One of the wonderful things about
the Lord Jesus coming to meet with his apostles after the resurrection
is that so much of what happened to those apostles is so evidently
what happens in the lives of God's saints in this world so
often. And so the scriptures give us
account after account of the sum of the things that the Lord
Jesus did in those extraordinarily special 40 days. This remarkable time in human
history, this remarkable time in the history of God's people,
this transition from His incarnation to His reign in heaven, to go
back and have the glory that he had from the foundation of
the world, and for him to send with the Father, to send the
Holy Spirit. I love what our verses say. He
says that you'll be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many
days hence. It's remarkable, isn't it? The
Holy Spirit is God Himself, and you will be immersed. immersed
so that you are not seen to the eyes of this world, but completely
immersed in Him. We might read these verses again
that we've been looking at for a little while and as Simon said
earlier, there is a foundation that's laid here which is so
special and precious and the Lord Jesus continues to do the
things via the Holy Spirit. He continues to do those things.
that he did in those days. Acts begins, isn't it, the former
treatise, Have I Made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do
and teach. This is referring to Luke's Gospel.
Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through
the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had
chosen, to whom he also showed himself alive after his passion
by many infallible proofs. being seen of them forty days,
and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And being
assembled together with them, commanded them that they should
not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father,
which saith he, You have heard of me. For John truly baptised
with water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost
not many days hence. When they therefore were come
together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this
time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And He said unto them,
It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the
Father hath put in His own power, but you shall receive power after
the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto
Me, both in Jerusalem and in Judea, and in Samaria and unto
the uttermost parts of the earth." We're about as uttermost as you
can get from Jerusalem. It's nice to see our part of
the world so often described in the scriptures. The islands,
we are one of the islands, one of the habitations of the Gentiles,
one of the places to which the Lord has promised to send His
Gospel, to gather His people out. And as I speak to sinners wandering
on their way from this earth to their reward, we have to think
again, don't we, of what it must have been like for those apostles. how many of them carried such
a great weight of heaviness in those days after the resurrection. You might recall the accounts
of how proud they were on that night that he was betrayed, how
proud they were that no matter what happened they would all
stand there with him. And Peter, the proudest of all,
fell so grievously They made these great promises, didn't
they? They made the great promises of being with Him, of dying with
Him. What heaviness filled their hearts,
as not only did they have to cope with the evidence laid out
before them of their own weakness and their own inabilities and
their own insecurities as He was taken away, taken away and
crucified. And as Simon read to us out of
Isaiah 52, it is instructive to think, isn't it, that his
face was marred beyond recognition, so marred more than any man. Again, I remind you, every picture
you have ever seen of the Lord Jesus Christ is a blasphemous
and dangerous lie. And it's why we don't want to
see them, we don't want to promote them. All of the religious symbolism
of this world is all deceitful and all profoundly unhelpful,
because it all robs our great God of His glory. How much they must have felt
such darkness and heaviness. He in whom they had trusted. He who cared for them. He who sailed with them on the
ship. on the Sea of Galilee and calmed
the storms and calmed their fears and again and again and again.
Never once did the Apostles have to defend themselves before the
enemies of the Gospel. He stood there before them. He
stood there between them and their enemies like a shepherd
protecting his sheep from the wolves that were around them
and said, you don't touch them. You cannot touch them unless
you touch me. And He was, as we read in Isaiah
50, He was the God of this universe and He reigned. And now what
a failure it must have seemed to those people. He saved others,
but He cannot save Himself. No wonder they asked, when they
saw him again in this passage here, they asked him, will you
restore the kingdom to Israel? They had earthly thoughts about
the kingdom and they had sadly earthly thoughts about him. What darkness they must have
felt. So much they felt of the things
that we feel so often, don't we? How cold. their supposed love for him was. How cold it must have seemed. How in cowardice and selfishness
they had abandoned him. How uncertain and dangerous their
future seemed to be. How heavy, how heavy their sin
and abandonment of him now expires. How heavy must Thomas have felt
in that week. See the painful dark experience
of unbelief is a reality to the child of God, how often they
must have thought, as some of you no doubt do, how can I approach
Him again? How can I have fellowship with
Him again when I've done such harm to Him? So these 40 days
are so instructive to burden saints
and so helpful, you think of what happened in the midst of
all that darkness. It was he who came to Mary weeping
outside the tomb. She had lost everything and now
even his body was taken from her and she was there now weeping. We've read the story of those
disciples on the road to Emmaus. bewildered and perplexed. They
thought that he was the Messiah to come, but now it seemed evident
that he wasn't. How often those wicked Pharisees
must have quoted Scripture to those believers in the Lord Jesus
Christ. How much they must have quoted
the Scripture and said, anyone that hangs on a tree is cursed
of God. We can take you to the Word of
God and prove to you that he's not the Messiah because he's
cursed of God. again and again. No wonder they
were so vociferous in demanding that He be crucified. We're getting
crucified, we can take Him to the Scriptures and prove that
He's not the real Messiah. No wonder the disciples spent
their time in Jerusalem, those evenings, in a locked room, locked
for fear of what was happening around them, how Peter must have
felt, what remarkable visits they must have been. When the
Lord Jesus came to Peter again, the last Peter had seen of him
is in the court of Caiaphas, isn't it? And he
betrayed him the three times and the cock had crowed. And the Lord looked at him and
Peter went out and he wept bitterly, it says. What was the look of
the Lord to him? The look of the Lord was a look
of love, a look of understanding, a look of compassion. a look
of someone who fully understands what Peter is going through,
who was about fully to bear all the sin in that, and carry his
grief and his guilt and his shame. It is remarkable what the Scriptures
say about what the Lord Jesus carried. No wonder his face was
marred beyond that of other men. But he who comes, isn't it? He
who comes again and again, he comes to Peter and restores him. He comes to Thomas, who had doubted
people. He had absolutely no reason in
the world to doubt. For a whole week he doubted those
other ten apostles and said, I will not believe. And yet he
came to them. See, in every instance, it's
He who comes to them. It's He who opens blind eyes. He comes to a weeping Mary. He comes to a broken-hearted
Peter. He comes to a fearful group of
disciples. And He comes and He speaks a
word to them, doesn't He, again and again. He says, Peace. Peace is the word that he brings
to his people. Peace is the word that he brings
to Thomas. He comes to them and he continues
to come to them. You see, one of the wonderful
things about the salvation of God is that we think We think
as natural men in the flesh. We think that it's our abilities. We think it is our achievements. We think that it's our character,
the goodness of our character, the morality of our lives, which
makes us fit for heaven's glory, the recipients of grace. The
recipients of grace never have any qualifications. Our qualification
is that we are weak and unable. We think that our sin, our many
sins, shut us out from heaven, shut us out from His company,
but He came to save. Again, I must remind you that
we so readily think that our abilities and achievements and
our attainments are qualifications for grace, and in this they are
never a qualification for grace. The qualification for grace is
to have nothing and only have perfect demerits before God. What a gracious saviour, what
a wonderful saviour for sinners, for those who are weeping, for
those who are broken hearted over their sin, for those who
are fearful and hiding, for those who doubt, for even for the persecuting
Saul, he comes to them. And when you think about the
experience so many of them had, so much, so much, if not all
of their grief and anguish was that his word of promise had
been sealed from them for a while. You think as you read the Gospels
a number of times, he told them again and again and again, that
every opportunity he said, this is what's going to happen to
me. I'm going to Jerusalem. I am in charge here. I am the sovereign God. I am
going to Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem I'm going to
be spat upon. I'll have my beard plucked out.
I'll have my back ploughed as with a furrow. I will be marred
beyond recognition. I will be crucified. I will be hung on a Roman tree
with nails in my hand and my feet and a crown of thorns on
my head. I will be mocked by men. I will die. I will be buried. And he never
left it there, did he? He never left it there. And I
will rise again. Three days later, I will rise
again." He rises again to come to his people. He rises again
to proclaim the glories of redeeming love, that their sins have now
been put away manifestly forever. that a holy and righteous God,
as he says in Acts 1.4, can assemble together with them, can live
together with them who had just in those days before abandoned
him, with all of their promises littered to the ground. He comes
to them. He comes to them in their darkness. And He comes and He reveals Himself
alive. And He reveals Himself as the
Word of God. He speaks personally to them. He speaks directly to them. He
speaks powerfully to them. He speaks to the very heart of
the concerns of the people. And He brings balm for every
pain, and for every hurt, and for every sin, and for every
sorrow. He is the Great Physician. He
was involved in the wounding, so He knows precisely how to
heal the wounds. And His appearances, these appearances
that I want to look at today, they proclaim again and again
those words from the cross. those words that ought to ring
in our ears again and again when we doubt. It is finished. Whenever we doubt, we ought to
be saying, it is finished. All of your righteousness is
finished. Your righteousness is Him. It's not your activity. What's
His name? He's called the Lord righteousness. What's the name of the church?
You can read about it in Jeremiah. The name of the church, her name
is exactly the same as his, the Lord our righteousness. Not the
righteousness of our activities. I love how Psalm 68 says, to
him belong the issues from death. To him belong the issues. all
of what issues, all of what flows from his death belongs to him. As we saw in John 14 a little
earlier, the reason he comes and assembles together with his
own is because he is one with him. They are one with Him, and
He lives in them. This is one of the glorious things
that we'll see as we go through Acts. The wonder of the Holy
Spirit is to take the things of the Lord Jesus Christ and
reveal them to them. Again and again He reveals them
to us. His death. By His death He obtained
for us faith and repentance. Every grace gift you will ever
receive will come from those blood-stained hands. Come from Him. We read it last
week, he gave himself, Ephesians 5, he gave himself for his church
that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water
by the word. He gave himself for us, Titus
2.14, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, all iniquity,
not just a little bit, all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar
people, a particular people. He entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. He has in
his hand eternal redemption for us. And now, unto you, when He
comes, when He comes and reveals Himself as God Almighty, as Saviour,
who lived and died and now reigns, He says, unto you, it is given
on behalf of Christ to believe in Him. It's a given, it's a
gift given by Him, a gift given by Him to those who have never
earned anything from God ever and will never ever earn anything
from them by anything they ever do. All of faith and believing,
every spiritual blessing, every blessing for your eternal soul
are given by Him. and they are given by him because
of his death. What does Isaiah 53 say? By his
knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he
shall bear their iniquities. He actually bore the sins of
his people in his own body on that tree outside of Jerusalem. And because of that, we read
here in Acts that He brings His people, He brings His chosen
ones, He brings His blood-bought ones, He brings them to Jerusalem. Simon read it to us in Isaiah
52, when you read Zion in the Scriptures, you read the family
of God. that heavenly Jerusalem. They
are brought to Zion. They are converted because they
have been redeemed. He claims them as His own. He has in this world a people
who are His and He claims them as His own. He's bought them
by His blood. They are called the ransomed
of the Lord. for the Lord has redeemed Jacob
and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than
he. Therefore, Jeremiah says, they shall come and sing in the
height of Zion. The ransomed of the Lord shall
return and shall come to Zion with songs." That's where they
are now, aren't they? They've come to Zion with songs. One of the wonderful things about
true, genuine Christianity is that it's founded on realities.
The existence of God and the character of God are realities
in everyone's experience. God says they are. and the realities
of His Word and the realities of His actions in time. They
are historic realities, which is why I just want to look at
some of them again. They're historic realities. Historic
realities over thousands of years, every single one of them, written
down and promised by God, written down for all to see and read. Why? Why Jerusalem? for this
event. It had to be Jerusalem for so
many reasons, but one of the reasons is that there were millions
of people in Jerusalem and around it. There were, according to
historians, a million people who were there in Jerusalem at
the time of His crucifixion, and most of them stayed for that
time of Pentecostal. They had to go and come back
again if they were zealous Jews. So there was an enormous crowd
of people who were there. An enormous crowd were there
in those days. They were all historic realities. When the day of Pentecost comes,
which we'll be looking at in a little time in Acts, there
were hundreds of thousands of people there. These things, as
the Scriptures say, were not done in a corner. They're never
done hidden away. They are done in such a way that
all of humanity is exposed to their reality. See, Acts is a
book of history. The Scriptures are a book of
history. It's His story. It's the story
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Which is why he gave, he showed
himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, being
seen of them for 40 days. One of the verses that I've really
taken a deep liking to lately is in 2 Timothy 3.14, it says,
but you continue, As you walk through this world,
Paul is in Rome with the sword glittering above his throat,
as it were, and he says to his friend Timothy, in his dying
words to him, he says, you continue in the things which you have
learned and have been assured of. You continue in the things
that you have learned and been assured of, knowing of whom thou
hast learned them. You learn them from His witnesses. You learn them from His witnesses
who are led by the Lord Jesus Christ, to bear witness to Him. What does He say to these people? You will receive power, in verse
8, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and you shall
be witnesses to me both in Jerusalem and all Judea and in Samaria
and into the uttermost parts of the earth." That's us here
in Australia. The uttermost parts of the earth. We are, we are as we gather here
today, We are bearing witness to a promise that was made and
written down thousands of years ago. Every time the Church of
God gathers together, we are fulfilling promises written down. which is why Acts gives us so
much history as does the rest of the New Testament. And once
history is established, it doesn't matter what anyone ever thinks
about it ever again. Their opinion doesn't change
the reality of it. Whatever the history is, it's
not history that's determined by the opinions of men ever. It's determined by him, by the
history. Once it's done, it's done for
all times. So I'd just like to look at some
of these infallible proofs. I would just like to go through
some of the Gospels and contemplate some of these things. I think
it's good, if God the Holy Spirit has seen fit to write it down
five times, it's good for us to contemplate it again and again. In Matthew 28, it says, The eleven
disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had
appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped
him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke unto
them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. He has all power. There is not a human being that
thinks a thought on planet earth that he is not in control of.
He knows the intents of the thought. He knows what lies behind the
thoughts that come. He is absolutely sovereign. There
is not a molecule or an atom or an electron that moves in
this universe outside of his absolute sovereign control. And I love it that way. And so
do all the children of God. All power is given unto me in
heaven and earth. He said, Go ye therefore and
teach your nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world. He never leaves his own. He will never be without a witness
in this world, in this land. Mark chapter 16, entering into
the sepulchre, into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting
on the right side, clothed in a long white garment, and they
were frightened. And he said to them, be not affrighted. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, which
was crucified, He is risen, He is not here. Behold the place
where they laid Him. But go your way, tell His disciples
and Peter that He goes ahead of you into Galilee. There you
shall see Him as He said unto you." In 1 Corinthians we have
some of the things that happened in Galilee, don't we? He was
seen. He was seen of above 500 brethren
at once. On a mountaintop beside the Sea
of Galilee, He was seen by 500 people at once. All, all in fulfilment of what
was written down. Nothing the Lord Jesus ever did
or said was something that was unique to his incarnation. He was a living, breathing, walking,
talking, fulfilment of Old Testament scripture all the time. All the
time. Before his birth, at his birth,
at his death, at times in his life when he had no control,
as it were, seemingly, over the circumstances around him. Scripture
was being fulfilled perfectly all the time. Even when he was
hanging on a tree, nailed to a tree, mocked by the religious
people of this world, mocked by the powers of this world,
they were fulfilling prophecy. It was as if they went through
the Old Testament and got a script. It said, now what will you do
now? Oh, this is what you do. How much are you selling for,
Judas? This is how much you're selling for. What will you do
with that, Judas? Again and again, again and again, all they were
doing is fulfilling prophecy, infallible proofs. 500 brethren
at one time. Paul is writing in the time when
these people are nearly all alive, effectively he's saying to the
Corinthians, you go back over there into Galilee, into Judea,
and you have 500 people who saw him at one time, go and interview
them. He met those people, didn't he?
He met them by the lake in John's Gospel, that remarkable account
of the Lord Jesus restoring Peter to his position of authority
by giving him the most wonderful, wonderful instructions. about
the fact that the Lord Jesus has sheep in this world and the
job of the servants is to feed them. After these things Jesus
showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. This
is how he showed himself. They were together, Simon Peter,
Thomas Cordinimus, Nathaniel of Cana of Galilee, and the sons
of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said
to them, I'm going fishing. And they said to him, we'll also
go with you. And they went forth and entered
into a ship immediately that night. And that night they caught
nothing. But when the morning was now
come, Jesus stood on the shore. But the disciples didn't know
it was Jesus. And Jesus said to them, children,
have you any meat? Have you caught any fish? They
answered him, No. And he said to them, Cast the
net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find. They
cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for
the multitude of fishers. Therefore that disciple whom
Jesus loved said unto Peter, this is John said unto Peter,
It is the Lord Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord,
he girt his fisher's coat about him, he put his cloak back on,
for he was naked, and cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples
came in a little ship, for they were not far from the land, as
it were about two hundred cubits, dragging the net with the fishers.
As soon then as they were come to the land, they saw a fire
of coals there, and fish laid their iron bread. And Jesus said
to them, Bring of the fish which you have now caught. He had his
own fish on the fire, and he had the meal ready for them.
You bring the fish which you have now caught. Simon Peter
went up and drew the net to the land full of great fishes, 153.
And for all there were so many, yet the net was not broken. And
Jesus said unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples
did ask him, who are you? Knowing that it was the Lord.
And Jesus then comes and takes the bread and gives them and
the fish. Likewise, this was now the third time that Jesus
showed himself to his disciples after he was risen from the dead.
And so when they had dined, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son
of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He said to him, Yes,
Lord, you know that I love you. And he said unto him, Feed my
lambs. And he said to him again a second
time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? And he said unto him,
Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He said unto him,
Feed my sheep. And he said to him a third time,
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Do you love me? And he said
unto him, these are great words, aren't they? These are great
words of full and sinister say. And he said unto him, Lord, you
know all things. You know all things. You know
that I love you. And Jesus said unto him, feed
my sheep. Verily, verily, truly, truly,
I say to you, when you were young, you clothed yourself and you
walked where you would go, and when you should be old, you shall
stretch forth your hands, and another shall clothe thee and
carry thee where you wouldn't go. This he spoke, signifying
by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this,
he said unto him, Follow me. Then Peter, turning and seeing
the disciple whom Jesus loved following, which also leaned
on his breast at the supper, and said, Lord, which is he that
betrayeth thee? Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus,
Lord, what shall this man do? And Jesus said to him, If I will,
if I wish that he should wait till I come, what is that to
thee? You follow me. What does it matter
what others are doing? You follow Him. Fix your eyes
on the Lord Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith. This
disciple which testified these things and wrote these things,
and we know that his testimony is true, and there are many other
things which Jesus did. the which, if they should be
written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could
not contain the books that should be written." The world itself
is not a big enough place to contain the words. But as John
says earlier, these things are written The things that the Holy
Spirit has caused these men to write, these witnesses to write,
these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God, and that by believing, that believing you might have
life through His name. The Lord Jesus met with the disciples. He met with them in Jerusalem.
He came to them in all of their anguish and in all of their abject
failure, all of their pain, all of what they suffered, all of
the darkness that was felt by them. He came to them. and he met with them and he taught
them and showed himself to them again and again. And then he
takes his disciples to Galilee. He meets with 500 in Galilee
and he meets with those 7 beside the lake shore. And just as an
aside, So often I hear and so often I read that when the apostle
said in John 21, he said, I go fishing. So many people that I am fond
of and love reading want to say that at that point Peter had
given up the faith and he was just going back to his trade. It was another case of Peter
abandoning the Gospel. And I can't find a shred of evidence
in Scripture to support it. I can't find it. In fact, we
read it visibly earlier in Matthew 28. He says to the eleven disciples,
under his instructions, they went away into Galilee. They
went to a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. He told them
to go to Galilee. He told them to go to Galilee,
as he said in Mark 16, 7, he says, go your way and tell his
disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee and there
you shall see him as he said unto you. So he instructed the
disciples to go to Galilee. And what were they to do? They
were to go to Galilee and wait for him to come there. All they were doing, I believe,
is just doing what people would do in a normal course of events.
What do you do in Galilee? Peter had a wife. The others
had family there. They either went to Galilee and
sat around and said to the people of Galilee, you feed me. Or they
went to Galilee and said, we are fishermen. We are waiting
for the Lord. He'll find us. And they just did something which
was normal and natural and right. They were just caring for themselves
and those with them. I think one of the things that
we mistake in Christian life is that we think that there is
something particularly special and spiritual about various activities
of life. And there are. There are special
and spiritual times. Coming to church, spending time
studying the Word of God and reading it, there are special
times. There are special times around
those ordinances that the Lord Jesus gave to His church of baptism
and communion. There are special times. But
all of Christian life is covered and sanctified by the Lord Jesus
Christ, isn't it? We honour the Lord by the acknowledgement
of His presence and His grace in the ordinary affairs of life. They can honour the Lord as much
by fishing as they can by so many other things that people
do. There are special spiritual times,
but there is in the rest of Christian life very ordinary things that
he sanctifies to himself. If someone can show me that I'm
in error, I'm very happy to see it otherwise. But I don't see
this as one of Peter's failures. I wanted to say that because
so often when we read the Galatians and so often when we look at
Peter's failures before that little servant girl, we are inclined
to say, look, there's a really big sinner. There's a really
big sinner, someone who had remarkable privileges who fell very badly.
We are all very big sinners, brothers and sisters, and we
all fall as badly as Peter does all the time. He was sustained
by grace. I love what the Lord Jesus said
about him, isn't it? You're going to betray me. You're
going to betray me. And Peter was denying it up and
down and all over the place. But he said, Satan's asked to
sift you. sift you as wheat." What did
the Lord Jesus say? He said, but I have prayed for
you. That is enough, brothers and
sisters. That is enough for all of this
life and all the trials of this life. I have prayed for you. And what did He pray? I have
prayed for you that your faith fail not. So the Lord Jesus was
never going to fail, ever. Ever. He was never, ever going
to fail. As we said last week, the Lord
Jesus showed Himself alive. He showed Himself alive to show
so many wonderful things, to show that His death was a successful
death. His death was a death that really
did achieve the things that He said, that He was triumphant. He has defeated death, brothers
and sisters. The most appalling and shocking
thing that can happen to us is to die in some sense. If he's
defeated the greatest enemy of all, if he's robbed Satan, if
he's gone into Satan's house and bound up Satan and robbed
him of his goods, then he will rescue his own and his resurrection
proves it. It's a tryout, isn't it? His
crucifixion was a tryout. His resurrection was a tryout.
I love what the Holy Spirit says in Romans 4.25. He says, He was
delivered over for our offences. He was delivered over because
of our offences and He was raised again because of our justification. Justified people have no sin
in the sight of God, nor have they In the courts of God there is
no sin on any of his people, ever. Which is why when Adam
sinned the human race was not destroyed. And it's why, it's
why when we stumble and fall and have times of weakness and
darkness like the apostles did, the Lord comes again and restores
us. and brings us back together.
He shows himself alive and he assembles together with them. He assembles together with them. He reveals Himself. He was seen
for 40 days in this remarkable time of transition from His Incarnation
to His dwelling with His people in the Church by His Spirit. This time, this blessed time
where the Holy Spirit will come. Forty days is a remarkable time
in Scripture, isn't it? It's the 40 days in which the
rains of the flood of God's wrath fell on the earth in the days
of Noah. It was 40 days that Moses was
on the mountain with God. It was the 40 days that the spies
searched out the land of Canaan. It was the 40 days that Goliath
stood before the armies of Israel and mocked their God. It was
the 40 days that Elijah was sustained by the angel's food, and it was
the length of time that Ezekiel, in prophecy, had to bear the
iniquity of the house of Judah. And it was the same time that
Jonah gave before the destruction of Nineveh. It's a special time,
isn't it? And it was 40 days that our Lord
Jesus fasted and was tempted in the wilderness. It's a significant
time, isn't it, those 40 days? And then at the end of those
40 days, they had 10 days to wait, to wait in Jerusalem, to
be gathered there together, to go to that place, that place
where the Lord Jesus' blood had been shed, to go there because
out of Zion, Out of Zion shall go forth a law, and the word
of the Lord from Jerusalem." In Jerusalem was the one place
on planet earth that disciples would not have wanted to have
been. It's the one place where the greatest danger was. It's
the one place where the greatest opposition to the cause of Christ
was. He will be caused to reveal Himself
in the places where the greatest opposition to Him is. Such is
the state of our fallen nature, brothers and sisters, isn't it?
He reveals Himself, He proclaims Himself in a place where there
is nothing but opposition to Him. He will rule and rhyme in
that place. And he will declare himself in
that place. And in that place he speaks of
the things that tie him to the kingdom of God. In that place. The Blessed Holy Spirit will
be poured out upon all people, all of His people. The Church
will be immersed in the Holy Spirit. They will be immersed
in the love of the Lord Jesus. They will be immersed in His
death and in His resurrection. They will be immersed, they will
be one with Him, that they are not seen but He is seen, seated
on the throne of heaven. A glorious Redeemer rinds. Our God rinds. Let's pray.