son of God, the son of man, putting his feet upon this earth. You notice that 24th Psalm which we quoted the other day. It begins with, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

That's the first stanza. Second stanza. Third stanza.

You see the movement? He's put his feet on the earth, the earth is the Lord. Stood on this earth. And he has lived his life without defiled hands or heart.

He is the one who and who alone is fit or the only type fit to ascend into the hill of the Lord. And because he has come here and so lived and so triumphed, the everlasting doors are flung open. He can enter in.

Now the point is this, the earth is the Lord. He has put his feet down on this earth and he has said, this earth belongs to this kind of man and heaven will attest it. That's the 24th Psalm.

And that is why he said to his disciples, when he had lived the life and gained the victory and risen triumphant, go into all the world. You go and put your feet down on the earth and claim it. It's my inheritance by right of creation, by right of redemption.

You go and put your feet on it. It belongs to me. That's all in the course of redemption.

The cross was making effective of that redemption and the purpose of the incarnation. Making effective that redemption of the earth on which he put his feet and lived his triumphant life. He took it out of the hands of the prince of this world by his cross.

He took the kingdom for himself. Now, said he, is the prince of this world cast out. Now is the prince of this world cast out.

The resurrection, in the resurrection he's in possession of that. He is establishing for 40 days the great fact that he's alive. He's alive, he became dead, he's alive forevermore, he has the keys of death and of Hades.

And he's establishing that in the very being of the nucleus of his church for all time. And then he goes to glory in their presence. And the whole thing, the incarnation with its meaning, the life with its glorious triumph, the cross with its wonderful destruction of the work of the devil.

The whole thing is taken and put beyond the reach of anything here, man or devil, to touch it, to alter it. It's put in heaven. Remember what the apostle says to us about heaven.

It's up there, nothing here can interfere with that. Well, there's the essential. The spirit came to bring all that back, potentially out of heaven, to take up the work of making good in believers for this dispensation.

And the church was born as the vessel, the one new man. I'm always afraid of using language like this because it's just here, you see, that people get hold of things when you speak about the church being Christ incarnate again. But the spirit came to entwine the church, to make the church as the body of Christ, his counterpart, for expressing all the work that he himself had done and taken to glory.

Church was born, we dwelt on that this afternoon. Last, he's coming again. What for? To finish it all.

To complete all that he came to do in the first place, in every realm. Complete the redemption of man. The eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans deals with this consummation of redemption in two respects.

The manifestation of the sons of God. They have been secret, they have been hidden, and they are only the Father, only the Son knows who are his. But they're going to be manifested.

That is the consummation of redemption, bringing of them out and manifesting them, making them known, displaying them in glory. I think it's very wonderful, you know, that word of the Apostles, of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians on this very point. Please turn the tape over now and continue listening at this point on track two.

Do not fast wind the recorder in either direction.