It makes all the difference when we see HIM in the Word! The Bible is lit up then: it is like a new Book to us! In “all the Scriptures” His varied glories shine also for us.
This is the main object of the Bible. It is not simply a book of history, but a divinely inspired volume to give to us the knowledge of God; and the more we progress in this, the more are the boasted results of the Germanized criticism of its sacred pages seen to be worse than vanity.
The first writing of which any mention is made is “the volume of the Book,” and it speaks entirely of Jesus, the doer of God’s will. And that writing is a document that the hand of man shall not and cannot touch! The destructive efforts of the unbelieving critic have not reached up to it. It also speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the heavenly record of the counsels of the Godhead—in the eternal roll—it is written of Him, “I delight to do Thy will, O My God” (Ps. 40:8; Heb. 10:7). He is the subject of that volume, as coming to do God’s will, and as delighting in it; but how much that involved!
“Lo, I come to do Thy will,” He said; and, “A body hast Thou prepared Me” (Heb. 10:5). This was necessary, that thus, as a man, in the place of obedience, He might have the “ears” of Psalm 40:6. Going forward in that path, the rising storm of calumny and shame began to beat pitilessly upon Him, but to God’s will He was devoted, and He would not turn back. Innumerable evils thickened about Him! “They that hate me without a cause,” He said, “are more than the hairs of mine head.” They smote Him. They plucked the hair from His cheek. They spat upon Him. He turned not to the right or to the left, but pressed onward in the path of God’s will. What did the religionists, who clamoured for His life, know of that? They thought God was against Him—that He was smitten of God and afflicted! When they saw Him they esteemed him not; they despised and rejected Him.
And what of Jesus?—He “despised the shame” they heaped upon Him; but He did not despise the cross—He “endured” that! Yea, and He must endure it, in all its awful depths of sorrow and suffering, if God’s will were to be accomplished. Into those unsounded deeps His love for His God and Father carried Him. To the natural eye His path appeared to be all wrong but in devotedness to God’s will He went onward. He looked into the dark cup which He must drink, and though sweat as blood fell from Him, He took the cup and drank it—“Thy will be done,” He said. He finished the work He came to do. He glorified God on the earth. He was the mighty One. Any other would have been crushed under the heavy load of sin and judgment, which He bore when He endured the cross, when He settled for God’s glory the question of good and evil.
Rising in triumph from the grave, He has brought us, according to God’s will to Himself—“we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once”; and “He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” Wonderful fact! His brethren. And as the risen Man He said, “I ascend unto My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God”—thus putting us into the same relationship as Himself with God; and all this is in accord with the will of God. How much more that will involves we may not here go into; but Jesus is the Doer of it. God’s pleasure prospers in His hand! Blessed, adorable Lord and Saviour.