I invite you to turn back with
me to Acts chapter 9. And as I told you before the
reading, Acts 9 begins with the conversion of Saul of Tarsus,
the calling of Paul the Apostle, arrested by God on the road to
Damascus. Every one of God's elect at one
point in his life will be arrested by God. God will say, you've
gone far enough, far enough. He will arrest him and he'll
call him as he did Paul with an irresistible call. You don't
see Paul kicking and squirming in the road against God. He was
a broken man. He was lying there blind, his
face in the dirt. bowed before the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ stripped him of his pride
and brought him to bow at his feet. And this is the story of
every saved sinner who'd been brought to bow before the Lord.
I hear a lot of talk today about my Savior, my Savior, knowing
my Savior. What I wanna know is who is your
Lord? Who is your Lord? Because if he's not Lord, he's
not your Savior. The first thing our Lord made
known to the Apostle Paul was his Lordship. He stopped him. He stopped all his forward motion. He stopped everything that this
man was about, everything this man thought he knew, he took
from him. Now he's laying there in the dust before the Lord.
Who art thou, Lord? That's what Paul said from the
dust, and that's what you'll say when he brings you to bow
at his feet. He's Lord, and it's the story
of every saved sinner. The Lord intervenes in his life,
brings to a halt whatever direction he's headed, wherever he's traveling,
and he makes him a bondservant in the kingdom of God. And this
man who was once blinded and deceived by false teachers, he's
now given a revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ. He goes back, he was very knowledgeable
of the scriptures, but he didn't understand the meaning of the
scriptures. He didn't understand that to him give all the prophets
witness. He didn't know that. He didn't
know that. And the Lord showed that to him.
He revealed his glory. And this man was chosen of God
to a very high office in the church. He writes to the Romans
and he says that he was a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be
an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God. And as a preacher,
he began, Acts 9, verse 20, and preached Christ in the synagogues
that he is the Son of God. This is not poor little Jesus
boy. He's not some errand boy. This is God come into the flesh.
He preached that Jesus of Nazareth was God, was God. I don't hear that being preached
today. No, he's, humbled by your presence. He
has to wait on you to make a decision. He has to wait on you to open
a door. He has to wait on you to do this, wait on you to, that
ain't the Lord. My soul, he spoke, he commanded,
and the universe appeared out of nothing. Everything that you
see wasn't there at that time. And everything that you see now,
he commanded to be, and it was. He preached Christ in the synagogues
that he is the Son of God. Verse 22, he increased them more
in strength and confounded the Jews, proving that this is very
Christ. This is the Christ of whom Isaiah
spoke and Abraham and all of the old prophets and teachers,
patriarchs. And the Jews, which once honored
him, now they took counsel to kill him. We gotta get rid of
him. They've ruined him. He got led
away by a cult. How many of you been told that
over the years? You just been deceived, that's a cult. They think they're the only ones
on earth who know anything about God. They took counsel to kill him. But the disciples led him down
over the wall in a basket and he escaped. And then he came
to Jerusalem and he began to speak again. And he spoke boldly
in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed against the Grecians.
Who were the Greeks? They were the philosophers. They
joined themselves in religion and mixed their philosophy with
the Word of God. We hear a lot of that today.
A lot of philosophy mixed in with the gospel of Christ. And
he disputed against the Grecians, and then they went about to slay
him. And the brethren, knowing this,
they got him out of there and brought him to Caesarea, and
then finally to his own home in Tarsus. And Paul's preaching
brought with it great persecution. Great persecution. And as a whole,
our churches today don't suffer that kind of persecution. Why? We preach the same message he
did. I preach that Jesus of Nazareth is the very Christ. I show you
that from the scriptures. I prove it to you just like Paul
proved it to them. I preach that Jesus of Nazareth
is God come into the flesh. Well, they wanted to kill him,
but nobody, as far as I know, wanted to kill me. Why is that? Why is that? As a whole, our
churches today don't suffer that kind of persecution that followed
the apostles. And I personally believe it's
because we don't pose any threat. to the religion of this world.
We're such little groups that we don't even pose a threat to
them. Now let that gospel take hold
like it did in Ashland, Kentucky and hundreds begin to come and
make professions of faith and begin to gather together and
that message go on television and that message begin to expand.
Now you're going to get some persecution that's going to be
public. It's going to be public. This handful of men turned the
world upside down. That's what the Jews said. These
men have turned the world upside down. Now they come hither. Now
they're coming over here. Thousands were converted under
their ministry and they were a real and present threat to
Antichrist's religion. They were ready to slay Peter
and some of the other apostles, but they feared the people. And
so Gamaliel, he gave them a little story to think about. He was
a Pharisee and a doctor of the law, and he quieted them down
for a season. But now here comes Paul preaching,
and persecution rose again. And this is where we pick up
my text over here in Acts 9.31. Paul left, they snuck him out
of town, And then they brought him all the way to his home in
Tarsus. Now watch this. Then had the churches rest throughout
all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified, and walking
in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost,
were multiplied. And what I want to talk to you
about this morning in this text is this. Fear. and comfort. Fear and comfort. Boy, them two words sound like
they're poles apart, but they're not. They're not. You can't be comforted without
this fear, and you can't fear without this comfort. The church has experienced the
rest from the persecution of men, a providential rest. They
already had an eternal rest in Christ. Man who believes on Christ
has entered into his rest. Hebrews 4.3 says, for we which
have believed do enter into rest. A preacher, what is that rest? What are you talking about? How
does a believer know if he's entered into the rest of Christ?
Hebrews 4.10, he that is entered into his rest, he hath ceased
from his own works as God did from his. How did God cease from
his work? Huh? How did God cease from his
works and declare a day of rest? How did he do that? He first
trusted in Christ. That's His rest. He rested all
things in the hands of His Son. He's the mediator. He rested
everything in His hands. All His creation, all His elect,
all His glory. He put all His eggs in one basket.
He trusted in Christ. He saw everything secure and
complete in Christ and He rested from His work. He saw His work
as finished and complete. and rested from all his labors.
If our Lord had not rested in Christ, this world would have
been obliterated when Adam sinned. The only reason he allowed it
to continue is because of Christ. That's right, he rested in Christ.
He knew that Christ would come and atone for our sins. He knew
that Christ would come and provide us with the righteousness. He knew that Christ would come
and that all his elect would bow to him and be saved. Every
one of them. Every one of them. And so he
rested. Had nothing left to do. Nothing left to do. Isn't that
what we do? We find out that when Christ
hung on that cross, after all those things that the scriptures
foretold were done, after he'd accomplished the redemptive will
of God, he said, it is finished. What's that mean? That means
it's done. It means it's done. You think you're going to add
something to that? No, you're not going to add anything
to it. All your work's going to do is distract from it. They're
going to distract from it. I've told you often about that,
and I'm by no means an art connoisseur. But when we was in Washington,
D.C., I wanted to see these things, so I'm going to get my money's
worth. So I went in, and here's all
these paintings, and on one room it was called the Dutch Masters. And these people had painted
these paintings. They were huge. They were three
or four feet tall and six feet wide, and they had benches there,
and you could sit on the bench and just study the paintings.
But the paintings were, who knows how old they were, but they were,
they were so detailed. It was just unbelievable. You
just have to see them to really appreciate the talent of that
artist who drew them. But over there in the corner,
there was this big old guy. He looked like Mr. Clean. He
was standing over there like this. Man, I mean, he had arms
on him like that, William. He's standing over there on the
corner. And my wife said, what's he doing? And I said, when you
get your little pencil out and you go up there to touch up that
painting, he's going to take you out. That's what he's doing. You think God's going to let
you touch up Christ's perfection, touch up his glory? No. No. He manifested His glory in Christ. All of it. All of it. And we enter into that and we
rest in that just as God rested in it. And that's what it says
over there in Ephesians 1, 12, and 13. In whom you also believed
after you heard. You did the same thing God did.
You rested in Him. You rested in Him. Believers see God's counsel and
will accomplished in Christ, his redemption purchased and
possessed, righteousness rotten and putrid, and they rest in
him. Rest in him. But isn't there a labor left
to do? Yep, he tells us about it over in Hebrews chapter four.
You just read the next verse, verse 11. Here's what he says. Let us labor therefore. Now watch
this. to enter into that rest. What's
the labor? The labor is to enter into that
rest. Why am I teaching you this morning?
Why am I reading these things? Why am I up here preaching? Why
do I go when a door's open and go over there to preach wherever
it is? I want you to enter into that rest. And I labor that you might be
able to do it and you labor Once you understand what that rest
is, that's what you're gonna want. Nothing else. Nothing else. My soul, which work have you
ever done or ever even imagined to do would you want God to see? Hold that thing up like an apple
before the teacher like it's something. Huh? Oh, my soul,
not once you know what it is. Once Isaiah understood what these,
now you read the first chapters in Isaiah, and Isaiah was a kind
of self-righteous man. He's woe and everything coming
and going. Woe is this, woe is that, woe is the drunkard. And
the scriptures are clear on that. But listen to me, when it come,
when he saw Uzziah die, now he said, I saw the Lord. What'd
he say then? Woe is me. He's not dangling
his self-righteousness up before God anymore. He saw his train
filled the temple, his glory filled the temple. Even the seraphims
covered their eyes before him and cried, holy, holy, holy. We enter into his rest, and we
labor to do that. Labor, therefore, to enter into
that rest, lest any man should fall short of the same example
of unbelief as Israel did back in that wilderness. Israel didn't want for anything.
They didn't want for anything. Was they hungry? He'd give them
manna. They need to drink, that rock
followed them all through the wilderness, that rock. The smitten
rock. They didn't want, their shoes
never wore out. The whole time they were there,
never wore out. Wore shoes of badger skin, they never wore
out. Anything they needed, God provided. They needed protection,
God protected them. All through there. But there
was a bunch. who couldn't enter into that
rest. They just could not rest. And they chided him, and chided
him, and chided him. And finally he swore to them
in his wrath, he said, you're not gonna enter into my rest. You're not coming in here. You're
not gonna have this rest. And that's what he says to all
men, even right now, that won't enter into that rest, you ain't
coming in. You ain't coming in. But the
churches had rest, a providential rest. And that same providential
rest, I think we're enjoying in our day. We're enjoying a
providential rest from harsh persecution. And it's this time during this
rest that I want us to look at. And several things took place
during this time. The first thing he tells us is
this. They were edified. Edified, being able to assemble
themselves on a regular basis. They were taught the gospel of
Jesus Christ from Genesis to Malachi. They gathered together. There was no public stonings
or any of these things going on. Those massive persecutions
had come to an end. They were enjoying a rest, a
providential rest from these things. And so they began to
meet. begin to meet, and they begin
to be edified. And I've not been able to go
verse by verse through the whole Old Testament Scriptures, but
I went through most of it, all the way through Genesis and Exodus,
quite a bit in Leviticus, all through the Minor Prophets, quite a few books of the Old
Testament. And I tried to show you Christ
in all of these. Churches are the pillar and ground
of the truth, and so our first business is edification. We talked
about it during the Sunday school class, what ignorance is. Ignorance is just not knowing
all the facts. That's what ignorance is. When
I say man's ignorant, I'm not trying to belittle him, I'm just
trying to tell you what his problem is. He don't know. A lot of things
I don't know. I can't build a spaceship. I can't operate on anybody. I don't know how. I'm ignorant. Well, man's ignorant of the person
and work of Christ. He's ignorant of God. He don't
have the facts. He's been lied to. He's deceived. And this is the reason given
by Paul in Ephesians four for the gift of the apostles and
prophets of evangelist and pastor teachers. And when our assemblies
are under fire from within or without, it interferes with this
edification. When there's problems doing and
working in, we're not being edified. It's only when it gives us rest
from those things. like we're sitting here this
morning. I'm not expecting anybody to come in here with a torch
right now or guns. And we can sit here and in relative
peace be edified from the scriptures. We can hear the gospel and be
taught, be taught of God. So they were providentially granted
a time of quietness and they took advantage of it. And they
walked in the fear of the Lord. And this word fear is an interesting
word. In some places it means dread
of terror. Dread of terror. Paul preached
to that one king and his knees knocked together. That's terror. Some places it means fear of
catastrophe or pain. They fixin' to do somethin' to
you at the hospital and you've not had it done before. A little
fear comes up there, isn't it? But here it's applied to those
who were edified and walking with God. In Psalm chapter two, verse 11,
he said, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Rejoice with trembling? Fear
of the Lord? In Luke chapter seven, verse
16, after they saw our Lord raise the widow's son from the dead,
it said, and there came a fear on all. Now watch this. And they glorified God. And they said, a great prophet has
risen up among us, and God has visited his people. And in Proverbs
1, 7, it says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
but fools despise wisdom and instruction. So what is this
fear which the believer has and no one else has? What is this
fear? Of all those under sin, he said,
there is no fear of God before their eyes. They don't have this
fear, but believers do. And I'll tell you what it is.
It's an awakening to the presence of the living God. God's not
who you thought he was. He's God. He's not under your
control. You had no say so in what he's
doing. He's God. We're accountable to
him without excuse. He's God. Have you ever been
awakened to the presence of God? I know what we believe in our
consciences. I know we're disturbed by those
things. Pricked a little bit, but we're not brought down by
it. Troubled perhaps for a little
bit. But it's an awakening to the presence of the living God.
He says this about faith. He that cometh to God must believe
that he is. Is what? God. He's God. That's who you're gonna come
to. That's who you stand before. You're gonna be awakened to the
presence of God. Jesus Christ is God come into
the flesh. The only way to rightly view
him is to see God in him. Who is this man? He's God. He's God. I can't say that enough
times. He's God. They come to take him and want to know his name. He said,
I am, and they fell backward on the ground. Well, Jesus of
Nazareth didn't have that kind of power over there, but God
Almighty did. And Jesus of Nazareth is God.
I don't know how many times he proved it. He that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
him. And what a shock to the soul it is when God begins to
reveal to that man his glory. I grew up in a small railroad
town in northern Ohio called Crestline. Old Pennsylvania Railroad
in New York Central, crisscrossed there in that town. I don't care
where you lived, you'd live next to the railroad. I was about 12 or 13, best I
can remember. I was on my way to school one
morning. I was walking. And I know to look at crossings
and stuff. And I know I saw that thing. And it was just sitting there.
But, you know, 12, 13-year-old, my mind was way off on who knows
what donuts or what I was going to do after school or something.
And I wasn't just paying attention to it. I was just walking. Cars
were crossing the tracks and things sitting there and puffing
and carrying on, you know, but I didn't pay no attention to
it. And I got right out in front of it about four feet away from
it. I'm talking about a train engine that weighed 255,000 pounds.
And that shifty old engineer pulled on his whistle. And I
tell you, I about jumped out of my shoes. And I turned around
and I looked up at that big old train, and there it stood. That guy just laughing, you know.
But I looked up at that big massive train. I didn't realize how big
a train was until I was standing two feet away from it looking
up. This is what happens when God awakens a soul to himself. All of a sudden, God's not this
distant term. He's not this abstract person
way off somewhere. He ain't just a word in a book. He's not just a man and story.
He's God. In Him we live and move and have
our being. He's God. This is what happens. Man's awakened. This is what
Paul was preaching. Jesus of Nazareth is God. God
awakened souls to that. Oh, I tell you fear, but it'll
be a good fear when you see him. You'll see this God, this massive,
unstoppable God, this unchangeable God, this all-powerful God. You're gonna see him, and then
you're gonna see him engaged to save your soul. And God was
manifest in the flesh. He was manifest in the flesh
to show us this salvation. This is God engaged to save your
soul, not some man. This is God. He can't fail. He can't fail. And oh, you better
listen to him. He is the word. I have words. I have his words. But he is the
word. I am the truth. Isn't that what
he said? I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life. No man cometh
unto the Father but by me. God gives a believer the revelation
of himself. He's overcome by his glory. This
is God, the eternal God, the creator, sustainer of all things. He spake, and it was done. He
commanded, and it stood fast. This is God. Those Jews looked
at Christ, and they said, only God can forgive sins. What's
he telling you why he forgives sins? He is God. He is God. He's all-knowing. He's all-seeing.
He's everywhere present. He's absolutely sovereign, unchangeable,
and irresistible. He's the great I Am. And there's nowhere you can go
to escape him. Boy, that train had me. If he'd
been moving, I'd been had. I'd been had. David said, if I send up to heaven,
thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold,
thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning
and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, you're out there
too. Your right hands are leading
me and holding me. Huh? He's God. He's God. But even more than this, when
the believer's introduced to the living God, he sees him through
his son and he sees him suffering on the cross for our sins. He
sees what it takes to appease the living God. The death of
his son. Oh, my soul. We don't know this much about
him. This is God. God. His holy justice demands
His death. His holy character demands a
perfect righteousness. His holiness of character demands
a perfect harmony with all the attributes. No one characteristic
of God is supreme, but they're all in equality and harmony at
all times. His love cannot compromise his
justice, nor his mercy his righteousness. All of these things must be shown
if he's God. And he said, he keeps mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, but I
will by no means clear the guilty. And when God passes by the sinner,
like he did with Moses, he'll make all his goodness known unto
him. All his goodness. His wrath been
taken away. His wrath was borne by another,
but he's gonna show you his goodness. In his sovereignty, you're gonna
see his sovereignty, but you're gonna see his goodness in it. You're gonna see his righteous
character, but you're gonna see a goodness in that righteousness.
It was wrought out for you. It was made known to you. How
come everybody in the world don't know about this righteousness?
Huh? Not given unto them to understand,
but it's given unto you. That's what the scripture said.
Given unto you. But he said, you can't see my
face. Nobody can see my face and live. Nobody. We see the
glory of his mercy and grace, and we see enough to make a permanent
impression on us. And God brings our minds and
hearts to conform to the image of his son. Not some painting,
not some statue, not some likeness, but to that testimony which he
gives us in his word, that image, he is the exact image of God. Express image, the scripture
said, of the father. No other place to see God. in
his true character, and he hath predestinated that every believer
be conformed to that image. That's the image you're gonna
see. That's the image you're gonna bow to. That's the image
you're gonna worship. God in Christ. We see the glory of his mercy
and grace, and we see enough to make an impression on us. And he burns that image by faith
into our hearts and minds, and from that day, The fear of the
Lord is a reality with us. And it's a reverential fear. I fear him not as a tyrant. I fear him as my father. I tell you, I had a fear of my
own father. I never one time believed that he hated me. You
couldn't have convinced me of that. I knew better. But I feared
him. I feared him. The opposite of this fear is
familiarity. And this whole generation that
I live in today is on a first name basis with the Son of God.
He's just Jesus. Just Jesus. The sinner learns
this fear as he stands stripped before God and all his righteousness
is standing out as filthy rags. And he knows this fear as he
stands before the living God as a hopeless, helpless, vile
sinner in need to be clothed. Daniel saw him. Saw him in his
glory. What happened? All his comeliness,
the scripture said, melted into corruption. Job, that speaker of righteousness,
when the Lord spoke to him, he covered his mouth. He said, I'll
never speak again. Isaiah, who woed all these sinful
things, he said, woe is me. Woe is me. That's the effect
it has on the sinner. He learns his fears. He stands
before God with nothing to say, nothing to plead, nothing to
offer, not even a potential to work toward. Even if God should wipe out his
past, it wouldn't do him any good. He'll just succumb to his
nature and go on sinning like he always did. Takes something
more than that to save the soul. Oh, but then God turns the page
and he shows him the glory of his mercy and grace, shows him
how he's just and justifier. He's righteous in his remission
of sin. and that every attribute of God
is glorified in the salvation of a sinner. Even God's eternality, sovereignty,
and wisdom. He's the lamb slain before the
foundation of the world, isn't he? And he stands there trembling. The Holy Ghost takes this gospel
of Christ and he begins to comfort his trembling soul. Acts 9.31, they walked in the
fear of the Lord. Now watch this. And in the comfort
of the Holy Ghost. The same revelation of God that
burns a reverential fear into the hearts and now begins to
comfort the trembling soul. And then let me close with this.
It says they were multiplied. They were multiplied. The same
glorious gospel that plucked them out of the world joined
them with the church of the living God. Scripture said God added
to the church daily such as should be saved. Where'd he add them
to? To the church. To the church. And I cannot emphasize
the preaching of the gospel too much. Believers, now won't you
hear me, they feed on Christ. They feed on Christ. I'm gonna
give you two men. This man's name is Apollos. He
was a Greek. He was well-versed. He was well-taught. He was an orator. He could have
spoke to millions. He was a talented man. He could
stand there and his, like Spurgeon, he could just do this like it
was infinite. He could grab this word, and
that word, and this word, and this illustration, and that illustration,
and he could go on for hours. And here was another man. His
name's the Apostle Paul. And Paul's face was distorted
because of his eyes. And he was hard to look at. He was hard to look at. He was
deformed. He told the Corinthians, or the
Galatians, he said, I take you to this fact right now. He said,
if I'd asked you, you'd have plucked out your eyes and gave
them to me. Why would they give him their eyes? Because of his. Because of his. He was hard to look at. But they
both preach Christ. And the people fed from both
of them. And when we meet together and the Gospels preach, believers
feed on Christ. That's what we feed on. When
God's church assembles, there's all sorts of appetites that come
to the table. It's just so. Some feed on men. They feed on their reputations.
They feed on their charisma. They feed on their talents and
wisdom. Others come to tell or to hear some new thing like they
did on Mars Hill. They want to hear something they
didn't know. I want to hear something I never heard before. That's
what I'm looking for. Tell me something I've never
heard before. You start telling me the same old thing, I'm going
to go to sleep. But some come to feed on Christ. If He wants to serve Christ in
an old fruit jar, I still wanna feed on Christ, don't you? And
if it puts him in a gold goblet, I'll eat from that too. It don't
matter to me. I'm just there for Christ. That's
what I want. That's what I wanna hear. Pastor
can't do any better than that. They preach Christ not in wisdom
of words, lest the cross of Christ be made of none effect, And they
preach Christ not in wisdom of words, that your faith should
not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Edification, fear, comfort of
the Holy Ghost. Why does he call this comfort
of the Holy Ghost? Because the Holy Ghost is the
one who can take those things and reveal him unto you. I can
talk about him all day, but he gotta make him real. You have
to turn and see that train. You gotta turn and see God. You gotta turn and see his glory,
and only the Holy Ghost can do that. He can show you that all
those things that sound so ridiculous and just wouldn't bring it, if
those things were true, I'd be shaking in my boots. Yeah, you
sure would. You sure would. If you knew your
soul was in the hands of God, and he could just as easily do
that, as he could do this. Huh? Oh, you'd be trembling then. But when he shows you that the
Father put you in his hand, put you in his hand, and he said,
none gonna pluck you out, all of a sudden that sovereignty
gets sweet, don't it? That that you once feared and
trembled before, now it's sweet. It's so sweet. Oh, may God be
pleased to reveal this thing to our hearts. Thank you.