What amazing words. Behold in there the risen Lamb,
my perfect spotless righteousness, the great unchangeable I Am,
the King of glory and of grace. One in Himself I cannot die. My soul is purchased by His blood. My life is hid with Christ on
high, with Christ my Saviour and my God. That's pretty much
the sermon for the day. It is, if you turn in your scriptures
to Acts chapter 5, we're looking at a message from heaven, a message
from the angels today, and the message from the angels has a
wonderful description of the Lord Jesus Christ. They who get
to see His face in heaven in all of its glory and get to be
here as ministering spirits to people are very active in the
early church, very active in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ,
sustaining Him and and bearing witness to Him in all sorts of
ways. But here in Acts chapter 5 they actually do something
quite remarkable and they make a remarkable statement about
Him and about the Gospel. It's a great summary description
of the Gospel. Let's just look at it. in verse 19, but the angel of
the Lord by night opened the prison doors and brought them
forth and said, go stand and speak in the temple to the people
all the words of this life. That's the verse that I'd like
us to focus on this morning. Zechariah 9.11 says, By the blood
of Thy covenant I have sent forth Thy prisoners out of the pit
wherein there is no water. Let's pray that the Lord would
guide us and direct us in our thoughts and in His Word. Heavenly
Father, we do thank You that Your Word is true and You are
a God who cannot lie. And we have just heard in John
6 words that are just beyond the understanding of human beings.
But they're not beyond the belief that you bring to your people,
Heavenly Father, and you just cause us to look away from this
world and to live by the faithfulness of the Son of God. Just simply,
Heavenly Father, we pray that you'd cause us to believe. and
that we might remarkably in that believing see Him and see Him
in His glory. And may it be our portion, Heavenly
Father, that we might see Him as our life this morning. One
with Him, we cannot die. One with Him, we cannot die. What an extraordinary Saviour
we have, our Father. We pray that He would be high
and lifted up. and that your word would just
be the thing that speaks to the hearts of your people, Heavenly
Father. We want to acknowledge that without you, without our
Lord Jesus Christ, we can do nothing. And we pray that you
would take your words and that you would cause them, Heavenly
Father, to be spirit and life for us. For we pray in your dear
and precious Son's name, our Father. Amen. There is just a remarkable statement
in John 5.13, isn't it? These things I have written unto
you, John, at the end of his life, one who had been in prison,
one who was about to be flogged, flayed by the Sanhedrin. These things I have written unto
you that you believe on the name of the Son of God and that you
may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe
on the name of the Son of God. God has written his word. God
has purposed it that his people would know that they have eternal
life. Christian life is not walking
around in a fog. It's walking around in a reality
of promises that he's made. And so here we have this message
of life. And the context is interesting,
of course, isn't it? The high priest in verse 17,
he rose up. What were they rising up against?
They were rising up against miracles being proclaimed, being done. They were rising up against people
walking in righteousness. They were rising up against the
proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ. He rose up. And they that were with him,
which is the sect of the Sadducees, and were filled with indignation,
they laid hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison."
So there they were now, all the apostles, not just the two, but
all the apostles in the common prison. And it is just a great
a great remarkable testimony to the fact that our God reigns,
and He reigns and rules over all things, and He has no problem
getting His word to His people, and that's despite all the opposition
of men. You can go down to those verses,
following in verse 21, the verses we're going to be looking at.
that they entered into the temple early in the morning and taught,
this is the apostles, but the high priest came with them and
called the council together. There they were having this great
council of Sanhedrin, 70 of the leaders of Israel all gathered
together. They'd locked them up the night before. They'd gathered
them all together. There they were going to have
this court case. And where are the accused? Where are the accused? They sent to the prison to have
them brought, but when the officers came they found them not in the
prison, and they returned told, saying, The prison we truly found
shut with all safety, and the keeper standing without before
the doors, but when we had opened, we found no man within. When
the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priest
heard these things, they doubted them whereunto this would grow. Then one came and told them,
saying, Behold, the men whom you put in prison are standing
in the temple and teaching the people." So then they finally
go and get them again. There they are. It's remarkable,
isn't it? The early church preached from
and they They prayed in the previous chapter out of Psalm 2, and Psalm
2 says, Why do the heathen rage? Why do the people imagine a vain
thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers
take counsel again together against the Lord and against his anointed,
saying, Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their courts
from us, he that sitteth in the heavens. He that sits in the
heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision.
Then he shall speak to them in his wrath and vex them in his
short-sought displeasure. Yet, he says, I have set My King,
on my holy hill of Zion, I will declare the decree of the Lord.
The Lord has said unto me, Thou art my Son. This day I have begotten
thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee
the heathen for thine inheritance, and the other mates past the
earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a
rod of iron, Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's
vessel. Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings! Be instructed, ye
judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and
rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry,
and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are they who put their
trust in Him. The remarkable thing about these Sadducees,
they'd locked these people up. The Sadducees didn't believe
in angels, and they didn't believe in spirits, and they didn't believe
in a resurrection. And in this one particular event,
the Lord God holds them in derision for all their worldly wisdom,
isn't it? They either had to acknowledge
that an angel opened and closed the prison door or they had to
acknowledge that it was a spirit. They were spiritually removed
from the prison and there they were back in the temple courts
preaching yet again the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. a remarkable picture of the fact
that Heaven's message will get proclaimed. And it doesn't matter
what men do or say, God will have His Son proclaimed and glorified
in this world and He'll hold them accountable. So the angel
opened, and I want to look at these verses and particularly
I want to spend some time looking at verse 20. The angel, the Lord,
by night opened the prison doors and shut them. So I want to look
at these words of eternal life. I want to look at, firstly, who
it is that proclaims these words of eternal life. We've got to
keep remembering that these, in the midst of this religious
ceremonialism that was in Jerusalem and the mighty temple and the
great priesthood and this extraordinarily impressive looking Sanhedrin. These guys were just ordinary
fishermen, Galilean fishermen, but they typify all of God's
servants, all of God's true preachers. have come to them what has happened
to these apostles. They have been set free. They
have been set free. So it's only the freed, it's
only the freed from the entanglements of this world and this world's
religion, only the freed can actually proclaim the Gospel
because otherwise you are trapped. You are trapped wanting to please
men, and there's enough in my flesh that wants to be pleasing
men all the time, but God's servants are not interested at the end
of the day in pleasing men. And if I please men, I am not
the servant of God. And if I operate and act in a
way to please men, all I will do is baptise your sins and your
wickedness. God's servants just stand and
proclaim what He said. These guys just kept on saying,
didn't they? Peter and the other apostles
in verse 29 of this chapter said, ought we obey God rather than
men? They keep saying, our task here
is to obey God and stand before men and just declare what God
says. we just declare the simple, plain truths of what God said. We are not, we are not to fear
men, we are not to be captive in any way at all. So it's only the freed, and only
the freed are made free by God Himself. Some of the most horrific
things that I have witnessed in churches that just horrify
me are people who are trapped by wanting to please men. I remember
being in a service the last time I ever went to it, a service
in a church in Wollongong, and the guy preached through preached
through Acts 13, and I think he did the whole chapter in one
session. But I said to him, I went to
Bible college with this guy, I said to him at the end of the
service, I said, why didn't you read verse 48? He just didn't
read verse 48 at all. And verse 48 says, speaking of
the Gentiles, when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and
glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as were ordained
to eternal life believed. And I said to my friend, I said,
Rob, why didn't you speak? Why didn't you just ignore that
verse as if it was not there at all? And he said, well, last
week we had a discussion time after church, and the discussion
time came to predestination, and people were so upset about
predestination, I didn't want to say any more about it this
week. Not so. Not so, the apostles. May God make it never to be so
with us. There is a group of people who
proclaim these words of eternal life. These words. And the angel's
message is really simple, isn't it? You go, stand, speak in the
temple to the people all the words of this life. And it can be sort of translated,
these words of life, these words of the life, this particular
life. And the life of course that he's
talking about there is the eternal life that we're looking at because
the life that's being proclaimed is the resurrection life of the
Lord Jesus Christ, that He now sits in Heaven's glory and He's
sent forth the Holy Spirit and His life, His life is the life
of men and His life is the one that is proclaimed. So they say
to them simply, don't you, you just go. You've been set free
to go. You go wherever a door is opened. You go and you stand. You stand. You take courage and
steadfast. It means to stand with courage
and steadfast mind as well as posture. You go to the very place
where they just arrested you. You go back to the very people
that opposed you and you just stand there. You stand in that
temple, that temple that typified the Lord Jesus Christ in every
way. That's the message of the angel, isn't it? You speak in
that temple. The word angel means messenger. The angels are ministering spirits
sent forth to minister for them who shall be the heirs of salvation. They are ministering spirits.
And so in ministering spirits they actually are sending forth
the apostles. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
The angels with all of their almighty power. and all of their
glory. One angel killed 185,000 people
outside Jerusalem in Seneca Ridge time. Angels are extraordinary
beings. And one, one appeared to Cornelius
and told Cornelius about Peter being down in Joppa. And Cornelius
saw this shining man. Imagine that, a shining man standing
before you. And you would think, now is an
opportunity, wouldn't the shining man, wouldn't the shining man
preach the Gospel? You see, it's left, brothers
and sisters, it's left in the hand of our God, by the hand
of our God, it's left for simple sinners like us, vessels of clay,
to be the ones that proclaim the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. The angels are here with us according
to 1 Corinthians 10. The angels encamp around them
that fear God. The angels stand there when the
Lord Jesus is taken up into heaven in Acts 1 and they say, this
same Jesus, verse 11, taken up from you into heaven shall so
come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven. So the
angels are very active in the early church. So this is a message
from heaven, isn't it? The angels direct Philip to the
Ethiopian unit. The angels come and speak to
Cornelius. The angels release Peter in chapter
12 from prison again. The angels smite Herod and kill
him. The angels visit Paul at the
end of Acts, in Acts 27. The angels have this simple message
to men. The angels have this message
to us, don't they? This is Heaven's message. You
go and you speak in the temple. And you speak in the temple to
the people. You speak to whoever is in the
temple. But you also, that word, the
people, is a description of God's people. Thirteen times in the
book of Hebrews you'll find that the people is a description of
God's people. You speak to the people. See, God encourages His servants
because He has the people there, doesn't He? He had the people
from all eternity. They were His. And they will
be born again and they will come to eternal life. They will come
to saving knowledge and saving faith and saving rest of their
souls in the Lord Jesus Christ. They will come through the preaching
of the Gospel. Paul in Corinthians is having
a bit of a rough go of it and an angel, God, comes to him and
says, he says, for I am with you. You keep on preaching, Paul,
in Corinth, that city, that despicable city. For I am with you. And why do you keep on preaching,
Paul? For I have much in this city. So the fact of God's absolute
sovereignty and the fact of His election and the fact of His
eternal covenant is the impetus of preaching the Gospel. We preach
the Gospel because we know it's always going to be perfectly
successful. It's perfectly successful, isn't it? Always. You preach
to the people. You preach to the people All
the words of this life. All the words. All the words. That is another description,
isn't it, of the whole council of God. You speak all the words,
you don't change any of them, you don't modify them in any
way, you don't in any way allow them to be so adjusted that people
could see that they can be modified or they can be accepted by men
in this way or that way. Bunyan has one of his extraordinary
characters, Mr Facing Both Ways. God's servants preach, and these
guys did preach in such a way that the enemies of the Gospel
knew exactly what they were standing against. The Sanhedrin knew exactly
what they were standing opposed to. The Lord Jesus spoke in such
a way that people knew what they found offensive. One of the great
blessings of church is for God's people to be comforted. One of
the other extraordinary blessings is, wouldn't it be wonderful
for someone to know that they weren't. They weren't His, and yet they're
here to hear the Gospel again. You speak to the people, all
the words. You leave nothing out. You leave
nothing out for the fear of men. The apostles were like the Old
Testament saints, weren't they? The Word of the Lord came unto
them. They had what was declared to
be the burden of the Word of the Lord came to them. and they
declared simply, thus saith the Lord. It is just a declaration
from the throne of God. We are God's ambassadors. The
King sends the message and the King takes absolute responsibility
for the message. I love what 2 Corinthians 3 says
about the preaching of the Gospel. We think that we are preaching
to men, and we are. And we want Him, if the Lord
will enable us, to speak to the hearts of men. It's in 2 Corinthians
2, I'm sorry. He says in verse 14, Now thanks
be to God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and
maketh manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every
place. For we are unto God. We are unto
God. Take note of that, brothers and
sisters. In preaching of the Gospel, there is an audience
of one that matters most, isn't it? We are unto God. Now unto God, a sweet savour
of Christ. God loves to hear about the Lord
Jesus Christ. He loves it, doesn't he? He loves
his son and he loves to hear him proclaimed in his deity,
in his glory, in his righteousness, in his holiness, in his resurrection
glory now in heaven. For we are unto God a sweet saver
of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To one we are the saver of death
unto death, and to the other the saver of life unto life."
And Paul makes a statement that everyone that's ever preached
the Gospel would understand completely. Who is sufficient? Who is sufficient
for these things? For we are not as many which
corrupt the word of God, but of sincerity, but as of God,
and in the sight of God we speak in Christ. That's what preaching
the Gospel is, isn't it? In the sight of God we speak
in Christ. You go to the people, you go
into that temple and you speak all the words of life. You speak all of those words.
Paul could say in Acts chapter 20 that he's free of the blood
of all men because he hasn't failed to proclaim the whole
counsel of God. It's the same as this, isn't
it? It's all the words. The whole counsel of God. What
is the whole counsel of God? What is it to preach the whole
counsel of God? It's to preach Jesus Christ. It's to preach
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is the whole counsel of
God. It is the whole will of God.
We know what the will of God is, brothers and sisters, don't
we? We know what the will of God is. We read it. This is the
Father's will, John 6.39, this is the Father's will which He
has sent. And of all of which He has given me, I should lose
nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And
this is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which
seeth the Son and believeth on Him may have everlasting life,
and I will raise him up at the last day. Everlasting life comes
through words. Faith comes by hearing. One of the wonderful things about
hearing is that you're passive in hearing. You're not active. You just hear. You just hear
all the words of this life. All the words. As Isaiah 8.22
says, if they speak not according to this word, There is no light
in them. No light in them if they don't
speak according to this Word. So we speak, as Graham read to
us earlier. We speak in such a way that we
want for God to be honoured and we want for those words to be
the words that the Spirit comes and the Spirit quickeneth. John
6.63. He makes a lie. The Spirit gives
life. The flesh profit of nothing.
The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are
life. They are the very words of this
life. Life. Life is in the Lord Jesus
Christ, isn't it? There are so many parallels between
temporal life and spiritual life. Temporal life in this world is
meant to be a picture of spiritual life, isn't it? You see, our life here now is
something about which we have no business of in the origin
of it, do we? John's little baby that was born
yesterday afternoon had no idea about its conception, probably
had no idea about its growth in the womb, had no idea about
its life. It's a real life. just like spiritual
life, just like real life, begins with something outside of ourselves
altogether. This earthly life originates
outside of us. We are sitting here living, breathing
people today, We have a connection back to the origin of life, don't
we? What a remarkable chain that
is, that parents begat children, begat children. So life came
to life, came to life, came to life, down to us in 2017. Life originates from outside
of us, no matter what the scientists want to say. But also, life is
sustained from outside of us. So if we take all the external
things away from us, air and water and food, we last very,
very little time at all. So life originates outside of
us, life is sustained outside of us. The very breath we breathe
and the very heartbeat you might feel, this actually comes from
outside of us, isn't it? The power to sustain those things
is from outside of us. Such as it is with all life, And going past our place day
by day almost now, people going to the end, passing the end of
their lives and going out to the cemetery. At the end of life
you have no control over it either. People will leave this world
at God's appointed time. What a silly nonsense it is to
think of man's free will. How much freedom do you think
people have? Everywhere in the scriptures
where man's freedom is proclaimed and his will is proclaimed, God
makes very sure as soon as possible that man is deceived that he
is but dust. See, God owns life. He originates
it. He sustains it. He controls it. He will determine the end of
it. It is a life. that is the life
of God. Real spiritual life comes in
that same way, doesn't it? It comes from outside of us.
It's sustained from outside of us. It originates outside of
us. It's ruled from outside of us. We kiss the son who is life himself. So all life is his, temporal
life and spiritual life. That's why Colossians can say
the Lord Jesus Christ is your life. He is the bread of life. He is the water of life. He is
the judge of life. Man thinks he has the right to
judge and to make decisions. and make judgments about life
and make judgments about Him. But God, our Saviour, is the
judge of life and He holds people responsible. You are to preach
all the words of this life. He holds Ananias and Sapphira
responsible. It is It is in the context of
death that these words of life are to be proclaimed, isn't it?
It's in the context of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
is in the immediate context of the death of Ananias and Sapphira. What an extraordinary thing it
is for them to be living, living and confident and yet dead. I often have been thinking in
this last week about Sapphira. We have no idea what happened
in that 3 hours between the death of Ananias and Sapphira's death
before God. Imagine that she had been with
the people who had been the recipients of the money that she gave. How
esteemed she must have been. How confident she must have been.
so well thought of she must have been, how much she must have
looked to what she'd done as worthy and worthwhile, giving
all that money to the Church and laying it at the Apostle's
feet. And she walks in without a single knowledge of what was
going on, and seconds later she is dead. Esteemed one moment,
dead the next. There is a way that seemeth right
unto a man, and the ends thereof are the ways of death, says the
proverb. And the Lord Jesus says, to enter
in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is
the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go thereat. Because straight is the gate,
and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that
find it. Thank God for the few. Thank God for the few. So I wanted
to look at what the words were. If you're going to be saved from
that, may God save us from being anonymous as a virus. To come
to God with something in our hands, to come to God as a hypocrite,
to come into the presence of God covetous for the glory of
men. There is a way of death for them.
There is a way of death for the Sadducees, isn't it? They come
so proud, they stand in judgement of the Lord Jesus Christ. They
are like the living dead, aren't they? They have a name to live,
but they are dead. And there is in Gamaliel another
example of someone who is dead, dead to the knowledge of who
God is. So there are two conditions aren't
there, there are two dominating principles. in the human heart
prior to conversion. One is there's just ignorance
and blindness. They're ignorant to their soul's
well-being. They're ignorant of who they
are. They're ignorant of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Just ignorant. The Jews were
remarkable in their ignorance, weren't they? Having seen all
those things, they get up at one point and say to the Lord
Jesus Christ, we've never been in bondage to anyone. And at
that very moment they're in bondage to Rome, they've been in bondage
in Egypt, they've been in bondage to Babylon, and now they say,
no, no, we're free. You tell Pilate how free you
are. Men are ignorant in their blindness, but the other thing
that's even worse than all that is that there's a hardness and
an insensitivity. There's a hard, hard heart in
man, a proud heart. It's serving diverse lusts. The hardness of the human heart
is so typified in these stories we've been reading in Acts, isn't
it? What more proof could be laid
before a group of people about the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the fulfilment of the very scriptures that they knew of
by heart? And yet having witnessed all
that, they remained like these Sadducees and this Council and
the Jews. They remained hardness, so hard
of heart. Evidence doesn't convince people. The whole idea of apologetic
ministry is based on the assumption that human beings can think straight.
And the heart of man is deceitfully wicked and beyond cure. That's why part of the words
of this life, part of the words of this life are a declaration.
There are two simple things, aren't there? There's a declaration
of who the Lord Jesus Christ is in all of His glory, in all
the fulfilment of all the promises of the scriptures. And there
is in every one, every one of these speeches, these sermons
in Acts, there's a declaration of what man is. There is a summary
of the words of this life in chapter 5 verse 30. Peter says
that we ought to obey God rather than men and then verse 30 says,
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you slew and hung,
hanged on a tree. Him hath God highly exalted with
his right hand to be a prince and saviour. He is a king and
a saviour. And what does he do as a saviour?
He gives repentance to Israel. He gives repentance to his Israel,
the Israel of God, and forgiveness of sins. You see, repentance
is a gift from God. Forgiveness of sins is a gift
from God. And so what he does in those
two simple sentences, what he does is he shows man as what
he is, doesn't he? He wants to lay at the feet of
these people This Jesus whom you slew and hanged on a tree. There is a necessity, isn't there,
in life eternal. There is a necessity of a beginning
in death. It is a resurrection, isn't it?
The dead shall hear, says John 5.24, the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God and they shall live. There's a resurrection
in this life. Paul declared himself as that
proud Pharisee. He says, I was alive once without
the law. I was alive once. He thought
he was alive. In his religion, he thought he
was alive. He says, for I was alive without
the law once. But then a commandment came.
The Lord Jesus Christ came in commandment, didn't He? The commandment
came, sin revived and I died. And what He thought was unto
life was actually unto death. So there is this extraordinary
proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ and then there is a declaration
of what man is. Just in simple statements. In
Acts chapter 2 verse 23, you have taken him and by wicked
hands, your hands are wicked, your thoughts are wicked, and
you have crucified and slain him. You did it. You see, everywhere
the Gospel is preached, it is preached directly at people as
sinners. You can't say it's them out there
ever to these servants. In 235, they are foes to him. In 234, they crucified him. In 240, all of their religion,
all of their religion in all their estimation is just a crooked
generation. It's bent and twisted. 313, you
delivered him up. You delivered him up. Do you
own that, brothers and sisters, as sinners? Do you own the sin? Do you own the fact that your
sin always, as David said in Psalm 51, is a sin against him,
against you and you only? You delivered him up, 3.14, you
denied him. It's your sins and your iniquities
that need to be forgiven. In 4.10, you crucified him. In 4.11, you builders. You're
building your religion. You're building your self-estimation. You're building and building
and building. People are always building. You're builders. And
you set this stone. This precious stone of God, this
precious cornerstone, this precious foundation, you set him at naught. You consider that what God says
is precious to be nothing, to be treated like trash. In 530,
as I just read it, there is a description of the fact that they slew him
and hung him on a tree. And there is, that is on one
side isn't it, a simple description of man in his depravity, man
in his utter wickedness, man left for just that brief time
to do to God as he would want to do. But there are these words of
life. I just want to make a few points
about them before we look at them. One of the things that's remarkable
about the words of life in terms of the description of the Lord
Jesus Christ is that they are all objective, verifiable facts. Everything that's said was witnessed
by hundreds of people. 500 people saw the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ. There was never ever any attempt
for him to go and reveal himself to the lost. Every resurrection
appearance of the Lord Jesus is to his people. They're all verifiable facts.
They're all facts of scripture. They're all just simple facts,
isn't it? The sermons are beautiful in their simplicity and they're
beautiful in their object, aren't they? And so it's not about,
I suppose the point I want to make, it's not about our feelings.
And it's not about our experiences, this life, this eternal life. It's not about what we have done.
It's not about what we're doing. It's not about what we might
do. It's not about us. It's about
Him. We read in John 6 about the manna.
How long did the manna last? You had it in the morning, didn't
you? You collected it in the morning and you had it for that
day. What happened to it the next
morning? full of maggots and smell, wasn't it? It stank the
next morning. So it is with all the things
that we think we've actually cherished, isn't it? Isn't it
God? Good. But God takes them away. The big issue of eternal life
is what do you say about Him? What do you say about Him? Whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's the message at the beginning
of these sermons in Acts. And so one of the remarkable
things in the Declaration of the Gospel, there is this extraordinary
meeting, isn't there? There's an extraordinary meeting
between a crucified Saviour and a broken-hearted sinner. A sinner
who's been made to see and say, I'm a sinner. You see, a whole-hearted
disciple, as my friend Mr Hart says, a whole-hearted disciple
can have but little communion with a broken-hearted Lord. crucified, meeting with a broken-hearted
sinner. A sinner is a sacred thing. The
Holy Ghost has made him so. There is in the preaching of
the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit a wounding in the
hearts of people. His heart was wounded. But for
those who are becoming united to Him in saving faith, they
are wounded in their hearts. and only He who made the heart
and knows the hearts of man can cause that wounding, but He does
it through simply declaring who the Lord Jesus Christ is and
what He has done and what He is doing right now. This new
life is entered into through Holy Spirit conviction, isn't
it? They were cut. They were cut. in the heart,
it says in Acts 2.37. They were cut in the heart, they
were pricked in the heart, they had a fatal wound in their heart. You see the response of the Sadducees
to that same declaration in chapter 5 verse 33, when they heard this,
when they heard this, when they heard about the Lord Jesus Christ
and his exaltation and the fact that these are witnesses, and
so is God the Holy Spirit as a witness to these things, they
were cut to the heart. And what's the response of someone
who's just cut to the heart? They took counsel to slay them.
Here they were with the words of eternal life, those who are
just wounded slightly will take counsel to slay him. They do the same, the same response
comes at Stephens. stone him. Stephen declared exactly
the same thing. He declared the wickedness of
these men and declared the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
declared the fact that they had slain him. He said that you were
betrayers and murderers of him. And then when they heard these
things they were cut to the heart and they gnashed with all their
teeth and they began to pick up stones." See repentance, repentance
is a change of mind, isn't it? It's a change, a complete change
of understanding about who you are and who God is. And that's
what Peter declares, doesn't he, in Acts 3.31. He says, God has exalted him
to his right hand to be a prince and saviour for to give repentance,
for to give repentance and the forgiveness of sins. I love what
my friend Todd Nivatt said a couple of weeks ago in a message. He
says, if you can't come to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith, come
to him for faith. If you can't come to him If you can't come to Him knowing
that your sins are forgiven, come to Him for forgiveness of
sins. So He gives it, doesn't He? So
it's not something that's worked up by men and all of their activities. It actually comes because of
who He is. Who He is declared in these words
of life. I just wanted for a little minute
just to look at these declarations of Him. It is remarkable, isn't
it, how wonderfully portrayed our Saviour is in Acts. I love
going back through and reading the sermon and just reading again
and again what they say about the Lord Jesus Christ. It's like
the Shulamite in Song of Solomon. says one wonderful thing after
another wonderful thing. And the Lord Jesus is like this
extraordinary brilliant faceted jewel, isn't He? And everywhere
you turn you get light from Him and light radiated back and you
just see He's glorious. And you turn a little bit more
and He's more glorious. and He's more glorious, and He's more
glorious. He's glorious in His deity. He's glorious in His solitude. He's glorious in His love for
His people. He's glorious in His mercy. What
glory in the righteousness of our Saviour. Fancy walking upon
this earth, tempted as we are in all points, and yet never,
ever sinning. What glorious righteousness.
And the wonder of this resurrected life, brothers and sisters, is
that the resurrected life is a picture of the life of us in
union with Him, isn't it? And so when we read these things
about Him, we're reading these things about He who is our husband. That's why Jeremiah says, isn't
it? That's what you call His name. What will His name be called?
The Lord our righteousness. And just a few chapters later
on, the bride is named. What will she be called? What's
her name? She takes her husband's name.
The Lord, our righteousness. So as we read these things, it's
good for us to be reminded, this is a description of who we are.
This is a description of life, isn't it? This is the life that
was lived out before men, our real life. Paul said that I was
crucified with Christ. The life I now live, I live by
the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for
me. In Acts 2.22 he's described as a man, a man approved of God,
a man such that he could be one with us, a man such that he could
be perfectly united to us, perfectly understanding of our frailties
and our weaknesses and the trials of this world. Perfectly understanding
of the trials that you have with family and friends. Perfectly
understanding of betrayal and hurt and distrust. Perfectly
understanding of everything that you ever go through. You will
never experience anything that the Lord Jesus couldn't say,
I know exactly how that feels. Exactly how that feels. He's
a man because he's not distant from us. It's not distant from
us. It's this one, isn't it? This
particular one. And he was delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God. He was delivered by God's
determinate counsel and he was delivered by the foreknowledge
of God. They took him and with their wicked hands they crucified
and slayed him, but the big issue of the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ is the transaction between God the Father and God the Son. That is the great transaction
of salvation. I love the fact that he was delivered
by the determinate counsel and full knowledge of God. Our God
does all things with a determinate counsel, doesn't he? That's what
it is to be a sovereign God. So you cannot worship a God who
is not sovereign. You cannot worship a God who
is not absolutely sovereign, because if he's not absolutely
sovereign, then someone or something else is. So worship it. But our God is absolutely sovereign
and He has raised Him up, verse 24, God has raised Him up having
loosed the pains of death, Acts 2.24. Loosed the pains of death. The death was not able to hold
the Lord Jesus Christ. Why was death not able to hold
Him? The wages of sin is death. Death cannot hold him because
sin is gone. That's what he did to our sins,
brothers and sisters. He's purged us. By himself, Hebrews
1, by himself he has purged us, which means that they're cleansed
and they're gone. They're gone from God's sight.
That's why he was raised from the dead. It's not possible for
death to hold him. His soul is not left in hell,
verse 27. And the Holy One will not see corruption. You have
made known to me the ways of life, and the fullness of His
joy is with Thy countenance. The fullness of His joy is with
the countenance of His Father. And this Christ, 230, would sit
on David's throne. He would reign. He would reign
as David's son and David's king and David's lord. And God hath
made this same Jesus. God hath made this same Jesus.
I love the transaction between the Trinity and all of these
sermons. It's just remarkable. It's God has done it. Now the
Holy Spirit is taking these things and declaring them with power
to people. God hath made that same Jesus.
He's made Him both Lord and Christ. He's made Him Christ. For the
Lord Jesus Christ to be the Christ of God means that every single
Old Testament prophecy and picture and promise is completely and
utterly fulfilled in Him. They're all yes and amen in Him. He has brought in everlasting
righteousness. He's put an end to sin. He's
done all the promises that we read amazingly in Daniel 9 and
Isaiah 53. He's done them all. They're finished.
Finished. Lord and Christ. Adonai and Christ. And is Christ now seated? Verse
33. He's seated and exalted at God's
right hand and he now receives, he receives and he sheds forth
this. That's exactly what Peter was
saying, wasn't he? God hath exalted him to his right
hand to be a prince and saviour for to give repentance, for to
give repentance to Israel and the forgiveness of sin. God,
in chapter 3 verse 13, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob hath
glorified his son Jesus. He's described as the Holy One,
the Holy One, the Holy One. You denied the Holy One and the
just. He was wholly See, holiness is not something
that man does. Holiness is something that God
is and holiness is something that we are in Him and in Him
alone, the Holy One and just. perfectly
just, perfectly righteous in everything he does, perfectly
righteous in forgiving sins because he's put it away, perfectly righteous
in all of his activities. Whatever he does is right because
of who he is. He's righteous. He is the Prince of Life. You killed the Prince of Life.
He is the Prince of all the lives of all his people whom God has
raised from the dead. He is the author and the giver
of faith. And His name, through faith in
His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yea, the faith which is by Him
has given Him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all."
This life is a life of faith, isn't it? Faith comes from Him. It is His gift and it is His
to exercise. I love that fact, isn't it? The
faith which is by Him. The faith which is by Him gives. He is the author and the finisher,
the author and the perfecter of life. And He is the One who
came in fulfilment as I said earlier in 3.18, all the prophets.
All the prophets speak of Him that He should suffer and all
of that has been fulfilled. All the prophets spoke of the
days of the Lord Jesus Christ. When you read the prophets you
want to say what is this saying about the Lord Jesus Christ in
His incarnation, in His crucifixion and His exaltation because that's
what it's saying. All the prophets spoke of Him.
all the prophets, all the prophets spoke of Him and spoke of Him
in that covenant which God made, that eternal covenant which God
made with the fathers. And the blessing of Christ, the
blessing of new life, isn't it? Unto you, first God, having raised
up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you. What's the great blessing
of this life? Send him to bless you in turning
away every one of you from his iniquities. How does he turn you away from
your iniquities? How do you turn away from your iniquities? You
turn to Him. The only way you can turn away
from them is to see that He took them and took them on Calvary's
tree. It's a blessing for us to live
without iniquity in this world, but the reality of God's people
is that they'll be made to see that iniquity is there with them
all the time. The turning away is turning in
faith and looking to Him, looking to Him. If anyone wants to take
those words and then turn it into something that allows us
to think that we can sin, it means nothing. We just don't
really know Him and love Him if we think that sin doesn't
matter. The only way God can get rid of sin is to lay it on
His Son and then to pour out infinite eternal wrath on Him. It's the love of Christ that
constrains us and compels us. It's the love of Christ that
causes us to turn away from iniquity. This Lord Jesus Christ in Acts
chapter 4 is the Creator, He's the Redeemer, and you kiss the
Son. What a remarkable promise. What
a remarkable command of God, that you kiss the Son. That's
to have life, isn't it? To kiss the Son. The God of our
fathers raised up is exalted again and again. So to go back
to where we started, this life, The life that is there, the words
of this life are the words of eternal life, the words of everlasting
life. I'll go back to what I said in
John 5. These things I have written unto you that believe. Just believe
those simple things about Him. and you believe them because
you are made aware of what you are in yourself by the Holy Spirit
showing you what you are. And you only see what you are.
The only way we ever see sin with any clarity And the deceitfulness
and the wickedness of our hearts, the only way you ever see sin
in any clarity is to see Him on the cross. It's the only place,
isn't it? It's the only place where you
see sin in all of its vileness, in all of its horror. And yet
that very same place, that very same place that we look to see
what we really are is the very place where we look to see what
we are in Him and what He has done for us. These things are
written that you believe on the name of the Son of God. You believe
His character, you just believe what God says about Him. He's
Lord and Christ, He's Sovereign Ruler and He reigns and He has
a people in this world. Just believe those simple things
about Him that you may know. You may know that you have eternal
life. that you may believe on the name
of the Son of God." See, this resurrection life is a life lived
in union with Him. What does the Lord Jesus say?
Because I live, you also shall live. The dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. In those verses that we read
in John 6, You actually have this life by union with Him,
amazing union with Him. To believe is to live by Him,
isn't it? It is to drink His blood, to
eat His flesh. He that eateth my flesh, and
drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." That's the
most remarkable promise of the scriptures, isn't it? That the
Lord Jesus Christ takes up residence in us. And why does He take up
residence in His children? Because it's a perfectly fit
habitation for a holy God. Because there is no sin and there
is the robe of His righteousness. That's why the church is the
habitation of God by the Spirit. So you live in Him and you live
by Him. It is that union that I spoke
of, of a crucified saviour and a broken heart, and they join
together like a branch in a vine. They join together as one in
Him. To be resurrected, to be resurrected
is to see. to see the glory of God in the
face of the Lord Jesus Christ. To be resurrected is to hear
His voice. They hear His voice and they
come to Him and they follow Him. To have this resurrected life
is to know Him. To know Him, as Paul said, is
the one thing he sought, isn't it? To know Him and the power
of His resurrection. the power of His resurrection,
raised because of our justification, put to death because of our sin,
to know Him in the power of His resurrection that He now is our
sanctification and He is our everlasting righteousness. To
have this resurrected life is to love Him. We love Him because
He first loved us. And we love Him as He is. You
wouldn't change a single thing about the Lord Jesus Christ,
would you? I would change everything I could possibly get my hands
on about me and a whole bunch of other people that I'd be busy
if I could mould them into something that suited me better. But there's
not a single thing about our Lord Jesus that you'd ever want
to change. He's just altogether glorious. We love Him and we love Him. To have this resurrected life
is to love Him and it's to love His Bride. To have this resurrected
life is to obey Him and to fear Him. To have this resurrected
life is to live by the faith of the Son of God. to look away
from ourselves, to look away from our works, to look away
from everything and just look to Him. It is this resurrected
life, it's a life that cries, doesn't it? It cries, a wretched
man that I am, a wretched man that I am. It is to have this
life tested as these apostles, this early church was tested
yet again and again. Tested, a tried faith in the
firmness of affliction is a faith that can be relied on because
who is proven to be faithful in the midst of all these trials?
It is him, isn't it? They counted it an honour to
be worthy of suffering for His name. This resurrected life looks
to Him, looks to Him in His promise-making and His promise-keeping. It looks
to Him on Calvary Street. It looks to Him in Gethsemane's
garden. It looks to Him enthroned in heaven. It looks to Him to
care for me. It looks to Him to take the things
of my life. There are so many, many things
that He has to deal with and I can't deal with. They're all
too big for me to look to Him enthroned in Heaven. praised, what songs are going
on in heaven. Think of our friends that have
gone before us and the songs and what is happening in heaven.
To look to Him in this resurrected life is to look for Him, look
over the edge of what we see and see His coming. We look to
Him, don't we? We look to Him. We look to Him
in faith, the faith that He gives. And we love to look to him in
this resurrected life, is to love the words that he speaks,
is to go to his word again and again and see that it just describes
our husband in great and wondrous glory. Let's pray.