If you turn in your scriptures
to Acts chapter 13, we're going to read from that verse that
we just looked at a minute ago and read down to the end of the
chapter. As I'm reading along, the title
of my message this morning is The Religious Way to Hell, or
The Religious Path to Perishing. Let's read that wonderful verse
again. It's a description of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has
described the Lord Jesus Christ in his glory, in his sovereignty.
He's described him as a saviour. He described him as a promised
keeper. He's the one who brings the word
of salvation. He's the one, he's the one who
brings forgiveness of sins. And by him, verse 39, all that
believe are justified from all things from which you could not
be justified by the law of Moses. And Paul, I'm no doubt having
seen the anger rising on the faces of these people, then speaks
these words of Habakkuk, which we've looked at over the last
couple of weeks. He says, quoting Habakkuk, Beware, therefore,
lest that come upon you which is spoken of in the prophets.
Behold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish. For I work a work
in your days, a work which you shall in no wise believe, though
a man declare it unto you. And when the Jews were gone out
of the synagogue, the Gentiles were thought that these words
might be preached to them the next Sabbath. Now, when the congregation
was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed
Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue
in the grace of God. And the next Sabbath day came
almost the whole city together to hear the word of God. And
when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and
spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting
and blaspheming. Then Paul and Barnabas waxed
bold and said, It was necessary that the Word of God should first
have been spoken to you. But seeing ye put it from you,
and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turned
to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded
us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that
thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. And
when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified
the word of the Lord, and as many as were ordained to eternal
life believed. And the word of the Lord was
published throughout all the region. But the Jews stirred
up the devout and honourable women and the chief men of the
city and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled
them out of their coasts. But they shook the dust off their
feet against them and came to Iconium, and the disciples were
filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost. There is laid out
in those verses before us the most extraordinary contrast,
isn't there, between the lost and the found, between the damned
and the saved, between the reprobate and the delivered by the Lord
Jesus Christ. As we read in Psalm 24, our God
is the Lord God, a sovereign God, the Lord of hosts. And wherever
he sends his gospel, he says, I'll have them. And wherever
he sends his gospel, he divides humanity as he did on the cross
of Calvary. Wherever the gospel comes, it's
like one of those giant icebreakers ploughing through the waves of
ice. It's unhindered. You think that this ice is strong
and these icebreakers just plough their way through. Such is the
way of God, the eternal covenant will have its outworking in all
of the things that will happen in all of this world. But where
it's been, there is then this division. Wherever the Gospel
comes, there is division. Wherever the Gospel really comes,
there is necessarily opposition to the Gospel, because wherever
the Gospel comes, Satan is stirred up. Wherever the gospel comes,
the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ is proclaimed, and the
defeat of Satan is proclaimed at the same time. And he's enraged. He's enraged. He's been cast
out of heaven, according to Revelation 12, and he's enraged. He's come
down to the earth enraged. His goods that he kept in peace
have now been pillaged, plundered by the Lord of hosts. He says,
I'll have them. I'll have those particular ones.
I'll have them and I'll gather them to myself. I'll have them
and I'll protect them and I'll set up walls around them. I'll
have them and nothing will take them away. Nothing will take
the Lord's sheep from the hands of the Saviour. Nothing will
rob the Lord Jesus Christ of the beauty of His bride and the
glory of His being in the salvation of people. It's equally a great blessing
and equally it's a stark, stark warning. Let's sing again and
then we might... The Lord allow us to examine it. Let's ask the Lord's blessing
on us. Heavenly Father, you have promised to be the teacher of
your people. The Blessed Holy Spirit has promised
to come and to lead us and to teach us and to reveal to us
the things of the Lord Jesus Christ, the things of him from
eternity, the things of him promised In the scriptures, the things
of him revealed in his blessed incarnation when he took on human
flesh, that he might live before you in holiness and die under
the curse of the law, to die under the wrath of God that we
deserved. Oh, Heavenly Father, we pray
that that might be our portion this morning, that you might
comfort our hearts as we examine these things, and Heavenly Father,
may May the warnings in the scriptures be warnings that sink deep into
our hearts that we might be people who take heed and hear and run
and hide ourselves in the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the only place
of safety in all of this world. We pray, Heavenly Father, that
You would teach us and lead us. For we pray these things for
the good of our souls, and whatever is good for our souls is for
the glory of Your dear and precious Son. We thank You that by Him
we have access to a throne of grace, a throne of grace that
is open to us in a time of need. Make us needy, Heavenly Father. Make us to light. in the blood-bought
best blessings that flow from the throne of grace. May they
be ours again this morning, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Paul is, you recall from the
many times we read the commissioning of Paul in Acts 9 and in Acts
21 and Acts 26, Paul is sent on a mission by God. He is God's
ambassador. And when God's ambassadors speak,
God is speaking. It is as simple as that. To disagree
with Paul is to disagree with God. So gospel preaching, gospel
preaching is never a light, an inconsequential thing. Whenever
the gospel is proclaimed, it is always a matter of life and
death. And you might recall that I have said on many occasions
since we first began, that if our gospel is not a matter of
life and death, then we don't have the gospel at all. Our Gospel
is a declaration of the Lord Jesus Christ in his suffering
and in his glory, a declaration of the wondrous treasures of
grace, the wonders of mercy and wisdom and knowledge that are
given to God's people. It is a grace gift. Salvation
is entirely of the Lord. It comes as a gracious gift from
on high. It comes as a promised gift from
a sovereign God who cannot lie. It comes bearing news of holiness
and righteousness by which you can ascend to that hill of the
Lord. and everywhere in scripture where
the gospel is rejected, and every instance throughout all of human
history, anyone who goes to hell, anyone who, according to the
words of our text here, anyone who perishes has no one to blame
but themselves. They cannot blame God, they cannot
blame Satan, and they cannot blame other men. The text before
us makes it abundantly clear. The Lord Jesus Christ said to
those who contradicted him, you will not come to me that you
might have life. To refuse to bow to this King
when he comes in mercy when he comes declaring the wonders
of the nature and the character of God revealed in the salvation
of sinners, to refuse to bow to this King, to refuse to kiss
this King, to say, as they said, we will not have this man to
reign over us. It's soul suicide. It is sole suicide. These Jews had a history preached
to them that could not be refuted. Ezekiel 5.5 says that God had
set Israel in the center of the nations. If you went east from
Israel, you went to Iraq and Iran and India and Asia. You
went north and you went into Europe. You went south, you went
into Africa. It was set in the center of the nations so that
the history of Israel that Paul has outlined here and Stephen
outlined to those Jews is a history that's meshed with the histories
of all of those other nations. It's a history that reveals a
great and glorious God. It reveals the character of God
in the salvation of his people. Paul has declared a God who is
a choosing God. a God who is a preserving God,
a God who is a redeeming and rescuing God from Egypt, a God
who appoints kings, a God who is a just judge in removing Saul
from his kingship. It is, all this history, is the
history of Christ revealed, fulfilling the Word of God. It's a history
of Christ justifying those who had no ability to justify themselves,
It's a history of the Lord Jesus Christ doing all that the law
could not do. It's a history of God warning
in word, warnings fulfilled. And we've looked at Habakkuk
over this past couple of weeks, and Habakkuk gives a memorial,
as Jeremiah and Ezekiel do, to the fact that apostate religion
is damning to the souls of men and the glory of God demands
that it be expunged from this earth. He will be a just God
and a saviour. He will be a just God. These
men, these men put the Word of God from them,
and they judge themselves unworthy of eternal life. What a shocking
indictment. They determine and they resolve that they are unworthy of eternal
life. They actually cast a verdict
upon their own souls. I want Lord Willing to chart
this path. This is a path to perishing.
It's a particular path, a path to hell. And it's the path that
lies exposed again and again throughout the scriptures. It's
the path that the people in the Bacchic stay. travelled on. It's the path that the people
in Jeremiah's day travelled on. It's a path that the people in
the days of the Lord Jesus Christ travelled on. It's a path that
is travelled again and again. And it's a path that's particularly
relevant to us because we have been blessed with the Gospel. I threw in the bin this morning
the Catholic weekly paper, you can pick up the Catholic weekly
paper and see what blasphemous nonsense is proclaimed just up
the road and down the road and across the road and in all sorts
of places. And a billion people, more than
a billion people, are caught up in that. But there's a particular
path, isn't it, that these people trod? They trod a particular
path because for them the Gospel was proclaimed to them. It was
proclaimed to them by God's ambassador. It was proclaimed to them by
someone who cared for your immortal souls, because he cared for the
glory of God. And Paul's preaching, and I trust
ours, doesn't come with complicated theology. It doesn't come with
man's tradition and man's wisdom. It doesn't come with the rituals
of religion. Paul preached as simply as the
Lord would enable him. because we don't want anything
to cloud the simplicity that's in the Lord Jesus Christ. We
don't want anything to hide the beauty of who the Lord Jesus
Christ is, the beauty in his person. We don't want to have
anything taken away or hinder you from seeing the work that
he's done. the work that he's done, that
work that is impossible for man, to love those who have no love
for him, to redeem from hell those who were his enemies, to
suffer death at the hands of ones that he loved, to bring
truth to those who loved lies, to satisfy the law, for those
who in every act and thought and word broke it all the time,
to bring to heaven those that deserve hell, to bring into loving
communion those that were at enmity one with another. Unto
him, says Genesis 49, speaking of Judah, unto him shall the
gathering of the people be. When the gospel goes, there's
a gathering of people to him. Our salvation, brothers and sisters
in Christ, is as secure as our surety. It's as secure as the
one who makes the promises. our fifth object. Our faith,
strength and safety and security is in the Lord Jesus Christ.
His life, not mine. His righteousness, not mine.
His faithfulness, His obedience, not mine. His dying, His rising,
His reigning, it's all mine. Because He never did anything,
He never did anything apart from perfect, complete, eternal union
with His people. It's all you have, brothers and
sisters in Christ. I trust it's all you have. It's
all I want. It's all I need. Not my doing,
but His. As I said earlier, heaven is
entirely the promise of the Father, the pardon of the Son, and the
glorious application of the Holy Spirit. And hell is entirely
the work of man. It's entirely the work of man. These men are laid out before
us to warn us. These men, like many of the Jews
in Jerusalem, have spent the last 2,000 years in hell, and
hell is eternal. Hell must be eternal, because
God is infinitely holy. Let's just read. Let's follow
this path. And I pray, as Paul speaks to
these Jews, we might be protected. We might be protected from the
prideful thoughts that spring up in the hearts of people and
say, well, that'll never happen to me. I could never go down
that path. I could never be like that. Be warned. Be warned if you're
proud. May your pride be humble. Remember, when Paul spoke of
these Jews in Romans 9, he wrote with tears staining his words. When the Lord Jesus Christ looked
over Jerusalem and saw what was going to befall it, he shed tears
for them. Woe to us when we read of these
heart-wrenching things, that we don't do it with a similar
attitude of heart. They are children of Adam, like
us. We are no better than them. What do you have that you have
not received? And if you've received it, why
do you boast as if you've earned it yourself? Salvation is by grace. It's a
gift from God. You've done nothing to earn that
gift. Be mindful of treating those who don't have it with
disdain. Let's turn to verse 41, and I'll
try and go through these points as quickly as possible. I pray
the Lord would be our teacher. Paul had seen the response of
the Jews. For those who have preached for
some time, you will, like Paul, have witnessed many people over
time. You preach and then some people
are drinking in the Word of God, and there are other people who
are enraged against it. They might come in enraged, and
they remain enraged, and they go enraged. And Paul, in a sense,
breaks off his sermon, I believe, because of the response of these
people. And he promises them, he says
that something that the prophets promised can fall upon you, can
come upon you, And he says, behold, ye despisers, and wander and
perish. These are the words of Habakkuk
1.5. And then the reason is, because I work a work in your
days, I work a work that you can bear witness to. These Jews
had the opportunity to go all the way back, as 1 Corinthians
15 says, they had the opportunity to go on Paul's journey back
to Israel and find the 500 people who are witnesses to the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Behold, I work a work in your
days, it's the work of God in your days, a work which you shall
in no wise believe, though a man declare it to you. It's a work
that's seen, it's a work that's done in your days, it's a work
that's declared to you. What a terrible judgment of God
upon someone. They despise, and they despise
in such a way that you will in no wise believe. In no wise believe. The Gospel came with God's witnesses
Honest men who sacrificed their lives for the witness of the
Lord Jesus Christ. The testimony of God came through
men who didn't declare that they had any righteousness of their
own. They didn't declare any religious privilege of their
own. They simply bore witness to facts. They bore witness to
what the scriptures said about the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the reality that these
men at this time were in church. They'd all come to church. They'd
all heard the Bible read. They'd all been involved in praying. They'd all been acknowledging,
no doubt, the glories of God. And yet, these men who perish
and go to hell begin by being despisers. You see, the Gospel,
the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ exposes the hearts of
men as nothing else in all of this world will do, which is
simply why we preach the Gospel, that your heart might be exposed
before God and you might see what it is, deceitfully wicked
and beyond cure. But the gospel exposes people,
exposes the Jews here. No doubt that morning when they'd
had their breakfast and done their other things, they all
looked as clean and as moral and as upstanding as citizens
as you could possibly imagine. They were zealous in this church.
They'd been out to gather the Gentiles in. They weren't just
an exclusive Jewish club. They had the Gentiles there as
well. They were missionary people. They were out there. They were
out there proclaiming a Christ. They were out there proclaiming
a God, and they were drawing people into themselves. And yet, when they hear the Lord
Jesus Christ proclaimed, as happened throughout His ministry, when
these Jews heard the Lord Jesus Christ described when he revealed
himself as he's revealed in the gospel, these men despised. They were contemptuous of him. Just a Nazarene. Can anything
good come from Galilee? You were born in fornication. You're a child of the devil and
you have your power because of Satan working in you. They scoffed
him. They scoffed him. That's what it is to despise. They despised. They despised
the Saviour. They despised the promises in
the Saviour. They despised the word of this
salvation in verse 26. They despised the glad tidings
of verse 32. They despised the promise. They
despised the fact that the word of God is fulfilled, was fulfilled
before the very people of Jerusalem just some little time beforehand.
They despise the fact that this Lord Jesus Christ is raised up
as the one who holds the sure mercies of David. I love that
phrase. I love my mercies to be sure mercies, and my mercies
and your mercies, brothers and sisters in Christ, are sure.
Why? because they're in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. They
are the mercies that were given to the Lord Jesus Christ. He
won them all, he owns them all, and he keeps them all, and he
has them all for all of his children. Mercy beggars like to know that
mercy is sure, not mercy offered on the basis of you doing something.
Not mercy on the basis of man's activities, sure mercies, blood-bought
mercies, the mercies that David on his deathbed could lay his
head in rest as he contemplated entering heaven's glories. The
Lord has made with me, not that I've made with him, the Lord
has made with me an everlasting covenant, an eternal covenant,
ordered and sure, ordered and secure in all details. It was all his joy. It was all
his salvation. Sure mercies of David. They despised. What an extraordinary thing to
despise. The thing we need to ponder again
and again is that what is true for individual believers is true
for churches and is true for this Christian world. When we
read the Jews in the New Testament, you can, in brackets after it,
put the professing religious world, because they are a picture
of the professing religious world. To despise to despise, to treat
with contempt, to disregard the word of God and to scoff at it,
to scoff at the warnings of God, to scoff at the glories of the
gospel, is to do eternal damage to your soul. See, churches are
fragile. Churches are candlesticks, according
to Revelation, and the candlestick can be removed. You think of
just over the hills, not much more than 100 kilometres from
where Paul was preaching this message to these Jews, was Ephesus. What happened to the church in
Ephesus? What a remarkable church, founded by Paul, pastored by
Timothy, overseen by the Apostle John. The Lord Jesus said to
them, you've left your first love. What happened to the church
in Ephesus? It ceased to exist. What about the church in Sardis?
This is one that sends shivers down my spine. Sardis, what was
the problem in Sardis? Sardis, you have a name that
you live, but you're dead. You have a reputation for being
alive, but you're dead. You're living on what you had
in the past, not what you have in the Lord Jesus Christ. The
Laodiceans, they thought they were doing well, didn't they?
They thought they were rich. They didn't realise that they
were poor and pitiful and blind and naked. Those churches ceased
to exist. Churches are precious things.
There is, in my understanding, very, very few gospel churches
that survive any more than a generation or two. It's a precious thing
for God to raise up a church. And the Christian world is a
world, like those churches, that hears the warnings. And this
Christian world, this religious world, have been despisers. Despisers of the glories of the
Gospel. the apostasy is always a turning
from the simplicity that's in Christ. Paul declares a simple
history. It's a simple doctrine, isn't
it? Christ is all. Christ is all. All in salvation,
all in life. all in heaven, all before time,
and it's simply declared, and it's simply believed by children,
as children. We just simply believe what God
says about God, and we quite simply believe what God says
about us. We simply believe. It's the simplicity,
the singleness that's in Christ. Religion is complicated. The
gospel is simple. So this was in their hearts,
wasn't it? In their hearts, they despised. They despised. They despised, and they heard
the warnings, and they wondered, and they perished. And what did they do? You read
the next verse of the scripture in verse 42. And when the Jews,
notice that it's plural, when the Jews were gone out of the
synagogue, gone out, In their hearts they had gone out by despising
and scoffing and mocking the things that were said of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And then in their actions they go out. They
walked away with anger and envy. See, people go out in their heart
before they go out physically. You think of the number of people
that have been through the doors of our church in the 10 years
that we've been meeting. The number that have come, the
number that have heard, the number that have gone out. And so many
have gone out in their minds before they've gone out physically. As I said earlier, these were
good, moral, Bible-knowing, church-going Jews, missionary-minded. They'd gone out. They'd gone
out from the apostles. To go out from the apostles,
to go out from fellowship with the apostles, is to go out from
fellowship with God. You can read about it in 1 John
1. Our fellowship, they say, is
with God. If you don't fellowship with the apostles, in their teaching,
in their doctrine, you don't fellowship with God. They'd gone
out from the apostles and they'd gone out despising justification
by faith. Justification by faith without
works. And they'd gone out as a group,
these leaders of this synagogue. See, the road to perishing and
the road to apostasy, the road to hell, is never lonely. If you want to criticise, and
if you want to scoff, and if you want to be contemptuous of
the Word of God and His servants, you'll always find fellow trappers. You'll never be lonely. You'll
never be lonely on the road to hell. The road to hell is a wide
road, according to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's wide enough to accommodate
all sorts of people. It's wide enough for Calvinists.
It's wide enough for Armenians. It's wide enough for Muslims
and Catholics. It's wide enough for the self-righteous. It's
wide enough to have those who can float down the gutters of
it. It's wide enough for all sorts. You'll never be lonely. If you want to criticise and
be contemptuous, of the work of God and His servants. You'll
always find something in the personality of God's people that
you can be critical of. This man's a friend of sinners,
they said. This man's a drunkard, they said of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the promise is, if they treated the master that way, they'll
treat the servants the same way. This is a heavy chapter of scripture,
isn't it? It began with these apostles
being sent out, and then they meet with Elymas, who stands
opposed to them, and Paul caused him to be blinded. And it finishes
with these Jews expelling the apostles, expelling the Word
of God from their case. So they'd gone out from the apostles,
they'd gone out from the Word of God, they'd gone out from
the grace of God, they'd gone out from the forgiveness of sins,
they'd gone out from eternal life, they'd gone out when others
were gladly receiving it and rejoicing in it, they'd gone
out. And that next week wouldn't have been an extraordinary week
in that town of Antioch, wouldn't it? The Gentiles, verse 42, the Gentiles
were thought that these words might be preached to them next
Sabbath. And now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews,
verse 43, and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who,
speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. The grace of God causes people
to hear the words of God. And when we hear the words of
God from God as words from him, we want to hear them again. And
we want to hear them again. We want to hear them again. And the next Sabbath day came
almost the whole city together to hear the word of God. What
a glorious day. Here around this synagogue of
the Jews, and they've been going out gathering the Gentiles themselves,
and all of a sudden Paul comes and preaches the gospel, and
that whole Gentile city's there. What a cause for rejoicing. 35. But when the Jews saw the multitudes,
they were filled with envy. They boiled up with envy. And they spake against those
things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. It was envy of the Lord Jesus
Christ that caused the Jews to bring him to Pilate. And Pilate
knew that they brought him because of envy. Pilate knew that there's
nothing that he had done that caused this other than the malicious,
evil hearts of these people. Those malicious, evil hearts
exposed by the presence of the Lord God himself. And these men,
these Jews, they couldn't rejoice with those who rejoiced in the
gospel. There was no joy in hearing the
Lord Jesus Christ preached. No joy in hearing the glories
of God are seen in him. No joy in that word of salvation. No joy in what others saw as
glad tidings. No joy in the fellowship of believers,
no joy in the fact that the promise-keeping God had finally fulfilled the
great promise which all of the scriptures have been telling
us about from Genesis 1 and Genesis 3, that this Messiah was coming,
Emmanuel, God with us, God in human flesh. The Jews did this
all the way through the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. If
you recall, Whenever the Lord Jesus Christ revealed himself,
there was this division in humanity. In Mark chapter three, he goes
into the synagogue, and there was a man with a withered hand.
No doubt the man had been there for a long time with a withered
hand, and the Jews and all of their activities could do nothing
about his withered hand. And the Lord Jesus Christ comes,
and he says to that man, you stretch out your arm. And he
stretched it out. This man is now able to walk,
work. This man is able to do the things
he'd never been able to do. He's able to hug his wife and
children. He's able to shake hands with
his mum and dad. He's able to do all sorts of
things that he could never do. You would think that they would
be rejoicing, these Jews. And what was it? The Lord Jesus looked around
on them, verse 5, with anger, being grieved for the hardness
of their hearts. And he saith unto the man, Stretch
forth thine hand. And he stretched it out, and
his hand was restored whole as the other. And the Pharisees
went forth, out of this synagogue, out of church, there they were
in church. They went forth and straightway
took counsel with the Herodians, the Herodians who were their
enemies, the Herodians who were the traitors. They took counsel
with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him. These men were filled with envy. They had every reason to be rejoicing. God had fulfilled his promises.
God had brought this salvation which was promised. And God had
brought the word of this salvation to them particularly, not to
other parts of the world, but to them. And they couldn't rejoice. What do you rejoice in? The Lord
Jesus Christ said, didn't he? He says, where your treasure
is, there your heart will be. That's where your heart is. Where's
your treasure? What do you treasure? Your treasure
is somewhere. Your treasure is somewhere. So
these men were filled with envy. There's no room for anything
else. filled with envy and filled with bitterness. And they spoke. That was in their
hearts, and this is their action, these Jews, these religious people. And they spoke against the things
which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. So they weren't
contradicting the history of the Jews. They weren't contradicting
the character of God in choosing the Jews as this particular nation. They weren't contradicting the
history that was laid out before them. They were contradicting,
they were contradicting the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ as God
in human flesh, they were contradicting the wonders of what happened
on Calvary's tree, that on Calvary's tree he really did bear the sins
of all of his people in his own body, and he bore the curse and
wrath of God, and he put those sins away, that as all the Old
Testament scriptures said, he would. He would see the suffering
of his soul, and he'd be satisfied. By his suffering, my righteous
servants shall justify many. Save his soul from going to the
pit, says Elihu to Job. God says why. I have found a
ransom. I have found a ransom. I have
found a redeemer. That's what they spoke against,
didn't they? They despised in their hearts. They didn't hear
or heed any of the warnings of God. They left the fellowship
of the apostles and left the fellowship of those who are glad
and rejoicing. Their hearts were filled with
envy and now they speak. These Jews knew the words of
God as men, but they didn't hear the voices of the prophets. The
voices of the prophets is that voice that speaks of the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The prophets spoke. And the prophets
speak. And when you read your Old Testament,
remember that that word is a living and active word. That word is
a word written historically 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 years ago, but it's a word that
speaks to you and I now. The prophets speak. The voices
of the prophets are the voices that remind us again and again
of salvation accomplished in the Lord Jesus Christ. And all
the prophets spoke with one voice, of a saviour despised. A saviour
despised, a saviour put to death, a saviour of rising and reigning
and ruling. A saviour who came lowly, but
a saviour who is exalted to the heights of heaven's glory. A
saviour rejected by men, but accepted by God. A Saviour who
exposes sin in a way that no one else ever did. He exposes
the sin of self-righteousness and pride. And he bears that
sin for his people in his own body on the tree to the extent
that God says it's finished. And they cannot be remembered
anymore because they have ceased to exist. That's what it is to
be justified. and they contradicted. There's
so much contradicting now, isn't there? So many people come and
they want to talk, and they want to contradict. Contradiction
starts with the word, doesn't it? It starts with a yes, and
then it has another little word that you hear all the time, but.
Every time you hear the word but, you just wait for the next
part, isn't it? Goats are butting all the time.
Sheep. Sheep don't need to be butted.
Sheep just need to hear the Word of God again and again. There are so many in religion
who will butt their way, as these men did, contradicting and blaspheming. See, to contradict is ultimately
to end up blaspheming. You start by contradicting and
you will end up by blaspheming. The word blaspheming means to
vilify, to defame, to speak evil of. You contradict the word of
God and use your butts and use your nuances and you will find
yourself blaspheming. and you may not be aware of it
at all. Isaiah 66 declares those to whom
the Lord looks. This is the man, will I look
even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth
at my word. Poor, poor, poverty struck. Nothing. Nothing you can bring. You see the contradictors and
the blasphemers have got their own wisdom and their own words
and their own theology and their own philosophy and they'll use
that to contradict. They spoke against them. In verse 5 of that same chapter
of Isaiah 66 is a remarkable verse of scripture. It says,
hear the word of the Lord, hear the promise of God, ye that tremble
at his word. Your brethren that hated you
cast you out for my name's sake and said, let the Lord be glorified. They cast you out, declaring
that they're doing it in the name of God, and they're declaring
that the Lord should be glorified. But, there's one of the buts
of God, the buts of God are wonderful, the buts of men are incredibly
dangerous. But, he shall appear to your
joy, you, You that are poor and of a contrite
spirit, and trembled his word, but he shall appear to your joy. And they, they who declare and
cast people out, declaring, let the Lord be glorified, shall
be ashamed. They began. in their hearts,
despising the Lord Jesus Christ. They went out, they saw what
should have brought them joy, and they are filled with envy,
and then they speak against Paul, and they contradict and blaspheme. And Paul says this verse that
I trust. The Lord might lay to our hearts
and it might never ever be something could be said of us. Then Paul
of Barnabas waxed bald and said, it was necessary, it was necessary
in the provident purposes of God, it was necessary that salvation
should first be declared to the Jews. It was necessary that the
word of God should first have been spoken to you. But seeing you put it from you
and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life. You put it from
yourself. You cast it away, you drive it
off, you reject it. You start with contradiction,
you start with questioning God's Word, you start with questioning
God's Word and God's servants and you end up blaspheming and
you're actually putting the Word of God away from you. You drive
it off. You reject it. What a shocking
thing to do. The word of God is the Lord Jesus
Christ himself. He and his word are so intimately
linked together in the scriptures that you cannot drive his word
off. You cannot contradict his word without blaspheming him
and driving him off. You put it from you. That was
the first word of Satan in the garden, wasn't it? Has God really
said? Did God really say? He raised
the possibility that Eve could stand in judgment of the Word
of God. And you and I live in the consequences
of that sin that Adam joined her in. You put it from you. You put it from you. The Word
of God lives, it's living and active,
it divides, it cuts, but the Word of God is a Word that's
in the hearts of God's people, isn't it? We know and love those
verses in Ezekiel 36 where he declares these eternal purposes
of God, the glories of when the Spirit comes. He says in verse
26, A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I
put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your
flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, a heart that feels,
a heart that lives. And I will put my spirit within
you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you shall keep
my judgments and do them." He says, I'll sprinkle clean water
on you and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, not
from a little bit of it, from all of your filthiness and from
all your idols and I will cleanse you. And he says earlier, doesn't
he, in verse 24, he says, I'll take you, I'll take you from
among the heathen and gather you out of all countries and
we'll bring you into your own land. It is the promise of God,
isn't it, that his word dwells in the hearts of his people.
There's a glorious passage in Jeremiah 20, Jeremiah who was
there to witness the things that Habakkuk promised that was going
to happen to those Jews that rejected the word of God. And
Jeremiah was abused by the people and rejected by the people in
Jerusalem. And you know how they treated
him, and they treated the Word of God with utter contempt. And
one of the kings of Judah had a fire pot, and he had the scroll
from Jeremiah, the Word of God. And he used to take a scribe's
knife, after they'd read a section, and he'd throw it in the fire
to warm himself. And Jeremiah is brokenhearted
by the fact that he is rejected. He's rejected like Paul and God's
preachers throughout time. And then he says, Jeremiah says
in Jeremiah 20 verse 9, then I said, I will not make mention
of him nor speak any more in his name. That's it. Every time
I mention the name of the Lord, every time I declare the warnings
of the Lord, I end up in stocks or in a cistern or somewhere.
And then he says, but. His Word was in my heart as a
burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing,
and I could not stay." He couldn't hold it in. The Word of God burned
in his heart. You might recall in Revelation
10 that John was given a scroll and he was asked to eat it. and
it was to be as sweet as honey in his mouth. Ezekiel was asked
to eat a scroll, that the Word of God, that living and active
Word, would live in them and be in them. The Word of God is
precious to the children of God. The Word of God is as precious
to the children of God as the Lord Jesus Christ because it's
the only way we know about him. How do you know about heaven? Because God has written about
it here. How do we know about the Lord Jesus Christ? The Spirit
of God takes these words and they become spirit and life.
They're not just words of a man, they're the words of God. They
put it from you. As we've said again and again,
the pathway to perishing is one of real, always, is one of real,
personal, decisive acts. Always. And those who go to hell
have no excuse. You put it from you. You put
it from you because you believe that you're righteous. You put
it from you because you believe that you're able to judge the
Word of God and judge the people of God. You put it from you because
you're able to discern, you think, who is the false teacher and
who is true. You put it from you to have the esteem of men. From their religious high tower,
they can speak against the simple declaration of the Lord Jesus
Christ. You judge yourselves, and I must
hurry, the time is running on. You judge yourselves unworthy
of everlasting life. You decide, you determine that
you are undeserving and unsuitable for eternal life. This is Paul's
warning to these people perishing. See, people accuse the Lord's
servants of being dogmatic or judgmental or immovable and uncompromising. The gospel we declare is the
gospel that saves your eternal soul, the gospel that describes
the Lord Jesus Christ as God, as the Christ of God, as the
mediator, the one mediator between God and man. And whatever is
best in any situation of life for you is always that which
most glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever is best for
you is what raises him up the highest. people who perish. They begin
by despising. They go out from the fellowship
of God's people. They go out from the fellowship
of the apostles. They are filled with envy. They speak against
those things. They contradict and blaspheme.
They put the word of God from them. They become their own judge
and jury. They judge themselves unworthy
of eternal life. And they don't stop there. If
you turn down to verse 50. But the Jews stirred up the devout
and honourable women and the chief men of the city and raised
persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them out
of their coasts. They begin with despising and
now They resort to removing that testimony, that testimony of
God. And it's extraordinary the way
they do it, isn't it? They stir up the devout and honourable
women. And most likely this is a reference,
given the language, to devout and honourable women who had
become Jewish proselytes. They were They were women who
had come to the Jewish religion, and no doubt the Jews, as they
always were, says in Galatians 6, you know, they want to boast
in your flesh. They would have been so pleased that these honourable
women of the city had come, and they would have been able to
pat them on the back and say, how wonderful it is you've turned from idolatry,
and here you are under the law of Moses with us. You've turned
from the wicked immoral activities that proliferate around you,
and here you are living honourable moral lives. Here you are hearing
the Word of God proclaimed. They stirred them up. What was the basis of stirring
them up? Look what you've done. Look how
good you've become. Look how religious you've become. Look at all the things that you've
turned from and look at the things you've turned to. Look what you
have done. Look at the decisions you made.
Look at the way you're behaving. You are prone and you are prey
to the flattery of the things of your flesh. And the Lord Jesus
Christ and Him crucified will not have you come to heaven with
the things of your flesh and your activities. God will accept
what is holy. God will accept what is pure. God will accept what is clean,
and there's only one thing, and only one person has ever achieved
any of those things, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot
have your law-keeping and the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot
have your religious righteousness and have Him as well. And that's
what Paul said, that's what stirred them up, that's what stirred
the Jews up. By Him all that believe, to simply have faith,
the faith of Abraham, are justified from all things from which you
could not be justified by the law of Moses. These people were
under the law of Moses. They thought that their religious
righteousness was about the things that they did and the things
that they had. Someone or anyone who puts people
back under the law is ignorant of two things, always ignorant
of two things. They're ignorant of the holiness
of God. They're ignorant of themselves
and what they are. The law exposes your sin. It was never designed to make
anyone holy. There's no way in the world we
want people to live immoral and disgusting lives. We want people
to live honourable lives. And we are thankful for all of
the activities that happen in this world and the activities
of the Lord in restraining people from outbreaking immorality. But nevertheless, the law works
wrath. And they stirred up persecution. So the Jews got to the chief
men of the city by their wives. They went to the women before
they went to the men. They're always cowards. From
all of my experience, those that have contradicted and blasphemed
have always been cowards. They've always wanted to carry
out their activities in as much darkness as possible. They always
want to use the manipulation of people rather than the simple
declaration of the glories of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Gospel
is a powerful Gospel, brothers and sisters. Our Gospel is the
Gospel that's promised. It's promised to have its effect
on the lives of people. We have no other purpose than
to declare the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
It is the power of God. There is no other power in the
hands of men to do these things. Men can manipulate others. And
they can manipulate them into religions of all different sorts. So let's go. The end of it is
that they expelled them from their coasts. They rejected them
altogether. They shut them out of their lives. I don't know how many, but it's
probably numbers in the hundreds of people that we have told us,
I'll go away and look at that. I'll come back to you. I'll come
back and have a think about that. And the number that come back,
the number that come back are so, so few. and your path to hell, your path
to perishing, you'll never be alone. You'll never be without
the ability to influence others to join you in your religion
and your opposition to the gospel. You'll never be without having
the authority of the world in some way or other assisting you.
You'll always have those who will compliment you on your good
moral religious behaviour and use that as evidence of your
security before God and a reason to stand opposed to the righteousness
of faith. and they'll use a Bible. They'll use a Bible. This service
began with the reading of the Word of God. The Church of Jesus
Christ marches on. We'll look at that when we next
come back to this, but the Word of God is published throughout
the whole region. The churches are established in this town
and in the other towns there. The Church of God simply proclaims
the Gospel and it says to this world, the door is there. Paul
just wiped the dust off his feet. He said the most unworthy thing
in your town is not worth clinging to me. The Church says in proclaiming
the Gospel, it says the door's open, you can go. I was very
struck by Naomi's discussion with Ruth, you might recall it.
Naomi went to Moab. Naomi was rich when she went
to Moab. She had a husband and two sons. And in Moab, where she thought
there was grain, her two daughters married the men of Moab. And
Naomi is left in bitterness. She's lost her husband. She lost
her two sons. But she's heard a word from God.
She's heard a word from God. The Lord has visited his people
in Bethlehem. In the house of bread, he's visited
his people. And Naomi says, I'm going back.
I'm going back to a place where there's the bread of heaven.
And she says to her daughter-in-laws, her Moabite daughter-in-laws,
go home. In Moab, you'll have your religion,
you'll have your family, you'll have your husbands, you'll have
the security of people who know you and esteem you. You'll have all of that. Naomi
pictures the church. You can go back. Go back to the
world. Go back to the religion, if you
like. And Orpha goes back. And what does Ruth say? Ruth, Naomi pleads with her. And Naomi is nothing much to
be looked at now. Naomi went out full and she comes
back bitter. In fact, she comes back and she
was unrecognizable by the people in her town. Is this Naomi, they
said. She says, don't call me Naomi,
I'm bitter. I'm bitter, I'm emptied. You see, what does Ruth? Ruth
is a picture of the believing, Gentile, converted
person. There's nothing back there for
her other than a promise. There's nothing back there. Naomi
has nothing. There's nothing back there but
a promise from God. And Ruth said, entreat me not
to leave thee, nor return from following after thee. For whither
thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy
people shall be my people, and thy God my God. We have a promise. We have a
promise from God. A promise that's fulfilled in
the glorious work of the Lord Jesus Christ. See, if you're
needy, if you're needy, you'll be like Ruth. If you have a God-given
need, you'll be like Ruth. Paul didn't have to go, nor did
the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn't go back pleading to
these Jews, and he didn't go back to debate with them. He
had a task. You preach that there is bread
in Bethlehem, that God has visited his people. And like Ruth, with
nothing, nothing of this world to draw them to it, they'll be
drawn. Such is the power of our God.
Such is the work of God, the Holy Spirit. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do pray
that your warnings might sink as deeply into our souls that
they cause your promises and the wonder of your salvation
to be ever sweeter to us, our Father. That you might use the
perishing of others for us to esteem even more highly the wonders
of redeeming love in the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, you've
given us this simple way of remembering Him, remembering Him in that
broken body, remembering Him in that shed blood, that blood
that washes all of your people clean and renders us perfect
and fit, wholly unblameable and unreprovable in your sight. Heavenly
Father, help us to remember Him, to heed your warnings, to delight
in your promises, to find ourselves with our eyes yet again fixed
on the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot remember Him whom we
don't know. Will you cause yourself to be
known to us, Heavenly Father, that we might remember Him Remember
the glories of redeeming love. Remember the wonders of redemption
from the foundation of the world that's fully accomplished. Remember
that His Church will be gathered and His Church will be glorified. We thank you again for warning
us, but we thank you again that our Lord Jesus Christ bore all
of the sins of all of his people in his own body on the tree and
put them away perfectly. Give us hearts to see. Give us
hearts that simply believe our Father. For we pray in Jesus'
name. Amen.