So what a glorious way Acts finishes. And I want us to go back and
recall for a few minutes why we decided that, well I decided,
you decided, we decided, I hope we decided together, that we
would look at the Book of Acts in a sense so that we would be
in the Book of Acts for I wanted us to contemplate as
we come to the Book of Acts the fact that in the Book of Acts
we have the first 30 years of church history, we have excerpts
from almost 20 sermons, we have the establishment of the church,
we have the enmity of religious people, both Jews and those who
claim to be believers, the evidence of all those things,
all of the problems of the church throughout this gospel age are
going to be encountered by the church in one form or another
in this time. But most of all, began to do and he makes that
glorious declaration to the disciples at the beginning of it that not
only in the words of Matthew 28 is with those people always
and all power is given unto him and we've seen that power exercised
again and again through the books of that book of Acts. But he
says that you shall receive power after the Holy Ghost, this is
Acts 1 verse 8, is come upon you and you shall be witnesses
unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and
the uppermost part of the earth. And here we are at the end of
Acts, in Acts chapter 28, and Paul speaks, we'll just read
these last four verses of Acts 28. He says, Be it known therefore
unto you that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they
will hear it. There are a people to whom God
will send his gospel, and they will hear it. And when he had
said these words, the Jews departed and had great reasoning among
themselves, great discussions, great disputing. Let them go
on disputing. They've been doing it for the
last 2,000 years, and it'll continue till the Lord returns. And Paul
dwelt. two whole years in his own hive
house and received all that came in unto him. Preaching the kingdom
of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus
Christ with all confidence, with all boldness that means, no man
forbidding him. It's a glorious picture, isn't
it? And what a glorious journey, and I'm endeavouring to long before I can enjoy the end
of it so much. But also a lot of us to think,
as a church, that we have been gathered by the Lord, we set
ourselves and stand apart from this religious world, not because
we don't wish to have fellowship with Him, but we stand apart
because of the gospel we proclaim. We stand apart like Paul did,
we stand apart and we are welcoming all that came, all that will
come to us we welcome. We don't wish to be anything
other than a light that shines and not something that We have in the Book of Acts and
throughout the Scriptures, and the Book of Acts is really an
exposition of all of the Old Testament Scriptures regarding
the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and what is called
this salvation. It's called a great salvation. It's called a common salvation.
That doesn't mean that it's common. in terms of being ordinary, it
just means that it's common amongst all of the churches. You can
go to any church in that world at that time, and you would find
where the apostles had planted the church, you would have the
same decorations of the Lord Jesus Christ as we have today,
and our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world
have today. It's a common salvation. It is
a common salvation, says Jude. It's a salvation It's a salvation that comes in
words, words of ordinary men like Paul and Peter, men who
are seen to be frail, men who have their proclamations shores of Galilee, perfectly
equipped by God to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul was a
great theologian, Saul of Tarsus was a great theologian of the
Jews, but before he could proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ he had
to have all of that knowledge and all of that wisdom and all
that learning stripped from him and make it to be done before
him. This salvation It's really fascinating the word
salvation is used 158 times in the scriptures. And what's the
most common adjective, adverb attached to it, pronoun attached
to it? It's called my salvation. My salvation. It's called thy
salvation, it's the salvation of God. If you are saved, you
have a salvation which is yours, in your possession, and it's
His salvation, and they're exactly the same. It's called our salvation
20 times, and it's called His salvation 9 times. It is, as
we saw, I trust last week, salvation is a person. We go back to Luke,
Chapter 2, and you might recall that glorious day in the temple
when a promise was fulfilled to Simeon. There were two old
people in that temple. The promise was fulfilled to
Simeon. He was just and devout and he was waiting for the consolation,
verse 25 of Israel. He was waiting for the comfort
of Israel. And the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him
by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen
the Lord's Christ. The Lord's Christ. What a great
description of our Saviour. He is the Lord's Christ. And
he came by the Spirit into the temple and when the parents brought
in the child Jesus to do for him after the custom of the Lord,
to have him circumcised and then blessed, And he blessed God and said,
Lord, now let us, thy servant, depart in peace according to
thy word. And I love this description of
our Lord Jesus Christ. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation. In the great activity that the
Lord has left for His Church is the proclamation of the Gospel.
The end result of the proclamation of the Gospel is that some will
hear, some will believe, and some will not. And those who
believe will say, My eyes have seen thy salvation. My eyes have seen thy salvation. The church exists to preach the
gospel. The church is gathered because
of the preaching of the gospel. And the question that we have
to have laid out before us and in a sense one of the comforting
things is that we, because we stand apart, because their gospel
is different to our gospel, we stand apart. And so there's a
sense in which we are under continual examination. examine yourselves
to see that you're in the faith. Why do we stand apart? We stand
apart because the Lord Jesus Christ described in the book
of Acts bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Lord Jesus
Christ who's named by the religious world. Here we are, 28 chapters
in Acts, and what's the one thing that is never mentioned regarding
the character of God in all of the of all of these journeys, of
all of these apostles, never once As if the Lord Jesus Christ has
done his level best, and then you can add by adding your faith
to his work, you will make his work successful. His work is
successful. The Father accepted him. He's
raised him from the dead. He's seated him in his right
hand in glory. Never once in the book of Acts
are any of the children of God put back under the law, under
the Mosaic law, as the believers Again and again we can go on
in so many different ways, isn't it? We read in the Book of Acts
again and again about a God who is a covenant God. We read in
the Book of Acts about a God who is a sovereign God. We read
in the Book of Acts and hear preached in the Book of Acts
about the particular redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We never hear in the book of Acts that the Lord Jesus is trying
to do something and fails. We never hear of him trying to
achieve something and it can't be achieved because he runs up
against that interminable, that immovable object that thwarts declaration of who the Lord Jesus
Christ is. I want us to know this Saviour
who is the One who has a great salvation and has wrought a great
salvation. I want us to know that it's a
common salvation, that we stand And we want most of all, we want
most of all for those who see us and for those who hear the
words of God to be able to say with simian, my eyes have seen
thy salvation. And we will rejoice if the Lord
grants us the grace to do so. That's why we're singing. Okay. Rejoice! The Lord is King! Your Lord and King adore! Rejoice! Give thanks and sing,
and triumph nevermore! Lift up your voices, Lift up your voice, rejoice again,
I say rejoice! Jesus, the Savior reigns, the
God of truth and love. When He had purged our stains,
He took His seat above. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice. The keys of death and hell are
to our Jesus. Give, lift up your heart. Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice. Rejoice in glorious hope, our
Lord the Judge shall come, and take his servants up to their
eternal home. Lift up your hearts, lift up
your voice, rejoice again, There are several things I'd
like us to look at this morning when it comes to this verse in
Acts chapter 28, verse 28. This gospel. The salvation that declares a
great God, the salvation that declares a God in all of His
glory and all of His attributes. The longer I go on, the more
and more I delight in the attributes of God. I love to contemplate
them. I love to think that in His absolute
sovereignty there's not a single thing moving in this world. That
sun is shining and beating down on us and cooking us and our
land. Every tiny little ray of light
that comes from that sun is directed exactly where He wants it to
go. Not a raindrop falls, not a speck of dust moves, nothing
moves in this universe outside of our glorious God. Which is
why His people, gathered together, want to talk about Him. We want
to talk about Him. Someone criticised us years ago
by saying, all they ever do is talk about Jesus Christ. I wish
they'd talk about something else. I wish they'd talk about my obedience. I wish they'd talk and tell me
about how well I have performed and how well I am doing. We just
talk about Him. One lady came to Scott Richardson
years ago and said, Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ, all you ever
speak about is Christ. And he turned to her and he said,
can you make sure that goes on my tombstone? make sure that
goes on my tombstone what a glorious Savior what an amazing God we
have and in the salvation of our God we have Don't we? Again and again and
again, we see the holiness of God. And we see those who will
not worship Him, as David said of Uzziah. You remember when
David said, let's bring this ark back. And he gathered all
of Israel. You can read about it in 1 Chronicles 15. He gathered
all Israel together and he made a brand new oxen cart. And you
can imagine how fancy it all was. And he had them all there
and they were singing and dancing. And Uzzah, the oxen stumbled
and Uzzah put his hand out and touched the ark. And God struck
him dead. Three months later, David has
another worship service to God and they move the ark. And this
time, this time David does it according to the due order. What
was it? What was Uzzah's problem? In the salvation of sinners man
must do something to aid God. God will be honoured for His
holiness. He'll be honoured for His glory. He's created His people for His
glory. God will be honoured for His
absolute sovereignty. And in the salvation of sinners,
no wonder it's a great salvation because it describes a great
God. In the salvation of sinners there's always going to be a
declaration of God, that before the foundation of the world in
the eternal covenant of grace, he had a people that he gifted
to his son. And the son looked at his bride
and said, wow. The son looked at that bride
as the gift of the father. They're foreknown, they're loved.
The Lord added to the church daily, it says in Acts 2, such
as should be said. You cannot preach the Gospel
without talking about the foreknowing, the love of God for his elect
people. You cannot talk about the Gospel
without declaring the election of God, that he's chosen. He's
chosen. All of those who were ordained
to eternal life believed. You cannot talk about the salvation,
the great salvation of redeemed, the church that he
bought with his own blood. This notion that somehow he didn't
get what he paid for is a blasphemous notion. The notion of universal
redemption, that salvation is somehow an offer and God has
done his best, is not in the book of Acts at all, and it's
not in the scriptures at all. It's the church that he purchased
with his own blood. They are a ransomed people, they
are a redeemed people. He paid the price to have them
brought back to Himself. We are the Church of God. We
are His by creation. We are His by foreknowledge. We are His by promise. We are
His by redemption purpose. He's ransomed us. He's ransomed
His people. And He comes to those people and He regenerates them. He regenerates. for him to be a blessed favorite
of our man and to attain leading to repentance. Without
grace there's no gift of God. Without grace there is no God
visiting his people. He must visit them in grace,
because there's never anything in them that causes them to be
deserving of his presence with them. They're regenerated. Without grace there's no knowledge
of reconciliation. He says, believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, your sins will be blotted out. There is sanctifying
grace, isn't there, in our salvation. That we are justified, and I
want us to be reminded again, to be justified is to be someone
who has never sinned. Injustice, God cannot view sin
in two places at once. Brothers and sisters, if he put
your sin son are now taken away and they're
gone forever. The children of God are children
who have never sinned. All of their sins were accounted
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And in this world they see themselves
as nothing but sinners, as nothing but frail. And in that frailty
they cry out, Lord save me. Lord you're the saviour, Lord
save me. You might remember, recall Peter Jeremiah 17, you might recall
Jeremiah's call from a very, very young age. He was called
a God and ordained and appointed. And by the time you get to chapter
17 of Jeremiah, he's been the most remarkable prophet of God
and seen the most remarkable things. And he says in verse
chapter 17, He says of his God, O Lord, the hope of Israel, all
that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and neither depart from me, shall
be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord,
the fountain of living waters. And then he says, Heal me. Jeremiah
17.14. Heal me. Are you in need of healing? God's children are always and I shall be saved, for thou
art my praise. Thou art my praise. Salvation
declares a God If you've called on Him, you're
calling on Him now. You're calling on Him again and
again and again. Lord, save me. Save me from myself. Save me from this world and its
entanglements. Lord, just save me. Save me your
way. Save me in your time. Salvation in Acts is a reconciliation,
isn't it? To be saved is to be reconciled
to God. See, salvation in Acts is meeting
God in all of His glory and surviving. To meet God and to be in the
presence of the Holy Lord God and survive. You ask Paul what
salvation looked like on the Damascus Road. When he first met the Lord Jesus
Christ and that light shone from heaven, I'm sure the very first
thoughts that came into Paul's life and grace had come to him at
that time. And the sovereign grace that
saves and this great salvation that saves is a sanctifying salvation. We're justified from all things
that we couldn't be justified by the law of Moses. We are sanctified. And sanctified, as Acts 26 is,
sanctified by the faith that's in him. God's people in salvation
are a glorified people. They're preserved people, you
might recall the preservation that Paul be declared. We are saved. We are saved in the salvation
that Acts described. We are saved from eternity to
eternity. We are saved to the praise and
the glory of His grace. The glory of It's an eternal salvation. And
it's good hope through grace. How do you know you're saved? How do you know this salvation
is yours? with this great Salvation, with
this great Saviour as your Saviour. It's belief, isn't it? What did
he say to the Ethiopian eunuch? What did Philip say? He preached the Lord Jesus Christ
and as they went on their way he came to certain water and
the eunuch said, see here is water, Acts 8.36. What doth hinder
me to be baptised? And Philip said, if our belief Salvation is not what you believe
about yourself. There are multitudes who believe
that they are saved and saved under this modern gospel. And
yet when you talk to them about the Christ of God and you declare
the Christ of God and the Son of God and the salvation of God
by sinners through the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ
by a blood atonement that took away all the sins of God's people,
they say, that Jesus Christ is the Son
of God. I believe that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God. I often try and put myself in the
place of Paul with a chain to a Roman soldier there in that
room in Jerusalem, in Rome, sorry. And he would have talked again
and again about the glory of the salvation of sins. To go
back to what we were just talking about, how do we know? So what
did the Philippian jailer do? He says, sirs, what must I do
to be saved? What must I do to be saved? And
they said, Paul and Silas, believe Jesus Christ. Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ as he's described in this book and thou shalt be
saved and thy house. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
who is proclaimed in this great gospel salvation. Believe on
him and thou shalt be saved. How does this gospel come? As
he was telling the story of the first European convert, a certain
woman named Lydia Rosella Purple from the city of Thyatira, who
worshipped God, she heard us. She heard the gospel. She heard
it more than just superficially, because what does it next say?
Whose heart the Lord had opened. and that she attended unto the
things that were spoken of by Paul. Paul stands before a religious
crowd, a religious gathered assembly, a religious assembly in this
room in Rome, a religious assembly of people who thought that they
worshipped God, they thought that they were honouring the
true and living God. He preaches God in all of his
glory from all of the Old Testament scriptures. He preaches God in
such a way that there is no place left to hide. You either reject him, or you just simply bow. See,
Paul was preaching, like all of God's servants, they want
there to be a decision. And they preach in such a way,
just briefly before we finish this part of our time together,
it's interesting, isn't it, that Acts begins with, be it now and
unto you, Be it known unto you that these apostles are not drunk,
these 120 people that are proclaiming the marvellous works of God are
not drunk, in Acts 2.14. Be this known, and hearken to
my words, begins St. Paul. Be it known and hearken unto
you. What Peter says again in Acts chapter 4 after the healing
of the crippled man, he says, Be it known unto you and all
the people of Israel. The things that have happened
here are beyond human understanding. And the Jewish leaders had to
use the same word when they described what happened. There was this
man standing before them and they said it was a notable miracle. The declaration of the Lord Jesus
Christ is notable. Be it known unto you. This notable
miracle. And they said, we can't deny
it. We can't deny the miracle. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed,
there's a be it known unto you. Be it known unto you. It was
known throughout all Be it known unto you. Through this man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sins is the first sermon in Galatia. Be it known unto you. Be it known unto all the Jews
and the Greeks. We know. They knew that this
was a sect. We know, and Paul then turns
their words back to them, be it known unto you, therefore. You reject this gospel, you will
have a be it known unto you for the rest of your days. The gospel
is the gospel of a successful, sovereign savior whose substitutionary
death saved all of his people. We give thanks unto God. God's people give thanks unto
God. Our apostle Paul says to the
Corinthians in 2nd Corinthians chapter 2, he says, thanks be
unto God which always causes us to triumph in Christ and make
us manifest, the savour of his knowledge
by us in every place." And then this glorious description of
what the Church of God is commissioned to do and the impact of the Church
of God's commission being fulfilled as the Lord guides and directs
his servants. He says, We are unto God a sweet savour
of Christ. That's how God views his gospel.
That's how God views the gathering of his people, the glory of his
grace, the glory of the gospel of the grace of God. We are unto
God a sweet savour of Christ. and we're a sweet saver in them
that are saved and in them that perish. To the one we are the
saver of death unto death, the other to the other the saver
of life unto life. Be it known unto you Jews who
depart There is self-life. And then he says in the next
chapter in verse 5, Not that we are sufficient of ourselves has made us able ministers of
the New Testament. Able ministers of the eternal
covenant of grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not of the letter,
but of the spirit. For the letter killeth, but the
spirit giveth life. These men that went away and
departed, a saviour of death unto death, Obedience. We have another obedience,
children of God, in our salvation. We have the very obedience of
Christ. And God saw him and sees him
and sees his work and sees his blood shed and sees him may he make it a sweet savour
unto you