I don't know how many times we
need to say it to ourselves, but I love saying it. Jesus Christ
is God. You need to say it to yourself. I don't know. It's a good thing
to say on a very regular basis, isn't it? In every situation,
Jesus Christ is God. Almighty God is He. Thank you for that. Almighty
God is He. And we're talking, if you turn
in your scriptures to Acts chapter 15, We're looking at the first part
of Peter's response to these. these false teachers. And obviously
there was a situation that was deeply troubling to the brethren,
but I love and I want us to spend a bunch of our time this morning,
if the Lord allows, looking at what it is. As verse 14, Simon
has declared, how God how God at first did visit the Gentiles
to take out of them a people for his name. It goes on in verse 17 in a similar
theme, doesn't it? The preaching of the gospel,
the reestablishment of the tabernacle of David. You can imagine what
the tabernacle of David looked like in their day. There was
no Davidic king. Mary was a princess by birth. Joseph was a prince by birth. They were both of the lineage
of David, and yet what were they? Nothings, nothings of Nazareth. The tabernacle of David has fallen
down, but when it's built again, if you look there at verse 17,
God says, I will, I will, I will, I will return, I will build,
I will build again the ruins thereof. He builds out of ruins,
brothers and sisters. He makes ruins and then he builds
out of ruins. And I will set it up, the I wills
of God are wonderful, aren't they, that, this is the purpose,
isn't it, of preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that
the residue of men might seek after the Lord and all the Gentiles
upon whom my name is called. When was his name called upon
them? Before the foundation of the world, brothers and sisters,
that residue, that remnant Upon whom my name is called, he names
a people with his own name, and he calls those people." And that's
the wonder of the gospel, isn't it? The wonder of the gospel
is that the Lord is seen to do all these things in that residue
that comes to him through the preaching of the gospel, that
residue that comes because he visits them, that residue has
his name. It's the wonder of preaching
the gospel, isn't it? It's the wonder of declaring
the name of God as faithfully as God will allow us to declare
it to people. But all of this, of course, is
a spiritual work of God. And what had troubled the believers
and what had caused all this dissension was these people that
had gone from Judea, from Jerusalem, claiming to be the servants of
God and claiming to have apostolic authority for what they were
doing, had gone all the way to Antioch, to that first Gentile
church, and in that first Gentile church they had been so prominent
and their morality and their doctrine was so clean that they
were accepted into that church and became in that church people
who had a position of some authority and certainly a position of some... a position to influence people.
They were just men. They said in verse 1, except
you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be
saved. Unless you do something, you
cannot be saved. And in verse 5, it's made very
clear that they were a sect of the Pharisees which believed.
So they claimed to be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. saying
that it is needful to circumcise them and to command them to keep
the law of Moses. The issue is never just circumcision. The issue is all about law-keeping.
And law-keeping is you doing anything. you doing anything
that in any way adds to or enhances the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the question is, of course,
why did God ordain? Why did God send and why did
God control these false teachers at this time? Well there are
several answers from scripture and we know the promise of God
that he works all things to good. So this must have been good for
that early church. And it's certainly good for us.
It's good in that these things come. Because every heresy that's
ever going to come upon the Church of God came in apostolic times,
in one form or another. And so we have the answer. And
also we have the response of the apostles to it. There is,
in all of these events, there is a must be. In all events,
as we read there in verse 18, it says, no one under God are
all his works from the beginning of the world. He knows the works
and he knows the opposition to the works. He knows it all from
the beginning of the world. There is a must about all events
in this world. There is a must about the fact
that the scriptures must be fulfilled. The Scriptures must be fulfilled. But when these trials come, it's
not a sign of God losing control in any way at all. The Lord Jesus
Christ said in Mark 13, he warned the people about false Christ.
He said, if any man say unto you, lo, here is Christ, lo,
here he is, believe him not, because, for, Matthew 13, 22,
for false Christs and false prophets shall arise and shall show signs
and wonders to seduce, and I love this next little phrase, to seduce,
if it were possible, even the elect. Thank God, it's not possible. And then he goes on to say, but
take ye he, behold, I have foretold you all things. They will come. Second Corinthians
11, which is long after those words of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the apostle Paul speaks of the false teachers that are coming.
In second Corinthians 11, he declares what they are and where
they've come from. I've got the wrong chapter, 1
Corinthians. He speaks of them as people who
claims in 2 Corinthians 11 verse 23, are they ministers of Christ? And then in earlier he says,
are they Hebrews? These false teachers are Hebrews
and they claim to be the genuine article. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of
Abraham? Are they ministers of Christ?
And he goes on to talk about the fact that they will come.
And I'm sorry I can't find that verse and I had it written down
so clearly. But he says in verse three of that chapter 11, he
says, but I fear less by any means as the serpent beguiled
Eve through his subtlety. So your minds should be corrupted
from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh
preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, and if
you receive another spirit which you have not received, or another
gospel which you have not accepted, you might well bear with him. false teachers must arise. There must be, as 1 Corinthians
11 says, there must be heresies amongst you. The reason for the
heresies amongst the people of God is that those who are approved
of God might be seen. And so in Acts chapter 15 we
find the children of God standing and accounting, aren't they?
The false teachers come to humble the children of God. The false
teachers come to cause the gospel of sovereign grace to be esteemed,
to be admired and to be held on to. And it's to reveal, to
reveal the glories of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. as
he reveals his character, as he reveals his saving words to
his people, the fact that he's going to be faithful to his promises.
He will keep them and keep them to the end. But also the purpose
is just to expose false teachers and false teaching, because in
some way every aspect of false teaching clouds the character
of God. Every false teaching detracts
from the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ in some way
or another. But as we saw earlier in Acts
chapter 15, it's remarkable and it's very instructive to think
of the way the apostles responded. Peter goes down, Paul goes down
from Antioch with Barnabas and what do they do? They go down
preaching the gospel. When they get to Jerusalem, he
takes the apostles aside and he preaches the gospel to them.
And here, Peter deals with his false teachers. Before he speaks
to them directly, what does he do? He talks about the character
of God. When God visits his people, when
God visits anyone, he's always going to reveal his character
to them. The brethren were probably unsettled. No doubt the apostles listened
on with consternation as these men defended from the scriptures
the need for you to go back under the law of Moses. You need to
do something to show the depth of your sincerity in belief. You need to do something that
proves to you and proves to the people around you that you really
are the genuine child of God. And we'll show you what to do,
said these false teachers. But Peter reminds them. He reminds them that God knows
the hearts of people, and he purified their hearts by faith. See, poor Peter is first speaking,
brothers and sisters, to the children of God who are there.
They're the only people that are ever going to hear God's
word. They're the only people that are ever going to hear God's
servants are the children of God. We speak to all men. And we plead with all men, therefore
knowing the terror of the Lord, we beseech you in Christ's name
be reconciled to God. But the only people who are ever
going to hear the words of God and the words of his servant
are those whom God has ordained to hear. Our great God, when
he visits, When he visits his people to take out of them a
people for his name, you read with me some of the attributes
of our God that Peter declares here. In verse 7, Peter rose
up and said unto them, Men and brethren, you know how a good
while ago God made choice among us. The first thing that's going
to happen when God visits someone is that you're going to meet
a sovereign God. You're going to meet a God who is absolutely
sovereignly in control of all things. And you're going to meet
Him, not because you do something, you're going to meet Him because
He visits you. It's always the case. He always
comes. He always initiates salvation. He always initiates the union
and communion with His people. God did first visit the Gentiles,
and He visited the Gentiles as a sovereign. And when He comes,
the first thing you will see of Him is that He sits on a throne. You know well those verses in
Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah in the previous five chapters
had been pronouncing woe on all sorts of other nations around
Israel. Isaiah was there in the temple. Isaiah had a place of extraordinary
esteem. Isaiah had been a servant and
a prince in Israel for all that time during Isaiah's reign. But
in Isaiah chapter 6, you have these glorious words, in the
year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. Where did he see
him? He saw him sitting upon a throne. When he sits upon a throne, it
means that he's sitting there because the work is finished
and he's untroubled about it at all. He's sitting on a throne,
high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Now John chapter
12 makes it abundantly clear that who Isaiah saw was the Lord
Jesus Christ. When God visits you, God's going
to visit you as a sovereign, and he's going to visit you in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ preached to you. But he's
going to be preached high and lifted up. And his train filled
the temple. Above it stood the seraphims,
each had six wings, and with twain he covered his face, and
with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly. Even
the angels, even the seraphim, have to hide their creatureness
in the presence of God. And one cried unto another and
said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth
is full of his glory. Who could see anything of the
glory of God? in that world at that time. Who
could say through the eyes of flesh that the whole earth is
full of the glory of God in Isaiah's day? Who could say today through
the eyes of flesh that the whole earth is full of his glory? The eyes of faith see our sovereign
God, our sovereign Lord Jesus Christ, high and lifted up, and
we'll see him as holy. When he visits his people, he
will make them to know that he is holy, and automatically they
will know that they're not. and the posts of the door moved
at the voice of him. Even dead timber had the decency
to move at the sound and the presence of God. And then said
I, verse five, what's the response of man in the presence of God
when he meets with them? Woe is me, for I am undone. Isaiah had an awful lot in his
flesh, about which man was esteemed and he was possibly esteemed.
That word undone means to be unravelled. All of his humanity,
all of what he thought about himself, all of what he thought
in the extraordinary position he was in, to be in the temple
and to be proclaiming the things of God and to be the servant
of God. All of the remarkable privileges that he had as an
Israelite, all of the remarkable privileges he had to be born
at that time, under that king, in that place. He says, I'm undone. I'm unraveled. It's all, as Paul
declared it to be, just filthy rags. I'm undone because I'm
a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean
lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."
He's seen the Lord Jesus Christ as a King. When you meet with him, if he
comes and meets with you, the first thing is you're going to
see him as absolutely sovereign. You're going to see him as absolutely
holy. And a good description of what
holiness really is, is otherness. It's what you aren't. in every
way. But if he visits people, as he
did Isaiah, and he does his people even to this day, you'll see
what happens in verse 6. Then flew one of the seraphim
unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he'd taken with
tongs from off the altar, and he laid it upon my mouth. and said, Lo, this has touched
thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged."
It is always the same, brothers and sisters, isn't it? In any
real meeting, when God visits people, there's always going
to be this meeting between a sovereign, holy God and a sinner. But the only people he ever comes
to visit in this world are people that he's going to do the same
things as he did to Isaiah. He's going to declare them. He's
going to declare them as his people. To go back to Acts chapter
15, God did visit his people. God did visit his people. God
visits his people. God visits and he makes a choice.
He chooses. He discriminates. It's just God
being God. He's exercising sovereignty.
He chooses among the Gentiles. Peter goes on at that service,
that declaration, he goes on to talk about what happened with
Cornelius. God chose Cornelius and God chose the family around
Cornelius. God chose how they would hear.
The Lord Jesus Peter was sent down there by God the Holy Spirit
and he preached Christ. He preached the Lord Jesus Christ
as risen and reigning and saving. He declared him, I can just summarise
some of the things that Peter said in Acts chapter 10, he declared
him to be Lord of all. His first declaration is that
the Lord Jesus Christ is God over all, that the Lord Jesus
Christ is God's anointed Messiah, that this anointed Messiah was
crucified, this anointed Messiah was raised by God. This anointed
Messiah is raised by God to sit on a throne, and he's the judge
of the quickened dead. This anointed Messiah fulfilled
all of the Old Testament prophecies. See, Cornelius had an angel in
his house, in shining clothes. But God ordained to humble man
in every estate He chose a fisherman from Galilee to proclaim the
gospel and not an angel. And Peter declared, whosoever
believeth in him, so he's declared his character the object of faith. is the essence of saving faith.
It's who our faith rests in. It's in his character. And God
sovereignly chooses when they would hear. God sovereignly chooses
when the Holy Spirit, as Peter declared it to be, it fell on
them. It fell on them, and it fell
on them which heard. If you meet a God, and if God
visits with you, you're going to meet a sovereign God, you're
going to meet a holy God, you're going to meet a God who gives. You read it there in verse 8.
So this is Peter, before he deals with the false teachers. God
which knoweth the heart, a God of omniscience, a God of sovereignty,
a God who gives, giving them the Holy Spirit even as he did
unto us. When God gives, he gives all
of himself. There is nothing lacking in any
way. He's not withholding something from his people on account of
their disobedience or on account of their lack of knowledge. He
puts no difference, it says, he put no difference between
us and them. He put no difference between
a pagan idolater and an extraordinary moral person. Everyone at the
foot of the cross is equal before God. He put no difference, no
difference between us and them. It's a glorious thing, isn't
it? He puts no difference. Paul speaks to those people who
think that they are something. He says in 1 Corinthians 4, 7,
for whom maketh thee to differ from another? Because the automatic
response of the flesh of all men is that I'm different because
of something that I've done. I'm wiser, I've heeded warnings,
I've done these things, look at the way I've lived. Who makes
thee to differ from another? What hast thou that thou didst
not receive? What have you ever that you didn't
receive? Now if you didn't receive it,
why do you glory as if you had not received it? Why do you glory
as if it's the result of your works and your activities? When God visits people, he's
going to visit them. And he will be a sovereign. He
will be an omniscient sovereign and he'll know all things. And
he'll be the one that puts no difference between them. No difference
between Gentile, pagan, idolatrous sinners who have never heard
of the God of glory. There's no difference between
them in all their immorality, no difference between them than
the most upright moral Jew that you can possibly imagine. God
knows the hearts, he goes on to say. He knows the hearts and
he gives them the Holy Spirit. And he puts no difference. He
purifies their hearts by faith. He purifies their hearts. What
a wonder it is to have God declare to you that your heart, the very
essence of your being that's hidden from all the world, That
very heart that rises up against you and reveals the depths of
your depravity and your weakness and your wickedness that no one
else ever sees. And God sees that heart. That
new heart is purified. I love how the Holy Spirit declares
in Hebrews 9, verse 14, it says, it talks about the blood of bulls
and goats and all they ever did was cleanse the flesh on the
outside. How much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without
spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God." To purge your conscience. I've lived long enough in this
world to have a conscience that can accuse me and keep accusing
me ad nauseum. But God says my conscience is
clean. Why? Because of what happened
to Isaiah is what happened to all of God's people. The Lord
has taken away your sin. Your sin was put on the Lord
Jesus Christ. He owned it as his own. And on
Calvary's tree he bore the infinite wrath of a holy God upon that
sin to the extent that God says it's gone. He's put it behind
his back. It's as far removed from us as
far as the east is from the west. gone, not because of something
we do. See, when God visits, he's going
to visit you as a God of all grace, which necessarily implies
that you are a sinner. When God visits people, there
is a new creation, and in that new creation, all of the activities
of the flesh of men that men esteem in all sorts of ways are
accounted for nothing. He says, Paul says in Galatians
6.15, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything. So all of your law works, all
of what you've done that you think is in obedience to God
availeth anything nor uncircumcision. The one thing matters, one thing
matters, when God visits his people, there is a new creation,
a new creation. And in that new creation, there's
a word in our vocabulary that's changed. Prior to that new creation, that
word I, that perpendicular pronoun, becomes he. I'm not saying that
that is universally the case in all the aspects of our lives,
but you know what I mean. No longer do we have an I to
boast in. I have, I can, I will, I am. No longer do we need to boast
in that. We have one thing that we boast
in. We boast in Him. We boast in Him. Because in Him, We have everything, brothers
and sisters, everything, absolutely everything. He fills all in all. There's no boasting in anything
we do. No flesh will glory in his presence,
says Paul in 1 Corinthians, and we've got it on our Bibles. But
of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. That is, according
as it is written, let him glory in the Lord. So when God visits,
that's the great aim of preaching the Gospel, isn't it? It's the
great promise of God when the Gospel is preached, that He,
as Acts 3 says, He will send Jesus who is preached unto you. If Jesus is coming to visit with
you, He will come, the Lord Jesus Christ, He will come in the preaching
of the Gospel, in the simple opening up of God's Word, in
declaring who He is. He will send Jesus as preached
unto you. You'll meet him as a king. You'll meet him as a holy king. You'll meet him as a righteous
judge. You meet him yourself. You meet yourself when you meet
him. You meet him in your preachiness. You meet him in your sinfulness.
You meet him knowing that you're in his hands, and he holds the
reins of all of the events of all this world and everyone.
He is the potter, and we are the clay. He has the right over
all things. But because of his visit, you
will find his promises of mercy and grace, and the opportunity
to call on his name, just the most unimaginable acts of graciousness. He calls on us to call on him. He promises to come and to meet
with his people. When he visits you, you will
find a finished work, the most delightful comfort to your soul. So Peter, before he deals with
these false teachers, he wants to assure all the brethren there
that God has done his work. a finished work in the Lord Jesus
Christ. He wanted to comfort the souls
of those people there, those believers there, and for them
to know that all that God requires of you, brothers and sisters,
he finds completely satisfied in the Lord Jesus Christ. Standing
before God the Father in heaven right now is a perfect man, a
perfectly holy man. And on his hands and on his feet
are the very marks of your sins. But he stands there now, which
means that your sins have gone. You stand with God, in God, in
a resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. You find his finished work, his
promises. You find, when he visits you,
his companionship, his life itself. That's why Paul speaks of that
crown of righteousness that everyone's going to receive on that last
day, because they love disappearing. They love disappearing. I loved the fact that he appeared
on my behalf before the foundation of the world. I loved the fact
that he appeared there and in that covenant, in that eternal
covenant, he said, I will take responsibility for all that you
have given me, my father. You've loved them and you've
loved me and you've given them to me and I take full responsibility
for all their sins and I take full responsibility for all their
righteousness. Love is appearing. We love He's
appearing in the Old Testament. when he visits his people in
types and shadows. We love his appearing in his
incarnation, this man, this man who was touched with the feeling
of our infirmities, who walked this earth and knows all the
trials and struggles that you and I ever can go through. But he's touched with the feelings
of our infirmities. He's touched, he's moved. We think when we sin, we've braved
him enormously. What's his response to his sinning
children? He's touched, he's moved with
understanding, and he's moved with compassion, and he comes
to and visits his people again, and reminds them of what he did
when he appeared on Calvary's tree, and he reminds them again
of what he did when he appeared out of that tomb, and he reminds
them what he does when he appears for them in heaven. We love his
appearing, brothers and sisters. He's made like unto his brethren
that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest. A merciful and faithful high
priest is our great God. We're going to take the Lord's
Supper now and have a break, and then we're going to sing
after we've had a cup of tea. Let's just pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank
you again for your promise to visit your people. We thank you
again that when you visit, you visit in such a way that the
glories of your dear and precious son and the work that he has
done is perfect and complete and finished and perfectly accepted. by you. And therefore, all that
are in him, all that have been granted the faith to simply trust
him, are declared by your Holy Word, our Father, to be accepted
in the Beloved. Heavenly Father, cause us to
remember him. cause us to know Him as He's
visited us, that we can remember Him as we take these elements
that remind us, Heavenly Father, yet again, of the enormous cost. the enormous cost of the weight
of our sins, and the wonder, Heavenly Father, that he bore
them in his own body on the tree, and he's borne them away forever,
never to be remembered again. Father, grant us simple childlike
faith in your dear and precious Son. Verse 10, Peter says, now
therefore, therefore on account of the fact of all of what God
has done, God has chosen us, God has given us the Holy Spirit,
God who sees all things has purified our hearts by faith. all of which
is summed up in the Gospel of Grace, isn't it? In verse 11
it says, but we believe that through the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ we shall be saved even as they. That would have
been a shocking statement to the Jews of those days, for them
to look upon these dirty, disgusting, filthy Gentiles and for an apostle
to stand up and say, if you're going to be saved, Jewish brethren,
you're going to be saved exactly as they are saved. Its humbling
to the pride of all flesh is the work of the grace of God.
Now therefore, now therefore, in light of all of what you've
heard about the Lord Jesus Christ, in all of what you would seek
to proclaim in some sense yourselves, now therefore, why tempt ye God? to put a yoke upon the neck of
the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able
to bear. So Paul Peter is obviously talking
about the whole business of putting these people back under the bondage
of the law. And it's shocking to think, isn't
it, that if you go to the websites of the churches of this world
and look for ones that declare the freedom of God's people from
the law, you will look for a long, long time in vain, generally
defined it. People want to say how esteemed
the Fathers of the Church are, nearly all the Fathers of the
Church. in this post-Reformation age have declared that children
of God need to go back to the law. It's all very well for God
to have done everything he's done in the Lord Jesus Christ
for you, but now to live the Christian life, we'll show you
how to live the Christian life. Here are the Ten Commandments,
here are all the commandments of God, and yet at this apostolic
conference, the first one of this period and the only one,
There was never to be another one. Peter makes these extraordinary
accusations against these people. And that word tempt, that word
tempt is the same word that's used of what happened when the
Lord Jesus Christ was led of the spirit into the wilderness
to be tempted of the devil. It's a direct attack upon the
very person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the same word
that's used for the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They came
tempting him, desiring him that he should show them a sign from
heaven in Matthew 16. In Matthew 19, they came tempting
him regarding divorce. And he says of those people that
came to him asking, Should we pray tribute to Caesar or not? The Lord Jesus Christ knew their
hearts. All of the words they said, if
you go and read that story in Matthew 27, 22, all of the words
they said about the Lord Jesus were fine. Everything was fine. The big difference was that he
knew their hearts. And he says, why tempt ye me? And then he declares what they
are, you hypocrites, you hypocrites. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
These Pharisees and others came to him and they came pretending
to be righteous. And Peter says that God knows
the hearts of people. Don't play games with the Lord
Jesus Christ. He knows absolutely everything. Why tempt ye me? It is the same word that describes
the rebellion of the people and the complaining of the people
at the waters of Massa and Meribah. You might remember when they
got to that place on their pilgrimage before they came to Mount Sinai
and they complained to Moses and said, is the Lord among us
or not? Has the Lord done all that he's
done now and he's brought us out here to put us to death in
this wilderness and there's no water here? and they tempted,
it was a testing of the Lord. Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse
16 says, you shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted
him at Massa. So this is serious, isn't it?
These are the activities of Satan. These are the activities of Peter
in open rebellion. So Peter is linking what they're
saying to an open rebellion against God. an open denial of who he
is and what he has done. Why tempt ye God? So your actions
are personal, Peter is saying to these people. You personally
are tempting God. To put a yoke, you put a yoke
on the neck of the disciples, which neither we nor our fathers
were able to bear. You might recall as soon as you
hear that word yoke, I have an old yoke in my office that hangs
above my door and the purpose of it is that I want to be reminded
again and again and again that my task is not to yoke the children
of God. My task is a simple task, if
the Lord would allow us to be faithful, is simply to declare
Him, simply to declare the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified,
simply to declare Him in all the glories of His being. simply to declare the gospel,
and the gospel will rebuke, and the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ will correct, and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
will warn and bring back the straying sheep. I don't have
to have a whip, and I don't have to have something to control
the people of God. And the simple reason is This
is what Acts 15 says, that He's given them the Holy Spirit. If
you have the Holy Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God will lead
you and guide you into all the truth. I'm here to remind you
of the glory of the Saviour, which is what He says. in Matthew
11, doesn't he? Matthew 11, 29, he says, take
my yoke upon you and learn of me. And then he describes himself,
this great sovereign God. He says, learn of me, for I am
meek. and lowly in heart, and you shall
find rest for your souls." What a remarkable description of our
Saviour. Especially in the context, if
you look at the context of that, if you go back, these people
He says, I thank you, O Lord, verse 25, I thank you, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent and has revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, so it seemed
good in your sight. All things are delivered unto
me by my Father. No man knoweth the Son, but the
Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. All you'll ever get to have to
know about God the Father will be in the revelation of the Son.
And then he makes this statement, doesn't he? He says, come, come
to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Who are the people that labour
and are heavy laden? The people of this world aren't
labouring and heavy laden at all. It's the children of God
who labour and are heavy laden. The children of God find in this
world that continual warfare against the flesh and the spirit that we cannot do what we want
to do. There is a battle going on in
the hearts of God's people which is not there in the hearts of
the unregenerate people. They don't see the problems,
they don't have two natures. And until people have the Spirit
of God dwelling in them, they'll deny and not understand what
it is to live in this world with two natures. to have the nature
of Adam and to have that new heart which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory. That's what happened to these
people in Acts, isn't it? The Holy Spirit comes upon them
and there's a new creation. It's Christ dwelling in you,
the hope of glory. It's a yoke. It's a yoke that
they put upon them. Why do they put it upon them?
Galatians 6 tells us very clearly why someone who claims to be
a Christian would want to yoke other people. At the end of verse 13, Verse 12, he says, as many as
desire to make. What they want to do is they
want to make a fair show in the flesh. They're not going to be
able to yoke you without telling you what wonderful things that
they have done. Look at me, look at my religion,
look at my devotion, look at my activities. There's a preacher
in town that every time I meet him I actually count the seconds
now. I count the seconds, the seconds, I promise you, the seconds
before he tells me something that he's done that's wonderful.
It's always seconds, it doesn't get to minutes. As many as desire to make a fair
show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised. So they want to make a fair show
in the flesh. Also, they don't want to suffer
persecution for the cross of Christ. They don't want to just
defend and declare the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. The
world is not going to be offended by you if you tell people that
they can do something and you give them some rules to live
by. The world finds Jesus Christ and him crucified offensive.
It doesn't find works religion offensive at all, which is why
around this world is paraded works religion everywhere. The doing, isn't it wonderful
what these Christians are doing? The children of God suffer persecution
for the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in verse 13 of Galatians
6. It says that they're hypocrites,
for neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law,
but desire to have you circumcised. So they're lawbreakers themselves. So they're hypocrites. They desire
to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. That they will get glory. Look
at all the people that have come under my sway. Look at all the
people we have in our church. Look at all the people we have
in our denomination. Look how it's growing. Look at the way
all these people are behaving. Look at what all they're doing.
They want a glory in your flesh. If they can take you captive
to them, they glory in your flesh. I remind you, as we read Galatians,
that these men, having had the most serious warnings that you
could possibly imagine from the scriptures, from the mouth of
the apostles gathered. The reason that letter to Galatians
was written is because these men and their ilk continued and
didn't heed any of the warnings. And in fact, if it wasn't for
the ongoing effect of that heresy in one form or another, we would
have very little of the New Testament, brothers and sisters. And it's
a sign again, isn't it, that in the opposition, as we saw
in Peter in this wonderful Jerusalem Council, the opposition causes
the children of God to esteem and to glorify the Lord Jesus
Christ in ways that without opposition none would come. They do yoke
the necks of the disciples and they want to boast. They want
to be able to boast about their activities. And then Peter declares to them
plainly, as Paul did in Acts 16, that they're hypocrites.
He says, neither we nor our fathers were ever able to bear the yoke. So there wasn't, Peter is saying
there was not one Jew who ever lived who kept the law ever except
the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
only one who ever kept the law, brothers and sisters. The only
possible way you can keep the law is by faith in Him, which
was the purpose of the law. It wasn't to show you how to
live. It was to show you the impossibility of it and to expose
the pride of the hearts of people who said, it's a simple thing
to keep the law of God. It's an easy thing to keep the
law. That's what they did. Turn with me in Exodus. It is
remarkable. I want you to see it. In Exodus,
prior to meeting God at Mount Sinai, after meeting God, after
seeing all the things they saw in Egypt, God, by ten plagues,
decimated the nation and the religion. of Egypt. And then
he buried Pharaoh's carcass and his whole army in the Red Sea. And they get to Mount Sinai. Let's go to verse 7. Moses came
and called for the elders of the people who lay before their
faces all the words which the Lord had commanded him. And all
the people answered together and said, Listen to what they
said. All that the Lord has spoken,
we will do. All that the Lord has spoken,
it's easy. Give us some rules, we'll do it. And Moses returned
the words of the people unto the Lord. Let's turn over to
chapter 24. Moses at the beginning of that
chapter, come up unto the Lord thou and Aaron, and Adab, and
Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship ye afar
off. And Moses alone shall come near
the Lord, but they shall not come nigh, neither shall the
people go up with him. Moses came and told the people
all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments. And all the
people answered with one voice and said, all the words which
the Lord has said, we will do. Simple, isn't it? Just give us
the rules, give us the way to live and we can do it. In verse
seven, and he took the book of the covenant
and read it in the audience of the people and they said, all
that the Lord has said, We will do and be obedient. Isn't that remarkable? While
you're there, just take your finger and turn to John chapter
19, verse 30, and hold your Bible in your hands, and I want you
to see something really simple, but really profound. is that all of the Old Testament,
John 19.30, where the Lord Jesus Christ declared on Calvary's
tree, it is finished. In all of that part of scripture
is all written about the children of Israel who made a promise,
and God made a promise. It's all works. It all relates
to temporal blessings. The only people saved in all
that time, and they're littered throughout all of these pages,
are people who are saved exactly the same way we are saved. They're
saved by the doing and dying and the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. They are not saved by works. The whole purpose of giving
the law was not to say to people that this is how you can be sanctified,
and this is how you can be saved, and this is how you can live
to please God. God's children live by faith. Romans 3 makes it so abundantly
clear. Romans 3 talks about a righteousness
that is of God. It is of God's doing. It is the
righteousness that comes when people meet with God, when God
visits them. He reveals His holiness and He
reveals His righteousness and He reveals the creatureness of
the creatures. He says in verse 20, Therefore
by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in His
sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. That's what
the law is there to expose, that these Jews that said, we can
do it, we can do it, don't worry, we can do it. By the law is the knowledge of
sin. Verse 21, but now the righteousness
of God without the law is manifested. And it's been witnessed by the
law and the prophets. It's all through the Old Testament,
the righteousness of God that comes through faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's how they walked. Enoch
walked with God and pleased God, by faith, hundreds of years before
the law. Abraham was called a friend of
God. God was his friend. God was his
exceedingly great reward. God was his shield. See, Abraham
wasn't a Jew, brothers and sisters. The Jews might be horrified.
He was an Iraqi idolater, is what Abraham was. And God called
him out of that and named him his child. the Law and the Prophets witness
to it, even the righteousness of God, let's read on in Romans
3 verse 22, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus
Christ, by the faithful obedience of Jesus Christ unto all and
upon all them that believe. For there is no difference For
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Being justified
freely. To be justified is to be declared
to be someone who has never sinned. That's what it is to be justified. To be perfectly righteous before
God and have no sin whatsoever. Being justified, I love that
next word, justified freely. Freely. That means there was
no cause in you for your justification. All of the cause is in God. Through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth
to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare
his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through
the forbearance of God. God set him forth. to declare,
I say at this time, His righteousness, that He might be just, that in
all of God's activities He will reveal His character as a just
God and a holy God, that He might be just. and the justifier of
him that which believeth in Jesus. We read about these people boasting.
Where is boasting then? It is excluded by what law? Of works? Nay, by the law of
faith. See, faith operates as a law
in the hearts of God's people. Therefore, we conclude that a
man is justified by faith. without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only?
Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, seeing
it is one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and
the uncircumcision by faith. Do we then, I love this statement,
do we then make void the law through faith? Do we make the
law void? Do we say that those 10 commandments
are void? Do we say the law, no. God forbid, says Paul. God forbid, says the Holy Spirit. We don't make the law void through
faith. God forbid, yea, we establish
the law. We establish the law. By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
we establish the fact that we have kept the law of God perfectly. We've kept the law of God, brothers
and sisters, in Christ. Beloved brethren, you've kept
it. You don't keep the law of God, you've kept it, and you've
kept it perfectly. Turn over to Romans 7 while we're
in Romans and just have a look. See, the problem with fleshly
men, and the problem with these men, and the problem with them
down through time, and the heart of the issue is that God hasn't
visited them. Because if God had visited them,
and continued to visit them, all of their creature boasting
in their activities and what they can do, all of their wanting
to yoke the children of God and bind them, all of that would
be washed away in a gospel. If you have the Lord Jesus Christ,
you have absolutely everything. You're heirs of God. You're joint
heirs with Christ. You've kept the law of God. The
Lord Jesus Christ, in his union with us, presents us wholly spotless,
unblameable, unapprovable in his sight, in the sight of God,
if that's how we are. See the problem is, always the
problem is these people that put anyone back under the law
or put people under any burden of works whatsoever for their
justification, for their sanctification, for their glorification. have
no knowledge of two fundamental things, which are essential for
salvation. They have no knowledge of the
character of God, and they have no knowledge of themselves. When
God comes and reveals himself in the preaching of the gospel
to his children, he reveals who he is, and he reveals who they
are. See the law in verse 12, Romans
7. The law is holy. and the law is just, and the
law is good. See, only the new heart, the
new creation, reveals the old heart of flesh in its attempt
to establish, to maintain, to exalt, or to esteem. See, the
law is holy, but it makes no one holy. The law is just, but
it makes no one just. The law is good, but it makes
no one good. See, only a new heart, when God
visits his people, reveals sin in its exceeding sinfulness. Paul spoke of the evil that is
present with me. You read down in verse 24, he
says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the
body of this dead? See, wretched men. Wretched men
are only ever made wretched by God. All the other people who
think that they can get people to do something and esteem themselves
and others by doing so never see themselves as wretched men.
He says the wretched man that I am, not the wretched man that
I was, The wretched man that I am, I thank. Those wretched
men thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, with my mind,
I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of
sin. God's children love the law of
God. We love the law of God. We love to study the law of God.
We love to look at the law of God. We love to look at the lawgiver
giving the law of God. We love the fact that when we
look at the law of God, we look at it in the hand of the Lord
Jesus Christ. So the first question you need
to ask anyone who says you've got to do something is ask them
how they're doing. Have you kept it? Have you kept
it? I met some people, I'm still
in disbelief, but there are some people in this town and they've
gone over to do some celebratory Passover thing in America at
the moment, but they actually genuinely believe that on Friday
afternoon at sunset they down tools and they've got everything
prepared so that all Sabbath day they can keep the Sabbath
of God. And I really believe they're
doing it. I cannot believe it. I said, can you name one thing
that you have done with these hands of yours that you think
that you can take to God and find acceptance? And then they
turned around to me and said, well, we're doing our best. You
find me one place in these scriptures where doing your best is good
enough, ever. So how are you doing? God's people
love God's law. We love reading God's law. We
love the fact that the law reveals so much of the character of God.
We love the fact that the law is not made for the righteous
but made for the unrighteous. We love the fact that the law
of God restrains and constrains so much of this world that allows
us to live in peace. But we love the law of God because
we see it in the hands of our Saviour. See, the Psalms begin, doesn't
it? Blessed is the man that walketh
not in the counsel of the ungodly. When have you not walked in the
counsel of the ungodly? or stands in the way of sinners
or sits in the seat of the scornful. The Psalms are a picture of the
Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling the law perfectly, obeying the
law. We read all this is about him,
this book is about him. Psalm 119 is our great exposition
of the law. Just read how it begins, blessed
are the undefiled. How are you going? How are you
going, Bethday? The undefiled, blessed are the
undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. There's
only one undefiled. There's only one who've ever
walked in the law. And when we read Psalm 109 and
read the other psalms and read the other commands and we see
them gloriously held in our Saviour's hand. And as Colossians said,
he took that law to Calvary's tree and it's nailed there. And against believers, the law
of God testifies of our holiness, that we've kept it. We've kept
it in Him. These people that think they
can do the law have no idea. In Psalm 119, it goes on to say
in verse 159, consider how I love thy precepts. Quicken me, O Lord,
according to thy loving kindness. Verse 166, Lord, I have hoped
for thy salvation and done thy commandments. Who? Who? Our Saviour did it for us, brothers.
We can read Psalm 119 and say, isn't that a glorious description
of me? That's a glorious description of every child of God before
the Father, that's how he sees us. My soul has kept thy testimonies,
I love them exceedingly. I have kept thy precepts and
thy testimonies, for all my ways are before thee. God's children
are not yoked by the law. They can't be yoked. They can
be troubled by those who would want to yoke them to the law. God's children need all of this. and see how much it glorifies
our great God and Saviour. Paul describes his life. He lived
this life under the law and he was the most remarkable man. No man has ever said this. He says, He was circumcised on
the eighth day, Philippians 3.5, of the stock of Israel, of the
tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the
law, a Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the Church, touching
the righteousness which was in the law, blameless. He was the
most extraordinarily fastidious Jew that ever lived, and God
allowed him to be so fastidious under the law that he could say
that he was blameless. what things were gained to me.
He was highly esteemed in his nation, highly esteemed in his
own opinion. Those I counted lost for Christ,
yea, doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of
the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered
the loss of all things. I count all of that, all of that
zeal, all of that law keeping, he counts them done, done. that I may win Christ and be
found in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of
the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness
which is of God by faith, that I may know him and the power
of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering be made conformable
unto his death. Paul just wants to know him.
You can't look to the Lord Jesus Christ and look to the law. You
can't look to the Lord Jesus Christ and look to your works
and find any peace. It's only a new heart that looks
to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's only a new heart that heeds
the warnings. And our time has run out. But
the warnings to these people were extraordinary, weren't they?
There, before this apostolic baron, they were warned in verse
10 that they were tempting God, they were testing God. Verse
10, they were yoking the disciples. Verse 5, they were preaching
law. Verse 24, they were liars. The apostles declared them to
be liars. In verse 24, they said, They said that they came out
from us. They said that they went out
from us. To whom, at the end of verse 24, we gave no such
commandment. They were lying. They were out
there lying publicly in the name of God in churches. They were subverting your souls. They were bewitching you. See,
only a new heart of flesh would find those warnings so riveting
and so concerning to their eternal soul that they would plead with
God for mercy, that they wouldn't be led astray. That they wouldn't
be led astray. May God protect us. by visiting us and revealing
the Lord Jesus Christ to us in the glory of His person, in the
wonder of His finished work. that he now reigns in heaven,
and we're seated there together with him. We're perfectly fit,
brothers and sisters, you who believe, you to whom the Lord
is revealed in saving faith, you are perfectly fit right now
to enter heaven. and you're perfectly fit. You
were perfectly fit to enter heaven before the foundation of the
world. You were perfectly fit to enter heaven when you were
born into this world. You're perfectly fit to enter
heaven at every moment of your lives. Not because of anything
you've ever done, but because of his work. Let's pray. Our
Heavenly Father, we pray again, as you visited those Gentiles
long ago, Heavenly Father, that you might come and revisit us
again and again. As you bring your Gospel, you
bring the power of the promises. The wonder, Heavenly Father,
of the things that we read in the Scriptures about what the
Lord Jesus Christ has done, how he's made us meet, he's qualified
us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. And He
has transferred us out of this kingdom of darkness into the
kingdom of His light. Heavenly Father, we pray that
that light would shine upon us and that you would open your
word and cause us to see again and again the glories of your
dear and precious Son. And that we might find ourselves,
Heavenly Father, at rest in the trials and troubles of this world,
in all the battles with our flesh and the battles with things around
us. Heavenly Father, we might find ourselves at rest and at
peace. that our souls are secure because
of his finished work. Give us, Heavenly Father, a simple
childlike faith in your dear and precious Son. For we pray
in his name. Amen. We're going to sing the
Lord. Thou art with him who is able
to keep you, able to keep you from falling, and protect you
for mercy, for the rest of its glory, receiving glory. To the only-wise God, our Saviour,
be glory and majesty. Dominion, power, love, love and
glory build, I'll see how many I've got.