Good morning. Let's open this
morning service with hymn number 21 in your Spiral Gospel Hymns
hymn book, number 21. Familiar tune for all of us.
Let's stand together. Number 21. and the Son, and the Spirit,
three in one. In eternal ages past, made unloved
and sure and fast, God my Father chose His own. In the purse of and ordained that I should be
one with him eternally. God the Son agreed to come in
the flesh to bring me home. he would keep God's holy law
and retrieve me from the fall. Christ in love so willingly stood
as my great surety. For my price he offered blood
to appease the wrath of And he brings us to the lab. By His mighty sovereign call,
God's elect are gathered all. This poor sinner is secure, For
God's love and will endure. It is sealed by God's own word,
By his Spirit and his blood. Blessed, holy, covenant God,
I am yours by ties of blood, Ties of grace and ties of love. Hold me to thy God above, Please be seated. Good morning. Will you open your Bibles with
me to Acts chapter 7? Acts chapter 7. If the Lord gives us ears to
hear what we just sang, that's the whole gospel. That's the
whole gospel. God's sovereign grace in election,
The Father chose according to his own will and purpose, his
people. God the Son came and redeemed
them by the sacrifice of himself. God the Holy Spirit now blesses
the gospel to the hearts of those for whom Christ died and those
whom the Father chose. It's a covenant of grace, all
of grace, all of grace. What great comfort and hope we
have in knowing that salvation is of the Lord. It's all of him. All of him. Let's ask the Lord's blessings
on his word. Our Heavenly Father. We take great hope and comfort.
And knowing that the promise of salvation. Is not based on
a commitment that would make to you. but a promise that you
established in eternity past to save a people, to redeem a
people, to elect a people, to regenerate a people. Lord, we
know that what you do is perfect from beginning to end. We ask,
Lord, that you would give us ears to hear, that we would heed
to the things that you have spoken. We pray that you would give us
faith to believe all that you've said. That we would find our
hope, our rest, and all our salvation in the glorious person and finished
work of thy dear son. Father, we ask the same for all
the places where your gospel is preached today. We ask Lord
that you would. Call out your lost sheep. And
that you would strengthen your elect. Lord, we pray this morning for
Britain and we ask that you would. Be with the surgeons that minister
to him tomorrow and that you would give them skillful hands
and. Or that you would bring healing
to his body We ask that you would comfort his heart now as he waits
on you and give him a sure hope in Christ. For we ask it in Christ's
name. Amen. Most of you know that Britain,
Uranic has a shunt in his head that he's had for many years.
11 years ago, they had to replace it and Now there he's having
some complications and they're going to be doing surgery tomorrow
to try to fix that. So Lord enables you to to pray
for him. If you've got your Bibles open
with me to Acts chapter 7. I want to call attention to a
phrase in verse 54. Stephen has finished the message
of salvation and the message of judgment against these Pharisees. And the scripture says, and when
they heard these things, when they heard these things, what
did they hear? Turn back with me to Acts chapter
two, And look with me at verse 37,
because I want to contrast the hearing of these Pharisees to
the hearing of those on the day of Pentecost whom God saved. And in verse 37 of Acts chapter
2, the Lord tells us, and when they heard this, They were pricked
in their heart. Go back with me to our text,
verse 54. And when they heard these things,
they were cut to the heart. Hearing the gospel will either
prick the heart or it'll divide the heart. That word cut means
to be divided or to be separated or to be set at enmity with. And the Pharisees in Acts chapter
seven, after Stephen had preached the gospel to them, heard what
he said and had their hearts divided, had their hearts cut
and in rage, they murdered Stephen. Whereas the Jews in Acts chapter
two, after Peter had preached the gospel, heard something also. But what they heard pricked their
heart. It was like a spear that went
into the heart and caused them to say, what should we do? How can we be saved? We believe
what we've heard. The difference is that Those
in Acts chapter two believed. They believed what Peter had
preached. In Acts chapter seven, the Pharisees
didn't believe. The Pharisees were offended by
what they heard. What made the difference? Well,
we know who made the difference. Who maketh thee to differ? The
Lord. The Lord has to give the hearing ear and the Lord has
to give faith to believe But what was the essential difference
in these two groups? The one heard that they were
sinners. And the other heard that what they heard was an offense
to them because they were being called sinners as well, but it
offended them because they were self-righteous. So the sinner
always hears. and the self-righteous never
hears. You remember in Luke chapter eight, when the Lord gave the
parable of the soils, the four different soils and the sower
takes the seed, that's the word of God. We know that faith comes
by hearing and hearing comes by the word of God. What did
these men hear? And the sower scatters the seed. He preaches the gospel. And some
of the seed fell on hard, pathway, and some of it fell on stony
soil, and some of it fell in the briar patch, and some of
it fell on ground that had been properly prepared, and the only
one that produced fruit was the one. And then the Lord concludes
that parable. The disciples didn't understand
it, and the Lord explained it to them. He said the sower is
the preacher of the gospel, the seed is the word of God, and
the different soils represent the different conditions that
men are in when the gospel is being preached. And here's what
the Lord concluded that parable with. He said, take heed, therefore,
how you hear. For to them who have more shall
be given. But to them who think they have,
even that which they have will be taken away. And so the Lord
is saying to me and you, take heed, take heed how you hear. What is it that these men heard
and how would the Lord have us to hear? We know that hearing,
physically speaking, is the first sense that a baby has when it's
born, even before they can see. before they can smell, before
they can feel anything, they hear. They hear. And we're told that the very
last sense that leaves the body before death is that of hearing. How important hearing is to our
physical life. Someone asked Helen Keller one
time, who you know was blind and deaf, And they ask her, if
you could have one of your senses, what would it be? And you would
think it would be to be able to see. She said, no, to be able
to hear, to be able to hear. She said, blindness puts you
out of touch with things, but hearing puts you out of touch
with people. And so it is. We're not talking about physical
hearing. We're talking about spiritual hearing. I had a man
say to me recently, he said, well, I'll be listening. And,
you know, there's a difference between listening and hearing,
isn't it? You can listen without hearing.
The hearing ear is of God. Now, these Pharisees heard something
and they were offended by what they heard. They had their hearts
cut by what they heard. And it enraged them in such anger
that they stoned Stephen. Whereas the men in Jerusalem
on the day of Pentecost, they heard the same message, same
message. And it pricked their hearts,
it broke their hearts. And they wanted to know How they
could be saved? How could they be forgiven? How
could they be made right with God? Now we understand that the Lord
uses the audible preaching of the gospel in order to speak
to our hearts. That's what Peter was doing on
the day of Pentecost. And that's what Stephen is doing
here. They're preaching the gospel audibly. But unless the Lord
gives us ears to hear, the audible voice is of no real effect. It's of no real effect. And yet
the Lord said, they that call upon the name of the Lord shall
be saved, but how can they call upon him in whom they've not
believed? And how shall they believe on
him in whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without
preaching? The Lord goes on to say for the
preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. It's foolishness. They're like
these Pharisees. They heard it and they hated
it. But unto us which are saved,
the preaching of the cross is the power of God. It is the power
of God. Paul went on in 1 Corinthians
1, he said, we preach Christ. We preach Christ. We're not preaching
doctrine. We're preaching a person. We're
holding up the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And sinners
will find themselves drawn to him. Sinners will find themselves
in need of him. The self-righteous, on the other
hand, will have their hearts cut away from him and they will
and what they hear will anger them. You see, the gospel when
it's preached is either a message that you love or it's a message
you hate. And if a person remains indifferent
to it, then it just means they haven't heard. They haven't heard
the declaration of the gospel. They haven't heard the message
that all men, all men, are sinners. They haven't heard that. The
self-righteous don't want to hear that. They want to hear
that they're a sinner. They want to believe that they've
got something to offer God. And the message of the gospel
puts men where they belong. And sinners love that. I had someone say to me just
recently, I love a message that reminds me that I'm a sinner.
because that causes me to have all my hope in Christ. And that's
the way it is, isn't it? Sinners love being reminded that
they're sinners because it causes them to put all their hope in
the sinless one, the only one who is holy and undefiled and
separate from sinners. And as long as we think we've
got something to offer God. See, the self-righteous are offended
by that message, aren't they? And they're offended by bowing
in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. In their hearts, they'll
say, I'm not gonna have that man reign over me. When Peter
preached, turn back with me to Acts chapter two. When Peter preached on the day
of Pentecost, look at verse 36. Therefore, let all the house
of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus
whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ. What do we hear? What do we hear from the lips
of the self-righteous? I'm gonna make Jesus Lord of
my life. No, God made him Lord. God made him to be the Christ,
the anointed one, the savior of sinners. And yet men in their pride and
in their self-righteousness want to stand in judgment of God. And when they hear the gospel,
they hate it. Nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. Men still hate pure grace. They
still hate Christ and the hate They hate the gospel of free
and sovereign grace accomplished in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. They want to take some credit and some merit for their
salvation. And what did they say when they
heard this? Peter blazed the blame right at their feet. You
crucified him. He? He revealed himself, he declared
himself for who he was, and you took him, and with wicked hands. Look over, you're in Acts chapter
two, look over at verse 22. Ye men of Israel, hear these
words. Jesus of Nazareth, the man approved
of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God
did by him in the midst of you, as you yourself also know, Him
being delivered by the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of
God. This was all purposed, this was all purposed by God. Our God, we hear people talk
about God making a plan. Our God doesn't have plans. He's
got, everything he does, everything he does is on purpose. From the minor details of our
lives to the salvation of sinners, everything he does is on purpose. And this was purposed of God
in the covenant of grace in eternity past. So does that relieve us
of any responsibility? Well, look at the rest of this
verse. You have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and
slain. James says, now, don't blame
God for your sin. God's sovereign, yes. Yes, he's
sovereign. But the Lord always lays at our
feet the full burden and responsibility for our own sin until he makes
us to bow and to agree with him. That's what, that's what being
made a sinner is. The scripture, John put it like
this in 1 John chapter 1 verse 9, he says, if we confess our
sins, and that word means to agree with God. It doesn't mean
to come up with a list of all of our sins. That's not possible.
We don't, we're not, we're not aware of all of our sins. What
is it, what is the Lord saying? If you confess your sins, you
agree with God that everything about you is sinful. that every
imagination of the thought of the heart is only evil and not
continually, that in me there is no good thing, that I'm vile,
I'm a man of unclean lips, I'm unholy, I'm unrighteous. That's
what it is to agree. Hearing the gospel is agreeing
with God about what we are. And that's what made the difference
between the publicans in Acts chapter seven. I mean, the Pharisees
in Acts chapter seven and the men of Israel in Acts chapter
two. They did not believe themselves
to be a sinner. And the Lord says, if you confess your sins,
he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us
of all of our unrighteousness. What great hope we have. The
sinners are the only ones that have hope. They're the only ones
that have hope of salvation. This is a faithful saying and
worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. He only saves sinners. And he
saves every one of them. Aren't you glad? My question this morning is what
have we heard? What have we heard? Have we heard
what God has said? You see, only when Christ is
lifted up, this same Jesus whom you crucified, God has made both
Lord and Christ. He's made him both Lord and Christ.
And Stephen told the Pharisees the same thing in Acts chapter
seven, you murdered him. Go back with me to Acts chapter
seven. We didn't read these verses.
Look at verse 51. You stiff-necked and uncircumcised
in heart and ears. You do always resist the Holy
Ghost. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets have not
your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them, which
showed before the coming of the just one. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the only just one, and he's the only one that can justify
us. And he was offered up for our
offenses and raised again because of our justification. The Lord
Jesus Christ actually justified his people. He satisfied the
justice of God when he bowed his head on Calvary's cross and
said, it is finished. When he made himself an offering
for sin, not to us, but to his father. And the father saw the
travail of the soul and the father was satisfied. And now Stephen
saying to these self-righteous Pharisees who have their hearts
cut away from God, rather than pricked by the Holy Spirit. He
said, you always resist the Holy Spirit. He showed you before that the
prophets of old and all the prophets, you know, here's the message
of the Bible in short, in short, here's the message of the Bible.
The entire Old Testament is look who's coming. Look who's coming. The Gospels,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, look who's come. And the rest
of the epistles, including Revelation, is look who's coming again. Look
who's coming. It's all about Christ. In the
volume of the book, it is written of me. And that's what Stephen's
saying to these Pharisees. This wasn't a book of rules and
regulations and laws. You say that you believe in Moses,
but if you believed in Moses, you'd believe in me for Moses
wrote of me. He said, the Lord said to these
famed Pharisees, He said, I'm not here to judge you. You've
got one already that judges you. And that's Moses. I've come to
save you. You will not hear me. You will
not come to me that you might be saved. Last Sunday, we made the point
that the Lord is the only one that can help us. He's really
the only one. And the reason being is that
it ultimately ends up a heart issue. Everything ends up being
a heart issue and he's the only one that can change the heart.
And we might be able to persuade one another minds, but only God
can change the heart. And here's the sad truth. Men
don't want their hearts changed. They don't want their hearts
changed. I'm not gonna bow before Him
as Lord and Christ and let Him have my heart. No. So they resist the Lord. They have slain them which showed
before the coming of the just one, verse 52, of whom you have
been now the betrayers and murderers. And what's the difference between
Stephen's message and Peter's message? Same message. Said the
same Jesus, you crucified him. God made him Lord and Christ.
And their hearts were pricked by the Holy Spirit. And they
bowed and said, yes. Yes, he is Lord. He is the Christ. What must we do to be saved?
And Peter said, repent, repent. Verse 53, you who betrayed and murdered
the holy one who have received the law by the dispensation of
angels and have not kept You've not kept God's law, not once. It doesn't mean that you haven't
satisfied the fullness of God's law, it means that you haven't
kept any part of God's law. Here's how you know that you've
heard and had your hearts pricked. You're glad to hear what God
says about your inability to keep his law. You're glad to hear that. You're
happy. You love that message. Otherwise, you're under bondage.
You're under the obligation of the law to satisfy its demands. You and I have never kept one
of God's laws one time. No, not to satisfy Him. I'm not
suggesting that we go around lying and stealing and murdering,
you know that. I'm saying, man, God looks at
the heart. And we've never been able to
love God with all of our heart and all of our mind and all of
our soul all the time. Well, not just all the time,
anytime. Anytime. Christ did. Verse 54, and when they heard
these things, They were cut to the heart and they gnashed on
him with their teeth. The gospel, these two examples
give us a contrast of how men respond to the gospel. They either
hate it or they love it. There's no middle ground. No
middle ground. You either bow, say, yes, Lord. Or that Syro-Phoenician woman,
the Lord called her a dog, said, yeah, Lord. That's what I am,
a dog. See, men are offended by that,
aren't they? They don't want to hear that. Take heed what you hear. What have you heard? What have
you heard? And I asked myself, what have
I heard? Have I heard what God has said about my state before
God? Am I a sinner? Acts chapter 13, when Paul and
Barnabas went to Antioch and preached the gospel, The scripture
says the Jews or the religious or the self-righteous were filled
with envy and spoke against these things. And when the Gentiles
heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord.
Heard the same message. The self-righteous heard it and
they spoke against them and nothing's changed. You tell people about
the sovereign grace of God and salvation and they'll say something
like this, yeah, but, and they speak against the gospel. But
when the sinners heard it, they were glad and they glorified
the word of the Lord. They believed God's word. What
about you? Do you believe God's word? Are
you glad to hear? that salvation's of the Lord,
that He did it all. He did it in election. He did
it in redemption. He does it in regeneration. He
did it in sanctification. He'll do it in glorification.
He does it all. It's all of God. You believe
that. You see, either you do believe
it or you don't believe it. Either you believe Him or you don't
believe Him. In Acts chapter 14, They left
Antioch and went to Iconium. And the scripture says, and the
multitude of the city was divided. It was divided. The gospel divided
them. The Lord said, I did not come
to bring peace on the earth. I came to bring a sword, a sword. The gospel divides men. That's
what happened to these Pharisees in Acts 7 when Stephen preached
to them. Their hearts were cut. They were
divided. They were set apart from what
Stephen was saying. And ultimately, they were set
apart from God. The Lord went on to say that we have peace with God through
the Lord Jesus Christ, It's not gonna bring us peace with men
unless they believe the gospel, but if they believe it, oh, what
great fellowship we have together with those who believe the gospel.
The Lord said, your enemies will be of your own household. See, that's how we know if we've
heard, isn't it? The Lord says, take heed how you hear. When they in Acts chapter two
heard these things, they were pricked in their heart. And when
the publicans heard the same things, they were cut and gnashed
in their teeth. In Iconium, after the city was
divided, the religious leaders got together and plotted to kill
Paul and Barnabas. and they fled the city to Iconium.
Just read through the book of Acts. Everywhere he goes, a riot
breaks out. People hate what they're hearing
and he has to escape to the next city. Nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. You either
love the gospel or you hate the gospel. It either makes you glad or it
makes you mad. If you've heard, if you've heard. The self-righteous hate it. Sinners love it. Their hearts were cut, divided,
cut off, separated. They didn't want to hear anymore.
They wanted to shut up the witness, deny the message. Nothing's changed. What have you heard? What have
you heard? You know, I was thinking we have young people in our,
in our fellowship. All they've ever heard is the
gospel. And unlike some of us who the
Lord left in free will, self-righteous works religion for a period of
time, they don't have that contrast. And they hear us talking about
our experience in the past and they think, well, I haven't had
an experience like that. And maybe They're waiting for
an experience in order to confess Christ. And I would say to those
young people, you were born just as self-righteous as anybody
was. You're just as much a sinner
as any of us are. Don't wait for an experience.
Don't wait for a feeling. You believe the gospel, These
people, they were pricked in their hearts. They knew that
they were sinners. They knew they couldn't save
themselves. They believed what they were
being told. They believed the gospel. And
they asked Peter, what do we do? What do we do? Go back with
me to Acts chapter two. First Thessalonians, second Thessalonians
chapter two, the scripture says, because they had no love for
the truth. See, if God gives you ears to
hear the gospel, you love it. You love the gospel. You love
Christ. You love being told you're a
sinner. You love having all your salvation completed and accomplished. by the Son of God. And you believe
that Jesus is the Christ. Look at verse 37. And when they heard this, they
were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest
of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? How can we
be delivered from what we've done? What we are? What hope
do we have? Peter didn't say to them, Peter
didn't say to them, well, you know, you just need to go home
and wait for a feeling and wait for an experience and wait till
you learn more and get more knowledge. And, uh, and you know, get into
some discipleship classes and maybe you'll, maybe you'll get
to the point to where you can be saved too. Now he didn't say
that, did he? Peter didn't say any of that.
He said, repent. Repent. Now what God requires
and what God commands, we know that God must provide. So repentance
is not our contribution to the gospel. And yet for us to depend
upon the Lord for a changed heart, a changed mind, that's what repentance
is. It's like I said, men don't want their hearts changed. The
Lord says, change your way of thinking, change your mind, change
your heart. Give me a new heart and I will, and I will. Repent and be baptized every
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remissions of sins. Now
I've used this illustration before, I'll use it again. Be careful
how you understand this. If you repent and if you're baptized,
then your sins will be remitted? No, no. If you read a bulletin
that said Jesse James is wanted for robbery, there's two ways
to understand that. He's wanted for a robbery that
he's already committed, or he's wanted for a robbery to be committed. And so it is with the word for. And what the Lord's saying, this
word for could be understood just as that example I just gave,
it could be understood as because. Jesse James is wanted because
of robbery. And that's what the Lord's saying
here. When they said, men and brethren, what shall we do? And
Peter said, repent. You have to have a changed mind.
about who you are, about who God is, about who the Lord Jesus
Christ is and about how it is that God's pleased to save sinners.
You got to change all your thinking, all your thinking. You got to
have a new heart and be baptized because of the
remission of your sins. That's the understanding, that's
the meaning of this. You know, here's the truth, brethren. The
Lord has written his word in such a way to give the self-righteous
enough rope to hang themselves. Yes. Men will use this very passage
of scripture as well as they'll take it out of context and they'll
say, well, see, we've got to repent and we've got to be baptized
in order for our sins to be remitted. That's a works gospel. That's
a man-centered salvation. What have we heard? What have
we heard? That when the Lord Jesus bowed
his mighty head and closed his eyes and said, Father, into thy
hands, I commend my spirit, he declared, it's finished. Sins
have been remitted. The shed blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ on Calvary's cross successfully covered all the sins of all of
God's people. The self-righteous hear that,
and they say, well, that's a license to sin. And the believer says, the only inducement I have for
obeying God is to know that my disobedience has already been
forgiven. So I would say to our young people
who have sat under the gospel all their lives, what Paul said
to Timothy, turn with me to 2 Timothy. Chapter three. Verse 14. There are young people. Now in
chapter one of this same verse, Paul reminds Timothy that he
heard the gospel from his grandmother, Lois, and from his mother, Eunice. His mother and grandmother were
faithful to teach him the word of God from the very young age. And now he says in verse 14,
but continue thou and the things which thou has learned and has
been assured of, knowing of whom thou has learned them. And that
from a child thou has known the Holy Scriptures, which are able
to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ
Jesus. So I say to all of us, Do you
believe the Holy Scriptures? Do you? Do you believe what God has said?
Do you delight in it? Do you rejoice in it? Are you
like those Gentiles in Antioch who glorified the word of the
Lord and were glad when the self-righteous Pharisees were angry? Are you like those on the day
of Pentecost who who bow to the declaration that it was your
sins that put Christ on the cross. And yet God has made this same
Jesus to be both Lord and Christ. Or like the Pharisees over there
in Acts chapter seven. Their hearts were cut. They were angry. But see, you either believe the
gospel or you don't believe the gospel. You either believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ You rejoice in him and rest in him, or you
don't. This, this, this contrast is
so clearly demonstrated throughout scripture. And, uh, you believe the spirit and the
bride, what did they say? drink from the water of life
freely, freely. God add his blessings to his
word. Let's let's take