We will sing those songs, the
wonder of what's being sung in heaven right now. and they sung
a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and open
the seals thereof. It's the book of God's eternal
covenant, the book of God's providence. It's the book of life. It's the book, the Lamb's book. And He's worthy to open the seals
thereof. And why? Why? They sing in heaven, you are
worthy to do all this because you were slain and has redeemed
us to God. You have brought us back. But
I love what it says, you are redeemed to God. You're redeemed
to his company, redeemed to his fellowship, redeemed into his
family, redeemed. Redeemed, redeemed to God, and
how did He do it? By thy blood. And He's done it, He's taken
them out. He takes His people out of every
kindred and tongue and people and nation. And thou hast made
us unto our God. kings and priests, and we shall
reign on this earth. Because He has the book, and
He has written the book, and everything in the book is about
Him and His glory, and His glory in particular in saving His people
to Himself. Blessed Redemption, brothers
and sisters. It's the glorious story of Acts,
isn't it? The wonderful thing about the
scriptures is that they are a biography of a church, like the biography
of God and his dealings with men. They are the biography of
every church that God has ever raised up on this earth. And
they are the biography of every individual member of those churches. We are reading in the scriptures
the story of our life. It is remarkable. No wonder so
many turn from it. No wonder it is so little read. But nevertheless, when God the
Spirit comes, as we saw last week, the Holy Spirit comes in
power. He comes in power to these chosen
ones. These ones set aside, there's
120 in this room. The room may well have been in
the temple, but it certainly was in Jerusalem. And we saw
last week that the Holy Spirit comes with suddenness. It comes
unexpectedly. The Holy Spirit, the glorious
Holy Spirit comes from heaven. He comes with a sound of mighty
rushing wind. mighty rushing wind, uncontrolled
by man, directed by God. And as the Lord Jesus told Nicodemus,
you don't know where it comes from and you don't know where
it's going, but it comes with God's power and God's purpose
and it cannot be stayed or stopped by all of the contrivance of
men. I saw a picture on the front
page of one of the newspapers yesterday and there was a man
in his mango orchard outside of Bowen and he was standing
beside a stump of a mango tree and that was all that was left
of his orchard. When the mighty rushing wind
of the Holy Spirit comes upon people, it just overpowers. It blows where it wills and the
Holy Spirit came with the appearance of fire and these tongues which
represented His presence, they sat on the heads of these 120
to indicate that His presence is there and His presence remains
with them. And the result of it, of course,
the result of it is the proclamation the proclamation of the Gospel,
and in summary, the Gospel is described in verse 11 as the
wonderful works of God. The wonderful works of God. Not
the wonderful works of man, but the wonderful works of God. They were filled with the Holy
Spirit, and as they were filled, it came out. They preached with
power. Grace gave these people hearing
ears and grace caused for the Gospel to be the savour of life
unto life. I think we might have to stop
for a second on account of that, isn't it? So I don't know how
our visitor is going to get out. You're very welcome darling. I hope you get well soon. Now this lady, she comes every
morning. She comes every morning and feeds
about 20 magpies in the main street and then up around here
as well. And she has names for all of
them. So that is a named magpie. Okay. Let's read these verses. I'd
just like to look again at some of these verses and we'll go
down to verse 13. In verse 5, Acts chapter 2, And there were
dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under
heaven. Now when this was noised about,
the multitude came together and were confounded, because that
every man heard them speaking in his own language. And they
were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold,
are not all these which speak Galileans? and how we hear every
man in our own tongue wherein we were born. It names them from
these 15 nations. Parthians and Medes and Elamites
and dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judea and Cappadocia and Pontus
and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in parts of Libya
about Cyrene. And strangers of Rome, Jews and
proselytes. The word proselyte means those
who were born Gentiles, but under the ministry of the Jews, they
actually became Jews and were considered to be Jews by the
Jews. They came, obviously, at a mature
age. They came to live under the laws
of Moses. They became circumcised and the
Jews considered them as one with them. Cretans and Arabians. We do hear
them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God and they
were all amazed and were in doubt saying one to another, what means
this? What does all this mean? Others
mocking said, these men are full of new wine. There are three
things that I would just like us to look at in the time before
us this morning. There is in these verses, there
is a description that God the Holy Spirit gives of these sinners. They are all sinners. There were 120 believers. The
others were all sinners. And then there is the description
that God the Holy Spirit gives of those God uses to declare
the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And then there is, as we'll see
through the rest of Acts, and as we have borne witness to over
and over again when we have endeavoured to proclaim the Gospel, there
are two responses to the Gospel, and only two. There are some
who say, what does this mean? What? What does this mean for
me? What does this mean for my understanding
of who God is? What does this mean for my soul's
destiny? What does this history mean? What do these verses that they're
quoting from the Old Testament mean for me? And verse 13 says,
others mocking said, these men are full of new wine. Basically these men are drunks. They accused the Lord Jesus Christ
of being a drunkard. That's what wine bidder means
in Luke's Gospel. They accused him of being a drunkard
and a glutton. God saves sinners. He came into this world to save
sinners. My friend John Bunyan has eight
reasons why God saves the worst of sinners. He says that God
saves the biggest sinners because they have the most need of salvation. God saves the biggest sinner
because He gets the most glory out of saving and He gets the
most fame through His name out of saving the biggest sinners.
God saves the biggest, vilest sinners because it shows other
vile sinners that there is salvation with the Lord. If He saves the
vilest sinners that have walked on this planet, then He might
just save you. God saves the biggest, vilest
sinners because As Bunyan puts it so delightfully, by saving
the colonels, the generals in Satan's army, God weakens Satan's
kingdom. God saves the biggest, vilest
sinners because they who know the most about temptations, the
most about what it is to be feeble-minded, most about what it is to be weak
and to fall and to fail. He saves them and puts them in
the church because they are the ones who are the biggest help
in the church to those who suffer similar temptations. If you have
been there, you know what it's like and you can sympathise and
understand with others. God saves, as Bunyan says, the
biggest, vilest sinners because those who have been forgiven
much love Him most. God saves the biggest, vilest
sinners because the vilest sinners shine forth much light in their
salvation. God saves the biggest, vilest
sinners because those left behind, those who in their self-righteous,
proud wickedness will not bow to the Lord. They will on the
Day of Judgment have no excuse, because bigger sinners than them
in their own eyes were saved. The question that lies before
us in Acts Chapter 2 is where does God find them? Where do
you think God would find these big vile sinners? You would think,
wouldn't you? Your natural inclination as mine
is that you think that you would go to the gutters and the brothels
and the dens of King's Cross and any other notorious place
on the planet and there you would find these vile sinners. Acts chapter 2, like all of the
Scriptures, undoes all of our natural thinking about who God
is and who men are. You see, the Gospel was preached
to these vile sinners in Jerusalem. Acts 2.5 says, now they were
dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews. Listen to how God the Holy Spirit
describes them. Devout men, devout men out of
every nation under heaven. Here they were, here they were. God describes them as devout
men. They'd come to Jerusalem, the place to worship God, the
place where men called on the name of God. Here they were in
Jerusalem. The word devout in the scriptures
is a description of people like Simeon and Cornelius, and it's
a description of those who carried Stephen's body to his grave after
he stoned him. But devout also is a description
of those who stood up in the crowd against Paul in Antioch
and wanted to take him out of the city and out of their land
altogether. It refers to believers, but it
also refers to those who have a zeal for God. These people
were here as zealous religious people. Every single one of them
in Jerusalem was there. This gospel message that we read
about in Acts 2 was preached to a religious crowd, a devout
religious crowd. And to that devout religious
crowd, Peter has one word for them all. All of them. And that
is, you repeat. Repeat is the word. There were
those who have a zeal for God and as Romans 10 so beautifully
describes, so many people that we meet, isn't it? For I bear
them record, says Paul, speaking of these Jews, speaking of nation
Israel, I bear them record that they have a zeal for God, Romans
10.2, but not according to knowledge, not according to knowledge of
themselves and not according to knowledge of God, not according
to knowledge of the Scriptures. For they being ignorant, of God's
righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness. That is such an accurate description
of almost every single person we meet. Going about to establish
their own righteousness, and if you ever doubt that that's
the case, you touch their righteousness. You touch their righteousness
just a little bit. you take away or touch their
morality and their goodness and you will find how much they are
clinging on to it. Going about to establish their
own righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness
of God. These people were going about.
The Jews that were in Jerusalem, the Jews that were gathered to
Jerusalem for this feast that the Lord demanded they go to. Paul may well have been there
somewhere in these crowds. As zealous as he was, and he
calls himself blameless before the Lord in Philippians 3, he
was probably there. And there were, as I said earlier,
There were these Jews, as Paul describes himself, that they
had great confidence in the flesh. They had great reason to boast,
didn't they? They could trace their lineage
back to the patriarchs, back to the twelve tribes of Israel.
They could trace their lineage back to Jacob and Israel. They
could trace their lineage back to Abraham. They can trace their
natural lineage according to the genealogy in the scriptures
in Matthew. They can trace their lineage
back to Adam. They can trace their lineage
back to God. And not only that, not only that,
these ones were devout, sincere and law-keeping. They travelled
great distances. The Jews had been scattered at
times and you can read in Esther's, the book of Esther, that in those
days, hundreds of years beforehand, the proclamation for the Jews
to save themselves went out to 127 provinces from Babylon. The Jews were scattered all around
the Mediterranean, all over that part of the world. But also some
of them were proselytes, those that had turned from their so-called
idolatry and they were now worth walking according to the law.
They were devout, weren't they? They were devout and devoted
and zealous. And no doubt as they went on
their journey to Jerusalem, they would have looked at all the
others that didn't go and felt a certain little tiny righteousness,
wouldn't they? Here I am. I am so devoted to
God. Look what I am doing. The proselytes were the fruit, so often, of those
missionary activities that the Lord Jesus Christ described.
The missionary activities of the Pharisees in Jerusalem. He describes it, he says, Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you compass,
you travel across land and sea to make one proselyte. They've
been very active in making proselytes, proclaiming to the Gentiles that
they must become Jews to be saved. The Lord Jesus describes those
that were converted under the teaching of the Pharisees that
they were now two-fold more a child of hell than before. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
Not only did they have their normal, natural, fleshly sins,
but on top of it they had self-righteous religion. And we'll see in time
what self-righteous religion did. So these were devout. They travelled a great distance.
They were motivated in their travels by the Word of God, by
God's prophets, And here they were obeying God's word. They may well have been there
because the Jews didn't need to be much of a mathematician
to know that the 70 weeks of Daniel was up. There was huge
messianic expectation. They may have been there because
they thought something remarkable was going to happen in Jerusalem. And so did the apostles. They
said to the Lord Jesus as he was about to go back to heaven,
is the kingdom now going to be restored to Israel? And Peter, Peter's response to
the Jews and to the proselytes, to these devoted men, is that
you repent. You repent and be baptised. You repent and be baptised. See the lesson, the lesson at
the beginning of Acts, the lesson at the beginning of the history
of the Church in this Gospel Age is a fundamental lesson,
isn't it? That these vile religious wretches
need salvation. You need to be saved You need
to be saved from yourself and you need to be saved from the
religion, the religion of man, which fills this earth like a
flood. We must be saved, not just from
our sins, but we must be saved from what we think is our righteousness.
These zealous religious people, there they were, as they did
in the days after the so-called Reformation. They preached sermons
while they burnt the Lord's people. They preached sermons as they
burnt Wycliffe and Huss and all of those guys. They preached. See, Peter makes no distinction.
When he preaches this sermon that we'll look at in the next
few weeks, he preaches it to all of that crowd. They were
all there and they were all in exactly the same situation. No
matter what devotion they had, no matter where they'd come from,
whether they came from a Gentile background or a Jewish background,
all of it meant nothing. All of it meant nothing. I suppose that's the question,
isn't it, that lies before us as we contemplate these things
in our own personal experience. Am I devout? Am I sincere? And am I lost? Because that's
exactly the state of these people. Devout, zealous, sincere and
lost. Am I looking? Am I looking for
some witness in myself, something that I have done, something that
I have achieved, something that I no longer do? Am I looking to the law to give
me satisfaction, the things that I've done, the goodness and the
zeal and the other things? Or am I looking, have I been
led by God? Has He swept away what Isaiah
calls that refuge of lies, that hiding place of lies? We cover
ourselves in this world with a refuge of lies. Has God swept
it away so that there is nothing? There is nothing except Jesus
Christ, not what I have done for Him, but what God has done
for me. I love how the Gospel is described,
isn't it? The Gospel proclamation in verse
11 is the wonderful works of God, not the wonderful works
of man, not the wonderful works of man ailing God. It's the wonderful
works of God. All of the law and the prophets
which had drawn these men to Jerusalem Christ. They bear witness to
Him. They don't bear witness to the
righteousness of man. They bear witness to His words,
to His righteousness, to His salvation, to His sanctification,
to His finished work, not to mine, not to me. It is the wonder of grace, isn't
it? The wonder of grace is that grace
is only grace to those who have nothing. Grace is only grace
to those who have nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the
cross I cling. I love how Romans 3.21 describes
it. He said, but now the righteousness
of God without the law is manifested. You see, this righteousness of
God without the law is witnessed in the law and the prophets,
witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness
of God which is by faith, by the faith of Jesus Christ. unto and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference, for
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified
freely." That word freely means without any cause. They hated the Lord Jesus freely. They hated Him without any cause. Justified freely by His grace. through the redemption that's
in Christ Jesus. See, these people were zealous,
weren't they? They were devoted, they had a
zeal of God, they travelled great distances to obey the law of
God. And yet Peter says that all that
they have ever done in coming to Jerusalem, in being in Jerusalem,
their circumcision, all of their activities. All of them need
to be repented of. Not one of them made them righteous. What a great place. What a great
place for the Gospel to be first proclaimed. The last place on
planet Earth the apostles would want to have gone to is Jerusalem. It's the one place that God sends
them to. It was back to the place where
man's religion had a freedom with God just once. And what did they do, these zealous
religious people, when confronted with God in human flesh? They took him and nailed him
to a tree. Just seven weeks earlier, just
seven weeks earlier, this was the place. This is the place where God the
Holy Spirit To these people who had cried out, crucify him, crucify
him. To these people, as we'll see
in verse 13, to these people who could stand in judgment of
God, God sent the gospel to. What a great place for God to
start, with the vilest of the vile, in the place where man
displayed what he really feels about God. in the place where
man's best religion and best religious zeal had caused there
to be the greatest sin that this planet had ever borne witness
to. God goes to the epicentre of
it, doesn't he? The epicentre of it. One writer said, and I'm sorry
I don't know his name, he says, in the thief on the cross we
see God saving a man in the very height of immorality. He wasn't
crucified just for some petty crime. He was in a very serious
state. A man in the very height of immorality.
In Saul of Tarsus we see God saving a man in the very height
of religion. And in both of them we see our
Redeemer's ability to save to the uttermost those who come
to God by Him. I would just like us to look. They're the sinners. that Peter is sent to preach
to, and the others of the 120 who preached. The sermon that
Peter preached is a summary of their sermons. They were of one
accord, they were of one mind. They had one message, the early
church. And now, verse 6, And now when
it was noise abroad, the multitude came together, and they were
confounded, because they heard that every man speak them in
his own language. And they were all amazed and
marvelled, saying one to the other, Behold, are not all these
which speak Galileans? I don't know that in our communities
we actually have anything that allows us to consider what Galileans
were. No doubt there are some people
who are so prejudiced against Aboriginals and people of other
races that they would use all sorts of terms in terribly derogatory
ways and they'd lump them all together. But Galileans, as far
as the Jews were concerned, The Galileans, as far as the religious,
the most religious Jews were concerned, were the scum of the
earth. They were the lowest of the low. They were looked down upon. They
were looked down upon. And they were looked down upon
especially by devout men. You might remember in John chapter
1 when Philip comes to Nathanael and he says that Jesus at Nazareth
has come. He is the one who has fulfilled
the law and the prophets. And Nathaniel's response, typical
Jewish response, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Can anything good come out of
Nazareth? We hear them speaking in our
tongues the wonderful works of God, but they were Galileans. Those who heard this Gospel,
this first Gospel preached, were devout religious men. And those
who preached it were Galileans. They were considered unwise,
unlearned and despicable people. They were at the very top of
what was originally Nation Israel and so they were up there nearer
the trading routes and they mixed with the Gentiles and they were
considered dirty in all sorts of ways. They were looked down
upon. In Acts 4.19, before these wise
and learned religious people, they perceived There they are,
they can stand in judgement of these Galileans, but they were
unlearned and ignorant men. That was the typical description
of them. So why? Why would God, having gathered together the
vilest of the vile in religion on this planet, use those who
were most despised to preach it to them? Graham read it to
us earlier, didn't he? For you see a calling, brethren,
that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise. And God has chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the things that are
mighty. And the base things of the world,
the things which are despised, God has chosen, yea, and the
things which are not, to bring to naught the things that are.
Why did he choose the Galileans? 1 Corinthians 1.29 says that
no flesh should glory in his presence. When God builds his
church and when God saves his sinners, he's going to use the
lowest of the low. He's going to use the most ordinary
that he could find. He's going to use those who have
been very much aware of the depths of their frailty and will continue
to be made so. Galileans. The Galileans, they
are the base things in the eyes of the religious world. They
are the foolish things. They are the weak things. And
now these Galileans are speaking in foreign languages. That's
what the tongue speaking is about and that's what Biblical tongue
speaking is always and only always all about. It is speaking in
a known language. Any other tongue speaking is
deceptive, and just a fleshly activity of proud men. God never changes tongue speaking
in the scriptures. It always remains someone like
Jennifer coming to someone from Greece and speaking fluent Greek
and speaking the wondrous works of God. These men were proclaiming the
Old Testament, proclaiming the Gospel, and they were expounding
the Law and the Prophets. They were teaching out of the
Old Testament, and they were teaching in such a way that those
with all of their learning and all of their religious zeal and
all of their hard work and all of their devotion, didn't have
a clue what was going on. It's a bit like Nicodemus, isn't
it? The scriptures say he is the teacher of Israel. He was
the greatest teacher, he was the professor of the professors
of Israel, the most learned Jew in all of Israel. And the Lord
Jesus Christ, in my understanding, just expounded something out
of Ezekiel 36 to him about the work of the Holy Spirit, the
activities of God in the new birth, and Nicodemus didn't have
a clue. Devout, religious, and as blind
as a bat, They preached, didn't they? They
preached redemption. They preached the Lord Jesus
Christ nailed to a tree. And Peter stood up with a message
from God, not a message about who they were as apostles and
Galileans. He preached as a man who had
nothing in himself to commend himself to them. The remarkable
thing, isn't it, in the providence of God is that Peter and those
other Galileans were there at the head of the Jewish church
and remained apostles to the Jews for the next 20 or 30 years. Every time they opened their
mouth, to those Jews, they would have had reason to mock them
and to look down upon them. One of the things that's difficult
for us is we sort of live in an Australian egalitarian society. We don't know how language divides
people and how people who speak proudly are contemptuous of those
who don't speak with their dialect. In India it was extraordinary
how I was treated and other Australians no doubt were mocked by people
with really posh English for our Australian accent, which
I was born with. But that was the situation of
those apostles for the rest of their days, when they opened
their mouth to proclaim the wondrous works of God. What the flesh
of the men witnessing it, how they reacted, was one instantly
of repulsion. They had nothing in themselves
to commend themselves to God, these proclaimers of the Gospel,
nor did they have anything in themselves to to commend themselves
to men. They were just fishermen. They
still would have been dressed in those clothes. They wouldn't
have been dressed in fancy robes and they wouldn't have carried
on in any fancy way. They were just simple, simple
fishermen proclaiming the wondrous works of God. And these Jews,
these Jews with all of their heritage, with all of their religion,
They reveal to us, don't they, that all of the natural learning,
all of the natural abilities, all of the natural privileges
of this world do nothing in salvation. You see, the proclamation of
the Gospel is a grace activity of God, and the response to the
Gospel is a grace activity of God. 100% the power of God. That's why
the Spirit comes as a mighty rushing wind. It doesn't need
man's permission and it won't be moved by man's opposition.
Salvation is by grace. God begins this Gospel Age, brothers
and sisters, with proclaimers who have nothing in themselves
to commend themselves to anyone. And God begins this Gospel Age
with hearers who have nothing in themselves to commend themselves
to God at all. Nothing's preaching to nobodies
who have nothing good in them in any way. You see, God uses
the lowest to preach to the highest because He will have His people
bow. He will have His people bow to
His word of revelation and He will have His people find their
highest estate on this earth. in the lowest place possible. Romans 10 says that they went
about to establish their own righteousness. They are as busy
as little beavers establishing their own righteousness. But
they would not submit. There is, in the grace of the
Gospel of our God, there is a submission to the righteousness of God.
The proud deceive themselves in their pride. See, every knee
will bow. See, beggars bow. Those who are pleading bow. And the proud stand erect for
a while, just for a while. The wonderful thing about bowing
is that those who bow can't fall any further. They have been brought
to the best place that human beings can be brought to on this
planet, as low as you can possibly go. Also, believers will follow
their Lord's path to glory. Philippians 2 describes our Lord
Jesus Christ. Philippians 2, who being in the
form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made
himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant
and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion
as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also has highly
exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
and things on earth, and things under the earth. and that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of
God the Father. His path to glory is the path
to glory of His children and His Church. They will be brought
low. They will be esteemed as nothing
in the eyes of this world. on their way to glory. Don't trouble yourselves, brothers
and sisters, when you are brought low or esteemed as low. It's a good place to be." There
is remarkable Remarkable gift of God in the providence of those
who were there brought to Jerusalem to hear the Gospel proclaimed.
And there was remarkable wisdom of God in the nature of those
who proclaimed. And in verse 12 and 13 we read,
And they were all amazed and were in doubt, saying one to
the other, What meaneth this? Others mocking. These men are
full of new wine." You see, in verse 12, there is an honest
inquiry. They have witnessed something
which is beyond human understanding. It's beyond, it hasn't ever happened
before in history. And it is happening in this place,
where the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, he's been proclaimed
as Lord and Christ, he's been proclaimed as their God and their
Messiah. It's an honest inquiry, isn't
it? What does this mean? What does this mean? What does
this mean? What does this mean about my
understanding of who God is? What does this mean about my
understanding of who I am? What does this mean about my
understanding of how God saves people? What does this mean about
my understanding of history and the world around me? These things
can't be explained. I had chatted to John earlier
just to remind myself of the story, but John came to me having
heard all sorts of stories in another place about how wicked
and deceptive and all sorts of other things. I possibly don't
know them, I didn't want to know them then, I don't want to know
them now, but what a dodgy character I was. And John came along because
we'd known each other before I went to India. And he wanted
to find out, he was saying, what does this mean? What does this
mean? I didn't know what they said
and I wasn't interested in what they said. We actually spent
the next hour or so reading the scriptures and talking about
the Lord Jesus Christ. It is part of the path, isn't
it, to salvation, that question, what does this mean? What is
really going on? A serious searching out of the
truth. And it's very interesting, isn't
it? It's very interesting what the mockers say. Just look at
the words again there with me. You see, the others mocking said,
these men are full of new wine. Exactly the same happens over
and over again in our experience, in our histories, isn't it? Is that the religious, these
devout men, Devout religious people will always try and find
some human explanation for these things. You be wary of that Simon
Bell. He can take the Scriptures and
he can do all sorts of amazing things with the Scriptures. You
be careful of these men. They've actually been deceived
by others. They've actually learned how
to manipulate others. They are. The fleshly religious
men can only ever respond in fleshly ways to the Gospel. It is the grace of God that takes
the spiritual and makes it precious. It's the grace of God which takes
the Word of God and makes it spirit and life to people, a
revealing of who Christ is are revealing of His Gospel and His
salvation. You see they, because of their
religious zeal and because of their supposed wisdom and because
of their righteousness and all of their history, look what we've
done for God. We've travelled across land and
sea and we've brought these proselytes here. We've been great missionaries. We've built this great church
here in Jerusalem. This great building, we've built
these amazing Bible colleges here in Jerusalem. We've got
these amazing missionary organisations, these amazing works of charity.
We've done all this and here we are and we come twice a day
to the temple and we do our sacrifice and we do all of that stuff over
and over again. And because of that, because
of our religious activities, we can stand in judgement. It's
exactly what they did to the Lord Jesus again and again and
again. What do they say? He's a-gotten and a-drunkard. He's been taken over by Beelzebub. He's gone stark raving mad. That's what his family thought
of him, that he needed to be rescued from what he was and
what he'd become. The natural man, to the natural
man the things of God are foolishness, foolishness. But in their foolishness
they will always find a reason to stand in judgment and not
ask the simple question, what does this mean? I bear testimony
to many of what many of you have said. What do we long for? What
do we long for? We long for someone to come and
say, what does this mean? We long for someone to come and
say, let's read the scriptures together. And what we have, what
we have so often is that we have to listen again and again to
men proclaiming their righteousness. All we want to do is to have
an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel. God's children will be
saying, what does this mean? They will. They will be saying. What shall we do? What shall
we do? Which is the crowd's response,
the response of some of the crowd. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed,
the natural religious people will be mocking, always. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed,
there will be a division in humanity. just as the Lord on that cross
had a saved man saved by grace, a testimony to the wonder of
the grace of God, this man who had done nothing to commend himself
to God, this man who could do nothing to ever commend himself
to God. And what did he say? Lord. He acknowledged that bleeding,
dying man hanging on a cross beside him was actually God. And he had a simple prayer, didn't
he? God, remember me. He had a simple confession of
faith. I deserve to be here crucified. And he had a simple a simple
gospel declaration from the Lord Jesus Christ, today, today you
will be with me in paradise. There is a twofold response. There will be always a two-fold
response when God takes nobodies to proclaim to nobodies, proclaim
to nobodies who think they're somebodies, such that the Lord
Jesus Christ will be glorified in the proclamation of the Gospel. And as Graham read earlier out
of 1 Corinthians 2, that your faith Your faith should not stand
in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." Who made the difference? Who
made the difference? Was it the wisdom of men? God
made the difference. Who made you to differ? Who made
you to differ? in bringing these languages together
and unraveling them and causing everyone to hear is undone that
work of Babel, isn't it, where man in his righteousness, man
in his self-righteousness and his pride said, I'll build a
tower, I'll build a tower unto heaven, he said. And God came
and he confused their languages and scattered them throughout
the earth. And now he's brought them back
together. He's brought them back. He brings
them together. And the wonderful comfort, brothers
and sisters, as we close, is that these people contemplate
for a minute, these people who heard this Gospel for the first
time. his apostles back to Jerusalem,
to the very place where they had nailed the Lord Jesus Christ
to the cross. These men, in their devotion
to the law, had been brought to the very city where the Lord
Jesus had accomplished redemption. Just think, what some of those
elect children of God had just done seven weeks earlier. In that crowd, crying, crucify
him, crucify him. In that crowd, mocking the Lord
Jesus Christ. What great encouragement, brothers
and sisters. If you, like me, have been made
mindful yet again of something of your weakness and your frailty,
had the heinousness and the horribleness, the willfulness of sin exposed
before you yet again, our great God Our great God saves the chief
of sinners. What grace, what grace, what
mercy. Our God is not like us. He doesn't change and His love
for these people had not changed one little tiny bit. He loved his own with an everlasting
love as they drove the nails into his hands. He loved them
everlastingly and he can't change and he won't change his love
for his own no matter what. You see, mercy and grace brought
these people to repent and to believe. In the providence of
God, the law and the prophets had brought them to this place
at this time to carry out these activities. But it was mercy
and grace, mercy and grace that brought these people to the Lord
Jesus Christ. The response of men does not
change the Gospel one little tiny bit. I love, it's amazing
what 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14 and 15 says. Now thanks be
unto God who always, which always causes us to triumph in Christ
and make manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every
place. And I love what it says. brothers
and sisters who join in our Church's proclamation of the Gospel. For
we are unto God, we are unto God a sweet saver of Christ. We are unto God a sweet saver
of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish. We are
a sweet saver unto God. In them that question what does
this mean and were saved, we are a sweet savour unto God in
the proclamation of the gospel. In them that are mocked, we are
a sweet savour unto God. All of the things that religion
offers in this world account for absolutely nothing. One thing
matters, brothers and sisters. Our God reigns. Our Lord Jesus Christ will have
his bride with him. There will be a marriage supper.
There will be a time when people will proclaim and talk of His
wondrous works. That's what church is about,
to proclaim His wondrous works. O Lord, Thou art my God, I will
exalt Thee, I will praise Thy name, for Thou hast done wonderful
things, and Thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. That's Friday.