Acts chapter 28 and we'll read from verse 25. Remember that the Apostle Paul
is in Rome, he's in his own house, he is under arrest, he is still
confined to these premises, but he is able to have people visit
him and a number of the Jews from the city had been called
to speak with Paul and it is during this conversation that
we take up today's verses. So we're speaking of the Jews
and it says in verse 25 of Acts 28, Well spake the Holy Ghost by
Isaiah, the prophet, unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this
people and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand,
and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive. For the heart of
this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing,
and their eyes have they closed, lest they should see with their
eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart,
and should be converted, and I should heal them. Be it known
therefore unto you that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles,
and that they will hear it. And when he had said these words,
the Jews departed and had great reasoning among themselves. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. Now I've purposefully broken
up these final few verses because there are important lessons that
we don't want to miss in them. Last week we learned that some
of the Jews believed when the Apostle Paul preached the Gospel
to them, and some did not believe. And we reminded ourselves that
this is always the case when the Gospel is preached. The Gospel
always causes division. The Lord Jesus Christ said He
didn't come to bring peace but a sword. And the Gospel will
always cause division. It will cause some to go one
way and some to go another way. As these unbelieving Jews, these
Jews who resisted Paul's words and resisted the Gospel, were
rising to leave Paul's lodging and Paul's company. The Apostle
took that opportunity and quoted a passage from Isaiah's prophecy. And indeed it is a passage that
is quoted many times in the New Testament. It is in each of the
Gospels and it is the Lord Jesus Christ who uses it on those occasions. And it's important because while
it is applied to the Jews, of that day, it applies equally
today to men and women who hear the gospel preached. And so there's
two points that I want to draw from these few verses that will
help us to remember what the Apostle Paul is saying. whether
it is actually his words quoting Isaiah or indeed the Lord Jesus
Christ as he quoted them also. The first thing is this, that
hearing the gospel in and of itself, even seeing miracles
performed, is not sufficient in itself to bring men and women,
boys and girls, to salvation. You know, you don't get saved
because you come to church. You don't get saved because you
hear the gospel with your natural ears or you participate in a
church service as part of the congregation. That's not what
saves a man or a woman or a boy or a girl. Some people would
say, you know, what you really need to do is make church more
exciting and then people would love to come and be part of your
church and part of your membership and hear the gospel preached
and you could have lots of different activities and maybe lots of
music or lots of drama or lots of different things that could
be going on and all these people would be much more excited and
engaged in coming to your service. But that's exactly the point
that Paul is making here. He is telling us that it's not
simply the hearing or even if it was the seeing of the various
miracles that the Lord Jesus Christ performed. Because sin
is in the heart and the life of all men and women. Adam's
sin and our own sin make our hearts hard towards the gospel. They block our ears to properly
hearing and understanding the gospel. We might hear the words
but we don't comprehend. Our eyes are blind. It's as if we've got scales or
our eyes have been blinded. Our eyes are covered and we don't
see the truth that is in the gospel. We don't see the real
person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we might be able to see a
preacher speak. We might be able to hear his
voice. But until the Holy Spirit enables
us to hear that message by faith, to see our need as sinners, we
will not receive the truth of that message. Like those unbelieving
Jews, like that division that was made between the two, they
all heard the gospel, they all heard the same message, but some
believed and some did not believe. for a person to be saved from
their sin, for a person to believe the gospel, the Holy Spirit must
open our spiritual eyes and ears and soften our heart to receive
the truth. That's the first point that I
want to make with us this morning. The second is this, that the
Apostle Paul used the opportunity of these Jews rejecting Bible
truth to stress once again that the gospel message or what he
called the salvation of God, because this is God's salvation,
it's the salvation that God gives to his chosen people, that this
gospel message or the salvation of God would be sent into all
the world. These Jews were rejecting this
message and Paul says, well be sure of this, this same salvation
of God is being sent into all the world and it will be heard
and it will be believed by the Gentiles, that is the non-Jews. Now this had already, of course,
happened to a certain extent. Jesus' disciples had been preaching
the gospel. Paul himself had been preaching
the gospel to people from other nations, and they had seen converts. But now at the end of the Acts
of the Apostles, we can see that this message is going to, as
it were, mushroom out and be carried out to all the nations
of the earth. And that is what has been happening
over the past 2,000 years. When the Jews left Paul that
day, they had great reasoning among themselves, and well they
might. They had been looking for the
Messiah to come all of their lives. And now Paul is telling
them that the Messiah had come, that Jesus of Nazareth, that
one whom we call our Lord Jesus Christ, had come and they had
missed him and they had rejected him. What a sad and terrible
thing it is to miss the salvation of God, to miss the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ, to have that gospel preached to us and
then turn our backs upon it. When the way of life and salvation
is set before us and we say, we will not believe, Friends, this morning, this afternoon,
we are the Gentiles to whom the Gospel was sent according to
the words of the Apostle Paul. We are those of whom Paul speaks
when he says, they will hear it. and praise God he has sent
his gospel to sinners like you and like me. May God the Holy
Spirit open our eyes to see our sin and the need that we have
for forgiveness and may he open our ears to hear the gospel of
grace and may he soften our hearts to receive the Lord Jesus Christ
as our Saviour and King. God willing, we will bring the
last couple of verses of Acts to our attention next week and
we will wrap up our thinking upon this delightful book of
the Acts of the Apostles. Amen.