Acts chapter 28 and verse 17. And it came to pass that after
three days, Paul called the chief of the Jews together, and when
they were come together, he said unto them, Men and brethren,
though I have committed nothing against the people or customs
of our fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into
the hands of the Romans, who when they had examined me, would
have let me go because there was no cause of death in me.
But when the Jews speak against it, I was constrained to appeal
unto Caesar, not that I had ought to accuse my nation of. For this
cause, therefore, have I called for you, to see you and to speak
with you, because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with
this chain. And they said unto him, We neither
received letters out of Judea concerning thee, neither any
of the brethren that came showed or spake any harm of thee. But we desire to hear of thee
what thou thinkest. For as concerning this sect,
we know that everywhere it is spoken against. And when they
had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging,
to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading
them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses and out of
the prophets, from morning till evening. And some believed the
things which were spoken, and some believed not. Our Lord Jesus Christ, three
years previously, had visited the Apostle Paul while he was
in prison. It was a moment of fear and uncertainty
for the Apostle, his faithful servant. It was so because there
were those who were endeavouring to kill him and it seemed as
though his life was now hanging by a thread. But when the Lord
Jesus came to him in the darkness, he came to him with words of
comfort and courage. And we read those words previously
in Acts chapter 23 in verse 11, where we were told that the night
following, the Lord stood by him and said, be of good cheer,
Paul, for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou
bear witness also at Rome. Now in the intervening 36 months,
Paul had been kept in prison, he had been tried in court multiple times with the
prospect of being condemned every time he was tried. He had been
transported in chains. He had been threatened with death. He had been shipwrecked. He had
been bitten by a viper. And then, just as the Lord Jesus
Christ had said, he was brought to Rome. And this is where we
find the apostle today. He is in Rome having completed
this long and arduous and fearsome journey. and he had been brought
to Rome just a few days previously. Within days, the apostle began
fulfilling the task that the Lord Jesus Christ had set him
those three years previously. He began seeking opportunity
to declare the gospel because that's what means by him speaking
about the kingdom of God. He was speaking about Christ's
rule upon this earth and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now there are many things in
this passage that we could mention, and I'm going to split this passage
into a few different parts. We're not going to complete the
whole of the chapter today because I don't want to pass anything
by that's important, but neither will we be able to speak about
everything that is said here in these few verses. We might,
for example, have spent time dwelling upon Paul's relative
freedom and the surprise that that might cause us, that he
was able to hire a house of his own and there stay for the duration
of his time in Rome before he was to appear before Caesar's
court. That surely wasn't a common eventuality. Or we might wonder that the Jews
had sent no message from Jerusalem to the Jews in Rome in order
to be condemning of Paul when he arrived at Caesar's court. or we might wonder about the
odd mix of curiosity and arrogance that the Jews expressed regarding
the Lord Jesus Christ and the way of salvation. But what I
want to do today is just very quickly draw your attention to
three other things that Paul mentions in these few verses
before us. And the first one is this, the
little phrase that he uses about the hope of Israel because it's
a delightful little comment and it is very appropriate the way
in which the Apostle Paul brought his thoughts together as he preached
the gospel to these Jewish men on this occasion. These were
the leaders from amongst the Jews and Paul speaks to them
of the hope of Israel because Paul was speaking to them about
the Messiah. Jesus Christ is the anointed
one. He is God's Messiah. And this was the Messiah that
the Jews both looked for and longed for and had done for hundreds
and hundreds of years. the Messiah was Israel's hope. And therefore when Paul speaks
to them about the hope of Israel, he is speaking to them about
that one that they looked for and anticipated to bring them
liberty, to bring them prosperity, and to bring them an earthly
glory. A glory that they looked back
at with envy to the time of David and Solomon, the glory days of
Israel. They wanted that restored and
they hoped that the Messiah would do that and more for them. These men were desperate to discover
the Messiah. And yet when the Messiah came,
these Jewish leaders and their followers, they failed to recognise
him. And indeed, they put him to death. And this is the first point that
we can draw from Paul's words here. Simply this, that religion
means nothing if it fails to recognise the Lord Jesus Christ. There are many who speak in religious
words. There are many who speak of hope
and of faith and of believing, and they use the words of the
Bible and the language of religion, but they never find the Lord
Jesus Christ. May God give us grace to find
Christ, the true hope of Israel. Another thing that we see here
is that Paul persuaded these people concerning Jesus. That
is, he spoke to them and endeavoured to be persuasive about who the
Lord Jesus Christ is. and why the Lord Jesus Christ
came. He used the Old Testament scriptures,
he used Moses and the prophets and Paul was a most able and
diligent teacher. He was a Pharisee, he knew the
Old Testament Scriptures, and he knew about the hope of Israel,
both from the Jews' perspective and having met the Lord Jesus
Christ personally. And therefore he was best positioned
to speak knowledgeably and persuasively about the Lord Jesus Christ.
But here's the thing, it takes more than persuasion to save
a sinner. You can be persuaded about the
value of faith, about the nature and character of the Lord Jesus
Christ, but persuasion itself is not sufficient. Salvation
is a gift. It isn't a lesson that we learn.
It's not a proposition that somebody makes to us. It's not a human
decision that we make. There are people in hell right
now who listened to Paul that day in Rome, speaking persuasively
about the Lord Jesus Christ. And they came away from that
meeting and they thought to themselves, that man certainly knows his
Bible. That Paul certainly made a good
case for what he believes. You know, a powerful preacher
can move your heart. but it takes God the Holy Spirit
to open a heart and there is all the difference in the world. And here's another point. Some
of these people believed the things that were spoken and some
of them believed not. When the gospel was declared
to these people, some of them believed and some of them did
not. So it always was and so it always
will be with the gospel. And I'm not talking about conversions
in the way that some preachers or evangelists like to talk about
getting people saved. What I'm talking about is this,
that when the gospel is preached in our hearing, Week by week,
whenever the Lord brings us around his word, whenever the Lord opens
up the opportunity and the possibility for us to hear the gospel, right
here, right now, some of you believe and some of you do not. What makes that difference between
those who believe and those who do not believe? Simply this,
the will and the purpose of God. What you might say, not my free
will, not my choice, not my decision, not the skill of the preacher,
not the circumstances of my life, not my will in this matter. Well,
no, all of those things are there in the mix. But what makes a
new life is God's gift of faith. Salvation is a gift. Faith is
a gift. Our natural, sinful, rebellious
opposition towards God must first be overcome, and only God the
Holy Spirit can open a sinner's heart and enable us to believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore God himself, in the
person of the Holy Spirit, must take the initiative for anyone
to believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me put
it like this. There are many reasons why a
person will not believe the gospel. But there is only one reason
that they do and that is that God gives them grace and enables
a sinner to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power
of his blood and in the way in which God saves sinners and come
trusting with faith to the Lord Jesus Christ. May God open our
hearts, grant us faith and bring us to believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.