I wanted to spend some time at
the close of our service looking at that glorious verse. It says, notwithstanding, in
verse 17 of 2 Timothy chapter 4, the Lord stood with me and
strengthened me. The Lord had stood with Paul
and strengthened him. The declaring means that he poured
out his strength into him. It literally means that the Lord
came and took his stand beside Paul and poured out his strength
into me. That the preaching might be fully
known. Acts finishes with an extraordinary
phrase, isn't it? He was preaching the Kingdom
of God, no man forbidding Him. Teaching those things which concern
the Lord Jesus Christ, no man forbidding Him. With all confidence,
with plainness of speech, no man forbidding Him. Acts begins with the glory of
the Lord Jesus Christ. revealed in resurrection glory
and the resurrection promises to his disciples. And Acts finishes
with the Lord Jesus Christ being proclaimed and the rest of the
life of Paul is laid out before us in these letters of the New
Testament which are written from his prison in Rome. But it's
a glorious picture And one of the things I want us to note
with care and caution and note from the law The testimony of God the Holy
Spirit in raising up churches and the proclamation of the gospel
begins in many ways in Jerusalem in great triumph as thousands
are added to the church daily. But as it finishes, so the rest
of what is called this gospel age will continue and the reality
is that the New Testament finishes being very small remnant churches
with a few faithful believers surrounded by a world, a world
of religious apostasy and idolatry. And it's to the glory of God
that His Church triumphs in this world, not by fleshly activities
and not by ways that might be seen of the flesh. That the Church,
wherever it is gathered, is going to be a small remnant, and wherever
it is gathered it is going to be surrounded by enemies. But
the Church is triumphant. The Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is as triumphant as Him. and He reigns, our God reigns. The Lord Jesus Christ comes personally
and powerfully to his people by his spirit, through his word. The Lord Jesus Christ has set
on a great task, isn't it, from the beginning of the world, to
gather his sheep into one fold. There are others, he says in
John 10, other sheep have I. He's already owned them, when
did he own them? He owned them before the foundation of the
world. Other sheep have I, then also I must. bring in. There is a glorious, glorious
declaration of the absolute sovereignty of God over all things. There's
also a promise of God that is good for us. It is good for us
to be small and to be a remnant and to be seen, to be preserved
and kept by the Lord Jesus Christ, despite all that happens around
us. We must remember that Acts of
the Apostles begins about the time of Pentecost, and Pentecost
is 50 days from the Day of Atonement, and Pentecost is the Feast of
Ingathering. It's a glorious, glorious picture,
isn't it, where there is bloodshed and there is a cry from that
cross. It is finished. There is a necessity
that they will come, and there is a necessity of the Lord's
reign and rule, and it will never be a reign and rule that the
people of this world will understand until it's far too late for them
to know it. You see, it's on the basis of
bloodshed that the yin gathering comes, it's on the basis of the
Lord God the Father accepting the work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
that the Church is safe and secure and accepted. I love what Ephesians
1.6 says, accepted We are put into the Beloved's
hand before the foundation of the world. There is nothing more
fragile to the world's eyes than the Church of God, and believers
in it. There's nothing more fragile
in our own eyes than the Church of God. believers and us in it. And there is absolutely nothing
more secure and certain in all of this world. Everything else
is shifting stand. The it is finished of our Saviour. He says that right now there
is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. It is
finished. Righteousness is finished. Sin
is finished. Atonement is finished. Sacrifice
is finished. There's no more offering to God. He's accepted his Son. Satisfaction
is finished. The law is finished. Curse, the curse of the law is
finished. Judgment is finished. Condemnation
is finished. It's all a glorious, glorious
declaration of our Saviour. I love what the hymn writer said.
Nothing either great or small, nothing sinner, no. Jesus did it, did it all long,
long ago. When he from his lofty throne
stooped to do and die, everything was fully done. Hearken to his
cry. It is finished. Yes, indeed,
finished every jot. Sinner, this is all you need. Tell me, is it not? Weary working,
plodding one, why toil, why toil you so? Cease your doing, all
was done long, long ago. Till Jesus work you cling by
a simple faith, doing is a deadly thing, doing ends your death. Cast all your deadly doing down,
down at Jesus' feet, stand in Him, in Him alone, gloriously
complete. It is the triumph of our Saviour,
isn't it? It's the triumph of our Saviour.
And the evidence of the triumph of our Saviour is Him gathering
His people together in His Church. In Him is the answer to every
question that matters. In Him, the Lord Jesus Christ
and crucified, in Him is the object of faith. In Him there
is the answer. Who is God? What's God like? You look to Him and Him crucified. What does God think about sin? You look to the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's Christ that died. Read that verse in Romans 8.34. How holy is God? It's Christ that died. How righteous is God? It's Christ that died. How wise
is God? How powerful is God? It's Christ that died. What is
God's purpose? What is the main thing that we
think of when we think of what God has done in this world? What
is the one place where we see the glory of God in glorious
display? What is the one place where we
see all of the attributes of God in the most bright, shining
light that you could have shining on them from heaven? in the Lord Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. How can we know Him? How can He be with us and in
us? It's Christ that died. As Paul
said, it's how Christ died for our sins, how Christ died as
a shield and a covering for our sins, according to the Scriptures. It's interesting, as we will
turn back to 2 Timothy a little bit later on, the one thing that
Paul says You remember my life. You remember what God has done. And in the midst of opposition
from within the churches, you would think that the church of
Ephesus, and that's the churches centred around Ephesus, would
have been as strong and stable as you could ever wish. Paul
spent years there. And then they had Timothy, Paul's
disciple, an assistant there, and then they had John there.
And you would think, surely this is a bunch of churches which
has just the most remarkable testimony, and these churches
will be strong and big and vigorous. And I want to tell you that from
the word of God, exactly the opposite is the case. And all
of the apostles finished their days with warnings about the
church being a small remnant, attacked from within and attacked
from without, and sustained entirely by a sovereign hand of a gracious
God. Our Lord Jesus Christ reigns,
but his church in this world will be sustained in such a way
that it is seen by his people and his people alone within it. as a sustaining hand which comes
from God on high. Norm's going to preach from Exodus
33, and I don't want to steal much of his thunder, but there's
a verse there that we have quoted since the beginning of our time
together, where Moses has received these great promises of grace
from his God, and then he says to God, if you don't go with
us, if you don't carry us up from here, if your presence doesn't
go with us, don't lead us up from here. And the Church of
God is continually praying that. It's Christ that died, and it's
his revelation to his people. I want to remind you that those
glorious resurrection appearances in Jerusalem for 40 days with
many, many proofs to 500 people at one time, to the 12 apostles,
to those who were his, he appeared, and he never once appeared to
Caiaphas, and he never once appeared to Pilate, and he never once
appeared to those thousands. But he had a people there, and
he appeared to them at the preaching of a fisherman from Galilee,
a failed, feeble fisherman from Galilee, an unlearned and ignorant His life wasn't taken from him.
He says, I have the power to lay my life down. No one takes
my life from me. This commandment have I received
from my father. And men by wicked hands. As Acts
begins, you with your wicked hands have crucified the Lord
of glory. And you did it according to the
determined counsel and full knowledge of God. Christ gave up his life. He humbled himself. Determinedly,
he set his face like a flint to go to Jerusalem. For the joy
set before him, he went to that place. And what's the joy that's
set before him? The fellowship of his bride,
the glory of his father, and all of the attributes on display. It's his glory. It's for the
glory of his grace. So what is our hope? What is
the hope of Paul? What's the hope of Timothy, surrounded
by lions on every side? It's Christ. It's Christ that
died. Christ that has risen. The one who was offended by sin
is the one who makes reconciliation. God the Father accepts Christ's offering. God accepts the peace that Christ
made and he grants peace with us, his enemies. God cannot die. Man cannot pay, and yet what
is impossible with man has been done by our great God and Saviour. Paul has spent possibly the last
five years of his life in jail. Where's the wisdom in that? Where's the wisdom? If you put
your hand to that situation for a millisecond, the first thing
you'd do is you'd get him out of there and you'd put him up
on a pinnacle and you'd get him on top of a mountain and you'd
get him preaching to people. And that, no doubt, was his desire. But God had another purpose. and the Paul we have often read
in 1 Timothy 1.15. He says, This is a faithful saying,
and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. And then he says
in verse 16, Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that
in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering. What extraordinary longsuffering
of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Apostle Paul as Saul of Tarsus. There he was, there he was, murdering
the children of God. pouring out hatred upon the Lord
Jesus Christ, piled upon hatred upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and
he couldn't get to Him, and he got to the nearest thing he could
to Him, which was the Church of God, and hauled them back
to Jerusalem. What longsuffering has God shown
to you? What longsuffering? What longsuffering
in all your years of rebellion and wickedness? What extraordinary
longsuffering? He might show it forth. And then
he says, in verse 16 of 1 Timothy chapter 1, for a pattern. For a pattern. Paul's life is
a pattern. We have read in Acts a pattern. A pattern of preaching. A pattern
of declaration of both faith's object and faith's operation. We have in Acts all that we ever
need to know about preaching the Gospel. I couldn't believe
it the other day, there's a mission, a Bible college in Sydney is
advertising a course for church planters and missions and other
people, and the first lady that comes on there says, the most
important thing we need is that we need to hear from God. And then I listened to it about
four times and I couldn't believe what she next said. She said,
we need to put aside our Bibles and textbooks. And I think she
was treating the Bible as a textbook. I don't know. You can go and
listen to it. It's unbelievable. Let's put
aside our Bibles and hear what God is saying. That is conservative evangelicalism
in Australia right now. Let's hear from God. Let's put
aside our Bibles and let's hear from God. If you put aside your
Bibles to hear from God, I promise you, you'll be deceived. You'll
hear things alright. You'll hear things alright, but
I promise you, you'll be deceived. God will have his word honoured. God will have his word honoured.
These men preached what? They went out preaching all over
this world from the scriptures, from the scriptures, from the
scriptures, from the Old Testament scriptures. Paul was a pattern
of long-suffering. He's a pattern of preaching the
Gospel. He's a pattern of the declaration of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He's a pattern as the churches are established through
the preaching of the Gospel. He's a pattern as the churches
are sustained through the preaching of the Gospel. a pattern of what
is repentance is laid out, a pattern of how the church is to stand
before this world, whether Jew or Gentile or Roman, whatever
it might be, we stand before this world and we declare the
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray that a door of utterance
might be opened. And God opens a door and He closes
doors. And we have no doubt that this
Gospel, the real Gospel, will go forth and will gather the
Lord's sheep. hear his voice. What other voice
did that silly woman in Sydney want to have? What does the Lord
Jesus say? They'll hear the shepherd's voice.
And the shepherd will speak personally and powerfully and particularly
to them exactly as he did to Paul. And it'll be as a light
from heaven and a voice from God Almighty into the hearts
of people. And they'll be put They'll be
put in the dust and have the very hand of God raise them up
and set them to their work in this world to bear witness to
him. That's why Acts finishes so beautifully, doesn't it? No
man forbidding him. He had run his course, our blessed
apostle Paul. And what a remarkable testimony.
You think of the comfort that you've had in your walk before
the Lord. Paul has been inspired by God
the Holy Spirit to pen. And you've found the joy and
the comfort of your eternal soul in words that he's written. Because
he was in jail. Because he was in jail. So he wrote to Timothy, as he
wrote to Timothy, he was preaching to those that came into him.
And it's a lovely description, isn't it? In verse 30 of Acts
28, he dwelt two whole years in his own hide house and received
all that came in unto him. The door was absolutely wide
open. And if you came in, you were
received. All that come, come unto me,
says the Lord Jesus Christ, all you that are weary and heavy
laden. If you're weary of your religion
and weary of your efforts to establish your own righteousness,
come unto him and you'll find rest for your souls. And you'll have a yoke, a yoke
that's fit Easy. The commands of our God
are not burdensome. So Paul has provided us this
pattern. It's Christ. It's Christ that
is preached. The Christ of the Old Testament
Scriptures, the Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord of glory, preached. That's what he says to Timothy,
I'm here, I'm here in jail in Rome, and you're there in Ephesus
surrounded by walls. We have one task, we just preach. In the midst of all of what lies
before us as a church, we have just one task, don't we? We have just one task, just preach
the gospel. It's so much easier to go out
into this world and run soup kitchens and do all sorts of
other fancy things that cause men to think nicely of you. The one thing that is needful
in this world is the faithful proclamation of the Lord Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. So Paul will be turned back to
2 Timothy. I'll try and come quickly to
chapter 4. Paul says in verse 5 of chapter 1, he says, I want
to put you in remembrance. I want to put you in remembrance.
In verse 4, as I read earlier, he's greatly desiring to see
him. He's being mindful of his tears. This is how he describes in verse
2, Timothy, my dearly beloved son. Grace, mercy and peace from
God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. He has a remembrance
of him. He remembers him, doesn't he?
I thank God whom I serve for my forefathers with a pure conscience. Do you have a pure conscience? Paul had a pure conscience. How do you have a pure conscience? The first thing is you don't
look inside. You look away. Paul wasn't looking
to his attainments and achievements to boast, was he? He was looking to a sacrifice
that God had accepted of him, wasn't it? God accepted the sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ. I love what Hebrews 9.14 says,
verse 13 says, for if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes
of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctified to the purifying of
the flesh, you can get yourself cleaned on the outside by these
activities, how much more, how much more shall the blood of
Christ who through the eternal spirit offered him without spot
to God. Purge, clean your conscience. from dead works to serve the
living God. I love what God said to Peter
when he said, do you eat these animals? And Peter said, I've
never eaten anything. I've never been undefiled. I've
never eaten a prawn in my life. I've never touched a piece of
pork. I've never been in a Gentile house. I haven't had anything
to do with them at all. And God says to him twice, don't you
dare call unclean what I've called clean. We're cleaned by a declaration
of God. We're cleaned. They're purified, as Acts 15,
9 says. They've purified their hearts,
which is similar to your conscience. They've purified their hearts
by faith. By faith. the chief of sinners, the chief
of sinners with a pure conscience. It's only real sinners that will
ever have a pure conscience, isn't it? It's only real sinners.
It's only real sinners that will come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Sinners who know that sin is entirely all their fault. Sinners
who know that there's absolutely nothing they can do about it
at all. Sinners who have, by the manifestation of their to look away, look away to a
crucified Savior. He puts Timothy in remembrance. Why do we have to put him in
remembrance? Because we're always forgetting.
We're always forgetting. And then he says in chapter 14
verse 2, he says in verse 2 of 2 Timothy chapter 2, he says, He says you be strong in the
grace that is in Christ Jesus, not strong in anything in yourself.
We're only strong in grace. And the thing which thou hast
heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful
men, who shall be able to teach others also. And in verse 14
he says that these things put them in remembrance. Put them
in remembrance. What are you putting them in
remembrance of? If you go back earlier, it's a faithful saying. Verse 11. If we be dead with
Him, we shall also live with Him. If we suffer, we shall also
reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will also
deny us. If we believe not, yet He abideth
faithful. He abides faithful. Our God is
faithful. You put them in remembrance.
You put them in remembrance of my trials. You put them in remembrance
of the gospel I've preached to you. For want of time, I won't quote
the verses that we sing so often in 1 Timothy chapter 12, but
he says, I'm persuaded. Paul is persuaded because he
knows whom he has believed. When these witnesses are declaring
the Lord Jesus Christ, they're simply declaring what they have
seen and heard. You can't be a witness to something
you haven't seen. You can't be a witness to someone
you haven't seen. They don't try and be a witness
to something you haven't seen. Our children are witnesses. We have a testimony. He says,
don't be ashamed of the testimony. Don't be ashamed, verse 8 of
chapter 1. Don't be ashamed of the testimony. Don't be ashamed of the witness
of our Lord. Hold fast, he says in the form
of sound words. He put them in remembrance of
all of these things. And the good thing that was committed
unto you, verse 14, you keep by the Holy Spirit that dwells
in us. Be strong in the grace. Consider, he says in verse 7,
consider what I say. The Lord gives the understanding
of all things. You put them in remembrance,
verse 14. You study yourself, verse 15
of chapter 2. Study yourself. Study to show
yourself. approved of God, a workman that
needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You
see, it's all about preaching. It's all about the gospel. That's
what Timothy's task was. Paul wants to put him in remembrance
of how he finished his life. He wants to put him in remembrance
of the faithfulness of God to the commission that Paul had
given him. the promises of God that he'd be a witness unto him
to the Gentiles, the promise of God in Acts 23 that he would
go to Rome, the promise of God that not a single soul on that
ship would be left, that all reach land safely. You rightly divide the word of
truth. And you're going to meet opposition,
and it's extraordinary the places where opposition comes from.
In verse 18, we won't have time to look at it, but they say that
the resurrection is past these people. These are in the churches
in Ephesus that Timothy was caring for, that they were saying possibly
that there was no other resurrection to be expected, that the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ and those who were resurrected with
him and rose from the tomb and bore witness to him in Jerusalem,
that there was no other resurrection. They might have been saying that
the resurrection is only a spiritual one. The glory of this Creator,
Saviour, God, is going to be revealed in that glorious day
when there is a resurrection. You are an eternal being, created
in the image of God, and you will have a resurrection existence
forever. There will come that glorious
day when everything will be transformed and all those that have been
asleep in the dust of this earth will rise. There will be a resurrection. And there they were denying the
very fundamentals of the faith of the testimony of the Lord
Jesus Christ, that resurrection that established the fact that
all of his people and all that Christ did for them is accepted
by God and God raised him from the dead. They're denying that
in the churches. He's so anxious that Timothy,
her baton, is now passed from Paul to Timothy and then passed
on. And this is a pattern for the
rest of this church age. He says in verse 22 of chapter
2, he says, flee youthful lusts. That whole notion that I'll do
it my way and I will reign supreme. It gets worn down in older saints. But you follow righteousness,
faith, charity and peace. And you do it in the church. You do it, verse 22, with them
that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Out of a pure heart. And a servant and the servant
of the Lord, verse 24, must not strive to teach patience, in meekness
instructing those that oppose themselves. Everyone opposed
to the Gospel is an enemy of themselves, whether they know
it or not. If peradventure, I love this
verse, if God peradventure will give them repentance, and here
is the same definition of repentance as in Acts, isn't it? This laid as a foundation for
us to the acknowledging of the truth. Repentance is about changing
life, but repentance in Acts is about changing your understanding,
your thinking about who the Lord Jesus Christ is and how God saves
sinners in Him. Repentance is a gift from God. It's a grace gift of our God. Paul is saying to Timothy, you
preach on. You be patient. You be kind and
gentle. You wait in faith. And verse 1 of chapter 3 reminds
us of the times that Timothy was living in. And we would have
thought that they were living in perilous times. Rome is your enemy. The rampant
false teaching of the Judaizers devastating the churches of God. all the heresies that were to
come, and yet we're told that the perilous times shall come. There are perilous times now,
but perilous times shall come. In fact, in 1 Timothy 4, verse
1, it says, The Spirit expressly speaketh that in the latter times
some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits
and the doctrines of demons. Perilous times shall come. And
then listen to this description of people in perilous times. For men shall be lovers of their
own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient
to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truth-breakers,
false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that
are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than
lovers of God. Who's he talking about? You would say that's a very,
very great description of this pagan world that we live in,
this God-despising world that we live in. Listen to it. Listen to verse 5. He's talking
about people in churches having a form of godliness, but denying
the power thereof. What is the power of godliness?
What's the power of God? It's the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's what it is to deny the
power of God. From such turn away perilous
times, for this sort are they which creep into houses, creep
into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins,
Why are people laden with sins? That's what religion does to
people, doesn't it? It burdens people with sins. It tells them
again and again that sin is something that they must do, not something
that the Christ has dealt with. It leaves them under a bondage
of law and works. Led away by diverse lust. How much Timothy needed in the
midst of all of this to remember Paul. To remember Paul and to
remember how Paul finished his time. He says, They're going to oppose
you as Janus and Jambres oppose Moses. In verse 10 he says, But
thou hast fully known my doctrine, my manner of life, purpose, faith,
long-suffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions which
came unto me at Antioch and Iconium, and Lystra, where he first came
to meet Timothy. What persecutions I endured! But out of them all the Lord
delivered me. Yea, all that will live godly
in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Don't expect that
standing up and preaching the gospel is going to present you
with an easy life. I've set you a pattern, and you'll
follow the pattern, children of God. And then he says, but
evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But that's the world you're living
in, Timothy. That's what you'll see around
you in Ephesus. The promise that God made to
Paul in Acts chapter 20, as he was on that beach, saying goodbye
to those people at Ephesus, that you know that from among your
own selves, people will rise up. people will rise up, speaking perverse things to draw
away disciples after themselves. And it's been fulfilled in five
short years. No wonder he goes on to Timothy,
in verse 14 of chapter 3, 2 Timothy. He says, But you continue, but
continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and hast been
assured of, knowing from whom thou hast learned them. and that
from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are
able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus. There's salvation, isn't it?
The faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our faith, the
security of our faith, rests entirely upon the success of
the Lord Jesus Christ. The faith which is in Christ
Jesus. That's why I love quoting Galatians 2.20, isn't it? The
life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faithfulness of
the Son of God. His faithfulness. His faithfulness
to the Father is my faithfulness. His law-keeping is my law-keeping. He's done it all. And he loved
me. He loved me and gave himself
for me. Why would you want to tell people
in a Bible college that you can hear from God and close your
Bible and expect to hear something that speaks to you that is the
truth? Listen to it. 2 Timothy 3.16. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God. It's profitable for doctrine.
In this Bible college you didn't need that. You didn't need doctrine. It's for reproof. No wonder you
closed the Bible. For correction. No wonder you
have a closed Bible. For instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect,
truly furnished unto all good works. I charge you, he goes
on to say, times, in great desertions, in
apostasies, in abundance, in disappointment, I charge you as to preach the
Word. Preach the Word. The only thing
that you are to do in the midst of all this, in the face of all
of this, Timothy, is you just keep preaching. You preach the
Lord Jesus Christ. You keep preaching. Be instant,
in season and out of season. It doesn't matter what the season
is. It doesn't matter whether there are multitudes listening
or just a few listening. It doesn't matter. The circumstances
doesn't matter. We are unto God a sweet savour
of Christ. You preach Christ. We preach
Christ to his Father. We preach Christ to his people. You preach the word. Reprove,
rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will
come. This is the promise of God. For
the time will come when they will not endorse our doctrine,
but after their own lusts, shall heap up to themselves teachers
having itching ears." If Paul had to write that in 2021, he
wouldn't have to change a word, would he? You wouldn't have to
change a word. From every church of God in this
world you can go in any direction you wish and you'll have another
place you can have your ears tickled. You can leave here can't
you? And the Catholics are just up
the road, the Presbyterians are just down the road, the United
Church is up the road, the Anglicans, the Pentecostals are scattered
all over the place. You have many other places to
go. The Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is always going to be a remnant community. People will
have what their itching ears want to hear. They shall turn
their ears from the truth and shall be turned into fables. Isn't that a beautifully accurate
description of what purports to be Christianity in this day
and age? The fables. Not once in all of
the Book of Acts is it ever mentioned of once in the Book of Acts,
and yet the great declaration of every missionary I've ever
seen anything from in these last 20 years is, we have to go out
and we have to show the love of God to people. We have to
tell them about the love of God. They're doing it all the time.
The local mission organization that goes into the schools around
here teaches thousands of young children. It has as its banner
316, that's the name of this organisation, 316, John 316. The leaders of that organisation
have been asked, and pleaded with, and told, and promised
to us they would go away and they would examine the Scriptures,
and they would ask themselves the question, why are you preaching
to young people in Nauru, in New South Wales, in 2015, 16,
17, 18, every time it's spoken, why are you preaching something
which not once in all of the Acts of the Apostle was preached?
You know what they did? Exactly what everyone else has
done for this last 20 years. They say, we'll go and have a
look at that. I'll have to take that seriously. And you never ever hear from
them again. And they are lying. They're going
into these schools and they're telling all these young people
in all the high schools of this district that they have opportunity.
God loves you. If God loves me, what on earth is there to repent
of? Jesus died for you. That's how
much he loved you. Jesus died for you. But his death
is an ineffectual death unless you add something of your activity
to it. They say in the modern confessions
now that Jesus died for those who would believe. Why don't
they tell the truth and say that he died for his sheep, he died
for his bride, he died for his church, he shed his precious
blood for them? What they do is they elevate
the activities of man above the glory of the extraordinary transaction
between God the Father and God the Son when he crushed his son
on Calvary's tree. And man's activities are as important
as Christ's activities. The Holy Spirit wants to save
you. God wants to save you. God is
long-suffering to us with the number of times 2 Peter 3 is
taken completely out of context and removed from all of its meaning
in the Scriptures. The Lord is not slack concerning
his promises, some man can't slacken, but he's long-suffering
to everyone in the world, not wanting anyone in the world to
perish. But everyone in the world should
come to repent. That's what they're saying, aren't
they? What does God say? God is not slack concerning his
promise, as some men count slackness, but his long-suffering to us-hood. And the us-would-are described,
the pronouns are described at the beginning of the letter.
The us-would-are the elect of God. He's long-suffering to us. He was long-suffering to Peter.
He was long-suffering to Saul of Tarsus. He was long-suffering
to all of his people. He's not willing that any of
them will perish. None of them will perish. No
one can take them out of the hand of God the Son. The Father
put them there. Our lives are hidden with Christ
in God. None of them will perish. They'll
all come to repentance. They'll all come to repentance.
Fables. The list goes on and on. Fables. Stories that men have
made up to teach morality. to teach good behavior. Fables, fables. Perilous times
shall come. But I wanted us to close in some
sense as Simon led us to see in the book of Philippians, in
Philem, sorry, and as Paul speaks of to Timothy. Wherever the Lord Jesus Christ
is present, his graces and his character are revealed to his
people and revealed in his people. He takes proud sinners. Saul's name was Desire of Men. You remember Saul, the king.
He was head and shoulders above all the others, and they desired
to have a king. Saul means desire. What does
Paul mean? Little. Little. When Christ is revealed,
men who are proud and self-righteous, and puffed up and made to be
little. So he was a somebody once upon
a time, wasn't he? And he became a nobody at the
feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he might preach the glory
of the only God, revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ to other
nobodies, who thought they were somebodies, but had to be reduced
to nobodies, that they might be made like the Lord Jesus Christ. They might be used of him to
reveal his grace in this world, and his glory eternally to be
revealed to his own. We are made nigh by the blood
of God. So if we're made nigh to Christ
by the blood of God, made nigh to God by the blood of Christ,
we are made nigh to each other. You can't be drawn near to him
and not be drawn near to one another, which is why when he's
writing to the Romans, I think it's 28 or 30 people he writes
to, and over and over again he says, beloved, beloved, beloved,
my fellow workers, my fellow labourers in the Lord Jesus Christ,
The church is gathered together to be a habitation of God through
the Spirit. We're no more strangers and foreigners,
but fellow citizens with the saints and the household of God. God's people are the very workmanship
of God. Saul, Paul, was a man of love. It was a love in the truth. But
it was a love in reality. Faith worketh by love. And love creates relationships. As I told you earlier, when Paul
piled company with those people in Ephesus, never to see them
again, they all wept sore and fell upon Paul's neck and they
kissed him. His years in Ephesus have been
years where bonds of love were grown between them. As Timothy,
he says, he's mindful of his tears, how much it must have
moved Paul as he parted from Timothy, to see Timothy in tears,
having to be separated from a short time from someone that he loved
so much. And they're real relationships
that God works in his church and amongst his people. Relationships
of love, of faithfulness, of dependableness, of reliability
and trustworthiness. Love is not big things. Love is mostly made up in terms
of action. That's the work of the gospel
in the hearts of God's people, as Peter says, and the gospel
comes, you're born again by the word of God. But it speaks of unfeigned love of
the brethren. Unfeigned love. 1 Peter 1.22,
seeing you purify your souls in obeying the truth through
the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren. Love is not
coerced. Love is not commanded in that
sense. Love is something that springs,
springs naturally from the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Love seeks the best of others. We don't have time, but you can
go and read 1 Corinthians 13, and if you relate every one of
those admonitions and declarations there to the Lord Jesus Christ,
you'll see the source of love, and you'll see where love comes. Paul's a man of love, of real
relationships, a man of integrity, Lord Jesus Christ had come to
him, and as much as Paul remained the chief of sinners at the end
of his days, he just had one focus, and that was the Lord
Jesus Christ. You preach him. You preach him. The one food, the one manna from
heaven that the child of God needs is to hear of the Lord
Jesus Christ. stood by him, verse 17. This pattern of faithfulness,
this pattern of love. It's extraordinary to read of
his abandonment by all in Asia. That's where Ephesus was. They'd
all abandoned him. How it must have wounded him. They all abandoned him, and he
says, but the Lord stood by my side. That's exactly what the
Lord Jesus Christ does. He takes his doesn't matter what this world
does, doesn't matter what this world brings, if you have Him. And He strengthened me. He strengthened
me. He poured power into him. As Paul said, I can do all things
through Christ which strengthens me. And he did it with a purpose,
that the message, that through me the message might be fully
proclaimed. Paul has finished, when you finish
dropped or penned at the end of Acts, all that's ever needed
for the Church in terms of preaching the Lord Jesus Christ is established
and settled. It's fully proclaimed. It's fully
proclaimed. All that we need to know is written
in this book. There's no need to go beyond
the Scriptures. All is revealed. It's fully proclaimed. And that all the Gentiles might
hear. He was delivered. Delivered out
of the mouth of a lion. Delivered from Nero. Delivered from Satan. Delivered
by a hand of a sovereign God from death. Delivered from the
Jews. Delivered no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the trials are.
And trials that Paul suffered are trials that hurt more because
love was so evident. Where there is real love, the
pain is much more real. Paul loved those people that
he preached to in Ephesus in Asia. He loved Demas, and Demas
left, and in his leaving he revealed that all he ever had loved was
this present evil world. People that had been close to
him, who'd been his fellow labourers, left him, and he was abandoned. And yet the Lord stood by his
side. What do you do when things are
tough? Exactly the same as when things
are wonderful. Exactly the same as when things
are wonderful. What do you do when you can't
understand what God is doing and how he can bring good out
of these circumstances? You do exactly as you do when
things are as you would see them to be right. Just trust him. What do you do when you're full
of fear? Paul was a man with emotions just like us. You trust
the Lord. What time, I'm afraid, I will
trust thee, says Psalm 56. What do you do when you feel
hopeless and helpless? You look to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I'll lift up my eyes to the hills from whence my help cometh. What
do you do when there's no strength to endure What do you do when you feel
abandoned by those who should stand by you? You wait in faith
and the Lord will come. I will bless the Lord at all
times, says David. His praise shall continually
be in my mouth. In this world you will have tribulation,
is the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ, but God is our refuge.
We have a need to come to a throne of grace, and we come with boldness.
We have grace to endure. We have a faith that God has
poured into the hearts of his people. And we rejoice in God,
our Savior. He says, I'll never leave you.
I'll never, never, never leave you, nor forsake you. Our only
resource is in Him. He's made a promise. Paul wrote to the Philippians,
my God shall supply all your need according to his rich