Pastor Martin, Pastor Al Martin
of the Trinity Baptist Church in Essex Fells, New Jersey. It's
my privilege this last summer when I was doing my chaplaincy
training in New York to be able to spend some time with their
congregation, and I'm hoping that for part tonight of the
evening service that you can bring us greetings from your
congregation and let us know something about the work of the
Trinity Church for a few moments tonight. Pastor Martin, we welcome
you to Yazoo State. But let us give careful attention
to the reading of the word of God this morning, that word as
given to us in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 20, Acts chapter
20. And I shall begin the reading
with verse 17 and conclude with verse 27, Acts chapter 20, verses
17 through 27. In verse 17 we have the pronoun
he and it refers back of course to the Apostle Paul. And so this
is a record of something that the Apostle Paul did at a very
strategic point in his life and ministry and will form the basis
of our meditation in the scriptures both this morning and then again,
God willing, this evening. And from Miletus, he, that is
Paul, sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church.
And when they were come to him, he said to them, Ye yourselves
know from the first day that I set foot in Asia, after what
manner I was with you all the time, serving the Lord with all
lowliness of mind, and with tears, and with trials which befell
me by the plots of the Jews, how I shrank not from declaring
unto you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly, and
from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks, repentance
toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold,
I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things
that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Spirit testifieth
unto me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide
me. But I hold not my life of any
account as dear unto myself, so that I may accomplish my course,
and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify
the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that
ye all, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, shall
see my face no more. I testify unto you this day that
I am pure from the blood of all men, for I shrank not from declaring
unto you the whole counsel of God." It would constitute no straining
of the truth nor overstatement of the facts to say that this
man, the Apostle Paul, was a man obsessed that is, a man who was
driven by one great and pressing passion. It was an obsession
and a passion which, according to his own testimony in verse
24, led him to be relatively indifferent even to his own life. He could say, I hold not my life
of any account as dear unto myself. In other words, this obsession
caused him to regard something of greater worth than even his
own life. In the fulfillment of this obsession,
he came to the place, according to 2 Timothy 4, verses 6 through
8, where he could face death with great delight and with joyous
anticipation. He could say, I have finished
my course. I am ready to be offered. the
time of my departure is at hand." Now we may well ask the question,
what was this obsession in the life of the Apostle Paul that
made him, as it were, treat his own life as a thing of little
account? What was this great and overwhelming
passion, the fulfillment of which enabled him to face death with
such confidence in the knowledge that he had completed his course?
Well, we are told in verse 24 what that passion was, what this
great and magnificent obsession of the Apostle Paul really was. For we read in verse 24, I hold
not my life as of any account as dear to myself, so that I
may accomplish my course and the ministry which I receive
from the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God. This burning obsession of the
Apostle Paul was the obsession to testify the gospel of the
grace of God, but with specific respect to the preaching of that
gospel as entrusted to him in the original commission given
to him from the Lord Jesus. You have a record of that commission
in Acts 26 verses 16 through 18 in which we read that the
Lord Jesus appeared to Paul and said, I have appeared to you
so that you may bear witness to me. And Paul could say as
he does in that passage, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision." Acts 26, 19, but declared both to them of Damascus first,
Jerusalem, throughout all the country of Judea, and also to
the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God and do
works meet for repentance. Now it should be obvious that
if this man came under the power of this tremendous obsession,
this obsession to preach the gospel of the grace of God, to
preach it as an act of obedience to Jesus Christ, who had laid
hold of him in grace. It is natural that he would become
to us, in a very real sense, a model of a true gospel preacher. And for our meditation, both
this morning and this evening, I want you to consider with me,
from this passage in Acts chapter 20, the Apostle Paul, a model
of a gospel preacher. And I'm doing this for a number
of reasons, not the least of which is, on the one hand, to
encourage you in your efforts to proclaim the gospel during
this week. Furthermore, to instruct you
and to underscore in your own minds what constitutes true gospel
preaching. Furthermore, I hope it will stir
you up in terms of your prayers with respect to the great need
of our own day. When you pray, Lord, raise up
true preachers. What are you praying for? What
are you asking God to do? Well, I say the Apostle Paul
becomes a great model and pattern of that for which we ought to
be praying. And then another one of the major
reasons for choosing this passage is that in the midst of beholding
Paul as a model of a gospel preacher, we have one of the most wonderful
statements of the gospel itself, and that will occupy the primary
focal point of our study this evening. Well, first of all,
then, with this passage in Acts 20 before us, considering Paul
a model of a gospel preacher, will you notice with me in the
first place the position from which he self-consciously preached
the gospel. The position from which he self-consciously
preached the gospel. Listen to his language, verse
18. And when they, that is the Ephesian elders, were come to
him, he said unto them, You yourselves know that from the first day
that I set foot in Asia, after what manner I was with you all
the time, serving the Lord. And the word he uses for serving
in the verb form is that word which occurs again and again
in the New Testament in the noun form to describe a slave, a bond
slave. And it was one of the titles
which the Apostle Paul loved to use in conjunction with his
own self-conscious identity as a preacher. For instance, notice
in Romans chapter 1 and verse 1, when he writes his letter
to the church at Rome, he begins with these words, Paul, a doulos,
a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle. Now notice
which came first. He functioned as an apostle in
the self-conscious identity of a bond slave. And similar language
is set before us in Philippians chapter 1 and verse 1. Paul and
Timothy bond slaves of Christ Jesus to all the saints that
are in Christ Jesus at Philippi. In other words, Paul is saying
to these Ephesian elders that from the first day he set foot
in Asia, and for the subsequent days and months and years, and
by bringing together the biblical materials, particularly from
Acts 18 and 19, we understand that he served there approximately
three years. He could say, from the first
day I set foot in Asia, I knew my identity as a gospel preacher. And that identity was essentially
to be understood in terms of a bond slave of Jesus Christ. In other words, he did not come
to Asia because the denominational mission board thought it would
be a good idea, and he therefore would come as the lackey of his
missionary society. Nor did he come because there
was some general consensus there at Ephesus that it would be nice
for him to come and this would be a good ego trip. No, no. He
says, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, I was with
you all the time, serving the Lord, behind every sermon preached. behind every exhortation given,
behind every public and private enterprise for the gospel, there
was this constant self-conscious identity, I, Saul of Tarsus,
stand here in Ephesus as a bondslave of Jesus Christ. In other words,
the Apostle Paul was bound to Jesus Christ. in bonds of the
deepest kind of intimate love and loving obligation. This is the man who could say
in 2 Corinthians 5.14, the love of Christ constrains me. That is, the love of Christ holds
me in a vice-like grip. He had come to such a discovery
of God's love to him in Christ. that the reflexive response of
that love was to be found in the language uttered at his conversion,
Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And in response to that
question, the commission recorded in greater detail in Acts 26,
16 and 18 was given by the great Lord who said, this is what I
want you to do. And under the constraint of the
love of Christ, and under the constraint of obedience to Jesus
Christ, he delighted to take that position self-consciously
of a bond slave of Christ. Now, what practical implications
did that have in his life? Well, he tells us. There are
many practical implications, not the least of which is set
forth in Galatians chapter 1 and verse 10, where he says, For
am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving
to please men? If I were still pleasing men,
I should not be a bondslave of Christ." You see the practical
implications it had? When he came to Ephesus, conscious
that he came there, not primarily on an ego trip or under the pressure
of his church or missionary society, but in loving bonds to Jesus
Christ, he says this had tremendous practical effects upon him. When
he came to Ephesus, he did not, as it were, wet his finger and
hold it up and see which way the current theological winds
were blowing, so that he might adjust the sails of his message
accordingly. He didn't go around and take,
as it were, a man on the street pole and say, now, I'd like to
find out what truths you'd like to hear and what truths are rather
offensive to you people. No, no. He came conscious that
he was a slave, a bondservant of the Lord who had loved him
and died for him and in grace had saved him. And he said, as
long as he was self-consciously the bond-servant of men, he could
never make seeking the favor of men or pleasing men the goal
of his ministry. And he said, the moment I begin
to be activated, motivated, adjusted in my thinking, my methods and
message by pleasing men or by seeking the favor of men, I cease
to be a bond-slave of Jesus Christ. And so as we look at Paul, the
model of a gospel preacher, we understand that the position
from which he preached was that self-conscious identity as a
bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he was not overly
concerned about preaching matters which might offend the current
religious climate in Ephesus. and his preaching did offend
it led ultimately to a riot because he preached there was but one
true and living God and the Holy Spirit blessed that message and
these people who are bound up in sorcery and idol worship ended
up having a big bonfire until the whole city was in an uproar
and a big crowd came out and for hours stood chanting great
is Diana God of the Ephesians until they had a ruckus in that
town didn't bother the Apostle Paul, why? Because he said, from
the first day I set foot amongst you, I was there serving the
Lord. That is, discharging my task
as a bond slave of Jesus Christ. And oh, my dear friends, as you
pray that God will raise up gospel preachers in our day, this is
what you need to pray for. That God will give men such a
sight of the majesty and the glory of a crucified and an exalted
Savior. And so hold those men in the
vice-like grip of the love of Christ, that they will be indifferent
both to the frowns and the smiles of men. There is nothing more
sickening upon the face of the earth than a reverend who is
the slave of the frowns of his people, or a slave of the smiles
of his people, or a slave of the wallets and the purses of
his people, who is not Christ's slave. and therefore Christ-free
man, to preach whatever Christ has given him to preach. And
as you pray for your pastor, what should you pray for him?
Well, among the many things you pray, pray this prayer, Lord,
keep him consciously and constantly, self-consciously in that position
that he is the bondslave of Jesus Christ. when he comes before
us week after week, whatever else he has upon his mind and
his heart, Lord, write upon his spirit, etch into the deepest
recesses of his heart that he is your bond slave, so that whatever
you, his master, would say to us, your servants, that we may
hear and receive that message as from the Lord Jesus Christ. But now we must hurry on to the
second area of consideration, or we'll never get through the
passage this morning and this evening together. Having noted
the position from which Paul preached the gospel, the position
from which he self-consciously preached the gospel, notice in
the second place the manner in which he proclaimed the gospel. Someone say, well, wait a minute,
Pastor Martin. If we pray that God will raise up preachers whose
only primary concern is pleasing the Lord, won't that produce
men that are hard and callous and insensitive and domineering
and overpowering? Well, look at the passage. Look
at the passage. Nothing could be further from
the truth. Serving the Lord with, now notice
the qualities, all lowliness of mind and with tears and with
trials which befell me by the plots of the Jews, how I shrank
not from declaring unto you anything that was profitable, teaching
you publicly and from house to house. There are five basic characteristics
of Paul as the model of a gospel preacher. Time will not permit
to unpack them in detail. Let's just look at them briefly
and then I trust In your own meditations, you will see them
enlarged and amplified in other portions of the Word of God.
The first thing that he tells us about the manner in which
he proclaimed the gospel is this. He proclaimed it in a spirit
of humility. You people know, he says, from
the first day I set foot in Asia, self-conscious of my identity
as a bond slave of Christ, I preached with lowliness of mind. In other words, the exact opposite
of arrogance and haughtiness and an overbearing, domineering
spirit that is so unlike him who said, I am meek and lowly
of heart. For you see, the man who knows
that he's the bondslave of Christ is the man who knows he is what
he is by the grace of God. And no man who understands grace
can be a proud man. No one who understands grace
can be marked by strut and swagger and that kind of carnal projection
of the super personality, the cursed image of the modern evangelist. I remember When I was in school,
I had speakers come and actually talk to potential preachers and
say, now, if you're sort of just an ordinary personality and you
don't have a lot of zing and zip and charisma, you can be
a pastor. But if you're going to be an
evangelist, you've got to have something unique, something scintillating,
something dazzling, something very attractive about your personality,
that sheer rubbish. The Apostle Paul, the greatest
evangelist next to the Lord Jesus, said, in a city where his evangelistic
endeavors were so blessed of God that we read in the earlier
chapters that after two years, all of Asia heard the word of
God, and the word of God grew and mightily prevailed. He said,
I was with you with lowliness of mind. You see, that has nothing
to do with how loud or how soft a man preaches. It has nothing
to do with whether or not he's very reserved as he preaches
or very animated, talks with his hands and his feet and his
eyes and his ears, or whether he talks just with his mouth.
It has to do with the disposition of heart. Lowliness of mind,
that means, first of all, he receives everything that God
says as truth, so that he may be a conveyor of truth. You see the greatest act of pride
is for a man who says he is a preacher of the gospel to say there's
either certain things in the Bible that aren't true or that
aren't worthwhile preaching. What an act of pride when God
has given the whole word for our good for some puny little
creature to say well this doesn't belong in there and this should
never be in there and that's an error and this is a mistake
and that's not necessary and a man may say it very piously
and very softly and with a lovely ministerial tone and have all
the semblance of humility. He's as proud as the devil. Little
creature of the dust telling God what he should put in his
word? Little worm of the dust telling God what should be preached
to men? Paul said, lowliness of mind.
And that lowliness of mind had a twofold reference. It had to
do with God. in that as the bond slave of
the Lord Jesus, he received all the message that Jesus gave him.
As he intimates later on, I kept back nothing that was profitable,
all that was given to me I passed on. And then as a man would reference,
lowliness of mind meant as we've already suggested, no self-assertiveness
in the carnal kind of super personality attitude. And this comes through,
you remember, when he says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, And
I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech
or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. And
I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. What's the matter, Paul? Is your
first sermon you're preaching a little bit nervous? Got knots
in your stomach? Now, he had preached hundreds
and thousands of sermons, but he said, I was with you in weakness
and fear and much trembling. Why? Because he understood what
he was, not only in the presence of God, but when he stood in
the presence of his fellow man. What could he do to open up the
blindness, the spiritual blindness of the sinner? If you take seriously
what the Bible says, that all men by nature are spiritually
blind and spiritually deaf and spiritually dead, you don't think
there's any amount of clever manipulation with words that
you can bring together that's going to open blind eyes, unstop
deaf ears, and quicken the dead to life? And so there is that
attitude of utter dependence upon God, which is, if not the
very spirit of humility, is its inseparable attendant. He was
with them with humility. He says he was with them with
compassion and with pathos. And I don't know another word
to use that describes it more accurately. Look at the language.
Serving the Lord with all lowliness of mind and with tears. With tears. Now, tears, you see,
are funny things. Tears can be expressions of frustration
and anger. If your brother, if you have
a brother, takes something he shouldn't and he won't give it
back to you, you get so mad, you're gonna end up crying, can't
you, huh? But they can be tears of just frustration or of anger.
Or tears can be an expression of self-pity. We have a little
saying around our house, let's have a pity party. Poor me, nobody
loves me, everybody hates me, I'm going out and eat worms,
you know that kind of an attitude? That's what tears can be, can't
they? Just an expression of self-pity. Ah, but tears can be an expression
of the deepest yearnings of outgoing selfless love. And when Paul
says, I serve the Lord with all humility of mind, lowliness of
mind, and with tears, he is speaking of those tears of a broken heart. You remember he refers to them
in Romans. For he was preaching not only to Greeks, but to Jews.
He says, I have continual heaviness and great sorrow of heart for
my kinsmen, my brethren, according to the flesh. And when he was
in the presence of those who taught error, it broke his heart.
He could say in Philippians, I tell you now, as I've often
told you, even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross
of Christ. You see, generally speaking,
apart from these other expressions of tears. Tears are usually a
reflection of the heart being bound up with something. just
turned 17, gets his first car, and the first day has it. Someone
smashes it up and he stands there and cries like a baby. Why? His
heart was bound up in that bucket of wheels and bolts and the rest.
Because his heart was bound up in it, when anything touched
the object of his heart, it opened up his tear ducts. Well, you
see, the Apostle Paul, as a true gospel preacher, had his heart
in this. He wasn't just performing a professional
service. When he preached to men concerning
their sin, when he preached to men concerning Christ and His
glory, Christ and His salvation, when he pleaded with men to repent
and to believe, he wasn't play-acting. He was not just pushing a button
in terms of something that got programmed into him in seminary,
and now he's doing his thing. His heart was in it, and because
his heart was in it, it was often bathed with his tears. And in
so doing he was just a picture, a little picture of his own master,
who when he beheld the city of Jerusalem according to Luke's
gospel, that city which was under now the judgment of Almighty
God, it is said when he beheld the city, and it's vivid in the
original, it does not say he merely wept over it with the
same word used for weeping in John's gospel when he came to
the grave of Lazarus. Jesus wept. But the word there
is literally, he wailed over that city. The very word used
for the professional mourners who wept and who wailed. It was
uncontrollable weeping. Why? Because our Lord Jesus'
heart was broken. That's the mark of a true gospel
preacher. That's the mark of true gospel
ministry. not only humility, lowliness
of mind, but compassion and pathos. But then there is a third mark
which characterized the manner in which he proclaimed the gospel,
and it's this, faithfulness in the face of opposition. Look
at the language. He preached, he says, not only
with lowliness of mind and with tears, but and with trials which
befell me by the plots of the Jews. And as you read through
the book of Acts, you see the many times these unbelieving
Jews followed Paul wherever he went and were constantly plotting
to take his life or to have him imprisoned. But he said, from
the first day I set foot in Asia, my ministry, characterized by
humility, by compassion, was characterized by faithfulness
in the face of opposition. Had he been a man pleaser, he
would have run. He would have drawn back and said, it's not
worth it. Every time I open my mouth, I get in trouble. Remember
Jeremiah? This is what happened to poor Jeremiah. He said, every
time I open my mouth, I get in trouble. So I said to myself,
why bother? So he said, I'll shut up. But then he said, I
had a worse problem. He said, thy word was in my heart
as a fire shut up within my bones until the problem within was
greater than the problem without. So he went back to preaching.
Even though it meant he ended up in a dungeon, even though
it meant he ended up being accused of treason, the same spirit Jesus
said that the spirit of decadent religion is the spirit that always
persecutes God's prophets. He charged upon his own day the
blood of all the prophets, from Abel to Zacharias. And in the
same way, Paul knew this, and every true gospel preacher will
know it. And in a sense, we ought to have been encouraged by some
of the opposition we had last night. I didn't know whether
it was someone sitting outside tooting the horn who was hearing
us on the radio and knew we were in there and was determined.
I didn't know it was a train. And other kinds of opposition,
well, we ought to glory in it. If there is opposition to the
endeavors of these days, why? Because that's one of the marks
of every true gospel enterprise. It will be carried on with faithfulness
in the face of opposition. But then the fourth thing that
characterized the manner of his preaching is this. Thoroughness. Thoroughness. Thoroughness both
of content and exposure. Look at it. Thoroughness in the
content of his preaching. He says, verse 20, I shrank not,
I didn't draw back from declaring unto you anything that was profitable. Now notice he didn't say anything
that was palatable. Many things are profitable that
are not palatable to the natural man. Do you think people like
to be told that their hearts are a sink of iniquity? Do you
think people sit down and start clapping their hands and then
shouting hallelujah when for the first time they discover
what they are is sinners? I shall never forget one man
of God saying to me, and he was a seasoned man of God, This was
just a couple of years before the Lord took him home. He said,
the most sickening sight I've ever seen in all my life is my
own heart. The most sickening sight I've
seen in my whole life is my own heart. But Paul says, I kept back nothing
that was profitable. I told you the truth about yourselves.
I told you the truth about the emptiness and the vanity of your
pagan gods and your pagan religion. I kept back nothing that was
profitable to you. He could say in verse 27, I shrank
not. The same kind of language. I
didn't draw back. You see, when material shrinks,
it draws back. I did not shrink from declaring
unto you the whole counsel of God. And remember, he did that
primarily as an evangelist. Now, there is in our day the
idea, well, you see, the evangelist, he just picks just a few little
truths. Take out a little bit about God's
love, a little bit about faith, a little bit about peace, a little
bit about happiness, a little bit about joy, mix it all together,
and that's the gospel. Who said so? Who said so? This evangelist said, from the
first day I came, I preached the whole counsel of God. He
told men not only that God is love, but that God is light.
He not only told them that God so loved the world that He gave
His only begotten Son, He told them that God is angry with the
wicked every day. He not only told men that there
is peace and joy in Christ, He told them that through much tribulation
we must enter the kingdom of God. He not only told them they
must trust the Savior, he told them they had to turn from their
sins or perish. You see, there was thoroughness
in the content of his ministry and also in the exposure. Look at the language. Verse 20,
I shrank not from declaring anything that was profitable, teaching
you publicly and from house to house. In other words, he sees
the opportunities in the marketplace. We read in the earlier chapters,
in this rented school, the school of Tyrannus, he sees that opportunity
to preach the gospel. Then he sees the opportunity
to go from house to house, aggressively proclaiming this message. That
is the mark of a bondservant of Christ, whether it is an individual
or a church. In that sense, Paul becomes the
pattern for us. Then the fifth thing that marked
his ministry is what I'm calling intelligent solemnity. Intelligent
solemnity. You say, where do you get that?
Well, look at the text. And it's bound up in these words,
I shrank not from declaring unto you anything that was profitable
and teaching you publicly and from house to house. Now, that
word declaring literally means to declare solemnly and emphatically
even to warn. So when Paul came from the first
day he set foot in Asia, there was a solemnity about his bearing. He didn't stand up with the racy
Johnny Carson type mentality of the average evangelist who
for the first 15 minutes wants to prove, you know, he's a nice
guy and he can make you laugh and he knows how to handle a
crowd and he's master of the situation. When any man comes
before you with a heart pregnant with the great issues of heaven
and hell, a heart pregnant with the great realities of God and
His law, of the sinner's obligation, of the sinner's liability to
wrath and judgment, any preacher that comes before you with his
heart pregnant with the mysteries of Mary's womb and of Golgotha
and of the open tomb, Whatever legitimate place for humor may
find expression along the way, the dominant characteristic will
be solemnity. You don't tickle people into
conviction of sin. You don't see people moving into
the path of repentance on gales of laughter. You don't find people with broken
hearts and tickled ears at the same time. Paul said, I was there
declaring, but then he says, teaching. See, the other word
he uses, teaching you publicly and from house to house. Now,
when you teach, what do you do? Well, you take certain propositions,
you state them. Then you seek to open them up,
to explain them, to illustrate them, to enforce them. That's
what you do when you teach. That's what I'm trying to do
today, to teach. I can remember when I was, quote, an evangelist
for five years. a traveling preacher, and for
lack of a better term, I was called an evangelist. And many
times when I would go to a place for the first time, after the
first or second meeting, dear people would come to me and they'd
say, Mr. Martin, Brother Martin, I don't want to be unkind, and
I'm not quite sure I know what I want to say, but you're not
an evangelist. I said, no. No, no, you're a
Bible teacher. I said, oh, and I played stupid.
That's not too hard for me to do. And I played stupid, and
I said, now, what do you mean? I'm a Bible teacher, but not
an evangelist. Well, you take a passage, and
you open it up, and you explain it, and you stick with it, and
you don't tell too many stories, and you don't tell any jokes.
And I said, oh, you mean an evangelist, then, is someone who just sort
of uses the Bible casually as a stepping stone to tell stories
and tell jokes. well not well i'm not and then
it began to get embarrassed to see that just sort of let them
uh... make their own news and get in it and But you see in their minds, you
see the problem. They had the notion that the
evangelist was the hyped up personality, you see, who could, as it were,
using the Bible as a springboard to project upon people the force
of his own personality and drawing from his rich experience, tell
stories and all the rest that would hold people at the end
of his fingers. But the Bible teacher was the one who was willing
to be hidden behind the truth of God. and unpack the truth
of God and lay the truth upon the conscience of God." Well,
needless to say, I would use the occasion then to try lovingly
and gently to instruct them and say, look, there was no greater
evangelist than the Apostle Paul, and yet he describes his evangelism
how? Teaching, teaching, teaching
publicly and from house to house. That was the manner of his ministry. And oh, again, As I pass on very
quickly to the third and final consideration this morning, as
you pray that God will bless this poor, sin-sick nation of
ours with true preachers, what are you praying for? Oh, among
other things, pray that God will raise up not only men who have
a sense of their identity as the bond slaves of Christ. And it's the most liberating
thing in the world to stand here this morning and know that ultimately
I'm ansible to my Lord. I hope you love me. Some of you
I know do. And I hope that that love will
grow and deepen. But in a sense, I don't care
if you love me or not. I do, but I don't, you see. It's
wonderful to be so free in Christ. that people's frowns or smiles,
their kind words or their nasty words, will not budge you one
one-thousandth of an inch from the message your Master has deposited
in your hands. As you pray that God raise up
preachers, that's what you need to pray for. But not only so,
pray that they may have the manner of Paul's preaching, a manner
characterized by lowliness of mind, a manner characterized
by compassion and pathos, a genuine yearning over the souls of men,
a manner characterized, as we have seen in the passage that
is before us, by faithfulness in the face of opposition, thoroughness,
content, and exposure, and a manner characterized by intelligent
solemnity. men who will give themselves
to the labor of really discovering what's there in the text, and
then not content simply to dish up the raw materials, but to
labor until they make it delicious, and make it attractive, and add
the spices and the condiments and the other things necessary,
so that when the people of God come to the Word of God, they
come eager, because they know that there will be true teaching,
characterized by that intelligent solemnity. And as we pray for
the meetings during this week, let's make that our prayer, that
night after night this will characterize my ministry, that those who come
amongst us will sense immediately that there is compassion, there
is genuine concern, that the great concern is to be true to
the message of the Master Himself. Well then, We notice in our text,
in the third and final place, what kinds of people did Paul
proclaim his gospel to? We've looked at his self-conscious
identity, the position from which he preached to Bonsley, the manner
in which he proclaimed the gospel. Now, what kinds of people did
he proclaim his gospel to? Well, he proclaimed it to Jews
and to Greeks. The time has gotten so much away
from us, I didn't realize we've gone as far as we have. I wonder
if it wouldn't be well for us just to stop here and pick it
up at this place tonight, because we don't, we don't want you kids
to get siddhitis and not want to come tonight and say that
preacher preaches too long. And you've been listening. You've
been listening pretty good. Once in a while you haven't been,
but for the most part, you've been listening real good. And
we don't want to discourage, discourage the little ones, but
let me ask you to do this, will you? For your own meditation
this afternoon, look at this passage and just go through and
see if you can anticipate the lines of thought that will seek
to open up, as we consider, the kinds of people to whom he proclaimed
his gospel. He describes them, Jews and Greeks,
and then the essence of his gospel, repentance toward God, faith
toward the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know if you'll all be
here tonight. I don't know if I'll be here tonight. And so
I must say in capsule form, whoever you are, whether you come under
that great category of those who have had wonderful privileges
in your past, you would be the modern day Jew who knows the
scriptures, who's been subjected to true religion, or whether
you would be characterized as the Greek, the pagan, who knows
little about the Bible and God and truth and the church. There
is one message for both of you, Jew and Greek. And that's the
message of repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's that God-centered message
that says you've got obligations to God that you have not met
and that you cannot meet in yourself, but which, bless God, can be
met in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you go out of here with
nothing else ringing in your ears, may those words ring in
your ears. Your greatest obligations are
obligations to God. He made you. You're accountable
to Him. You'll stand before Him in the
last day, and you've not met those obligations. You've sinned
and broken His law and provoked His wrath, and there's nothing
you can do about it. But thank God He has done something
about it, and He has sent His only begotten Son. And in His
beloved Son, He's done all that is needful to meet all the obligations
of His own law with respect to you. And oh, my friend, don't
stop short of first-hand dealings with the Lord Jesus. The great
glory of the gospel is this, that in the gospel, the sinner
in all the nakedness of his need and the Savior in all the glory
of His power come into direct contact with no one or with nothing
in between. no church, no priest, no ritual. That's the glory of the gospel.
Have you and Jesus Christ come into direct and living contact? If not, then you know nothing
of the power and the glory, the privileges of this great gospel
preached by this great preacher. But thank God preached by the
humblest of preachers ever since, and its power does not depend
upon the greatness of the one who preaches it. It lies in the
message. It is the power of God unto salvation. You say, oh,
well, if Paul came and preached that gospel to me, then it might
have more influence. No, no, my friend. Paul stands
in a class all his own, but I stand with him in this respect. I bring
the same gospel he brought. Oh, that you may believe that
gospel and, believing, know its power in your life. God sparing
us blessing us and bringing us together again this evening,
we'll complete the study of this portion of the Word of the Living
God. Let us pray together. Our Father, we confess from the
depths of our hearts that it has been our great joy to sit
in your presence, to sing your praises, to have our hearts run
out in the prayers that have been offered on our behalf. And now to sit together beneath
the feet of our Lord Jesus, speaking to us in his own living word,
we thank you for this portion that we've been privileged to
study together this morning. And we pray that the Holy Spirit
will write it upon our hearts, that he will make it effectual
in our hearts. And, O God, we do earnestly pray
that this word may be so sealed to our understanding and to our
affections and so regulative in our lives as to be a word
by which we are sanctified in answer to the prayer of our Lord
Jesus, who prayed, Father, sanctify them in thy truth. Thy word is
truth. Hear our prayer for the sake
of your beloved Son. Amen.