Praise Him, praise Him, Jesus
our blessed Redeemer. Sing, O earth, His wonderful
love proclaim. Hail Him, hail Him, highest archangels
in glory. Strength and honor give to his
holy name. Like a shepherd, Jesus will guard
his children in his arms. He carries them all day long. Praise Him, praise Him, tell
of His excellent greatness. Praise Him, praise Him, ever
in joyful song. Praise Him, praise Him, Jesus
our blessed Redeemer. For our sins He suffered and
bled and died. He our rock, our hope of eternal
salvation. Hail Him, hail Him, Jesus the
crucified. Sound His praises, Jesus, who
bore our sorrows. Love unbounded, wonderful, deep,
and strong. Praise Him, praise Him, tell
of His excellent greatness. Praise Him, praise Him, ever
in joyful song. Praise Him, praise Him, Jesus
our blessed Redeemer. Heavenly portals, loud with hosannas
sing. Jesus, Savior, reigneth forever
and ever. Crown Him, crown Him, prophet
and priest and king. Christ is coming over the world
victorious. Power and glory unto the Lord
belong. Praise Him, praise Him, tell
of His excellent greatness. Praise Him, praise Him, ever
in joyful song. In your bulletins on page 4,
Ben was saying we need some Joseph Harpe's hymns read. So here you
are, Ben. Page 4 of your bulletin says
you turn in your scriptures to Acts 26. Almighty Father, bless
the word which through your grace we now have heard, and may the
precious seed take root, spring up and bear abundant fruit. We
praise you for the means of grace, as homeward now our steps we
trace. Grant, Lord, that we who worship
here may all at last in heaven appear. Praise God from whom
all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here
below. Praise Him above ye heavenly
hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. I hadn't realized that last refrain
was from Mr. Hart. I sang it at the end of the services
in It was run by the Masons. It's amazing how people could
use such delightful words from such a remarkable servant as
God and be so, so lost. Okay, let's turn back in our
scriptures to Acts 26. We read this before. It's the
account at the end of Paul's defense of himself. And you might
recall that this defence is on account of a gripper asking to
hear from Paul and Paul being invited to speak. And such is the case so often
in Acts that we ought to rest that In the sort of religious
world I was brought up in, you were made to feel guilty about
not witnessing to everyone that stepped in front of your path,
and yet the Lord, in all the way through Acts, there has always
been an invitation to speak. And so the Lord, the Lord's arm
is not short, brothers and sisters in Christ. The Lord has saved
his people, and they are saved from the foundation of the world.
They were blood-bought at Calvary's tree, and they will hear, they
will be brought to hear. And so that doesn't cause us
to cease our activities, it's the cause of energizing our activities. That's what Paul is commanded
in Acts chapter 18. He says, the Lord said to him,
I have many people in this city, Paul, so you preach on. So we
have great hope in resting in who our Lord is. and what he's
doing and his activities to guide and direct his people. So Paul has given this remarkable
defense of himself, defense of the gospel, declaration and proclamation. The one thing I want us to know
at the very beginning is that Paul directed his activities
towards the hearts of people. And Paul was in the presence
here of these people who had wrongfully jailed him for the
last two and a half years. And by all of their admissions,
he had no reason to be there. And yet, when he comes to speak
before these people, what does he do? He preaches the Lord Jesus
Christ to them. He could have defended himself
and he could have said all sorts of things. I think the one thing that comes
across in the writings of the New Testament is that there is
a deep and genuine love, not just for the brethren, but we
do actually love people. And that love expresses itself
in a desire for them to hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ, for them to not only love, be loved in the ways of
this world, but for them to sort of join with us in love for our
Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul's efforts are directed
toward the hearts and souls, and again and again you'll see
that he has one person in his focus all the way through this
chapter. He says, O King Agrippa, I'm pleased I'm here speaking
to you. He says, O King Agrippa, O King, he says, O King Agrippa,
verse 19. The king knoweth these things.
He's speaking personally to this ruler, And he has one purpose in mind,
isn't it? He wants to declare the glory of God. And he has
one desire in his heart, isn't it? He says in verse 29 of the
passage that we looked at earlier, read earlier, he says, I would
to God, I would to God that not only thou, but also all who hear
me this day were both almost and altogether such as I. What a remarkable testimony.
I wish and pray that the Lord causes that to be our testimony,
that we can say to everyone we meet, I wish you were like me.
Wish you were like me. Wish you were like me in my relationship
with the Lord Jesus Christ. I wish you were like me in the
way that he has revealed himself to me. I wish you were like me.
I wish you were like me. Not almost, but altogether like
me. And so Paul to that end puts
no stumbling blocks in the way at all. He mentions nothing of
his achievements in any way at all. This is a man who wrote
more than half the New Testament. This is a man who'd been planting
churches for 20 years by this stage. He had much that he could
have done, but he didn't exalt himself. And he doesn't enter
into any of the disputes. He says that Agrippa is aware
of all the disputes. The Jews were divided up into
all sorts of factions, and they're still divided up today. Religion
is always divided up into factions. It's the Church of God that is
one. They're always one, because the servants of God see eye to
eye. They speak with one voice. And
so, brothers and sisters, I promise you, if you go to any of the
churches that we're associated with in America, you'll find
that it's exactly the same. In so many ways, you would sit
in their pews and it's exactly the same. You would fit in there,
as I said, like a hand in a glove. And they fit in here. We've witnessed
it for the last 10 or 12 years that they come here and they
find the fellowship here the same as the fellowship they had
there. So Paul's not interested in the theological mysteries
of religion. He could quite easily have mentioned
Agrippa's sins. Agrippa had a family heritage
which he could have dragged up before him. Herod the Great, your grandfather,
was a murderer of children. Because his kingship was threatened
by a baby in Bethlehem, he'd killed every baby two years and
younger in that place. He was a brutal man. Paul is
not dealing with him, he's dealing with his Agrippa. Herod's father
was the one who had set the Lord Jesus Christ at nought before
him and made a mockery of him in his court in Jerusalem. Agrippa's father was the one
who exalted himself. before the Jews by killing James
with a sword and then exalted himself down in Tyre and was
put to death by the Lord and eaten with worms. Paul could
have mentioned all sorts of history of the gripper. See, he doesn't
do anything. He doesn't want to put a stumbling
block between the people that he loves and the people he cares
for and them meeting the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing about himself
much at all and nothing about them. and all of the sins of his family
and all of the sins in his life. The big issue that Gripper is
going to encounter and did encounter was that at the end of this life
you meet the Lord Jesus Christ as he is and as he's declared
in this book. So, and he reminds Agrippa that
none of this was ever done in a corner. It was always done
publicly. The activities of the Church
of God are always as public as possible. We have nothing to
hide, brothers and sisters, from anyone. Everything is public. It wasn't done in a corner. And
Agrippa, as we've seen in this last several weeks, was left
with the most remarkable and clear testimony as to the work
of God and the character of God and the character of man in religion,
the character of a religious man like himself when he actually
does really meet God. And the problem with all religious
people in this world, and it doesn't matter, there are only
two religions in the world. There's a religion of sovereign
grace in God, the religion of being in relationship with God
the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit from all
eternity. And all the rest is works, and
it doesn't matter what color it is. It doesn't matter how
they act in this world, whether they be Buddhists or Baptists.
All of them, it's a work of work, a work of man that Paul says
that he came, he came on that road to Damascus with all his
religious righteousness he could ever muster. He could say to
people, I was blameless before the law. You could take the law
of God and all those statues, 613 of them, Paul would have
ticked the lot off. And he hated God. and he met
him on the Damascus road. It wasn't Paul who met with him,
was it? It was God who met with him. That's what happens in salvation,
isn't it? God comes. God comes in the preaching
of the gospel. God comes, as we saw earlier
in this chapter. He comes as a light from heaven. He comes with the power from
heaven. He comes with a word from heaven.
Saul, Saul, you're persecuting me. Now God is able. See, he comes. Personal, personally,
he comes as the promise-keeping and promise-making God. He comes
as a faithful God. He comes to people as a resurrected
Lord Jesus Christ. And forgiven sinners, forgiven
sinners, have two great burdens, haven't they? A great burden
that the Lord Jesus Christ would be honored and glorified in this
world for who he is and what he's done. and that others might
join them in the glorious freedom, the glorious freedom of the gospel,
the liberty of the gospel. So let's just go back and have
a look at Antipas briefly. He was a man who had a history.
He was the son of Herod. the grandson of Herod the Great.
He's now living with his sister, Bernice, and I'm surprised they
haven't made a movie of this lady. She was as much the Jewish
Cleopatra as anyone ever was. If someone gets hold of her story
and gets it to a Hollywood screenwriter, there ain't much of it. She was
an extraordinary, like her family, she's the sister of Agrippa,
but she'd been married three times prior to this. and she
lived apparently openly in an incestuous relationship with
Agrippa. So they are there. Verse 3 of
Chapter 26 says that he was an expert. So Agrippa wasn't someone
who just took his religion lightly. Agrippa was an expert. Verse
3. He's an expert in all the customs
and questions. He knew about the debates amongst
the Jews. the ridiculous religious debates
that they had. People that don't know the living
Word of God will use the Word of God as a debating tool all
the time, but Agrippa knew all of these debates amongst the
various sects of the Jews. In Acts 26 he had a clear, close
knowledge of the events of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, for
the king knoweth of these things. Before him I speak freely, for
I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him. We
are now 25 years after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
are now 25 years into the history of the church, and he had witnessed
all of those things in one way or another. They're not hidden
from him. Well this thing was not done
in a corner. See the Lord Jesus said to those I said nothing. He said to the
apostles, what you've heard in secret, you proclaim it from
the rooftops. We have nothing. God is not ashamed of his character.
He's not ashamed of his activities in this world. He wants it to
be magnified and displayed. I'm sorry, I shouldn't use that
word. He does have it magnified and
displayed in the lives of his people. And Paul says that there
are witnesses. There are many, many witnesses. Luke begins this account by saying
that the Lord Jesus Christ left many infallible proofs. He showed himself alive after
his passion, Acts 1-3, by many infallible proofs, being seen
of them forty days, and speaking of things pertaining to the kingdom
of God. When Luke was writing his epistle,
he writes to Theophilus, a word means friend of God, And
he says in verse four, he's writing to him, verse four of Luke chapter
one, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things
wherein thou hast been instructed. I love that that word certainty
means, it means safety. It's a safety for the children
of God in the truth of the word of God. Verse 27, Paul says to
him, you believe the prophets, You believe the prophets. You
believe the prophets. Paul is laying out before Agrippa
the depths of his responsibility before God. You believe the prophets. Agrippa was religious, as I said
earlier, and the Jews Contrary to many of the other leaders
they had around them, they actually esteemed Agrippa for his devotion. He used to go to Jerusalem at
Passover and fast. He used to give offerings. He
was owned by the Jews in Jerusalem as a brother, believe it or not. So what's Paul's preaching? We looked of this last week that
he says none other things than what the prophets and Moses said
should come to pass. He describes what he's saying
is, in verse 25 he says, he's speaking forth the words of truth
and soberness. He's not intoxicated. These are
words of truth and soberness. So when Fester says with a loud
voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself. You've lost your mind. Must learning doth make thee
mad? He says, I'm not mad. These are
words of truth and soberness that are being spoken to you. So Paul wants a gripper. and Agrippa is confronted with
the Word of God. Let's just go back through our
chapter and see some of the things that Paul said. If we could,
in our witnessing to people, in our testimony before people,
restrict the other debating that goes on. See, Paul's example
is a great example, isn't it? In verse 6 he says, I stand and
am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our
fathers. The hope of the promise is the
promise keeper coming. It's the Lord Jesus Christ coming.
The hope of the promise is that he would come, Immanuel. Solomon,
when he dedicated the temple, he said, will God really dwell
on the earth? Well, the answer, Solomon, yes, he will, and he
dwells on earth as God with us, Immanuel. And in him, in him,
Personally, are all the promises of God, yea and amen. And the
resurrection is a promise, isn't it? He says in verse eight, why
should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God
should raise the dead? Throughout the Old Testament
from Enoch in Genesis all the way through to Job, Job said,
I know that my Redeemer liveth. And these very eyes that I'm
looking at you men here accusing me now, these very eyes will
see him. I'm going to see him. Worms will
eat my flesh, but I'll see him. Elijah was translated to heaven.
Psalm 110 says that the Lord Jesus Christ will suffer and
die and he'll rise from the dead. The promise maker and the promise
keeper is one that's going to rise from the dead. He'll be
put to death under the justice of God. He'll be put to death
by the hand of God the Father, as Isaiah 53 says, and he'll
be raised from the dead. And Paul not only says that that's
a promise in verse 8, in verse 14 he says, I met him, I met
him. I heard a voice speaking unto
me in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Why are you persecuting me? He's
talking to the one who is the resurrection, the resurrection
and the life. In those verses that we've looked
at, Earlier in verse 13 to 18 we have Paul bringing a gripper,
a glorious description of the character of our God. He's the
one that comes as a light from heaven. He shines a light. He's
the one that brings sight. He is the deliverer from darkness.
He is the redeemer, the forgiver of sins. He is the giver to those
who receive. He is the sanctifier. He is the
faithful one. And Paul says, We are witnesses. We are witnesses. And he's declaring
and he's saying, none of the things in which the prophets
and Moses did say should come. He's declaring the deity of our
God. Don't you love the absolute sovereignty
of God? Don't you love the character
of God? That when he speaks a word, it's
done and it's sealed and settled forever. He speaks and the world
comes into existence. He speaks and light. His first
words were light be and light was. Such is the power of our
God. He's able. He's able. He's always
able. Nothing's impossible with this
glorious God. We witness, as we say, none other
things than which the prophets and Moses did say should come,
that Christ should suffer and that he should be the first that
should rise from the dead and should show light to the people
and to the Gentiles. And to the Gentiles. See, Paul,
in love for this man and in love for his savior, brought him the
word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
by the Word of God, not the fables of men, not the fables of men. To hear and to be saved is to
bow to the Word of God, to find the Word of God, the Living Word
revealed in the written word with light shone upon it by the
blessed Holy Spirit to be light and salvation to his people. So he believed. He was pressing. He was pressing, wasn't he, for
Agrippa to believe. We read these verses out of John
chapter 5 last week, but they bear repeating in John chapter
5 We have, as with many of the other apostles, their last desire
as they thought of leaving this earth is the desire that the
Lord be exalted and the people would believe. He says in 1 John
5, verse 10, he that believeth on the Son of God believeth on
the Son of God, hath the witness in himself that he believeth
not God, hath made him a liar, because he hath believed not
the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal
life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath
life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. You
can believe in Him, but believing on Him, that word on means an
entrance into, an entrance into, a point reached or entered. Paul had faithfully witnessed
to his Lord and Savior. He'd given Agrippa nothing but
what Moses and the prophets said should happen. He gave as well
to Agrippa his own personal testimony. Our testimonies are significant.
They are not to be hidden away. Paul, as we've often said in
1 Timothy 1 verse 16, says that he's a pattern. He's a pattern.
He's a pattern. His life, his conversion. As much as there are extraordinary
differences, there is a pattern of salvation in all this. I love
what he says. He says in verse 15, this is
a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. See, Paul
presents himself not as someone standing above a gripper. He
presents himself as just a sinner saved by grace. 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. Howbeit for
this cause I obtained mercy. You see, if you've been like
Paul, and you look upon anyone else in this world, you can never
write them off as being saved. Can you? He was a murderer of
Christians. Here's a pattern. He says, I
obtained mercy. I obtained mercy. I didn't earn
it by anything I did. What had Paul ever done to receive
the mercy and grace of God? about the same that you had,
brothers and sisters. And he says that in me first,
Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering. Don't you
love the fact that the Lord God has been long-suffering to you?
Dear, oh dear, how much long-suffering. How much long-suffering. He's
long-suffering now, isn't he? He's long-suffering. I love what he says in Acts chapter
13. Paul said that he suffered their manners. He suffered their
manners in the wilderness. That's his preservation of us
brothers and sisters. He suffers our manners. That
he might show forth all longsuffering for a pattern to them which should
hereafter believe on him to everlasting life. him, what the Lord had done for
him, what the Lord had done in him. The chief of sinners saved
by sovereign free grace, not the chief of sinners saved by
an act of his will, not the chief of sinners saved by saying the
sinner's prayer, not the chief of sinners being saved by walking
in Isle or wandering down the Romans Road and all of those
other things. Not saved by his will, but by God's will. not
saved by the worth of anything he'd ever done, but purely on
the basis of the worth of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not by
his works. What on earth did he have to
commend himself on that Damascus road? Nothing more than we have
right now, brothers and sisters. See, God saves sinners. God saves
sinners entirely, 100% completely and absolutely on the basis of
the finished work of God. It's God's will, isn't it? When
it pleased God, says Paul. When it pleased God, he comes
to his people. God the father looks to his son. everything. That's what it is
for him to be a surety. God is always and only ever has
looked to his son for all of my righteousness, for all of
my obedience, for all of my law keeping. He's looked to his son
for all of my sins being put away. He looks to his son for
everything and he's pleased. This is my beloved son. in whom
I'm well pleased. You hear him, hear him, brothers
and sisters. The father looks to his son for
everything, and the Holy Spirit exalts the son as the promised
fulfiller. And how's that promise fulfilled
in our day? By little gatherings like this
that have gone on for the last 2,000 years, where the Lord himself
comes and bears witness to his truth of his character and the
way he saves sinners. Paul brought the Word of God
to Agrippa. Paul relayed his personal testimony
of salvation by grace. Paul gave Agrippa the simple
historic facts of the Gospel. The Gospel is worked out and
lived out on the stage of human history. It's prophesied and
it's proclaimed and it's fulfilled in real historic events. This history of this world is
God's history. This world exists that God's
history should be there for the children of God to see that our
God is faithful. Our God is faithful. The shoulds
of Christ, we looked at them last week, that the Emmanuel
should come, that Christ should come, that Christ should suffer. How that Christ died Not the
mere fact that he's died. Millions know that he's died.
You can pick up an encyclopedia and find out he's died. The issue
of the Gospel is how that he died. He died as a substitute. He died satisfying the divine
justice, satisfying the divine and absorbing the divine wrath
of God against all the sins of all of his people who were united
to him forever. It's how that he died. He died
as a sacrifice. He died as a substitute. He died
as a successful saviour. He didn't try to do anything.
God doesn't try and do anything. He just does it. And he rose
from the dead. He was put to death because of
our sins. Romans 4.25. And he was raised
for or because of our justification. Therefore being justified. Being
justified is in the passive tense. And it's in the perfect tense.
That he did it all. And it's perfect and you can't
change it and you can't get it any better than it is. He rose
and he ascended, and he's now the light of the world, revealed
as a successful saviour. He's a light to his people. He's
a light to his people. He's a saviour. He's able to
save to the uttermost those who come to God by him. He's the
sanctifier of his people. And there is no sanctification
outside of him. brothers and sisters in Christ.
There is no sanctification outside of him. He is our sanctification. He's made of God unto us. Wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Paul, in love
for this man, Agrippa, personally addresses him. And it may well
have been embarrassing, Agrippa asked a lot more than he bargained
for. But nevertheless, Paul wants to address him personally. The
gospel is always personal. It's proclaimed publicly that
it might be personal. In a sense, it's much more personal
when it's proclaimed publicly. He personally and directly I would to God, verse 29, that
not only thou, but also that hear me this day. were both almost
and altogether such as I am. He says, King Agrippa, you believe
the scriptures. I've just explained to you, I've
given you a summary of what the Old Testament scriptures are
all about. They're all about the Lord Jesus Christ and him
crucified, and him resurrected, and him reigning, and him saving
his people, and him declaring all of the character of God in
the way that he saves his people. He appealed to him directly. Agrippa makes his own confession,
doesn't he? He says, I'm almost persuaded.
It's not Paul's testimony of him, it's Agrippa's testimony
of himself. He's almost persuaded to leave
Judaism and become a Christian. See, Agrippa saw something that
others didn't see. He saw that to leave Judaism
was to leave it all together. And he's almost persuaded. He's almost persuaded. He'd had
many years to examine the claims of Christ. He is a testimony,
brothers and sisters, to us of how easy it is for people in
this world to lay aside the claims of Christ and for them to be
meaningless. The number of times we had been
promised I'll take your words and I'll
take the gospel that you proclaimed. I'll take it with seriousness
and I'll go back and I'll get back to you. Do you know how
many people have got back to me so far in these last 15 years? Not one. It's very easy, it's very easy
in the face of the most extraordinary testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ
to put his words aside. His father had set the Lord Jesus
Christ at naught, and Agrippa effectively was doing the same. See, Paul's claims to him were
just a persuasion. When Paul met the Lord Jesus
Christ on the Damascus road, it was much more than a persuasion,
brothers and sisters. If he meets with you, it's much,
much more than a persuasion. It's much, much more than an
intellectual decision made by a rational man. Agrippa. Agrippa thought. That was Naaman's
great problem, isn't it? He said, he came to Elisha, I
thought. That's the problem with humanity, isn't it? They think.
Naaman said, I thought you'd come out and make a great religious
show before me and we'd have this sort of great exhibition
of the miracles of God. And Elisha said, I'm not even
coming out this evening. You go down there and bathe in
the Jordan. So the reality is that Agrippa and all of humanity
stands as condemned criminals before the bar of a holy God.
This is the condemnation that light has come into the world
and men loved the darkness because their deeds were evil. The sentence
has already been given. The judgment has already been
laid out before people. You're not in a place before
this judge to make intellectual decisions about him. And your intellectual pursuits
over no assistance whatsoever. The judge sees it as vanity. There is the reality of sin against
the holy God, and it's only the children of God that ever see
the reality of that. It's sinned in thought, in word
and deed and desire and will. And it's a reflection of the
heart. And we have a problem which is much bigger than our
external activities. The lust of the eyes and the
lust of the flesh and the pride of life. So Agrippa was almost persuaded. He'd been able to put aside the
claims of Christ for all this time, and now he continues to
do so. Next to him sat Denise, his sister. The reality is that for Agrippa, accepting the claim to Christ
was going to cost him. And Bernice was an extraordinarily
powerful young and attractive young woman and able to woo the
most powerful men in the Roman Empire. And she was there sitting
next to him. And next door to him, on the
other side probably, Paul had a powerful and influential man
nearby, Festus. who could make his life as a
king of Judea a blessing or a curse to him by just some words sent
back to Rome and some actions of his. Agrippa saw Paul in chains. He saw that it costs, it costs
to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ before the people
of this world. The gripper had a future marked
out for himself, hadn't he? He was only a young man when
he was made king and had a long life ahead of him in this world. See, there is, there is, as people
are confronted with the claims of Christ, there is a crisis.
This is the condemnation, that word is crisis. This is a judgment,
it's a crisis. the alliteration of the Greek
word. There is a crisis of wills. There's a crisis of desires. Bring on the crisis, I say to
you, any of you who are almost persuaded. May the Lord bring
on the crisis. Agrippa was blind to the remarkable
opportunity before him. He had lived in this land for
most of his life, and he had opportunities to witness all
of the remarkable things that the Lord Jesus Christ had done.
He had the opportunity, as Paul said to the Corinthians, there
are 500 of them over there in Galilee. They all saw the Lord
Jesus Christ as one. You can go and interview them
if you wish. Paul, her gripper, had put it
aside. Paul Gripper is the reminder
that what is born of the flesh is just flesh. And fleshly activities
and fleshly religion gets no further than fleshly desires
and does nothing to quell the real fleshly heart that's in
all of Adam's children. So the great truths of the revelation
of the Lord Jesus Christ and non-negotiables. Your belief
or your rejection of them, or your putting them to one side,
makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to the truth of them. God is a rock. He's a rock. Read
Deuteronomy 32. Our rock, says Moses, our rock's
not like their rock. Our rock is immovable. The character
of our God is set, and he's not embarrassed or ashamed about
it. He's not ashamed about his electing love. He's not ashamed
about his predestination, predestinating providences over all things.
He's not ashamed of the particular redemption of his people. He's
not ashamed of his union with his people. They're not negotiable. Deny them, change them, dilute
them, obscure them. He's unchangeable. Therefore
you sons of Jacob are not consumed, he says. He changes, not our
God. Paul had presented to him the
glory of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in the hearts of
people. In the hearts that are moved by it, cry out for mercy. Cry out for mercy. Lord, if you're
willing, says the leper, if you're willing, you can make me clean. You can save me if you're willing. They came to him as beggars in
all of the gospel accounts, and they never, ever went away unsatisfied. The heart of the matter, for
Agrippa, is a matter of the heart. It's a matter of the heart. There
are no blessings in being almost persuaded. There's no quenching
of a thirst unless you're made to be thirsty, and then you'll
need to drink. We sing that hymn, don't we?
I need thee. I need thee every hour. I need thee. I need thee. I need thee to make me hungry,
and I need you to satisfy my hunger. Agrippa reminds us that there
is a believing which is not saving, saying something of the truth
of God's testimony in the scriptures about his son and about his character. That God's people love. God's
people love. So Agrippa knew about the power
of God, but he didn't savour the power of God. He didn't find
any sweetness in the declarations of the glory of God. What extraordinary
sweetness there is in the promises of God to open your eyes, to
turn you from darkness to light and from the power of Satan under
God, that you might be made a receiver, that you might receive something
that you didn't earn and work for in any way at all. You receive
an inheritance that's been earned by someone else. And he gives
it to you. Inheritance, you receive the
forgiveness of sins, not because of anything you do. There's a
sweetness to sinners in Paul's declarations, isn't there? Inheritance
among them which are sanctified, made holy. Receive that sanctification
by the work of God. See, these are gifts of grace.
They're not earned by merit. And it's extraordinary, isn't
it, that in their sweetness, in their sweetness to the children
of God, there is something in there that is repulsive to the
people who think that they can come to God with some merits
of their own and some work of their own. The very things that
delight the heart of the child of God are the things about the
character of God and the doings of God and the work of God and
the worth of God that the religious world finds offensive. To go back to where we began,
Paul reflects the extraordinary love for the soul of this man
still before him and all the others who are witnesses to him. He's there in chains, unnecessarily,
in effect, illegally bound and imprisoned for two years. He's
done nothing worthy of death, verse 31 says. He could have bemoaned his circumstances. He could have complained to the
Lord. He could have said, I've done
all this stuff, and here you are. I've done all these remarkable
things for you. I've suffered all these remarkable
things, and here I am just languishing in prison. But see, Paul, reflects, doesn't
he, in his attitude to Agrippa? The high calling of all believers. See, there is a greater and more
significant reality going on in our lives. The glory of our
God, the proclamation of our great king and his kingdom. It says we have an unction, we
have an anointing from the Holy One and we understand all things.
All things are of God. God has placed these circumstances
before Paul. And he takes the circumstances
as difficult as they are and chooses them all as an opportunity
to proclaim his savior and his God. We live in the most privileged
generation And one of the sad things about
it is that in all of those privileges we've become more precious and
we're more concerned about the offence that's caused to us than
any generation has ever been. And yet the Lord set us here,
that in the circumstances he's placed before us, that we might
honour his sovereignty and his predestination. And by praying
that there might be an opportunity in the midst of the trials that
we find ourselves in, and the trials that we often find ourselves
in unjustly, as Paul did here. And the Lord might turn those
as an opportunity for us to proclaim the glories of our Saviour. God that turns us like the prodigal
into someone that comes back and says, just make me one of
your hired servants. Just make me one of your hired
servants. We have both a warning and a
blessed invitation that we have a warning and a blessed proclamation
to make before men in any of the circumstances that are before
us. Agrippa's father set the Lord
Jesus Christ at naught in Luke 23. He's almost being persuaded But he's not set at nought before
his people. And he's not set at nought before
the praises of heaven. And one day he'll be set before
all people and no one will set him at nought ever again. This
is the day of salvation. What a glorious savior we have,
brothers and sisters. He's worth more. He is that pearl
of great price. That was the question, wasn't
he? What's he worth to you, a gripper? Not enough. Is he worth everything
to you? Is he worth everything? Precious. He's precious, our
saviour. What a precious work he does.
In carrying his servants to a place where they can bear witness to
him. And then joining his people together where collectively we
bear witness to him. A blood-borne church. Let's pray. Now, Heavenly Father,
we pray that you might bless your word to our hearts and that
you would cause the Lord Jesus Christ to be precious to us.
And Heavenly Father, we wouldn't trouble ourselves about the cost
of following him. That he might be honoured and
glorified and that we might find our peace and our rest in the
wonders and the beauties of your dear and precious son. He shed
his life's blood that we might be your children now, Father,
and to be one with you and united with you and cared and protected
in all the circumstances of our life and drawn by the irresistible
grace and power of the blessed Holy Spirit to have the things
of the Lord Jesus Christ. May you do a work, Heavenly Father,
that you and your Son and the Blessed Holy Spirit alone can
do in the hearts of your people that we might go away warmed
but rejoicing, rejoicing in the glory