If you turn in your scriptures
to Acts chapter 5, it's been a remarkable journey
for me in many ways. I've learnt so much. I trust
the Lord has blessed these foundations. The end of this chapter, it's
bookended, this chapter by Ananias and Sapphira and then the story
of Gamaliel and the first physical persecution of the Church, the
first opposition of men to the Gospel is an opposition that
we meet with all the time. Don't tell me about that. Keep
quiet. Don't say any more about your
Jesus to me. Let's not talk about God. Let's
talk about absolutely everything and anything else in all of this
world. but not talk about Him. The silencing
of the Gospel is the first work of Satan and we need to see that
that's where it comes from and pray that the Lord would give
us, as Paul prayed so often, for a door of utterance would
be given to him, that there would be, in the providence of God
and by the hand of God upon His people, there would be an opportunity
to talk and to share about the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
what these apostles did at the end of this chapter, we see,
despite all of the opposition, despite all of the trials that
must have come upon them personally in the situation of Ananias and
Sapphira. In verse 42, it finishes, doesn't
it? And daily in the temple and in
every house, They ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. It's a great description of what
we're here about today, isn't it? To preach Jesus Christ. To teach and to preach Jesus
Christ. If He's preached, His people
will be blessed. Wherever He is preached, His
people will be blessed. And if that involves His people
being taken into places of physical persecution and brought out of
it rejoicing, long as the Lord Jesus Christ is preached. So
let's read these verses. I thought we'd read from verse
29 down. Then Peter and the other apostles
answered, we looked at this some time ago in a couple of sermons,
but it's such a beautiful, simple description of the Gospel and
a simple description of the Christian's behaviour in this world. They
answered and said, ought we not, we ought to obey God rather than
men. The God of our fathers, they
immediately want to talk about the fact that this God that they
are talking about, the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God
and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of our fathers,
the God of covenant love and covenant mercies, the scriptures
describe it as the sure mercies of David. It is that pillar that
all of God's children rest their weary heads upon. Our God is
a God of covenant love and covenant faithfulness and it's all revealed
and displayed so amazingly in the Lord Jesus Christ. The God
of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you slew and hanged on a
tree. Sin is always personal and sin
is always real. Him hath God exalted with His
right hand, to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance
to Israel and forgiveness of sins. We are witnesses of these
things, and so also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to
them that obey Him. This is the response of these
people that Graham was talking about who turned the temple,
that place that was to picture the Lord Jesus Christ in all
of His glory, had been turned under the leadership of these
men into a marketplace, into a place where they took advantage
of people coming there. It was just a den of thieves,
says the Lord Jesus Christ. When they heard that, They were
cut to the heart and took counsel to slay them. They took counsel,
that word literally means to destroy them. Then stood there up one in the
council, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation
among all the people, and commanded to put the apostles forth a little
space, to get them out of the road. So they wouldn't hear this. He didn't want them to have any
encouragement from what he was saying. And he said unto them,
the council, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what
ye intend to do as touching these men. For before these days rose
up Thudas, boasting himself to be somebody to whom a number
of men, about four hundred, joined themselves, who were slain, and
all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered and brought to nought. Man rose up Judas of Galilee
in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him.
He also perished, and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed. And now I say unto you, refrain
from these men, and let them alone. For if This is the counsel,
or this work be of men, it will come to naught. But if it be
of God, you cannot overthrow it, lest happily you be found
even to fight against God. And to him they agreed, and when
they had called the apostles and beaten them, they commanded
that they should not speak in the name of Jesus and let them
go. And they departed from the presence
of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer
shame for his name. and daily in the temple and in
every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ."
It's a great picture, isn't it, of the Lord moving His people
into a place where He and He alone can guide and protect. It is so clear, isn't it, that
these men were in this situation under the direct will, the direct
counsel and the direct command of God. And Graham read to us,
and I'm so thankful he read out of John's Gospel about the temple,
because that was the very place, that very place was to picture
the Lord Jesus Christ in all of His glory, in all of His glory
as the Sacrifice and the Sacrificer, all of His glory as the Redeemer
of His people. all of His glory as the place
where God met with His people. And it's to the temple that the
Holy Spirit directs these men. You go back into the temple.
You go back into the temple. You went back there yesterday
and you were arrested. You go back in there again this
morning. You go there early in the morning. You go there as
soon as you possibly can and you speak. You speak in that
temple, but you speak in that temple about He who is the temple. that all of that earthly structure,
all of that and all of those rules and regulations they had
surrounding it were all just pictures, glorious pictures of
the Lord Jesus Christ. The showbread is a picture of
Him as the bread of life. That candlestick is a picture
of Him as the light of the world. That labour is a picture of Him
washing His people. That mercy seat is a picture
of Him washing away the sins of His people. That broken law
in that ark was a picture. That mercy seat above it was
that place where the Lord met with His people. But He met with
His people on the basis of blood atonement. He will only ever
meet with His people and deal with His people in mercy and
love and grace on the basis of sins being put away perfectly
and satisfactorily and forever. And that temple was just a picture. And yet these men, these Pharisees,
this Sanhedrin, they worshipped those things that they could
see and they could do with their hands rather than worshipping
the true and living God. And in both the story of Ananias
and Sapphira and in Gamaliel we have pictures of people who
are very close to the Kingdom of God. They had the most remarkable
privileges. are very close to the Kingdom
of God, and yet they did not enter in. And well might Gamaliel's
words be the words that we should speak to ourselves, isn't it?
In verse 35 he says, take heed to yourselves. Haggai says it
another way, doesn't he? He says, give careful thought,
give careful thought. It is so easy for us to look
at others, isn't it? Every time the Lord Jesus was
asked a speculative question, He responded by making it personal. Always. It's so easy to debate
theology, isn't it, and discuss doctrine and history and all
sorts of other things. But in the matter of our souls
dealing with our God, everything is personal. The Lord Jesus spoke
about one of the events that's recorded here by Gamaliel, about
this man Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing in verse
37. In Luke 13 he's asked about that.
There were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans,
Luke 13.1, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galileans
were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such sins?
I tell you, nay. But except ye repent, ye shall
all likewise perish, all those eighteen upon whom the tower
of Siloam fell and slew them. Think ye that they were sinners
above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? Nay, I tell you, nay, but except
ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. So these examples are
laid out before us here to give us stark warnings and stark reminders
but also to show us that our God reigns and the word of God
is not bound and he has his people in this city and his word will
go out and his people will hear that gospel. But these men, Ananias
and Sapphira and Gamaliel, show us that it's possible to be religious and seem devout and yet be lost. To have for a time, as I know
that Ananias and Sapphira did, to have great esteem among the
true believers, even among the apostles, to have that great
esteem and still be lost. It is possible to have great
generosity in the Church, to give much of your earthly possessions
and then be lost. And Gamaliel reminds us that
it is possible to have great learning and great knowledge
of the scriptures and be lost. Gamaliel died as a Pharisee.
He died warning people about the Lord Jesus Christ. He is
not a picture of someone who is a saved person at all. He
is a picture of those that are described throughout the scriptures
who hardened their hearts. had the most remarkable privileges
for three and a half years. When those Pharisees went out
to test the Lord Jesus Christ and asked him questions, Gamaliel
would have been one of the ones that sent them out, and if he
wasn't there himself he would have been one of the ones that
they reported to. the president of the Sanhedrin. If you look there in verse 34,
he had a reputation. He was a doctor of law. He was
a Pharisee, a doctor of law, and had a reputation among all
the people, and he's the one that commanded to put the apostles
out. So he was actually the president
of the Sanhedrin. He had risen in Judaism as high
as you can go. He was highly regarded and highly
esteemed. And what privileges he had in
his life, three and a half years, three and a half years of bearing
witness to the miracles and the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Don't you often think, wouldn't it have been amazing to have
just heard one of his sermons? Just to have been there, people
were amazed. When they sent those men out
to arrest him, what did they say in return? No one ever spoke
like this man. No one ever spoke, and he certainly
didn't speak like the lawyers, did he? He said, they say unto
you, but I say unto you. What authority in his voice. What warmth in his words to lost
and broken hearted sinners. And I am, says the Lord Jesus
Christ. What a word, what words, what
an extraordinary privilege. The Lord Jesus Christ was fully
obedient to all the law of God, which means he was there in Jerusalem
during that time for at the very least nine of these festivals
of the Jews. Gamaliel could have had the opportunity
to hear him preach in the temple. to hear the Lord Jesus Christ
preach. What an extraordinary privilege.
And again and again we find throughout the scriptures that they are
these men that harden their own hearts against God. The Lord speaks
in verses like Psalm 81. There are just so many throughout
the scriptures. You can no doubt bring many to
mind, I trust, that in Psalm 81 the Lord speaks to his people
in warning yet again. He says, hear my people and I
will testify, Psalm 81a, if thou will hearken unto me. See, Peter's
first words, weren't they? Will you listen to me? People
of Israel, will you just listen for a little bit? Stop all the
noise. Stop all the noise of your own works and your own worth
and your own righteousness and your own doings and just listen. If you will hearken unto me.
Verse 10 says, I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out
of the land of Egypt. Open thy mouth wide and I will
fill it. What remarkable blessings there
were, what remarkable material blessings there were for the
children of Israel in obedience to God. What remarkable spiritual
blessings came to the children, the spiritual children of God. Open your mouth wide and I will
fill it. But my people would not hearken
to my voice, and Israel would have none of me. So to be a disciple
is to be a learner. So to be a learner is to be a
listener. It's as simple as that, isn't
it? God's people want to hear the voice of their God. They want to be learners. But
my people would not hearken to my voice, and Israel would have
none of me. If you can't hearken to his voice,
you'll have none of him. You'll obey his word to obey
him. If you listen to his word, you
want to speak to him, he'll speak to you through his word. So,
in judgment, This is God's judgment upon them. So I gave them up
unto their own heart's lust, and they walked in their own
castles. It's the very worst thing that
can ever happen to a human being on this planet, to be given up
to their own heart's lust. That word lust means desire as
often in the scriptures, isn't it? To be given up to what I
want to do and to walk in their own counsels, to walk in the
wisdom that you get from your own understanding rather than
the wisdom that is from God. It's remarkable, isn't it? Camilio
knew those words of by heart, brothers and sisters. And he
had seen thousands of years of the testimony of God on people
who would not hear the word of God. Camilio stands before us
as a beacon of warning, doesn't he? He is a man of great learning
and great knowledge, and he is lost, and he is a man of great
prominence among the religious people. He was as esteemed as
you could possibly be. There were none more moral, none
more outwardly righteous. His disciple Paul said that he
kept the law perfectly. What a remarkable statement to
be able to say that. He never kept a single thing
of it, but he thought in his own righteousness, and Gamaliel
was his teacher. Gamaliel was his disciple. It is possible, isn't it, to
have a position of power at the very temple of God and be lost. And it is possible to offer wise
counsel, as it were, to this group of people who were gnashing
their teeth at the apostles and wanted to kill them. And it is
possible to save them from this threatened death and still be
lost. As I said earlier, the apostles
were put into this situation. It's a great reminder that the
Lord Jesus Christ sovereignly rules over all things, and he'd
sent them back to the temple, hadn't he? He'd sent them back
to that temple, sent them back to the place where they were
just arrested, and he sent them there. He sent them there to
bear witness to him. So this is the Lord Jesus Christ
bearing witness to that Sanhedrin who had just weeks before put
him to death. And by their words and by the
words of the apostles, these men are exposed. And the religious
hypocrisy of their actions is exposed. And sadly the hardness
of their heart was exposed. And also it's a great reminder,
isn't it, as we'll see later on, it's a great reminder that
even the activities of the reprobate never hinder the Gospel. It is
so easy for us to think that all of these things stand opposed
and against the Gospel of God in this land and this world we
live in and this adulterous generation that we live in. But remember,
brothers and sisters, this is a great reminder, isn't it, that
the Word of God goes where the God determines it will go. And
it goes with a sovereign hand and it goes with a sovereign
purpose. And it will always achieve its ends. Our God reigns. He reigns. This is God reigning
over these people. by his apostles. This is God,
our Lord Jesus Christ, bearing witness to himself in this very
place where just weeks before they had determined by their
wicked and deceitful hands that he would be put to death. This
is God reigning, brothers and sisters. This is our God reigning. It's also good to remember that
Camellia put them out. He put them out in verse 34 so
that they wouldn't hear what Camellia was going to say. It's
a good reminder isn't it, there are no secrets from God. You have never had a private
conversation nor a private thought in your life. God has borne witness
to every single little bit of it. And I love it that way. I love it that way, that he sees
me exactly as I am in Adam, but also that he sees me exactly
as I am in the Lord Jesus Christ. So I'm dead, in the eyes of God. I no longer live. I'm a dead
man. All of that's been put to death,
hasn't it? All of that sin that's in my Adam flesh was nailed to
Calvary's tree. We're crucified with him, brothers
and sisters. And the life we now live in the
body, we live by the Son of God who loved me and gave himself
for me. There are no secret counsels.
There are no secret meetings. There are things that we have
in confidence with our brothers and sisters that we dare not
tell the rest of the world, but they're nothing secret from our
God. It's just lovely to think that
every little tiny thing that happens in our lives is there
with us. So don't hide from Him. Don't
be a Gamaliel. When I see these people the first
thing that comes to my mind is, Lord please don't let me be an
Ananias and Sapphira. Don't let me be a Gamaliel. Don't
let me be like them. These men were there under the
clear direction of God. They had obeyed God's voice. So let's just look for a little
while at Gamaliel. So what had brought
him to this place of prominence? The first thing that brought
him to that place of prominence was that he was a man of remarkable
gifts. and a remarkable heritage. There
were two great schools of theology, two great Bible colleges in Jerusalem. One was Hillel and one was Shemai,
I think it's called. But he was the grandson of Hillel. So he was the grandson of the
man who was one of the famous, famous teachers in Israel. So he had a great lineage, he
had extraordinary natural gifts, he probably was a remarkably
intelligent man and a remarkably learned man. But he had risen,
he had risen with all of that talent to the top of this thing,
this group called the Sanhedrin. So how do you rise to the top? of an organisation which has
people in it, like the Sadducees, who deny the resurrection and
deny the existence of spirits and deny the existence of angels.
How do you get to the top and maintain a position of prominence
with people who, as we see in other parts of Acts, who stand
violently opposed to what you believe? He's standing there
in that organisation as the leader of it. Because he's prepared
to compromise, isn't he? He's prepared to compromise things
that he holds very dear for the sake of power and position and
privilege and prominence and the esteem of men. So what was
it Ananias and Sapphira wanted? They coveted the one thing that
God will give, didn't they? They coveted the glory, some
of that honour that God will give to His humble servants.
They wanted something. They wanted to take something.
Camellia was prepared to compromise with these others. That's the
art of success in man's organization and man's religions, isn't it?
In all of the religions that man makes a compromise, it's
essential, isn't it? You've got to be able to play
some political game to get along with others. Compromise. Compromise is always
dangerous. There is just one thing to do,
which the Apostle says, is just to obey God. The resurrection
is stamped throughout the Old Testament in the clearest possible
way. The Sadducees were just like
liberal Christians of these days, weren't they, where they mixed
Greek philosophy with their Christianity. They were able to esteem their
intellect and their learning. and they denied things that are
at the very core of what honours the Lord Jesus Christ. So the
resurrection is all about Him, isn't it? So Gamaliel was prepared
to compromise with these people. And then in his speech, in verse
36 and 37, in his speech he compares the apostles to men who are notorious
deceivers and seducers of men." What a shocking indictment. These
apostles were so unlike those men. They weren't there to gain
any earthly power whatsoever. They simply proclaimed the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him resurrected, Him reigning and ruling They
simply declared that this Lord Jesus Christ is the Christ of
the Scriptures and every time He returns to the Old Testament
Scriptures, anything you saw in picture or type in prophecy,
it was all about Him and it was all fulfilled in that life that
He had lived and in that resurrection that He had so gloriously triumphed
over death and sin and Satan now put away for all His people.
What does he say? What does the scripture say about
these people? They're ever learning and never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth. They were, it was, to join the
apostles with other deceivers, to label them, to give them a
label as people who operate in deceitful ways. So he seems to make a very reasoned
argument Our example, Gamaliel. But all of his reasoned arguments
are just a cloak for unbelief. Possibly a cloak to protect himself,
because their concern was that if this sort of rebellion broke
out and the Jews didn't have the right to put someone to death,
then the Romans would come and take them away. And in verse
26 of chapter 5 we see that they were afraid of the people. They
were far more afraid of men than they were afraid of God. They feared the people. The people
they sent out feared the people. They feared that this uprising,
this church which now possibly numbered 10,000 people, would
rise up if they killed these apostles. The other thing about Gamaliel's
seeming wisdom was that he acknowledged that these They rose up for a
while, didn't they? They rose up Thudis and rose
up Judas of Galilee. They rose up and they had men
follow them. And when they were killed, it
all came to naught. It was exactly the opposite of
what happened with the case of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was
his death which was the beginning of his triumph in the lives of
the people in Jerusalem. And the Lord Jesus Christ, unlike
Thudas and Judas of Galilee, the Lord Jesus Christ went willingly
to his death. He promised that it was going
to happen. The Old Testament scriptures declare that it was
going to happen and in the most exact and minute detail. And it was He who went to them. It was He who went to them in
the Garden. And in that remarkable event
in the garden, he just spoke a word to them, and that crowd
of soldiers fell back dead. He was sovereign there, and what
did he say? What glorious thing did he say?
He said, you can take me, but you let these others go. You
can take me, you can have me, but all of my people will go
free. So different from those, isn't
it? And the greatest works of the Lord Jesus Christ He said,
greater works than these you shall do. And here we have, before
the Sanhedrin, we have the evidence that these greater works have
been done. That church that rose up in the proclamation of someone
who has been killed, evidently put to death before them and
now rises and rules. So in their very presence, in
the presence of the Sanhedrin, had been this man who was healed.
Thousands of believers, multitudes coming, multitudes coming to
Jerusalem to be healed and to be saved by the very man that
this Sanhedrin had murdered with their wicked hands. Gamaliel
owns no personal responsibility whatsoever for his hand in what
happened. He owns no personal responsibility
whatsoever for the fact that they broke every Jewish law regarding
putting someone to death, and they coerced a weak-willed Roman
governor into breaking Roman law as well, to put to death
an innocent man, declared to be an innocent man, and Gamaliel
owns none of that. He's a lawyer, and he broke all
the laws of the Jews, and he broke all the laws of the Roman
state. Gamaliel. Gamaliel is someone
who was incapable of heeding his own advice. He says, take
heed of yourselves. Take heed to yourselves. and
yet he took no heed to himself. But despite all of his wickedness,
in the unbelief, the evil heart of unbelief, The angel had opened
the door in the previous part of this chapter and sent the
apostles into the temple to preach the Lord Jesus Christ. Gamaliel
opened the door for them to be released and to preach the Lord
Jesus Christ again. He's used, isn't he? Our God
uses everything, everything, to the end that His Gospel will
be proclaimed, His people will be saved. And then Gamaliel does something
at the end of these verses. He says in verse 38, he makes
this reasoned argument, it is remarkable. He says, Now I say
unto you, refrain from these men and let them alone. Then
he makes these two conditional statements, For if this council,
this work, be of men, it will come to naught. And then he says, But if it be
of God, you cannot overthrow it, yet happily you be found
even to fight against God. Now they had tried to overthrow
it and tried to overthrow it, and they couldn't overthrow it.
But Gamaliel is making a statement here in those if clauses. In fact what he's saying is that
he's actually Assuming that it is true, that this is of God,
he's actually declaring that this is far more likely to be
the work of God than to be the work of man. But there's a huge difference.
between acknowledging that it's the work of man and affirming
it to be true and real for you, isn't it? Gamaliel makes a remarkable
statement, but he also does something which is appallingly dangerous.
He says, we'll wait and see. We'll wait and see. Today is
the day of salvation. Wait and see are just the words
of unbelief. And Gamaliel then, because of
his actions, he's complicit in what happens next, isn't it? Verse 40, and to him they agreed. So he'd won them over. He'd won
this group of Sadducees and other Pharisees and Levites over. He'd
won them over. To him they agreed to protect
themselves and to protect their position as much as anything.
And when they called the apostles, and beaten them. And that word
means to skin, literally. They beaten them with that whip
of three cords, so thirteen times three with that cord that actually
was designed to tear the skin and the flesh from your body.
It was a punishment that people died under. Don't think that
this was a light beating, brothers and sisters. They were beaten
with thirty-nine lashes. They had flayed them. It is the
first physical persecution in this Gospel age. They had beaten
them and now for the third time they commanded they should not
speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. Gamaliel was complicit in this
first persecution of the Church. There is, there is in the heart
of natural man, there is a shocking enmity against the words of the
Gospel and the declaration of the Lord Jesus Christ. They took
counsel to slay them, but then they just beat them. We'll find
in a couple of chapters on that they will beat, they will stone
Stephen to death. And this camellial, this camellial will have his disciple there
holding the cloaks. And this Gamaliel will say nothing
about that. And this Gamaliel will no doubt
be encouraging that apostle to be Saul, to go out and to persecute
and murder Christians wherever he can get a hold of them. wise, seemingly wise words of
counsel amongst religious people is of no good in the salvation
of people's souls. It's not the wisdom of men. It's
not the wisdom of men, it's the glory of God. And in all of this,
these apostles I just love these verses. I think
it's so significant what happens here, isn't it? And they departed
from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted
worthy to suffer shame for his name. They were counted worthy
to suffer shame for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
children of God in this world are going to suffer They are
going to suffer shame for His name. It is just a necessary
part of Christian life. But there is, in all of that,
there is a glory, isn't there? There is a reason for rejoicing,
brothers and sisters. In all the persecutions and all
the malice, of the enemies. God's people are born up and
they are supported. And as Paul says, they're troubled
on every side yet not distressed, yet perplexed yet never in despair. And they always, they always
bear about the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of
Jesus may be manifest in their body. This is a manifestation
of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ in their body. They can
put them in jail and the angel of the coven will bring them
out. You can persecute them and you can beat them and his presence
with them will be real and the whole church will be blessed
by it. So their bodies, their bodies
no doubt were full of pain, but their hearts were full of joy.
They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame
for Christ. So they considered it a high
honour bestowed upon them that God should count someone like
Peter and someone like John, someone like those men that we
hear of hiding away those men denying the Lord Jesus Christ,
that God should count those weak ones, those infirm ones, those
bowed down by all of what they'd gone through, they counted it
as a high honour. that God would use such worthless,
such sinful, such weak people as us to bring glory to His dear
and precious Son. And the weaker we are seen in
the eyes of the world, the more glory the Lord Jesus Christ gets,
brothers and sisters. It's not about the power of men
and the strength of men and the wisdom of men. God's Church is
built by His Spirit, not by might, not by power. And our God is
faithful. It is, it is, as these apostles
show us here, it is an honour, it's an honour to be counted
worthy, to suffer as a Christian. is an honour and throughout the
scriptures it is an honour. Paul at the end of the Galatians
warns them to be mindful of who he is, not who he is as a man
himself, but who he is as the Lord's man, doesn't he? And he
says, From henceforth let no man trouble me, Galatians 6.17,
for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
had this happen to him, is it at least twice he had the 40
lashes minus one. He had the same marks. All 12
apostles have those marks across their back. If you had taken
their shirts off it would have just been a mass of scars. and
yet they counted it not. From henceforth let no man trouble
me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ." At the end of the day, our Lord Jesus will swallow up
the shame of the world with His glory. and He will take and turn
the reproaches and slanders and the mockings of the world into
great honour. And the reproach, the suffer
reproach of Christ exceeds all the trials of the world, no matter
how much comfort people think they get from them. It is given to the children of
God that in this world we will be counted worthy to suffer.
Charles Spurgeon's wife, after not long of him being in preaching
in London and suffering all sorts of persecutions, she did a tapestry
of Matthew 5. and she had it in his room so
when he went to bed he could look at it, because such is the
life of so many of God's people in this world. Blessed are they,
blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. It's a blessing. It doesn't seem
like a blessing as one of the wonders of the Gospel is that
in the Lord Jesus Christ everything is turned upside down. All of
what men would count as a blessing in this world is turned upside
down in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. All that men think
is a reproach in this world has actually turned into a great
blessing. It's an honour to be counted worthy to suffer for
the Lord Jesus. Blessed are ye when men shall
hate you and when they shall separate you from their company,
this is Luke 6.22, and shall reproach you and cast out your
name as evil for the son of man's sake. Blessed. To be blessed is to be in an
enviable situation. Blessed. And it's throughout
the scriptures, I can just read some of them to you, but in Philippians
1.29, it stops being hidden in my Bible.
In Philippians 1.29 he speaks of those as this being a given. He says, don't be terrified by
your adversaries. which is to them an evident token
of perdition, but to you of salvation that of God. For unto you, it
is given in the behalf of Christ, It's a given, it's a given to
believe, not only to believe on Him but also to suffer for
His sake. It's given of God. It will be
the lot of God's people and there is a way out of that suffering
and that shame and Gamaliel shows us all of it. Compromise and be quiet. In 2nd Timothy 1.8, he says,
Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord,
nor of me his prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions
of the gospel according to the power of God. When God exercises
power, there will be afflictions for the gospel. And then I love
the description of the Gospel, who has saved us and called us
with a holy calling. So part of that holy calling
is that you'll be a partaker of afflictions of the Gospel.
that holy calling, not according to our world, but according to
His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and has
brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
whereunto I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher
of the Gentiles, for the which cause I also suffer these things. Nevertheless, I love this, nevertheless. He suffers these things, but
nevertheless, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed,
and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have
committed unto Him against that day." He's persuaded. Are you persuaded, brothers and
sisters? Are you persuaded that the sufferings and the persecutions
and the things and the evil speaking against God's Gospel and God's
people, are you persuaded that it's according to the power of
God? Are you persuaded that He's able
to keep in the midst of that, to keep what's being committed
unto Him, commit everything to Him? in the midst of that suffering,
commit everything unto Him." The Thessalonians, you read the
rest of Paul's journey in Acts, you'll see that wherever he went
he would suffer persecution, left for dead, beaten, so many
ways, wasn't it? Hebrews, in Hebrews 13, 13, he
says, of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our altar, Hebrews 13.10. We have an altar. We have a place
of sacrifice. We have a place. We have a place
where God accepts the sacrifice. It's in Him. And those like Ameliel,
they have no right to which which serve the tabernacle. 12. Therefore Jesus also, that he
might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without
the gate. Let us go forth, therefore, unto
Him. So where's the Lord Jesus Christ
now? He's outside of the gate. He's outside of the camp. He's outside of this world's
religion and all of its esteem. Let us go forth, therefore, unto
Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. To bear his name
is to suffer shame in this world, in the eyes of this world. And
all of these people that were in Jerusalem were religious people.
It's to suffer the reproach of the religious people for his
name. But we go under him. We will
have nothing more or less happen to us than happened to him. That's how they treated him.
So we go unto him outside without the camp bearing his reproach. In 1 Timothy 4.10 Paul speaks
of his labour. We labour and suffer reproach
because we trust in the living God who is the saviour of all
men, especially those who believe. He's not talking about he's the
saviour of all humanity, he's a particular saviour of all types
of men, the believing type of men. Accounted worthy. These will rejoice him. I sometimes
struggle with rejoicing. It's a very good thing, isn't
it, to be reminded that we are to rejoice always and we are
to be thankful in all situations, in all circumstances, be thankful
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. It is in
these dark days, it is so easy to become despondent and it's
a great lesson for us, isn't it, that the apostles suffered
that shame and suffered that reproach and they suffered that
beating and yet they suffered it and they went away rejoicing. May the Lord cause us to be rejoicing
people in the midst of that. It's not rejoicing over what
happened but rejoicing over the fact that once again the Lord
Jesus Christ is bearing witness to Himself. And if He's going
to bear witness to Himself in this world again with force and
power and clarity, He's going to do it in such a way that His
people will bear that reproach and bear that shame. And in our
land, In our land we are too polite to physically harm people
generally, but it does happen in other parts of the world and
throughout time, and maybe there'll come a time when the politeness
will be taken away. Just like the Melial and the
Sanhedrin were polite for a time, but a matter of a little time
later they're stoning Stephen to death. And it may well come
to that. to suffer shame, they counted
it rejoicing, counted it worthy to suffer shame. So much of what
we suffer these days is just people ignoring us, treating
us as though we are dead, not wanting to hear from us, to silence
us. to be treated as one whose feelings
don't matter and whose beliefs are irrelevant and don't matter.
It's a hurtful thing so often. But these men suffered shame,
suffered that shame and they went away rejoicing. They suffered shame for his name.
It's the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They went away not despondent
and not melancholy, but they went away rejoicing and they
went away preaching. I love the continuing work, isn't
it? The work of men is to silence the Gospel and the work of God
is to send His people out. Daily in the temple, verse 42,
in every house they cease not to preach to teach and to preach
Jesus Christ. And to teach and to preach Jesus
Christ is to declare the Jesus Christ that we have been preaching
and seeing in these sermons through that axe. It's to preach Him
as the sovereign rule of this universe, to preach Him in His
humanity, in His glorious humanity. It's to preach Him in His deity. It's to preach Him as crucified
under the determinate counsel and full knowledge of God. It's
to preach Him as having a people for whose sins He put away and
for whom He now represents in heaven. It's to preach Him as
reigning in heaven as both Lord and Christ. ruler of this world
in every way, that He has power over all flesh to give eternal
life unto as many as the Father would give Him. It's to preach
Him as a successful substitutionary saviour, it's to preach Him in
His glory, the glory of His deity. To preach Jesus Christ, not preaching
about Him, it's just preaching Him as the Old Testament scriptures
describe Him to be. And out of that preaching, not
morality and not law keeping, just preaching Him, He works
in the hearts of His people. miraculously, stupendously he
works in the hearts of his people to such an extent that they will
go to the very place where death stares them in the face and reproach
and shame stares them in the face and they will go to that
place and proclaim him. They will proclaim him in every
house. And in the temple they cease
not to preach Jesus Christ. May the Lord teach us some lessons
about this, the lessons of compromise in religion, the lessons of being
very close, very close and yet so far from the Kingdom of God,
the lessons of being a rejoicing people in the midst of the shame
that we must suffer for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. But
also our work, our one task, if the Lord will allow us to
do it, is to cease not to preach and to teach Jesus Christ. Let's pray.