when he died upon the tree, as
the substitute for sinners God will not impute to me. Glory, glory, I'm accepted, robed
in Christ's own righteousness. I'm a child, an heir of heaven,
saved by God's almighty grace. Christ's obedience to the Father
is imputed now to me. In God's sight I'm pure and holy. He declares me so to be. Glory, glory, I'll not perish. In Christ's hands I am secure. He who saved me sure will keep
me. By God's grace I shall endure. This is not a vain presumption. I just take him at his word. Christ has sworn they shall not
perish who believe on me their Lord. Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles together
to Revelation chapter 21. Revelation 21. The Lord is describing in symbolic
language the New Jerusalem. This is the one that comes down
from heaven. This is our heavenly abode. And we'll begin reading in verse
21. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, every several
gate was of one pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold,
as it were transparent glass." And we know from what the Lord
has described, there's three gates on each of the four walls,
north, south, east, and west. And each one of these gates is
a picture of Christ. There's 12 of them because the
12 tribes of Israel come from every kindred, tongue, nation,
and people. And all the whosoever's of God
come into this city. That gate is the pearl of great
price, the Lord Jesus himself. And notice that these streets
that are made of pure gold are transparent like glass. When
you look at a pane of glass, you don't look at the glass,
you look through the glass. And so we're not going to be
looking at the streets of gold and being enamored by their beauty. They're going to not be of any
attention to us at all. And I saw no temple therein,
for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the
sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it. For the glory of
the Lord did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which
are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth
shall bring their glory and honor into it. And the gates of it
shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there,
which means the gates are always open. coming and going, fellowshipping. And they shall bring the glory
and honor of all the nations into it, and there shall in no
wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever
worketh abomination." I was thinking about that. What is an abomination?
It's a sacrifice that's not acceptable to God. That's an abomination,
a sacrifice that doesn't measure up to His glory, doesn't honor
Him. And there's only one sacrifice
that does that. And that's Christ. So everything
that man brings is an abomination. No man trying to get into this
city with anything other than Christ will be entered in, will
be allowed in. Or that maketh a lie, but they
which are written in the Lamb's book of life. And he showed me
a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal proceeding out
of the throne of God and of the Lamb. That's the word of God. And in the midst of the street
of it and on either side of the river, there was the tree of
life, which bear 12 manner of fruits and yielded her fruit
every month. And the leaves of the trees were for the healing
of the nations. We know who that tree of life
is. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God
and of the lamb shall be in it. And his servant shall serve him.
and they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their
foreheads." In other words, he's gonna be on their thoughts all
the time. And there shall be no night there, and they need
no candle, need the light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth
them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. And he said
unto me, these sayings are faithful and true. And the Lord God of
the holy prophets sent his angels to show unto his servants the
things which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the
sayings of the prophecies of this book. Let's pray together. Our heavenly father, once again, you have called us
together here to this place. You've put it in our hearts to
want to be here. You've promised to meet with
us. You've knit our hearts together in a like spirit, looking in
faith to thy dear son. We ask, Lord, that you'd be pleased
now to bless your work, bless your word, Bless the message
to our hearts. Give us more faith and cause
us, Lord, to come in repentance and grace. Lord, we have nothing in and
of ourselves to offer you. Everything would be an abomination.
But oh, what great hope we have in knowing that the Lord Jesus
Christ offered himself to you and that he is acceptable in
thy sight and that you were pleased when you saw the travail of his
soul. Lord, we pray for our brother Robert. We thank you for his
progress. We pray for your hand of healing
to continue to be upon him and for you to bring he and Deanna
back to us soon. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. Number 352 in the hard back teminal,
352. Let's stand together. ? Jesus, lover of my soul ? ? Let
me to thy bosom fly ? ? While the nearer waters roll ? ? While
the tempest still is high ? ? Hide me, O my Savior, hide ? ? Till
the storm of life is past ? Safe into the haven guide, O receive
my soul at last. Other refuge have I none, hangs
my helpless soul on thee. Leave, O leave me not alone,
still support and comfort me. All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring, Cover my defenseless head With
the shadow of Thy wing. Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
more than all in Thee I find. Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
heal the sick, and lead the blind. Just and holy is Thy name. I am all unrighteousness. False and full of sin I am, Thou
art full of truth and grace. Plenteous grace with thee is
found, Grace to cover all my sin. Let the healing streams
abound, Make and keep me pure within. Thou of life, the fountain
part, freely let me take of Thee. Spring Thou up within my heart,
rise to all eternity. Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles together
to Acts 28. I've titled this message, Gospel Truths
from Melita. We have four verses to look at
tonight where The Apostle Paul is on the island of Melita after
the shipwreck, and he encounters a man by the name of Publius.
And I hope the Lord will teach us some valuable truths from
these four verses. I have six, so I hope that we'll
be able to get through them. Acts chapter 28, we'll begin
reading in verse seven. And in the same quarters were
possessions of the chief man of the island. That's the governor. This is the island of Malta today,
just south of Sicily, and it was a Roman territory. And so the governor of this island
was named Publius, and he owned a large estate near the place
where this ship wrecked. Remember, you have 276 souls
that are marooned now on this island. And the chief man of
the island, whose name was Publius, who received us and lodged us
three days courteously. And it came to pass that the
father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux,
some sort of dysentery, would have been common in that day,
I'm sure, to whom Paul entered in and prayed and laid his hands
on him and healed him. So when this was done, others
also which had diseases in the island came and were healed,
who also honored us with many honors. And when we departed,
They laded us with such things as were necessary. And after
three months, we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had
wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux, who were
Roman gods of the sea. And that was the name of this
ship. So the Apostle Paul is on this
island for three months. There's no mention in these verses
that we just read of him preaching the gospel to a group of people
like we find in so many other places. There's no mention of
anyone being converted. There's no mention of Melita
anywhere else in the scripture. there's no mention of a return
visit to check on the church, there's no mention of a church,
there's no mention of an epistle being written to this congregation,
you would think after three months that the Apostle Paul would have
gathered these people together and after they had observed the
miracles of healing that you would you would hear the Lord
telling us, and they believed, and they gathered together in
Christ, but there's no mention of that anywhere. As a matter
of fact, if we look at extra biblical history, which is always
suspect, there's no mention of a church in Malta before the
time of Constantine, which was the fourth century. And so there's
no mention of believers anywhere on this island. We cannot say
with any certainty whether anyone was saved in the three months
that Paul was there. The scriptures are silent. And
where the scriptures are silent, we must remain silent. We can't
speculate. We can't have an opinion about
What may have happened, or we can, but that's all it would
be, it would be an opinion. When we stand to speak for God,
we can only preach, thus saith the Lord. And since we don't
have the answer to these questions, we can't say with any authority
or with any confidence. that there were people saved. Publius, his father, the others
that were healed. Do we have any examples in the
Bible of God healing someone who wasn't saved? Yes, we do. You remember the 10 lepers? At
least nine of them showed no evidence whatsoever of coming
to faith in Christ. One of the ten that the Lord
healed. So just because the Lord performed
a miracle of healing, physical healing for them, doesn't necessarily
cause us to conclude that the Lord saved them. Matter of fact, Every single
time, every single time that any person in the world is brought
back from an illness, it was the hand of God that did it. Every time. It's the Lord that heals men,
and so how many millions or billions of times have men been cured
of illnesses by the very hand of God who didn't belong to the
Lord? As I said, there's no other mention
of Melita or Malta anywhere. That being said, I want to try
to draw some gospel truths from this story, not knowing what
the state, what the spiritual state of Publius was. We don't know. And we're not
going to make any conclusions about that. But we do know, we
do know that nice people go to hell. This man was very gracious. Matter of fact, the word, the
word courteously that you see in verse seven is the word philanthropy. And just because a person shows some
evidences of kindness is not evidence of their salvation.
I remember preaching a funeral, and there was a man there. As
far as I know, it's the first time he ever heard the gospel.
And he was the first one to speak to me after the funeral. And
he came up to me and he said, I have a brother that's a professing
atheist, but he's the nicest guy I've ever known in my whole
life. Do anything for you, give you
the shirt off his back. I never understood how someone
like that could go to hell, but you answered that question today. Nice people go to hell every
day. The hope of our salvation is
not determined by, we ought to be. Like Publius was, we ought
to be courteous. We ought to be kind. We ought
to be considerate. But that in and of itself shows
no evidence of salvation. The world exalts morality over
truth. I'll say that again. The world
exalts morality over truth. They sacrifice sound doctrine
for outward appearances and they look at the behavior of a person
to determine whether or not that person is saved and going to
heaven. Nice people go to hell every
day. Every day. The world figures that if a person
is kind and generous and affectionate, and if they speak the right religious
words, it doesn't really matter what they believe. Salvation
is determined by how courteous they are and how kind they are
and how sacrificial they are. Nice people go to hell every
day. Now, I don't know what Publius went to hell, or whether or not
the Lord saved him. We don't know, the Bible's silent
on that. But just because he was kind
and courteous and just because he honored the apostle and gave
to him, laden him with such things as were necessary at his departure,
is no evidence in and of itself that he was saved. Salvation is determined by who
and what we believe. You see, the world exalts morality
over doctrine, don't they? I remember going to preach at
a jail one time and the chaplain at the jail told me, he said,
now just leave your doctrine at the door. We don't want any
controversial doctrine in here. Everybody's got a doctrine. The
word doctrine means teaching. But the religious world wants
to say, well, you know, the doctrine of election and the doctrine
of sovereignty and the doctrine of particular redemption and
what exactly you think was accomplished at the cross and what I say was
done, those are doctrinal differences that we can have within the family
of Christianity. No, it's not. They say, as long as you love
Jesus, it doesn't matter what doctrine you hold. This is what
I'm trying to say. Nice people go to hell every
day, and they go to hell because they believe the wrong thing.
They believe the wrong person. They may give you the shirt off
their back. They may be like this man's brother, who may be the kindest person
you've ever known. Good people. As far as outward
goodness is concerned, measured by man's standard, go to hell
every day. We want to be courteous. We want to be kind. We want to
be a testimony of God's grace to others. No question about
that. But you can believe all the wrong
things and be a nice person. Our authority is God's Word.
What we believe comes from the Word of God. And who we believe. We know whom
we have believed and we're persuaded that He is able to keep that
which we've committed unto Him. We're trusting Christ for our
souls For the sacrifice for our sins, we have no other means
by which to atone for our sins. Doctrine is teaching. It's the
teaching of the Bible. We believe those things that
God has said. Those who are in charge of the
ship have cast the moorings to the dock when it comes to doctrine. And the ship was without a rudder
and without sails and it's at the mercy of the sea. And they
think, well, you know, we're just going to love Jesus. Publius
very well may have spent three months with the apostle Paul and died and went to hell. He
may have shared his immense wealth with these people that sacrificially
and died and went to hell. We don't know. But we do know
that nice people, nice people go to hell every day. Our salvation
is not determined by how nice we are. It's determined by who
and what we believe. We look to the word of God. Our
doctrine is Christ. It's Christ. And we get it from
the word of God. Here's our hope. Our hope is
in the precious promises of God. We're resting the hope of our
immortal soul on God's promises. And we know that all scripture
is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for what? Doctrine,
reproof, instruction in righteousness, correction. The man of God may
be thoroughly furnished. The very first thing that God
says about his word is it's profitable for doctrine. What do we believe and who do
we believe? We don't have any idea what Publius believed. We
know what happened to him. We know what opportunities he
had. We don't know what he believed. Paul was writing to Timothy in
1-2 Timothy chapter 4. He said, preach the word of God
with doctrine. For the time will come when men
will not endure sound doctrine. And people say, well, you're
just preaching cold doctrine. No, we're not. We're emphasizing
the importance of having right doctrine, of having our faith
founded on the truth. As I said, all men have some
form of doctrine. The Bible speaks of the doctrine
of Balaam, which is a mercenary doctrine of buying your way into
heaven. Obligating God to save you by
what you offer to him. That's the doctrine. That's a
doctrine. It's the doctrine of Balaam. Scripture speaks the
doctrine of devils and the doctrines and commandments of men were
warned to not be carried about by every wind of doctrine. And in Hebrews chapter 13, nine,
it says, be not carried away with strange doctrines. What
are strange doctrines, teachings that are contrary to the word
of God, contrary to Christ, contrary to the gospel of God's grace. Here's the hope of our salvation.
The hope of our salvation is not determined by how nice we
are. And again, we ought to be the nicest people on the face
of the earth, but that's not going to save anybody. Publius
was courteous, he was sacrificial, he took care of her. 276 souls,
he took him to his home. That's what scripture says, and
provided for them for three days, fed them, made sure they were
dry and warm. No, our salvation is determined
by who we believe and what we believe about him, about Christ. Don't you love the story of Jairus
who came before the Lord and pleaded with the Lord, come Lord,
come to my home and heal my daughter. She's sickened to death. And
that's when the woman with the issue of blood came along. While
the Lord is going to Jairus' house, who was the keeper of
the synagogue, this woman, comes along and there's a divine interruption
in the Lord's progress to Jairus's house to heal his daughter. And
by the time the Lord's finished dealing with this woman with
the issue of blood, the servant of Jairus comes and says, no
need to bother the master any farther. Your daughter's dead. You remember what the Lord said? Be not afraid. Only belief. Only belief. There's the hope
of our salvation. Not based on how nice we are
or what we do or what we don't do, but who we believe. Be not afraid. Only belief. Martha accused the Lord, Lord,
if you'd been here, my brother hadn't died. Martha, you believe
in, yes, Lord, I believe in, I am the resurrection and the
life. He that believeth in me, though he be dead, yet shall
he live. And he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
Martha, believest thou this? Believest thou this? What's she say? Yea, Lord. I believe that thou art the Christ,
the son of God that should come into the world. There's salvation. See, you and I are constantly
accused by the devil to evaluate the hope of our salvation based
on our behavior. We're not excusing bad behavior,
you know that. We're just saying our behavior
is never going to be what it needs to be. But our faith is
sure. We believe God. Nice people go
to hell every day because they don't believe Christ. They don't
believe God. It's faith that heals, that saves. Look at, you still have your
Bibles open to Acts chapter 28. Look with me at verse 24. Now, we're gonna
deal with this later, but I wanted to show you this in light of
what we're saying right now. And some believe the things which
were spoken and some believe not. Neither you believe or you
don't believe. You either believe God or you
don't believe God. You're the believer or you're
not a believer. It's that plain and simple. And when they agreed not among
themselves, you see the believers believe what was being told them.
The unbelievers didn't believe what was being told them. And
they came together and the believers said, I believe what he just
said. And the unbelievers said, I don't believe that. You're either a believer or you're
not a believer. And they agreed not among themselves,
they departed, and after that, Paul had spoken one word, well,
speak the Holy Ghost by Isaiah the prophet unto our fathers.
You remember, I've said this on many occasions, this is the
passage that is most often quoted in the New Testament from Isaiah
chapter six. And Paul's saying, the prophet
Isaiah spoke the truth when he prophesied of you. When he said,
go into this people and say, hearing you shall hear and shall
not understand and seeing you shall see and not perceive. For
the heart of this people is waxed gross and their ears are dull
of hearing than their eyes have they closed, lest they should
see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand
with their heart and should be converted and I should heal them. Now, the Lord's not saying here,
you know, maybe you just understand things about God, but you really
don't know God. And you need to really evaluate
whether or not you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
You start doing that and you're gonna find, if you're honest
with yourself, you're gonna find your motives and your behavior
and everything else to be inconsistent. No, the Lord's saying here what
some believe and some believe not. And the ones that did not
believe were not ashamed to say, I don't believe that. And they're
still not ashamed to say that. And the believers say, yes, yes. And that is the evidence of when
the scripture speaks in Romans chapter eight about the Spirit
of God confirming to our spirit that we are the sons of God,
Is that Romans 8 or 1st Corinthians? I can't remember. You know the
passage I'm talking about. That's speaking of when believers
hear the gospel, the Spirit of God confirms to their hearts,
yes, yes. If Christ doesn't save me, I
won't be saved. He's the only acceptable sacrifice.
Yes, God is sovereign. Yes, God has elected a particular
people according to his own will and purpose for his own glory. Yes, Christ succeeded in accomplishing
everything the Father seemed to do in securing the salvation
of his people. Yes, he offered himself not to
me, to be accepted or rejected by me. He offered himself to
his father. Yes, if he doesn't give me the
desire, if he doesn't make me willing, I won't be willing.
And I'm a whosoever will because he made me willing. Yes, when
you hear sound doctrine, the spirit of God confirms to your
hearts, yes, that's who I believe. Some believed. and some that
didn't believe. The ones that didn't believe,
oh, they were religious, they were outwardly moral, but they
sacrificed sound doctrine for morality and for outward appearances. The second thing we see from
this, these are lessons. We're probably not going to be
able to get to all six of them, but lessons, gospel truths, not
just lessons. I don't want them, I don't want
these to be lessons. I want them to be gospel truths that speak
to our hearts. We're not here just to be taught
a lesson. We're here to hear the truth. And the first truth
is that nice people go to hell. Publius wasn't saved. all these
people that were healed weren't saved. That's not inconsistent. People are healed and blessed
by God every day that aren't saved. The second lesson, the
second truth is that the law of God is written on every man's
heart. Now these were, these were Romans
who worshipped the mythological gods of Rome. We saw that the
ship from Alexandria was named, where is it? Well, I've turned a page, that's
why I can't find it. In verse 11, Castor and Pollux,
these are the twin sons of Jupiter. Jupiter was the Roman equivalent
to Greek's Zeus and chief God. And so these gods were, this
is where this man was. He was a pagan, worshiping these
mythological gods. And yet, He was, he knew in his
conscience that these people were in need and he had the means
to help them and he showed them benevolence and kindness and he courteously cared for them. We know already that these people
knew something about justice and they knew something about
the power of God when Paul was bitten by that snake in the previous
verses. And they said, yeah, well, you
know, he escaped the sea, but justice has got him now. And
then when he shook off the serpent into the fire, what did he say? What'd they say? They said, oh
no, he's a God. Well, they were wrong on both
points, weren't they? But what does that tell us about these
people? That they knew something about justice. They knew something
about divine power. Why? Because God has written
on the hearts of every man, the knowledge of himself. the difference
between right and wrong. That's not salvation. That's
not salvation. Conscience, the conscience of
men only smites them when they when they violate when they trespass
the law of sin is the transgression of the law of God. And so when
men outwardly transgress the law that they know in their hearts
is right and wrong, then their conscience smites them. And that's
all conscience can do. The difference between that and
the conviction of the Holy Spirit is that the believer knows that
he's never kept any part of God's law, not one single time. That's
the conviction of the Holy Spirit. When the Lord said, I'm gonna
write my law upon their heart and press it upon their mind
so that no man will have to say to his brother, know the Lord,
know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of
them unto the greatest. What is it to have God's law
written on your heart versus having it in your conscience?
Well, when it's in your conscience, all you know is in between what's
right and what's wrong. And this man knew the right thing
to do. But when it's written on your
heart, and you see God's law for what
it is, holy, just, good, and that you are sold under sin,
that the law of God is spiritual, but you are carnal. and that
you've never been able to keep God's law. They had a moral standard, as
do all men. This is the evidence that the
law of God is written on every man's heart. So nice people go
to hell. And people who go to hell know
the difference between right and wrong. They do. They may sear their conscience.
They may lie to themselves. They may change the standards
all they want and say that there are no absolutes, but in their
heart of hearts, they're facing death. They know that they're
going to stand before a holy God. They know. We live in a society that has
changed all the moral standards, haven't they? But you know what? I've seen some of those people
who proudly celebrate things that they ought to be ashamed
of. And I've seen them when they're exposed to the gospel. And there's
a conviction and a shame and a fear that causes them to flee
that. They know. They know. They can whistle through the
graveyard all they want. They can say, well, there's nothing
wrong with this, but they know. They know. The third truth that we can draw
from this, not knowing if the Lord saved any of these people.
No evidence in scripture that there was a church planted here.
in spite of all that happened. But a truth that we can draw
from this is that men will enjoy the benefits of God's good providence
without believing the gospel. Men breathe God's air every day. They eat God's food. They walk
on God's earth. The rain falls and the sun shines
on the righteous and the unrighteous. So, You know, just because these
people enjoyed the good providence of God is no evidence that they
were saved. All men in this world enjoy the
good providence of God. They enjoy the gift of work and
family and children. And they may even say, as one
man in my life has said to me many, many times, who doesn't
believe the gospel and won't come hear me preach. But when
I talked to him, he'll say, you know, every day is a gift. Every
day is a gift. Just because you believe that
doesn't make you a believer. So men enjoy the good providence
of God every day. Doesn't make them believers. The fourth truth from these few
verses is that all men serve God's purpose. And God's purpose
is to glorify himself through the salvation of his people.
And so everything the Lord's doing is to save his people. And the Lord placed these pagan
unbelievers right at the very place where he knew the apostle
Paul would be in order to provide for him. Isaiah chapter 43, verse three.
I am the Lord thy God. the Holy
One of Israel, thy Savior. I gave Egypt for thy ransom,
Ethiopia and Ziba for thee." The nations are dropping a bucket
to God. They all exist for his glory
and for the salvation of his people. All the inhabitants of
the earth are subject to him. Bible says that the heart of
every king is in the hand of the Lord and he directs it whithersoever
he wills. That's our sovereign God. Our
God reigns over all the armies of heaven and over all the inhabitants
of the earth. And so let the politicians in
their hypocrisy and in their greed and in their dishonesty,
the things that frustrate you and me so often, Child of God,
don't be frustrated. Every one of those politicians
are but pawns in the hands of our God. They're puppets, he's
pulling their string. That boss that is difficult for
you, he's actually there to serve
you, not you him. I mean, we do, we want to be
obedient, we want to be faithful, we want to, but in the grand
scheme of things, that boss exists for you. God put him there to
provide that job for you. In the grand scheme of things,
in the spiritual light of things, they are there to serve you.
Everything in this world is that way. If you belong to the Lord,
you belong to the Lord. Everything in this world is here
for his glory, and he's using it to that end. Does the Bible not say that the
Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh? As difficult as those taskmasters
made it on the children of Israel, it was God that had Pharaoh in
his hands. It was God that used Pharaoh
to bring about the deliverance of his people. And in the same
regard, it was the Lord that made King David a man after God's
own heart. So all these kings are in the
hands of God. The Bible says, a man's heart
deviseth his ways, but the Lord. direct us his steps. And that's
true of you and me. And it's true of every other
person. Man makes his plans. He divides his way. God orders
his steps and everything, everything is right on schedule. It's exactly where it's supposed
to be. That's a truth from this. The
Lord raised up a pagan king by the name of Cyrus in the days
of Ezra in order to issue a decree, a Persian king, in order to issue
a decree to send Ezra back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.
And in the days of Nehemiah, he raised up another king by
the name of Artaxerxes and sent him back to build the city of
Jerusalem. Our God reigns over the living
and the dead. Pilate, Herod, the Pharisees, the high priest,
they were all but props in the drama of redemption being carried
out by the Lord himself. That means that when the Lord
sends a Shimei, you remember Shimei? When David was fleeing
Jerusalem and when Absalom had taken over the throne and there
was a man by the name of Shimei that started cursing David and
casting rocks at him. And David's commander wanted
to go over and take off his head And what did David say? Let him
alone. The Lord told him to curse David. May God give us that kind of
faith. When people don't do things the way we think they should,
when people are actually dishonest and mean and evil toward us,
might we be able to say the Lord sent Him. He's my Shimei. The Lord sent him into my life.
I've had a lot of Shimeis over the years, haven't you? The next gospel truth. that I
see from this passage of scripture is that men love the praise of
men rather than the praise of God. You say, where do you get
that from? The name Publius translated means popular, popular. There's no evidence that God
saved him. I don't know whether he did or not. I want to emphasize
that again. I'm not making conclusions. I'm not speaking. I'm just drawing
from these few verses that we have some truths about the gospel. That men love the praise of men
more than the praise of God. Well, you know, I'd have to,
if I believe what you believe, I'd have to leave my church.
I've had people say that to me. I've had preachers say that.
I'd get fired if I preach what you preach. Or, you know, I'd lose all my
friends, or I'd be ostracized from my family. And men will
deny Christ in order to remain popular among
men. They value the opinions of men
more than the praise of God. They'd rather be popular with
men than to have peace with God. And sixthly, the sixth truth
that I see from these few verses is that our God is not trying
to save the world. He's not trying to save the world.
If no one on the island of Melita was saved, if Publius was not
saved, If his father was not saved and these other people
that came and were healed and were around the apostle Paul
for three months were not saved, it would not be the first group
of people that the Lord passed over. He's been passing over
whole nations of people, whole cities, whole states. millions
of people. God's not, he's not running around
making his voice known and trying to get a following, you know? Now he takes no pleasure, the
Bible says, in the death of the wicked. And we crieve over the lost condition
of the world. But God's not obligated to save
anybody. We're not running around trying
to get everybody saved. We're just God's sheepdog trying
to, you know, Bring the, you know, God's sheep
together. I'm trying to round up God's sheep. And how do we
do that? We preach the gospel to all men,
and we don't know who God's sheep are. We don't know who God's
elect are until we see how they respond to the gospel. So, If the Lord saved none of these
people, it wouldn't be any different from what he's doing right now. Here we are. Most of us have
driven from outside of this little city to come here to this place.
I don't see anybody here that lives in Apopka, Florida. Juan, you got an Apopka address?
Adam, do you have a... Oh, I'm sorry. We have one, a
pumpkin here. You get my point though. You
get my point. The gospel's here and this city
has no interest in it. And the Lord's not... Ramon, you're from Apopka also.
But you see my point. And the Lord has, there's huge
swaths of humanity that have no gospel anywhere around them. Nations, cities of millions of
people. The Lord's not, not trying to
get the world saved. He's elected a particular people.
Christ successfully redeemed those people whom God chose. He put away the sins of those
people by the sacrifice of himself. And those sheep will hear the
shepherd's voice and they will follow after him. Our heavenly father, thank you
for your word. Lord, might these gospel truths
be impressed on our hearts and minds by your spirit. We ask
it in Christ's name, amen. Number 28, let's stand together,
28. ? God has mercy on whom he will
? ? And whom he will, he hardens still ? ? To whom he will, he
gives his grace ? ? And when he will, he hides his face ?
? Let none despise God's sovereign throne ? ? He does what he will
with ? his own. It is his right to save or kill
according to his sovereign will. Yes, God saves some and others
leaves to reap the fruit of their own ways. In the eternal ages
past, God made his choice and it stands fast. Aware that I'm
a guilty and that I'm in God's sovereign hand. Prostrate I fall
before His throne, a wretched, helpless, guilty one. Lord, if you will, you can, I
say, take all my guilt and sin away. A guilty sinner at your
throne, I beg for mercy through your Son. Now trusting Jesus
Christ, God's Son, I know that I'm His chosen one. And God's eternal, sovereign
choice makes this poor sinner's heart rejoice.