Astonishing doctrine, said Sergius
Paulus of this. Words of comfort, Paul called
them. As so often happens in the week
prior to my messages, it's been, goes round and round in my head
and I keep thinking about it. I have occasions to actually
sort of see something of what happens in the world. Beth sent
me a thing the other day called the three circles. They've gone
from two ways to live to the three circles. If you can look
it up, Beth will show you what it's all about. Really it is,
do you want to go to heaven or do you want to go to hell? Choice
is up to you, isn't it? All the choice is in your hands.
I heard a message yesterday by a man who has a huge organisation
and thus far they have sent out 160,000 missionaries around the
world. A huge organisation which is
still doing remarkable things and the topic of his message
was world evangelism. And I was waiting for him to
say something about the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. The word evangel, the word evangelism
means to the gospel. It means to declare the gospel.
And that organisation would find, as these people that were in
the audience of Paul on this first gospel sermon recorded
for the Gentiles outside of Nation Israel, they were offended at
what was being said. In fact, Paul describes them
as despisers of what he is saying. has people, and God's people. love him because he first loved
us. And God's people love every single
attribute of our God. Everything about him. You think
of all the glorious doctrines that are revealed in these verses
here before us. The glorious doctrine of the
absolute sovereignty of God. And we love it. We love the fact
that he's sovereign. I don't know what is going to
befall you in these next days and weeks and months. I don't
know what's going to befall this world. But I do know one thing,
that our God sits on a sovereign throne and he rules all things
and whatever happens, whatever happens must be for the spiritual
good of all of his people. It must be. Our God is declared
in these verses again and again to be a God of promise, a God
of covenant, and a God who keeps and maintains His promises. All
that is unfolding in this world is but the outworking of an eternal
covenant. It is day by day, second by second,
in every part of this universe. the unfolding of the purposes
of a sovereign God. And in these words before us
in Acts chapter 13 verse 17, we have God declared to be a
God who has a people. He has, the Lord Jesus Christ
has power over all flesh. He has power over all flesh to
give eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him.
So He does rule all things, and He does rule all people, and
He does rule them with absolute sovereignty. But God is declared
here, as Paul begins, God declares, Paul declares this God to be
a God who has a people. the God of this people, the God
of this people. When God reveals himself, he
reveals himself as the God of a particular people, a God of
sovereign purpose, a God of faithfulness to eternal covenants, a God who
reveals himself in time. And that's how God does reveal
himself. And this is Paul's sermon, in
summary, isn't it? God actually makes promises,
and those promises are promises that are said and then recorded
in words. The word of God and the words
of God are together, aren't they? The promises begin before the
foundation of the world, but in the revelation of these promises,
we have a promise in the garden. The fall was no accident. Adam
was said, when you eat of the tree. The fall was not an accident. The fall was in the determinant
counsel and full knowledge of God. And then God, in the midst of
all of that, reveals his character to his people. He doesn't leave
this people to themselves. He doesn't leave this people
to go their own way in this world. God rules and reigns. He makes
a covenant. He makes promises. And the promise
in Genesis 3 is that the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's
head. The son will be bruised. The son will suffer. Satan will
be defeated, and God's children will go free. That there is,
in the midst of death and judgment, that comes from taking and eating
and defying God, there is promise. And it's so beautifully pictured
in Genesis, when Adam and Eve are brought before God. They
don't go to find him, they're hiding, which is what all of
us were doing. We were hiding from God and running
away. And we were hiding most from
God, covered in the fig leaves of our own righteousness. And
God brought them to himself. He brought that pear to himself.
And God slew a lamb in the garden. And God removed their fig leaves
of their own works righteousness. And God had them stand there
naked as they were before him. And God clothed them and covered
their shame. See, God makes a promise. God makes a promise. And then
he reveals that promise fulfilled in the works that he does. The Lord Jesus Christ and Him
crucified, He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of
the people. And that word is fulfilled in
God drawing these people back to Himself, to be in covenant
union with Him. The God of this people, the God
of this people chose I can't but read Acts 13 and
remember a time I was in a service in what is considered a reformed,
conservative, Calvinistic Baptist church in Wollongong. And the
preacher did a sermon, as they often do, on all of Acts 13.
I won't quite get there today, but he did a sermon on all of
this portion of scripture, and I couldn't believe that he didn't
read in his reading of the chapter, Acts 13.48, that as many as were
ordained to eternal life, not only did he not read it to the
people, He didn't speak on it. He preached a sermon and deliberately
left it out. And I said to him after, I said,
Rod, I was at Bible college with you. I knew him. Rod, why didn't
you read it? Why didn't you preach on it?
Well, he said, the reason was, last week we had a dialogue session. This was an evening service in
a university town. And so there were lots of people
there and they wanted to have a discussion. And he said, we had a discussion
on election and choosing and predestination. And people were
very upset with it. They were very upset in that
debate, and I didn't want to upset them anymore. Paul, I would suggest, by the
words that he says, In verses 13, 40 and 41, Paul saw the anger
of the people before him, and he just preached on. The Lord
Jesus Christ met with a lot of opposition when he preached the
gospel. You can read about it in John
6 and 8 and 10. And the more they complained,
the more he declared the glory of who he is, the more he declared
his deity and the successful work, and that we won't come
to him unless the Lord draws you to Him. It is still a word
of comfort. If man finds it offensive, the
doctrines that man finds most offensive are the doctrines that
God causes His people to find the most comfort in. Man is offended
by God's absolute sovereignty because he wants to sit on a
throne. Man is offended by the doctrines of particular redemption
because he wants to think that somehow, somehow he is worthy
of the Lord Jesus Christ dying for him. Man loves to think that
God loves him. Why? Because he's worthy of being
loved. He's worthy of being loved by
God. God ought to love him because he's so lovable. Our God, our God reveals himself
at the beginning of this first sermon to the Gentile world preached
by the Apostle to the Gentiles. He begins by declaring himself
as a God who has a people, a God who chooses, a God who chooses. See the elect are set apart by
God. So in this audience, there are
these Jews, aren't there? There are the Jews and there
are the God-fearing, the Jewish proselytes. So the Jews could
boast in their religion. They could boast in their lineage. They could trace their lineage
all the way back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They could trace
their lineage back to Noah. They could trace their lineage
back all the way to Adam. And they thought that because
of their physical lineage, they had some inside track with God. And they proved that by their
works. These people were zealous, moral people. And they had been
evangelistic, for want of a better word. They'd gone out, they had
their mission organisations, and they had their missionary
trips going out from Jerusalem, and they'd reached to these Gentile
people. And these Gentiles were there.
The Gentiles were there. joined with the Jews in the Jews'
religion, comfortable in their works. And Paul just simply declares
God to be God. God to be God. It's an extraordinary
thing, isn't it, that all of the things that God had set before
the Jews in all of their history and in their ceremonies and in
the very beginning of their race, all that God had set before them
was there designed to point them to the Lord Jesus Christ and
to humble them. And yet they had turned those
very things which were designed to humble them. Imagine what
it's like to go to the temple and take a lamb and slit its
throat and watch it die in its blood and be completely unmoved. Familiarity
with religious activities is very, very deadly. See, election
is the setting apart the Jewish nation. The God of this people,
Israel, where did that people begin? They began with God's
choice of one man, Abraham, was chosen out of all the people
of Ur of the Chaldees. In fact, he was chosen out of
all the people of all the Middle East. In fact, he was chosen
out of all the people of all the world. God chose one man. He chose one man. And it's a picture of the fact
that God chose one man. Mine elect, he calls his son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. He looks to one man. He looks
to one man only. God looks nowhere else. He looks
to his son. He looks to the Lord Jesus Christ. Abraham is a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ in so many ways, that from this one man came this
enormous nation. He was the father of the faithful. And God revealed his choosing
in the fact that he chose Isaac and not Ishmael. He would have
for his children, children of promise, not children of works. He'll have children of God's
promise. even if you have to wait for
it for a long time, not children of man's activities and man's
works, not children who are born because of some cooperative activity
between man and God. Somehow we can help him along
in his works as if somehow our God is powerless. Ishmael is
a picture of all works religion throughout this world. Isaac
is a picture of God's covenant children. They are born as a
result of promise. They are born in the midst of
an impossibility for man. Abraham and Sarah were both well
beyond the years of having children, way beyond the years of having
children. And God chose Jacob and not Esau. God chose. And why does God choose? I love Deuteronomy 7. Just turn
there for a minute with me. Deuteronomy 7. Verse 6, in Deuteronomy 7, for
thou art a holy people under the Lord thy God. The Lord thy
God has chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all
people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord, verse
7, did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because
you were more in number than any people. For ye were the fewest
of all people, but because God loved you. See, the language of choosing
in the Scriptures is the language of God's love. But because God loved you, and
because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your
fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and
redeemed you out of the house of Bondom from the hand of Pharaoh,
the king of Egypt. God chose them because God is
God and everything that God does is right and just and holy. The natural man finds God choosing
offensive. We all We all find God being
God naturally offensive to all that's in our Adam flesh. The natural man believes that
he can make himself right with God by his own activities. The Jews thought that they were
right with God by their blood. They boasted of being Adam's
children. The Gentiles thought that they
could be right with God by the will of the flesh. They could
join the synagogue. They could profess belief in
Jehovah. They could, in their fleshly
activity, believe that they actually obeyed God's law. And they still do today. They
do. They do commit that grievous
sin that the children of Israel did at Mount Sinai. They said,
you just tell us what to do and we'll do it. It's simple. It's
simple to obey a holy God. You just tell us what to do.
Religion is continually causing people to think that somehow
they can obey God by the works of their flesh. It's not by blood,
says the Lord Jesus Christ to the Jews in John chapter 1. He says, He was in the world, verse 10,
and the world was made by Him and the world knew Him not. He
came unto His own, the Jewish people, and His own received
Him not, but as many as received Him. To them gave He power to
become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name,
which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but born of God." These Jews and Gentiles
together joined in proselytising other Gentiles. with the will of men and their
feshly wisdom, they could persuade people to become children of
God. The man who has the mission organisation that's had 160,000
missionaries makes the road as broad as you can possibly make
it. All you have to do, in his estimation,
is name something about the name of God and do some activities. And you're a Christian. He's
declaring them to be Christians again and again. Billy Graham
declared them as they came forward to his invitation in a gospel
that didn't declare the glory of God. He declared them to be
saved. And then he'd admit later on
that 97 or 98% of those people that he had declared to be saved
six weeks later weren't in church. And not once did he appear to
be horrified that he'd lied to them. See, our gospel, the gospel
of God, is so big and so powerful and so effective that Paul could
go and sit in a synagogue and wait for there to be an opportunity
because our God saved his people from the foundation of the world.
They will be saved and they must be saved and they won't be born
again by the will of the flesh. They'll be born from above. God
will birth his people. Just like he miraculously birthed
Isaac into that family of Abraham, so he miraculously births all
of his children, all of his children of faith. As I said, Paul declares himself,
in those lovely words in Galatians chapter 1, declares himself having
been religious and having been profitable in that religion,
having been profitable in the tradition of his fathers. And
then he says, but when it pleased God. Our God takes pleasure in
choosing. And it pleased God who separated
me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace to reveal
his son in me. That is salvation, isn't it?
Separated, separated from his mother's womb. What great hope
the gospel of election has brings to us. Almost all of us who sit
here have family members who aren't believers. All of us know
people who look like Paul in so many ways. What a wonder it
is that in the Gospels, that people, parents, brought their
children's concern to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus
Christ heard them. We are, because of the doctrine
of sovereign grace and the doctrine of God's electing purposes, we
are caused to have hope, brothers and sisters. We don't know what
they look like in this world. Paul was the most unlikely person
to be saved in all of Israel. There weren't many people out
there murdering Christians, but Paul was one of them. You don't
meet many people who are murdering Christians. We meet people who
murder Christians' reputations these days, but there aren't
any shedding a whole lot of blood. But nevertheless, our God, because
He is the God of this people, and because He chooses people,
and He causes them to come to Him, We have reason to pray and
we have reason to hope. Without God's sovereign grace
and without his electing love, we'd have despair because all
we'd have left was the arm of human flesh. It says in that
verse that we're looking at, He chose our fathers, He exalted
the people as they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt. With a
high arm, He brought them out of it. It's a great description
of salvation, isn't it? With an arm of might and an arm
of power, He just says, I'll have them. And it doesn't matter
if the world's superpower stands against them. He says, I'll take
them out and I'll have them. Why? Is God declared to be a
choosing God? This is the astonishing doctrine,
isn't it? And these are the words of comfort. Ephesians 1 is remarkable, isn't
it? We don't have time today to read that whole sentence,
but Ephesians 1, 3 down to 14 is just one sentence in the original,
just one sentence with one particular theme. And it says, blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who have blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. And where
does he begin with his list of spiritual blessings? All the
spiritual blessings are in Christ Jesus. All the spiritual blessings
are in heavenly places. It's a good and secure place
for your blessings to be, brothers and sisters. They're not going
to get touched or defiled in that place. And they're in Christ. Your blessings are in Him. He
says, according as He has chosen us. In Him, when? before the
foundation of the world, before the foundation of the world. that we should be holy and without
blame before him in love. Having predestinated us, which
means that God has a determined plan, isn't it? Having predestinated
us under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according
to the good pleasure of his will, Why does He choose people? Verse
6, to the praise of the glory of His grace. There is no glory
for the grace of God without God being a choosing God. To the praise of the glory of
His grace. So those verses before us show
why we are chosen. They show when we are chosen
and they show how we are chosen. We are chosen in Him. God looks to one man. We are chosen in Him. God's elect, God's children have
never been separated from the Lord Jesus Christ. We were separated
in our minds by our evil works. We were separated in so many
ways when we fell in our father Adam and we sinned against God.
We were separated, but He always had us in His mind. I love that hymn, isn't it? Near, so very near to God, nearer
I cannot be. In the person of His dear Son,
I am as near as He. Dear, so very dear to God, dearer
I cannot be, in the person of His dear Son, I am as dear as
He. God's children are saved, saved
from the foundation of the world. God's children must be saved. All that the Father gives me
will come to me, and no one No one will cast them out. No one
can take them out of my hand. They're in my hand, and they're
in my father's hand. How do you get them out of there?
You can't get them out of there. They are perfectly safe. They have been saved in eternity.
They must be saved in time. They are being saved, and they
will be saved. And in this world, they cry out,
Lord, save me. Lord, save me. Save me from myself
yet again. Save me from the things that
are bigger than me and God's children. Sing. Sing the songs. So we're practising, aren't we
now? That's what church is about. We're practising singing for
heaven. And when we leave here and get
to heaven, we don't have to change the tune and we don't have to
change the words. We might change some of the company,
but when we get to heaven, we realise that we've always been
there. And God's children are singing. Thou wast slain, and
hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and
tongue, and people, and nation, and hast made us unto God, our
God, kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. Worthy
is the lamb is the song that's being sung in heaven right now,
isn't it? Worthy is the lamb. Worthy is the lamb that was slain
to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor
and glory and blessing. Blessing and honor and glory
and power unto him that sitteth on the throne and unto the lamb
forever and ever. And the beasts in heaven, the
preachers in heaven are singing, Amen. Truly, truly, we're saying,
we're singing. So the gospel to the Gentile
world begins with this word of election, of God's choosing.
It is so littered throughout the Bible, and is so descriptive
of God's people that it is just an absolute wonder of mystery. It's only religion that could
cause people to turn away from it. It's only training in religion
that could cause people to be fearful of it. The word election,
of course, as we saw a few weeks ago in Isaiah 42, is a description
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot describe him as God,
the Father describes him, without describing him as mine elect.
Behold my servant, Isaiah 42, whom I uphold, mine elect in
whom my soul delighteth. You can't preach the gospel without
preaching God's electing love. You can't preach the gospel without
preaching God's choosing love. You can't, you can't have people
come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ without
the preaching of this God, the God of this people who chose
our fathers. Without election there is no
coming to Christ because people are dead in transgressions and
sins. They aren't just a little bit
sick, they are dead. They don't need a little bit
of assistance, they need life. They need life to see the Lord
Jesus Christ. They have to have spiritual life
from above to see him. People say that election shuts
the door of heaven to those who want to go in. That's what you
hear people say. Can't preach that. It shuts the
door to heaven. You try and find one person that
fits that description, brothers and sisters. Someone who wants
to go to heaven and can't get in. Election reveals God coming to
dead sinners and saying, live. Live because you are mine. Election and the cross are so
joined together that there is no understanding of the cross
without election. This nonsense that pervades this
world, this nonsense of some theoretical universal redemption,
if dead sinners would respond in some particular way, then
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ was sufficient for all of them.
But somehow it works for the elect. The death of the Lord
Jesus Christ was a particular death. It was a successful death. It was a sovereign death. It
was a saving death. And it was a death that satisfied
God. See, to be chosen is to be brought
into the relationship, the realisation of that relationship with God.
How do you get close to a holy God? You have to be as holy as Him.
You can't get close to a holy God unless you are as holy as
Him. Just think of the stories in
the Old Testament where people presumed to come into the presence
of God, and His holiness erupted in their
destruction. The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
is the thing, is the one, one thing that is needed for sinners. All, that's what Paul finishes
this word of comfort, all that believe, all that by him, all
that believe. See, believing is a gift of God.
All that by him believe are justified from all things. There is this
man, in this man is preached the forgiveness of sins. There
is no gospel, there is no salvation in this modern message of God
loving everyone and Jesus dying for them. It never reaches to
where a dead sinner really is and it doesn't reveal the true
and living God as he is. In the scriptures again and again
where the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and salvation and the
gospel is proclaimed, it's always proclaimed as a particular death
for a particular people. Paul, describes this gospel in
1 Corinthians 1.15, doesn't he? He says, Moreover, brethren,
I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you. He
didn't have to change this gospel once. Paul preached for the rest
of his life and he never had to change a word. He just kept
preaching the same gospel. It's the power of God under salvation.
I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which
also ye have received. It's the gospel that's received
by God's children, because they receive the declaration of who
God is in his saving character. Wherein you stand, there is no
standing apart from this gospel. by which you are also saved,
if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed
in vain. For I delivered unto you first
of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our
sins, literally died for the sins of us. He died for the sins
of this people, the God of this people. He died for the sins
of these chosen people. He died for the sins of those
who were so united to the Lord Jesus Christ in the eternal covenant
of grace that God the Father from that moment on looked to
his son for everything. It's the sure mercies of David.
They're sure mercies, because all of it is in the hand of God.
Sure mercies of David. Again and again, the scripture's
picture. Picture this amazing salvation. What a wonderful picture Passover
is. See, God, prior to the Passover
in Exodus 11, said He puts a difference between Israel and Egypt. The Egyptians had no idea of
the Passover. They had no idea. They had no
idea of what the Israelites were putting the blood on the doorpost
for. They had no idea why they took that lamb in and it became
one with them and their family. They had no idea of the painting
of the blood on the doorpost. And the blood's on the doorpost.
And you're inside, and you can't see the blood. I reckon if I'd been in Egypt
that night, I would have been in and out of that door every
few seconds. Is it still there? What's happening?
Is it still there? And people in those houses, some
of the people in those houses would have been shocking sinners
that very day. shocking sinners that very day.
And what does God say? That lamb is the Lord Jesus Christ. That blood is the precious blood
that was shed on Calvary's tree. That union of that lamb with
that family pictured the union of the Lord Jesus Christ with
his people. What does God say? When I see the blood. When I see the blood, I'll pass
over you. God saw the blood. God still
looks. He just looks to one place. He
looks to the blood. He looks to his Son. Paul wants at the very foundation
of this Gentile ministry, the Holy Spirit wants it recorded
for us at the beginning of this word of comfort that Paul brings
to these people. God the Holy Spirit wants us
to know that in the midst of a people who find it offensive,
Paul will just continue to preach on. If you read on in Acts, you'll
find that these despisers in Antioch followed Paul for the
rest of that missionary journey, that first missionary journey,
and went from place to place to stir these people up. Such
is the enmity of the natural religious man against the gospel
of free and sovereign grace. People say it's too difficult. It's not too difficult. It's
not difficult to understand. Natural religious men just find
all of the implications of it offensive. It offends their pride. It offends their religious activity. It offends all that they think
that they have learned and done. God chooses. It's not hard to understand.
For God's children who are dead in trespasses and sin, God's
children who have been made by God to see that they are sinners,
and sin is all they do all the time. It's the most comforting
doctrine of all, isn't it? It's not hard to understand,
but the Lord Jesus Christ said, you haven't chosen me, but I've
chosen you, to the apostles. Does anyone have a problem understanding
what he said? It's not difficult to understand, The problem is
we just don't like the God who operates that way. And until
we're brought humbled to the dust, as Paul was, we will find
it offensive. is just declaring the very character
of God. Election, as we've seen, declares
the eternality of God and his purposes, that what he did and
purposed before the foundation of the world will be carried
out. It's a declaration of his love. Election and choosing are
the love languages of God in the scriptures. It's a declaration
that our God doesn't change. It's a declaration of our God's
holiness. A declaration, as we see in this
sermon, of Him being a God of purpose. He's purposed everything
that comes to pass, including you being here listening to this
message, including those people who sat in that congregation.
A God who has a will. a God who has a desire that's
fulfilled. The election is the fountainhead
of all spiritual blessing. Election reveals both man's plight
and the solution. Without election, you can't speak
of a man who is dead and totally depraved. election must be preached where
the gospel is preached. The gospel is just a declaration,
a declaration of the character of God, the declaration of the
simpleness of man, the declaration of the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ. a declaration of the work of
God the Holy Spirit in bringing dead sinners to life because
they were one with the Lord Jesus in eternity. It's a declaration of salvation
by sovereign grace. It's a declaration that faith
and repentance and holiness of life are gifts from God. Gifts, blood-bought gifts from
a holy God to a people loved eternally. It's the God of this
people. It's the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. The God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Are you one with this people?
Has He made you to love the decoration of His character? Let's pray.