Acts chapter 4. The church has undergone its
first whiff of persecution and they've been gathered together
to pray at the end of Acts chapter 4. And I just wanted to read
some of these verses. They begin their petitions in
verse 29. It says, Lord, behold their threatenings,
and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may seek
thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal, and that
signs and wonders may be done in the name of thy holy child
Jesus. And when they had prayed, the
place was shaken where they were assembled together. They were
all filled with the Holy Ghost and they spoke the Word of God
with boldness. And the multitude of them that
believed were of one heart and of one soul. Neither said any
of them that of the things which he possessed was his own, but
they had all things in common. and with great power gave the
apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great
grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them
that lacked, for as many as were possessors of land or houses
sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
and laid them down at the apostles' feet, and distribution was made
unto every man according as he had need." And then it goes on
to speak about Barnabas. But I wanted to focus on those
verses. beginning in 32, the multitude
of them that believed were of one heart and soul. What a glorious
description of the early church. There is the outpouring of God
the Holy Spirit upon this church and upon this world in the proclamation
of the Gospel and as we go through Acts we see that the Lord Jesus
Christ has won an extraordinary victory and now the Lord God
the Holy Spirit does exactly as He's promised. He brings and
takes the things of the Lord Jesus, His deity, His humanity,
the wonders of His eternal everlasting love, the wonders of what He
did on Calvary's tree. And He says the Holy Spirit takes
those things and He reveals them to people. He makes them known
to people. So the blood that was shed on
Calvary's tree is now sprinkled upon the consciences of God's
people and they are declared by God to be perfectly clean. They are declared by God to be
as righteous as He is. What a remarkable gospel we have.
And that happened 2,000 years ago. I don't know where you were
2,000 years ago. Well, I wasn't around. And that's
the wonder of saving grace, isn't it? It happened outside of our
experience and it happened outside of our time. It happens because
of the sovereign work of our great God. There is this great
grace and great power, great power to witness, great grace
that is poured out from the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's a great
grace that's poured out from Him to reflect glory back to
Him. It requires great grace to preach
the Gospel. It requires great grace to hear
the Gospel. It requires great grace to continue
as the early church did in the face of opposition and persecution. It requires great grace to be
present to hear the Gospel. These people were drawn by a
sovereign hand of God from 15 different nations. They were
gathered from all over the Roman Empire by a sovereign hand of
God and they happened to be gathered at that particular time on those
particular days to hear that particular sermon and to have
that message come to their particular hearts. It is a great, great
gift to be present. It's a great, great, great gift
to actually hear God speak. And that's what they did, didn't
they? They actually heard. Some of them heard. Peter gets
up on Acts chapter 2 and three times he says, will you listen
to me? He just wanted for there to be an audience for people
to listen. There's great grace required
to repent and believe and be baptised. There's great grace
required to be gathered as one and to love the brethren. There's
great grace of God to keep His people, to keep His people in
this world, keep them believing, keep them looking away from themselves
and looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's great grace
required to keep them separated from the others. You see, we
actually have the gathering. We have three different gatherings
of people here. These were all of one accord.
They were all of one accord, the people. But there are three
other groups that are of one accord, three groups of people
here. In Acts 4.27 you actually see
they were gathered together. There is a gathering together
against thy holy child Jesus. A gathering together of Herod
and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the people of Israel. They
were all gathered together. We will, Lord willing, look in
the next little while couple of weeks that Ananias and Sapphira,
and if you actually go down to Acts chapter 5 verse 9, Ananias
and Sapphira were agreed together. They were agreed together. And
then there is the Church of God, which are the true believers,
and that multitude of them were gathered, 8,000 at least, gathered
with one heart and one soul. So there are some gatherings
that are good to be part of, and some gatherings that are
very, very dangerous to be part of, aren't they indeed. See,
without grace it is possible, as these Jews were, to be very,
very religious, to be extraordinarily knowledgeable of the Scriptures,
to be very wise, it seems, in many things, to be extraordinarily
generous. Have you met anyone yet who has
sold their house to give the money to the Church? And a nice
of Sapphire, indeed, brothers and sisters. That's remarkable,
isn't it? It is possible to live outwardly
very loving moral lives, to talk much about God and talk much
about Jesus Christ, and to use words like grace and justification
and sanctification, to use words like blood atonement, to use
words like the love of God, to use words like the sovereignty
of God, to describe God in so many ways that is so close to
the scriptures and so accurate. It is possible to have all of
those things and not have any grace of God whatsoever. The
Jews, the Jews were gathered together, weren't they? With
all of their religion, with all of its history, with all of its
pomp, with all of its show, with its great Bible colleges in Jerusalem,
with its great mission organisations, with its great success in all
of its missionary organisations. With all of those things gathered
together and yet, There's no grace at all. No grace. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him. Neither
can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned. So what's the difference? What
is the difference that takes you out of one of those other
two gatherings and brings you into this gathering where they
are all of one heart and one soul? Quite simply, it is just
in those words that we've been looking at already, isn't it?
Great grace, great grace came upon them. They actually called
on the name of the Lord. They called on the name of the
Lord, Acts 2.27. They were gathered by God. They were gathered by God to
hear the message of the Gospel as Peter proclaimed it. But they
are gathered by God, as we see, in response to the promise, to
the response of a sovereign God, who in absolute divine, sovereign
election and mercy, gathers these people and brings them to himself,
and teaches them of himself. They will, they will be taught
of God. They will be taught of God. See,
God will be the teacher of his people. And when he teaches his
people, Isaiah 54, 13, great shall be the peace of thy children. It is just a wonderful thing
to ponder, isn't it? We hear and have to put up with
the fact that so many people say, well look at this thing
called Christianity, it is so ridiculously fragmented. How
on earth in the midst of all of that fragmentation can you
possibly find your way into something that might be true there? Surely
the fragmentation of the Church is one of the greatest testimonies
against the truth of the Gospel, and it is used by atheists continually
so. The reality is that God's children
are, and always have been, of one heart and one soul, because
they have one teacher. God teaches them. There is promise
to be divisions among them. There will be separations. There
will be, like Ananias and Sapphira, there will be people who superficially
join with the believers and are people who were no doubt esteemed,
no doubt when they brought that money. The money for a house. Your house, Lord. Bring it along
to church. Bring the money along to church.
and lay it down, we would be in awe and wonder, and they would
have been highly esteemed. And yet, and yet, there they
were in the church, looking like the genuine article, and yet
hypocrites and lost. And their instant destruction
is a warning to us all, isn't it? They are there to make true
believers cautious and not presumptuous. They are there to humble us.
They are there to cause God's servants to actually leave the
whole business of peace and assurance in the hands of the Lord. They
are there to remind us that it's only sovereign grace that makes
the difference. But the Church of Jesus Christ
is going to be gathered. Do we listen to what the world
says or do we actually believe what God says? God says he's
going to gather these people and he'll put them together and
they will be one. And the verses throughout the
scripture are multiplied, multiplied dozens and dozens, where this
is just promised. One of the ones that I love the
most is is Jeremiah 32. It's a great verse regarding
people getting married, although it's not about that. It's about
the marriage of the Lord Jesus and His bride. He says, Behold,
Jeremiah 32, 37, Behold, I will gather them out of the countries
where I have driven them in mine anger and in my fury and in great
wrath. And I will bring them again into this place, and I
will cause them to dwell safely. And they shall be my people,
and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and
one way, that they may fear me forever for the good of them
and of their children after them. And I will make an everlasting
covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them to do
them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they
shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them
to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with
my whole heart and with my whole soul. One of the things that's
remarkable about these declarations of God, and they are multiplied
throughout the scriptures, multiplied throughout the scriptures, is
that who does it all? Who does it all? He does it all,
doesn't he? The wonder of the gospel, the
wonder of the eternal covenant is that it is always couched
in terms of I will and they shall. I will and they shall. I will
gather them. and I will be their God. I will
give them one heart and one way that they may fear me forever for the good of them.
See, the Lord Jesus prayed, didn't he? We read The declarations
in Psalm 2 that the Apostles quoted earlier in Acts Chapter
4, and one of the things in Psalm 2 is that the Lord Jesus is asked
by the Father, He says, Ask of me, ask of me and I'll give the
heathen for thine inheritance. And the Lord Jesus, on the night
He died, He asked. He asked of His Father, didn't
He? And now I am no more in the world,
but these are in the world, and I come to thee, Holy Father.
Keep them through thine own name, those whom thou hast given me,
that they may be one as we are one. And towards the end of that prayer,
that they may be one, verse 21, that they may be one as Thou,
Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in
us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me. And the
glory which Thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be
one even as we are one, I in them. and thou in me, that they
may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that
thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me."
He asked. Did he get what he asked for,
brothers and sisters? Is he lacking something? Is he
wandering around in heaven trying to get these promises to come
to pass? not according to the scriptures,
he sits on the throne of this universe and he sits in heaven's
glory. For the rest of the New Testament
there is just an encouragement about this unity, isn't it, in
Romans 12? So we being many are one body
in Christ and everyone members of one another, that we may with
one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. There's an encouragement to speak
in 1 Corinthians 1. Speak the same thing, that there
be no divisions among you. Perfectly joined together in
the same mind, and judgment. There is, according to Ephesians
4, there is one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father over all who is above all and
through all and in you all. Is that true? God says it's true. So are they
going to be united? Are they going to be united in
one heart and one soul? They will be united in one heart
and one soul. One of the things that we delight
with is our visitors come from all over the world and what do
we find? What do we find when we meet
these people and we've never met them before and we don't
know anything much about them at all? And what happens? What
happens, brothers and sisters? We get together with them and
it's like you have met a long lost friend. And when you meet
them again, it's like picking up where you left off, wasn't
it? Exactly, one heart and one soul. The Lord Jesus Christ lives
in his people. And when he lives in his people,
he causes them to be united. He brings that unity. Whosoever believeth that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God, and everyone that loveth him
that begat, loveth him also that is forgotten of him. Those who
are born of God, they love him and they love those that are
born of him. They are born from above, brothers
and sisters. It is so true, isn't it, that
what we believe is determined by who we believe. And who we believe determines
what we believe. And who we believe determines
how we practice and what we do. I love this description of what
happened to these people. What gathered them together?
What made the difference between these people and the Jews? What
made the difference between these people and Ananias and Sapphira?
Who makes you to differ? It doesn't come from something
that's in you. That's why grace is such a glorious
thing, isn't it? This is the first description
in the New Testament Church Age of the word grace. All the references
to grace prior to this in the Gospels are references in relation
to the Lord Jesus Christ. The law was given by Moses, but
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. As I said earlier, this
is called great grace here. Why is it great grace? Because
we're great sinners, brothers and sisters. We need great grace. We need great grace to observe
a great God. We need great grace to see that
we are great sinners. We need abundant grace and we
need exceeding grace. And we need special grace, don't
we? We need grace that's great in
its origin. We need grace that's great in
its revealing power. We need grace that is powerful
to work. What did the Lord Jesus say?
They quoted Psalm 110. The promise of Psalm 110 is that
thy people, the people that belong to you, will be made willing
in a day of His power. When He acts in power, His people
are made willing. They're made willing to repent,
they're made willing to believe, they're made willing to join
together. We need great grace. There is throughout the world
this notion of common grace. Common grace? Great grace isn't
common grace, brothers and sisters. It's like common love, isn't
it? It goes together with common
love, that somehow God's love is exactly the same for everyone,
that God loved Judas exactly as He loved Peter. The common
grace is useless grace, isn't it? Common grace is worthless
grace. Just like common love. Common
love is meaningless love. A common death is a meaningless
death. The Lord Jesus Christ did not
die for everyone. He died with a purpose and He
died for a particular people and His grace is extended to
those people. To know what you feel about grace,
tell me what you feel about election. Your love of the doctrine of
election will reveal your love for the doctrine of grace. God's grace. is eternal, it's
according to His own purpose and grace that's given us in
Christ Jesus. When was the grace given to God's
people? It's great grace because it was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began. God's people had grace before
the world began, 2 Timothy 1.9. God's grace is free grace, justified
freely by His grace. God's grace acts on people regardless
of what they look like, regardless of what they say. And God's grace
is sovereign grace. He bestows it upon whomsoever
He pleases. Even so, might grace reign. The Lord God declares Himself
as one who is prepared and always will be. He'll be gracious to
whom He will be gracious. He'll be gracious to whom he
will be gracious. The scriptures speak nothing
of common grace. Grace. I love the description
that Arthur Pink has in his book, The Attributes of God. If you
want a copy, I think we may have some. I'll certainly get one
for you. It's just the most remarkable description. So much of preaching
is defining terms, isn't it? We want to define who the Lord
Jesus Christ is. We want to define Him as the
Scriptures define Him. We want to define Him as the
New Testament Church defines Him. We just want to define Him
so clearly that when you get to meet Him, lost or saved, you
will say, That's exactly what he was like. He was described
accurately to me. But grace, grace is the grace
that's in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no grace apart from Him. Grace is the sole source of love. It's the sole source of all the
blessings of salvation. It's the sole source of all those
blessings to a chosen people. Grace is only ever described
in the scriptures as grace toward a particular people, to God's
people. So it's not common. And grace
can't be frustrated. And grace is always powerful
and effective. And grace is only and it's always
to those who are guilty and undeserving and have no mirror in them. And
grace is only grace. when God bestows it on them who
have nothing to return to Him in any way. Grace is only grace
when it comes to those who are thoroughly ill-deserving and
thoroughly hell-deserving. Sovereign grace is unmerited,
it's unsought, it's not asked for, it's not desired. And it's totally and completely
unattracted by anything in or from the recipient of it. Is
that appealing to you, brothers and sisters? I find it very appealing,
I promise you. As I go on in this life, in this
world, and on as a Christian, I don't see sin getting worse.
I don't see progressive sanctification. I see the one place where all
the Christians are jostling for the head of the queue. Paul laid
claim, didn't he? He planted the flag and said,
I'm the chief of sinners at the end of his life. And all of God's
children are jostling for positions. We might not be there with Paul,
but we are jostling for a position there somewhere, aren't we? We
see ourselves as we grow in this world, we see ourselves more
and more clearly aware of the depths of our depravity and the
depths of our frailty. So that's why grace is so attractive,
isn't it? That's why John Newton called
it amazing grace. If you read his biography, you'll
realise why it was amazing grace for him, and how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me. Because it's common grace. You're
not a wretch. So grace is totally unattracted
by anything in or from the recipient. It can't be bought. It can't
be earned, and it can't be won. And the recipient of grace has
no claim upon it, because it's not due to him in any way at
all. It's God who bestows it. And
therefore, in the Scriptures, grace and works are completely
opposed to one another. They cannot ever be put together,
which is why the Church is persecuted. The Church is always going to
be persecuted. Grace believers will always be
persecuted by those who are works believers. Always. If it's of grace, it's no more
of works. You see grace, as we've seen
in these sermons in Acts, this Church now is the recipient of
great grace. It reveals the heart of natural
man, doesn't it? See, unbroken hearts hate the
fact that God is absolutely sovereign, and He rules over this world,
and He rules over you, and He rules over everything around
you and about you, and He rules with absolute sovereignty. and
your pretended free will and your pretended throne is a throne
that will be unmasked for what it is in time. See, unbroken
hearts hate the absolute sovereignty of God. And the self-righteous
hate the fact that it cannot be earned. The one thing that
distinguishes those other gatherings of people is that they had something
of merit in them, didn't they? Ananias and Sapphira had some
merit and some righteousness of their own, and the Jews had
all of their religion and all of their activities. Grace comes to those who are
strict of any self-righteousness at all, and rebels. Rebels hate the fact
that grace discriminates and makes a difference. And people
rise up, don't they, and they all join the not-it's-that's-not-fair
club. That's not fair for God to do
things that way. Grace is proclaimed in the Gospel. Grace is communicated by the
Holy Spirit. It's called the spirit of grace
and supplication in Zechariah 12, verse 10. And they will look
upon him who they have pierced, and they will mourn. God's children
will look upon the one that they have pierced, and they will mourn. It comes from God the Father,
it comes through God the Son, and it's enacted in the lives
of God's people by the Holy Spirit. And He applies, as I said earlier,
the Gospel to the souls, and He creates life where there was
no life. He creates spiritual life where
there was none before, as He did in the incarnation of the
Lord Jesus Christ when the Holy Spirit hovered, as it were, over
Mary, and the Lord Jesus was begotten into that womb. So,
in the preaching of the Gospel, God's children are born again,
aren't they? They are born again through the
preaching of the Gospel. There is life created where there
was none before. There is spiritual life, spiritual
life to see. spiritual life that raised the
dead, spiritual life that conquered rebellious wills, spiritual life
from God when hearts of stone are removed. The hardest object
in all of this creation is not a lump of steel or a bit of diamond.
The hardest object in all creation is the human heart, isn't it? Because not only is it hard,
it's hard in its beginning, but it grows harder. It grows harder
and harder. And it grows more blind and more
insensitive. It's amazing, isn't it, these
Jews who have started persecuting Peter and the other apostles,
they'll continue persecuting him. And then they say, in the
next chapter, in chapter 5, verse 28, they complain to the apostles
that they haven't obeyed them to be quiet, and they've been
talking, and they said, you've filled Jerusalem with your doctrine,
and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us. What have
they just said a few weeks earlier? Those same people let His blood
be upon us. The human heart, the human heart
is hard, brothers and sisters, and it grows harder. It grows harder in rebellion
unless God sovereignly works a mighty act of grace. That's why these apostles prayed
this prayer, didn't they? They prayed that they'd have,
with great grace and great power, they would have the Lord bear
witness to himself through the preaching of the Gospel. They
wanted a supernatural activity. They wanted something from God,
and God responded in remarkable ways. He responded by shaking
that place where they were, and He responded by giving them the
very thing that they asked for, which was a boldness. He responded
by giving them the signs and wonders which bore testimony
to the fact that they were of God and that the ministry of
the Lord Jesus Christ, shut out by men, snuffed out on Calvary's
tree, the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ goes on exactly
as it did before. He sits on Heaven's throne and
He rules, and He comes. That's what Acts 3 says, isn't
it? He will send Jesus. He will send Jesus Christ. Acts 3.20. Where does He send
Jesus Christ? He sends Him to His churches. and he comes to his churches
and he bears witness amongst his gathered people and he sends
him into the hearts of his people. If the Lord Jesus Christ is living
in my heart and he is living in your heart, brothers and sisters,
we will be of one soul and one heart, won't we? That's what
happens. That's the experience of God's
people throughout time. No wonder the scriptures are
just full of this admonition, isn't it, of how beautiful it
is for brethren to dwell together. And if you go back through Acts,
you will find that maybe a dozen or two times it actually speaks
about how they are one accord. They are all one accord. They
are one accord in one place. All the believers were together. and continually the Lord added
to the Church, such as should be said. They are witnesses and
they all describe one person and they all describe him in
exactly the same way. They describe the Lord Jesus
Christ as God in human flesh. They describe him as the one
who was promised in all of the scriptures. They describe him
with accuracy. And the Lord added to the church. Much people were added unto the
Lord and they increased in number daily. They were raised like
that crippled man at the gate in Jerusalem. They were raised
by a sovereign hand of Almighty God and they go into the temple
together with Peter and John and he holds on to them. And
then in the midst of persecution they stand together with them. The great grace and great power
caused their prayer and their desire to be fulfilled. They wanted to speak with boldness. They wanted just to speak His
words. That's what God's people want,
don't they? Just to speak what God says. We want for you in
our church to simply hear what God says. Not much interested
in the opinions of men. Not much interested in all the
opinions of the world. So where there is great grace
and where there is great power, there will be unity. And where
there is disunity, there's an absence of grace. You see, saving
grace and great grace puts all the recipients on the same plane. They're all beggars, aren't they?
All the chief of sinners. See, grace believers are receivers,
aren't they? They are received from God. They are not earners and they
are all born from above. They are one accord. They are one accord. They say
the same thing. They confess and they are baptised
and they are joined together. So what are they in one accord
about? They are in one accord about the fact that they have
heard a word from God. They are one accord in the fact
that they are in this remarkable declaration in Acts 2.27, they
actually had a wounding to their heart. It was a heart activity. God reached through the Gospel,
through the simple declaration of the Gospel, a place where
no man can ever reach. He reached their heart and He
pricked them in the heart. They were wounded in their heart. So that's why they hear, don't
they? They heard. They heard this. When they heard,
what did they hear? They heard a simple message that
they were the murderers of the Lord Jesus Christ. They heard a simple declaration
that this Jesus Christ whom they had murdered is now made of God,
both Lord and Christ. They heard a simple declaration
that they had with wicked hands taken him and denied him and
handed him over and they had colluded in corrupt manner with
Pilate and Herod and others to put him to death. They heard
that they were the sinner. There's one simple way to prove
the total depravity of man. When you think back on the moments
of the cross and those events, what is your automatic response
when you hear of the subtlety and the wickedness of the Jews
and the cowardly behaviour of Pilate? and the way they mocked
him and they tore out his beard and they ploughed his back, as
it were. The automatic response of us. Maybe it's just me, but isn't
there an automatic response? If I was there, I wouldn't have
done that. If I was there, I wouldn't have
joined. Isn't that the reality? I don't want to show of hands,
but that's just the reality, isn't it? God says that if you were there,
you would have done exactly the same thing. You would have done
exactly the same thing. We are, my friends, guilty of
the murder of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's exactly what these
people were charged with. So that's one of the wonders
of grace, isn't it? The wonders of grace is the wonder
of God plucking people out of something so deep and so dark
and gathering them from the very gates of hell by a sovereign
hand of God. A sovereign hand of God. You
see, all of the issues of Christian doctrine are solved by just that
one thing, that if you know yourself to be a sinner, if you don't
see yourself as the chief of sinners, then you don't need
a sovereign God and common love. and common grace and a common
death is fine. But if you see yourself, as these
people did on that day, as someone who was responsible for the judge
of all this world, for murdering the Son of God by wicked hands,
then you need a sovereign God. You need a God who is holy and
just. You need a God who is righteous. You need a salvation that is
more than just an offer. You need a salvation that actually
reaches to where you are, because you can't reach anywhere yourself.
You need a God who is both holy and just. It's the great declaration
of the Gospel, isn't it? The great wonder of this universe,
the one event around which all of history and all of this universe
and all of future revolves. The epicentre of all things is
what happened on the cross. Why would a holy and righteous
and just God put to death a holy and righteous and just son? What happened on the cross is
the big issue, isn't it? It is simply a declaration of
the fact that on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, He took
as His own all the sins of all of His people, and God the Father
put Him to death. God the Father put him to death
because those sins were owned by the Lord Jesus Christ as his
own. You see, if you believe, if you
believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for all the world and then
it's made available to you by your act of doing anything, whether
it's act of faith or act of repentance or any of those things, then
you have to declare that you do not believe that He is righteous
and He is holy. Because why? Why on what basis
could a holy and just God put to death His Son and still remain
holy and just? Proverbs 17. declares, 1715, He that justifieth
the wicked and he that condemneth the just, even they both are
abomination to the Lord. Even they both are abomination
to the Lord. So the Lord is not, our holy
and righteous God is not going to commit an act of abomination.
The death of the Lord Jesus Christ was the death under the strict
justice of God, because my sins were made His, and He bore them
in His own body on the tree, and He bore them away that they
are now in the court of God, they ceased to have existed. To be justified is to be someone
who has never ever sinned. never ever sinned in the court
of God, and yet God's people earn themselves to be the chief
of sinners. That's why in these declarations,
why these people are of one heart and one mind, and why there is
great grace, in Acts 2.38, there is remission of sins, isn't it? There is remission of sins. In Acts 3.19, it says that the
sins of these people are blotted out altogether. So if you see
your sins as black and grievous, the Gospel declares that they
were taken away by the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest news.
It is the most glorious thing. Sin cannot be in two places at
once. It cannot be on me, and it cannot
be on the Lord Jesus Christ. And he bore it, and he bore it
away, and God can't remember them anymore. They are hidden behind his back. A holy and just God. No wonder they were of one heart
and one mind. And all they wanted to do was
tell this story. Tell me that story over again.
Tell me what happened on the cross. Tell me what Psalm 110
says about my Lord Jesus Christ. Tell me what Psalm 2 says about
Him. Tell me what Psalm 16 tells about Him. I want to hear what
the scripture said about Him. And they promised these remarkable
things that he would see He would see our Saviour, He would see
the suffering of His soul. God the Father would see the
travail of His soul. And He would be satisfied. Satisfied. Sins gone forever. Righteousness. As righteous as
God is righteous. So near, so very near to God,
nearer I cannot be, for in the person of His dear Son I am as
near as He. Dear, so very dear to God, dearer
I cannot be, but in the person of His dear Son I am as dear
as He. They were of one accord. They were of one heart and one
soul. They were joined. They were joined
in that mystical marriage union to the Lord Jesus Christ. And all they wanted, all they
wanted was to grant unto your servants that with all boldness
they might speak your word. that they might be joined together
in the proclamation of who He is. And they would just keep
talking about Him. And they would take them and
put them before councils and they would kill them and they
would just keep talking about Him. They would just keep proclaiming
who He is because of what He'd done. Great sinners receiving
great grace, great sinners Receiving great power from on high. Great sinners receiving that
wonderful gift where all the things of this world could be
thrown away. You can have my house, you can
have my car, you can have the whole jolly lot. That's of course
is in Philippians chapter 3, isn't it? You can have it all,
as long as I can have Him. All of it is worth nothing compared
to him that I may win Christ. Let's pray.