Meek and lowly on high may dwell
with Thee. It's the great hope of believers,
isn't it, that we will dwell with Him and He with us. He takes up residence with His
people. He takes up residence in His
people, our great God. If you turn in your scriptures
to Acts chapter 8, we've come from chapter 7 with the death
of Stephen. And here we have after the first
martyr in the church, we have the first breaking out of persecution
against the church in a serious way. Let's just read these verses,
just down to verse 8. And Saul was consenting unto
his death, and at that time there was a great persecution against
the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad
throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen
to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for
Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house and
hailing, hauling men and women and committed them to prison.
Therefore they that were scattered went everywhere preaching the
word. Then Philip went down to the
city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them. And the people
with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spoke.
hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits,
crying with a loud voice, came out of many that were possessed
with them, and many taken with palsy, with paralysis, and that
were lame, were healed. And there was great joy in that
city. great joy in that city. It is
like Dickens' famous novel, The Tale of Two Cities. It was the
best of times and it was the worst of times. This is an extraordinary
event, but also it's an extraordinarily instructive event for us in the
history of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We do thank
God for the fact that the Lord does a scattering, that the Lord
does a scattering that He might do a gathering. The Lord sovereignly
is in charge, even of the death of Stephen, even of the persecution
of the church, it all comes within those things that are ordained
and predestinated by God. And you would think, natural
man would think that the best thing that you could do for the
church is there, it's established in Jerusalem, it has thousands
of people, it has the apostles, and it has people coming to Jerusalem
from all the cities around Judea. The best thing to do is to establish
that church and train these people and make them more and more secure
and sound in the faith. You can start Bible colleges
and set up all sorts of established things. And yet the Lord, the
Lord, in His sovereign purposes brings destruction upon this
church. And the historians say, and we don't know how true it
is and don't hold much to it, but they say that 2,000 believers
were killed in Jerusalem at this time. which may have been a quarter
or 20% of the population of the Christians. Certainly for the
next 300 years of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, there
was wave after wave of persecution, first from the Jews and then
eventually from the Romans, such that For the first three centuries
of the Church, there would have been no one in the Church of
God who didn't know someone who had been put to death for the
testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is all according to
the will of our God. It is, once again, God working
out His perfect plans and purposes. And the reality is that in all
of the situations for believers, it's out of the deepest trials
and the most difficult circumstances that God brings the joy of His
presence and the joy of the experience of His faithfulness. As I said
earlier, Graham and I spent some time with Owen the other day,
and Owen's been through a trial that no one would ever have wished
upon him in his last 12 or 18 months. And yet, that trial has
been something that the Lord has used in Owen's life to strengthen
his faith and to cause him to see the faithfulness of his God
to his people. Such is the glory of our God. The reality is that as much as
we long not to go through trials and long and wish for peace,
the reality is that in the purposes and providence of God, He has,
throughout time, taken His people into the most difficult of circumstances,
where all of the helps of this world are taken from them. and all of the stays of this
world are shattered. And it's in those places, it's
in those places where there is no help outside of Him that we
will find the Lord proving the depth of His faithfulness to
His people. We don't wish them upon anyone,
but the reality is they will come. They have come, and they
are coming. He may be in them now, but the
Lord will prove His faithfulness. He will prove His faithfulness
to His people. He always has. He is faithful,
and He will do it. The Lord Jesus Christ has a sheep. He has these people. He has these
people. And he says in John chapter 10,
he says, I have other sheep. Other sheep have I, he says,
and they must come in. So the Lord Jesus owns these
sheep. They were his grant from his father before the foundation
of the world. They are his by covenant promise. They are his by creation. They
are his by redemption. He says that other sheep I have
I, He owns them, and they must come in, and they'll come in
through the Word of God, and God will cause, as we see in
these verses, God will cause His Word to go to where His sheep
are, and He will have prepared the ground for them. And so when
God's servants go out, they go out with great confidence that
the Lord has gone before them. The Lord has prepared a way. It is the delight of the Gospel,
isn't it, that our Lord Jesus Christ reigns. He reigns and
rules over all things. It is the delight of the Gospel
that our Lord Jesus Christ is alive now. So often I get frustrated
with theology, isn't it, because it treats him as some object
to be studied and examined like a rock. But the Lord Jesus Christ
is alive right now. He is. He is both Lord and Christ,
and He rules and reigns all things from heaven. And providence,
the providence of life, the providence that we are often so frustrated
with, the providence that causes us to act with faithless unbelief,
And frustration is His providence. It's always His providence. He
rules, He leads, He guides, He instructs, and He determines. And the Gospel is for His glory. I love what it says in Ezekiel
36, and it says it twice. He does this not for your sakes,
He does it for mine holy name's sake. For mine holy name's sake,
he does things. The Lord our God has more at
stake in the proclamation and the response to the gospel than
we have. and he determines that his gospel
will go, that he has a people, as I said earlier, other sheep
have I. They must come in and they will
only be brought in, they'll be brought into that fold through
the preaching of the gospel. So how did Philip become an evangelist,
this Philip that went down to this city and there was great
joy in this city? Philip became an evangelist through
the preaching of the Gospel. He was drawn by the sovereign
hand of God to that place where he heard the proclamation of
the Gospel from the mouths of the apostles. He was a man filled
with the Holy Spirit. He was a man chosen out. He began
his service of God by waiting on tables. He's a great lesson
for us like Stephen. Stephen has died and Philip is
now raised up to be a preacher of the Gospel. And he began,
like Stephen, by waiting on tables. The little things the Lord has
placed before you are sufficient to exercise your faithfulness
at any given time. Big things, as we might see them,
will come along. But Philip, Philip goes to Samaria
by the sovereign hand of God. And Philip's driven to Samaria
by the wrath of man. We saw it last week out of Psalm
76.10. The wrath of man shall praise
thee, and the remainder thou shalt restrain. that Philip goes
to Samaria to a place where there's great joy because someone has
gone before him. Someone went before him down
into Samaria. In John chapter 4 we have that
delightful story of the Lord Jesus Christ at that going through
Samaria, and it says that he must needs go through Samaria. Why must the Lord Jesus needs? Why must he go through Samaria? He must go through Samaria because
he had some sheep down there. His bride was in Samaria, that
bride that he'd loved with an everlasting love, that bride
that needed to hear of who he was. And it is a remarkable encounter. I trust that in your leisure
you might get to read it again and again because it's remarkable,
isn't it? Not only is this woman a Samaritan,
she is now with the sixth man in her life. Five of them she'd
married and this one she was living with. The great picture
of the Samaritans in the eyes of the Jews and the great picture
of the Samaritans is there is a sinner, a real sinner. But she has this remarkable encounter
with the Lord Jesus Christ. At the time of His love He came
to her and He revealed Himself to her. He revealed Himself. as God. He revealed himself as
God's Christ to her. And he revealed something that
is so, so encouraging to the people of God. The hour cometh, and now is,
in John 4, 23, when the true worshippers shall worship the
Father in spirit and in truth. True worshippers worship in spirit
and in truth. They worship by the power of
the Holy Spirit, and they worship in the truth of who the Lord
Jesus Christ is. And there is no worship of God
without the power of the Spirit, and there is no worship of God
where there is not the truth of the Gospel proclaimed. But
then there is a wonderful promise, isn't it, if you go on at the
end of that verse, because, or for, the Father seeketh such
to worship Him. That's why the Lord Jesus Christ
went to Samaria. It's why Philip went to Samaria.
The Father seeketh such to worship Him. And I figure that when God
the Father seeks, God the Father has no problem finding. Our God
has no problem finding His sheep. And there was joy in that city,
and it seems as if it's the same city that Philip was sent to. So let's go back. I'd like to
start at verse 2 in our story here. Let's read through these
verses and trust that the Lord will be our teacher and our guide
and reveal to the Lord Jesus Christ, reveal Him yet again
to us. And devout men, this is the finish
of the story of Stephen, the Pharisees left Stephen as a stone-covered
corpse, buried out of sight. They had silenced, as they thought,
the witness and his testimony of God against them. And devout
men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over
him." What a remarkable scene it must have been for that early
church. This is their first burial of
a believer, but to get to that believer's body they had to uncover
him and remove those blood-soaked stones. It is It is a precious body. The bodies of the saints of God
are precious bodies. The Lord says in Psalm 116, precious
in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Precious
in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. There are
two things that are precious about that, aren't there? One
is that the death of all of his saints was a death that was died
on Calvary's tree 2,000 years ago. Precious in the sight of
the Lord is the death of all his saints. All of his saints
died representatively and legally in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
that's why death, as Graham read to us, death has passed from
us. But also precious in the sight
of the Lord is the death of his saints. When the saints die in
this world, these bodies that are buried ought to be esteemed
by burial. I find cremation something that
is only ever practised by pagans and never by Christians. I'm
not saying it's an issue of salvation. that honour the children of God
in your death by being buried, because that body that's buried
is going to be raised again, raised to newness of life, raised
to life everlasting, life eternal, real bodies. There is in heaven
right now a real body. a body that came back, the body
of the Lord Jesus Christ, a body that came back and you could
touch Him and you could handle Him, you could eat with Him,
you could walk with Him, you could talk with Him, you could
be taught of Him. Such is the destiny of the children
of God. A body is buried in the grave,
but it's only buried there and it's only ever called in the
scriptures just sleep. Stephen's body has been asleep
in Jerusalem for this past nearly 2,000 years. But that's not the
end of Stephen's body. Stephen's body will be raised
and transformed and gloriously such. Devout men carried Stephen
to his burial. The Jews forbade anyone to mourn
over someone who was executed. So we know that this is in all
probabilities for members of the Church. And somehow, in the
midst of all of what went on, they were given leave to honour
Stephen in his burial. And here we have, in verse 1,
this Paul, Saul, was consenting unto his death, and at that time
there was a great persecution against the church which was
at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout the
regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. So here
we have this persecution that had been restricted to the apostles
and this persecution had been restricted generally to the activities
of the Sadducees. It is a great lesson for us to
learn that the true and murderous persecution of the children of
God, the true deniers of the grace of God, the true deniers
of the Gospel are always going to be wearing the garb of the
Pharisees. The most bitter enemies you will
ever have to your soul are those who are legalistic and righteous
and self-righteous in their legalism. It's the Pharisees that caused
this to break out. Saul was consenting. The word
consenting is not quite strong enough. Saul had pleasure in
the death of Stephen. He was pleased with the death
of Stephen. He persecuted the Church of God,
he says. In Acts 26.10 he describes what
he's doing, which thing I also did in Jerusalem. And many of
the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from
the true priest. And when they were put to death,
I gave my voice against them. And I punished them oft in every
synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme, being exceedingly
mad against them. I persecuted them even to strange
cities." It's the first time that we have the persecution
of the church which brings about the death of the believers. It's the first time that there
is the persecution of the church which includes women. It is. It's an extraordinary thing,
isn't it, to think that Stephen proclaimed the Gospel as the
Lord Jesus Christ did, and it's in the proclamation of the righteousness
of God and in the proclamation of the reality of the sinfulness
of men that there is this division among humanity, isn't it? There
are those who are enraged. And what enrages them? What enrages
them is that they are shown and it is revealed that their righteousnesses
are filthy rags. You can take everything away
from people except their righteousness. You take their righteousness
away, especially the righteousness, the legalistic righteousness
that comes from performing religious activities. You take that away
from them as Stephen did in his sermon. These men claimed, they
claimed that they were obedient to the law. They would have even
claimed that in the murder of the Lord Jesus Christ they were
fulfilling the law. But Stephen tells them, tells
them plainly and clearly that they didn't ever keep the law.
You've received the law by the disposition of angels and you
have not kept it. Their righteousness was in the
things that they did, the things that they saw, and the things
that they didn't do. Their righteousness was a righteousness
of men, a righteousness to be seen of men. And it is those
people who are righteous in their own eyes who have always been
the most grievous persecutors of the Church of God. And they
act, they act like ravening wolves, don't they? You would think that
the death of Stephen, that man who preached that wonderful sermon
to them, you think the death of Stephen would have settled
things down, that they could say, now we've got this one dead,
this one who preached and openly confounded us by his knowledge
of the scriptures because he saw in the scriptures the Lord
Jesus Christ and him crucified. And he explained the scriptures
to them and they couldn't, they couldn't stand against him. And
now they've got rid of him, they've silenced the word of God. You
would think that that would bring them peace. But like a ravenous
animal, once they get the first taste of blood, all it did was
create a thirst for more. And they were scattered. There were scattered the signs
of God. the great persecution which was
at Jerusalem. And they're all scattered abroad
throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. They were scattered to the very
places that the Lord Jesus Christ, before he went back to heaven,
had told them. He said that you'll receive power.
You'll receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you.
And you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and Samaria. and unto the uttermost parts
of the earth. God promised that they were going
there. Here they were all gathered at
Jerusalem, and yet the Lord had promised that they were going
to be scattered to proclaim. And it's interesting, isn't it,
the apostles remained in Jerusalem, possibly because people feared
the power that they had because of the death of Ananias and Sapphira,
and yet the apostles had no power to stop this persecution. Possibly
they were there to stand in this most dangerous place to show
that the Lord would keep his witness in that city, in the
midst of his murderers. But Jerusalem was to become,
as the Lord promised, Jerusalem was to become a spiritual wasteland. The Lord said to the Pharisees
in Matthew 23, your city will be left unto you desolate. Jerusalem
was to become desolate. You search the scriptures and
you will find no mention of another convert in Jerusalem. You will
find no mention of another miracle in Jerusalem. You'll have the
wonders of providence that saved Saul. But from here on in, the
Church of Jerusalem is more of a problem than not in the rest
of the Book of Acts. It's been left desolate. But
the Gospel goes to these Samaritans. Therefore, in verse 4, Saul having
made havoc of the Church, Therefore, because of that havoc, these
women were committed to prison, and many, many were killed. Therefore,
as a result of all this pain and trial in verse 4, they that
were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word. They went
everywhere evangelizing the Word. You see, the Samaritans would
not have been welcome in Jerusalem. The people from the cities around
Jerusalem, after the apostles had started to perform miracles,
they flocked to the city. You can read about it in Acts
chapter 5. But there's one group of people not too far away from
Jerusalem who would never have been welcome there, nor would
they have wanted to go there, this group of despised Samaritans. And God has his people there. And God sends his Gospel there. Let it be a lesson to us, brothers
and sisters. God's children will never be
short of hearing the Gospel at the time appointed by the Lord. The Spirit blows where it wishes. The wind blows where it listeth,
says John to Nicodemus. It blows and you don't know where
it's come from, you don't know where it's going, you just know
that it's been. And so is everyone born of the
Spirit. They were scattered and they
went down to Samaria. Once again I want to remind us
that we seek peace and security. We seek peace with all men. We don't wish to be the cause
of strife among men. And we certainly seek peace amongst
the children of God in the fellowship of believers. We want to be forgiving
and to be forgiven. And I love what Ephesians 4 says,
isn't it? That forgiving one another as
God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. If God, for Christ's sake,
has forgiven you of all of those sins, the sins that you're aware
of and the sins that you're not aware of, then we can forgive
and overlook the sins of our brothers and sisters. There was,
in Jerusalem, as I said earlier, there was much reason to think
that this is a great place to nurture and grow that church
in Jerusalem, wasn't it? There were many believers, so
there was no problem finding fellowship with like-minded believers. There was no problem finding
a little clique, a little group that you could join with who
were like-minded and had similar backgrounds. And there was in
Jerusalem, of course, the presence and the teaching of the apostles.
There was in Jerusalem that place of worship, that temple, and
there was a place of gathering. There was in Jerusalem the comfort
of the other Jews and proselytes that had become Jews through
the proclamation of the Gospel. There were in Jerusalem all the
families and traditions. the comfort of known culture
and known ways of operating. There was in Jerusalem for the
poor in the church all their daily needs met by that distribution
that the deacons took on. And there was in Jerusalem plenty
of opportunity to do evangelistic activities because people flocked
into Jerusalem at those feast times and other times of the
year. And you would think, you would think from a natural point
of view, this is a great place to grow the church. And yet... and yet they were scattered. Therefore, it says in our verse,
therefore they were scattered abroad. It's a necessary consequence. There is a necessary reason for
all things. In the Lord's scattering, there
is the Lord's purposes being fulfilled. He had his sheep down
there. And they are scattered, and as
they went in their scattering, as they went in response to all
of this pain and all of the horrors that had happened in Jerusalem,
they went preaching the Word, they went evangelising the Word,
isn't it? They evangelised the Word of
God. That Word, they proclaimed that
Word, they went proclaiming the Old Testament Scriptures, and
they went proclaiming the Old Testament Scriptures fulfilled
in the Lord Jesus Christ. They are these scriptures which
speak of me." They went proclaiming the Word of God, the Word of
our Lord Jesus Christ. I love the other descriptions
in the New Testament about the Word. It's the Word of His grace. It's the Word that describes
the grace of God in the salvation of sinners. It's called the Word
of His Gospel. It's the Word of this salvation. It's the Word of promise, the
Word of faith, the Word of truth, the Word of life, the Word of
His power, the Word of His righteousness. So all the people that were scattered,
that whole church that had been gathered is now scattered. And
Philip, verse 5, went down to the city of Samaria and he preached
Christ to them. He went down to Samaria to preach
Christ. And we know what the preaching
of Christ is, isn't it? He went down to this despised
place, this place of rejection, this place that was notorious
for its religious idolatry and hypocrisy. It went to that place,
that place. You might recall in Luke chapter
9 that John and James were rejected with the Lord Jesus in one of
those villages of Samaria. And they said to the Lord, Lord,
wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and
consume them as Elias did? That's how the Jews thought of
the Samaritans. The Lord's response is remarkable. He says, He turned and rebuked
them and said, You know not what manner of spirit you are of.
Which is so true, isn't it, of people outside of the Lord Jesus
Christ. They know not what manner of
spirit they are of. And then he says, for the Son
of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them,
and they went to another village. Philip preached Christ. That's
the sole purpose of the Church, isn't it? The sole reason for
us gathering is that we preach Christ. We preach Him, we preach
Him incessantly, we preach Him from the scriptures, we preach
Him in all the wonders of His deity, in all the wonders of
His sovereignty, in all the wonders of His character. His absolute
righteousness, His absolute justice in all things, the wonder of
God's holiness, the wonder of His atoning blood. We preach
Christ and we preach Christ and Him crucified and we have no
other appointed task. To preach Him, that's what the
church is gathered for. And in those places where the
Lord has done the ploughing and the sowing, you might recall
in John chapter 4 that the Lord Jesus said to the disciples when
that village had responded and that woman had responded, He
said, look up, don't look down, don't look down at the dirt,
look up. He said, the fields are white
unto harvest. They are white. They are ready
for harvest. And how do you get a harvest?
They're white on the harvest because someone has done the
ploughing and someone has done the sowing. And God's servants
and God's people get to enjoy the delight of the harvest. a harvest that's been done by
someone else. And they that reapeth receive
wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that
soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. The reason for proclamation of
the Gospel is that there is rejoicing in the proclaimer and rejoicing
in the city, rejoicing in the hearts of those who hear it. And herein is that saying true,
one soweth and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon
you bestowed no labour." He just sent us to reap where we've bestowed
no labour. We'll have nothing of ourselves
to boast about in it. Other men laboured and you are
entered into their labours. and the people, the response
of these people in Samaria. The people with one accord gave
heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing
the miracles which he did. They gave one accord. They had
silenced. In Jerusalem they had silenced
a man preaching a gospel. Here amongst the despised Samaritans,
with one accord the people gave heed under those things. In verse
7, for unclean spirits crying with loud voice came out of many
that were possessed with them. Many taken with palsy, and that
were lame, were healed. And there was great joy in the
city. There was great joy in the city. All of the signs, the signs of
those gifts, those particular gifts of the Holy Spirit, followed
the preaching of the Gospel to Samaria. and were never seen
as recorded in Jerusalem again. You see, there is joy, there
is great joy in the city, great joy in the city. It's a great
joy in the city that's been born of great sorrow. These Samaritans
had spent all of their history, a despised and rejected group
of people, and now there was great joy in the city. As I said earlier, that joy comes
from a great trial. It always is remarkable how little
we gain from the sweet things of life and how much we learn
and how much we grow in the things that are difficult. That's where
we see the faithfulness of God most clearly, when we are brought
low and then lifted up by Him, when we pass through the waters
and find that He's carried us, when we pass through the fire
and the trials of the fire and we find that the Lord Jesus Christ
has been with us in that fire and has brought us through. He's
revealed Himself to be faithful. He's revealed himself to say,
as he does again and again, you are mine. You are mine. There are many, many passages
in scriptures, aren't there? You think of Psalm 23. Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil. Why? For thou art with me. And you'll make me, having been
through that, you'll make me to lie down in green pastures. In Isaiah 41, verse 10, fear
thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy
God. I will strengthen you. Yea, I
will help you. Yea, I will uphold thee with
my right hand, with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed
against thee shall be ashamed and confounded. They shall be
as nothing, and they that strive with thee shall perish." God
is faithful. Again and again He says to His
Bride, You are mine. I am with you. The trial is by
my appointment. The difficulties come from my
hand. I'm sovereignly ruling over them. There is reason for great joy
as a response and in response to those great sorrows in Jerusalem. Joy amongst the apostles and
joy in that city. And there was joy, this joy was
brought about by the preaching of one man. He preached Christ. He preached Christ, a Jew preaching
Christ to those despised Samaritans. Philip preached Christ. He did not preach. He did not
preach what they could do and what they must do. He preached
what Christ had done. He preached the same message
that he'd heard in Jerusalem. He preached the same message
filled with the Spirit as the apostles preached. They preached
the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. They preached the fact that he
came and he lived that perfect righteous life according to the
scriptures. They preached the fact that his
death was according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God. They preached that that death was a sin, atoning death,
and he took away all of the sins of all of his people. They preached
Christ's person. They didn't preach doctrine,
they just preached Christ. And in preaching Christ, the
reality of who he is, is revealed. He is alive. He is reigning and
ruling. He has, I love what Romans 4
says, isn't it? It's just remarkable how full
the scriptures are of reasons for the children of God to go
away from hearing the Gospel with believing hearts and rejoicing. He was delivered He was delivered
for our offences. He was delivered over to death
because of our offences and was raised because of our justification. To be justified, to be justified
is to be declared in the courts of God to have no sin. Sin is gone completely and God
doesn't see it, and God sees with perfect clarity. All of
the sins of all of God's people were perfectly and completely
put away, and He is our righteousness. He is our sanctification. He is our wisdom. He is our redemption. Romans 5.1. Therefore, being
justified, by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. By faith we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the joy that came into
that city, not in terms of them having to do something in the
future. The joy came with the preaching of the Gospel. The
joy came with the blessings of the Gospel. They were simply,
they had simply the Lord Jesus Christ declared and presented
unto them, and they believed. By the grace of God, they believed. Later on in this chapter we come
to the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and it's fascinating what
was said. The Ethiopian eunuch was reading,
he was searching and looking and not understanding what Isaiah
53 was about and we'll look at it in a few weeks time. And he says, the eunuch says,
see here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptised? And
Philip said, if thou believeth with all thine heart thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe. So what did he believe? I believe
that I have faith, I believe that I have this None of those
things at all, isn't it? What is saving faith in Acts
of the Apostles? I believe that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God. I believe that the Jesus Christ
that you have proclaimed to me out of these scriptures, these
Old Testament scriptures, I believe that that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God. He'd just come back from Jerusalem
and learnt nothing. All that religion in Jerusalem,
he'd learnt nothing. But he had a hunger and a thirst
to know more. That's a saving declaration. I believe that Jesus Christ,
that man of Nazareth, is the Son of God. as great rejoicing in that city.
The wonders, the apostolic wonders had followed those children of
God down and followed that testimony. And those signs and wonders are
there to testify to the veracity, the truthfulness of what is preached.
So here we have laid out before us the tale of two cities. There are two cities mentioned
here, aren't there? There is that city of Samaria
where there is great joy, and there is joy in the hearts of
the Pharisees in Jerusalem. Now there is joy. They've managed
to get rid of Stephen. They've stopped this message.
But there's joy in the city of Samaria because the gospel has
come to them. In Jerusalem there are these
religious people who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and
ears. In the city of Samaria the people
gave heed. They listened. They were given
ears to hear. With one accord they gave heed. As Stephen said of the ones in
Jerusalem, those ones rejoicing at the death of Stephen, they
resisted the Holy Spirit, they stopped the Word of God being
preached by murder. How many of you stopped the Word
of God? Stop your ears to the Word of
God. These people in the city that
was rejoicing, they gave heed to the Word of God. The ones
in that city of Jerusalem that was left now desolate. They thought that in having received
the law and their keeping of it, that they were righteous.
They thought their righteousness was about their doing. And down
here in that city of Samaria, there were these people who had
no righteousness and had no law. And yet, by simple faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ, they are declared righteous, and the ones in Jerusalem
are left desolate. The ones in Samaria have kept
the law of God perfectly, and the ones in Jerusalem, thinking
they'd kept it, have never ever kept it at all. In fact, they
dishonour the law. The city of Samaria sees the
Pentecostal evidences of God the Holy Spirit working. In Jerusalem
there are no miracles, there are no healings, there are no
conversions. In the city of great joy, there
are outcasts accepted as the true Israel of God. In that city
that had all of its traditions, they thought themselves to be
the true children, but in reality they were the children of the
bomb woman. The Lord Jesus has taken his
people out of that city and taken his message out of that city.
Which city are you living in? Which city is your city? There
are two cities. There is that great city that
come down out of heaven as a bride, beautifully adorned for her husband. And there will be the cities
of this earth with all of their religion and all of their traditions
and all of their multitudes of people and all that can be seen
and esteemed of men. And the Lord Jesus says, as He
speaks those serious words to the Pharisee, your house is left
unto you desolate. I'll take all mine out of your
city. I'll take them out and I'll destroy
that city, which He did in 70 AD. But prior to destroying that
city, He took all of the believers out of that city. It's a great
picture of the Lord's deliverance of His people out of this world
and out of the wickedness and out of the religion. of this
world it is a blessing to be in the city of God, to be with
the children of God, to be in the place where God comes and
reveals himself. There is joy in the city of God. There is joy in the people of
God. And it's much deeper than happiness.
It's a joy that can be had in the midst of great sorrow. There's
great joy for the believers. There's great joy for the proclaimers. The disciples in Acts 13, the
disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost. Why? Because those ordained to eternal
life had believed. There is joy. But the joy of
God's people is ultimately a reflection of the joy of their God over
them. Thy God, thy God is in the midst
of thee. Thy God in the midst of thee
is mighty. He will say, he will rejoice
over thee with joy. He will rest in his love. He will joy over thee with singing. Our God is a joyful God. He rejoices over his bride. He rejoices over the circumstances
that lead his bride into his arms, there to find rest, the
one place of rest. That's the city. That's the city
that I want to be found in. That's the city that I long for
you all to be found in. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we do thank you again for our great shepherd. knows where His
sheep are and He knows them. They're known of Him and He knows
them by name. And none of them can be lost
and no one can pluck them out of His hand. Oh, Heavenly Father,
we do thank You that in Your sovereign will and reign and
rule over all things that You must and will take your people
through trials to bring them to the foot of the Lord Jesus
Christ, to bring them to a place where they'll look upon Him,
they will look to Him and be saved. We thank you, Heavenly
Father, for the fact that all of your people are perfectly
secure. All of your people, Heavenly Father, are perfectly fit and
ready to enter Heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ has taken
upon Himself the task of presenting all of His Bride holy and spotless
and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. We praise you Heavenly
Father that on Calvary's tree all of your holy wrath on our
sins was poured out and our death was died. And now your children in this
world must be saved and must live in the city of God forever
and ever. We praise you for complete redemption. We praise you, Heavenly Father,
for justifying righteousness. We praise you as we take these
elements that remind us of the broken body and the shed blood
of your son, that eternal life is in Him and with Him, and eternal
life is the gift, the grace gift of You to all of Your blood-born
children. Help us, Heavenly Father, to
rejoice in Him and find Him our rest and our peace. For we pray
in His name and for His glory. Amen.