Acts 28. We've come now to the
last two verses of the book and our study in it. And I think
that everything that this letter has contained and taught us is
borne out in just a few brief comments right here in these
last two verses. Paul dwelt two whole years in
his own hired house and received all that came in unto him, preaching
the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the
Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him." Now,
the power of God is unstoppable in this world. Absolutely unstoppable. God is going to glorify His name.
God is going to save His people from their sins. And God is going
to conquer all His enemies. And that power to do so is absolutely
unstoppable in this world. And there are three ways that
the power of God works in His children in which we can see
here in these two verses. And this will be our divisions.
The love of God the power, the love of God working in the hearts
of His children and His church. And that truly is the love that
constrains us. The Gospel of the Kingdom of
God is His power. And this is where our hope is.
That's how the hope came to us. The hope of Christ Jesus. And
the third thing is The faithfulness of our God. The power of His
faithfulness to do everything He said He shall do. And this
is the confidence of faith. In these three workings of His
power within His children, you have faith, hope, and love. And these things are borne out
right here in these two verses. And this is what He's shown us
that He's doing in His church throughout This whole book of
Acts and what he shows us, we hear the gospel, he works all
things, everything together and he teaches us this. That this
is what shall be in the church of God and in this world. The first thing we see here is
the power of God's love in the hearts of his children. Paul,
it says here, dwelt two whole years in his own hired house.
Everything that the Apostle did from the day God called him,
he did for the sake of those whom God had everlastingly loved
and put in Christ. He did it for the sake of bringing
them the Gospel. He did it for the sake of helping
in every way possible that there be no hindrance that they hear
the Gospel declared. God everlastingly loves somebody. He put them in Christ and Christ
came. And everything that our Lord
Jesus Christ did on this earth, He did to glorify the Father. He did to call out His sheep. And He did to edify those that
He had called out and to increase them and constrain them by His
love for them. Everything He did That was the
end, the chief end. And that chief end is the glory,
the very glory of our God. That's the end for which God
loved. That's the end for which God
has done everything He's done in this world is to show us His
glory freely, freely. And in that glory, we see an
everlasting love, a love that is distinguishing, a love that
is certain, a love that really does save, a love that really
does work in His children and really does accomplish, by which
He does accomplish our salvation and protect us from all our enemies.
This is what our Lord, our God is love. And everybody that's
born of Him, born of His Spirit, loves. They love one another. Everything we do, we're learning,
it's not about us. It's not about this achieving
things in this way. It's about God and His Christ. Everything. It's about the good
of those He's everlastingly loved. And it's about the good of His
church. Everything. Everything in this
life. Everything. How do you get that
from Paul dwelling two years in his own hired house? Well, and paid his expenses here and
rented this house. And he was under what we would
call house arrest here. Now, we know at Corinth, when
Paul went there to preach the gospel, he worked and he paid
his own expenses there because there were some there that Paul
perceived that were using their authority in a way that was drawing
men away after them, and that they would use anything they
possibly could to reject the truth of the gospel of Christ
Jesus. And Paul knew that, and he perceived
that. And so what he did there in the church at Corinth, he
did for one end that the gospel be not hindered. That's exactly
what he said. You can look at that in 1 Corinthians
9.12. He said, if others be partakers
of this power over you, or not we rather, that is, we not rather
entitled, but nevertheless we have not used this power, but
suffer all things lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ. That's love. That's love wherein
What's more important is the glory of God, the glory of Christ
being set forth in the Gospel, and the good of these sheep that
the Lord Jesus Christ Himself told Paul He was going to call
out at Corinth. And Paul was determined not to
do anything that was going to hinder that work. Well, even then when he did that,
look over at 2 Corinthians 11. 2 Corinthians 11. Even when he was doing that,
though, there was other brethren to whom he had preached, to whom
God had worked this work of grace in their hearts, and they were
constrained by the love of God, and they provided for him. They
were providing for him. Look at 2 Corinthians 11. He
said, I robbed other churches, taking wages of them. Why? And why were those other churches
giving that to Paul. All of them were of one mind
and one heart. Why? To do you service, Paul said. To do service to those at Corinth.
And when I was present with you and wanted, I was chargeable
to no man, for that which was lacking to me, the brethren which
came from Macedonia supplied it. And in all things I have
kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep
myself. That was great love. Working
itself in their midst, so that the gospel be not hindered. Now,
at Rome, Paul's bound with a chain. And yet again, this time, he
can't work now. But he's being provided for.
Look over at Philippians 4, verse 10. He said, I rejoiced in the Lord
greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished
again. wherein ye were all so careful, but ye lacked opportunity,
not that I speak in respect of wont." It wasn't about him at
all. This is what love, love makes
us esteem others better than ourselves, beginning with God
in His great name. He is the Gospel of Christ, our
Redeemer, and everybody else involved. He said, not that I
speak in respect of wont, for I have learned In whatsoever
state I am therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased
and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things
I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound
and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ
which strengthens me. Notwithstanding you have well
done that ye did communicate with my affliction. Now ye Philippians
know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed
from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving
and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent
once and again unto my necessity, not because I desire a gift,
that's not it, but I desire fruit that may abound to your count,
the Spirit of love working in their hearts. this fruit, this
effect of the constraining love of God in the heart. He said,
But I have all and abound. I am full, having received of
Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of
a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. And he
says, But my God shall supply all your need according to His
riches in glory by Jesus. Now, hold your place there in
Philippians. Actually, turn back to Philippians 1. And I want
you to see this. This is beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Now, I don't know how to connect this. Art and I were talking
about this this week. We were talking about things
this week we couldn't have talked about in the spring with each
other. But through the Gospel and through
His working of all things together, through Your supply to Him and
Your supply to me, This very thing that Paul is talking about
right here is what we were talking about. And Art said to me, he
said, I can't put a price on what God is doing through the
Gospel being preached to me. And I can't put a price on how
that He's working everything to show me that there's nothing
else important in this world as this Gospel and being together
with brethren and doing everything, everything for the sake of one
another. And that is so. And that takes time. That takes
time. To teach all the children that
together, it takes time. And it comes only in God's time.
We can't just make people understand that. We can't make each other
understand it. It takes time. And when we start over, this
whole body is like a little child. Like a little child. It's just
that fragile. And it'll just take time. And
the Lord will teach us all, and He'll make it known. We've seen
that, haven't we? Just between me and you have
seen that this year. And that's what He's doing with
each individual person here. And you can teach the Word, and
then you wait on God to work it in the heart and in all the
trials, and then He knits your heart together. And that's something
that no man can design a school like that. We look into the letter
of the Scripture, but he has to teach us this. This is a spiritual
matter. It's a spiritual matter. And
what happened here was, as we feed upon this Word, just as
Paul did and as he went about in declaring this Gospel, we
experience the love of God shed abroad in our hearts through
these trials. learn and experience these things,
we become more and more to know how valuable the gospel really
is and how valuable our brethren really are. And it becomes more
valuable than anything else, more important than anything
else. And so we do everything we do for our brethren for this
chief end. This time of the year you see
a lot of folks providing for the poor. and for those that
don't have, and what have you. And that's good. The chief end
here, in everything that Paul did at Corinth, everything that
these brethren were doing for him, and everything that he's
doing now that he's at Rome, and everything's being provided
by God through this constraining love he's worked in the heart
through this Gospel, so that now Paul has to pay for this
house and to sit there and receive all that come into him and to
preach this gospel to them. All of this has been worked by
to this chief end for this purpose that the gospel be near the saints
and that the saints be unhindered in hearing the gospel and that
others be called out through that gospel. This is what the
love of God is working in the hearts of His people. They loved
Paul. They wanted to see Paul comforted. But the chief end, and this is
the chief end, is to have you here, have you unhindered and
with and near for this end. This chief end right here. Right
here, right now. This chief end. And this is the
purpose for which God is working this love in the hearts of His
people. This was the chief end. Look at Philippians 1-3. Paul
said, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in
every prayer of mine for you all, making requests with joy.
And here's what he was thankful for. For your fellowship in the
Gospel from the first day until now. Being confident. We're going to see that word
again in a moment. This is all tied together, this
love and this hope and this confidence of faith. It's all tied together.
Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun
a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ,
even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because
I have you in my heart. Inasmuch as both in my bonds,
they were there bound with Him. That's right. They were together. They were one. Paul said, I have
you in my heart. You have me in your heart. As
much as in my bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the
gospel, this was the end purpose. The love and this gospel together,
bound up together. It's how it came to Paul. It's
how it came to them. And this love came to them for
this purpose, for this chief end, for this confirmation and
defense of the gospel. And he says, y'all are partakers
of my grace. Paul and his brethren had the
love of God so that they provided everything God had given them
for the defense and confirmation of the gospel of the God of all
love. That's what this chief end is
about. That's what true love is about.
That's right. You can give everything to somebody,
but if it's separated, if it's... I saw today on something on the
news where they brought a girl out of the house and all her
neighbors had gotten her a bunch of the things that she had written
a letter about, wanted, and everybody was... she was crying and it
was very emotional. It was stirring. It was moving.
But when they go and they leave, and those things grow old, without
this love of Christ in the heart, that was nothing. It was nothing. But this is love that's drawing
together for this end purpose of edifying one another with
this Gospel and of the rest of God's sheep being called out.
That's what it's for. And God's people see that. They
understand that. They're given a heart to know
that this is where we're being drawn to Him. And this is this
love and how it works. Now, the second thing that we
see about this power, the power of His love we see there. We
see also the power of the Gospel. As I said, these are just united. You just can't separate these
things. And this, you could say, is our
hope. The first we talked about was
love. This is our hope. This is how the hope came to
us. And Paul, he had the dynamite, the power of God, the gospel
by which God reveals Christ and reveals His love in His people. And he had this, and this is
the power that God worked this in Paul. It's the power by which
he worked it in these brethren, and it's the power by which he
was going to work it in others. And this was all Paul's hope,
Christ the Lord, revealed in this Gospel, and it was all the
hope he had of being kept by God, and it was all the hope
he had of others being called out by it. It was why it became
his life's work. It was his hope. Why he left
everything. Because of the hope of this Gospel.
Verse 30 says, He received all that came in unto Him, preaching
the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the
Lord Jesus Christ." Now let's just talk a little bit about
this kingdom of God and these things concerning the Lord Jesus
Christ. The kingdom of God is eternal. Nebuchadnezzar found
that out. Look over at Daniel. We'll look
at a few scriptures in Daniel tonight. Let's look over there
together. Daniel chapter 4. He was walking about and he was
bragging about everything he had done, about his kingdom.
And he said, I think it's good for me to tell you what God's
wrought toward me. Verse 3, he says, How great are
His signs and how mighty are His wonders! His kingdom is an
everlasting kingdom. His dominion is from generation
to generation. I know we are creatures of time
and we look at things in time and we hear them spoken of about
this kingdom in the future and things of that nature. God's
kingdom is God's kingdom. It's from generation to generation.
It's everlasting. He's made kingdoms here below
to teach us something about His kingdom and what His kingdom
is. But he found this out. Look down at verse 3. He was
going about bragging about His kingdom, what He had done, and
God turned him out like a beast and just let him wallow around
like a beast. And verse 34 he said, And at
the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes unto heaven,
and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the Most
High, and I praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose
dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation
to generation. And all the inhabitants of the
earth are reputed as nothing. And he doeth according to his
will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the
earth, and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest
thou? And at the same time my reason
returned unto me, and for the glory of my kingdom my honor
and brightness returned unto me, and my counselors and my
lords sought unto me, and I was established in my kingdom, and
excellent majesty was added unto me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise
and extol and honor the King of heaven. He is the King. He has always been, is, and shall
be the King of Heaven. All whose works are truth and
His ways judgment and those that walk in pride He is able to abase. Christ Jesus. I told you a place
there in Daniel. We are going to come back here.
But Christ is the Son of the Highest and He is the King of
this Kingdom. The Lord said, and said of him,
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.
And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father
David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever.
And of his kingdom there shall be no end." This kingdom is His
over the people given Him by the Father, and it's His by promise. God gave it to Him in the everlasting
covenant of grace, promised it to Him. It's His by purchase.
He came and conquered all the enemies of His kingdom as a faithful
king who rules and governs in righteousness and truth. He came
forth and He put away the sin of His people by the sacrifice
of Himself. He fulfilled all the law of His
kingdom Himself. He separates His people through
His gospel Himself. And He has, He said, when He
finished the work, He said, it's finished. It's His by promise,
it's His by purchase, and it's His by privilege or right or
power. It's rightfully His. It's rightfully
His kingdom. Daniel saw Christ going up in
resurrection glory. And he said this in Daniel 7.13,
he said, I saw in the night visions, Daniel 7.13, I saw in the night
visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the
clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days. How did
they see Him rise up that day when they stood there? They saw
Him rise up. And there He is going to the
Ancient of Days. He is going back to the Father
from whence He had come to the earth. And they brought Him near
before Him. And there was given Him dominion
and glory and a kingdom that all people, nations, and languages
should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting
dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which
shall not be destroyed." You know, he stood there one day
and he was talking to some folks. We read it in Mark's Gospel and
Matthew's Gospel. And he told them, he said, there's
some of you standing here right now who won't see death until
you see the kingdom of God come with power. And they saw it. They saw it. When did they see
it? Look at Acts 2. Look at Acts
chapter 2. When all this power and glory
was given unto Him, when He took the throne, suddenly, Acts 2.2,
there came sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind,
and it filled all the house where they were sitting, the apostles
and the disciples. They appeared unto them cloven
tongues like as of fire, and it set upon each of them. And
they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak
with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." The end
of verse 11 tells us what those other tongues were and what it
was they spoke. We do hear them speak in our
tongues the wonderful works of God. They weren't babbling. They were speaking of Christ
and the wonderful works of God, what Christ had accomplished.
And Peter stood up there, and in verse 29 he said, Men and
brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David,
that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us
unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and
knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit
of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ
to sit on his throne, verse 36, Therefore let all the house of
Israel know assuredly God hath made that same Jesus whom you
have crucified, both Lord and Christ." They saw it. Some didn't see it. Some were
sitting there and they didn't see the kingdom. You've got to
be born of the Spirit of God to see this kingdom. And they
didn't see it. They said, these are just drunk folks, drunk men.
But some sitting there saw it. They didn't taste death until
they saw this kingdom coming in the entire world. And the
Most High has set His King in His holy hill of Zion. Nobody's
frustrated Him in accomplishing this work. He's done it, and
He set His King in His holy hill of Zion, and He rules in heaven
and earth right now, not by might, not by the power of men, but
by His holy, irresistible Spirit. And because He does, because
He does, the growth of God's kingdom is unstoppable. Psalm
72-16, this got me. Psalm 72-16. And this is so. Psalm 72-16. There shall be a handful of corn
in the earth upon the top of the mountains. Those mountains
are every church that this Redeemer has established. The fruit thereof
shall shake like Lebanon, and they of the city shall flourish
like the grass of the earth." The kinsman-redeemer, this one
who is our king, our kinsman, our redeemer, this one is reaping
in this field, this world, right now as we speak. And he's leaving
the fruits, the handfuls of purpose, he's leaving them in every place
he sends his gospel and in every place where he establishes his
church in the top of the mountains. And this truly is the place where
fruit comes. Shakes like Lebanon. Fruit He
brings forth. Fruits of righteousness which
are by Jesus Christ Himself. That's so. And brethren, they
of the city, this Mount Zion, this heavenly Jerusalem, this
heavenly city, the church and kingdom of God, flourish like
grass upon the earth. Why so? Why so? because he works this. Do we
see how everything he had said in prophecy, everything he had
promised to happen was happening in our text? All that came to
Paul, he received them. He said to those, he came to
his own, and he spoke the gospel to them just as Christ did. And
they seeing, they didn't see. And hearing, they didn't hear.
And they had a division amongst themselves. They didn't even
agree why they left the gospel. They didn't agree with each other
on it. But he said, I'm turning to the Gentiles, and they're
going to hear. All of them, not all of them,
but as many as the Father gave to the Son, they're going to
hear. Because the Son redeemed them. The Father chose them.
The Son redeemed them. And the Spirit of Grace is going
to call them through that Gospel that Paul was sent to declare.
And He called Paul out, and He brought him everywhere He brought
him. He passed by some. He prevented him from going to
some places, and he sent him to other places. And everywhere
he sent him, we've seen all through the book of Acts, he called out
his people, bam, bam, bam, bam, in every place through this gospel. And here they are sitting there
coming to him now, coming to him now, and he's drawing them,
he's drawing them, and he's calling them, the king's doing this.
And so the Scriptures are fulfilled that said, God, it says, The
abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee. The forces
of the Gentiles shall come unto thee." And it's happening right
there with Paul. Every chosen child of God. Be
looking at II Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 13. Every chosen
child of God has their appointed, foreordained, predestinated,
time appointed by God when they shall hear the gospel and shall
be given the spirit of adoption whereby that child shall call
God, Abba, Father." It's appointed. It's appointed. Election and
predestination to hear the truth and to believe the truth are
one and the same because they're of the same God, worked out by
the God who works all things. All things together. 2 Thessalonians
2 verse 13, We are bound to give thanks always to God for you.
Brethren, be ye loved of the Lord, because God hath from the
beginning chosen you to salvation. And He did it through sanctification
of the Spirit and belief of the truth. What does that mean? That
means when He chose them, He also predestinated the exact
time when they are going to have that truth sent to them, and
they are going to hear it, and they are going to be called out.
Just what we have seen all through the book of Acts. Ephesians 1.4.
Let's look at that. Ephesians 1.4. These two go together
and are worked together by the same God. Ephesians 1.4. According
as He hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him
in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. Look down at verse 8. wherein
He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence. Verse
9, Having made known unto us the mystery of His will according
to His good pleasure which He had purposed in Himself. Verse
11, In whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated
according to the purpose of Him that worketh all things after
the counsel of His own will. Verse 12, That we should be to
the praise of His glory who first trusted in Christ, in whom ye
also, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of
your salvation, in whom also after that you believed, you
were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest
of our inheritance, unto the redemption of the purchased possession,
unto the praise of the glory of God. Because ye are sons,
God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father." The God of chance is a gambler. The God
who gives everybody a chance, that God is an idle gambler.
That's so. But the God of heaven and earth
works everything together. From the hair of your head, to
the highest trial, to the deepest, darkest, blackest thundering
of depression and trial and misery, to the heights of praise and
honor and glory, He works everything, everything. Today, yesterday,
the day before that, from the beginning, He works everything
in minute detail according as He predestinated these things
to come to pass, exactly in the hour in which He predestinated
them to come to pass, and this God leaves nothing undone. He does everything in righteousness
and in truth. That is so. You see, the glory
of this is the King. The glory of this is the King.
The glory of this truth is that He is the King. He is the King. Every earthly kingdom below is
His. And it's used by Christ our King
for His glory and the good of His saints. In Daniel 2, back
there. Look at Daniel 2. All this was
shown to Daniel. All of this that I'm teaching
you now is so. It has been. It was coming to
pass in Daniel's day. It's coming to pass in our day.
We see it more fully now. Daniel 2.44, And in the days
of these kings, Shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom. He's
talking about some earthly kings, but he's going to set up a kingdom,
which shall never be destroyed. And the kingdom shall not be
left to other people. That kingdom is established now.
That's what we're talking about. Christ is the king of this kingdom.
But it shall break in pieces and consume all these other kingdoms,
and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that
the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, Not done
by man's hand, it's done by the King Himself, Christ the Lord,
by His Spirit. And that He'd break in pieces
the iron and the brass and the clay and the silver and the gold.
These were things that were done in a vision prior to what I'm
reading to you here. You can go back and read it.
But He showed him all this, how that they were all broken. It
was all symbolism. And He says, The great God hath
made known to the King what shall come to pass hereafter. This
is what Christ is doing. These shall make war with the
Lamb, And the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords
and King of kings. And they that are with Him are
called and chosen and faithful." You know what they do? They go
forth and they spend and be spent like the Apostle Paul and like
these brethren to pay his own hired house, though he is bound
with a chain, and they preach this gospel to everybody and
anybody that will listen. God does the work. It never returns
to Him void. Period. Never returns to Him
void. And at last this King is going
to come and we are going to dwell with Him in His Kingdom in the
new heaven and the new earth. Peter said we are looking and
we are hastening to the day wherein the heavens being on fire shall
be dissolved and the elements shall melt with a fervent heat.
Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, Everything started
with a promise, and everything started with a Word, and that
Word has come to us, and that Word is this. According to His
promise, we are looking for a new heavens and a new earth wherein
dwelleth righteousness. And He said to the Hebrews, when
in Hebrews 12, He said, you have come to Mount Zion, you have
come to the heavenly Jerusalem, you have come to the city, you
have come to a mountain that He has assembled, the King has
assembled. and the mountain where He is
dropping out handfuls of purpose and bringing forth fruit and
His children, and this mountain where His children flourish as
the grass, this is the mountain you have come to. And He said,
now, He said before He is going to shake the earth once more,
and He said, and also the heaven, so that Only those things that
are established by Him, those things that He has made, are
going to remain. And He said, wherefore, we receiving
a kingdom which cannot be moved, a kingdom which cannot be moved,
let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with
reverence and godly fear for our God shall consume and fire.
And at last, every knee, every knee, every knee, Those who said,
and we did many wonderful works in Your name and cast out devils
in Your name. And those who said, who never
even put His name on their lips. And those who have this work
of grace wrought in their heart, everybody, everybody at His name,
at the name of this King, they are going to bow their knee and
they are going to confess He is King of Kings and He is Lord
of Lords. He's that sovereign. He's that sovereign. Well, if there's anything we've
seen in Acts, it's this. He's sovereign to call out his
people. He's sovereign to send forth his ambassadors, his delegates
with the word of this gospel. He's sovereign to work this work
with grace in their heart. He's sovereign to protect them
and hedge them about and constrain them by His love for them. He's
sovereign, brethren, to continue to grow us and edify us so that
our hearts are knit together in love, so that we have the
chief end of this gospel for everything we do. And through
it, He's going to edify us and grow us in it. And this is the
third thing. Our confidence is this. Our God
is faithful. Our God is faithful. We have
love here. We saw, secondly, this hope that
we have in this Gospel. And we have the faith, our faith
that He's given us. And that faith is our God is
faithful. That's our confidence. Steadfast
to the end. Verse 31 of our text said He
preached this Word with all confidence. With all confidence. The word does mean openness.
The word does mean boldness. The Lord hid nothing from Paul
concerning the Lord's power to save. He experienced it. He had
every reason to trust Him. It has to do with trust. He trusted
Him. And through every trial that
the Lord had brought him through, the Lord proved to Paul He wasn't
going to let him go. He just wasn't going to let him
go. He called him for a purpose. He put him in the place. He put
him for a purpose. And that purpose was to honor
his own name and glorify his Son. And for that reason, he
couldn't fail. He just couldn't fail. We can't
fail, brethren. We can't fail. You know, in the
church at Corinth, and all the problems, and all the discord,
and all the pointing the fingers, and that's what the problem was,
and all of that. You know where Paul began? He
said, you've been given every gift in all abundance. You come behind in nothing. We've
been given it all in Christ. And he said, the same God who
called you, the same God who called you unto the fellowship
of Christ will keep you because He's faithful. God is faithful.
And because the Lord had nothing concerning His power to save,
Paul trusted the Lord and he didn't hide anything from those
who came to hear the Gospel. Where he went to preach the gospel,
he declared it to them. Those that came there and heard
him at Rome, he declared it to them. And he spoke with all confidence
because his confidence was in the Lord. Let me show you three
more places I want you to look at. Confidence is in God's faithfulness
toward us. Ephesians 3.11 tells us that. Ephesians 3.11. Let me make sure I'm in the right
place. Yep. According to the eternal purpose
which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness
and access with confidence by the faith of Him. And that's
by the faith of Christ we have boldness, confidence, access,
by the faith of Him. That's where this confidence
comes from. Second thing, this confidence in our Lord is our
strength. It is why Paul said to the Philippians,
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. That was
his confidence. That's our confidence. And he
said that in Isaiah 30, verse 15. We've seen this in our study
in Isaiah. Isaiah 30. Verse 15. He says, For thus saith the Lord
God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest shall ye
be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.
That's our strength. Returning and rest. Returning
from everything else that we like to turn to. and resting
in Him. Resting in Him in quietness and
in confidence. This is our strength. And it's
what made Paul's brethren and Paul together joyfully give themselves
and everything they had for this Gospel. Look at Hebrews 10. Look
at Hebrews 10. I said this is all joined together.
It's so vitally linked together. Faith, hope, and love. This faith
confidence in our God, this hope we have through the gospel that
causes us to know that it's unsearchably valuable to us, and this confidence, this love that He
gives us, it's all bound up together. In Hebrews 9, Yeah, 1034. He's talking about how they were
called by God's grace and endured a great fight of affliction,
made a gazing stock by reproaches and afflictions, because they
became companions of them that were treated the same way. They
joined with Paul. They joined with the apostles.
They were called out. He says, and ye had compassion of me in
my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling
of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better
and enduring substance. And in all of this, he said,
cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath a great
recompense over all. This confidence is our Lord.
It is God who is faithful. God who is faithful. And this
is what gave Paul the confidence to preach with all boldness,
with all confidence. Go where he went with all confidence.
That's what we've seen over and over. And then once again, in
our text, turn back there to Acts 28. I'll tell you what,
I'll save you a little time. Turn to Philippians 1. That's
where I want you to go. I know we've looked at a lot
of Scripture, but Paul wrote these Philippians and Ephesians
and Philemon, and I forget the other one now, but he wrote these
while he was there bound with his chain at Rome. And very important,
but the Scripture says God proved all this. God proved his faithfulness
in all this, showed it once again. It said he did all this, and
no man forbid him. No man forbid him. Paul could
have second-guessed things. He could have looked at himself.
He could have looked at his past. He could have looked at his decisions.
He could have looked at that chain. And all of that, every
bit of it, would have caused him to find no confidence, no
hope, no love whatsoever. None at all. But he was kept
by the power of God working in his heart. The power of God's
love was the love that Paul had. The gospel of Christ was Paul's
hope. And the power of God who is faithful was the confidence
of Paul's faith. And Paul, therefore, ministered
right where God placed him. Right where God put him. That's
right. He knew when God opens a door,
no man is going to shut it. No man is going to shut it. Now
look here at Philippians 1.12 Chapter 1, verse 12. And I want
to end by reading down from 12 to verse 20, and then I want
to go to chapter 4 and read one verse. Philippians 1, verse 12. This is what they were concerned
about. This is what the chief end was, and this is what Paul
said to them. He wanted them to know. I would
you should understand, brethren, that the things which happen
to me have fallen out, rather, unto the furtherance of the gospel.
so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and
in all other places. And many of the brethren in the
Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to
speak the word without fear." You see, all this had been the
same thing where this faith, this hope, and this love was
all worked together through this gospel and through this great
trial in other brethren there where Paul was, so that they
were more bold and have this confidence that no man forbid
them. And he said, some indeed preach Christ even of envy and
strife. And I'm convinced that that is
much like what we saw throughout the Scripture. I'll give you
an illustration of this. I've heard this before. I know some brethren
who came to a town where the Lord had a faithful preacher
preaching the Gospel and was asking around, where do I go?
Where can I go hear the Gospel? And they said, don't go. Go anywhere,
but don't go to that place. Why not? Because if you go there,
you're going to hear a man tell you, preach election, and preach
predestination, and preach God as God. And that Christ actually
effectually redeemed the people, and that the Spirit of God calls
them, and that God preserves them, and they persevere until
the end. Everything out of man's hand and puts it all in God's
hand. You don't want to go there and hear that man. And I have no doubt that was
taking place here. That some were saying, you don't
want to go over there where Paul's at. Why? Because. Here's what you're going to hear. And I can give you some brethren
to go talk to that will tell you. And if for some reason I
just want to go hear what that man had to say. And God called
them and saved them. That wasn't the intent of why
they were told what they were told. Just as it wasn't the intent
for a man to say the truth when he said, others he saved, himself
he can't save. That was true. That was true. By the everlasting covenant of
grace, he couldn't. He couldn't save himself from
that hour. For that hour, he came to that hour. to save others. Well, let's read on here. And some do it of goodwill, the
one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely supposing to add
affliction to my bonds, but the other of love, knowing that I
am set for the defense of the gospel. What then? Notwithstanding every way, whether
in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. That's the concern. Christ is preached. Whether they're
saying things to try to turn people away from me and increase
my bonds, if they're saying the truth about Christ, I'm happy.
I don't care what their motive is or whether they're doing it
to end truth and sincerity. He said, I rejoice and I will
rejoice, for I know that this shall turn to my salvation through
your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. according
to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing I shall
be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also,
Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life
or by death." Now, that's the fruit we're talking
about. That's the fruit we're talking
about. And look at this glorious verse. We'll be done. Chapter
4, verse 22. God's Word never returns void.
He said, Salute every saint in Christ Jesus, verse 21. The brethren
which are with me greet you. All the saints salute you, chiefly
they that are Caesar's household. God's done gone into Rome and
called out His sheep out of Caesar's own house. that one who thought
he was the king. It wasn't powerful enough to
stop this God, was it? The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all. Amen.