NOTES OF AN ADDRESS BY S. RIDOUT,

At the Labor-day Meeting, Washington, D. C., September 1, 1907.

Read first chapter of John's Gospel.

There are four verses here to which I wish to call your attention. First of all, we have the One who was in the beginning. He is called the Word; that is His name, what personally describes Him; for in Scripture the God-given name always describes the one who bears it. The word is the expression of the thought; so we read that our Lord Jesus was "the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of His substance." He is the expression of God because He is God, was God, and ever shall be God-the unchanging One. In that way, "the Word "is a very beautiful title. It tells that God was going to make Himself known to a universe, a creation which was to enjoy Him in praise and worship throughout eternity; and He makes Himself known by expressing what He is. God might, and He does, indeed, bless man. He has blessed man with all the mercies by which He surrounds him. He has blessed him in countless ways, and yet that blessing can never make Him-Himself-known. There needs be the expression of what He is. God is God, and He has created us for Himself, not for ourselves. But man listened to Satan's lie, and he turned from God. That lie was, '' Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." You know, the word is just the same as it is rendered all the way through those chapters of Genesis-Elohim. It is not "Ye shall be as gods" as though they were to be divine persons in addition to God, or in distinction from God; but ye shall be as God.* *Supreme and independent.* It is pride for any creature to seek to be anything apart from subjection to, and dependence upon, God. It brought Satan's fall and then man's.

We have our Lord Jesus Christ here, first of all, as the Creator, the Mighty God. If we rightly know Him, we must needs confess Him as God-nothing short of that. We have heard a good deal about the character of Jesus. It was a wondrous character, absolutely perfect in every way. We have heard of His example, of His teachings, and all that; but back of all is this great fundamental truth-"The Word was God; " so that the One who is the Saviour of sinners is the Almighty God. Blessed fact that is:it means that the Saviour brings back sinners to God, in order that God may be indeed the source of all blessing, the source of all joy, and finally be all in all.

The fifth verse says, "The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." If the Son of God were merely a divine person, He could not be truly known. " The world by wisdom knew not God." Man may reason about God, as in Job; "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou know the Almighty to perfection ?" It is impossible to know God by human reason. We see evidences of His wisdom in His works of creation, and of His power in all things consisting-being held together-by Him. But no one can truly know God in that way. He is not known, even by His goodness in His constant care over all His works. So we read, '' The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." God was shining from the beginning, from the creation, and ever since; but it was in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. Now, how is that darkness to be banished, and God to be known ? We have introduced here, it seems, almost with a jar, what appears to be another subject. We have been speaking of the Light that shines in the darkness, of His being the creator and upholder of all things; and here we have a man introduced. "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John." Now there is a connecting link. If God is to be known, if the everlasting Word is to be understood, if that voice of God is to be heard in the soul, there is one who has to come to bear witness to the Light.

I think we know what John stands for. Possibly every one here knows that John came with one message. " I am not the Christ," he testifies. That is what he was not; he was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light, that all men through him should believe. John was simply a voice:"I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." And what did he do to prepare the way of the Lord ? He preached repentance. It was his one message; and that is how God is to be known. That is how the word of God is to be heard-through repentance. And what is repentance ? It is such a sight of oneself in the light as makes a man know he is absolutely nothing but a lost sinner in the sight of a holy God. So John's message to all was "Repent." Those who claimed to have something of their own to present, he called a generation of vipers-the brood of the serpent. To the Pharisees and teachers who boasted in the law (which really condemned them when it was truly received), John's message was a leveling one. It was the great gospel message, "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." John's call to repentance would bring before the soul many a dark page of life's history which one might be glad to forget, if he only could have done so. But this was not all. It is not merely that the ax is laid to the fruit of the tree-that would be only the practical life; but it is at the root of the tree, and at the root of all the trees. Every tree-every man-was worthless, and fit only for the fire. That is John's message.

Now, the name John is a striking one-it means "Jehovah is gracious." It is a beautiful thing:John's name speaks of grace; his message, of sin. Does it not show God's goodness, in bringing home to our souls the message of our sin, that it is done in grace, not in wrath, not in judgment ? Satan would have men think that because sin is realized there is therefore no hope of salvation. He seeks the destruction of the soul, and so he says, "Well, what hope can there be for such a sinful creature as you ? What hope can there be for you, who have not one solitary patch of righteousness that you could present to God; not one spot of white upon that black Ethiopian skin ? " But it was not Satan who brought the message of John; and this was John's message. Satan brings the message that leads men to say, '' I thank Thee that I am not as other men, or even as this publican," etc. Or else, "I thank Thee that I have a good heart," and, as many say, '' Even if my outward life has not been altogether perfect, and even though it has some faults in it, it is better than that of many others." The message which John gives brings men to the place where they know that only mercy will do for them. "God be merciful to me the sinner," as though he were the only sinner. Not comparing himself with the Pharisee, nor with others whose prayers were outward, but thinking simply of himself in the presence of God, he says that what he needs is mercy. John is the bearer of God's grace, because he brings home to man the fact of his absolute sinfulness, nothingness, and helplessness. He manifests the condition of the natural man, the works, and the heart from which the works had sprung.

The object of John's message was to bring people into God's own presence. He says, " I am not." It was not what he was, but what he was not. He was nothing. One thing only he had-the message of God; the call to repentance, the acknowledgment of sin, and then the testimony connected with that, as we shall see a little later.

But now look at verse 14. Here is the blessed One to whom the man whose name means grace, points. How could he point to any other ? His message- the call to repentance-shuts up to Him every repentant soul. Only Jesus can avail for a repentant man. But I want to connect that now with the first verse- "the Word was God." There is the divine character, the divine glory of the Son of God. " The Word was made flesh." There is the great "mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh." We sometimes hear a good deal about holiness, perfect holiness, and expressions of that character. The verse that I have just partly quoted gives us the mystery of true holiness. " Great is the mystery of piety." How can people be holy ? How can a sinful man be a holy man ? It is a great mystery. Delve down into our hearts, and we only find still greater depths of blackness than we ever conceived of. Go down still deeper, and we find enmity, self-will, rebellion; there is nothing in the natural heart that has anything of piety or holiness about it.

But what is that mystery ? "God manifest in the flesh." It is the Son of God come into the world; and in His own blessed person He shows us what true piety, true holiness is. He is the Holy One, the sinless, the spotless One; and if you want to see holiness and perfection, you will see it in Christ alone. Holiness is wrought in us only as He is the One who fills our vision.

'' The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." How good that is! God, after our first parents had sinned, came down, and they heard Him walking in the garden in the cool of the day. He was not content that His poor creatures should have departed from Him; and so He comes down. In that very expression we have a foreshadowing of this-"the Word was made flesh." That Word is found, as He walked in the garden. It was God, and yet in such a way that He spoke to them ; He was seeking after sinful man, to bring him back to Himself; and you know how He did it. Just in the way we were looking at-bringing home to man his sin and guilt, then delivering him from it. First of all, "Where art thou ?" then, "What hast thou done?" Man is away from God now through sin; then he has disobeyed God and become guilty too.

Well, the Word was made flesh, and- came down; the eternal Son of God emptied Himself of that glory and majesty which He had with the Father before the world was. He did not lay aside, as people have suggested, His deity, or Godhead. God cannot cease to be God, and such teaching is blasphemous:but He laid aside His majesty. He became flesh. He became a man, while God as well, and so dwelt here. He came not merely in human form. It was not as though it were a divine spirit dwelling in a human body; not as though He were God and only partly man; but there was the human soul, the human sympathy, the human mind as well. It is an unutterable mystery, but a blessed truth, that the Word was made flesh. And so, when we think of the Lord Jesus when He dwelt here upon the earth, we are to think of the everlasting Word, the Creator. Never let us dishonor the Son of God by thinking of Him as anything short of Deity when He was here. There are blasphemous doctrines* which teach, for instance, that the Lord Jesus was a spirit, and a wonderful creature, at the beginning; and then, when He came down here, he became simply a man. *The " Millennial Dawn" doctrines.* That is a teaching that is current today; and it simply denies the deity of the Son of God. There is no Saviour at all in that teaching. The word of God is robbed of its meaning.

But now, here we have Him made flesh, a true man, and dwelling among us-how He dwelt here full of grace and truth. Full of grace in going out to poor, needy souls, ministering to their need. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them," ministering to need wherever He met it. A poor leper, banished from the presence of his neighbors,-a poor, helpless paralytic,-both healed with a word from the Lord; and so with everything down to the very death, from which He raised those who had already departed this life. There He was, full of grace, using His power. Then, He was full of truth as well. There was no compromise with sin.

And then you notice that striking parenthesis. It is as though the writer (who was a mere pen in the hand of the Holy Ghost) had his heart full (or filled) with divine life as he wrote of that wondrous Word, and so he puts in, "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father." There is the word of faith. It is not only that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, but while He was here faith saw His glory; faith beheld Him as the Only begotten of the Father; and all that grace and truth, all that perfection of character, only manifested forth the glory, the effulgence of God's own character, which shone in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we go a step farther. We have seen Him as the divine Word, and we have seen alongside of that the necessity for a testimony as to what we are. There is God over all, blessed forever, and here am I, a poor, sinful, lost creature. The eternal God has become flesh, and dwelt among us here, and faith recognizes in Him the Only-begotten of the Father; but there is something else, and that is what we get from the lips of John. It shows us how perfectly his name illustrates his ministry. He had called the people to repentance:but they must not stop there. Repentance is not Christ. You are not to be occupied with how sorry you are for your sins, or how deep your feelings are, or things of that kind. So the next day John stood, and, pointing to Jesus, he cried, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world! " It is not " a lamb," it is "the Lamb of God." Every word here is suggestive. You remember, when Abraham and Isaac went up the hill of Moriah to carry out that word of God to Abraham, that he was to offer his son:as he went up, Isaac said, "Here is the wood, and here is the fire, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering ?" And Abraham's reply was the reply of faith, " My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering." Here we have the God-provided Lamb. It is the Lamb of God. Blessed it is that salvation is God's provision, not ours. Salvation is not God's call to us to come to Him to render something that we have not got, to render obedience, to render love. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and mind, and strength," is perfectly right and good; but God does not ask for that, or for anything else, from a heart that has got nothing but sin in it. God's remedy is His Lamb. It is provided by God. He knew our need, and He has provided for it according to His own knowledge.

Now the lamb, we know, has one unmistakable meaning from the beginning to the close of Scripture. I would not question that it does speak of the meekness, gentleness and submission of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of those characteristics were in Him. But there is one thing, which is even shown in heathen inscriptions-the lamb always speaks of sacrifice. It speaks of substitution, and of divine righteousness dealing with another, instead of dealing with the guilty one; it speaks of wrath poured out upon a substitute. All God's judgment, all those waves and billows of God's wrath poured out upon, not the guilty sinner who deserves it, but the sinless Substitute, the Lamb of God without blemish and without spot. No sin in Him, no sin upon Him, no sin connected with Him in any way whatever; save that in infinite grace He came into a world of sin in order that He might be made sin for us, in order that He might in His own body on the tree bear our sins.

He is the Lamb of God, and that is the message which the preacher of repentance has now to give. If my sin is brought home to me in all its heinous-ness, there is God's remedy, the remedy of the One who created me, the remedy of the One who has sent the Lamb of His own providing into the world to shed His precious blood for sinners. After receiving all the wrath and judgment of God, He said, " It is finished:and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost." There is the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world, no matter how great the sin. There is the justification for preaching a worldwide salvation, a salvation to the very ends of the earth. "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." If He speaks to the ends of the earth, then all who are between the Speaker and the ends are to hear it too, and so it is world-wide.

Now, then, we have the outcome of this; and that is the other thought that I was going to call your attention to as well. John points Him out the second time, a twofold witness. He did not grow weary of pointing to Christ. People might say, "Have you got anything else to preach to us about, or is there not something else you can tell us about save Christ and the Lamb of God-nothing but Christ all through your preaching ?" Nothing whatever; nothing but Christ, whether for sinner or saint! If it is not Christ, or something about the work of Christ, or the person of Christ, it is falsehood, and not truth at all. He is the theme of the written word of God, from Genesis to the close of the Bible. It is that which describes and brings Him before us; and further, there is no message for the sinner but that one-repent, believe the gospel; and no word for the saint but that which is connected with the Lord Jesus Christ.

John, then, repeats his message-"Behold the Lamb of God! " Two of his disciples are with him, and this lays hold of them. Blessed fact it is when the word of the preacher does not attract attention to himself, but draws attention to the Lamb of God to whom he points. John points Him out, and two of the disciples heard him, and they followed Jesus. That is a beautiful kind of ministry, a ministry that will lead people to follow Jesus, not that will draw disciples after us:as the apostle says, "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." Then we see how the Lord Jesus recognizes those who follow Him. He asks them., "What seek ye ?" What did they want ? what were they looking for ? For something good in themselves ? Were they looking for some great remedy for the ills of mankind ? Ah, they had heard the testimony of John, and therefore their answer is, "Rabbi, where dwellest thou?" They wanted Him-Christ. John had pointed to Him, and they simply wanted to go where He dwelt, and look at the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Come and see;" and so they go and abide with Him. How blessed and beautiful that He who is the almighty Word, the Creator of all things, should say to sinful me, "Come and see." Does not that illustrate those words of the Lord, "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out," no matter how great his sin, no matter what he might be ? "Come, see," is the Lord's answer to the soul that inquires, to the soul that says, "Lord, I have nothing of my own to bring to Thee." It is the word for the saint as well as for the sinner. He is never to grow weary of finding out that Christ is as good as His word, that He is constantly giving grace upon grace. " Of His fulness have all we received."

Now, to go just one point further. The word of God is like the seed that germinates; it grows, it doubles. One of those who followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He has come and seen for himself; and he first findeth his own brother Simon, and brings him to Jesus; and so the work goes on. One who has come to the Lord Jesus will be the messenger to carry that word to another, in order that he too may come and hear for himself. But it transforms character too. When Peter comes to the Lord, the Lord gives him a new name, one which speaks of steadfastness, stability. Strange name for Peter, possessed, as he was, of such an opposite disposition; yet the Lord gives it to him. His grace can produce stability out of an unstable man; and besides, the same grace had also made him a living stone in the house which the Lord is building.

So we have put before us in these verses a journey from the infinite Word, the eternal Word who was in the beginning with God, down to the Word made flesh; down to the message of God laid to the roots of the trees of all human righteousness, making man realize what he is; down deeper and deeper than man had ever reached, the Word comes. He is the Lamb of God; He goes down to the cross, and there, in the depth of the darkness, under the wrath and judgment of God, He dies for sinners, in order that He may open wide His arms, and welcome and save the soul that has heard that message, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." He says, " Come, see for yourselves;" and His people, taking up that cry, repeat it again and again:"Come and see."

And so the Word is not alone. The Lord Jesus is not alone. God, when He made man at the beginning, said it was not good for the man to be alone. And Adam, you know, was a figure of Him that was to come. Christ, in His death and resurrection, is the last Adam. And so-let us say it reverently- it was not good for God to be alone; and so the Word did not remain in all His solitary glory which He had with the Father before the world was. He became a man, became the Lamb of God, in order that He might draw weary and heavy laden, worthless, helpless sinners to Himself, and say to them, "Come and see;" and there is His message to every one who knows his sin. May the Lord draw our hearts, each one, to Himself.