Tuesday 2nd February 2010

Lamberhurst Strict Baptist Chapel
Mr Jabez Rutt 

Reading:  Hebrews 13

Text: Hebrews 13 verse 8

‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever’.

Greatly feeling to need the Lord’s gracious help I would direct your attention to the 13th chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews and we will read verse 8 for our text.  ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever’.

‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever’.  This particular phraseology, I will put it that way, that we have in the New Testament, similar in the book of the Revelation when the Lord Jesus introduces Himself to His servant John on the Isle of Patmos  He says to John, ‘I am He which is, and which was, and which is to come’.  If we look back into the Old Testament we have that glorious and sacred name Jehovah, it is called the incommunicable name, the reason it is called the incommunicable name is because it can be given to none other than the eternal, infinite, uncreated God, who dwelleth in, and inhabiteth eternity.  I understand that this verse that we have and the way that the Lord Jesus Christ introduces Himself to John, ‘I am He which is, and which was, and which is to come’, is in actual fact a paraphrase of the name Jehovah.  In that name Jehovah there is this sense and  meaning of past, present and future, and as we explained to our friends recently when expounding on this particular point, this is a deep mystery but with the eternal God there is no such thing as past, present and future, there really is not.  He lives in one eternal NOW!  Isaiah chapter 57, ‘Thus saith the high and lofty one which inhabiteth eternity’.  One of the senses and meanings of that incommunicable name Jehovah is the self-existent One, and as one of Moses’ Psalms says, ‘thou art from everlasting to everlasting’.  So here in the text and in these other places that we are quoting from there is this sense of eternity.  When it says here, yesterday, it actually means all eternity past; the same as the last part, to come, for ever. God lives in eternity, God inhabits eternity.  Those beautiful words we have in Holy Scripture, ‘The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms’.  So in this word before us we have a sense given to us, by way of paraphrase, of the eternity of God, and please note it is applied to Jesus Christ, who is very God and very Man, who is Himself the eternal Son of the eternal Father, ‘from everlasting to everlasting thou art God’.  As the Lord introduces Himself to His servant John in Revelation chapter 1, He says, ‘John to the seven chuches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come’.  That is referring to the eternal Father.  You might say, well, why do you say that? Because it goes on to say, ‘and from the seven spirits’; seven in Holy Scripture is the number of perfection, it is the complete number, so it is referring to the Holy Spirit of God, the complete, infinite eternal Spirit of the living God.  ‘And from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; And from Jesus Christ’.  So there in the introduction that John writes under the divine influence of the Spirit directly given to him by Christ, he speaks of the wonderful glory of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  These three are one, one infinite almighty God and eternal Lord Jehovah.  ‘Grace be unto you, and peace, from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come: and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness and the first begotten from the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth’.  ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever’.

Just think for a moment of that beautiful reference to the Trinity that we have in the last chapter of the book of the Revelation. John has a vision into heaven itself, and what does he see in heaven, as the very centre and sum of heaven? The eternal God.  You must remember that the Revelation is written in highly symbolic language, and it is to be understood symbolically, ‘And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal (that is the Holy Ghost.  Time and time again the Holy Ghost is referred to in Holy Scripture as living water, that is the divine Person of the Spirit of the living God)’.  ‘And he showed me a pure river’, you just think of this pure river.  Psalm 46, ‘There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles the most High’.  What is this river?  It is the Holy Ghost poured forth from the Father and the Son, poured forth into Zion, feeding the church of God, quickening precious souls, building them up in their most holy faith, bringing them from darkness into light, bringing them from bondage into liberty.  ‘For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty’.  ‘He showed me a pure river of water of life’.  What does Paul say when he writes to the Romans? ‘The Spirit of life’.  It is the Holy Ghost.  ‘The Spirit of life’, that divine and blessed Spirit.   ‘You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and in sins’.  When the Lord speaks to Nicodemus, He speaks there of that essential work of the Holy Ghost, and He says, ‘Ye must’, oh my beloved friends, listen to Holy Scripture, ‘Ye must’, no if’s, no but’s, no ambiguity whatsoever.  ‘Ye must be born again’.  ‘Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit’.  Listen carefully, sometimes we become so familiar with Scripture that we read over it and we do not take it in.  ‘Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, (he cannot!!) he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven’.  My dear beloved friends if you live and die having never being quickened by the Spirit of God you will be lost for ever, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.  You may be a good Strict Baptist, you may go to chapel every Sunday, you may go to every service in the week, you may live a moral and upright life, you may believe the five points of Calvinism, you may be very clear on the doctrine of truth from the word of God, but if your soul has never been quickened by the Holy Ghost, you are a lost soul and you will be lost for a never-ending eternity.  ‘Ye must’, oh there seems to me friends, such an emphasis. 

I have never forgotten reading this of George Whitfield, apparently it was a text that he preached from more than any other text, ‘Ye must be born again’.  And a man said to him one day, ‘Mr Whitfield, why is it that you so often preach from that text, ‘ye must be born again’?’.  And he turned and looked at him, ‘Because ye must be born again, that is why I preach it’.  It is absolutely vital and essential.  You can have all the outwards trappings of religion, you can have it from the cradle to the grave, church membership, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, but if your soul has never been quickened by the Spirit, you have got nothing, nothing at all.  Oh that the Lord would cause these solemn searching truths to sink deep into our hearts.  ‘There is a river’, has that river been poured into your heart, into your soul? Have you known the quickening power of the Holy Ghost? ‘He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal’, that pure Holy Spirit of God; it is called a river because it is a never-ending supply, an inexhaustible supply.  ‘He that hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ’.  “He will not fail.”  O that blessed Holy divine Spirit.  There have been a few times in my little experience when I have felt such a sense of the savour and unction of the Spirit on my soul, and Christ made so precious, I felt such a love to that blessed Person of the Spirit of truth, and my heart has expanded in holy love to Him.  To think that He, as He proceeds forth from the Father and Son, came to this wicked sinful man, He entered into my wicked sinful corrupt heart, He quickened my soul, He convinced me of my sin, He revealed unto me the way of life through Jesus Christ our Lord.  ‘Christ in you the hope of glory’.  You think of this beautiful word, this pure river flowing forth; ‘He showed me a pure river of water of life clear as crystal proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb’, out of the throne of the eternal Father and the eternal Son.  We read in John  that He proceeds forth from the Father and the Son, He proceeds forth into the Church of God, ‘this river that makes glad the city of God’. 

‘When He the Spirit of truth is come He will reprove (the margin says, convince) the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment to come’.  When the Holy Spirit comes to a sinner’s heart, that sinner will be convinced of their sin.  It is a strong word ‘convince’, and I have often thought of it in this way.  Some of the Lord’s people, many of the Lord’s people have a very gentle work, in their experience of the truth, our dear sister here, her experience I think could be rightly expressed, “here a little, there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept,” a gradual opening of the truths of God in her heart, in her soul, in her experience.  And eventually brought by that blessed Spirit to see something of the wonderful sacred grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and attracted and drawn to Him.  That is the work of the Holy Ghost.  Now, some of the Lord’s people are led very deeply and they are deeply convinced of sin, they solemnly and deeply feel conviction in their heart and the terrible awful nature of their sinful heart and their wicked life, and then they have the precious things of Jesus wonderfully revealed unto them.  Others of the Lord’s people, very gradually, they are led and taught, they are guided, perhaps over many months, many years, but gradually, just a little here, a little there, a little opening of their lost condition, a praying unto God, a seeking, a searching, ‘a feeling after Him’, as we read in the Word of God.  Is there anyone here tonight feeling after God?  You have come to the chapel tonight and there is something deep within your soul.  We read of it in the Acts of the Apostles, ‘feeling after Him’.  There is something, does this express it?  ‘An aching void that the world can never fill.’  You have tried all the things in the world, and its pleasures, but there is something within that is not satisfied, you need something, you have got an aching void, you long for something, you look for something, you wait for something.  You keep seeking, you keep praying, you keep pressing on.  ‘Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you’.  That is the way that the Lord leads, that is the way the Spirit works in the heart.

‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever’.  This is where the divine Spirit leads a poor broken-hearted sinner to this eternal foundation that is laid.  ‘Behold I lay in Zion a foundation’.  What is that foundation? Christ!  Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  That is the foundation that is laid in Zion.  ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’.  That is the foundation that is laid in Zion, and that is the foundation that the Holy Ghost lays in a heart of a poor sinner.  We need to be careful, friends, and I emphasise this.  There are those that rest on the fact that God has laid a foundation in Zion, and they know all about the truth of God,  that Jesus Christ is the first and the last, that He was crucified on Calvary, that He put away sin, that a glorious foundation has been laid in Zion.  But they do not know it in their own hearts.  Real religion is wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost.  ‘Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus’.  But we must be brought into it experimentally,  Christ revealed. 

We read of the work of the Holy Ghost, that He will testify of Christ, that He will reveal the things of Jesus. He brings a poor sinner in all their emptiness, poverty and insufficiency to know their lost condition and to see,

‘If ever my poor soul be saved,
‘Tis Christ must be the way’.

Now, let us dwell then for a little here on this sacred blessed and truth, when the Lord Jesus in the Revelation says, ‘I am Alpha and Omega’, Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, Omega is the last.  ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the ending’.  ‘I am’ Jehovah Jesus, I am the eternal Son of the eternal Father.  Just think of those sacred and blessed truths that we have here in the Word of God concerning the Person of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  My mind goes to those beautiful words in the opening passages of John’s Gospel.  J. C. Ryle said that if you change a comma or a full stop in the first five verses in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, you will introduce a damnable heresy into the church of God.  You just listen closely, because it is speaking of Christ the eternal Son of God who was manifest in the flesh, listen to what it says of His glorious Person, ‘In the beginning was the Word’, (that is the eternal Son of the Father, from everlasting to everlasting.)  ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’.  (It is speaking here of the divinity of Christ.)  ‘The same was in the beginning with God, all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.  In Him was life, and the life (notice the change in metaphor) was the light of men.  And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not’.  This is the true light that now shineth.  ‘God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined into our hearts with the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’.  John 1 verse 18, ‘No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him’.  This wonderful, glorious mystery of the holy God Man.  Again, John chapter 1 verse 14 is a word that I probably quote more than any other when I am preaching, ‘And the Word (that is the eternal Son of the Father) was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth’. 

It was brought to my mind earlier today as I was meditating in this word, ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever’, when I was very young in the way, just after I was baptised, the Devil came very powerfully, I did not know it was the Devil, but he came with a very powerful temptation, he suggested to me that Jesus Christ was not the eternal Son of God.  That temptation brought me into such confusion and darkness, it really did.  I did not know how to pray to God; at the same time he tempted me that I could not pray to the Father, I could not pray to the Son, I could not pray to the Holy Ghost, because they would be jealous.  And these things were so real.  But I remember coming home late one evening and sitting up in bed in all this darkness and confusion that so seemed to fill my mind after being baptised and Christ being made so precious to me, I was brought into utter darkness, confusion and bondage, and I started reading in the Proverbs, in those early days I often read the Proverbs, I found them so profitable, and the Psalms.  And I sat up and in the early hours until I arrived at the 8th chapter of the Proverbs, and I came to this point, verse 22, ‘The Lord possessed me’, you know, friends, it was so beautifully revealed to me, this was Christ speaking, and He spoke it right into my heart,  the scales fell off my eyes, the bondage departed and I was delivered from darkness.  ‘The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.  (And this is what delivered me) I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was’.  And then it goes through a whole list of before the creation of the world etc.  And he says, ‘my delights’.  ‘Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men’.  In eternity past, before the Son of God was made flesh He was delighting in His Church, in His Bride, He was.  He was looking to that time when He would come to redeem them and deliver them from all adversity and from all their sin, He was looking to that time when He would be made flesh.  ‘A body hast thou prepared me’.  And so at the appointed time “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem them that are under the law.”  ‘I am come that they might have life’, that life is in Christ, and what a life it is, it is eternal life.  ‘I give unto my sheep eternal life’.  You see, He is the eternal Son of God, and the life He gives is an eternal life.  ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and for ever’.

Please do not think that we are trying to separate between the divine and human, but we must make a clear distinction here because the Word of God does.  Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God that took into union with His divine nature a holy sinless human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and in so doing He became bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.  In the first two chapters of the Hebrews the apostle opens this sacred and precious truth, he speaks of the divinity of Christ.  In the first chapter he quotes from the book of Psalms in the fifth verse, ‘For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten (that is Christ) into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him’.  According to Holy Scripture, it is sinful to worship any but God.  It proves His divinity, that He is the eternal Son of the eternal Father.  Then he quotes to us here from those beautiful sacred words of Psalm 45, ‘But unto the Son he saith’.  I shall never forget my brother Joe, I heard him speak it from the pulpit but he told me personally also, he used to work with a Jehovah’s Witness.  Well the Jehovah’s Witnesses deny that Christ is the eternal Son of God, they deny the Trinity, and they deny that the Spirit of God is a distinct person.  And this man used to talk to my brother Joe day by day, and one day Joe thought, well, I will test this man, and he took him to Psalm 45 and said, ‘what does this mean concerning God and ‘Thy throne O God is for ever and ever, and the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre’?  And he gave a very good exposition on the name Jehovah and on the eternity of God, and then my brother said to him, let us turn to Hebrews chapter 1, and he said, what do you make of verse 8?  ‘But unto the Son He saith, Thy throne O God is for ever and ever’.  ‘Ah’, he said, ‘that does not mean what it says’.  It completely floored him.  You see, the word of God is clear and we must stick close to it.  This scripture proves that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, ‘Unto the Son He saith, Thy throne O God is for ever and ever’. 

Just think of that beautiful word in Psalm 2, ‘Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion’.  Who is it? Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  ‘Thy throne O God is for ever and ever, a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.  Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows’.  Oh how beautifully it speaks of the glorious Person of the Son of God who was manifest in the flesh.  And then he goes on in the 2nd chapter of the Hebrews to speaks of man and the creation of man, quoting here from Psalm 8, ‘””What is man that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, thou crownest him with glory and honour and didst set him over the works of thy hands’.  That is man, that is Adam, when he was created, and God set him over all the works of His hands.  ‘Thou hast put all things in subjection under Him, for in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under Him’.  But then what does He go on to say?  ‘But we see Jesus’.  What a wonderful mercy if there are those of you here that come tonight and you, ‘see Jesus’.  You see something of the beauty and glory of the incarnate Word, something of the beauty and glory of the law fulfilled in His glorious Person, something of the beauty and glory of that holy sacrifice of Calvary and that blood that we have in the chapter here, ‘the blood of the everlasting covenant’.  ‘The blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son that cleanseth us from all sin’.  That is the foundation and it is eternally the same.  That precious blood will never lose its power, never.  It is the blood of Jesus, it will cleanse away the sins of the whole Church.  ‘But we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels.” He establishes before that man was made a little lower than the angels.  Angels are pure created spirits, man is body and spirit, hence he says ‘a little lower than the angels’.  ‘But we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels’ – now why? ‘for the suffering of death’, that is why.  He came to suffer, to bleed and to die.  This baptistery, my beloved friends, represents the grave of Christ.  So it is a very solemn thing, and yet very sacred.  He suffered death for His people, ‘for the suffering of death we see Him crowned with glory and honour that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man’.  Then it speaks of His divinity.  ‘For it became Him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect’.  The word ‘perfect’ means complete.  He has redeemed His Church His Bride, He has saved her with an everlasting salvation.  Through sufferings perfect now He reigns.  He has done the work that His Father gave Him to do.  He cried with a loud voice, “It is finished.”  We read in John 19, ‘Jesus knowing in Himself that all things were now accomplished’. There on the cross of Calvary in the midst of all His agonies and sufferings He knew, He had satisfied the demands of divine justice.  Divine justice demanded ‘the soul that sinneth it shall die’, curse and damnation to every soul that has sinned against God, that is what divine justice demands.  Christ came to satisfy it for His Church, for His Bride, in that glorious holy sacrifice of Calvary.

Again here in the Hebrews we read in the 9th chapter of the wonderful and glorious sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, in verse 11 we read, ‘But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle’, that means, His sacred humanity that He assumed in the womb of the Virgin.  Of course the comparison is with the tabernacle of the Old Testament, that tabernacle in the Old Testament represented Christ, the outward adornments of that tabernacle was badgers skins, the inward part of that tabernacle was pure gold, the mercy seat, the golden cherubims, so the outward adornment of badger skins represented His humanity, ‘he hath no form nor comeliness that we should desire him’, that is in His humanity, in all His humiliation, sufferings and sorrows.  But the inward part of the tabernacle represented His divinity, He is the eternal Son of the eternal Father.  ‘But Christ being come an High Priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place’.  There was a constant and continual sacrifice under the Old Testament, as we are instructed here ‘For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifice make the comers thereunto perfect’ – never.

Not all the blood of beasts
On all Jewish altars slain
Could give the guilty conscience peace
Or wash away the stain

But Christ the heavenly Lamb
Bears all our sins away
A sacrifice of nobler name
And richer blood than they

‘Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once’.  ‘Now once in the end of the world hath He put away sin by the offering of Himself’.  ‘Having obtained eternal redemption for us’.  Then he goes on, ‘If the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit’.  I do not believe that that means the Holy Ghost, no, I believe it means the divine nature of the Son of God. Look more closely, ‘How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God’.  In the context it is speaking of the altar under the Levitical dispensation, now that is typical, it is typical of Christ.  There is an altar and there is a sacrifice on the altar, they are distinct one from the other, the altar typifies/represents the divinity of Christ, the sacrifice on the altar represents the humanity of Christ, one sacrifice.  He offered His sacred holy human nature on the altar of His divinity, it is a perfect and a complete sacrifice of Jesus Christ the Son of God, and I believe that that is what the apostle alludes to there.  ‘How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself (a complete sacrifice) without spot to God, purge your conscience’.  ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever’.  He then entered into death itself, but we read those beautiful words in the Acts of the apostles that ‘death could not hold Him’, it was not possible that death could hold Him, He died for the sins of His people.

 My beloved friends in the Garden of Gethsemane is that sacred transaction that is recorded in Isaiah 53, ‘He laid upon Him the iniquity of us all’.  That is, the eternal Father laid upon His incarnate Son the sin of the Church. In the Garden of Gethsemane we see our Beloved as He bows before His holy Father under the deep solemn and awful sufferings. The awful weight of the guilt and sin of the Church.  And He said, ‘Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but thine be done’.  He was under the tremendous weight of the sin and guilt of the Church of God. How He suffered, what a weight, we cannot even begin to understand.  We read that so great was the agony of His holy soul that He ‘sweat as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground’.  What agonies, what sorrows.  This baptistery not only represents the grave of Christ, but when the believer is baptised in the water it speaks of the overwhelming sufferings of Christ, when we are baptised it is witnessing that we humbly hope trust and believe that Jesus suffered and bled and died for me, this is my only hope of salvation, that is what we are professing.   

 I said to you that we must make a clear distinction, the Son of God, in His divine nature, could not suffer, the Son of God in His divine nature could not die, it is an utter impossibility, the Scripture says, ‘God, who cannot die’, He cannot die and God cannot suffer.  But the Son of God manifest in the flesh, He took into a sacred mystical union with His own divine nature that sacred holy humanity, and in that sacred holy humanity, which was His own personal body and soul, He suffered, He bled, He died, He passed through untold agonies and sorrows.  He declares; ‘No man taketh my life from me, I have power to lay my life down (He is speaking of that holy human life that He took in the womb of the Virgin) and I have power to take it again, this commandment have I received of my Father’.  So when He said, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit’, the eternal Son, commended His own personal human soul into the hands of His eternal Father and in so doing He voluntarily entered into death itself.  ‘But on the third day He rose again’.  When the believer comes up out of the water, it is an emblem of Christ rising from the grave, we rise in newness of life. This baptismal service represents ‘Jesus Christ and Him crucified’.  He is now entered into heaven, He has opened heaven, He has made a new and a living way into the holy place.  ‘Such an High Priest have we who is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, He now sitteth (that holy God Man) on the right hand of the Majesty on high’.  We have an High Priest, He was ‘tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin’.  He remains eternally the same.

One last word, a beautiful word of comfort concerning this glorious Person of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  He sends a message to His poor, tempted, tried people, He does.  ‘Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me, In my Father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself’ – now this is a message from the eternal Son of the Father, and He is absolutely true to His Word, “He will not fail “– ‘I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also’.

May the Lord add His blessing.

Comments at the pool

My dear sister in Christ, the word that has rested with me today to give to you, is from the 6th chapter of the prophecy of Hosea and the 3rd verse, ‘Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord, His going forth is prepared as the morning, and He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain upon the earth’.  The apostle Paul in his epistle to the Philippians says, ‘I follow after’, and here we have, ‘then shall we know’, there is a knowledge yet to be obtained, this knowledge is not just an empty intellectual knowledge, it is a spiritual knowledge, it is what the Lord will lead you into and what you will experience in the days that are to come.  But the great thing is, ‘if we follow on’, this evening we are ‘following on’ in the sacred ordinances of His house, and it says here ‘then shall we know’.  The apostle Peter in the closing benediction of his 2nd epistle exhorts, ‘But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’.  ‘Then shall we know’.  And the great thing is to be found following Christ, and the way that we follow Christ is in His Word. By reading His Word, meditating in His Word, sitting under the ministry of the Word, not as we read in James as ‘forgetful hearers’ but going on to practice and to walk in those things that the Lord lays in our hearts, and keeping close to our Lord Jesus Christ.  ‘Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord, His going forth is prepared as the morning, and He shall come unto us as the rain (that is Christ, He will come by His Spirit, we have spoken of the water and of the Spirit), as the latter and former rain upon the earth’.  That is, the Lord will visit your soul from time to time and He will revive your heart and renew your spirit.  ‘Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord’.