AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD

In preceding chapters we have found the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Emmaus, on the Sea of Galilee, and on the Mount of Olives. In this final chapter we see Him at God's right hand.

There is a simple reason why this last study has a place in this series of messages. The great day of Pentecost had come and a ridiculing crowd was saying that the company of Believers was drunk. Peter, however, explained that what they were seeing and hearing was God's fulfilling His promise to send the Holy Ghost. What was happening was explained by the fact that Christ was now up yonder.

I wonder if you have noted in your reading that Peter did not preach about the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost? He spoke of the Lord Jesus, saying that He had arrived up there, and the reason he knew that He had arrived up there was that the Holy Spirit had arrived here. "If I go, I will send him unto you." And Peter's confident knowledge is ours.

One of the stock questions often asked by scoffers is, "How can Jesus sit on the right hand of God if God is a spirit?" Scripture uses many terms suited to our limited understanding that are terms of accommodation or anthropomorphic terms. In other words, there are certain attributes that belong to us as human beings that are attributed to God, and they are used by God in order that you and I may understand Him better.

For instance, Scripture says, "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth." God does not have physical eyes as do I, but the only way in which I can understand that God sees is for Him to say that "the eyes of the Lord run to and fro." The One who made the eye can see without eyes — though I do not understand it. Therefore the language is given to me as to a child.

Then the Bible speaks of the heavens as "God's handi-work" or finger work; not that God has fingers, but He can do the work as if done with fingers. Likewise when Scripture says the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven and is sitting at the right hand of God, I understand that to mean He has gone back to His original place of prominence and honor.

Scripture makes this very plain. In Acts 2:32-35 we read: "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool."

Again in Romans 8:34 we read: "Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us."

Some will say, "But no one ever saw Him at God's right hand." To the contrary, three men saw Him there after He arrived: Stephen, Saul, and a son of Zebedee by the name of John. And here we want to consider the witness of these three men. In the revelation of the Lord Jesus to Stephen we see the intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus we see the illumination by the Holy Spirit and identification with the Lord Jesus Christ. In John, the son of Zebedee, we see our inspection by the great High Priest in heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ

Stephen comes before us first, and we shall see in him the intercessory work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Acts 7 tells of Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin.

After reciting the history of God's people he made a tremendous charge — he accused them of being betrayers and murderers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Immediately they mocked him, then took him out and stoned him. Looking steadfastly into heaven Stephen saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father. Then he asked the Father not to lay this sin to the charge of these men, and so saying he "fell asleep."

Some will say, "Is there confusion in this — a moment ago we were told He was sitting at God's right hand, now we are told He was seen standing at God's right hand?"

When Jesus ascended back into heaven, He sat at God's right hand, and I understand that to mean that salvation was completed. It was finished. It is a finished transaction that He offers. But when Stephen was stoned, do you think He sat there indifferent to the suffering of His own? When that first martyr was stoned, He stood that He might welcome His child home, and He stands with open arms to receive the martyrs of each hour.

He is never indifferent to the sufferings of His own and He makes intercession for them. He died on earth to save us; He lives in heaven to keep us saved. He came down here to get us; He went back to hold on to us, and He can hold on to you today. His hands are not dead hands-they are the hands of a living Christ, an omnipotent God

Christ's work on earth was the work of redemption. In heaven His work is that of intercession. The writer to the Hebrews says, "He is able to save to the uttermost . . . seeing he ever liveth to make intercession" for those that are His own.

"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Could Stephen have used almost the same words as our Lord had not Christ gone back to the right hand of the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to flood the heart and soul of this child with comfort and understanding? Listen!

"Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed unto the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was m all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." He is the Shepherd at God's right hand, and He is watching over His flock down here. Nothing happens to His sheep that He does not see and understand. Oh, there is a Man in the glorv but the Church has lost sight of Him!

Another man who saw Christ at' God's right hand was Paul of Tarsus. In him we see illumination by the Holy Spirit and Identification with Christ. I think the conversion of Saul of -Tarsus on the Damascus road is the greatest event that the world has seen in 1900 centuries great because of its far-reaching effect upon the world.

There are always three factors that enter into the conversion of any individual; without these there would never be a conversion. First, there must be the Holy Spirit to supervise; second, the Word of God must be used and third, there must be a human instrumentality. It is always the Spirit of God using the Word of God through the man of God to make a son of God. 

When Stephen was stoned the young man Saul was there -in fact, he had charge. Stephen, looking up, saw heaven open, but Saul looking up in skeptical blindness saw nothing. However, I am confident that as he looked upon the radiant, indefinable beauty of martyrdom on the face of Stephen Saul must have longed for an understanding. Thus Stephen became the human instrumentality in the initial steps of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Little wonder that Saul was prepared for his Damascus road experience. Seeing heaven open and hearing a voice asking in his own tongue Saul, why persecutest thou me?" this brilliant product of Judaism said "Who art thou. Lord?" It was then that the Holy Spirit illuminated his dark mind and he saw that Jesus Christ was the living Christ.

He found out something else after he said to the Lord Jesus, "Who art thou?" The Lord said, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." In Paul's thinking he had not persecuted One whom he did not know; he had only persecuted the Christians. But Saul of Tarsus was to learn that m salvation is identification; therefore, when he persecuted them he persecuted Him. Here he came to know that those who are in Him" are in a vital relationship. Salvation is identification! But listen to Paul: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do'" The spirit of obedience is the proof of salvation, the proof of identification; and later on, when Saul was arrested he could say, to Agrippa, "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly voice."

We can talk all we want to about Jesus being the Head of the Church, and the Church being His body down here; but until the Church obeys Him, there is no evidence that we belong to Him. It would be folly if I should say with my head "I am going out and have dinner," and my feet and my hands would suddenly say, "We are a little tired, we will sit here and wait for you."

How absurd, for the head and the body work together. And If a man has been joined to Jesus Christ, he will have to say Lord, what will You have me to do?" There will not only be illumination, so that he can see Him as Saviour but Identification, whereby he says, "Now, Lord, not my will,' but Thine be done."

When one is brought into union with Him, Christ never leaves nor forsakes His child -Saul of Tarsus discovered this At the close of his life he wrote in his one song, "All men forsook me"; then he wrote with great ecstasy. "The Lord stood by me."

In a dungeon in one of the awful concentration camps was place a very brilliant doctor who had just found Christ. Later his skeleton was found, and by it was his Bible m which were written these words. "If it were not for the presence of Christ, I could not have stood these days." Abigail said to David, :You are bound in a bundle of life with God." The Church is His body - it is identified with a living Christ.

In the Lord's appearance to the third witness, John the apostle, you see the inspection of the great High Priest. Stephen and Paul had already been martyred, and now John, alone in exile on the Isle of Patmos, saw the living Christ! He saw Him first in the midst of His Church, His feet as burnished brass, His eyes as a flame of fire, and he saw His mouth with His tongue like a sword.

But John, who had been so close to the Lord as to recline on His bosom when in the upper room, who had been so close in fellowship that he could go to Him and ask that he be placed on His right hand -this John, when he saw the glorified Christ, fell at His feet as dead. And should He appear in our midst, there is not one who would approach Him; we would fall on our faces before Him.

Today, He is the glorified Christ, and we stand under His inspection. His eyes, as a flame of fire, will now, and in the future, search us out. In I Corinthians 9:26,27 Paul the intrepid pioneer of the faith, states: "I therefore so run' not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air [Paul says I am not shadowboxing] : but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway "

The word "castaway" simply means disapproved. Paul never imagined he would lose his salvation, but he did think it was possible for him to be a Christian and live m disobedience, and that when he stood in the presence of Christ He would tell him that he had failed Him-he had not been true to Him in this life down here.

But when Paul finished his life, he could say with confident joy: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." He had been obedient m his life Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, laving aside the sins and the weights that would so easily beset us, and let us look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of the faith.

Again, in Hebrews 4:12 the writer says: "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword" Now I know that it means the Book secondarily; primarily it means the Lord Jesus, for He is the Word of God He is the living Christ, and we are standing before Him today as He looks down upon our lives. Someday those eves, as of flame, will search out the wood, hay and stubble. Today, under His loving inspection, what are you building, in your life? Will it stand the refining fire of His inspection at that great time of the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The living Christ is at the right hand of God today, and that right hand is more real than the road to Emmaus, more real than the Sea of Galilee or the Mount of Olives. For I read that there shall be but one highway; that there will be "no more sea," and that every mountain shall be brought low but the right hand of God shall abide forever!