I truly pray and I desire sincerity in what I
say. I truly pray that the Lord might
be pleased to bless this service and that He might bless it in
power, that He might bless it by His mercy We are complacent people, and
we expect so little. We do. We expect little. I'm speaking to myself, so as
I've told you before, you listen in. And you deal with it the
way you deal with it. I think about how long I spend
sitting down preparing to write out a set of notes and to look
up scriptures and then ask myself, how much have I asked the Lord
to bless it? And then before I stand, I will
ask, Lord bless this, even as Brother Scott was praying a moment
ago, I was thinking to myself and praying and asking, Lord,
help us. Then I ask myself, when I've
prepared and stood to preach, How much have I continually asked
the Lord to bless it? How concerned am I for those
in my midst and in my family that know not God? I say I'm concerned, but then
when I consider how little I've asked and how little I've continued
to ask, and continue to ask, then I ask myself, how concerned
am I? Paul said, I'm carnal, sold unto
sin. And I think if we were honest
about it. This evening, I'd like for us
to look at a passage of scripture. And I do pray that the Lord might
be pleased to bless this and that truly we might hear and
hear from heaven. Because if we don't, I truly think that the message
will be consistent doctrinally. The message, I've gone over the
notes. I've looked at them and the notes
are Calvinistic in their doctrine, in their The notes are Calvinistic. I know they're consistent with
what we've heard before. Oh, but if God would bless it.
And if truthfully, we would truthfully with a heart say it has been
good to have been in the house of the Lord. I pray God bless
this message to the salvation of the lost. I ask Him to save,
save His people and comfort His people. I have entitled this
message, Two Covenants, One Hope. In the midst of a Roman prison, the Apostle Paul was comforted. by the Lord Jesus Christ is where
we stopped last week, verse 11, Acts 23, 11. The night following,
the Lord stood by him and said, Be of good cheer, Paul, for as
thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear
witness also at Rome. Oh, what a presence! The Lord stood by him. You know, one of these days,
that truth right there is going to be fully realized. In that day, when the Lord Himself
shall stand by us, with us, and we in Him, we will then truly
know, Lord, You have been merciful to me. What familiarity! Be of good
cheer. Well, I thought, you know, be comforted, Paul. Be confident,
Paul. Paul was in jail. Garnered. Had some folks outside that just
wanted to kill him. Be of good cheer, Paul. Paul was comforted because of
who comforted him, encouraged. You know, we are truly encouraged,
truly cheered, truly confident when we are brought by the grace
of God to be thankful for the trial that we are in. 1 Thessalonians 5.18, "...and everything
give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning
you." I've said this before. A situation never changes, only
the way you look at it. It's a trial. It's a grievous
trial. These things are, according to
the flesh, they're hard. But if I truly am brought to
know Be of good cheer. Marvin, be of good cheer. I'm standing with you. And if He stands with me, it's
okay. Oh, what a settling voice. Be
of good cheer. hear my voice, I know them and
they follow me." Proverbs 20, 12 says, "...the hearing ear
and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made them both." Oh, I got
to thinking about that. The seeing eye and the hearing
ear. I know that those are the effects
of His mercy. I know they are. I know that
man by nature is deaf and blind spiritually. I know that. And
I know that the Lord said that I give the seeing eye and I give
the hearing ear. Now, let me ask you this. How do I see and hear? I know I do. How do I do it? I'll tell you how it is. I try
everything that I hear. by the Word of God. There is where you know if a
man sees and hears. He tries what he hears and sees
by God's Word. Heaven and earth have passed
away, but my words will never pass away. We rest our soul on what God
Almighty has said. concerning the glory of his blessed
Son in the salvation of his people, in the keeping of his people.
A man stands up and preaches something, and I'm telling you,
you know it, you see it in the scriptures, and the Spirit of
God bears witness with your spirit that you're a child of God and
you believe it. You heard him. You say, what does he sound like?
He spoke to my heart. And a believer understands what
you said. I see him. Oh, Paul, what a call to duty!
As thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear
witness also in Jerusalem. Look at 1 Timothy 1.12. Here
was the Apostle Paul told by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself
Paul, you're going to preach for me. Preach in my name. Preach in my stead. 1 Timothy 1, 12-14, I thank Christ
Jesus our Lord who hath enabled me, who hath strengthened me,
for that He counted me faithful. He led me in faithfulness. He counted. He led me. in faithfulness, putting me into
the ministry, fixing me, placing me there. Brother Scott said,
where God puts a man, He keeps a man. The gifts of God are without
repentance. God doesn't put a man there and
move him. He put me in the ministry. I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord,
who hath enabled me, for that He counted me faithful, putting
me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer, persecutor,
injurious, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in
unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with
faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." What a call. What a call you have to be able
to be here. What a calling. to be called, to be fixed, to
be led to, hear the gospel and love it and desire it. What you want to do tonight,
I know what you want. You that know Him, I want to
hear Him. Tell me again. Tell me again. Rehearse that in my mind one
more time. Oh, with the blessed promise
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the comfort of Him, we learn three
things in this passage of Scripture, and I'm going to deal with verses
12 to 15. First of all, this world for the believer is not
our place of rest. This is not it. Now, for an unbeliever,
one that dies without Christ, This is the best it's going to
be. This is the best right here. I heard Brother Henry, I've said
this before, said this concerning those that oppose themselves,
despise the gospel, refuse to hear, leave them alone. This is the best they're going
to have. But for a believer, this is the worst. This is the
worst. This is as bad as it gets, this
world. This world is not our rest. The Lord Jesus Christ praying
for His own in John 17, 16, they're not of the world, even as I'm
not of the world. John 15, 19, if ye were of the
world, the world would love His own. But because you're not of
the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore
the world hateth you." The world hates God's sovereignty because
I chose you out of the world. This world hates you. This is
not our home. We're just pilgrims and sojourners
here. And the older we get, the more
we realize that. We're just passing through. And the closer we get to leaving
this world, we begin to taste and hunger for that city that has foundation and sustenance,
whose builder and maker is God. We begin to look and we begin
to long for, and the Lord is weaning us away. And He knows
how. Secondly, I know this. God is just. Let's read verses 12 to 15. And
when it was day, I realized that here was Paul the Apostle in
a jail. And the Lord stood by him. And
the Lord said, Be of good cheer, Paul. You've preached in Jerusalem. You're going to preach in Rome
also. When it was day, certain of the Jews banded together and
bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither
eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. And there were more than
forty which had made this conspiracy. And they came to the chief priests
and elders and said, We have bound ourselves under a great
curse that we will eat nothing until we have slain Paul. Ye with the council signify to
the chief captain that he bring him down unto you to-morrow,
as though he would inquire something more perfectly concerning him.
And we, wherever he come near, are ready to kill him." This group of men, more than
forty of them, more than likely the Sadducees, because they despised
what Paul had said concerning the resurrection. I won't get into the resurrection
now, Lord willing, in the next few weeks. But they bound themselves
together, and what they did, they said this. They said, we
bound ourselves under a curse, saying, We're not going to eat
or drink until we've killed Paul. Now, when you first read what
they said there, it's almost too easy to pass over what these
men truthfully said. Bound ourself under a curse. If we don't kill Paul, I'm going
to tell you what these men said. These men, first of all, were
moved by the dictates of Satan himself. John 8, verse 44 says
this, the Lord speaking, He said, Ye are of your father the devil. And the lust of your father ye
will do. He was a murderer from the beginning,
and a bow not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When
he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar,
and the father of it." So Satan directed more than 40 men to
conspire against Paul, and they entered into a covenant to kill. God's spokesman? Yes. But more than that, they raised
themselves up against the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He told Paul, why have you persecuted
Me? When you do it unto the least
of one of these, My brethren, you've done this unto Me. And
they entered in to a covenant. We bound ourselves under a curse,
they said. God is just. He is a just God. Matthew 16, 27. Let me read this
to you. Matthew 16. Verse 27, For the
Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his
angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his works. God is just. Let me read Jeremiah
17 to you. Jeremiah 17, verse 10, I the
Lord search the heart. I try the rains even to give
every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of
his doing." Here is what is being said. God Almighty is going to give
to every man what is due. Every man is going to get exactly
what is due. entered into a curse. Now, if you happen to have, in
my Bible, I've got in the little center column here, it gives
the interpretation of that word curse. It says, an oath of execration. That's a big word. Big word. Here's what it was saying. We
are calling down. and making this vow before God
Almighty, if we don't kill Paul, may God Almighty curse us if
we don't kill him. Execration, that's what it means. They devoted themselves to God
for destruction. if they didn't carry out exactly
what they said they were going to do. Now, you know, let me
just say that when we hear the Scripture, for the carnal mind
is enmity against God, we've heard that Scripture so
many times that we just kind of glaze over it, and we fail to realize the depth
of what was being said. Here's what these men, when it
says they bound themselves under a curse, they prayed for the
heaviest curse upon themselves if we fail. If we don't do this to Paul,
God Almighty curse us if we don't do it. We are so sure of what
we're going to do. I absolutely defy that there
is going to be any other way but this. They left no room for
repentance. The word, that curse, anathematized,
is what the word means. Do you remember, Paul says, if
any man preach any other gospel, let him be anathema, accursed. Devoted to God, I devote myself
to God for God to damn me. Now listen, let me tell you something.
This is not a light thing that these men did. They raised their
finger in the face of God Almighty and said this, I defy the God
of all power and might. If we don't do what we said we're
going to do, They showed great contempt for
the providence of God and for His gospel. They showed great
contempt for their own souls. And I will tell you this, that
all that stand against God Almighty and refuse to bow to the Lord
Jesus Christ mock the judgment of God. A man that hears the gospel of
free grace and refuses to bow to it says in his heart, I defy
you to judge me. Now, the carnal mind is enmity
against God. That is what that means. I don't more believe that you're
going to put me in hell than the man in the moon. It doesn't more mean anything
to me that what you said than daylight and dark. I don't care. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the
living God. My friend, you stick your finger
in God's face and I'm telling you, you are flaunting eternal
damnation. We have bound ourselves under
a curse, an oath of execration, anathematized. Leviticus 27-29 says, None devoted
which shall be devoted of men shall be redeemed, but shall
surely be put to death. Let me tell you what this was.
This was a covenant with death. And every man, every woman, I'm
telling you, sitting under a false gospel, believing a false Christ. There are many Christs. Paul
says, going out into the world, there is one Lord Jesus Christ.
And I am telling you, as Jonathan Edwards says, a man without Christ
is like a man that is held over the gaping mouth of hell with
nothing more than the air that supports him by the mercy of
God. A man that will not bow to Christ I'm telling you, has got the
utmost arrogance and defiance against God Almighty. And but for the grace of God,
he would stay right there. It was a covenant of death, a
covenant against all that was holy, and I'm telling you, If
God leaves a man to himself, God is going to give a man exactly
what he wanted. Here is what a man without Christ
is saying, I have bound myself to a curse and I defy you. Can you imagine
on the day of judgment standing before God Almighty with that
attitude right there? I can't get to Him, but I'll
get to you." And the Lord says, you get to Him and you got to
Me because you were persecuting Me. Here's the third thing I know.
The last point of this message this evening. God Almighty is
merciful. Oh, the mercy! Here is the sad but truthful,
wonderfully truthful thing about what these men were doing. They bound themselves by a curse
to kill God's servant, Paul the Apostle. But you know who had
also done the same thing? Paul the Apostle. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 9, 10. He said, I'm the least of the
apostles, that I'm not meet, not fit to be called an apostle,
but I was because I persecuted the church of God. But by the
grace of God, I am what I am. And His grace which was bestowed
upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than
they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me."
Paul said, I did what they did. Cut out of the same lump. The only difference between Paul
the Apostle and those forty-something men was the grace of God. And the only difference between
any of us and anybody else. You know, I'm talking about all
those evil people out there. The only difference between one
lump and another lump is the grace of God. Paul said, I persecuted
the church. I did what they did. Here it is. That which makes
this vow so heinous is that every man born in Adam is born with
that attitude right there. Every man born in Adam is born
with this attitude. I defy you, God. That's what
Adam said. That's what Adam said. In the day you eat, you're going
to die. And he took it. This is the nature. This is what
Christ was made. He has made Him sin, rebellion,
the sinfulness. I don't even know how to say
it to express the utter depravity and rebellion Loathsomeness. I don't even know how to express.
Sin is the transgression of the law. I don't know how to even
say enough to express what He was made. But I know this. He
knew what it was. And whatever my need was, He bore it and made it His own. These men had bound themselves
together with an oath, a covenant, a covenant with death. And they
said this, if we don't accomplish, if we don't accomplish what we
say we're going to accomplish, if we can't do what we say we
can do, may God damn our souls. Do you know that's what free
will says? That's what free will says. If
I can't save myself, then God can damn my soul. There's another covenant. Oh,
apart from that covenant, that covenant of death. David said
in 2 Samuel 23, verse 5, Although my house be not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting
covenant, ordered in all things. And sure, this is all my salvation,
and all my desire although He make it not to grow." This is all my hope. God didn't
leave me in that attitude and that state. He gave me a new
heart. He gave me a new will. He gave me a new mind. And He
took away that stony heart that reigned presence of it's there, I can
tell you that. But I'm telling you the guilt
of it's not. He bore it. And when I think
about how little I thought, how nothing I thought of him, and
began to realize the attitude that I had of him, and the arrogance
I had of Him. Arrogance! Oh, but for the grace of God,
He would have put me in hell years ago. The long-suffering of Almighty
God for Christ's sake, for the sake of His blessed Son. His
Son that put away my guilt, His covenant, A covenant of grace. Not a covenant of works. Not
a covenant of arrogance. Not a covenant of death. A covenant
of grace. Mercy. That's what she was talking
about the other day. Mercy. Mercy. His covenant was everlasting.
A covenant of men. And there's only one covenant
that a man can produce of himself. It's a covenant of evil. There's
none righteous. No, not one. There is no good in every man.
Every thought, imagination of a man's heart is evil continually. What kind of covenant are you
going to make? The covenant of God in Christ
is holy. Man's covenant is temporal. I can make a covenant, but it
is only as good as I am able to continue to do it. As soon
as I die, what am I going to do with it? I can't sustain it. Once I'm gone, what am I going
to do? I need one to make a covenant with me that's conquered death. His covenant, eternal. One covenant was unto death,
hating God. The other covenant, unto life
in Christ. I tell you, both these covenants
were evidenced in the lives of Paul and these men. Here was
one man in jail, arrested by God and resting in God and hearing
God. The Lord told him, He said, Be
of good comfort, Paul. You preach Jerusalem, you're
going to preach in Rome. Found out there was a group of
men on the outside. evidencing their attitude toward
God. Proverbs 19.21 says there are
many devices, many plots in a man's heart. Nevertheless, the counsel
of the Lord, that shall stand. Aren't you glad? If God's purpose
is to save a man, He's going to save him. Call him out of
darkness. Lord, I pray You save him tonight. I pray God saves somebody. I
pray he does. Say he's going to. He said, I'll
be inquired of by that. For that, you ask me. What if it's your son? What if
it's your daughter? Would you desire God to save
them? Ask him. Ask him. I tell you this, if
you have a desire to ask him, you didn't come up with that.
I can tell you that you didn't come up with that thought. If
you have a desire for God to show mercy to your children,
your husband, your wife, your daughter, whoever, you didn't
come up with that. If He put that desire in your
heart, you ask Him. Isaiah 46, 9, Remember the former
things of old, for I am God, and there is none else. I am
God, and there is none like Me. declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying,
My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure." A group of men had bound themselves
together to kill Paul in defiance to God. And I can tell you this,
if they left this world, which there is no record that would
cause us to think any otherwise. They left this world and God
gave them exactly what they wanted. Paul said, I am what I am by
the grace of God.