Acts chapter 22. Gracious Father, be with us by
your Spirit. Testify to us of the things of
your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. May we behold him this evening
and be filled with joy at the knowledge of him. Father, we thank you that you
chose us to know your will, to see the righteous one. and to
hear His voice. Fulfill that for us this evening
in Jesus' name. Amen. Now we got started this morning
on this message that Ananias gave to Paul, at that time called
Saul. He said in verse 14, the God
of our fathers has chosen you to know His will and to see the
righteous one, and to hear words from His mouth. Now, we got as
far as being chosen, and that was the major one. In fact, that's
what attracted me to this particular scripture. I heard someone, I
was listening to a CD of Brother Henry Mahan, and he quoted this
verse, and that just caught my ear. The God of our fathers has
chosen you to know His will. And as I was driving along, I
thought, what a blessing to know God's will, to know what God
is doing, to know the purpose, the goal that defines and directs
everything that God brings to pass. And toward the end of the
message this morning, I only got to briefly point this out,
but I want to return to this, that the will of God, knowing
the will of God, It's the parameter, it's the outline of answered
prayer. And I want to repeat this because
it was to me a revelation, so to speak. I mean, seeing something
I hadn't seen before. When John says that our prayers
will be answered if we pray according to his will. And that means more
than simply that we pray for the details that we wanted to
come to pass. Rather, it indicates or it means
that if we pray for those things, which will bring about that overall
will of God, which is bringing all things under the headship
of Jesus Christ. Those prayers will all be answered,
and that should teach us how to pray. Now, of course, we are
free to bring all our cares before the Lord and lay them all upon
him. And we don't have to, you know,
run all our prayers through some kind of filter, you know, saying,
well, I wonder if this could be for the glory of Christ. It
would make things come under the headship of Christ, as though
we have to be kind of neurotic when we pray, unless we accidentally
pray something amiss. Now, we can pray amiss. James
speaks of that, I believe it's James, and says we have not because
we ask not. And then when we do ask, we ask
amiss because we're praying for things just to satisfy our own
flesh. But if we pray to satisfy God's
will, that is, if we pray with that goal in mind, we may lay
all our burdens on Him and know full well that everything which
could be for the glory of Christ will be answered. And then we
also know this, that He does not give us our request as we
ask it. It means that what he does instead
will redound to the glory of Christ. And in that, can we not
take some comfort in our trouble? If we are sick and we pray, Lord,
heal me, and then the Lord does not, well, that's not going to
make our bodies feel better. They're still going to be sick.
But we may lay upon our sickbed knowing this, what is happening. is for the glory of Christ and
someday we will see how that glorified Christ. Whatever our troubles may be,
whatever our desires regarding our life may be, we lay them
upon him subject to this will. They said you have been chosen
by God to know his will and to see the righteous one. The Lord
Jesus Christ is the righteous one. Now Paul wanted to be the
righteous one. Paul wanted everyone to think
of him as the righteous one. We all have some of that in us.
We all express that attitude to varying degrees. Some people
seem to be humble, outwardly speaking, and others are obnoxiously
self-righteous. But the fact is, running through
all of us, in our flesh, is this thought that we're righteous
and we really want everyone to know about it and to acknowledge
it. That's why Men by nature, whatever
works they do, they do to be seen of men. You know, it's kind
of like what good is a good work if somebody doesn't see it, you
know? And the Lord said those things which are done in secret
are that which are best in the eyes of the Lord. But Paul wanted
to be the righteous one. Paul wanted the reputation of
the righteous one. But here, this blessing is going
to be given to him that he will see the righteous one. Now, in
our lifetime, you and I will not see the righteous one like
Paul did. It appears that Paul actually came face to face with
Christ. Well, on the road to Damascus,
but that sight blinded him. But many people believe that
during the three years that Paul was in Arabia, that he was there
being personally instructed by the Lord Jesus Christ as he revealed
himself. Paul calls himself an apostle
born out of due time. All the other apostles saw the
risen Lord before he ascended, but Paul was born an apostle,
so to speak, after the Lord ascended, but he nonetheless saw the Lord.
He saw the Lord in his glory. He saw the Lord in his righteousness.
He saw the Lord in His power. He saw the Lord as He is. Now, you and I, in this lifetime,
are not going to see that. Not that way. Don't listen to
anybody that says, I saw the Lord. Because they didn't. I
don't know who they saw, but they did not see Him. The next
time the world sees Him will be when He comes back in the
clouds in great glory to bring judgment upon this earth and
salvation to all His people who remain here. Brother Scott Richardson
preached a message once from the story of Noah, how God shut
Noah in the ark. God, in his essence, told Noah,
get in the ark. Now, God had spoken to Noah 120
years before that. And so far as we know, God never
said another thing until the day he brought the flood. There
was the message of the gospel of Noah, then 120 years of silence. And the next time God spoke,
it was a time of judgment. And Scott Richardson made this
point. He said, everybody wants God to speak. But he said, I
want God to say something. He says, beware, the next time
God speaks, it's judgment. The next time Christ appears,
it's judgment. But you and I do see the righteous
one by faith. We see, so to speak, with our
ears. Seeing the righteous one and
hearing words from his mouth, we could actually bundle those
as the same thing. You and I hear the gospel preached,
and when we who believe, when we hear it preached, it has an
effect on us that it does not have on the unbelieving. We see him with our hearts. We read in the book of Hebrews
this morning, it says, we don't see the present world made subject
to man, but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor. We see it, we understand it within
our hearts as though we had seen it with our eyes. It says that
Moses saw him who is invisible. And likewise, you and I have
never seen Christ with these eyes, yet we've seen him with
the heart so much so we are as confident of him as if we had
seen him face to face. When we hear the gospel, that
gospel goes into our heart and it touches something that nothing
else can touch. When I hear the gospel, I can
believe. Do you notice that about yourself?
Day to day, so often we go through our days It's just tough to believe,
that is, to believe in that emotional sense, to actually feel as though
these things are true and to live upon them. But when I can
hear it, when I can sit down and I hear one of the brethren
preach the gospel, when I put in a CD and hear a recording
of somebody preach the gospel, it goes through my mind and by
the Spirit of God, I see Christ. I am as confident of those things
in the gospel as if I'd already seen them take place. Have you
ever sat and listened to a preacher, and it is to you as though you'd
heard the voice of God? It's not that way every time
I hear someone preach, and I'm certain it's not that way every
time I preach. But I have sat and listened to preaching. And
it was as though I heard the Lord Jesus Christ himself speak. I can remember particular notable
times when preachers spoke and God spoke to me through that
preaching with such force. It was as though God spoke to
me directly. Things that stick with me And
it secured me in times of greatest doubt and trouble. I remember,
and I've related this to you before, but I remember at 13th
Street, sitting there in the pew, daydreaming, as is common
for me. My mind wanders. It's so hard
for me to keep it focused on what's being said, unless I'm
the one saying it. And I'm sitting there just thinking,
you know, and I don't know what the rest of the message was about,
but Henry made this statement. If Christ paid my debt, I don't
owe it. And that line, and as far as
I know, only that line, pierced through the fog of my brain that
day and touched my heart. I've never forgotten it. God spoke to me. I heard words
from His mouth that day. And I can think of times when
God has spoken to me through the voice of conscience. And
by that, I mean the collection of all those truths that we learn
as we sit and listen to preaching. You know, sometimes we go away
from a message and say, I didn't get anything out of that. Don't
think you didn't. God may have put something in
there for you that's not going to show up till Wednesday or
two years from then or whatever. But I remember, and here's another
story I've told you, but it was so powerful for me. We're going
my way to Minnesota. I'm going to preach. So we're
talking probably back in 2001, something like that. Bonnie's
driving, because she would normally drive there and I'd drive home.
And I'd sit there in the car and I'd meditate and then do
that kind of meditating you do with your eyes closed. But I
was just about to drop off to sleep. I was in that area, you
know, that kind of foggy area between being awake and being
asleep. And I was thinking about the
message, and then it is as though I actually heard an audible voice
say, you are a fraud. It startled me. You are a fraud. And it startled me so much because
it's so true. But then a few seconds later,
Christ is, but Christ is no fraud. And I was all worried about going
up to preach. As is common with me, I was worried
because I was thinking about how unworthy I am to preach the
gospel. And there, in that time, God
confirmed it. You are unworthy to preach the gospel. You are
a fraud. You are not what you preach yourself
up to be. You're a fraud. But Christ is
no fraud. And we don't preach because we're worthy to preach.
We preach because we have someone worthy to be preached. We hear from Him. He speaks to
us. Let us listen. God has chosen
us. God has appointed us to know
His will, to see the righteous one and find all our righteousness
in Him, and to hear words from His mouth through preachers,
through the Holy Spirit, Taking the things that have already
been put in our mind and bringing them back. If we've been chosen
to hear from Him, then let us choose, by all means, to listen. Sometimes we may complain, it
just seems I don't hear from God anymore. Maybe it's because
when He was speaking, we weren't listening. And so He got quiet. So we perk
up our ears. I remember I took a class in
college called Childhood Education in the Church. And of course,
a lot of that just has to do with learning how to teach children.
It doesn't matter what you're teaching them. There's some principles
that remain the same. And they pointed this out. When
children are getting noisy, as children will. And this is probably
the most difficult part in teaching children. And some people got
a gift for it. But kids get rowdy. And one of
them gets started, and another one before long, and you know,
they kind of reach critical mass, and they just get too noisy. Now, some people will raise their
voice. Tell her to be quiet. Tell her
to be quiet. Just keep getting louder and
louder. When you do that, the kids just keep getting louder
and louder. Here's what the teacher said. When the kids get loud,
drop your voice. It'll take a little bit, but
then they'll notice. They can't hear. and they'll quieten down. And
you know, sometimes we don't listen and we get noisy with
worldly activities. I don't mean necessarily sinful
ones. I just mean that the activities of this day-to-day life and we
get noisy with it and get our minds and hearts turned that
way. And God will lower his voice. And then, lo and behold, we'll
notice, I don't hear you. It's happened to me. I'll bet
it's happened to you too. Well, he says in verse 15, you
will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. Every child of God has been called
to be a witness. Concerning the things of God
in Christ. Now, we've not been called to
be theological debaters. We've not been called necessarily
to be Elijah on Mount Carmel. and take on the prophets of Baal
in our day and slay them all. Here's what we've been called
to tell people, that which we have seen and heard. We have
seen that righteous one. We've seen him with eyes of faith.
And we have heard from him. And all we have to do, and really
it's all we ought to do, is tell others that which we have seen
and which we have heard. And if they want to bring up
something else, say, well, I haven't seen or heard anything about
that. So I can tell you this. I've seen the righteous one.
And in seeing him, I know this. I'm not righteous. But he's righteous
enough for me. He has righteousness enough to
make me righteous. And I've not heard much, but
I've heard this. that he will receive everyone
that comes to him. We're his witnesses. And then
he gives Paul four exhortations here. And now, he begins with
this, what are you waiting for? Oh, I like that. As I prepared this message, I
was looking for, I wished I could have got it all done this morning.
I want to ask some people, what are they waiting for? If we've
heard the gospel, if through preaching we have seen the righteous
one and we've heard from him, what are we waiting for? What
are people waiting for? I remember when I first came here, that
was often kind of one of those, you know, pull your hair out
type thoughts I would have because I would preach the gospel and
some of you would listen and you'd talk about how much it
warmed your heart and you rejoiced to hear it, but you wouldn't
confess it. You wouldn't profess him, and I'm thinking to myself,
what are you waiting for? What else do you think is going
to happen? We are to wait on the Lord. That's what the scriptures
teach us to do. But that doesn't mean to wait
to call on him. It doesn't mean to wait to believe
him. Calling upon him, we wait on him. Believing him, we wait
on him. When we hear the word, we should
act upon it as soon as we hear it. As soon as we're sure of
what it is the Word of God says, let us act upon it. What are
you waiting for? There was Paul. He'd been three days waiting.
And so Ananias comes in, this devout observer of the law, it
calls him. He's an old covenant believer.
By this I mean he's a believer yet worshiping God under the
old covenant. But he comes into there and God
has given him a special gift, and he says, receive your sight.
Paul said, Paul's sight comes back. And he said, now God chose
you to know his will, to see the righteous one, to hear his
voice. You're going to be a witness
of the things you've seen and heard. Now, what are you waiting for? Take action. The scriptures,
the gospel was never given to us so that we can sit in our
chairs and idly just think about it and never act on it. There's
such a danger in this. I was thinking today, one of
the days I'm going to write an article or a little essay or
something on the danger of theology. Now, by theology, I mean all
the thinking that men do about the scriptures when they take
the statements of scriptures and try to organize them and
try to draw some conclusions from them. And men do that. And
often they come to the wrong conclusions, but sometimes even
when they're coming to the right conclusions, they think it's
simply by thinking about it and discovering what the truth is
that they've done all they need to do with regard to the truth.
The truth was not given to us simply to think about. It was
given to us to act upon. What are you waiting for? That you do us good each morning
as we get up. If the Lord is pleased to give
us some thoughts from the scriptures in our mind, and after we think
of them, we ought to say, now what am I waiting for? Let's
go forward according to those scriptural things. And he says
this, get up. Get up. Paul was evidently either seated
or laying down. Of course, he'd been blind up
until a few minutes ago. He'd been in prayer. God told
Ananias to go speak to Paul, he says, because he prays. He's
praying. They've been in prayer. You know,
there is a time, there is a, how to put this, there is a time
for us to feel and acknowledge the weight of sin, and there
is a time to throw it off by the grace of God and get up.
There is a time to beat upon our breasts, and say, God, be
merciful to me, a sinner. And there's times to get up and
say, I rejoice. God's been merciful to this sinner. There's times to be down in the
pit, unable to speak, say my sins are more than the hair on
my head. And there's a time to stand upon
the rock where God has put us and sing that new song He's put
in our hearts. him of praise to our God. We've got our moods, we've got
our challenges in this life, but brethren, we need to make
sure that we get up. We need to make sure that we
don't go around and testify to this world that believing God
is a miserable thing. Believing God ought to bring
joy. Believing God ought to give us
a reason to be happy, even if there's a lot of other reasons
to be sad. Even if the trials of this life
bring us down, yet in our hearts we should be able to get up and
thank God that He's chosen us and appointed that we should
know His will, see the righteous one, and hear from Him. If nothing
else good happens to me in any day, that's some pretty good
stuff. Get up. And then he says this,
be baptized. Notice this devout observer of
the law is going to call Paul to be a devout observer of Christ's
commandments. You know, under the law, under
the old covenant, I've often wondered why did God send to
Paul a devout observer of the law to preach the gospel to him?
Because, you know, we talk about being free from the law, and
that the law has been put aside, the gospel has superseded it,
and all this. I've often stumbled over that.
Ananias, a devout observer of the law. And that was said to
commend him. And then it occurred to me, until
Christ came, and until the gospel was fully revealed, Every believer
was a devout observer of the law. By that I mean this, that as
Ananias grew up and God gave him grace to believe, he still
went to the temple three times a year as the law commanded him. He still offered sacrifices as
the law commanded him. He still prayed the prayers the
law demanded of him. All the things that the law told
him to do, he went ahead and did them. Even though he knew
in his heart none of those things put away his sin. He knew the
blood of bulls and goats didn't put away sin, but that didn't
keep him from taking the bulls and goats and lambs and all that
according to the law. So here we come to the gospel.
We are in the gospel age. Now, we never were raised under
the law like that. That is, we never were really
Jews. We've never been devout observers of the law. But we
have come to the gospel and the gospel has some things for us
to do. Ceremonies, which those ceremonies do not put away sin
any more than offering lambs and bulls and goats put them
away. But shall we say, well, that baptism doesn't put away
sin, so I'm not going to fool with it. Can you imagine Ananias saying
such a thing? Say he's 20 years old and He's
been brought up under the law, and God gives him grace to believe,
and he says to himself, you know what? Now that I believe, and
I see that this is entirely by grace, and that all these ceremonies
I've been doing are just to point to the one who has to come, well,
I'm just going to forget the ceremonies from now on. I don't have to
do that anymore. Say, well, I've read a book,
and I saw one. I read a book and someone said
in this book that baptism was just for the first generation
of believers and is no longer applicable to the church. Some
might object in that fashion. Well, you've got a book. Who
wrote it? Dr. So-and-so or something like that?
Well, I've got a book, too. And it says that believers are
supposed to be baptized. You want to know who wrote this
book? God did. And I'll take God's word over
Dr. So-and-so any day. Here's Ananias, a devout observer
of the law, and he comes to Paul and he says, Get up, be baptized,
and wash your sins away. Now that's one of the things
that baptism signifies. Of course, it signifies the death,
burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that we
were in Him when He died and was buried and rose again. But
also, it's an an act or a good illustration of being washed. And in the early church and really
according to the scriptures, there was always a connection
between that right of baptism and the washing away of sins.
We know that in the absolute sense of the word going under
the water won't put your sins away. But what baptism symbolizes
put sins away. It will wash them away. Let me make this point, too.
We need to be careful that as we preach the gospel and we talk
about it all being done by God, and we might even go so far as
some say when Christ said it's finished, salvation was all finished.
And indeed, by the blood of Christ, all our sins have been washed
away. But don't ever believe or preach up the gospel as though
the gospel is something that never happens to a person. Say,
what do you mean by that? Paul, we know this, he'd been
chosen by God, it says so. Because he'd been chosen by God,
he'd been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ and he was called
by the Spirit of God. And yet, Ananias says to him,
wash your sins away. Now, I'm not going to try to
do some theology and reconcile how it is that it was by the
death of Christ that my sins are washed away, and yet there
comes a time in my life when I'm called upon to get up, be
baptized, and wash my sins away. It really doesn't prove a conflict
to me, but I've heard some preaching where some professed sovereign
grace people would act like there's really nothing that happens in
your life in terms of justification or the putting away of sin. The
fact of the matter is, Paul was in his sin. And I and I said
to him, get up, be baptized, submit yourself to the command
of the Lord, and testify of faith in Him. Wash away your sins. And fourthly, calling on the
name of the Lord. First two outward things, get
up and be baptized. They were outward professions
of a heart that calls on the name of the Lord. In getting
up, spiritually speaking, that is, in rising up from the pit
of conviction that he was in, rising up in confidence in Christ,
being baptized as a confession of Christ, he was calling on
the name of the Lord. That was the outward calling. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. We call upon Him in prayer from
our hearts, and we call upon Him even from our minds as the
gospel impacts us, and we come to that realization that our
sins are put away by Him, and our hearts are lifted up, and
we rise up inwardly. We call upon Him when we are
baptized. That's a calling on the name
of the Lord. And we call upon Him throughout our lives. And
the result is, our sins are washed away. Washed away. None but the Lord can wash them
away, and yet in calling upon Him, we wash our sins away. Water
by itself will not wash our sins away. But he who in faith is
baptized is called upon the name of the Lord, and his sins are
washed away. Friends, our Lord has made such
a simple gospel. Oh, we make things so complicated.
We wrestle with it. We agonize with it. And you know,
the only difficulty in the gospel It doesn't come in the understanding
of it, it comes in the submitting to it. That's really where the
hitch is. Just like our brother Tim James
once said, if people say election's deep, he said, well, election
is, God chose who He would save. What's deep about that? That's
pretty simple. Well, that limited atonement,
that particular redemption, that's deep doctrine. Well, all it is
is that Jesus Christ came and redeemed God's elect. What's
deep about that? It's shallow. It's simple. flesh
can't receive it. Not because it's beyond the intellect. Because it's beyond the will
of the flesh to submit to it. That's why. Our Lord said to the Apostle
Peter, repent and be baptized every one of you for the remission
of sin. That's pretty simple stuff, isn't it? Then let us do it. What are you waiting for? I don't
know the hearts of anybody here. I know the professions of most
people here. But I'll say this. If the gospel
has impacted you in any of its points, in its doctrines, in
its commands, in its entreaties, if it has impacted you at any
point, what are you waiting for? Let every one of us with a whole
heart, with a full heart and a joyful heart, follow Christ
completely in everything. For therein is joy, and therein
is the proof that we have been chosen. Heavenly Father, only
you can work in us that which is laid before us here in the
Scriptures. Paul said that in his preaching
it was as though you were speaking by him and he was speaking in
your stead, in your place. Be reconciled to God. Be in submission
to him. Lay aside every rebellion. Lay
aside every weapon of warfare against him and his lordship. In like manner, we preach it,
but we can't reconcile anyone to you, Father. Lord, I can't
reconcile myself to you. Reconcile us. Change our hearts
and minds that they would be in complete sympathy and agreement
with you. Lord, may we know your will.
May we see your son and may we hear from him. And may that cause
us to rise up rejoicing. May we confess your name and
wash away our sins, calling on your name. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Okay, you are dismissed.