Thank you for inviting us to
be here with you all this morning. We've been looking forward to
it. It's good to see some old friends and everyone I've spoke
to about the church here has been very encouraged with what
the Lord's doing here with you all. And we're thankful to have
an opportunity to be a part of that this morning. I'd like to
try to bring a message from the last two verses of the Book of
Acts, if you would like to turn with me there in your Bibles. And I will preface this message
by saying that I hope that I'm not being presumptuous. For I realize very well that
this church has stood for many more years than I've been
trying to preach as a beacon to gospel preaching. And in bringing
this message, I don't want anyone to think that I esteem myself
very much as a preacher, but the title of this message is
Preaching. Preaching. I hope the Lord will by his spirit
make it fresh to our hearts. The importance of preaching,
the significance of preaching the gospel of God's free grace
in Christ. and that he will make it fresh
to our hearts. For by the end of the book of
Acts, it's been now 30 years since the Lord sent those apostles
out to preach. The day of Pentecost in Acts
chapter two, the Spirit of God comes and empowers the disciples
to preach. And for 30 years now, they have
been traveling and preaching. And God has been using the message,
not the man, but the message that's being declared to save
his people. And it's amazing to me, we've
studied the book of Acts over the last few months, or maybe
longer than that, over a year and a half, I guess. It's amazing that the Holy Spirit
closes this book with the same theme that it opens with. Notice
in verse 30 of Acts chapter 28, and Paul dwelt two whole years
in his own hired house. He's in house arrest, he's in
Rome, and he's waiting to be brought before Caesar for preaching. That was the charge against him
that he was guilty of preaching the gospel. But the Lord gave
him two years in Rome before he stood trial, and he was in
his own house and had the freedom to have others come in that he
could preach to. And so when he was no longer
able to go out and preach, the Lord sent the church to him to preach. 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. Preaching has fallen on hard
times in modern-day man-made religion, hasn't it? Preaching's
been replaced with moralistic teaching and various forms of
entertainment and pop psychology. The preaching of the gospel is
no longer the central theme of most religious groups, but to
God's church, to God's church and to God's people, it's still
the emphasis, it's still the focus of what we do. It is still as it was for these
30 years in the book of Acts, the activity of the apostles. An apostle is just one cent,
is an ambassador. And so that's what preaching
is, is taking the message that God has given. You know, I don't
know much about politics, but I know that ambassadors, when
they're sent to a foreign country, are held responsible to only
say those things that are approved by the one that sends them. And
that's what an apostle is. It is ambassadors. And so all
we do in preaching is declare what God has said, and all God's
people want to know is what God has said. Preacher, I'm not interested
in your opinion. I'm not interested in hearing
about politics or anything else. I want to know what thus saith
the Lord. And so when we preach, that's what we're doing. And
God's people are not only concerned for that and interested in that,
but they need that. Sinners in need of a savior want
to hear about him from God's word. And it's preaching that
the Lord has ordained to declare that message to sinners. God uses what the world calls
foolishness. Your friends and my friends,
consider what we're doing here this morning to be foolish. But
the foolishness of God makes foolish the wisdom of man. And
God uses the foolishness of preaching to save them which believe. Call upon the name of the Lord
and thou shalt be saved. How shall they call upon him
in whom they've not believed? I want you to pause on that verse
for just a moment and think with me. How shall they call upon
him in whom they've not believed? What does that tell us? That
believing comes before calling. How shall they call upon him
in whom they've not believed? God has to give you a spirit
of grace and faith to believe before you call. So when you
call, you're just responding to the work of grace that God
has put in your heart. How shall they call upon him
in whom they've not believed? And how shall they believe on
him in whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear? Without
a preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent? Oh,
I know you all are familiar of this more than most any other
church, but how important this matter of preaching is. And I want to try to deal with
five questions from these two verses that we just read. The
first question is, who does the preaching? Who does the preaching? And the answer to that question
is, men do the preaching. And how glorifying that is to
the Lord that he would humble all of us. You're humbled and
that you are made to only listen. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
comes by the word of God. Why would the Lord ordain hearing
as the means of faith? Because hearing is a passive
activity, isn't it? You're not actively doing anything
right now. You're just listening. And if
you think they're humbling for you to sit there and have to
listen to another man tell you about God, try standing up here. I'm here to tell you there's
nothing more humbling than to have to stand before God's people
and bear the responsibility of speaking the truth about God.
And so, you know, Paul is preaching here, isn't he? And you remember
when the Lord saved Saul of Tarsus, the name Saul means one to be
desired. That's what his name used to
be. The first king of Israel the scripture says was head and
shoulders above all the other men and they chose him because
they saw him as One to be desired. We want a king and they chose
Saul and Saul of Tarsus was following in that same He said I was you
know, I achieved Excellence above my peers and he was trained by
Gamaliel and Saul of Tarsus was a man to be desired and And yet
when the Lord saved him, what did he change his name to? Paul. You know what Paul means? You
know what it means. Little. That's what Paul means. It means little. God took a man
who was proud and self-righteous and made him little in his own
sight in order to be able to use him to preach the gospel. Who does the preaching? Men do
the preaching. Sinful men, sinners telling other
sinners about the Savior. Beggars telling other beggars
about where to find bread. dying men. That's what preachers
are. This message is not in any way
to exalt the preacher. That's why I wanted to see in
our very first point the humiliation of the preacher. The glory is
in the ones being preached and the means of the ministry of
declaring who he is. But it's Wonderful to me that
the Lord would use such a humbling means for all of us to bring
glory to himself. And that's what preaching is. Chapter 27 of the Book of Acts
is all about the Apostle Paul on a ship and wrecking that ship,
wrecking in Malta, you remember? And how the 276 souls that were
on that ship were all saved, although the ship was lost, and
all that happened there on the island of Malta. we have a friend
that is from Malta and she tells us that there's a bay there called
St. Paul's Bay and there's a bronze
statue of a man who's supposed to be St. Paul and they eventually
had to put a fence around that statue because so many people
had kissed the feet of this statue that the feet were wearing away
and You know, that's not what, you know, men want to exalt the
preacher, but might God give us the grace. to always say in
preaching, he must increase and I must decrease. I'm but a voice
of one crying in the wilderness, behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sins of the world. But I also want to say this,
when I say that, when we say that preaching is done by men, It's not just done by the man
who stands behind this pulpit and preaches as I'm doing right
now. It's done by every single one
of God's people. In the sense that to preach is
to declare, it is to proclaim. And preaching can be done And
every time we talk to someone about Christ, every time we speak
of him and declare his gospel and tell of what he's done, I
love that passage in Ezekiel that we read earlier, I will
and you shall. And every time you have an opportunity,
because preaching is to publish, it is to show forth. And so it
is the ministry not just of the man that God's called and gifted
to stand and preach, but it's the ministry of the whole church.
You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria
and unto the uttermost parts of the world. If I had come up here last night
and none of you were here, and I stood up here and I preached
this same message from this same text, would I be preaching? Would I be preaching? And the
answer to that is no. And what I'm trying to say to
you right now is that you are just as involved in what we're
doing right now as I am. You know the old adage, if a
tree falls in the woods and there's no one around, does it make a
sound? And the point of that adage is that sound has to be
heard in order to be sound. And so it is with preaching.
Right now, as I'm speaking audibly, you are praying. and thinking
and rejoicing in what you're hearing, I hope. So this is a,
this matter of preaching is something that we do together. It's not
a one man thing. It's a ministry that God has
given to his church to preach the gospel. Turn to me to Judges chapter
15 Judges chapter 15 And look with
me at verse at verse 15 God's raised up a man by the name of
Samson one of the judges of Israel and in each thing that the Lord
Gives him to do he is a picture of Christ and and here he is
as well and Samson in going against the Philistines in verse 50 in
verse 15, and he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth
his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. And
Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,
with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. And it came to
pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast the
jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramothlii." I actually found the jawbone
of an ass and I put it on the wall in my office to remind me
what I am. The only reason that that jawbone
was able to slay a thousand Philistines was not because of the strength
of the jawbone, but because of the strength of Samson. It was
the hand in which that jawbone was held that made that jawbone
effectual. Jawbone's not a very likely weapon,
is it? That's all preachers are. It's just the jawbone of an ass. An ass in the scriptures is a
burden-bearing beast, and as that ass brought the Lord Jesus
Christ into the city of Jerusalem, that's all we're doing. where
we're carrying the message of God in the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the Lord uses that message to slay his people,
to put us to death in order to make us alive. Second question I want to try
to deal with from this text What do we preach notice notice
in verse in verse 31 preaching the kingdom of God The kingdom
of God is an eternal kingdom Just like we have in Christ eternal
life And when the Bible speaks of eternality, it's not talking
about something that starts now and lasts forever. It's talking
about something that never had a beginning and never has an
end. The kingdom of God is a kingdom that has always been. It's a listen to what listen
to what Nebuchadnezzar said in Daniel chapter 4 you remember
Nebuchadnezzar he became proud and thinking that he had established
the kingdom of Babylon and the Lord humbled him the Lord turned
him into a beast and In chapter 4, the scripture says, Nebuchadnezzar
lifted up his eyes to heaven, and his understanding returned
unto him, and he blessed the Most High, and he said his 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 hath done according to
his will with the armies of heaven and with all the inhabitants
of the earth whatsoever he wills. And no man can stay his hand
and no man can say unto him, what doest thou? That's the kingdom
of God. The kings of this world are but
puppets in the hand of our God. The nations of this world, the
scripture says, are but a drop in the bucket. When we preach,
we're preaching a kingdom that is an eternal kingdom, an everlasting
kingdom. A kingdom where the subjects
of the king are his children and where he loves and provides
for them In every way, we're preaching the kingdom of God.
The first reference to the Lord Jesus Christ preaching is that
he came preaching the kingdom. The kingdom has come unto you.
The kingdom of God has always been, the Lord Jesus Christ has
always ruled and reigned. But now, through the preaching
of the gospel, it has come unto you. People blasphemously talk about
making Jesus Lord of their life. You cannot make him Lord. He
is Lord. You can't do something that God's
already done. God made him to be both Christ
and Lord. He's king of kings and Lord of
lords and when we preach we are calling on men to bow and to
rejoice and to come to the king of kings To follow him to believe
on him We're preaching the kingdom of God We are declaring unto men that salvation is of
the Lord. He's king. He has the sovereign
right to choose a people of his own will and purpose before the
foundation of the world. He has the sovereign power to
effectually redeem those people that he chose. He has the sovereign
right to call out of darkness, effectually, those that the Father
chose and those for whom the Lord Jesus Christ died. He has the power to keep us from
falling and to present us faultless before the throne of God. He's
king. We're preaching the kingdom of
God. We're preaching the Lord Jesus
Christ as the sovereign reigning ruler who has never abdicated
his throne. And he's never been threatened
by the unbelief or the rebellion of men. Psalm, Terminator, Psalm
2. This is who we preach. Look at
Psalm 2. Does this not describe our world
today? Does this not describe the natural
man who has not bowed to Christ, who has not believed on him?
Why do the heathen rage on the people? Imagine a vain thing. When men think that they can
do what they want, or they can have power over God, or they
can choose Him when they want to choose Him, or not be accountable
to Him, they're just imagining a vain thing. He's King. The kings of the earth. You see,
the men who set themselves up on the throne of God, according
to 2 Thessalonians chapter two, that's what the natural man does.
He makes himself out to be God. And he makes God dependent upon
him. God can't save me unless I do my part, unless I, you know,
he wants to save me, but he really can't until I allow him, invite
him into my heart. How blasphemous is that? Dethroning
it's it's it's taking Christ off his throne Attempting to
here's what the Lord says the kings of the earth set themselves And the rulers take counsel together
against the Lord and against his anointing, saying, let us
break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us.
And he that sitteth in the heavens. When the Lord Jesus Christ ascended
back into glory, the father said to him, sit thou here at my right
hand until I make all thine enemies thy footstool. That's where the
Lord Jesus is. He's seated in the heavens. And
he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold
them in derision. He's not threatened by the rebellion
of men. He's king. He's the sovereign
ruler. So I'm not gonna have him reign
over me. Isn't that what men say? I'm here to preach the kingdom
of God, and I'm here to declare to you without any apology, without
any confusion, the Lord Jesus Christ reigns over you right
now, whether you want him to or not. Amen? And God's people
rejoice in that But for the kings of the earth and those who hold
him in contempt thinking that they that they can have things
their way He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh He's
king When we preach Christ we are preaching him as the sovereign
ruler the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Notice back in our text in verse
31, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things
which concern the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn, look with me down just
a few places in your Bible to Romans chapter 1. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ,
called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which
he hath promised to for by his prophets and the holy scriptures
concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the
seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the
son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by
the resurrection from the dead. That's who we preach. We preach
Christ, the Son of David, according to the flesh. He had to come
as a man, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem them
who are cursed by the law. He had to be born in the likeness
of sinful flesh. He had to have a body in which
he was able to bear our sins on Calvary's cross. He had to
have a body that had blood in it that was able to be spilt on Golgotha as a covering for
the sins of his people. He had to have a body in which
he was able to glorify His Father, perfectly obeying all the commands
of God in heart, in mind, in word, in action. He's the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believeth. He kept God's law perfectly in
His body as a man. He obeyed the Father. God required a perfect man. And that's who we preach. You
and I have never been able to keep any part of God's law, not
for one minute, not for one second. Love the Lord your God with all
of your heart and all of your mind and all of your soul. When
have we ever been able to do that? The Lord Jesus Christ, as the
one who came in the flesh according to the seed of David and declared
to be the Son of God by his resurrection, was, if we could say, rewarded
by his Father. to be raised from the dead because
of his obedience, his obedience even unto death, he obeyed, he
loved his father with all of his heart and all of his mind
and all of his soul, all of the time, all the time. That's who
we preach. This ministry of preaching is
essential if we're to know God, isn't it? And it's who we preach. It's who
we preach. It's the subject of our preaching. It's the object of our preaching
that matters. And so this little man by the
name of Paul, who he says of himself did not come with excellency
of speech, but he came with fear and trembling. If you've ever
stood to preach, you know a little bit about that. He's preaching the kingdom of
God. He's preaching the rule and reign of the son of God who's
seated at the right hand of God. He's preaching all the things
that concern him in terms of who he is and what it is that
he accomplished in the salvation of his people. What a glorious message we have,
brethren. What a glorious message. We have
a Christ. We have a Christ who has satisfied
everything that God required for the penalty of our sin. We
have a Christ who has fulfilled everything that God requires
for our righteousness. We have one who was made sin. that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. Now, I know that Don loved this
passage of scripture, and I loved hearing him speak of it, but
I'd like for you to turn with me again, if you would, to 2
Corinthians 5, verse 21. Here's who we preach. Here's
the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. For he, God the
Father, hath made him God the Son. And notice the verb to be
is in italics, and one of the reasons I like the King James
Version is because when the translators added words, they let us know
that they were added by them and that it wasn't the original
text. And normally, most of the time,
it's better, the verse is actually more clear without those italicized
words even being there. So let's read it without those
words. They don't really belong there for he hath made him sin
for us Now I know there's a lot of people say well, you know
Christ paid the penalty for our sin But He didn't have the guilt of sin. They say that guilt implies commission,
and we don't want to defile the holiness of the sacrifice by
even implying that the Lord Jesus Christ ever committed a sin. I've never heard a gospel preacher
say that. I've never heard a gospel preacher
imply for one second that the Lord Jesus Christ was guilty
of committing a sin. And yet, let me ask you a question.
When we talk about guilt, what do you experience? What do you
experience when you feel guilty? We all know what guilt is. What
do you experience? You experience two things. You
experience shame. And you experience separation
from God. Your sins have separated you
from your God. Is there any better definition?
Men say, well, Christ wasn't guilty. How else can you define
guilt other than shame and separation? You know, if you took the punishment for someone
else's crime, You could feel proud that you did something
good for somebody else. Or you could feel resentment
that you were forced to carry someone else's responsibility. But one thing that you could
never feel, that you could never feel, shame. If you were punished
for someone else's crime, you could not feel shame for that
punishment. Now turn with me to Psalm 38,
if you will. Psalm 38. David is speaking prophetically. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
speaking the Son of David Verse 5 My wounds stink and are
corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled. I am bowed down
greatly. I go mourning all the day long
for my loins are filled with loathsome disease and there is
no soundness in my flesh. Look down at verse 17, for I
am ready to halt and my sorrow is continually before me. Here's the Lord Jesus Christ
expressing what he experienced when he bore the sins of his
people on Calvary's cross. Turn over to chapter 40 in the
Psalms. Look at with me at verse 12 for
innumerable evils have come past me about Mine iniquities have
taken a hold upon me so that I am not able to look up Can
you relate to that is that not what guilt? When you sin when
you do wrong you you shamed not able to look up can't make eye
contact with people and Not the result of sin. You know, we get over our shame
pretty quick, don't we? Don't last very long. And in Psalm 22 verse 1, the
Lord Jesus Christ said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? And when he said those words
from Calvary's cross, he did not look up into heaven. Not according to what we just
read. I cannot look up. I'm too ashamed. Innumerable evils have come past
me. Mine iniquities have taken hold
upon me. I feel the sorrow. You and I, our sorrow is so small. Here's the point, brethren. Shame
and separation. which is the guilt of sin, the
Lord Jesus Christ experienced infinitely, infinitely. He knew the fullness of shame.
He knew the agony of separation. When he prayed to his father
in the Garden of Gethsemane and said, Father, if there be any
way this cup can pass from me, let it be. Nevertheless, not
my will, but thy will be done. He wasn't talking about the agony
of crucifixion, as horrible as that would have been. He was talking about the bitter
dregs of sin and the separation that he would know experientially. He had had perfect union with
his father for all eternity, and he knew that when he was
made sin, that that union was gonna be broken, that he was
gonna bear the full shame and guilt of sin. Here's the good
news, so that we have not to. He took it. He took the shame. He took the humiliation. He took
the guilt. He took the separation from the
Father. And here's what God said in Isaiah
53. God saw the travail of his soul. of his soul, and God was satisfied. Satisfied. The person and work of the Lord
Jesus Christ is the subject of our preaching. We as a church,
men, feeble, sinful men like you and like me have been called
of God to carry the gospel of His grace to the world. And God,
by His Spirit, takes the message of salvation, the declaration
that the work of redemption is finished. and applies it through
faith to the hearts of God's people to deliver them from their
shame and from their guilt and from their separation from God
that we might have life in Christ. Paul Just kept preaching right up
right up to the time they they put him to death Preaching the
kingdom of God teaching those things which concern the Lord
Jesus Christ with all confidence We don't preach this message
Saying well, you know, it seems to me or why don't you go home
and think about that? We we preach it with bus sayeth
the Lord we have great confidence that That this is the truth We're
not speculating here. We're not trying to figure out
what we're going to do, or what's true, what's not true. We're
declaring the Lord Jesus Christ as the truth, and the life, and
the way. We do it with all confidence.
I only hear a man preach to me who believes what he's preaching.
He knows what he's preaching is true. And the longer I preach,
the less confidence I have in myself and the more I have in
Christ. That's what preaching does. It
decreases the man and increases the man. With all confidence, I want you
to notice briefly just that, well, last comment. No man forbidding
Him. The Bible says the Word of God
cannot be bound. Paul said, I'm bound in chains,
but the Word of God can't be bound. My Word, when it goes out, will
accomplish the purpose for which I send it. No man can forbid
it. No man can stop it. You can't
stop the Word of God for yourself. Spirit of God applies the truth
of God's word. You're gonna believe. You're
just gonna believe. You cannot believe. No man can
forbid the word of God. You can't forbid God from speaking
to you. And we can't forbid this gospel. The world can't forbid this gospel. The Lord's going to accomplish
his purpose. He's going to get his word to
those for whom he died. When God says my word, when it
returns unto me, it will not return unto me void. It will
accomplish the purpose for which I sent it. That's not just the
preached word, but that's the living word. When the Lord Jesus
Christ has the living word of God ascended back into glory,
he did not return to heaven void. He went with all the names of
those for whom he lived and died. And the scripture says that we
are in the heavenlies right now in Christ Jesus. That's where
the church is. We are preaching the kingdom
of God and teaching all those things which concern the Lord
Jesus Christ with all confidence and no man can forbid it. Amen.