You can be opening your Bible
into Acts chapter 10, but we will pray before we get into
the message. Acts chapter 10. Is the sound working back there,
Shana? Oh, let me turn this up just
a minute. Is that somewhat better, or does
it need even more? I don't know if that means turn
it up or everything's okay. Okay. Is it on back in the cry
room? Okay, good. We've been taking
stuff upstairs and downstairs, and I'm always afraid we've kicked
a wire. All right, let's seek the Lord's
blessing. Our Father, we thank you that we are able to gather
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and participate in this
table and to know that what we do symbolically
is true spiritually for our sake. And that Jesus Christ has bled
and died. And in that death, he has satisfied
all that your righteous wrath demanded in response to our sin. And our Lord said it is finished,
and we believe him. We come to you this morning not
in the boldness of anything we have done, not because of any
righteousness we've done or any sin we've avoided, for Lord,
in our flesh dwells no good thing. but we come boldly nonetheless
because we come boldly through Jesus Christ. And we are convinced
that you are pleased with Him and that you have called us to
approach you through Him. We pray that you would give us even greater understanding
of our Lord Jesus this morning, greater appreciation for Him,
greater love for Him, and a purer faith in him. Bless those, Lord, who could
not be with us here at the building. Bless them as they watch via
the live stream. May the message be as much a
blessing to them, and may they be able to enter in to this communion
and fellowship that we enjoy. We pray for all the churches,
Lord. And we ask you to bless them, bless their preachers today,
give them grace to declare the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Lord, whether they are men we know or men we don't know, you
know those that are yours. You know which men you've sent
to preach. And we ask, Lord, be with them. And we cannot help but, as we
think of that, to remember the church in Danville and ask that
you would bring them blessing as they gather with the grief of the loss of their pastor
so fresh on their minds. And if it pleases you, Lord,
bring one, another one, another man to lead them shortly. Father, we pray for our nation
and ask that you would be merciful to it. For mercy is the only
thing we can ask for in this nation. We cannot ask you to
look upon anything the nation has done and say, Lord, for this
reason, bless us. It is a nation of rebels. We pray that you would bless
it most of all with an outpouring of your spirit upon even more men called to preach. And Lord, that the fancy celebrity-oriented version
of Christianity would be drowned out by true demonstrations of
the Spirit of God as men go out on the power of the Spirit to
declare Jesus Christ. And in whatever way we can, Lord,
let us be a part of that. Thank you for your daily provisions
for us as individuals and in this congregation. It is in the
name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that we ask these
things. Amen. Now in Acts chapter 10, we have
a story which I assume most of you are familiar with. And it's the first time that
the gospel went out to the Gentiles officially. Now I add that word
officially because there were Gentiles at the temple on the
day of Pentecost. And some of them heard the gospel
preached by Peter and some of them believed it. And in all
reality, even before Jesus Christ came, there were some from among
the Gentiles who were what traditionally came to be known as God-fearers. The Jews never considered them
to be on the same level with them. You know, they always thought
the Jews were just a little bit better than them, but nonetheless,
they were able to come into the court of the Gentiles at the
temple, and they were able to worship the God of the Jews.
And if you think back into the ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ,
several times Gentiles entered into that. You remember Ruth. Ruth was a Gentile. She's from
the land of Moab. She was a descendant of Lot,
his incestuous relationship with one of his daughters. She was
not among the 12 tribes of Israel. And yet she is, uh, was married
to Boaz and Boaz is in the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ. They
gave Boaz and, uh, Ruth gave birth to a child and eventually
King David came from that line and right on down to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Once the gospel was fulfilled
by Jesus Christ, then it became more obvious that the gospel
was as much for the Gentiles as it was for the Jews. But in
truth, God has never been a respecter of persons. He is at all times ready, willing,
and able to save those who come to him pleading his mercy. Now, here in chapter 10, we're
not going to go through this whole story. It's Peter's visit
to Cornelius. Cornelius was a centurion who
feared God. And even within his household,
there were those who feared God, who believed the God of the Jews,
prayed to him, This centurion, you know, you always see the
centurions in scriptures as rough, ruthless, brutal people, but
this man was a, he was a man of God. He gave many gifts to
the poor. I actually believe that this
man was spiritually alive. He was not just someone, he was
like any other believing Jew of that day. He just happened
to be a Gentile. And what's interesting is he
had a soldier, a Roman soldier, who was kind of his personal
bodyguard who also believed. And I point that out simply so
that we would be reminded that there is no category of human
being from which the Lord has not claimed people for himself.
You'd say, how could a Roman centurion believe God? And if you believe God, how could
he being a Roman centurion or a Roman soldier. Well, how can
a believer be a general in the United States Army or a private? If done properly, according to
the scriptures, if carried out with justice, those are needful
jobs. But Peter went and spoke to him.
And we go down here to verse 42, And Peter is telling him the message of Jesus
Christ. And evidently, Cornelius had
already heard a good deal about Jesus Christ, but he hadn't heard
about the fact Christ raised from the dead. But Peter says in verse 42, he,
that is God, commanded us, or Christ commanded us to preach
to the people. and to testify that he is the
one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All
the prophets testify about him, that everyone who believes in
him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Now it's verse
43 I want to focus on and I want to read it to you in the word
order that it appears in the Greek language because there
is some significance to that. It reads this way, to him all
the prophets bear witness that forgiveness of sins receives
through the name of him everyone believing in him. Now, that sounds
really odd to us. We wouldn't talk that way. We
wouldn't put the words in that order. And normally, Greek-speaking
people wouldn't put the words in that order. But Peter, and
I assume he was speaking in Greek because that would be the language
he knew that Cornelius also knew. And he put the words in these
order because whenever they would put words out of order, it was
generally for the purpose of emphasizing those words. Now, our translation said, all
the prophets bear witness of him. And that's true. And as a simple matter of fact,
that's exactly what the Greek says, but the Greek starts out
to him. bear all the prophets witness. And that's what stuck in my head
to him, to him. This him is the Lord Jesus. So
it is altogether fitting that the Holy Spirit put the reference
to him at the beginning of this phrase, this sentence, to him,
to him, bear all the prophets witness. The main point, according to
the Holy Spirit, as he inspired Peter to preach, and then Luke
to record what Peter preached, the Holy Spirit said it was not
the prophets who were the main thing to notice here, It was
not even the ones who believed on Him that were the main subject
of this phrase. It was not even that wonderful
blessing of the forgiveness of sins that was supposed to first
arrest our attention. It is Christ Himself, to Him. And as I looked, or as I pondered
on the scriptures, and then even did a little bit of research
and concordance and things like this, looking for this phrase,
to Him, how often it appears. To Him, the Father has committed
all things. To Him. In the book of Revelation,
those who are in His presence, Singing praises, this is what
they sing. To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins
by His blood and has made us to be a kingdom and priest to
serve His God and Father, to Him be glory and power forever
and ever. Heaven's all about Him. If the preaching of Christ, if
the hearing of Christ, if the focusing on Christ, the singing
about Christ, the praying to and through Christ is not what
you find delightful in worship, then you're not gonna like heaven
at all. Because everything in heaven is about Christ. The Bible
says to him belongs strength and victory. Isn't that true? I mean, you know, we're not strong,
are we? And we've never been victorious,
have we? We've been given the victory, but we've never won
the victory. To Him belongs strength and victory. To Him belongs eternal
praise. I always get a little frustrated
when I see The preachers, you know, they're being introduced
to speak at a conference or something. And as they're being introduced,
they'll say, now, we're so glad to have with us today, Dr. So-and-so. Now, he studied at
Oxford or someplace like this. He's written these books, la-da-da-da-da,
and all that. And they give this great buildup
to this guy, as though all these things they've said about him
make him to be a more effective and fruitful preacher than John
Doe who came out of the hills somewhere and simply declares
the truth of Christ. They praise men and men love
to receive praise. To him belongs all the praise. I truly hope that your heart
is blessed this morning with what we shall go on to see. But
if your heart is blessed, it won't be me that blessed it.
It'll be him. Paul said, I'm jealous for you
with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband,
to Christ, to him, so that I might present you as a pure virgin
to him. Paul says, I'm jealous for you,
but I'm not jealous for you that you go around telling people,
yeah, I was saved under Paul's ministry or Paul's my favorite
preacher. That's not the kind of jealousy it was. He was jealous
of them for the sake of Christ to protect them from being polluted
and corrupted from the pure simplicity in Christ that in time to come
when Christ shall be revealed that she These people who make
up part of the bride of Christ will be presented to Him as one
who's been faithful and kept herself pure through the gospel
of Christ. In speaking of the coming of
our Lord Jesus, it says that we are to be gathered to Him. There's that hymn, when we all
get to heaven. And I'm not even saying it's
a bad hymn, I can't even think of all the words to it. But friends, it's not heaven
we're going to, it's him we're going to. And wherever he is, for the believer,
that's heaven. And wherever he's not, it may
as well be hell. Paul says, I know whom I have
believed and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have
entrusted to him for that day. Faith is to him. It's in reference to him. You
say, well, I believe in God. Well, that's all well and good.
You've managed to achieve the theological aptitude of the devil
and all his demons. James says, you say there's one
God. He says, so to the demons and they quake at the thought
of it. So if you say you believe in God, you've only risen to
the level of a demon. So far as your understanding,
we believe God through him. We entrust our souls to Christ. We hand them over to him. The Bible says, the Lord will
rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his
heavenly kingdom. To him be glory forever and ever. The writer of Hebrews says, let
us then go to him outside the camp. There are a lot of people
that seem their glory and their whole religion is about the false
religion they left. Well, leaving false religion
doesn't mean you went to the right place. You can go from
one false religion to another false religion. Or you can leave
false religion and become irreligious altogether. We leave false religion, which as Hebrews
was explaining it, was the religion that's accepted by men. That's
exactly what he was talking about there. He said, let us go therefore
to Him outside the camp. But no use going outside the
camp if you're not going to Him. It says that Jesus has gone into
heaven and is at God's right hand with angels, authorities,
and powers in submission to Him. We get worried about stuff. Why
are we worried about anything? I'm not saying that as though
I don't worry about anything, I worry about everything. It's just written in my genetics
I think. But our Lord Jesus, everything
has been made subject to Him. I used to be scared to death
of demons. That was back when I was late teens, early 20's
and they had all kinds of movies about demonic possession and
all this. I probably got started with that
movie, The Exorcist, you know. And I remember even having dreams
where I thought that some kind of demon was involved. I heard his voice come out of
the stereo speakers or something, you know, and of course it's
the Hollywood demon voice. I don't know if that's what they
really sound like or not. But I just woke up terrified. Until
one day I, uh, this is why I was in college and I, uh, there was
a show on that was featuring demonic things and I could feel
the anxiety starting to rise. And I thought, wait a minute
now, what are these demons doing here that everybody's so afraid
of? They're knocking plates off out of the cabinets. They're
opening and shutting windows. They're turning the lights off
and on. Well, I can do all that. I might get in trouble if I did
it, but I can do all those things. But more importantly than this,
all of those demons, no matter what they do, they are in subjection
to the Lord Jesus Christ. God has made them subject to
him. The devil himself is subject
to him. You picking up on the idea of
how important this to him is? It says, but growing grace and
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to him be glory
both now and forever. To him who is able to keep you
from falling and to present you before his glorious presence
without fault and with great joy. The Bible says, sing to him a
new song. It would be perfectly acceptable
that every song written be written about him and that every song
sung be sung to him. It would not be over, what's the word here to
use? It would not be putting too much
attention and honor upon the Lord Jesus Christ if every word
we spoke was to or about him. There has never been anything
done in respect, honor, love, and
faith toward Christ that could be written up as having gone
overboard. In fact, we must confess that
as much as we might like to think that all of our thinking and
all of our believing and all that is invested entirely in
Him, we know the truth of it, that we come up very short of
what He is worthy of, even when we meet together like this. I don't think I've ever preached
a message. where I went away satisfied that I had done a good job, that
I had spoken of Christ as he should be spoken of, that I had
praised him as he's worthy of. If you know Christ, you know
what I'm talking about. If you don't know Christ, you
won't be able to understand. It's perfectly acceptable that
everything be about him and it's absolutely necessary that all
who consider themselves prophets bear witness to him. And you
hear these modern day prophets and they give their prophecy.
If it's not about Christ, God didn't send them. And I haven't heard a one of
them speak about Christ. There are men these days, even
men who consider themselves to be sovereign grace and they count
themselves to be an apostle. Now, not like the 12, but they
said that there were the apostles from churches, other men that
were sent out that were called apostles, but they weren't the
apostles of Christ. But they kind of went from church to church
and they were considered to be, um, I don't know, you know, they
had better insight or something and at any rate, They call themselves
apostles, but when I hear them speak, they're not talking about
Christ. I listened to one one time. I
just, I'd heard of him. He's a believer in sovereign
grace and claims to practice the miraculous spiritual gifts. And I thought, well, I want to
hear what he's got to say. And so I tuned into one of his sermons.
And he preached a whole message on how women ought to dress. I could do it pretty quickly.
Cover up. That's saying for the men, you
know, that's why we put on clothes to cover up. No, I mean, he went on and on
and on about it. And I kept waiting for him to
say something about Christ. To him, give all the prophets
witness. And I like this, to him, it says,
give all the prophets witness. And then it noticed this, it
doesn't say to him, gave all the prophets witness. They still
are. Their words were written down.
Remember in the book of Hebrews, it speaks of Abel and said, who
being dead yet speaks. Well, those prophets are dead,
but they're yet speaking. And they are giving testimony
of Jesus Christ. They are not testifying about
giving us timetables of what's to come. to look in the book
of Daniel and try to figure out when Jesus is going to come back. Well, we've had 69 weeks. We've
got one more week to go, but there's been this big pause,
and they've got it all sketched out. Daniel wasn't talking about
days and seasons, not in and of itself. He was talking about,
he called him Messiah the Prince. That's who he was consumed with.
That's what his message was about. Him give all the prophets witness."
And that means as we read the prophets and that could be applied
to any of the Old Testament which is all that was of the scriptures
that were available at the point that Peter spoke here. Because
Moses was a prophet and he wrote the first five books and all
that. So, but if it's true to Him give all the prophets witness. means when we read the prophets
we're supposed to be looking for Christ because that's who
they're talking about. And if we miss Christ while reading
the prophets we missed whatever it was the prophets were saying. To Him give all the prophets
witness. And what witness did they give
concerning Him? They gave testimony concerning
the forgiveness of sin. I think we don't appreciate the
forgiveness of sin that's given to us by God. We don't understand
what a wonderful thing it is because we ourselves are not
particularly forgiving. Now there's levels of forgiveness.
And it may be that those who have offended you, you didn't
punch them in the nose or anything. And I guess that's one level
of forgiveness. You might, you might've gone
to the level of forgiveness that you didn't go tell other people
what that person did. But nearly every one of us, if
someone is deeply offended us, that offense is never gone. I know very few people. who are
able to truly, completely forgive and treat a person as though
the event never happened. I'm talking about serious events. But we have the forgiveness of
God. There is a people whose sins
have been washed off the ledger, scratched out, blotted up, cast
into the depths of the sea, cast behind God's back. There's lots
of phrases that the scriptures use to describe this forgiveness. But the primary point of forgiveness
is in God's declaration of the new covenant when he says, their
sins, I will remember no more, which means I'll not bring them
up anymore. They will not be brought to mind. Why? because of Him. Now to think that in testifying
to Him they testified of forgiveness of sins, that's very important
when you look at the previous verse because in verse 42 it
says, He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify
that He is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the
dead. Now, all of us know that there's
going to be judgment. Every one of us. It's just written
in us. This is part of what Paul means
when he says the law is written on the heart. We all understand
that there is one who is above us, who has a right to demand
an accounting from us. And who has a good eye. And he knows who we are. He knows
everything we've done. And this judgment will be carried
out by none other than Jesus Christ. You know, modern, and I don't
know how long it's going on, I say modern, you can go back
almost a couple hundred years when it seems as though it just
started taking hold. The preaching of the gospel started
to begin with a declaration of the love of God. They thought
that was a way, that's how they would start their so-called evangelistic
messages. But that's not what the apostles
were commanded to preach. What were they commanded to preach?
Verse 42, he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify
that he is the one whom God appointed to judge the living and the dead.
That was their message, at least the initial part of it. When
Paul went to those philosophers in Athens, and after some little
bit of talking about all the gods and idols that he saw, he
said, I saw one shrine to the unknown God. He said, well, I
want to tell you about the unknown God. And he described Him as
the Creator. And then described Him in the
person of Jesus Christ, and then said, and He has testimony that
He will judge the world in righteousness by Him, by raising Him from the
dead. That was God's testimony that
Jesus is going to be the judge of the living and the dead. That
means the judge of everybody because you're either living
or you're dead, you're one or the other. And that's the initial message
of Gospel preaching. It's not God loves you. It's
that Jesus Christ is the judge of everybody. That should get
people's attention. People say, well, the Lord taught
us do not judge. Well, he's going to. And I'm not saying that that
means we should. I'm just saying that doesn't
mean there won't be judgment. He's going to do it and he judges. But now notice this about him
then. Here's the message to declare.
He's the judge. And to him, all the prophets
give wisdom, excuse me, give witness of the forgiveness of
sins. In other words, forgiveness can
be obtained from the one who is going to be the judge of everyone.
And if I'm going to be forgiven, I want to be forgiven by the
judge. I don't need the preacher to
tell me I'm forgiven. Even if he truly forgives me,
he's not the judge. I can't take a piece of paper
from Reverend so-and-so declaring that I've been forgiven of my
sins and present them, present it to God. And God's going to
say, well, I guess I got to let you in then. It's not the way
it works. The only one who can authoritatively
forgive is the one who can authoritatively judge and condemn. And it's nice to know, it's encouraging
and such a blessing to know that he who will judge the world in
righteousness is the one to whom the prophets bore witness that
there would be forgiveness of sins through him. That puts a whole different complexion
on the concept of judgment. forgiveness of sins as received through His name." Now there is a group of churches, a couple of
them, and now I can't remember what kind of church they call
them, but they think it's very important that you know how to pronounce
God's name. You've got to get that right. And it used to be
one group. And I think, believe it or not,
I think they split over this. Originally, they all said his
name is pronounced Yahweh. And they all got along fine.
And somebody said, no, it's Yah-vah. Uh-oh. And they split into two
groups. Knowing how to pronounce God's
name, mean anything because quite frankly
no one knows for sure what that name sounded like. The name he's
talking about here is the name Jesus because that's our Lord's
name. And I know that it's become a
popular thing now at least if what you see on YouTube and all
that they like to pronounce it in what they think was the Hebrew
or Aramaic Yeshua. And they think that they're somehow
more godly because they talk about him as Yeshua. Joshua, Yeshu, Jesus, doesn't
matter how you pronounce it, it's what that name means that
gives it power. Because it's a combination of
a shortened version of God's name, Yah, and then the word
for salvation. Down there in the belly of the
great fish, Jonah said, salvation is of Jehovah. And you cram that
phrase into one word, you get Jesus. And through that name
comes the forgiveness of sins. There's one God and one mediator
between God and me and the man Christ Jesus and there is none
other name given in heaven and earth whereby we must be saved. It's not in the pronunciation
of that name, it's in a reliance upon the person who rightly bears
that name. Jesus is God's salvation. Brother Mahan used to say, salvation's
not a plan, it's a person. Old Simeon in the temple when
the Lord was brought there. And I think he would have been
about 40 days old at this point, but they brought him to the temple
so that Mary could offer the sacrifice of purification required
by all women who'd given birth. But they're walking and they've
got Jesus in their arms as you'd carry any other baby. But Simeon
had been told by the Lord that he would not die till he saw
the Lord's salvation. And the Holy Spirit must have
said to him, it's that one right there. Now, I don't know if it
was Joseph or Mary carrying him at that point, but whoever it
was, he went over there and he took our Lord Jesus up in his
arms and he said, now let your servant depart in peace, for
mine eyes have seen your salvation. It's through him that the forgiveness
of sins has come. And it's come through him because
he bled and died in payment of all the sins that he bore. Peter said he bore our sins in
his body on the tree. And I know this, every sin he
bore is gone and it will never be brought up by God again. Every sin he paid for, God will
never require payment for that sin again. And if he bore one of a particular
person's sins, he bore all of them. And that means if he bore your
sins, he bore every last one of them. And none of them exist
anymore. And God is never going to bring
them up again. And inasmuch as He punished the
Savior for those sins of yours, He will never punish you for
those sins. Why? God's just. As Augustus
Toplady wrote in another of his hymns, he wrote A Rock of Ages,
he also wrote one which said, Justice, payment cannot twice
demand. First at my bleeding surety's
hand, and then again at mine. If a man dies in unbelief, and
many will, here's what will be discovered. Christ did not bear
his sins. Because if Christ had borne his
sins, he wouldn't suffer for sin himself. And that means that
somewhere along the line, the spirit of God was seen to it.
He learned of Christ and trusted Christ. All right. And then it says this,
we receive this forgiveness of sins. It's upon everyone who
trusts him. Now the forgiveness of sins comes
by the blood of Christ. And it's true whether we are
in a believing state or an unbelieving state, but the experience of
that forgiveness, it comes when we believe. When I was born into this world,
I was by nature a child of wrath. That means I had the same nature
as the children of wrath. But let it be understood, not
one of the elect of God has ever been a child of wrath. They were
the same kind of people as the children of wrath. They had the
same nature as the children of wrath. They acted like the children
of wrath, but they've never been the children of wrath, because
Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,
and their sins never even made it into this world. And then Jesus Christ entered
space and time, and that which was already real in heaven became
real upon earth. And then sometime in the and
the bit of space and time in which we live, the Spirit of
God comes and He testifies to Him. Just like the prophets bore
witness to Him, the Spirit of God bears witness to Him. He takes the things of Christ
and shows them to us, shows us who Christ is, reveals to us
what Christ has done, gives life to our dead hearts, and we believe. and we receive the forgiveness
of sins, that which was already bought and paid for, that which
was already accomplished in heaven is accomplished on earth. To him, give all the prophets witness. I've been preaching to you, it's
getting really close to 33 years now. And I know that I am by no means
a perfect preacher, but it has always been my intention to speak
to you about him, to bear witness to him. And there's been plenty of dross
in what I've said. But by the grace of our God,
there's been some gold in there too. And may God burn out the
dross of what I say and reveal the gold of the person of Christ
that you may find him precious, that you may find him honorable,
that you may find him worthy of all your trust, all your love,
all your devotion, for truly, he is worthy. If you'd lead us
in prayer.