I'm in Acts chapter 14. We have
now transitioned to the 14th chapter, which is really a running
commentary on through chapter 13, to be honest. And we will now look at another
aspect of the apostolic ministry. It's largely no different than
that, which has gone before. And literally we are still in
the same region. We are in the regions of Iconium
and Lystra, Asia Minor, the Northern area of Asia, up in the Galatian
territory, a little bit north of Paul's original home, Tarsus,
Sicilia, where the Italian brethren are. It's largely Gentile land,
but there are a number of Jewish synagogues that are there as
well. So for the next two chapters, you will see this, relationship
between the Jews and the Gentile emerge more and more until it's
resolved in chapter 15 around how do we preach the gospel to
the Gentiles since the Lord has opened a door of faith to them
as well as we'll see in verse 27. So I'm going to actually
start at verse 50 of chapter 13 read chapter 14 verses 1 through
verse 10. And then we'll work with what
we have. We'll probably only get through two or three points
tonight. Verse 50 of Acts 13 on through verse 10 of chapter
14. But the Jews stirred up the devout
and honorable women and the chief men of the city and raised persecution
against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them out of their coasts. They shook off the dust of their
feet against them and came unto Iconium. The disciples were filled
with joy and with the Holy Ghost. And it came to pass in Iconium
that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews.
And so spake that a great multitude both of Jews and also of Greeks
believed. But the unbelieving Jews stirred
up the Gentiles and made their minds evil affected against the
brethren. Long time, therefore, abode they
speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the
word of his grace and granted signs and wonders to be done
by their hands. But the multitude of the city
was divided, in part held with the Jews, in part with the apostles.
And when there was an assault made both of Gentiles and also
of the Jews with their rulers, to use them despitefully, and
to stone them, they were aware of it and fled unto Lystra and
Derbe, cities of Lyconia, and unto the region that lies round
about there. And there they preached the gospel. And there sat a certain man in
Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's
womb, who never had walked. The same heard Paul speak who
steadfastly beholding him and perceiving that he had faith
to be healed, said with a loud voice, stand upright on your
feet. And he leaped and walked. Thus is the reading of God's
word. The title of this portion of the series is The Witness
and Wonders of God. And I could add a little cliff
note through the apostles, the witness and wonder of God as
he works through the obedience of Paul and Barnabas to keep
preaching the gospel. Under point number one, it's
very, very important for us to see as you work through your
outline, preach the word. We're dealing with this particular
sort of proposition as well as theological discipline in our
men's meeting right now on Saturdays. And Timothy's text is an exhortation
by Paul to all pastors to actually continue preaching the word as
our fellows are learning and what we see taking place in the
life of Paul is nothing short of amazing. When you and I think
about preaching the word, very seldom do we think about preaching
the word in its context or in its environment or in terms of
the implications of faithful proclamation. When we think about
preaching the word, we think about maybe the formal call of
a person to the ministry of the word with the objective of them
finding a local church to become pastor and then the duties of
the pastorate in terms of preparing messages and Bible studies week
in and week out. When you hear the term preach
the word, we really think more about religion than we do about
the nature of that mandate in a culture that is a verse to
God. When Paul told Timothy to preach
the word, first and foremost, Paul was telling Timothy to do
something that he was already doing. Paul was a preacher of
the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Paul was a avid preacher
of the word of God. And the life of Paul, again,
in the ministry of preaching is nothing short of amazing.
I want you to get this now. I want you to see how Paul lays
out the terrain, the atmosphere, the conditions in which faithful
preaching was to be done at that time. And then we'll come back
and work on our texts and our points here in a moment. Go with
me in your Bible to 2 Timothy 2, verse 8 through 12. What amazes me about the ministry
of Paul is there was nothing that shook him up. or that caused
him to depart from his calling so as to avert him from what
he even said that he was called to do, and that is to preach
the gospel. And the reason why his preaching
of the gospel to me, as we will be working through the book of
Acts, is so relevant, so important, is because there is a connection
between what Paul is doing and what Paul was called to do. There's
a connection between Paul's preaching and what Paul was called to do. So again, what he is doing is
preaching. We're gonna put Paul here, but
that was connected to his call. He was called. So he's actually executing his
call of preaching. That's motivating his preaching.
And that's really important too because The things that Paul
is suffering from chapter 9 to chapter 14 would cause 99% of
us to stop preaching if we were preaching. I want you to understand
that his preaching is remarkable because it's rooted in his conscious
awareness of his call, of his call. That if an individual is
not called by God to preach, it's going to be very evident
by the circumstances in which he preaches, by the message that
he preaches, by the culture to whom he preaches, it's going
to be very clear whether or not he's called of God to preach. Now, I want you to hear Paul's
ethic. These are the things that Paul has learned. These are the
things that he has forged in his own soul as an ethic, which
he is passing on to Timothy. This is gonna help us appreciate
a little bit more of what's occurring. Because in the city from which
Paul just came, he was rejected, wasn't he? Him and Barnabas.
And they're moving to another city. And some of the same folks
that were in the previous city is hunting him down in this other
city. And that's just remarkable to
me because the way he responds is, as I've been teaching my
guys here, is counterintuitive. And we'll see that. But here's
the ethic I want you to grasp. He's talking to young Timothy,
who's a minister of the gospel in chapter two, verse one. Thou
therefore my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
The things that you have heard of me among many witnesses, the
same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach
others. Then we drop down to verse eight.
Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised
from the dead according to my gospel. Here's the heart. Here's
the heart of Paul motive. This is his fire. What fires
Paul up is that he spent many years denying this testimony
until Christ met him himself. And he realized that he was a
liar and that he was so fiercely committed in his delusion and
lie To hurt of the people he was willing to kill them and
have them kill Just to retain his religious presuppositions
and assumptions about god until he met the resurrected christ
Notice what he's saying to timothy Remember that jesus christ the
seed of david was raised from the dead according to my gospel.
Why is he saying that to timothy? Because timothy will face the
same kind of persecution and it's easy to stop the persecution. All you have to do is deny the
son of David and deny the fact that he rose from the dead and
preach another gospel and you won't take any hits for it. He's
telling Timothy, this is the thing that you're going to take
a hit for. The offense of the gospel is the person and work
of Jesus Christ. Timothy, if you get tempted to
smooth out the gospel, shave off its edges, modify the gospel,
distort the gospel in order to have a comfortable life. Timothy,
you're going to be in trouble. Here's what he says in verse
nine, where in that little opening clause there, where it means
because Jesus Christ is the son of David, because Christ rose
from the dead, according to my gospel, I suffer trouble. Do you see it? I suffered trouble
for the gospel sake. I suffered trouble. And here's
how I suffer. I suffer as an evildoer. Even
unto bonds. Notice what he said. Timothy,
I suffer in trouble. They call me an evildoer. And
I'm actually in bonds now. Even unto bonds. Watch this. But the word of God is not what?
See how, you see how he thinks? You see his ethic? He says, it
doesn't matter that I'm bound. So long as the gospel is free
to go forth. He actually is talking about
himself. Because what he know is not bound is his mouth. His
hands are bound, but his mouth is not bound. And his mouth is
not bound because his heart is not bound. And his heart is not
bound because his heart is in the hands of a risen sovereign
savior who allows him to preach Christ no matter where he is. And so he's saying to Timothy,
listen, Timothy, this is the heart of the battle of the ministry
of the gospel in this world. And then he gives us another
ethic, which I love therefore, because the word of God is not
bounded. It doesn't matter whether I'm bound or not. As long as
I can open my mouth and the sounds of the gospel can go out as long
as they can go out in the prison chambers, in the backwoods, Anywhere
so long as other eternity bound souls can hear me speak Therefore
I endure all things Watch this for the elect's sake Notice now
that Timothy. I mean Paul is operating out
of a call I'm going to show you that in a little bit the call
drives him to continue preaching His preaching is christocentric.
It's a resurrected christ that he preaches which is the offense
jesus said You're going to be offended for my sake, not your
own sake, my sake. And then he says, now I suffer
everything for the elect's sake. So his motive is his call and
his objective is the elect. His objective is the elect. What is Paul saying about the
elect? He loves them. He loves them. When you're going to suffer all
things for somebody, don't you love them? He loves the elect. Now, see, Paul is a little bit
older now, a little bit more mature. His theology is rich.
His theology is crystal clear. He understands what we ought
to all understand is that to obey Christ is to love his people. To love his people is to see
to it that they have all of the mysteries of the gospel laid
out in front of them. often and as fully as we possibly
can because this is how they get to know the Savior and it
doesn't doesn't matter what cost we have to pay in order for the
people of God to know God But I've got to love you to suffer
hits to share the gospel for you with you And so it is with
Paul his object is the elect his love for them allows him
to endure all things his preaching is because he remembers he remembers
and His call, he remembers his call. He remembers what Christ
has said to him. So let me read this verse, verses
10 through verse, um, uh, 12. And then I'm going to take you
back to act nine, the way to work our way through. Therefore,
I endure all things for the elect sake that they may also obtain
the salvation, which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Do
you see that children of God, Paul is saying I'm willing to
live, do anything that's necessary. to see God's elect become saved. Now, verse 10 is just radical
because his motive is there, the objects of his motive are
there, and the exclusivity of those who are going to obtain
salvation, which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory is
there. Now, notice Paul is not saying,
I endure all things for anyone. He didn't say that. He didn't
say I endure all things for every human being on the planet He
didn't say that just as a caveat so you can know the Bible makes
a clear distinction of our love for people in the world and our
love for the elect The Bible makes a clear distinction
of the kind of love we have for those who are of the family of
God who are Christ sheep and our love for the world That distinction
is clearly there. And Paul is making it clear here,
too. I'll do all things for the elect's sake that they might
obtain the salvation, which is in Christ Jesus. It's an unusual
pastor, isn't it? An unusually gifted pastor. It
is a faithful saying, for if we be dead with him, we shall
also what? If we suffer, we shall also what? If we deny him, he
also will what? And we believe not, yet he abided
faithful. He cannot deny himself. He'll
put me to the side, raise somebody else up and go get his elect.
Not one of God's elect will ever be lost because of the defect
on the part of his servants who don't understand that it's worth
laying down your life for God's sheep. What I'm doing is commending
the apostle Paul to you as one of the chief reasons for which
you and I are saved. and that he is not to be lightly
esteemed because he took all sorts of hits for you and me
as our master did. The apostles were amazing men,
human, flawed, had their issues, but they were amazing men. There
was an infusion of the Spirit of God in their life that was
absolutely amazing and worth marking. Go to Acts chapter 9.
Let me help you see just a bit of what I meant by his call drove
him to continue preaching. So he met our master on the Damascus
road, as you know, and our master, master gave him his charge. This
was not an agreement. This was not a bilateral contractual
agreement. This was a unilateral charge
by a sovereign Lord who had purchased Paul by his own blood. And he
told Paul when he raised him from the dead, this is your job
for me. Look at verse, um, 15, but the Lord said unto Ananias,
go your way for he that is Saul, who would become Paul, is a chosen
vessel unto me. This is amazing. The Lord knows
his people, doesn't he? He is a chosen vessel unto me.
It's not like the Lord didn't know him and was looking forward
to getting to know Paul. God knows all of his own before
the world began. He knows him perfectly. He knows
the man that he is about to use to turn the world upside down.
I want you to mark the specifics of Christ's charge to this man
because this will help you understand how he could endure what he did. Go your way for he's a chosen
vessel unto me to bear my what? That's right. To bear my name. That's what all Christians are
called to do. Here are the people groups before the Gentiles and
kings and the children of Israel. See it? These are the people
groups, the echelons and the categories. Now here is the verse
that I know Paul got when Christ spoke to him about the nature
and character of his calling as a minister of the gospel.
Verse 16, for I will tell him, what does it say? How great things
he must suffer for my name's sake. How great things he must
suffer for my name's sake. So here's what I'm saying. unfolding
of the ministry of the Apostle Paul from Acts chapter 9 all
the way to chapter 14 was a continual progressive revelation of the
master's will for him so that every event every circumstance
Where in he preached the gospel and there was opposition the
master said this is what I'm calling you to I Want you to
I want you to accept this as part of your calling Suffering
is a major component in your serving me. Paul, you're going
to take a lot of hits for my name, but I'm going to be with
you. I'm going to work through you. This is going to advance
my glory. Can you see then how Paul could
explain for you and me throughout the new Testament epistles, how
important suffering is, how he could expand theologically on
the importance of suffering. When he says, if we suffer with
him, we'll reign with him. That the suffering of the present
time is not even worthy to be compared with the glory which
shall be revealed in us That though our outward man perish
the inward man is renewed daily and that these light afflictions
Only add to the weight of glory that's bestowed upon a believer
Do you guys understand that that what what god did was forged
into paul's character through the troubles that he went through?
Every time he preached He had to take a hit for christ Every time he preached his theology
was clear He says that I might fill up the sufferings of christ
in my body for the church's sake colossians chapter one He knew
that he would be pummeled every time he opened his mouth Isn't
that crazy? And yet this is the man that
gave us 75 80 percent of our new testament that was willing
to die for the electric. When we saw that in second Timothy,
what he was saying was I'm willing to go through anything and everything
necessary for your sake and mine. That's what he was thinking about.
How can you not love a person like that? How can you not love
him? Now let's go back to our text
and work through our points. We'll get through a couple of things.
Act chapter 14. This is the apostle Paul and he's privileged to have
Barnabas with him in this excursion. of his first missionary journey
up north to Asia Minor. He's gonna be headed back down.
In fact, he's gonna be driven back down by persecution by the
time we get to chapter 15. And even when we get to the latter
part of chapter 14, back at verse 26. But it opens up as we might
note, and it came to pass in Iconium that they went both together
unto the synagogue of the Jews and spake that a great multitude
both of Jews and also of Greeks did what? But the unbelieving
jews stirred up the gentiles and made their minds evil affected
against the brethren Now I want you to mark under our first point
preaching the word two Aspects or consequences of faithful preaching
the one is as we have it in our powerpoint is There will always
be success the preaching of the gospel for those who are actually
called to preach Christ you guys see that in your outline right
there will always be success there will always be success
in the preaching of the gospel we should be at our PowerPoint
and what that means is the Word of God never returns void wherever
God means to send his word is going to have its impact now
you have to be careful when you take that promise that's given,
uh, wherever the word of God is sown, it will not return void.
Isaiah chapter 55, um, as the snow from heaven, as the water
descends. So show my word be that I send to be very careful
because when I say success, success is not bound by how you and I
empirically determine the impact of the word in that moment. Success
simply means Exactly what God has purpose for that word to
do at that time. It will always do it The Word
of God will never ever be itself impotent. It will always have
power To do one of two things there it is Convinced men of
sin and drive them to Christ are Increased men's hostility
against God and should drive them to persecute that is part
of the success of the gospel. You must understand that. But
what I want you to mark in our account is, in verse 1 and 2,
as they were driven by the previous town to go into Iconium, they
went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, right? And they
spake. In other words, the same pattern
that they were exercising in the previous city, they're still
doing, aren't they? They didn't stop. They didn't change their
method. Their MO is the same. Let's find a synagogue. Let's
find a church, go sit down, wait for them to ask us, do we have
anything to say? And they stand up and start preaching.
Verse two tells us, or verse one rather, tells us that a great
multitude, both of Jews and also Greeks, what? That's right. Why? Because Jesus says, my sheep
hear my voice. and I know them by name and I
call them and they follow me. Paul understands that God has
a sheep. We'll see that when we get to act 16. So he knows
that he must go into these churches and look for the opportunity
to preach. And in the opportunity to preach,
he will discover whether or not God has elect there or whether
or not he means to simply bear witness to that culture, that
crisis Lord heaping upon those people the obligation for having
heard the gospel and rejected it. That's part of gospel preaching.
Every time we come together, particularly in the context of
worship, when the gospel is preached, people are either rejecting the
gospel or receiving the gospel. Every time we come under preaching,
it's that solemn and that serious. No one is ever just being sort
of nonchalant or casual or sort of indecisive about it. Either
you receive it or you reject it. So in verse one, we have
the success. In verse two, what do we have?
We have the opposition to the gospel. We have the Jews and
the Gentiles being saved. We have also the opposition of
the gospel. That's under point number two,
the continued hostility of what? Judaism. Follow your points quickly
because we'll be able to make our way through. Under point
number one, preach the word because there will be success. We do
see success in two marked ways in verse one. Both Jews and Gentiles
are receiving the word, aren't they? In chapter 13, largely,
it was a full orb rejection in that synagogue by the Jews with
the Gentiles embracing the gospel fully according to verse 48.
But in chapter 14, we have here a great multitude of both Jews
and Gentiles. So from one region or one city
to the next, there was a radical difference in response, wasn't
there? And yet, Even with that kind of reception of the gospel,
what did Paul and them experience? Opposition. That's point number
two, the continued hostility of what I call what? Judaism. That's the category that's opposing
Paul. We'll get a chance to talk about
that a little later in the Q&A. People don't really oppose the
gospel who don't have a worldview by which the gospel threatens
it. People don't oppose the gospel
who haven't formulated a worldview for which when they hear the
gospel, the gospel is threatening that worldview. They only oppose
the gospel when they hear a gospel that says your view about God,
about man, about the world, about the origin of things, about the
nature of things, about the destiny of things is wrong. The people
that oppose the gospel are the people who are holding on to
an idolatrous notion of God and they don't like the fact that
the biblical God has come and reproved them of their false
notions. You'll meet people who will be
wide open to what you're saying and may not be ready to receive
Christ, but they're wide open because they don't hold any strong
formulations of a worldview. So they're open to your views
of God. When you come to a person who
hasn't forged a conviction about who created the world, they don't
have a knowledge of, they haven't worked that through. By the way,
that's true. Not everyone has worked through
the issue of God. Not everyone has the name of
a God written down on a piece of paper or in a book or in their
heart. So don't assume that. All men are idolaters. but not
all men are learned idolaters. All men have notions, but their
notions are not so formulated that they're willing to wage
war with you over against your views. So sometimes when you're
sharing the gospel with people, you won't get an argument that
simply gives you insight to the fact that that person hasn't
spent time working through and choosing a view. Am I making
some sense? At that point, your privileged
position is to simply see if you can nurture a greater interest
in them, in the things of God, so as to bring them further along
the Christian road, if that opportunity opens up. In other words, don't
turn immediately into a sort of antagonist toward them because
they don't have a view. That would be a horrible method
of evangelism. What? You don't have a view?
You ought to have a view because I want to fight. Don't do that. You ain't got a view? You crazy?
Don't you have a God? No, not everybody does. Some
people are very indecisive. Their temperament, their upbringing,
their life could be very busy with secular material things.
And the issues of eternality have not really been that focused
in their life. Think about this as we get ready
to go to our second point. The privilege of being able to
sow into a person's mind a set of views about God on a blank
sheet of paper, on a blank sheet of paper where they don't have
any convictions. And what they'll say is, I appreciate
the data. I appreciate the information.
What you know is that you were able to sow the seed of biblical
truth into their thinking. so that when they begin to hear
other views, now they've got biblical views to weigh over
against those views. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? Very important then for us to understand that. And so
let's continue working through. Here's what I want to say about
point number one before I really go to point number two, and that's
in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verse nine. This was certainly
true about Paul, 1 Corinthians 16, nine. This was certainly
true about Paul. It could also be true about us as well. But
there would be some distinctions. And I think I could build an
argument for the distinctions around the difference between
us and Paul and therefore the cost to the kingdom of the devil
by apostolic ministry versus the normal ordinary ministry
of your local pastor. If the devil has a kingdom and
he knows that the cost of his kingdom at the ministry of the
apostles would be massive loss of subjects in his kingdom. But
he knows little ordinary pastor like you and me, we might put
a little dent in it, but nothing nowhere near like the apostles
because they were different than us. And I can argue that there's
not an apostle in this room. There's not an apostle listening
to my voice and my voice will go all over America and around
the world. And I'm saying right now, there
is no apostle listening to me. They're different. Their role
was different. They bust the gates of hell wide
open. Peter bust them open on Pentecost.
Paul is busting them open now. And the captive sinners who were
under the delusive control of the devil are being let out in
droves. and will be for a whole century.
And the foundation of the gospel will be so clearly laid down
by those 12 men that its impact will reach 2,000 years down the
line where you and I are saved and delivered from darkness because
of what they did. You and I can't say that would
happen from us to others over the next 2,000 years. Remember
what Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter three? I have laid the
foundation. Others have built upon it. God
made me a wise master builder. In other words, he, Paul was
a foreman and an engineer in the establishing of the kingdom
of God under Christ. You and I, listen, we just carpenters,
electricians, some of ain't doing that, but cleaning up the debris.
That's our job. Those men were the heavy lifters
in the ministry of the kingdom. And that's why I'm pressing it
home in terms of our needing to value the apostles for their
hard work. Here's what Paul said. I love
this. He says in verse, um, nine, I'm going to start back at verse,
uh, seven. He's speaking to the church of
Corinth, hoping to see them. He says, for, I will not see
you now, by the way, but I trust to Terry a while with you, if
the Lord permits, but I will Terry at emphasis until Pentecost
verse nine for a great door Defectual is what open to me look at verse
9 see Paul understood when God opened doors and he understood
when God shut doors We'll see that when we get to chapter 15
and 16 when the Holy Ghost will forbid them to go to one place
And he'll hear in a vision come over here. We need help Here's
what he says in verse 9 this is here's your here's your uh,
here is your confluence of opportunity to preach and But understand,
wherever you preach, you're going to have your issues. For a great
door and effectual is open to me, and there are many what?
Adversaries. See, Paul knew the landscape,
didn't he? He saw this door open to preach. And when he looked
in, guess what he saw? Adversaries everywhere. He says,
I'm going through this door, but I already see my opposition.
See, that was his ministry. That's the ministry of the man
that we are thinking about now. Go back to Acts chapter nine.
Let's look at some of the stuff this brother went through. So
under point number two, the continued hostility of Judaism. And this
is really true. This is a remarkable thing. And
this here is a theological extraction. I'm going to call to your mind,
uh, simply before we move on to the, to the miracle, God in
his sovereignty is allowing Judaism. That's that works religion of
the old covenant system to be a constant Barrage battering
ram up against apostolic ministry and the way Paul described Judaism
and the Jews in their opposition to him is again in first Thessalonians
chapter 2 verse 13 through 16 where I shared with you before
that Paul and encouraging the Thessalonians Said you guys are
suffering for the gospel sake just like we who are Jews are
suffering for the gospel sake from our Jewish brethren And
our Jewish brethren are so fierce in their opposition of the gospel
that they are contrary to God and they are contrary to all
men and they continue to heap wrath up against themselves in
their opposition of the gospel. How many of you guys have not
seen that verse? Raise your hand just in case you've never seen
the verse I quoted. All right, go with me. That's good. I just
needed to know. Go with me in your Bible, the first Thessalonians
chapter two, so you can see it for yourself. I want you to understand.
a fundamental theological truth that you will hear in some churches,
but not many. In most of our churches, unfortunately,
we have bought into a national gospel that is rooted in a political
paradigm and objective that basically has established a construct of
theology, particularly under eschatology that gives Judaism
a kind of pass. You don't hear many pastors explaining
the biblical view of Judaism over against the gospel because
it is culturally and politically incorrect to simply say what
the scriptures say and let the implications draw themselves
out. But the scriptures explicitly
tell us that Judaism is not of God since the cross. And what
that means is you can't say that the natural physical children
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are children of God simply because
of blood lineage. You also cannot say that Judaism
is still a vital source of divine revelation by which God is made
known to men and women in a saving way. You can't say that Judaism
is a means of divine revelation by which men and women are brought
to a saving knowledge of God. The gospel tells us that we are
no longer under the works of the law. We are no longer bound
to those Jewish particulars that constituted blood sacrifices
and circumcision and Sabbath days and law-keeping and going
to the temple and high priests and the priesthood and all of
those particulars which pointed to Christ and Had their totality
and fulfillment in the person and work of Christ Paul's whole
ministry is to try to convince the Jews that we are no longer
under the law. I When we preach our last sermon
in the book of Romans this Sunday, I'm going to demonstrate for
you as we close Romans nine out that the tragedy of Israel was
that they did not see Christ as the end of the law for righteousness.
And as a consequence, they failed to enter into the blessings.
Now, if that's true, you and I cannot say Judaism bears a
proper representation of the true and the living God, and
therefore they are saved even though they're under Judaism,
and we are saved even though we are under Christianity. I
go so far as to say, so long as you and I do not see the person
and work of Jesus Christ as existential to the revelation of the true
and the living God, you have a wrong view of God. You can't
say that I believe in Jehovah the Father, but I do not believe
in Jehovah the Son. And say that we worship the same
God. You are not only implicating
scripture as not being clear, but you are implicating the Holy
Ghost as not being effectual in bringing clarity to who God
is. Am I making some sense? Cannot
the Holy Ghost make it plain to you and I who the true and
the Living God is and Isn't the way into the kingdom of God that
vital? Revelation of the expression
of who God is and what God does call the church entrance into
the church Is it not through the door of the revelation of
the triune God? Is it not through the door of
the revelation of the triune God? How many y'all didn't understand
what I'm saying when the scripture says that? Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. And he that believe it
and is baptized shall be saved. How does God bring men and women
into the kingdom of God through baptism in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost? Men and women that are
baptized are baptized in a knowledge of the tri-personal being called
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. You are
stating and you are asserting that God has revealed himself
to you in the person of his Son by the Holy Ghost. You are acknowledging
the tri-personality of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. The
Jews do not acknowledge that. Are you hearing me? And when
Jesus says, Except you believe that I am he you will die in
your sins a Lack of that revelation leaves you outside of the kingdom
of God and whatever God you are declaring You are not declaring
the true and the Living God Am I making some sense, right? So
it's important for Christians to know that as much as you may
care about the Jews The care that you must have is the same
care that Paul had that they might be saying. I Romans 9 says
I could wish myself a curse. That's verse 1 Romans 10 verse
1 says my heart's desire before God is that Israel might be saved
Now you and I will be doing them great injustice if we call them
saved While they're still lost and don't know God through Christ
Christ spent an enormous amount of time in the gospel of John
and Making that point clear didn't he? You neither know me nor my
father for had you known me you would have known my father It's
impossible to know my father and not know me In fact, he had
to upgrade one of his servants Who said show me the father?
Have I not been so long with you? And you still haven't seen
the father He that has seen the son has seen the father And there
is no revelation of the father in a saving way Apart from the
son Am I making some sense brother? It's very important for you to
know it. So listen to it what it says in first thessalonians
chapter 2 verse 14 15 and 16 I learned this decades ago And
it and it actually informed my eschatology Because I was like
a lot of people back in the 70s when I was coming up under the
gospel And this was in the time of hal lindsey. This was in a
time of the guys that were riding left behind. This was in the
time when we were dealing with the Cold War. This was in the
time when Russia was the real big bad wolf and China was the
big bad wolf and we were dealing with the 10 common market and
all of this kind of newspaper theology had many of us that
were Unlearned buying into an eschatology that basically presumed
Israel to be the center of biblical prophecy in the end time And
that you automatically gave them a pass and that if you loved
Israel, then you you got your gospel, right? That's a subtle shift with a
damning consequence Because the Bible is not about Israel. It's
about Christ You guys got that it's about Christ In fact, that's
why they killed him because they discover that his hermeneutical
principles of scripture took them out of the center of the
equation and put him there. And he would constantly say,
hey, this ain't about you. This is about me. That's what got
him killed. You guys understand that? Listen
to the language. For ye brethren became followers
of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus.
For you have also suffered like things of your own countrymen.
He's speaking now of the Gentiles, even as they have of the home.
Now verse 15 says this, who both killed the Lord Jesus. Stop there.
This is for some of you who are working through your eschatology.
And when you hear debates, the subtle forked tongue debate of
those who are pro-Jewish saying, that the Bible nowhere says that
it was actually the Jews who killed Christ. And they say that
frequently, they rearrange the language to imply that it was
the Gentiles that killed Christ. But will you mark that the person
speaking in first Thessalonians two is the apostle Paul and under
the inspiration of the Holy ghost, which is the second impeccable,
undeniable witness. The framing of his words is who
killed Jesus. That's what the text says, right?
So what you can do when you hear them frame and formulate their
arguments around the ambiguity of who actually killed him, well,
it was actually Pilate who killed him. So now, if I bamboozle some ignorant
men and suborn them to bear false witness against you and put you
in a situation where capital punishment is the consequence
of me lying about you and the state of California puts you
to death. Would I be speaking with integrity to say, I didn't
kill that man. The state of California killed him. Are you guys hearing
what I'm saying? I'm a murderer. Am I not? I'm
an absolute murderer. My hands may not have put, been
put on that electric chair switch, but everything in my heart did
it. And this is why Paul is saying what he's saying because he,
Paul is a converted Jew. who realized that he had so much
hate and murder in his heart that if he was there, he would
have killed Jesus too. Like he killed the first martyr of the
new Testament church. It's amazing when God actually
changes your heart because what men fiercely hold onto and are
willing to die for the apostle Paul was willing to acknowledge
that he was a murderer and a blasphemer and injurious to the cause of
the kingdom. But when God turns your heart around confession,
it's easy, isn't it? Now watch this. Who both killed Jesus and
their own prophets and have persecuted what? Us. See how he includes
himself now? Because his experience now is
the relentless assault on the part of works religion against
the gospel. Follow these next lines. And
they do not what? And they please not God. Is that
crazy? See now, you and I in this age of politically correct
talk, we would call Paul judging, wouldn't we? Wouldn't we say,
Paul judging now. Well, he is, which is what we
all must do. You shall know them by their
what? Is that called judging or what? And God says, you better
do it. Paul is judging their fruits,
he says, and they please not God and are contrary to what? crazy The book of acts is gonna
bear this out one more verse Forbidding us to speak to the
Gentiles. Is that where we are in our acts
14 account? Yes, it is forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that
they might be what? To fill up their sin always for
the wrath is come upon them to the what? Right that that is
deep theological reflection in its own, right? I won't deal
with it now, but this is why we in the Reformed community
who hold to a Christocentric theology, understanding that
the Scriptures are pointing to a man, not an ethnic group, we
plainly say that the nation of Israel is still under the wrath
of God at this present time, just like all the Gentiles are.
The only people or persons that are not under the wrath of God
are those who are in Christ. You guys got that? Only those
who are in Christ. Now, this particular framework
does a couple things. It actually clarifies the scope
of redemption in terms of those who are going to be saved. And
it actually exalts God in Christ for the fact that he's saving
them. In other words, when we say that the only way that you
can escape the wrath of God is in Christ, we're glorifying God. If we say that you can escape
the wrath of God through any other means, we make both Christ
and the father liars. See, there are too many things
that fall out by way of inference and implication. If you shift
the centrality of the gospel from Christ to anything else,
too many implications, too many theological problems occur. I've
told people this before, and I'll just share it with you.
I don't know why I'm sharing it, but I'll share it with you
because it's not in a text. I mean, I could really go back
to the text, but if you're a person that's trying to build your eschatological
framework and paradigm, If you buy into a premillennial dispensational
system, you necessarily have to point by point, line by line,
deconstruct the gospel, dissemble the gospel of grace, and reestablish
the gospel of works as you locate God's work in Jerusalem rather
than the world. Manifest God's work by a temple
rather than by the body of Christ. Affirm that temple by a high
priest rather than our great high priest Jesus Christ. Return
again to sacrifices and offerings rather than the once for all
sacrifice which Christ accomplished 2000 years ago, whose blood alone
is able to put away our sins. Do you see how you unravel the
gospel every step of the way? And then you have to separate
Jew and Gentile. You have to separate men and
women, the nation of Israel versus the world. And that system subtly
raises up an ethnocentric paradigm called Judaism as the thing to
which people look for as the basis and sign of God's mercy
universally around the world. Judaism becomes large. Jesus
becomes almost nil. That's pre-millennial dispensational
theology worked out. Do you hear me? Worked out. If
you press them on it as a scholar or as a theologian, they will
admit, yes, we have to draw the conclusion that we are returning
in some form or fashion back to that old paradigm. heard a
brother yesterday on the radio after uh... monday rather after
my uh... monday program he comes on seven
o'clock arguing for pre-millennial dispensational theology, doing
what they all do, spout fragmented interpretations of the text without
explaining those texts, making people assume that they have
a rightly divided interpretation without demonstrating those texts
contextually and in the larger covenant scheme. And so people
just buy it hook, line, and sinker because it sounds so good because
once you repeat a thing 10 times, people believe it. Am I making
some sense? It sounds so good It sounds so
very good. He's got the sheep in matthews
25 as being the jews And the goats being the gentiles When
we know the sheep are god's elect From every nation kindred tribe
and tongue and the goats are the non-elect who reject the
gospel from every nation kindred tribe and tongue Including judaism,
is that true? So so it's an it's an amazing
phenomena for me when pre-millennial dispensational theology is preached
and taught and not expounded because it's assumed. It was, uh, it was, uh, Scofield
and a British dude named Darby, I believe, who worked together
on this whole construct about a hundred years ago, built this
idea sold it to Europe and then it came over here and got put
in all of our Bibles and published and people bought it as a foregone
conclusion. Am I making some sense? When
you check those dudes out, you come to discover those are some
shady dudes that have some really bad theology under their belt.
Much of the idea of a premillennial dispensational view was the consequence
of some vision, some dream that one of them had at a camp meeting
in a Pentecostal conference. That's wild. I mean, that's wild. What I'm sharing with you right
here actually has to do with the diabolical nature of religion in terms of its contextual outworking
in our culture over the last 400 years. I said this to our
Bible study about maybe 10 or 12 years ago. I said, now, when
you come into the kingdom of God, when you come into the kingdom,
your eyes are being opened up little by little to a lot of
things. And you do not see the big picture
at the beginning of your conversion. At the beginning of your conversion,
it's largely about the establishing of your own soul in your walk
with God. But the vulnerable element of
that is your naivete mixed with your hunger and desire to know
truth, which opens you up to ideas and notions and doctrines
and teachings that you have no ability to discern because you
don't have enough knowledge or wisdom or experience to determine
whether or not what you're drinking is poison. And so as the proverb
says, the simple believe every word, but the prudent look well
to his going. So it takes a few years for you
to get beat up with bad doctrine, to discover that you got to stop
drinking everything that somebody passes to you and start really
examining those doctrines yourself. And then you come to discover
not all those doctrines are built on solid biblical principles. And you go, wait a minute, the
very dudes I thought I could trust were piping to me stuff
that was contrary to the gospel. And when somebody taught you
how to drop the plumb line of the gospel and discern things
biblically, you saw that these doctrines were lopsided at best
and baseless at worst. They were simply assumed and
held out there as true. because the masses of the people
can be easily deceived because of a laziness not to study. Are
you guys hearing what I'm saying? A laziness not to study. This is what precipitates our
study every year of targeted subjects. When I teach and preach,
I'll do general exegetical expository teaching like we're doing in
the book of Acts, but then there'll be times where special issues
have to be addressed. Because I recognize our culture
is not actually engaging the church at large on these subjects.
Like it's assumed that speaking in Babel is speaking in tongues. It's assumed. So we went through
a 15 question series on the gospel and speaking in tongues, did
we not? We asked 15 salient and germane questions around why
do you assume that this Bible is equivalent to what the New
Testament is teaching concerning languages? Then we dealt with
the implications, didn't we? We did the same thing with positions
of leadership in the church. Because of the laziness on the
part of Christians, they think it's all right for every Tom,
Dick and Harry to say they've been called by the Holy Ghost
to be a pastor. Men are women. So what did we
do? We began to re-examine and expound
the scripture on the role of men and women in the church.
Lo and behold, what do you discover? Rightly dividing the word of
God clarifies explicitly whom God calls and qualifies to the
ministry of pastor, elder, deacon, and the church. Well, then how
come there's so much mess? Because people are not studying
their Bibles. And I could go on with the list,
on and on and on. I'm just touching eschatology
today, because through the book of Acts, what you're gonna consistently
see, even to the last chapter in the book of Acts, where Paul
is gonna throw up his hands and say, well, hath Isaiah said. Ears they have, but they don't
hear. Eyes they have, but they don't see. The Lord has poured
upon you, Israel, a spirit of slumber, so that you cannot hear
the word of God. That's how he closes out. That's how he closes it out.
So we opened up our series here, dealing with the framework of
the book of Acts, two kingdoms, the kingdom of man represented
in the old covenant system held up by Jews, the kingdom of God
represented in the new covenant held up by the apostles under
Christ. And they're clashing all the
way through the book of Acts. They're clashing and by extraction
and therefore application to you and me, just so you can get
it, just in case you're not getting my, diatribe right now If you don't understand the gospel
Then you don't understand grace And where you do not understand
grace you are always Susceptible to a legal system that will bring
you into bondage to a man-made teaching When you do not understand grace
and You cannot stay on the centrality of the person and work of Jesus
Christ because the centrifugal force of legalism and works religion
is going to swing you to an extreme and bring you into bondage to
some kind of work system that actually caters to your natural
predisposition. Who doesn't understand what I'm
saying? Raise your hand if you don't understand so I can make it very
plain. Okay. Here's what I mean. If God has
to teach you what grace is, and when he teaches you what grace
is, you will understand that grace and works as a basis for
being right with God are mutually exclusive propositions. So that
every time someone says that you must believe Jesus, plus
you will quickly recognize that they are teaching works. And that when you comprehend
that grace has its resting place and fullness in a person, which
is Jesus, Moses gave you the law, but grace and truth came
through who? Jesus Christ. That where Christ
is diminished in the teaching, grace is diminished. Where you
and I do not lift Christ up and make him everything that he says
he is, and he is in the scripture, You are in danger of losing grace. And when once you lose grace,
you have no way to stand when the teachings that come your
way are so powerful in their argument. You will suddenly give
up grace for a word system that may not feel like words at the
start. But eventually it will take you
so far away from Christ that you lose your peace. You lose
your joy. You lose your sense of security.
You lose your clarity of the scriptures because you're locked
into these extremes. So watch this children of God.
This is going to hurt somebody. It's already hurting somebody.
I know. Here's the problem. If you don't start with Christ
and make him everything, in terms of your theological
focus, you're going to lose him. That's the, that's the diabolical
nature of the devil in the power of his deceptive work. Because
all we have is the true Christ and the pseudo Christ. The true
Christ is the man of righteousness. And the pseudo Christ is the
man of sin. Second Thessalonians chapter two, seven through 11.
And he showing himself as if he was God sitting in the temple,
opposing everything that venerates God, making himself God, exalting
himself so that the people are focusing on the man of sin and
not the man of righteousness will buy into whatever the man
of sin is selling and propagating at that time. And what's cool
about what we're saying, if you can hold two and three and four
strands of thought together, that really the greatest and
most accurate portfolio of the Antichrist system, the greatest
and most accurate portfolio of the Antichrist system is Judaism. Are you hearing me? To resurrect
the temple, to resurrect the high priests, to resurrect sacrifices
and offerings has already been precursored by the Catholic church
with the Pope, the Papa as the vicar and the body of prelates
and priests, archbishops and bishops as your Levite and the
sacrifice, which is perpetually going on in the Eucharist. and
works religion that's based upon all of these acts you must commit
in order to secure your soul. By the way, you better get a
priest before you die to come in and do the last rites. Are
you guys hearing me? And get people think they're
under grace. And that's nothing but a Neo-Judaistic
construct. It's Judaism all over again.
This is why it's going to be so very easy for the world to
be deceived by a man-made religion. So the book of Acts is a sort
of tutoring system to help us understand that works and grace
will always be mutually exclusive. How many of you guys heard my
Monday program this Monday? Did anybody? Okay. So you remember
our dear friend, sister Lee, who is half in and half out.
I was talking about how Protestant churches need to poke. That's the tongue. That's the
tongue, right? That's the tongue. Because the
Protestant churches are jacked up in their own right in a lot
of ways, right? The solution for mankind is a man. The solution
for the elect is the God man, right? The solution for mankind
is a visible, physical man. Like the nation of Israel said,
we want a king. King Saul is your Antichrist.
King David is your Christ. You guys follow the paradigm?
As we go through the life of David starting next week, for
10 weeks, we'll see that paradigm. Saul versus David. That's your
paradigm of religion. One is called by God's grace.
The other is called by man. One has a form of godliness.
The other one has the substance of grace. One is proud, prodigious,
powerful, both operating out of the political powers of the
system and given over to the whim of his own lust and the
people love to have it so. The other one is a humble servant
whose ministry started off as herding sheep, who ends up being the servant
of the true and the living God and leading his people into the
kingdom of peace. See the parallels? But those parallels jump off
the pages of scripture that were done by the end of the first
century and They still operate in spirit today This is why many
of our churches are ready to succumb to Papa Because they
have no foundation on grace Are you guys hearing what I'm saying?
Let me see then Let me let me go back to our text and close
out on this point I'll open the floor for questions for 10 minutes
and we'll come back next week point number two in our outline
As we look at Acts chapter 14, this is gonna be a powerful and
fascinating study. Let me just, let me read verse
three, four, and five of Acts 3. I'm just gonna touch on the
two points in Acts, in our point number two, and then I'll open
the floor. We'll come back next week and deal with the gospel
does divide. Verse three, long time therefore
abode they, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. Amazing.
I already set the context. A few Jews believe, a few Gentiles
believe, a bunch of Jews are opposing them and yet God has
given the apostles grace to stay right in that city and preach
the gospel for a long time. Do you guys understand what's
going on here? The boldness to stay right there and preach and
teach has implications. What is that pastor? The implications
are there are believers in that city who are hungry for truth
for which Paul and Barnabas and those that are with him are willing
to endure persecution, slander, ridicule, conspiracies to get
rid of them. They would rather stay in that
context and preach the gospel to the hungry souls. See, because
they wouldn't stay there if there were no sheep. They wouldn't
be preaching to the air. But because Paul is willing to
endure all things for the elect's sake, he's ready to do Bible
study at four o'clock in the morning, 11 o'clock at night,
out by the seashore, in the tunnels, wherever he can gather a group
of believers to pour out the riches of the glory of God in
Christ into their life so that they can be rooted and grounded
in Christ before they kill him. Because they're going to kill
him. We're gonna see paul stoned in
our tax Left for dead That's religion for you, isn't it? Take
the servants of the gospel stolen drag him out the city Just know
they killed him The next morning paul back in the same city preaching
the gospel again That's revelation chapter 11 the two witnesses
That's not moses and elijah. That's the church of the living
god and every faithful gospel preacher. You can kill him, but
god's gonna raise him up again It's a testimony that you cannot
be killed when God has made you alive. When you serve the true
and the living God, he will deliver you and yet deliver you over
and over and over again. Right? It's the beauty. This
is the beauty of the gospel. Paul knew he was invisible. He was invincible until his time
was up and the Lord in his gracious mercy. Let Paul know when his
time was up. You know what he said? He said,
now God hasn't given me my pink slip. Therefore, no matter what
men do to me, I know that tomorrow I'll be preaching the gospel
again somewhere. Is that true? Radical, radical, radical. Listen
to verses four and five, three, four and five. Long time, therefore,
both they speaking boldly in the name of the Lord, which gave
testimony unto the word of his grace, the word of his grace
and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. I'm
looking forward to dealing with that with you guys over the next
couple of weeks. But the multitude of the city
was divided in part hill with the Jews in part with the what
that's conflict brothers and sisters. That's the whole city.
Half was with the Jews and half was with Paul. Welcome to the
gospel. Welcome to the gospel. Are you
with me? If you think you're gonna have
a gospel where everybody loves you, you got the wrong gospel. Verse five, and when there was
an assault made both of the Gentiles and also of the Jews with their
rulers, you see how it escalated even to the authorities of the
city? Ladies and gentlemen, did they collaborate? Did they have
councils? Did they meet, did they strategize?
Do you believe in conspiracy? I do. It's all through the Bible.
The devil is a conspirator. His fallen demons are conspirators. Unregenerate man is a conspirator.
Nations are conspirators. They gather together against
the Lord and against his anointed with the specific purpose of
cutting his cords asunder and breaking his bands. Is that true?
That conspiracy exists in the church too. The reason our churches
are messed up like it is, is because the devil sits on most
councils, most synods, most presbyteries, and most of your boards in your
colleges, jocking the hands up of the people to take away biblical
truth from the preachers. Because as the preachers are,
so are the people. If the preachers don't preach the gospel, the
people don't hear the gospel. They can never be created in
the image of God through Christ. Am I making some sense? That's
the problem with our churches today. That's why every man has
a tongue, a dream, a vision, a revelation, and the preaching
of Christ. I mean, the preaching of the
lovely Lord Jesus as the mold of operandi, as Paul says, I
am determined to know nothing among you except Christ and him
crucified is a rare thing in our world. It's a rare thing
to find a man committed to an exegetical expository ministry
where he continues to pummel you with the glories of God in
Christ. It's a rare thing. Why? Because
they do not believe that Christ is the image of the invisible
God and that the revelation of Christ by the ministry of the
spirit is not only able to save you, sanctify you, grow you up
and make you everything that God has meant for you to be.
And because they don't believe it, don't preach it. They don't preach it. Are you
hearing me? And because they don't preach it, people perish
in religion. Alright, questions, questions. Anybody got questions? Hands
up, questions. Going once, going twice. Got questions, anybody?
Okay, go. Alright, so Mike, you run back to the far back. Let
me see what Martin has to say. We'll spend a few minutes talking.
Satisfied. So, way, way, way No, no, you can, Martin, give
it to Martin. We got two microphones. Anybody got a question over here?
Any questions over here? Okay, we're good. Yeah, on Salvation. Pull your mic closer. Okay, can
you hear me now? Yeah. On Salvation. Can you hear
me now? Can you hear me now? Can you
hear me? On Salvation, it takes as much
power as it took to raise Jesus from the dead as it does to save
a person. Agreed. Would you guys agree
with that? That's right. That's what we call justice.
God would be a monster. That's a lot of energy. God would
be a monster to kill his son under his wrath
like he did. And the only thing that it takes
for you to be saved is for you to make a decision for Jesus.
All right, you can take the mic. Yes, I've been sort of struggling
and trying to understand the the message that you preach a
couple weeks ago about the the grace and that how the Lord has
to call the very elect like the doctrine of election and then
what our responsibility would be then to evangelize and witness
to those if they're already elected to be called by the Lord's grace
then what then do we need to do then? The great commission
is for us to go out and make disciples of men. So then what
then is our responsibility to that call if the Lord has already
called his elect? Great question. And that question
has its synthesis in two things. God is sovereign in electing.
He has chosen a people for himself. That's explicitly clear in the
scriptures. I don't think you argue with that. but there's
a means by which he calls them to himself, and that's the preaching
of the gospel. So gospel preaching is a non-negotiable
method by which his people are called. This is what Romans 10
will teach us. Romans 9 is about election. Romans
10 is about the means by which the elect are called. How shall
they hear without a preacher? How shall he preach except to
be sent? Blessed are the feet of those
that preach good tidings upon the mountains for faith comes
by what? Faith comes by what? So if we
don't hear the gospel, can faith be given? That's the point. And
so even though we may be elect, we're still lost. We're still
unregenerate until you and I are confronted by a gospel preacher
whom God uses to speak the word of God, the incorruptible seed
into our heart. Here's what happens to. I'm always
glad to talk about this subject because Paul taught this and
Peter taught this and Christ taught this. The kingdom of God
is like a sower who goes forth to sow seed. If he did not believe
that God blesses the methodology, he would be a fool. If he believed
that he could simply pray and ask God to bring forth fruit,
he would be a double fool. But he also knows two things
that God must bless that seed and he must bless that seed sown
Farmers are believers They are real believers in God because
they know after they have done their part God must do his part,
right? so that's the analogy of the
seed sowing and so we have what we call the sovereignty of God
and Then the responsibility of man The responsibility of man
is executed when God graces him to do what God has called him
to do. So what we have is the law of recapitulation. Believers
who have heard Christ directly are now the means by which other
believers hear Christ. So this is what I meant earlier
by there's nobody going to hear my voice who can say they are
apostles. Cause that business was done
by the master himself. He chose his apostles. He spoke
to them directly, gave them his commandments and told them to
go into all the world and preach the gospel. They preached. People
believe and those that believe now go and preach what they preach. And there are people who believe
them who also go and preach what they preach, what they preach,
what the apostles preach, which is what Jesus gave them. So you
see now how the law of reciprocity works within the framework of
God's sovereignty and human responsibility. What election does as it necessarily
must is it takes the glory out of man's hand in the area of
being able to say, I did something to save myself. And therefore,
because we live in a man-centered culture, you don't hear the preaching
of the gospel with the kind of clarity and emphasis that I bring.
You just don't. Far and few in between do you
hear solid men like John MacArthur or Alistair Begg or a few others
who are on the radio on a national level who lay out the doctrines
of grace as they have always been taught by the apostles and
then by the reformers. In our generation, most people
are under a works religion that is fundamentally Arminian in
nature. Meaning Jacob Joseph Arminius
was an arguer over against Calvin's doctrines of grace and said no
man is not saved purely by grace, but by grace plus his own words
Jacob James Arminius was Catholic So you had a Protestant theologian
at war with a Catholic theologian over salvation by grace alone
Versus salvation by grace plus words But I taught you when you
read your Bible in Romans chapter 11 verse 4 and 5 if it's grace
Then it's no more works But if it be works, then it is no more
grace Otherwise grace is not grace. I And what Paul teaches
explicitly and unambiguously in the scriptures is that our
salvation starts with God and it ends with God and you and
I are the byproduct of God's gracious work of redemption in
our life. So by the time we say yes to
Jesus, it's the consequence of having been born again, not the
cause. Like you, you don't tell people
if you want to be born again, except Jesus into your heart.
You don't have a Bible verse nor a precedent in Scripture
to use that mechanism You never cease Paul or Jesus or anyone
say except the Lord Jesus Christ into your life and you'll be
born again. You never read that The only thing you read is the
one imperative Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall
be saved Now watch this It is through the preaching of that
imperative that the spirit of God enters into the heart of
men and women and begin to change their heart and make them love
Jesus and love the imperative. And they come to discover that
they are actually believing what's being taught. That's, it's a
discovery. It's not a decision. It's a discovery
because it's a revelation to the propositions of the gospel. that gradually bring you to a
place of sin. I believe that. Now watch this. Believing is an ongoing disposition
of the soul that never ends. A decision is a one-time act. This is why masses of people
are still unsaved because they assume that they were saved by
the decision they made. And yet the evidence is not in
that they have a growing knowledge of Christ and a growing commitment
to his gospel. And for those who did walk the
aisle and pray the sinner's prayer, over time, they began to sense
something was askew in the churches they were a part of. And when
they came into a more sound theological understanding of who God is and
how God works, they found themselves moving towards that direction.
That's an evidence of your election. Are you guys hearing me? That's
an evidence of your election because it's Christ's sheep now
discerning His voice more specifically within the framework of theological
truth that's shifting them from a man-centered theology where
much of the work is laid on what you do. And now you're seeing
that it's not about me. It's about Him. To God be the
glory. And that's the radical difference.
And what I said a little bit earlier about when you come into
the kingdom, you have blinders on. There's a lot of stuff you
don't see. And then over time, the blinders
kind of get removed, your peripheral vision becomes larger, and you
start seeing wars in the church. And you start realizing there's
a bunch of truth I haven't been told. I've been in the church
785 years, And nobody told me God was sovereign. No one told
me that salvation is of the Lord. No one told me that regeneration
is a monergistic work of God, a soul singular work of God alone. Nobody told me that. I was always
told, do this, do that, do the other thing. And then you come
to discover that once you started reading your Bible, that the
Bible doesn't construct it that way. And now you are on your
search for a teacher who actually talks like the Bible. Now, but
this hurts because you and I now have to struggle with, well,
what was going on all these years that I was doing religion? We
struggling. And that is a necessary struggle. See, Paul struggled when he used
to hear free grace out of the mouth of Stephan and Peter. and
James and John, and the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the end of
the law for righteousness, and that salvation is a rebirth,
a rebirth that just blew Nicodemus's mind. Nicodemus was lost. He started babbling. You mean
I gotta climb back up in my mama's belly? This man was 55, 60 years
old talking gibberish on a philosophical level about the new birth because
Jesus says you don't get in by flesh or blood or by will or
work. You get in by being born into
that kingdom. He knew by implication that his will had nothing to
do with it. Just like your will didn't have anything to do with
you being born. So your new birth has nothing
to do with you. It has everything to do with
God. So what has to happen in the church today is a recovery
of the biblical gospel and all of the specifics of its doctrinal
teaching so that we can have a greater harmony of a biblical
understanding, a broader, more comprehensive knowledge of the
coherence of biblical truth. That is what has to happen. And
I might say this, it is happening around the nation and around
the world by and by. But just like in the book of
Acts where you've got the works religion battering up against
the grace religion This is what we are dealing with today. So
I've been part of God has allowed me to be part of for the last
20 years of the Reformation in the Bay Area and around the nation. I've been part of that because
there's only a few men whom God uses to bring the gospel to the
masses and It's just that way. Because the enemy has already
hired and produced legions of false prophets and false teachers,
sold books, movies, videos, everything with their Arminian free will
works religion. It is the major evangelical view today. So when
a person rises up teaching what I teach he is an oddball out
That god has raised up to allow the gospel to sound clearly in
that generation and it's designed for one thing. Are you ready?
the elect The elect you didn't know the gospel until you heard
the gospel You're just doing religion It's like paul didn't
know the gospel until he heard the gospel. And here's the conflict.
Paul hated the fact that the Holy Ghost was goading him all
while he was opposing the gospel. Remember what Christ said in
Acts 9? It's hard for you to kick against the goals. What
was the Holy Ghost doing? Breaking Paul down. Stripping
him of the pride of his self-righteousness. I'm born of Abraham. I'm a Benjamite. I was circumcised on the eighth
day. I'm a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I hold the highest office in
the Sanhedrin. I'm this, I'm that. And Stephan
is wiping him out. And Peter is wiping him out.
And James is wiping him out. And none of them went to seminary.
And they're wiping this dude out. He gets furious enough to
want to just kill them all. But what's going on in his soul?
He's breaking. The Lord Jesus stops in front
of him and says, Saul, you through do you through his time? Come on. Right. And for three
days, he's blind on his knees in prayer, humbled by the grace
of God humbled. That's why he says in Philippians
three, I count all things done now for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus. This is the radical conversion
from religion to grace that has to take place in our life. And
once it takes place, now what we have to learn how to do is
build our categories of theology correctly by making sure we understand
this, that everything starts with God and ends with God. Do you understand that? It starts
with God and ends with God. Watch this now. God gets all
the glory and no flesh will glory in God's sight. These are the
axioms Hallmark the gospel. This is 1st Corinthians chapter
129 and 30 That no flesh of glory in his sight, but of God are
you in Christ? You didn't put yourself in Christ
Who of God is made unto us wisdom redemption sanctification and
righteousness? That as it's it's written no
flesh should glory in God's sight. I What you and I discover is
God loved us in Christ before the world began, chose us in
Christ, and then in time called us by the true gospel. And he
opened our ears so we could hear it. He opened our hearts so we
could believe it. And he gave us his spirit so
we could walk in it. That's new covenant theology.
Is it not? In those days after that time,
I will make a new covenant with them. Not like I did with their
fathers. I will take out the stony heart.
Who takes that heart out? Can you take a stony heart out?
I will put in a new heart and then I will write my laws on
their heart Then I'm gonna send my holy ghost to dwell on the
inside of them to help them to know me In such a way that no
one will have to teach them who god is So the resident teacher
is the holy ghost who affirms right teaching when it's taught
So that god's elect are not deceived by men because of the covenant
that god has promised with you in christ you have to grow in
it. So again, we talk about, uh,
um, human responsibility. You and I have to continue in
the word. And now what John A said, if you are my disciples and you
will continue in my word and you will know the truth and the
truth shall set you free. Whosoever the son shall set free
will be free indeed. And so continuing in God's word
is one of the marks of our election. Because what the Word will do,
it'll continue to strengthen you in your position of humility
before God. Rearrange how you talk so you
stop starting with I and start with Him and give Him the glory. See, it's a repositioning ourselves
so that God gets the glory. And what you will learn when
you listen to people who have learned the gospel is that we
make this law a continual factor in all that we do. Like we don't
let you frame your lips to take God's glory from him by the way
you formulate and communicate doctrine. We won't let you say,
well, you know what? I did this and I did that. And
therefore God, no, that you, you actually got it backwards.
God did this. God did that. And therefore you
did that. And when, once we understand
that, then we will start actually rightly representing biblical
theology, but it's not easy because we have an old nature that loves
to talk about what it does, what it did and what it will do when
it ain't nothing but a liar. I'll take one more for my part
B is the faith without work scripture to to that. Is that a salvation
message or something else? What's that? What's the faith
without works is dead, right? I love that. And it's not a contradiction
here either. It's learning how to just simply
follow the logical syllogism. So like, if we say that salvation
is by grace and we understand that grace is the unmerited favor
of God bestowed upon a person apart from anything that they
do, right? I accept that definition right now, but I can actually
go deeper than that because grace is an attribute of God. We've
learned that, right? It's part of God's attribute. That means
it's existential to his nature. The man or the woman that's experiencing
the grace of God is experiencing God. That's what it means to
be made a partaker of the divine nature. It's not just like a
thing he gives you. Grace is existential to himself. Are you guys following me? So
it's very important to know that what this is crazy see so like
salvation is God making you a partaker of his nature As he always designed
for you to be It's just it's through a process It's in the
person of his son is by the power of his spirit is by the mechanism
of preaching That the spirit works to impart his nature into
you so that god's character now manifests itself in your life
That's what makes you a son of god Got that this is what makes
you a son of God and I keep saying you cannot say Logically, you
can make yourself a son of God. You can't do it This is why he
leaves the earthly paradigm as a model. He created the universe
as a testimony of How his redemptive paradigm works if a child cannot
say of his own will he brought himself into the world? Neither
can a saved person say of their own will they made themselves
born again Follow the logic? Now watch this. But when grace
has been imparted to your life and you become a partaker of
the divine nature, it manifests itself by a growth pattern because
grace is organic. It's a nature. It's not a static
set of propositions. It's God's nature. So when God
sows into you, 1 Peter 1, verse 23, the incorruptible seed of
the gospel, that seed is going to do what? Grow. And that seed
is going to manifest itself by faith. by trust, by hope, by
knowledge, by temperance, by charity, by good works. Faith
without works is what? That's right. So then when a
person says they have faith, but it doesn't manifest itself
in these characteristics, then it's not the faith of God's elect.
Am I making some sense now? Right. So now what we're doing
is defining faith biblically and anticipating its growth process
which takes place in every person that's truly born again. This
is why we're worried about people who say they're saved and we
don't see any evidence. That's like being stillborn and God
has no stillborn children in the kingdom. Am I making some
sense, ladies and gentlemen? Right. And this is basic theology
around what we call the doctrine of soteriology. The doctrine
of salvation means that God has a bunch of babies that he created
through this mechanism. who cry Abba father and grow
up trusting god, loving Christ and walking by his spirit until
we come into full maturity and and we dare not say I am what
I am by the grace of god plus something I did. So, let me help
you a little bit. That's a t-shirt. It's Christ's work alone that
produces in us the faith that works. For it is God that worketh
in us the will and to do of His good pleasure. Here's the other
thing you will discover when you are learning the gospel,
that the flatline, sort of bland, monotone nature of Scripture
that you experienced when you were reading it before the Spirit
of God started working, this kind of flat line monotone. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth. When the Spirit of God
begins to show you the gospel, those things start spiking up.
Biblical truth spikes up. Texts spike up. And you go, whoa,
I didn't see that before. What are you seeing now? You're
seeing the glory of God in Christ, Emphasizing now the testimony
of jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy is no longer a flat
line now. It's spikes To god be the glory
the principle of first causes god is doing this work And because
god is working now, we're working you see those spikes. Is that
true? Is that is that what happens in your life? You start reading
your bible and you begin to see these redemptive paradigms Right. It's important because the bible
is going to bear record of god when we are of god And when we're
not you can actually twist and turn the bible like plato into
whatever you wanted to say Let's close in prayer Father, thank
you for this time. Thank you for those wonderful
wonderful questions questions that were raised in the first
century with the apostles raised in the third fourth and fifth
century with our patristic fathers raised in the days in the pre-reformation
era with john husk and wycliffe and others who sought to make
sure that the scriptures were written in the vernacular of
the common people, raised again by Luther and the Reformation
for which the Pope wanted to kill him, called him anathema
and has damned the Protestant church, raised again in the days
of Calvin, raised again after the Reformation period hundreds
of years later, and by your mercy is being raised again in our
generation for only one reason. You are still saving people out
of every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue. And you will snatch
them out of the clutches of religion and secularism. And you will
set them in front of the glory of God in Christ. And they will
find Christ to be all sufficient. And they will fall in love with
him according to your word. If you love me, you will keep
my commandments. And you will grace them to believe on you,
love you, and be willing to suffer and die for your glory as our
brothers and sisters in the Middle East are. Hallelujah. We thank
you for them. We thank you for that childlike
faith you give them to take the hit for Christ in the midst of
hellish and demonic opposition. Here we are in your ironic Providence,
sitting in an air conditioned building, living life like Kings,
talking on a theoretical level, biblical propositions. concepts but they're more than
theories so make us to have that light precious faith that is
willing to lay down his life for your cause and for your people
may we make our election and calling sure may we not play
games with you may we not be lost in the midst of the church
may we love what you love hate what you hate and every day we
ask that you keep us by your grace. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you guys.