Let's turn back to Acts chapter
28. I'll start by reading verses
we looked at a little earlier again. Verse 26 of Acts 28. Go unto this people. This is Isaiah's commission.
Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand. Seeing ye shall
see, and not perceive. For the heart of this people
is waxed gross, and there is a dull of hearing. Their eyes
have they closed. And that's an active indicative
It's the same tense in the Greek as some believe not. So unbelief and closing eyes
and stopping ears is an active activity. Less they should see
with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with
their heart and should be converted and I should heal them. I should
forgive their sins is how Mark describes that phrase. Be it known therefore unto you
that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles and that
they will hear it. Salvation, what a glorious word.
As we looked at a little bit earlier, the first time it's
used, it's a description of a person. It's in Genesis 49, 18. I have
waited for thy salvation, O Lord, says Jacob. And it's just three
words in the Hebrew, isn't it? One is to wait, and the second
one is Yeshua, and the third one is Jehovah. And of course,
salvation is a person. Salvation is this particular
person. Salvation is all tied up in the
activities of one particular person. But I love what that
salvation meant, and I want us to picture ourselves back in
that room in Rome with Paul chained to a Roman guard. And that crowd
of Jews before him, and some of those Jews went out of that
place. They came into that place as
dead and as lost as you could possibly be in this world. Dead
and lost. The most dead and lost people
in this world are those dead and lost in religion. They had
a righteousness of their own. And that day, that day, salvation
came to them. The Lord Jesus Christ came to
them. He comes personally and particularly to people. And that
word salvation has all of these connotations and just think about
it. For you who are saved, just think about it. Liberated. Do you remember the day you felt liberated from your sins, liberated
from the bondage of all of the depravity that you earned in
your Father Adam, means to be delivered, delivered by a hand
of God. It means to be saved in battle. It means to be victorious. It means, in some places, to
be preserved. to be rescued. It means to be
safe. It means to be suckered, to be
nurtured, to be fed, to be sustained. It means to be
in an a place of the Lord's provision. Salvation is a person. I don't
know about you, but I can recall And I think most of the Lord's
people find it very difficult to name a moment. And I find it difficult that
the religious world wants to have a particular moment. Salvation
is an event and it's an ongoing event. But when I read some of
those words, do you recall being liberated? The feeling of being saved. The feeling of having the Lord
Jesus Christ, no longer someone that you ran from as an enemy
of your being. Someone who had taken captivity
captive. Someone who is now on the throne
of heaven. Did you see? Have you seen? You'll call it a great salvation
when a great God comes to great sinners and reveals himself.
This is eternal life, isn't it? This is eternal life, says the
Lord Jesus Christ. You know the Father, you know
Jesus Christ whom he has sent. The salvation of God is sent. Eternal life is in his Son, and
he who has the Son has life, has life eternal. Paul had spent this day speaking
to these people as I trust all of God's servants would be led
to do until the Lord himself returns and we no longer need
the testimony of sinful men. But we want to do those two things
always, don't we? We want to describe God in all
the glory of all of his attributes and we want to describe the Lord
Jesus Christ as God in human flesh. And as John says, this
is the record that God gave of his Son. So to disbelieve the
Gospel, to do as these Jews had done, to go and depart from there,
is to reject the testimony that God has given of his Son. And
life is in his Son. So you cannot trust an unknown
God or an unknown Saviour. And you shouldn't trust any other
Jesus. See, these Jews left that day,
didn't they? They departed. They still had
a messiah in their mind. that was to come. You can see
it on the signs in the synagogues of our land today. He's coming
again soon, they say. He's coming again. Their Messiah
hasn't come. He's still coming. They still
had notions of a God. They still had their attachment
to the scriptures. They still had their attachment
to all of their religious activities. And yet what they thought was
their freedom, what they thought was their righteousness before
God, was actually as bats. And this world, this
world, this world, this religious world
does as Isaiah 45 20 says, they pray to a God that cannot save. We want to describe our God as
a glorious, glorious Saviour. We want to describe Him as the
scriptures describe Him. We want to describe His salvation
as the scriptures describe Him. We want to describe the God that
we are saved from. The first thing that God must
do is save you from Himself, from His holiness and from His
justice, from the worth of who He is. We have to be saved from our
legal obligation. God has a simple obligation to
all of Adam's fallen people, all of Adam's race, doesn't he?
Obey me perfectly. Walk before me and be perfect,
the Lord said to Abraham. Be holy as I am holy. And the religious world thinks
that it's something that we can do. The holiness and the perfection
that you must attain is the Lord Jesus Christ. All of the declarations
of him are to turn us away, turn us away from ourselves. Those
people that walked out of that room that day, liberated, believing. The Lord had done a work in their
lives. They were delivered, and they were saved, and they rejoiced. You have a legal obligation.
You have a moral obligation as well, don't you? You obey me,
you obey my laws, All of the dictates that I have laid out
before you that you are so completely and fully aware of. And you have
a moral obligation, don't you? You have to love me. Love me
perfectly. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart. Yet have no other gods before
me. God's children love the law of
God. They delight in the law of God. The law of God is no longer standing
over them as a whip. lashing their backs about things
they must do, the law of God in the hands of the Lord Jesus
Christ is fulfilled perfectly and we by faith, we fulfil the
law by faith. And love, love is the fulfilment
of the law. If you're going to be saved,
we're going to be saved God's way. If you're going to be saved,
you're going to be liberated. You're going to be liberated
God's way, to God's satisfaction, to God's glory and honor, in
such a way that God's name is magnified. And we're going to
be saved from our natural enmity, from Satan's captivity, from
lies, from our flesh, from this world, this present evil world. We're going to be saved from
our fellowship with those who travel down this broad religious
road. We're going to be saved. We're going to be saved from
a God who reprobates people. We're going to be saved from
a God. We're going to be saved from that delusion that allows
the people to go through all of this life and to hear all
of the warnings of God against them. As the Lord Jesus said,
the Jews, they reject the counsel of God against them. You can go through this world
confident. confident in your religion and
confident in your works. That's what Matthew 7, 21 to
23 says, isn't it? He says, not everyone that saith
unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but
he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. What's
the will of God? Would you believe on his Son? Would you believe on his Son? Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, listen to their works. They're declaring their allegiance
to God with the emphasis, it's emphatic, Lord, Lord. They're saying it as we speak,
brothers and sisters. This sentence Every time I think about this,
I think of the time in India when I was asked as an emergency
to go and speak to a group of pastors. The Pentecostal pastors
in all of the hills where we lived had gathered, and there
would have been a hall about this size or a bit bigger, and
it was absolutely jam-packed with them. And I said, I can't
get there until my lunchtime, and I have a very limited amount
of time, and I have to get back to classes when I finish. And
so they were meeting earlier, and I arrived. And I arrived
to this crowd of pastors. There would have been 100, maybe
150 of them, and they were all revved up on their Pentecostalism,
and they were all carrying on. I was bringing a message to them
about who the Lord Jesus Christ is out of Revelation chapter
1, the Lord Jesus who met John. And the glory, and we were just
describing the glory of his being, and these men have been so revved
up on their nonsensical religion that I stopped them. I said,
we've just got to stop. I can't continue. We're dealing
here with a God who is holy and a God who is glorious, and you're
playing games. And I stopped them. that this is a promise from God
and we read these words and we read them slowly and we read
them quietly. I don't know what's happened. Not everyone that saith unto
me, Matthew 7.21, shall enter into the kingdom of God, but
he that doeth the will of my Father which is in him. Many
will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied
in your name? And in thy name cast out devils. And the Lord is not denying their
prophecies, and he's not denying their exorcisms. And in thy name
have done many There are many of them. Notice
the quality of them. Wonderful. They thought they
were wonderful. Other people thought they were
wonderful. The church thought they were wonderful. Many wonderful
works. I'm not like these other people.
Look what I've done. Look how I've changed my life.
Look at the things I'm doing in the name of the Lord. What
a horrible sentence. Then I will profess unto them,
I never knew you. The church knew you and
applauded you. Your friends knew you and knew
your works and applauded you. I never knew you. I never knew
you. I never had a relationship with
you. I didn't die for you. I didn't
love you. And what's the mark of it? I
left you go all the way through this life. And I left you. I left you. Depart from me, ye that work
iniquity. That word iniquity means lawlessness.
They thought that they had obeyed the laws of God. They thought
that they were doing their best. to be delivered, set free from
that condemnation that falls upon people. If you've been set
free from that, brothers and sisters, you'll be like calves
let loose from the stalls. It'll be a liberation to know
that all of your righteousness has got nothing to do with what
you do, that all of your boasting is in one thing, isn't it? All
of my boasting is in whose work? Not my wonderful works, but His
wonderful works. He's the Saviour. He's the Saviour. I'm just a sinner. I'm just a
sinner, beating on my chest, saying the problem's not just
the things I do, the problem's what I am. If the problem is
the things that you do, you just modify the life you live. If
the problem's in your heart, God has to give you a new heart.
God has to give you a new life. God has to give you a new record. And that's the record of every
believer in this world, isn't it? That I was born into this
world 2,000 years ago, and I lived before the law of God, and I
lived before men, and I lived in absolute perfection, 100%
of the time, in thought and word and deed. I perfectly obeyed
every single jot and tittle of God's law. I perfectly loved
God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, all my strength.
I had no idols before me. I had no false gods. I never
blasphemed His name. I rested on the Sabbath day.
I rested in Him and His faithfulness. I perfectly obeyed His law. That's
the record of everyone and every child of God. That's what it
is to be liberated, isn't it? I lived before men and I loved
them. I lived before men and I loved
them perfectly. I told them the truth all the
time from my heart. I lived before the law of God.
I lived before men. I lived before God in holy perfection. And on Calvary's tree, I died. And all of my sins received the
perfect, just punishment that a holy, righteous, and just God
must do and must give to every single one of my sins until God
himself says, That's the record that God has
given of His Son and it's the record of everyone who's in Him.
Everyone who's attached to Him. Everyone who is united to Him.
That's my record. It's the only record I have.
It's the only record I need. And if God has liberated you
and set you free, you'll find that that record is a glorious
record. God's accepted it already. God has in Heaven now, right
before Him, His Son. in all of his glory and all of
his perfections, and he doesn't need anything else. He doesn't
need anything else from us. He's got perfection. We have
it. That's to be set free. I'm not
much of an artistic person, as Mirren and a whole bunch of other
people will testify, but one of the things I really love,
the artist I really love, is a fellow called Turner. And Turner
was amazing, an English artist from the, I think it's the 19th
century, anyway. And he was amazing at painting
skies and seascapes and things. If you ever get a chance to go
and see Turner paintings, you'll see why they're amazing. I just,
and I travel to Canberra in Turner Paintings, where I'm always when
I go down, And you walk into these huge sort of galleries
there, and you see this painting a hundred yards away, and it's
just captivating in its beauty. It's just captivating in its
beauty. And the wonder of this man with
these brushstrokes that didn't seem very distinct, but they
paint just the most glorious pictures. to see them because they're so
beautiful. Imagine me turning up down there with my can spray
paint and saying to the fellas, well Turner's done the best he
can do and here I am, here I am going to add something to that.
That little painting there just needs a little bit of a touch
up over here and I've got the right colours. Here's my painting
paint. That's exactly what we do, that's
exactly what we do when we think It's a person. Salvation is a
person. Paul, the liberated man, the
delivered man, just spoke of that deliverance, didn't he?
What was Paul? What was Saul of Tarsus? What
did he have to commend himself to God? He was commended by man,
didn't he? He had a lot to commend himself
to man. He could tell people, couldn't he, that I've kept the
law blameless. You can go through the 613 commandments
that we Jews have concocted out of this. We can go through all
that, and I can tick the box on every single one. You can
watch me as I get out of bed in the morning. You can watch
me when I go to bed at night, and you'll see that I've actually
done it perfectly. Then he met the Lord Jesus Christ
and he saw for the first time in his life what holiness was
about. For the first time in his life
he saw what obedience was about. For the first time in his life
he saw what the justice of God was all about. The first time
in his life he ever saw what righteousness ever was. We need
that deliverance. We need for God to come. And that's the glory of this
passage that's before us. Here, read it with me. This is
a promise from our God, isn't it? It's a promise from our God
and it's a promise that actually lays out before these Jews something
that they were going to see for the rest of their days. Be it
known therefore unto you. As you Jews walk away from here
as the Jews did in Jerusalem, what was their response to the
glory of the declaration of the Lord Jesus Christ? They became
more and more hardened. The more that the gospel was
preached, the more hardened they became. They rejoiced when James
was beheaded by Herod. and they put Peter in prison
and Herod was hoping to do the same with him. Be it known therefore
unto you, be it known therefore unto you, religious people, who
have some righteousness of your own, the salvation of God is
sent. The salvation of God is sent
unto the Gentiles. sent unto the Gentiles as it
was promised in all the Old Testament scriptures. Abraham was a Gentile. Noah was a Gentile. Enoch was
a Gentile. They were Gentiles, all of them. Why on earth would these Jews
have some offense about the fact that the salvation of God was
sent to the Gentiles? But I love the promise of God.
It's going to be sent to the Gentiles and that they might
hear it? What's it say? They will hear
it. This is the great confidence
we have in preaching the gospel, isn't it? We don't want to preach
any other gospel than the apostles preached. We don't want to preach
any other Jesus than the one that's in these scriptures. We
want to preach the Lord Jesus Christ who is the salvation of
his people. We want to preach him in his
glory. And I love what that word sent means. Do you know what
the word sent means? We've got a word in our language.
It's called apostolo. Apostolo. It's the word for apostles. They were just sent ones. And
that's, I think, one of the reasons Paul quoted Isaiah, because he
had similar to Isaiah's experience. And the remarkable thing is that
Isaiah met the Lord. On his own, there's no record
of anyone else ever being with him. He met the Lord in the temple,
and then all that the Jews had from there on in were just the
words of Isaiah, who was an ordinary man like them. And you put Isaiah
in the crowd in Jerusalem, and you'd never know he was any different
to the rest of them. But when he spoke, when he spoke
the words of God, you better jolly well listen. Paul was just
a man, wasn't he? He was just a man like every
other sinner. He thought he was special once,
but as an apostle he was just a man. I love what the word means. It comes from two words, apo
and stelo, and one means to be separated, to have a separate
origin. I love the word Hebrews, isn't
it? Hebrews is a difficult word to
translate, but the word Hebrew means someone from another place. Someone who's passing through. Someone of a different origin. See, where's the origin of all
of God's people? The sent one came from heaven.
Our home is in heaven. Our home is in heaven. They're separated. They have a different origin. And stelo, the second part of
that word, means to set in order. Isn't it lovely? To set in order,
to set fast, to set apart, to arrange. So they're separated
by God, these apostles, these set ones. They're separated by
God and they set in order the glories of our great God and
Saviour. When he goes, I do quote John
chapter 12 because it gives me such delight in the thought that
it might be something that's true of us. It says, you cannot
separate, you cannot ever separate the Lord and his people. They
are united always. But he says in John 12, 26, any
man serve me, let him follow me, and where I am, There shall
also my servant be. We think that we wander around
in this world, don't we? And somehow the Lord Jesus Christ
is coming along behind us, picking up the pieces and sorting out
the mess. He goes before his people. You
can't be separated from him. He won't have it, brothers and
sisters in Christ. If any man served me, if any
man sent on my behalf to a particular people, Where I am, there shall
my servant be also. If you turn over with me to Acts
chapter 3, it's a remarkable description of our Lord Jesus
Christ. You might recall it's after the lame man healed and
Paul speaks to all of us on because he uses these opportunities,
like all of these remarkable opportunities, to declare who
the Lord Jesus Christ is. And he says, to them in verse
13, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the God of our
fathers had glorified his son Jesus, whom you delivered up. We've delivered him up and denied
him in the presence of Pilate, where he was determined to let
him go. You denied, you denied the Holy One and the just. And what did you do? You desired
a murderer be granted unto you, and you killed the Prince of
Life. You see, sin, sin in this world, and sin to those who haven't
been touched by the hand of God. But listen to it before God.
You've killed the Prince of Life. You've killed the Holy One. You've
killed the Just One of God, the One He sent. And your desire
is to have a murderer in your midst. And then it says, you
killed the Prince of Life when God has raised from the dead.
So you can do all of that, and all you're doing is fulfilling
the purposes and the will of our God. And his name, through
faith in his name, has made this man strong as you now see and
know. Yea, the faith which is by him. He gives faith. Faith is always
the gift of God. giving him this perfect soundness
in the presence of you all. And he says, now, brethren, I
know, I know that through ignorance you did it as also your rulers.
But those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all
his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he has so fulfilled. Repent ye, and be converted,
that your sins may be blotted out, and the times of refreshing
shall come from the presence of the Lord. It's a refreshing
time to hear that our sins were dealt with. When you are that,
do you fit that demographic that has been described there? Denied
the Holy One, killed the Prince of Life, You could say, well,
I wasn't there 2,000 years ago and I couldn't have done it.
You have. You have if you're an honest
person. But those things, verse 18, which
God before had shed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ
should suffer, and he hath so fulfilled. Testament prophets is going to
be fulfilled. Repent ye and be converted that your sins may
be blotted out and the times of refreshing shall come from
the presence of the Lord. It's called a great salvation
in Hebrews chapter 2. It's a great salvation for great
sinners. And we'll listen to what verse
20 says. And he shall send Jesus Christ. which before was preached unto
you. See, the preached Lord Jesus
Christ is the sent Lord Jesus Christ, and the preached and
sent Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord Jesus Christ who comes to
his people. He's not gonna leave his people
to themselves. He's not gonna leave his people
to this world and to Satan. He's not gonna leave his people.
He'll come to his people. And his people, because of his
perfect finished work on the cross of Calvary, are perfectly
fit, perfectly fitted by God to be a dwelling place of God. That's liberation, brothers and
sisters. That's rescue. That's deliverance. That's for these Jews, the poor,
declares believed that day. That's what they felt that day.
Set free. God looks to the Lord Jesus Christ
for absolutely everything from me. And he never looks to me
for anything. He's the surety. He's my surety. Just want to read a couple more of the beauty of it. Our
great Saviour. He says they will hear. They
will hear it. They will hear this Gospel. They
will hear this Lord Jesus Christ. I love what Isaiah 42 says. He
shall not fail nor be discouraged. Our great Saviour is not wandering
around heaven wondering what on earth is going to happen with
people. Saved one minute and lost the next. What a load of
nonsense, isn't it? This idea that somehow you can
lose your salvation. It's not salvation if you can
lose it. You're not saved if you can lose it. Salvation's
in the Lord Jesus Christ. He shall not fail nor be discouraged
till he has set judgment on the earth and the eyes shall wait
for him, to his law. Thus saith the Lord God, he that
created the heavens and stretched them out, he that spread forth
the earth and that which cometh out of it, he that giveth breath
unto all people upon the spirit of them, to walk therein. Such is the absolute sovereignty
of God. I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness and will
hold thine hands and will keep thee and give thee a covenant
for the people, for a light to the Gentiles. To do what? to open blind eyes, to bring
out the prisoners from the prison and them that sit in darkness
out of the prison house. I am the Lord, that is my name,
and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise
to graven images. Saved, set free, the glorious
liberty. Wherever salvation is spoken
of in the scriptures, it's always a salvation that is entirely
of grace and completely and utterly independent of works. I want to read one of my favourite
verses in the Old Testament. with benefits every day. I will take the cup of salvation
and call upon the name of the Lord. Remember those Jews in
Jerusalem. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. I will take the cup of salvation
and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows under
the Lord now in the presence of all is the death of his saints. All
of the saints of God had a precious death outside Jerusalem, publicly
before men, in the very presence of God. Our death was died. Our sins received their just
and complete punishment from God. And God can say to all of
these people, fury is not in me. Fury is not in me. If all of our sins are gone,
there is just one thing left between a sinner and a holy and
righteous God. It's love. It's all that's left. Love and
fellowship. The Lord Jesus Christ took that
cup that was full of our sins. He looked into that cup in Gethsemane's
garden and the shock and horror of what it was and what it required
of God to do injustice to him caused his heart to break and
blood to pour from his pores. And it was a cup that was given
him from his father and it was a cup that he had in his hands
And it's a cup that he said he must drink. And he said it's
a cup that cannot pass away unless he drinks it. And justice demands
that he drink it. If it's in his hands, it's not
in yours. If he drank it dry, there's nothing
for you to drink. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we do pray that you would cause your Son, who is our salvation,
to be high and lifted up in our midst. Father, we pray that by
your Spirit you might cause us to once again, our Father, see
your Son crucified under your holy justice that
we might see also heavenly father your son crying out it is finished
we might see that we are buried with your son having been crucified
with him and that we are now risen with him and he's taken
all of his blood-born children all of his precious blood into
heaven with him we pray that we might both drink
and eat in remembrance of him because you've caused us to know
him and our father we pray that we might be led as we go out
into this world again heavenly father to live as people who
have been delivered who have been saved that we might live
for the praise of the glory of your grace which was given us
in your dear son before the world began. Make his salvation to
us a great salvation, our Father. And make him a great saviour.
And make him and his blood precious to us. For we pray in his name
and for his glory. Amen.