Okay, let's turn to Acts chapter
18. This is Paul's... journey and time in Corinth and
we're coming to the end of it here in these verses and one
of the things that's extraordinary at the end of chapter 18 you'll
find that Paul goes on a journey which causes him to leave Corinth
and go all the way to Western Turkey and then down to Jerusalem
and then back up to Eastern Turkey and then through Eastern Turkey
and it's all just covered in a few verses. And yet these events
are covered in some detail, and therefore we have to ask the
question, why the detail? And the detail is always there,
the detail is always there to show us pictures of our God and
His salvation. And the Holy Spirit has chosen,
when Luke was writing these words, has chosen to bring us this particular
part of the story of Paul and then leave out years and years
and years of other bits of the journey. So the bits of the journey
that we have before us, they're chosen by God especially so that
we would see the wonder and the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. So let's begin. Let's begin in Acts chapter 18. Paul spoke in the first five
or six verses, he spoke in the synagogue of the Jews. So he
went to these cities and he went to the religious people, the
Jews, his brethren by birth, and his brethren, as it were,
in religion until the Lord saved him. And he spoke there until he was
asked to leave. In verse 6 it says, And when
they opposed themselves and blasphemed, these are Jewish, religious,
righteous people in their own eyes. He shook his raiment and
said unto them, Your blood be on your own heads. I am clean.
From henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles. And he departed
thence and entered into a certain man's house named Justice. One
that worshipped God, whose house joined hard to the synagogue.
So there we have in this city of Coherence, we have this little
church of Paul and Justice and Crispus and a few others, and
right next door to it we have this synagogue. And the question
is, where is God? Which one of those is God in? And Crispus, verse 8, the chief
ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house.
And many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed and were baptized.
Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision. Be not
afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace. For I am with thee,
and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee, for I have much
people in this city." In the great words of comfort we've
looked at them over the last couple of weeks, the great promise
of the gospel is that the Lord Jesus Christ will be with his
people. the great promise of his preachers and those who are
sent and his people in this world is that no harm, no physical
harm will come upon you in this world and you will suffer the
trials that everyone else in this world suffers, but no spiritual
harm is going to come to God's people. He says, touch not my
anointed and do my prophets no harm. His people are held in
his hands and they are protected and preserved in all of this
world. But sometimes, even while we know that, it's nice to hear
it again. And Paul would have preached
sermons on the faithfulness of God and the presence of God.
And he would have preached them, by this stage he's preached them
for 15 years. And it's a reminder to us, isn't it? We hear the
Gospel and we know the Gospel and we can recite Bible passages
and we can know so much about the Gospel. We need to hear it
again. Paul needed to hear it again from God. God didn't say
anything new to him, did he? Nothing new, just said this is
what it is anyway. And then it's lived out in this
next passage of scripture in the most extraordinary and delightful
ways that remind us of his faithfulness to his words. He speaks a word
and all of his character is tied up with what he says. So when
you read this book, when you read these words you are reading
the words of a God who is infinitely Faithful. He's faithful to his
word. So Paul continued there for a
year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. And
when Galileo was the deputy of Achaia, which is that region
of southern Greece, so Macedonia was northern Greece as we see
it today, and Achaia was southern Greece, so it had Athens and
Corinth in it. The Jews made insurrection with
one accord against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat, saying,
this fellow persuaded us men to worship God contrary to the
law. And when Paul was now about to
open his mouth, I just love this. It's just a beautiful picture,
isn't it? The Lord, Paul was about to open his mouth. Galileo
said to the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness,
O ye Jews, reason that I should bear with you. Don't forget,
he's in the city which is famous for its lewdness. There was a
temple just down the road that had a thousand prostitutes in
it. to be called a Corinthian woman was to be called a harlot,
effectively. It was extraordinary, wasn't
it? Anyway, so this is not lewdness of that sort, is it? It's lewdness
from these Jews. If it be a question, but if it
be a question of words and names in your Lord, look ye to it,
for I will be no judge in such matters. And he drove them from
the judgment seat. He drove Sosthenes and all these
others from the judgment seat. Then all the Greeks, took Sosthenes,
the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment
seat, and Galio cared for none of these things. Galio turned
a blind eye." It's remarkable, isn't it? Sometimes the Lord
makes promises to his people, and we have to wait and wait
and wait, for they are a long time being fulfilled. We are
waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are
waiting and waiting, and we are waiting for his work in the hearts
of his people. We are waiting for remarkable
promises to be fulfilled. The people of Israel waited for
2,000 years for the promised Messiah to come. In fact, they
waited 4,000 years for the promised Messiah to come. So sometimes we are caused to just
wait patiently in faith. knowing that what our God has
said he'll do. Sometimes he just answers immediately. And this is one of those remarkable
things, isn't it? So don't be afraid, he says to
Paul, but speak and hold not thy peace. For I am with thee
and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee, for I have much
people in this city. One of the remarkable things
is that the letter to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians he writes to
these people, And who's his companion when
he writes to the Corinthians? It's a man called Sosthenes. It's just lovely, isn't it? I
think that's maybe the reason the Holy Spirit has given us
that particular story to contemplate. So we'll contemplate that this
morning a little. We're going to sing, is it number 46, Normie? 46,
yes. 46. Rejoice, the Lord is King. Your
Lord and King adore. Rejoice, give thanks and sing,
and triumph evermore. So may our saviour rejoice, Jesus
the Saviour reigns, the Lord of truth and love, may he ever
trust his people. Lift up your voice, rejoice again,
I say rejoice! His kingdom, and of heaven, He
rules the earth and heaven. The keys of death and hell are
to our Jesus here Lift up your eyes, lift up your voice Rejoice,
my Saviour, rejoice Rejoice in God and His Son Jesus, lift up
your voice The faithfulness of our God the faithfulness of our God,
all the promises of God are yea and amen in the Lord Jesus Christ. All the promises of God, everything
that he says about what he was going to do has been done. Everything that he said about
what he's going to do in this world has been done and is being
done. He's faithful to his promises. But all of his promises are wrapped
up in his relationship with his people. You know what we read
there in verse 10 of Acts chapter 18, the Lord Jesus Christ said,
I have, I have much people, I have many people in this city. Paul
didn't have a clue who they were. And you would have thought that
day that one of the most unlikely ones in all of Corinth would
be this man, Sosthenes. Just like 15 years beforehand,
when the church was being ravished and Christians were being murdered
by a certain man called Saul of Tarsus, the most unlikely
man in all of all of Israel to have been one of the Lord's children,
loved from before the foundation of the world. One of those people
for whom the Lord Jesus Christ died on Calvary's tree and shed
his blood to take his sins away. And there he is, an enemy of
the Gospel, an enemy of God, an enemy of God's people, and
the Lord saved him. Why? because he belonged to him. That's what he says. I have. You notice that? I have. The people that he has are his.
The people that he has will come to a place in their lives where
like Paul, they will meet God. Like Sosthenes who had heard
the gospel and rejected it, he was going, I believe from what
the text in Corinthians says, he was going to at some stage
beyond this day that we have here, going to be the second
of the head of that synagogue to have been saved. God is faithful. He's faithful
to his promise. He's faithful to his servants.
You remember those great promises that he made, didn't he, in John
chapter six and in many, many other places. He says, that you
can't come to him unless he causes you to come to him. But if you
come to him, if you hear of him, If you hear of Him through the
eyes of faith, if He does a work of grace in the hearts of those
people, they will come, they must come, because they're His. He owns them. The Father will draw them and
I will raise them up at the last day. And as written in the prophets,
they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that has
heard and learned of the Father they come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And having come, they keep on
coming. They keep on coming. All that the Father gave him
will come to him. So God is faithful. And our Lord
brought Paul to this place to witness his faithfulness to his
word of promise. People might ask, well, Paul
had a vision. Do we need visions now? Do we need experiences now? Do we need the experiences the
apostles had? We have something much better
than the vision that Paul had, according to Peter. Peter says
that one day, he and his friends James and John were taken up
on a mountain by the Lord Jesus Christ. And on that mountain,
The humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ was torn apart and the
Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ shone through. The Deity of the
Lord Jesus Christ shone through. They received from God the Father,
he says in 2 Peter 1.17, they received from God the Father
honour and glory when there came such a voice, from the excellent
glory, this is my beloved Son. So they not only saw the Lord
Jesus Christ shining, and his shining was as bright as the
noonday sun, and brighter, and his garments became blindingly
white, And Moses and Elijah were there with him, and God spoke
to him. And you would think, wouldn't I like to have had that? I don't
like missing out on anything, brothers and sisters. I don't
like missing out. I'd like to have had that experience.
Peter says, we heard this voice, and then he says in verse 19
of 2 Peter chapter 1. We all have also a more sure
word of prophecy. What you are holding in your
hands now, my beloved brethren, is more important than seeing
those things on that mountain. We have a more sure word of prophecy,
where undo you do well that you take heed, as unto a light that
shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day'st eye
arises in your hearts. We're not looking for experiences.
People who are looking for religious experiences will I guarantee
end up being deceived. We just trust what God says.
We trust what God says. Our God changes not. He's the
same yesterday, today and forever. And He promises, He says, I'll
never leave you and I'll never forsake you. This world, the
people of this world will leave you and forsake you, but he'll
never leave or forsake his people. That's exactly what we see here,
isn't it? He makes a promise and he keeps it. And he's been
doing that since the foundation of the world. He makes a promise
and he keeps it. He's faithful. So let's go back
to verse 12 of Acts chapter 18, when Galio was deputy of Achaia. Now this deputy is a high title. He was the governor of this region.
And so this was no more small insurrections. The Jews made
an insurrection with one accord against Paul. And we've got to
remember what these Jews were like living there, and I keep
reminding you, we keep thinking that when we read the Scriptures,
and we read of the Pharisees, and we read of the Jews, and
we read of their wickedness against God, we keep thinking that you
would go along there and you would see those Jews, and you
would see that these are outwardly immoral people, these are wicked
people. None of their wickedness was seen. ever by the people
of this world. Their wickedness was only ever
seen in the light of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
these were religious people living in this place which was a den
of iniquity, Corinth, a rich, lascivious city. There they were
in this city and they had their Bibles, they had their traditions,
they had their history, they had their knowledge of the Scriptures.
They could recite Some of them could recite all of the Old Testament. It's remarkable, isn't it? They
had all of that, all of that tradition. They were zealous.
They were zealous. They were zealous for their religion.
And the gospel came. God came. I keep reminding me, I keep saying
that this gospel came and these servants were sent, but wherever
the servants are sent, the Lord Jesus Christ is there. The Lord
Jesus Christ came to Corinth. The Lord Jesus Christ comes where
the gospel is preached. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
comes, everyone is exposed. Everyone is exposed for what
they really are. So there they were. We don't
know how long they'd been there in this situation where side
by side in that street in Corinth there was the Church of God,
the believers meeting there and side by side was this synagogue
of these Jews. And it's said, of course, that
they were envious in other places. They were envious of what was
happening when they saw people gathering together, the religious
people get stirred up and they're envious. They're envious of what
God is doing. They're envious of the fact and
they're upset about the fact. that what the Gospel declares
is that the self-righteous Jews in that synagogue, with all of
their fine robes and their fine tradition and all of their fine
behaviour before men, all of the zeal they had in religion,
were, as before God, no different whatsoever than the harlot in
the temple down the road. No different. All have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. The offence of the gospel. The thing that offends in the
preaching of the gospel most is that it says to all of humanity,
all of your righteousnesses, all of the things that you think
cause you to be worthy before God are nothing less than filthy
rags before God. God will not accept it. It's
an affront and an offence to His holiness. It's an affront
and an offence to the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The most dangerous delusion in all of this world is religion. And the most dangerous religion,
and the most captivating religion, and the most hardening religion
against the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in all of this world
is the one that looks the most righteous. It always is, and it never appears
so to men. So Paul went to these Jews, it
says in Romans 10, and he says, brethren, my heart's desire and
prayer for God is Israel that they might be saved. Paul went
to the Jews, wherever he went to the Jews, he went there as
their fellow countrymen, he went to them as people he loved. His heart's desire, he writes
Roman 9 and 10 with tears in his eyes, because he knows what
they're doing. He says, I bear them record that
they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. And
what's the knowledge? Verse three, for being ignorant
of God's righteousness. That's the issue, isn't it? They're
ignorant of God's righteousness. God's righteousness is a simple
righteousness, isn't it? God's righteousness is a single
righteousness. What does God require of you
in terms of righteousness? He requires perfection. He requires holiness. He requires
holiness in your heart. He requires absolute perfect
holiness in your thoughts. He requires that you love the
Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all
of your mind, all of your strength, all of the time, and you love
your neighbor as yourself. You're ignorant of the righteousness
of God. That's what he says, doesn't he? God, the Holy Spirit
says that about them. They're ignorant of the righteousness
of God. Everyone in religion that is
getting people to do things, to do things and to perform outwardly,
is wanting people to do as what Romans 10.3 says, to go about
to establish their own righteousness, to go about in this world so
that people can applaud them for the way they've lived religiously. They're ignorant of God's righteousness
and going about to establish their own righteousness. And
the reason is, in verse three of Romans, they have not submitted
themselves unto the righteousness of God. See, the righteousness
of God requires all of Adam's children to just simply bow. Simply bow and say, I can't do
this. The glory of the Gospel, the
glory of the Gospel, the glory of the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ is that in Him God finds all that He requires. He is our righteousness, brothers
and sisters. He's the only righteousness you'll
ever have. He's the only holiness you'll
ever have. And He's all of that. and is
the sin-bearing sacrifice and the substitute. So all the righteousness of men
is illegal righteousness, and that's what was so offensive.
That's what caused this Sosthenes to cause this insurrection against
them, didn't he? Because Paul was saying, because
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone
that believes. Christ is as far as you can go for righteousness.
You get to the Lord Jesus Christ and you've reached the end of
the road for righteousness, God's righteousness. He's delighted
in it, that's why he raised him from the dead. He was put to
death because of our sins and he was raised because of our
righteousness. And that's what offends the Jews, that's what
offends the religious people these days, doesn't it? Paul
had this stirring, he was stirred up. There was an enmity against
him again and again, as we read in Acts, everywhere he goes and
he meets the Jews, there's a stirring against the Jews, and it's always
the same thing, isn't it? And we might think that Paul's
a hard man, but we heard what he said, his heart's desire,
and he wasn't lying. God the Holy Spirit wrote those
words, and he had tears in his eyes for them. He said to them,
He says in Acts 13, he says, Be it known unto you therefore,
men and brethren, this is what he preached in that synagogue,
this is what he preached to Sosthenes, this is what he's preaching,
and he didn't change his message. He preached this message in the
synagogue, and then he preached this same message in the church
next door. Be it known unto you, Acts 13, 38, men and brethren,
that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.
And by Him, I love this verse, it's become one of my favourite
verses in the scriptures. By Him, all that believe. If you're
going to believe, it's going to be an act of God to cause
you to believe. By Him, all that believe are
justified from all things. That's pretty broad, isn't it?
I like that notion. Justified from all things, from
which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. You cannot
be justified, you cannot be righteous before God, you cannot be just
before God by anything that you have done. The anchor for our
soul. Anchor only works if you throw
it out of the boat, brothers and sisters. The anchor for our
soul rests on a rock. rests on a finished work, and
a finished work that's done. It's a great declaration of the
gospel. It's not do, do, do, but done. And this is what religious
people do in the next part of that verse, in verse 12 of chapter
18 of Acts, isn't it? They brought him to the judgment
seat. It's extraordinary how religious
people are bringing the children of God to the judgment seat all
the time. They bring them to the judgment
seat, just as they did to the Lord Jesus Christ. They took
him to Pilate's judgment hall. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
Again and again, these Jews who had a religious argument with
Paul about the issue of the law and the issue of righteousness,
they always resorted not to the Scriptures, They always resorted
to carnal activities, isn't it? Let's go and get the police onto
these people. Let's go and sort this out before
the judgment. Let's go and cause them to be
as embarrassed as they possibly can, cause them to be publicly
condemned. And Paul was beaten again and
again and again as a result of these things. Why did God do it? Why did God
do it? If you turn with me to Luke chapter
21, you'll see one of the lovely reasons why God does it. He does
it because He has many people in this city. He does it because
He's made a promise. Fifteen years earlier the Lord
Jesus Christ had made this promise to His disciples. He made many
other similar promises to them. He talks about all the things
that are going to happen, and he says, but before all these, in
this gospel age that we live, they shall lay hands on you,
Luke 21, verse 12. They shall lay hands on you and
persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into
prisons and be brought before kings and rulers for my name's
sake. And then I love what verse 14
says. So often when we know we're going
into a situation where you have to sort of deal, you want to
deal with wisdom and prudence in terms of answering the objections
that you know people are going to have to the gospel of the
free and sovereign grace of God. You think, well, if they say
this, then I'll say that. Do you do it? I do it. It's ridiculous. God says it's
ridiculous. Listen what he says. He says,
verse 14, settle it therefore in your hearts. When you're brought
into these places where the religious world takes you into the best
judgment they can have, settle it therefore in your hearts not
to meditate before what you shall answer. He says settle it in
your hearts. Be prepared right now. Settle it right now before
you even go there that you're not to think about what you're
going to say. Isn't that remarkable? He says, no one's going to harm
you, Paul, I'm with you. Look at what he says. Verse 15,
this is a promise from God. For I will give you a mouth and
wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay
or resist. And verse 13 is the great promise,
isn't it? It shall turn to you for a testimony. We don't need to have wisdom,
brothers and sisters. We don't need to have intellectual
wisdom to work these things out. We simply trust what God says. And he'll take us into situations
that are as difficult as the ones that Paul has been in at
times. And then, in those situations where we've been taken to the
end of all of our human abilities and Paul's just there, submitting,
here I am before your court, what can he do? We just love what happens in
Acts 18. Paul was there, and he didn't
even have to say a word that day. He had testified to the
Lord Jesus Christ, and he continued for another 18 months testifying
to the Lord Jesus Christ, but he didn't. When Paul, verse 14,
when Paul was about to open his mouth, Elio said to the Jews, He didn't even have to open his
mouth. God holds the hearts and the
minds and the mouths of all of humanity in his hands and under
his control. Do you believe that? He says
the king's heart's in his hand and he can steer it like a watercourse. Galio, who had no interest in
the things of God, says that he didn't care about it at all.
He had no interest in the things of God. Galio stands there as
Paul's defender. It's remarkable, isn't it, in
the scriptures, how there was this evil empire of Rome. In Corinth it was expressed in
its lasciviousness, in Athens it was expressed in the wonder
of its philosophy, and this mighty empire that the world is still
in awe of to some extent. And yet throughout the book of
God, Rome is not the enemy. Rome is not the enemy. We've
got to deal with the atheists in this secular world. In all
of the book of God, the enemies of God are almost invariably
religious people, the self-righteous religious people. The Jews made insurrection with
one accord and brought him to the judgment seat. And then they
make this statement, don't they, and we'll look at it more later
on this morning, Lord willing, but they make this statement.
This is their accusation, isn't it? This fellow persuadeth men
to worship God contrary to the law. The essence of all the persecution,
the essence of all the opposition to the preaching of the Gospel
always starts with that silence, this man. Let's do as we did
in Thessalonica. Let's put him in jail. Let's
stop the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord had
said to him, you preach on, Brother Paul. I'm going to make sure
there is a way for you to preach on. You'll preach in jail if
I put you in jail, and the Philippian jailer will hear. You'll preach
on in Corinth, because I have many people here. And I'm with
you, and they're not going to hurt you. It's always the same, isn't it?
The issue is, the heart of the issue is who worships God? Who
is worshipping God? Those Jews thought when they
killed the Lord Jesus Christ, they were doing service to God.
There's no question that this ruler of the synagogue thought
that he was doing God's service in stopping Paul preaching. So the issue with the Jews and
with the issue with all people, isn't it, is their self-righteousness.
So they have no need of a saviour because they've never been lost.
They have no need of a new creation because the existing creation's
doing just fine. They have no need of light from
God because they reckon they can see. See, they're not sinners. They're not sinners. The Lord
Jesus Christ came to save sinners. He came to save sinners. He's
a friend of publicans and sinners. See, they're not sinners because
they believe they can keep the law. And religious people need
to be rewarded for what they have done. And that's what their
religion is all about. I used to get accused by people
who said, we need you to tell us how to live the Christian
life. You don't need to be told how to live the Christian life.
You know how to live the Christian life. You don't need a set of
rules about living the Christian life. But religious people don't
need educating, they need rewarding for what they've done. That's
what they're looking for. And the gospel comes along and
it takes away all of their works and all of their rewards and
all of their righteousness. And for those who are the children
of God, when all those things are stripped away, As the great
cry goes up, free, I'm free at last. I don't have to perform
anymore in any religious and righteous way before men. I simply
live as Paul did. The life I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave
himself for me. He didn't need the applause or
the praise of men. He didn't need the justice of
men in the courts of men. And if you have God with you,
that's all you'll ever need. And that's what he did, didn't
he? He stopped Galio's mouth. He stopped Galio's mouth from
accusing him. He stopped him even hearing the
accusations against him. And then he says in verse 15,
if it's a question of words, or names, or of your law, you
look to it, for I'll be no judge in these matters. And he drove
them from their judgment seat. And we have some understanding
in those three things of the declaration of the gospel that
Paul brought, didn't he? He brought words, didn't he?
He spoke the scriptures. This is what God says. This is
what God says in the Old Testament he's going to do, and he's done
it all in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he argued, and he persuaded
them, and he just preached the Lord Jesus Christ from Genesis
chapter one, verse one. In the beginning, God created
the heavens. Who was that? That was the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he preached it all the way
through, all those thousands of years of history, every single
little bit of it was about the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
It's just one big book of promise. And it all centers on one person,
on one event, in one place, before one people. the Lord Jesus Christ
and him crucified. And the book doesn't have any
meaning without it. It has no meaning without it
at all. So he just preached and he declared
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's about names. What are the
names of the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, there are so many names
in the scriptures, it's difficult to even know where to start with
them. Isaiah 9 is a passage of scripture
that's sung at Christmas time, isn't it? Unto us a child is
born. Unto us a son is given. What's his name? What's his name? His name shall
be called Wonderful. Is he wonderful to you? He's
wonderful, isn't he? He's wonderful to God, and he's
wonderful to all of God's children. His name shall be called Wonderful. He'll be the counsellor. If you
want counselling, you go to him. He's the one who speaks. He's the one who intercedes.
His name shall be called The Mighty God. The Mighty God. His name shall be called Everlasting
Father. His name should be called the
Prince of Peace. That's a nice name to have, isn't
it? That's the I am with you, isn't it? I am with you. If God's with you, it's wonderful. If God's with you, you're gonna
be counseled. If God's with you, you've got
the mighty God with you. God's with you, you have the
everlasting Father. If God's with you, you have the
prince of peace. Peace that passes understanding,
a peace that allows for you in the midst of the trials of this
world to simply say, my God reigns. And he must do right, he must
do right. No doubt Paul told them about
this child that was born and the son that was given. And then
it says, the government shall be upon his shoulder. That means that he rules everything,
brothers and sisters. The government shall be upon
his shoulder. And it's about your law. There
was only one man who ever kept the law of God. There's only
one man that ever had a Sabbath. Oh, I have some people I know
in this town who begin on Friday and they get themselves ready
on Friday and they work all day Friday so that they can make
sure that when the sun goes down on Friday afternoon, They can
stop work and they get the book of God out and they obey all
the book of God all Friday night, all day Saturday until the sun
goes down on Saturday, and they've kept the Sabbath. And they think
that God's pleased with the Sabbath that they keep. God despises
it, brothers and sisters in Christ, because it's an open and direct
affront to the finished work of his Son. There's only one
person ever kept the Sabbath. He is our Sabbath. God has made
him our Sabbath. He brought them to the judgment
seat, and he drove them from the judgment seat, and then all
the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue
and they beat him before the judgment seat and Galileo cared
for none of these things. He brought Paul to the judgment
seat and here he is before the judgment seat and he's being
beaten by these and Galileo turns and cares for none of those things.
There is no justice in Galileo. The people of this world are
not interested in justice, neither were Sothisnes. Sosthenes and Galio were as blind
as bats. There was no light from God from
them. But what happened in Sosthenes'
life? We don't know when it happened. There he was in the face of all
that, as dark as dark could be. John speaks of that darkness,
doesn't he? He says, he that believeth, John
3, 18, he that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that
believeth not is condemned already because he has not believed in
the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation,
that light has come into the world. The Lord Jesus Christ
and the gospel is light. And men loved darkness rather
than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone that
doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light,
lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh
to the light, that his deeds may be manifest. What are his
deeds? They're wrought in God. They're worked by God, and they're
worked in God. That's where your works are.
Let me finish with the first verse of 1 Corinthians 1. Paul
called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God
and Sosthenes our brother. Sosthenes has gone from being
an enemy of God to being a brother. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we pray that you would remind us yet again of the wonder of
your faithfulness to your promises, the wonder of your faithfulness
to your people, and the depth of your care and protection,
Heavenly Father, of those that you love and those that you call
to yourself. Help us, Heavenly Father, to
cry out as the man in the Gospels did, Lord, I believe Help thou
mine unbelief. Grant us the riches of simply
trusting your dear and precious Son, our Father. For we pray
in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we're gonna have a cup
of tea.