in Isaiah 57, that's reminiscent
of those last words in that hymn. It's a famous verse in Isaiah
57, 15. For thus saith the high and lofty
one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in a high and holy place,
with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. He does it
with a purpose, doesn't he? To revive the spirit of the humble
and to revive the heart of the contrite. If you're anything like me, I know
my heart reviving again and again and again. as the Lord enables us, we gaze
upon the glories of our great and sovereign God and Redeemer.
And we rejoice in the fact that He's holy, and we rejoice in
the fact that He inhabiteth eternity, and we rejoice in the fact that
He's absolutely sovereign over all things, and He's a sovereign
God and a holy God and a just God, but a God with a purpose. So in Acts 26 we've been looking
at that purpose of God, And we have two glorious descriptions
in Acts chapter 26 of the work of God. And then the work of
the church. We have the promises of God for
what he's going to do amongst his people in verse 26 that we've
been looking at. It says, when He appears, He
will deliver him from the people and from the Gentiles, verse
17. And this is the commission. And
as I've said on several occasions, it's an impossible commission,
that nothing's impossible without God. So we are called upon to
go out and do the impossible, to open their eyes and to turn
them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan under
God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among
them which are sanctified by faith that is in thee. And down
in the verse that I want us to spend some time looking at today
is the glorious description of the commission of the church.
Paul says in verse 22, Having therefore obtained help of God,
I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying
none other things than those which the prophets and Moses
did say should come. So that's preaching the gospel,
isn't it? We say none other things than what the Scriptures are
saying. We want to have attached to everything that we believe
and everything we do in this church a simple, thus saith the
Lord. That's all we wish to do. And
he goes on to say that Christ should suffer. He should come. This is a summary of all of the
Old Testament Scriptures. that the Christ should come,
that Christ should suffer, that he should be the first, that
should rise from the dead and should show light unto the people
and to the Gentiles. in this day, this glorious description
of what happens when the gospel of the Lord Jesus is preached. It's the glorious description
of Him honouring that promise that we'll be witnesses, His
people, His apostles and all those who follow Him, they'll
be witnesses unto Him, spreading out from Jerusalem and Judea
and Samaria and out to the ends of the earth and reaching to
Australia of all places, reaching to Nara, reaching to Bega. But before we have our break,
I just want us to consider one of the delightful things that
the Scriptures reveal to us. There is a delightful and important
intersection between the absolute sovereignty of God and the promises
of God and the responsibility of man. Let's go back there and
see it. We've seen these glorious promises
in Acts 26, 18, and we see this glorious commission But what
we have to declare, we don't declare anything about ourselves,
we declare everything about the Lord Jesus Christ. But Paul says
in verse 19 of Acts 26, When God works in the hearts of his
people, when God gives his ascension gifts to his church and God works to create a witness to himself.
He will create in the hearts of his people exactly what Paul
says here. He will come with vision, and
his people will come with a sense that our God is absolutely sovereign
over all things, and it's a purposeful sovereignty. But nevertheless,
he energizes and exercises his people. As we followed Paul in
his journey in Acts, 16 chapters we had seen him go wherever
there was a door of utterance open to him. He knocked on doors
and they were closed and he just kept going. He had the most remarkable
witness to bear of the Lord Jesus Christ and he wasn't disobedient.
He wasn't disobedient to the heavenly vision. And this is
what he was doing, verse 20. This is what the church is doing
today. Where the real church is gathered,
it's doing these exact same things. But he showed first to them at
Damascus and Jerusalem and throughout all the coast of Judea and then
to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God and do
works meet with repentance. To show is what we're doing now.
It's to proclaim. It's to declare. It's to make
plain, it is just to raise up before people who the Lord Jesus
Christ is according to the Scriptures. The glory of His very being,
the glory of our triune God, the glory that's revealed as
the Holy Spirit takes the words of God and makes them known to
His people and shines a light on those Scriptures. He showed
them first. You might recall that Paul didn't
need to go to Bible college. He'd already been to Bible college.
Bible college taught him absolutely nothing. He had to unlearn everything
he'd learned in that Jewish Bible college. He didn't have a clue
who God was. He didn't have a clue what the scriptures were saying.
He didn't have a clue who the Messiah was. It's like everyone,
almost everyone that's been to Bible college in this world.
It's a seat of ignorance rather than learning. More could be said, anyway. He
showed them first in Damascus and in Jerusalem. So he was immediately
commissioned, wasn't he? And he immediately went forth
and he was preaching to them and he was proving to them, as
Acts 9 says, that the scriptures of Jesus Christ is Lord, Jesus
Christ is God, Jesus Christ is Messiah. Jesus Christ has come
with the determinate counsel and full knowledge of God. He's
been put to death by a wicked man. This Jesus Christ is the
Christ. that we proclaim. That they should
repent. Everywhere he is going there
should be a change of mind. That word repent is to change
your mind. To change your mind about how
God saves sinners. Paul in Judaism was exactly like
every religious person in the world today. He thought that
him being right with God was on the He could do more things
to please God, and he could stop doing the things that displease
God, and he could make himself more and more polished until
finally, finally, having worked on his own personal holiness,
and probably giving, like they do today, giving credit to God
for that personal holiness, that he now would be right for heaven
on account of what he'd done. Repentance is a change of mind
about who God is. Repentance is a change of mind
about who you are. Repentance is a change of mind
about all of your works that are just filthy rags and they
never get above being filthy rags. Repentance is a change
of mind about how God saves sinners. It is all done. It is all done
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is all done from the foundation
of the world. He's the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world. Hebrews 4.3 says the works were
finished in the foundation of the world. What a glorious thing
for sinners like us to be united to God in a covenant that was
ordered in chore before the foundation of the world. It's all our salvation. It's all our desire. And it doesn't leave men inactive. See, you repent and you turn
to God and you do works Meat for repentance. What other works
are meat for repentance? Faith, brothers and sisters. Faith. Faith. Graham's just read it to us,
isn't he? Faith is the evidence. Faith is how all of those Old
Testament saints walked. Without faith, it's impossible
to please God. We simply believe what he says. about who he is. Believe what
he said about the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe what he says
about us. believe the Scriptures. That's
why that verse in Acts 24 is such a glorious verse, isn't
it? What did Paul come to believe? He thought he knew the Scriptures
and he read them off by heart and he didn't have a clue, because
all the Scriptures say this one thing, Jesus Christ and him crucified. He says, But this I confess unto
thee that after the way which they called heresy, now he become
a heretic. That's what repenting is, isn't
it? In religion, he had to be a heretic to the religion of
this world. He had to be a heretic to the
religion of works righteousness. He had to be a heretic to all
of that holiness, all of that supposed man-made righteousness
that he had. And they called him a heretic. What's he doing? So worship I. So worship. believing all things which are
written in the Law and in the Prophets. What do we believe? We believe everything that God
has written. That's faith, isn't it? It's simply believing all
that God has written. all of the remarkable, extraordinary
things that reveal the character of our God. We know, we know
that we ought to believe them all and we cry out with the man
who came to the Lord Jesus Christ, I believe, help thou my unbelief.
Help thou my unbelief. We worship God. We worship God. And we may not understand all
things. In fact, there's almost nothing. There's almost nothing
with which we hold our soul's eternity on that we understand. But there's no difficulty in
children simply believing what God says. For these causes the Jews caught
me in the temple and went about to kill me. That's the response
of the religious people. That's the response of the religious
people 2,000 years ago. It's the response of the religious
people many, many thousands of years before that. That's the
response of Cain to his brother Abel, wasn't it? That he saw
that his brother was righteous. And what's the response of the
religious man? They were in church. They were in church. And Cain
had it in his heart. to kill his brother. Verse 22 is the lovely, lovely
description of every believer's place in this world right now,
isn't it? Having therefore obtained help
of God. Having therefore obtained help
of God, I continue unto this day. It's the only reason we're
here, isn't it? Having therefore obtained help
of God. It's the only reason we have
a witness to him in this world. Having therefore obtained help
of God. All God has to do to allow for
men to go on in their rebellion and in their religion and finally
meet him with all the good works in their hands is for God to
leave us alone. We need help. We're helpless. That's the contrite part, isn't
it? We cry out, Lord, save me. Lord, help me. Lord, yet again,
I need your help. I don't know about you, for those
who think they grow in their holiness and grow in their independence,
it's not my testimony, brothers and sisters. I need him more
now than I ever did. And I'm more aware of my frailness
and my weakness now than I ever was. I need help. I need help. If we are to continue, if we
are to continue witnessing, we're going to require help from God.
You see, ultimately, God The Lord Jesus Christ is the
one that preaches. The Holy Spirit comes and he
preaches the Lord Jesus Christ. He preaches the light of the
world and the light is shone upon the light of the world and
all of a sudden we say, wow, isn't he amazing? Isn't he amazing? Isn't he more remarkable than
I ever imagined him to be? Isn't this salvation more secure
than I could ever imagine it to be? It becomes more and more
the case of our dependence and him fulfilling that dependence
with the glory of his promises and the wonder of his presence.
Therefore having obtained help from God, verse 22, I continue
unto this day, witnessing to small and to great. It doesn't
matter who we witness to, is it? We pray that God would cause
a door of opening, a door of utterance to be given to us.
It's a good thing to pray, and it's a good thing to pray with
the expectation that God will cause the door to be opened,
that we might declare the glories of our Saviour, if not for the
benefit of the person who hears, but for our benefit. You might
recall the Lord Jesus Christ in John chapter 4. He was exhausted
and weary, and he was hungry and thirsty, and he sat down
by that well. Maybe not having the energy to
go into town, but he went there for a purpose, didn't he? And
after he had witnessed to that lady, those disciples came back
and they had the food and they had all the other things, and
he was rejoicing. He was rejoicing, wasn't he?
Because once again, he had met one of his children, and because
once again, there was an opportunity to declare him. It's the rejoicing
of the hearts of God's people. It doesn't matter whether they
are small or great. But this is what we say and this
is what we stand upon in everything we do and everything we say in
this fellowship. We say none other things than
those which the prophets and Moses did say should come. Nothing. Nothing in practice. Nothing in belief. Nothing in
our witnessing, nothing in any of the other things we do. We're
not interested in the opinions of men. They might have written
wonderful things hundreds of years ago and thousands of years
ago, but we have one interest, don't we? What does God say? What does God say? I want to
hear what God says. I want His opinion to be my opinion. I love what Paul said to the
Corinthians. He says in 2 Corinthians 10, He talks about the fact that
we have the mind of Christ. So we cast down, 2 Corinthians
10.5, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth
itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ. And take all those
thoughts and lay them alongside and let them be captive to the
obedience of Christ. And that's what the Moses and
the prophets are talking about, that Christ should come, should
suffer, should be the first that should rise from the dead and
should show light unto the people and unto the Gentiles. Wouldn't
it be amazing if he sent some more light today, brothers and
sisters? Let that be our prayer. Let's have a break for five minutes.