In the 13th chapter of Acts we
see a wonderful example of God's sent preacher preaching the gospel
of our salvation, preaching Christ unto a needy people and preaching
him from the scriptures. In this chapter Paul shows the
Jews unto whom he speaks how Christ is the Messiah The Saviour
of whom the Scriptures promised. The Saviour whom the Scriptures
promised. He's the fulfilment. We read
from verse 14, When they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch
in Pisidia and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day
and sat down. And after the reading of the
law and the prophets, The rulers of the synagogue sent unto them,
saying, Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation
for the people, say on. Then Paul stood up, and beckoned
with his hand, and said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God,
give audience. The God of this people of Israel
chose our fathers, and exalted the people when they dwelt as
strangers in the land of Egypt. And with an high arm brought
He them out of it. And about the time of forty years
suffered He their manors in the wilderness. And when He had destroyed
seven nations in the land of Canaan, He divided their land
to them by lot. And after that he gave unto them
judges about the space of 450 years, until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they desired a
king. And God gave unto them Saul the son of Sis, a man of
the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of 40 years. And when he
had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king. to whom also he gave testimony,
and said, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after
mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will. Of this man's seed
have God, according to his promise, raised unto Israel a Saviour,
Jesus. when John had first preached
before his coming the baptism of repentance to all the people
of Israel. And as John fulfilled his course,
he said, Whom think ye that I am? I am not he. But behold, there cometh one
after me whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose. men
and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever
among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation
sent. For they that dwell at Jerusalem,
and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices
of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have
fulfilled them in condemning him. And though they found no
cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be
slain. And when they had fulfilled all
that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and
laid him in a sepulcher. But God raised him from the dead. And he was seen many days of
them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are
his witnesses unto the people. And we declare unto you glad
tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers,
God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he
hath raised up Jesus again. As it is also written in the
second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. And as concerning that he raised
him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption,
he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of
David. Wherefore he saith also in another
psalm, thou shalt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption. For David, after he had served
his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep. and was laid unto his fathers,
and saw corruption. But he whom God raised again
saw no corruption. Men and brethren, children of
the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you
is the word of this salvation sent. To you is the word of this
salvation sent. The word of this salvation. Here we see a preacher, Paul,
sent of God to preach Christ among the Gentiles. to preach
the Gospel of our Salvation, to preach the Word of this Salvation. And we see Him preaching. And
we see towards the end of the chapter the impact that this
preaching has upon those who heard. Because the disciples
were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost. This Word saves. It is the word of this salvation. It has an impact upon those who
hear, those who fear God, those who know that they need salvation. Do you know your need of salvation? Do you fear almighty God before
whom one day you will stand and before whom one day you will
give an account of what you have done throughout your lifetime? What you have done with the life
that he has given you? What you have done with the words
which he has spoken unto you? what you have done with the knowledge
of the truth which he has declared unto you. To him you will give
an account of what you have done with all the riches which he
has bestowed upon you and why you have not bowed down unto
him to worship. and why you have not used your
life for his glory and why you have not walked in his ways and
in his will and why you have used your life to build up your
own ambitions to further your own ends to flourish your own
glory why you have used that life to rebel against your own
maker. Oh do you fear that God before
whom you will stand and you will answer for that God will judge
you justly for all that you have done and all that you have said
and all that you have fought and all that you are and He has
the power to deliver you, and He has the power to condemn you,
and He is rightly to be feared. Men and brethren, whosoever among
you that feareth God, that feareth God, that knoweth that He will
condemn the sinful, and knoweth that he will justify the righteous. If you fear God, if you hear
his word, if you hear his gospel, if you look unto the Saviour,
Jesus, whom he sent unto his people, as Paul testifies here,
if you look unto him, then to you this word of salvation is
sent. And if you're given ears to hear
this word, it will have an impact unlike any other message. Have you heard? Do you hear? How can you hear? How can you
hear except there be a preacher like Paul sent with this word
of salvation unto you? Paul makes plain in the 10th
chapter of Romans, regarding Christ and his salvation. He
says in verse 13 of Romans 10, for whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call
on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they
believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring
glad tidings of good things. But they have not all obeyed
the gospel. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who have
believed our report. So then faith cometh by hearing
and hearing by the word of God. Hearing by the word of God. What is the word of God? And what is it to hear the word
of God? And what is it to receive faith
and salvation? By the word of God. The word
of this salvation. Well the word of God. First and
foremost is God's speech. God's word spoken unto man. He has spoken. He has spoken
from the beginning of time. He has spoken throughout all
history. He speaks today and He will speak
to the end of time. And one day when you pass out
of time into eternity, He will speak directly unto you. The Word of God is spoken. He
has spoken throughout history and He has spoken through men
whom he has sent as preachers to declare his word. The word
of God is not heard as a voice necessarily out of the heavens,
though men of old at times in sundry places have heard his
voice. But it is that voice which is
spoken within the heart by the Spirit of God. Within the hearts
are those preachers who go forth by His Spirit and declare His
Word unto men. And what they say is not their
speech but His. As 2 Peter 1, 21 tells us, For
the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but
holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. God sent prophets, he sent preachers
from the dawn of time to say unto a sinful world, to say to
sinners like you and I, thus saith the Lord. God has spoken. and their speech was with authority,
their speech was with power, their speech demanded the attention
of the hearer because they came not as men, not by their will,
but as the ambassadors, the voice pieces, the preachers of God. And if a preacher like Paul is
sent unto you with this gospel, this word, then that word demands
your attention, for God is addressing you. And God says, this is my
message unto you. Listen to me. This is the word
which Paul preached on this day. the word of this salvation, the
word of God. How shall they hear without a
preacher? He came with that word and he
preached and as he preached faith entered into the hearts of the
hearers for faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. The word of faith, the word of
this salvation, the word of God. Now those words which God spake
in times of old, which holy men of God spake as they were moved
by the Holy Ghost were written down, written down and recorded. Moses wrote the first chapters
of the Bible long after the event but he wrote by inspiration of
the Spirit of God, he wrote of the creation, he wrote of Noah,
he wrote of Adam and Eve in the garden, he wrote of the accounts
of Abraham and Jacob and Joseph going down into Egypt. He wrote of the travail in Egypt
and he wrote of the history of which he was part when God used
Moses to deliver that people from Egypt and lead them out,
lead them through the wilderness, lead them unto Mount Sinai where
they were given a law to prove them, a law which proved them
all to be sinners and guilty before a holy God. And he wrote
of their being led to Canaan. And then we read in the further
books of how Joshua led that people into Canaan of their mighty
victories. We then read the records written
down by holy men of the judges which were put over Israel. And
then of the prophets of Samuel of whom Paul speaks in this message. And of how Samuel was called
to appoint a king to Israel, Saul. who grieved the Lord, and
of how Saul was removed, and how that King David, a man after
God's own heart, was given unto the people, a figure of Christ
to come, a figure of the Saviour, the King of Kings. We read the
Psalms, the praises, the cries unto God, many penned by David
himself. We read the accounts of the prophets,
the prophecies which God gave unto Israel, and the accounts
of how Israel was taken into captivity, and those prophecies
made unto them in captivity, those prophecies regarding their
captivity and regarding their deliverance from captivity, and
those prophecies throughout of the coming of a Saviour who would
not only deliver as Moses did from Egypt, or as the people
were delivered from Babylon, but a saviour who would deliver
his people from their sins. We read of the coming of Messiah
and all was written down and recorded and preserved unto the
day in which Paul lived. And those scriptures, the law
and the prophets were read every Sabbath day in the synagogues
by the Jews of old. as it is written. And as Paul
stood up to preach the gospel unto his people, to declare unto
them that those scriptures and those prophecies had been fulfilled
in the coming of Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour long
promised, he quotes those scriptures, he quotes the Psalms with regard
to Christ. He quotes, thou art my son, this
day have I begotten thee. He quotes, I will give you the
sure mercies of David. He quotes, thou shalt not suffer
thine holy one to see corruption. He proves who this savior is
from the scriptures that that people already had. And yet the
scriptures, which though they had them, they did not comprehend. for he says of the rulers of
the people at Jerusalem that because they knew Christ not
nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath
day. They fulfilled the message of
those very prophets concerning Christ by condemning Christ. Every Sabbath day these Jews
picked up the scriptures and read the prophets and the prophets
said Messiah will come and he will be slain. God will smite
the shepherd. He shall deliver his people.
He shall bring peace to Jerusalem. They read the prophecies. And
when Messiah came, and when Messiah stood before them, when the Word
of God, that the record of God's Word, the Prophets, the Law and
the Prophets which they read testified of, when the very Saviour
of whom they had read stood before them, they put Him to death. For they had the written word
of God, the written record of the speech of God by the prophets. Yet they did not know the author. They did not know the Son of
God, who had spoken those words by His Spirit through those prophets. And when the very one of whom
the prophets spoke stood before them, they said, Away with him! Crucify him! and they put him
to death. They had the word of God on paper
but they took the word of God in person and slew him. Oh the blindness of men in religion
in the letter and without the spirit. Oh what is your religion
and what is it set upon? Do you speak of the Word of God? Do you speak of your knowledge
of the Word of God? Do you speak of the Scriptures
and your knowledge and wisdom in the Scriptures? Do you speak
of the authority of the Scriptures and the accuracy of the Scriptures? And yet not know Jesus Christ. Do you take his prophets whom
he sends with his word, and sends with his gospel, and sends to
preach that gospel, that message which you have in your hands,
and put them to death? When God sends a man who picks
up the book you have in your hands, and takes those words,
and points you to Christ, Do you say away with this man? Do you shut your ears? Do you
speak all day of your knowledge in the letter, and never ever
hear the voice of the Spirit of God by the gospel, by the
preacher sent to your soul? And in so doing, put both the
messenger and the one who spake the message, the Saviour Himself,
to death in your hearts. Men and brethren, children of
the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you
is the word of this salvation sent. Have you ears to hear what
the Spirit saith unto the churches. The Word of God. What is the
Word of God? It's His speech unto man. And
He spake in old times by the prophets. And those words were
recorded and set down in the scriptures. And when He spake
by the apostles, after the coming of Christ and those apostles
also wrote down the words of Christ and wrote down the testimony
in the four gospels of what Christ did and what happened to him
and when they recorded the acts of the apostles in this very
book we've read today And when they wrote their letters unto
the churches and recorded those letters and gathered them together
and collected them in the scriptures, then the recording of God's Word
in the scriptures was completed. And this is what we have today.
In this book called the Bible, the 39 books of the Old Testament,
the 27 of the New, that which we call the Scriptures, we have
the completed Canon of Scriptures, God's Word unto man, recorded
and sent. Just as Paul quoted from the
Old Testament, here we have the record of what Paul said at this
place at this time, we have the record of the preaching of the
apostles, we have the record of what Christ did in the Gospels
and we have the record and the accounts of those letters expounding
the Gospel. which were sent to the churches
in the early days. We have God's sure and complete
and perfect testimony unto man recorded in the scriptures. recorded
as he spake through holy men of God. The prophets and the
apostles who were moved by the Holy Ghost and who wrote these
things down, God inspired them, God breathed his word through
these men and they recorded it and they kept it and they preserved
it, God by them preserved his word. And this is why we can
speak today of having the Word of God in the Scriptures, the
recorded, the written Word of God, as the inerrant, infallible
Word of God, preserved unto our day. Because God wrote this Word. They are inspired, they are God-breathed. As 2 Timothy 3.16 tells us, all
scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
Now Paul writing to Timothy there is primarily speaking at that
time of the Old Testament scriptures but he also refers of course
to the Gospels which were being recorded and to his own letters
and epistles which he knew were part of those scriptures. He
knew that God not only inspired them but breathed them. For that word translated inspiration
or inspired in the Greek has more the sense of being breathed
out by God. God didn't just inspire somebody
as it were to move them to write things but he wrote through them. He spake through them. What they
wrote was God's very speech. They are God breathed. And as
such when they were originally written, when these scriptures,
when Moses wrote the Torah, when Moses wrote the first books of
the Bible in the Hebrew, it was inerrant. What he wrote down
was what God told him to write. It is perfect. And what Paul
wrote in these epistles was perfect, and what is recorded in the Gospels
is perfect, inerrant because it's not the will of man. It was not, it did not come in
old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake and
wrote down as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. It is God-breathed,
inerrant, perfect. in its original manuscripts. What God wrote down in the Greek
and in the Hebrew by these men is his word and it has been preserved
unto our day. countless generations later by
the good hand and providence of almighty God that he should
preserve his word to the end of the age that he should bring
his gospel even unto our ears by his word by the word of this
salvation which he sends to you even today. He's preserved it,
he's preserved this word, he's preserved these scriptures throughout
history by preserving countless copies which were made of the
original manuscripts, the original autographs of the scriptures.
Countless copies were made by the Jewish scribes of those original
words which Moses and the prophets recorded. countless meticulous
copies were made and countless meticulous copies were made of
the new testament scriptures the epistles when paul wrote
to rome that which he wrote would have been copied and multiple
copies were made and sent throughout the world to the various churches
and kept and then copies were made of those so that as the
older copies perished because of the passing of time and the
effects on the manuscripts in the day in which they lived the
word was preserved by new copies accurately being written and
then preserved. such that today we have of the
scriptures something in the region of five and a half thousand different
manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts of the old and the
new testament five and a half thousand some as complete books
some as parts of books some as pages but thousands of manuscripts
thousands of copies dating back centuries Some write until practically
the early, within about two or three hundred years of when the
apostles wrote the New Testament. And God has gathered all of these
manuscripts together and allowed scholars in latter days, in the
1400s, the 1500s, to gather all the Greek manuscripts and from
them to compile one single Greek received text which takes these
thousands of copies and puts them all into one book. And that
received text is the basis of the Bible which we have read
this morning. The basis of the King James Version
or the Authorized Version, translated in 1611 from that received text. And largely based upon the self-sacrificial
work of that godly man William Tyndale. who through fear of
death and a desire to bring these words to the hearing of the ordinary
man, to the hearing of the ploughboy, to bring the very word of God
to the ploughboy, to word it in English such that even the
poorest, the simplest, the least learned could read and comprehend
at least on the natural level, what the original Hebrew and
the original Greek said. And he translated that at fear
of death because there were powers at the time at which he worked
who did not want him to translate that word. Why not? Because for
centuries, for centuries the word of God has been attacked
in order to deny the possibility that the word of this salvation
should be sent to sinners and that sinners should be saved.
Why? Because there is one called the
prince of the power of the air, the devil, who goes about as
a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And he doesn't
want you and I to hear. He doesn't want you and I to
hear the word of God, and he doesn't want you or I to read
the word of God. He doesn't want this word of
salvation said. And for centuries following the
early church, the times of the apostles, as the church of Rome
grew up, the scriptures largely in many places became locked
away from the hearing of the ordinary man. Rome sought to
translate those scriptures into Latin and to prevent the hearers
from hearing it. They sought to have their men
declare unto the people what God said. And yet they never
gave the people the opportunity to read the word of God for themselves,
to see whether what those men said, what the clergy said, was
what God had said. It's not wrong that there should
be a preacher. but for the preacher to come
and say this is the message and for you to have no means of picking
up God's word and verifying that he preaches from that word and
what he says is there is to open the door to any fanciful preaching. But God would have us know his
word. And God would have us read his
word. That we might hear when the preacher
comes and we might see in the scriptures that what he says
is recorded. When Paul came to this people
here and spake of Christ, he said unto them, look, you've
got your scriptures this Sabbath day. You've heard them read in
the synagogue. You've heard what the prophets
and the Psalms say. And it says in those scriptures
you have before you, in the second psalm, thou art my son, this
day have I begotten thee. Paul quoted the very scriptures
the people had in their hands. And they could see that what
he said was there, and they could see that the Christ he spake
of was whom the prophets declared. And as God gave them faith and
understanding, they were brought to see the reality and the truth
and by faith to look unto Christ their Saviour. But Rome led by
that devil, led by the prince of the power of the air would
seek to deny the people from reading and deny us from hearing
the word of God. But God in his providence overruled. He ensured that there were scriptures
throughout history and he ensured that his church read those scriptures
and heard it preached. And he ensured that even in what
we might call the dark ages when the power of Rome ruled, and
when people didn't have printing presses, that the manuscripts
of the scriptures were still preserved and that people did
hear faithful preachers and did hear the gospel. And when in
the Middle Ages, the time of the printing press came, when
we come to the 1500s and the ability to print and to print
mass copies of books was opened up to us then godly men like
Tyndale saw the great opening that these things presented to
take the word of God from its original Greek and Hebrew and
to translate it into the language of the people that we might hear
and we praise and thank God for raising that men up like him
to do this. For by him we have this word
before us, the word of God, the word of God written, the word
of God which has been attacked, and the word of God which continues
to be attacked. For if you're to hear the gospel,
you need to hear the truth, and you need to hear the word of
God as God spake it, and what God meant in the beginning. and
not a twisted and a corrupted message. And yet the enemies
of Christ will do all they can to ensure that you don't hear
his word. They don't mind if it's close,
as long as you don't hear him. They don't mind if you pick up
a book and read of a man called Jesus, as long as it's not the
true Jesus. They don't mind if you read of
salvation, as long as that salvation is not the salvation which Christ
wrought. It can be oh so close, but Satan
doesn't want you to hear. And as he tried to prevent those
scriptures ever coming into our hands he's tried to corrupt them
and defile them throughout history. He tried to corrupt them in the
very beginning. In the times of the apostles
he tried when copies were made of the scriptures to create erroneous
copies and to introduce error into those copies and to take
manuscripts and bury them in the sand and take them away from
people. He's tried every means he can
to introduce error and yet God has preserved his word. And yet
today also, we live in a generation where people have increasingly
turned away from God's Word and the accuracy of the Scriptures
and the inerrancy of the Scriptures and turned to novelties. And
how many different translations of the Scriptures are there available
today to confuse and to confound? We have the NIV, we have the
Good News, we have the New King James, we have the ESV. We have
all of these different street Bibles and all different versions
for different people and different classes, young people's Bibles,
old people's Bibles, all designed to corrupt and to confuse. And
what is common to the vast majority of modern translations of the
Bible is that not only are they poor translations written by
ungodly men, unlike Tyndale, But they are not even translations
of the original Greek and the original Hebrew upon which the
King James was based, upon which Tyndales was based, upon which
the Geneva was based. But the translators and the scholars
have gone and have corrupted the very Greek, the very foundations
upon which the scriptures are based and made novelties that
they might slip in their deceits and their errors and lead the
people astray and disguise it all by telling them that their
Greek is more accurate than the Greek which God preserved upon
which the AV is based. Most of the modern translations
are based upon a faulty Greek text originally introduced in
the 1880s largely by two men Westcott and Hort who when there
was a revision being sought to be done of the AV text to correct
various errors various minor words which could be translated
better They saw this as an opportunity to say well let's not just revise
the English and the translation but let's revise the Greek because
we found some manuscripts which are older than the other manuscripts
upon which the received text is based. We found two or three. We found one found in the Vatican,
the Vaticanus text. And we found one found in a monastery
on Mount Sinai, the Sinaiticus text. And these are older than
these other manuscripts. So by definition they must be
more accurate. And what they did is they took
two manuscripts and set aside thousands of others and said
where these two differ from the thousands we will go with what
these two say. and in their folly and foolishness
which appeals to antiquity as though that's a ground for accuracy
they set aside God's preservation of his word in thousands of manuscripts
all of which agree to an incredibly high accuracy. Because although
they're copied manuscripts, and although some have this word
spelt wrongly and that word spelt wrongly, an occasional word missing,
if you take them as a whole, they all agree astonishingly.
But these manuscripts that Westcott and Hort found didn't. And yet
in their folly, they adopted it as the basis for the 1881
revised Bible. And every modern translation
has followed essentially on that basis since. The modern NIV,
New International Version, ESV, even the New King James, all
these versions lean upon the Greek that they slyly slipped
in, and which fundamentally undermines many of the truths. Yet God is
not mocked. He preserved his word, he ensured
that it went forth from Jerusalem in many, many places in which
many people were saved and gathered in the assemblies and in which
many copies of the original scriptures were made such that he could
gather them together and preserve them to the end. He did not put
the scriptures in just one or two places in this world, buried
in the sand in Egypt, buried under the Vatican at Rome. but
he preserved it and sent it forth to the four corners of the earth. And it's the shared testimony
of all those scriptures gathered into one which we have as our
sure foundation in the received text, the Textus Receptus upon
which the authorized version is based, upon which Tyndale's
and the Geneva Bible are based. you can trust the authorized
version you cannot trust and it is foolish to trust the modern
translations which have eroded the testimony of the scriptures
and in which the word of this salvation is shattered. Use the AV I recommend it. It's the best translation on
the best Greek text. God has honored it for hundreds
of years. I don't use anything else other
than to occasionally look at the original Greek in an interlinear
Because the Greek has a richness in many of its words which you
cannot always convey through one English word. The translators
of the Bible, when they took the Greek and put it into English,
had to choose what they thought would be the best expression
for each word in context. But often not every word conveys
the full truth. And there is much meaning in
the Greek which cannot always be conveyed in the English. And
they didn't always choose every word perfectly. Because as well
as being attacked from one side, this Bible is also attacked on
another. There are those who have arisen
in recent years, very recent years, who purport to support
the inerrancy of Scripture, who purport to support the Word of
God, and who claim to support the King James Bible. Those who
might call themselves King James Version only. Those who support
the 1611 translation. But they so put the translation
in English on a pedestal that they've turned it into an idol.
And rather than treating the original text that God breathed
in the Hebrew and Greek as inerrant and perfect, they have taken
the English written 1600 years after the close of the scriptures,
1600 years later, and they have said and come to the foolish
conclusion that this is God's perfect inerrant work. As though,
word, as though the word of God never truly existed until the
1600s. they sound like they are defenders
of the faith in fact they are enemies and enemies to our soul
and enemies of the word of God because they idolize a translation
in another tongue in English at the expense of the original
tongue they would go as far as correcting the Greek some of
them from what they find in the English this is foolishness And
they are the blind leading the blind. And only a fool would
be taken in. But they are very scholarly,
very studious. They have every answer to every
question you can present. They've got it all sewn up. Yet
what you find so often, what is so often missing with them,
as is so often missing with so many proponents of the modern
translations, is they don't preach the gospel. They don't preach
Christ. They are just like these of whom
Paul speaks when he preaches here. Paul comes and quotes the
scriptures authoritatively and points the people to Christ.
But he says that those rulers in Jerusalem, those custodians
of the law, those custodians of the scriptures, those like
their modern day counterparts who'll bang their hand on the
table about the 1611 translation and say, this is the word of
God. is the only perfect word in any language and so keep the
word of God from the French, from the Russians, from the Chinese,
from every other nation because God has only spoken they say
in English. These people with their foolish
learning have effectively turned away from Christ. They that dwell
at Jerusalem and their rulers because they knew Christ not,
nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath
day, they have fulfilled those prophets in condemning him. And
these who are so careful to defend the scriptures and give over
their lives to defending the accuracy of their translation,
even though it's the best, even though I commend it to you. They've
so turned to that translation alone and away from God's true
word and away from his gospel that they don't know Christ and
they don't preach Christ. God's word is inerrant those
scriptures which he breathed in the original and God has preserved
that and brought it into our tongue in one of the best translations
ever in the King James and he speaks and preaches his gospel
by this word. But the scriptures alone, words
and ink on paper, are not the word of this salvation. because you need more than the
scriptures. If you have the scriptures alone,
you'll put Christ to death and you'll put his preachers to death.
You need to hear Christ and you need to hear his preachers and
you need to hear the Spirit of God. You need to hear Christ. Christ, the Word of God. Because the Word of God is not
just a book. The Word of God is God's speech. That speech was recorded and
written down. But that speech is Christ. When God spake, he spake by Christ. He spake through his Son, as
Hebrews 1 makes plain. God, who at sundry times and
in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets, half in these last days spoken unto us by sun by
the word The Word of God. Christ, the Son of God made flesh. The Word of God made flesh. God
spake by Son. He created the world. When He
spake and said, let there be light, He spoke those words through
Christ. Christ created the world. Christ is the expression of God's
person. God cannot be seen, he's never
been seen, he's a spirit but he is seen and made known unto
us through Christ. He spoken unto us by son, whom
he have appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made
the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory, and the express
image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his
power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on
the right hand of the majesty on high. Christ is God's word,
he is his speech, when God speaks unto man he speaks through Christ,
and if you're ever to hear the word of God, truly you will hear
Christ. Now you may say, well if Christ
is the Word of God, what does that make the written Word of
God? It makes the written Word of God a record of Christ's speech. But a record of the speech alone
is not to hear Him speak. God must take those words from
the Scriptures and must speak them by a preacher by His Spirit
for you to hear Christ. And that's what Paul was doing
here. He went to these people in the
synagogue. They said, have you something
to say? And he stood up and addressed them. He took their Scriptures. He took those scriptures which
they read and yet they never saw Christ in them and He took
them and He preached from them and when they heard His voice
and when they saw Him read, they saw Christ. Of this man's seed,
David's seed, hath God, according to His promise, raised unto Israel
a Saviour, Jesus. Have you heard? Have you seen
this Saviour Jesus? He speaks of Jesus. He speaks
of who He is. David's seed. The King of Kings
of whom David was a figure. The Great High Priest of whom
David the Priest was a figure. The Prophet of whom David the
Prophet was a figure. The Preacher of Preachers. Christ. Christ sent unto his
people the Jews to deliver the Jews from their sins. Yet when
he came unto his own, his own received him not. Though they'd
heard and read the prophets, they never heard the voices of
the prophets. They never knew the Christ of
whom they spake. And when he came unto them, they
slew him. Have you read of Christ? Have
you read the Scriptures? Have you heard Him? What do you
do under Him, what they did under Him? They found no cause of death
in Him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. Have
you found no cause of death in Christ, yet you put Him to death
in your hearts? You reject Him, you turn away,
you're apathetic, you're cold, you're careless. You don't care
for him. Like them you reject him. Paul
spake of his rejection. He spake of his death. When they
had fulfilled all that was written of Him, they took Him down from
the tree and laid Him in a sepulcher. They crucified Him. And all that
was written of Christ came to pass when He was on that tree. He was nailed to a tree as a
substitute of sinners. He was nailed in the place of
sinners. He died to take sin away. Did he bear your sins? Was he
made sin for you? Was his blood shed for you? Was his body broken for you? All the scriptures pointed to
him. In the days of old to which Paul
refers, when Israel was in bondage in Egypt, That man, that son
of Jacob, Joseph, was rejected like Christ was rejected, given
up as dead, sent down into Egypt and thrown into jail. And as
it were in the belly of hell, in the pit of death, there he
was in jail. And on one side of him was a
baker, and on the other side of him was a butler. one who
served wine and one who served bread and both dreamed a dream
and both asked Joseph what the meaning of their dream was and
he interpreted and the interpretations were that the butler would be
set free the server of wine would go free the wine would go free
but the maker of bread the baker would be destroyed And all of
this pointed to Christ and what he would accomplish in his death
upon the cross. Because he would be split in
two. His blood, the wine, would flow
forth and be freed. But the body, the bread, would
be broken and destroyed. The body being made sin, destroyed
under the wrath of God. but the blood which washes away
the sins of the people that Christ bore, flowing forth from his
body on the tree, to wash sinners of all their sins. All the Scriptures
speak of Christ. And when they took him down from
the tree and laid him in a sepulcher, all had been fulfilled which
was written of him. And God raised him from the dead,
and he was seen many days of them which came up with him from
Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. So Paul says, we declare unto
you glad tidings how that the promise which was made unto the
fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children,
in that he hath raised up Jesus again. As it's written in the
2nd Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. All
was fulfilled in Christ, he came to save his people, he came to
bring salvation, and this message of salvation would be preached
to the end of the age. Men and Brethren, and whosoever
among you that fear God, to you is the word of this salvation
sent. Oh, have you heard it? Have you
heard the preaching? Because salvation's not to be
found in books alone. You can take the scriptures alone
and you will not hear, but have you heard of Christ? And have
you heard Christ? You must hear. You must hear. when God spake he breathed his
word he spake by holy men he breathed his word and he must
speak to you and breathe his word and breathe his life and
breathe Christ into your soul as he breathed life into your
soul you see when he takes this word and when the spirit of God
preaches it unto you he makes it a comfort unto you When you
hear God's voice in this Word, you see Christ crucified for
you, and you know that your sin is gone, and you know that your
sins have been covered by the blood, and you know that you've
been brought to peace with God, and you know that all is well
with your soul. It's a comfort, but it's only
a comfort to God's children. This Word is a savour of life
unto life and death unto death. It's a comfort. Is it a comfort
unto you? Because there was a time, there
was a time, there is a time when we can take this word and we
can read and we can hear and we can care nothing for it, nothing. But then there comes a time,
when we begin to read and when this book begins to fill us with
dread and condemnation and when we hear a preacher and we're
full of dread because we know we're full of sin and we know
God's wrath is burning against us we know we have no answer
for our sin then this book fills us with fear but then should
this word of salvation be sent to us Then should the Spirit
of God speak peace unto us. Then should we be led to the
foot of the cross and behold a Saviour crucified for us. Then, then, then, blessed time,
then we hear, then we read, and then we see a Saviour, our Saviour
crucified for us. Then by grace we hear and we
see comfort. and now by grace if that's you
if you've come that way if you've heard this word of this salvation
now when you read you find comfort in these words all because of
grace all because God's come unto you and spoken unto you
and breathed life into your soul No longer are these things just
words on a page but God has spoken and he speaks and you hear and
you see and love Christ in every word. He sends preachers to take
these words and speak them to our souls in spirit and in truth
and by them Christ is formed in us. He becomes real to us,
real living. Have you seen him? Is he living
to you? Is he your salvation? Is he your
all? I was speaking to a brother last
night to Chad in America and he said briefly he said he said
Christ is not just the bread of life but now he's my bread
of life He's not just the bread of life but He's my bread of
life. Can you say that too? That no longer is He just the
bread of life of whom you've read in the scriptures but now
you know Him and He's my bread of life. Is He? Is He your salvation? Have you heard His word? Have
you heard the voice of the Son of God and lived? Have you heard
the word? Today to you is sent the word
of this salvation. Have you heard? Amen.