To begin with this morning, I'd
like to say a few words. I want to kind of speak this
morning on the subject of words fitly spoken. Words fitly spoken. In the book of Proverbs, chapter
25 and verse 11, it says, a word fitly spoken is like apples of
gold in pictures of silver. are like apples of gold in pictures
of silver, words fitly spoken. In the year 1740, James Hervey
was a preacher in England, and he was a man of moral strictness,
and he was a man who was looked up to. He had great religious
principle, highly regarded by men. But he was an entirely lost
man. He was without the hope of the
gospel. He was without the understanding
of the gospel of Christ. He was a preacher, but yet he
was unconverted. Now that may seem rather strange
to you that a preacher could be unconverted. But one old preacher,
Brother Barnard, said that there will be many preachers in hell
that their feet will be sticking out the windows of hell. And
that may be true. He may know what he's talking
about. But there are many unconverted preachers in the pulpit. But the means of his conversion,
he was later converted, brought to Christ, brought to an understanding
of the gospel. He had a great ministry. God saved many through his ministry. But the means of his conversion
was a conversation that he had with an old farmer. And this
old farmer had learned the gospel from the lips of a free grace
preacher. And so they were walking one day in a field together,
this old farmer and James Herbie. And Mr. Hervey, he being a zealot
for righteousness by the law and being a zealot for works
and human merit, he asked this old farmer, he said, what do
you think is the hardest thing in religion? What do you think
is the hardest thing in religion? And the old farmer replied, sir,
I'm just a poor man. and you are a preacher." I begged
Lee to return the question. So Mr. Hervey said, well, I think
the hardest thing in religion is to deny sinful self. I think that's the hardest thing,
is to deny sinful self. And he went on to defend his
statement. And after he had finished talking, the old farmer said,
well, sinful self must be denied. It's true. But that which is
the hardest thing in religion is to deny righteous self. That's the hardest thing in religion,
is to deny self-righteousness. The old farmer said, I get up
every Sunday morning. I take my family to hear the
preacher. We get up early in the morning.
We have prayer together. And he said, I find pleasure
in that. He said, we walk to the meeting
house and walk back and I find pleasure in that. And he said,
I sit under the sermon and I find pleasure in listening to the
word of God. When I come to the Lord's table, I find pleasure
in that. But he said, yet to this very
moment, I find that the hardest thing in this world to do is
to deny righteous self. He says, I mean to renounce my
own strength and renounce my own righteousness and to lean
and quit leaning on that for holiness and to rely on that
for justification. This is the hardest thing, he
said, that I have to put up with in my life. Now, beloved, listen. Let me tell you that we're not
suffering in this day from being too righteous. That's not the
problem. But there is a great problem.
in our not denying our self-righteousness, denying old self. Now, most of
us, maybe here this morning, have been saved for some time.
And we made some progress, maybe in the things of God. Maybe we've
made some real progress. Maybe we've grown in grace and
in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe we've got familiar
with the Bible and we can quote scripture and we know something
about the purpose of God as it's revealed and set out on the pages
of the Bible. We know something about Christ.
But beloved, every one of us suffer from this idea that We
either stand or fall by what we think or what we do or what
we've been up to in our lives. It's somehow or other that what
we are and what we're doing has everything to do with our standing
before God. When it has absolutely nothing
to do with our standing before God. Now your sin, now you listen
to me carefully, will not keep you out of heaven. Christ died
for sinners. He died to pay the sin debt. He died in order that our sin
would be blotted out and that God would forgive all of our
iniquity. But your self-righteousness will
send you to hell. It will. It'll send you to hell. This idea that you, in and of
yourself, can provide a righteousness that God will accept. This idea
that you can get a standing before God that He will accept by your
doing and by your merit. You see, we have this idea that
if we're preaching us sermons, that God surely is going to like
us more than He would if we hadn't. And we get this idea that if
we give, the more dollars we give, that God's surely going
to like us a little bit more than He is the person that don't
give so much. And we got this idea that somehow
or other we just talk to people, make no difference whether we're
really saying anything or not, but we are carried on a religious
conversation that somehow or other we are just a little bit
better than the people that don't ever open their mouth and talk
about spiritual things. Beloved, all of that is wrong. That idea is wrong. We have a
standing before God. The Bible says that Christ has
been made, that means legally constituted, to be our wisdom,
our righteousness, our sanctification before God. Now I said that I
don't think there's anybody here righteous over much. But I think
that we think too much about what we're doing and about our
merit. And this comes out, of course,
when we are afflicted. It comes out when we have trouble.
It comes out when things begin to happen and go wrong in our
life. We think that because who we
are and because we've been preaching all of these years and because
we've been giving and because we've been doing this and that
and something else in a religious sort of way, that we ought to
be exempt. from all of these troubles that
other people have that's not as good as we are. I mean, after
all, other people are not as good as we are. And let them
have all of the trouble. Why should we have it? Because
we're good people. Well, beloved, I want to say
to you today that God's gifts, God gifts his people. He gives
us faith. He gives us all that He demands
of us. Whatever good there is in any
of us as believers is Christ. It's only Christ. It is altogether
Christ in our lives. It's not that our flesh is better
than other people's flesh. because our flesh is as sinful
as anybody else's flesh. And every seed, the seed of every
sin is to be found in every one of us here today. And there's
not a one of us here that can say, I stand on ground, I am
not, I thank God I'm not like other men. We're exactly like
other men, exactly. And it's self-righteousness to
believe that you have, that you are, and that you're different
than everybody else. You know, the Pharisees, proud
as they were, They said, we're not like other men. We're not
like other men. We be not born of fornication.
We're different. Abraham was our father. We're
not like everybody else. Beloved, there's one thing that
every man, woman, born girl in this world, if you're born of
a woman, that you have to admit. Number one is that you're unclean.
Number two is you have to take your part in the fall. You have
to own your part in the fall. You fell with Adam. You did what
he did when he did what he did in the garden. You did it, too,
because you were in him. You did it, too. Why you told
God, you going back to heaven? I'm going to do as I please.
And that's exactly because you were in Adam when he told God
that. And so you sin against God, you're
a self-righteous person, and you think that you're a little
better than other people. And this self-righteous Pharisee,
this old Mr. Harvey, or Hervey, why, that
cut him to shreds. He said, aw, this fella, this
old farmer, later Mr. Hervey said, I hated the righteousness
of Christ. I hated it. why he was a legalist. He said, I hated the righteousness
of Christ. Can you believe a man would make
such a statement as that? Well, I'll tell you who will
make a statement like that. The self-righteous sinner will make
a statement like that. I don't need somebody else's
righteousness. I got some of my own. I don't
need God to be my tailor, make me garments to wear in glory. I'm my own tailor. I've got my
own tailor to make my garments for me that'll dress me up just
fine and God can take it or leave it. I don't need anybody else's
righteousness. Well, this man said, I hated
the righteousness of God. And I looked at that old man
with astonishment and disdain. And I thought, this old man is
an old fool, is what he is. He's an old fool. He just don't
know what it's all about. But you know that old farmer's
words were blessed of God? They were blessed of God. And
like sharp errors, they pierced this young Arminian's heart.
And in time, they brought that man to repentance and faith in
Christ. And an old, uneducated farmer,
he spoke a word in season for his God. And it was a word fitly
spoken. And under the blessing of God,
it was the means of the conversion of James Hervey. He became a
mighty preacher of free grace. And do you know that we won't
know, we don't know that old farmer's name, we won't know
it until we get to heaven. But he spoke a word. that was
fit. He spoke a word in season and
it brought this fella to his senses and the spirit of God
used it to bring him out of his sin. And so beloved, I'm here
to tell you this morning that as God's servants, as God's people,
we need to be able to speak a word in season, because a word fitly
spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. So may
the Lord bless us and give us a word to speak. Now here in
the 22nd chapter of the book of Acts, We find the Apostle
Paul, and he's before, he says, men, brethren, and fathers, hear
you my defense, which I make now unto you. Here the Apostle
Paul is getting ready to speak some words before these that
have taken him into custody. And he's going to tell them something. He's going to show them something
about his experience with God. And I want us to listen very
carefully to this this morning in order that we might learn
something and take something out of here as to how we're to
conduct ourselves and how we're to speak for God in this, our
generation. Now the Apostle Paul was a learned
man. He was a greatly learned man,
a very intelligent man. But the thing that impresses
me at the very outset in this chapter is the simplicity of
Paul's defense before these bloodthirsty people, these people that were
out for his hide, out for his life, how simple his presentation
of his experience was unto this congregation of people. Now Paul
had been trained in the Jewish law and in Jewish theology. He had been trained in the customs
and the traditions of the Father. He had learned, as he tells us
in verse 3, he had been taught at the feet of Gamaliel. and
taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers.
He was zealous toward God, just as zealous as those that were
his persecutors at this time. He had been as zealous as they
are at this day. And Paul had He did not come behind in ability. He could wax elegant if necessary. He was able of poetic fire, as
one person I read after said. And he was an individual that
was precise in his logic. But yet at this time, here he
stands to defend the faith of the gospel, and he spoke in simple,
childlike terms. In this most dramatic moment,
Paul simply told the story of his conversion. He simply told
these people what God had done for him by his grace. He just simply told them of his
experience. Now then, as we look at this,
I want you to look at verse 7. He says in verse 5 that he'd
been on his way to Jerusalem to get those that were of the
way, the Christian way, those who were believers in Christ,
and to take them to Jerusalem to be punished. and he was on
his way to Damascus. And it came to pass, in verse
six, that as I made my journey and was come nigh unto Damascus
about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round
about me. And I fell into the ground, and
I heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? I want you to understand that
the Lord Jesus had been crucified. and the Lord Jesus had been raised
from the dead, and the Lord Jesus had ascended back to heaven,
and he was in heaven. He's the living Christ. He was
the one that was dead, now is alive forevermore, and he's seated
in heaven, and here he speaks to Paul, and Paul, he is telling
this story, and he's telling this story to unbelievers, He's
telling this story to people who believe that Jesus was an
imposter and he was a fake. He's telling this story to people
that are going to ridicule him and are going to try to destroy
him once he gives the testimony. But here he tells it. He says,
I heard this voice saying, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And I answered and said, who
art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus of Nazareth,
whom thou persecutest. Now, you understand that Paul,
or Saul, he knew that Jesus had been crucified. He knew that
he had been buried, and all the talk around Jerusalem about him
having been taken back up into heaven, he didn't believe a word
of it. He did not believe a word of it, just like the Orthodox
Jews to this day still looking for a Messiah. Because Paul,
or Saul, he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He didn't
believe that. Before this experience, God struck
him down. There was a great light from
heaven, and God struck him down, and now Jesus speaks to him,
and immediately, There's a light that's turned on in old Saul's
heart. Immediately, he believes in a
resurrected Christ. He believes in a Christ that
has been raised from the dead. He believes that Jesus is the
Messiah. He believes that he's the Son
of God. He believes in him. Immediately because here Jesus
says he identifies himself to Saul He says I'm Jesus of Nazareth
whom you're persecuting. I'm Jesus. That's who I am I'm
speaking to you, and I'm in heaven. Oh my what a what a time of light
What a time of light. Oh have you ever had a time of
light? Have you ever had a time when
God turned the light on in your soul? And you became aware of
the fact that Jesus was alive, and that Jesus is the Son of
God, and that Jesus is the Savior, and that Jesus is coming back
to this earth, that all of your dealings in this life has to
do with the Lord Jesus Christ, and that all of eternal salvation
is wrapped up in Him, and that it's in His hands. He's living. Christ is living. Okay, so he
reveals that to this congregation of people. And he says, those
that were with me saw indeed the light. They were afraid. They didn't hear the voice of
him that spake to me. Why didn't they hear the voice?
Because the voice of God, when it comes to call, calls the Lord's
sheep. He don't call everybody in general. Calls the Lord's sheep. Jesus
said, the sheep, my sheep, hear my voice. They hear my voice. Now, those that were around,
they didn't hear anything about what Jesus was saying to Saul. And what Jesus said to my heart,
you didn't hear it either. And what he said to your heart,
I didn't hear. But if you're a child of God, I got an idea
about what he said to you. He revealed himself to you. He
revealed his love to your heart. He revealed his dying love and
his dying mercy to your soul, and you came to know him through
faith. And I say to you today that these
people around Saul, they did not hear the voice because the
Lord calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And I said,
what shall I do, Lord? You see, immediately Saul is
calling Him Lord. He's calling Him Lord. Now, beloved,
we believe not only that Jesus is to be the Savior of His people,
but He's their Lord. He is their Lord. He's that one
they bow to every day. He's that one they bow their
knee to. Their whole life is taken up with the Lord Jesus
Christ. You know somebody said, I heard
this early in my Christian life, They said the word faith should
be spelled out, forsaking all others. We just take Him. Forsaking all others, we take
Him. And the Lord, that's what faith is. We forsake everyone
and we trust Christ. And we take Him. We cling to
Him. We bow to Him. We hate our own life. We hate
and forsake all and take the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe
that He's to be Lord of our lives. And we bow to His Lordship. Every
day of our lives, we're to do that as the Lord's people. And
so here's Saul immediately, hadn't been baptized yet, never has
took the Lord's supper, but he says, Lord, and the Lord said
unto me, the Lord talked to Paul and said, arise and go to Damascus
and there I'll tell you all things which are appointed for thee
to do. And when I could not see, being led by the hand of them
that were with me, I came into Damascus. And one Ananias, a
devout man, according to the law, having a good report of
all the Jews which dwelt there, he came unto me and stood and
said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same hour
I looked upon him, God gave me back my sight. And he said, immediately,
Ananias told him about election. He began to tell him about election,
and he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee. This generation
of people say, Well, I believe in election, but I don't think
you ought to preach it, and especially I think you ought to have a special
crowd if you ever even mention it. Well, beloved, here's old
Ananias, and he comes in, and here's Saul, and he hadn't been
baptized, never heard anybody preach yet. And yet, here he
starts out with him and said, The God of our fathers hath chosen
thee. He chose you. He set his love
upon you. You didn't know about it. It
took place. You wasn't aware of it. But you've
been chosen from the foundation of the world. God's purpose to
use you, to save you and to use you. God purposed it. It was
his will that determined your salvation. That you should know
his will. That you should know the will
of God. You should know the only free
will that there is in the universe. That you should know God's will. Well, how wonderful! "...and
see that just one, and should hear the voice of his mouth.
For thou shalt," what? Verse 15, "...be his witnesses
unto all men." Saul, you're going to be my witness unto all men
of what you've seen and what you've heard. Now what had Paul
seen? Well, Paul had seen that light
from heaven. It blinded him. And what did
he hear? Well, he heard the voice of the
mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ. He heard his voice. And the Lord
said, through Ananias, you're going to be my witness. You're
going to go out and you're going to be my witness unto all men
of what you've seen and heard. And now, don't tarry any longer. Rise and be baptized, because
your sins have been washed away, and call on the name of the Lord. Call on the name of the Lord.
And so it came to pass, When I was coming into Jerusalem,
even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance, and saw him
saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem,
for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me." In
other words, Saul just goes on and tells them flat out how it
is, that the Lord's already told me, you're not going to receive
my testimony, and the Lord said for me to get out of this place
as soon as I could, because you're not going to receive my testimony. So as we look on down here, the Lord spoke also in verse 21 unto
Saul as he said, Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto
the Gentiles. And so they listened to all of
this, gave him audience unto this word. When Saul told them
that God's made me a witness and I'm going to go to the Gentiles
and preach to them, Then they lifted up their voices, way with
such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should
live, this man here a Jew, going to go and, as it were, hobnob
with the Gentiles and carry what he says is the gospel to the
Gentiles. And they cried out, cast off
their clothes, and threw dust in the air. Now you say, I just
can't believe that these were religious people. that they would
carry on like this when a man was preaching and just telling
them of his experience. Just telling them what it was
that the Lord had done for him. And here they get into this state
of mind and they cried out, cast off their clothes, picked up
dust and threw it in the air. You say, I just can't imagine
that. Well, bless you if you've never been around religious people
when they got worked up and when somebody preached something they
didn't believe or when they were crossed some way or another. Bless you if you hadn't been
around. There's more hell been raised
in Baptist churches than there has been down at the corner taverns,
most towns. Why, in some churches, as one
old preacher said, you've got to have a sheriff and two deputies
to have a business meeting. Folks get riled up and they begin
to gnash on you with their teeth. I had one fellow one time grab
me by the shirt and rip my shirt off of me because I said something
he didn't agree with, something he didn't like. People get upset. If they're unbelievers, they
don't believe the word of God, the truth, and you begin to tell
them something, they get upset. You see, these people felt like
they were born saved. They felt like they come into
this world, as all religiouses get out, and that they were saved
because they were born to Jewish parents. They were automatically
saved. All right. And there's some people
raised in Christian families that think the same thing. They
think that because their mom and daddy are religious that
they're saved. That's not so. That's not so.
Your mother and dad may be saved. Your grandmother and grandfather
may be saved. But you're not saved until you personally believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Until Christ is received into
your heart, until you believe on Him, then you're not saved. It doesn't make any difference
who your parents are. You're only saved by trusting Christ. Every tub stands on its own bottom.
Everybody got to be saved like they were the only person in
the world. Every person has to be saved
like they were the only person in the world. Is that right?
Amen, that's right. I'm telling you the truth. Okay,
so but these people they didn't believe that and and they got
from what Saul was saying here that there was something wrong
with their religion. And so they got real upset, real
upset. And so here's old Saul giving
his testimony, giving his personal witness. Now we learn here three
things I want to give you quickly about this simple story that
Saul told to these cutthroats and to these people that were
about ready to put him to death here. And if it had been for
the grace of God, he wouldn't have escaped, but the Lord's
mercy was with him. And first of all, we learn that
this is the way the gospel ought always to be preached. When a
man stands to preach, let him simply tell what he knows. Let
him tell what he knows and what he has experienced of God's grace. in the simplest, most childlike
terms possible. Now remember that about preaching.
Remember that. When a man stands up to preach,
if God would bless what he says, if God would use what he says,
if God would save men and women and boys and girls by his testimony,
let him tell what he knows. Let him tell what he's experienced
in his heart. Let him tell about how God came
to him. How God visited him through the
Word. How that the Spirit of God brought
him to see his lost condition in a state of nature. And let
him speak of how Christ was revealed to his heart, made known unto
his heart, how God turned the light on in his soul, how he
came to know his sin pardoned, forgiven, how he came to have
some assurance before God, how he was taught the meaning of
justification, the meaning of sanctification, how he was taught
the meaning of election, the meaning of the particular redemption
that is taught in the Bible. Just tell what he knows and what
is experienced by the grace of God. Paul said, what does it
that makes men differ? He said, well, the Lord makes
men differ, but he says this, he says, I am what I am by the
grace of God. And so he just got up and told
what he was by the grace of God. We don't see him going to a class
where that he's taught the theology of a certain church
But we see him being struck down by the Lord. We see him being
visited by the Lord Jesus Christ. We see him having some experience. So the first thing is that this
is the way the gospel ought always to be preached in simplicity.
telling what one has experienced. Number two, there's no room in
the pulpit for learned philosophy, speculation, carnal wisdom, or
human reasoning. There's no room in the pulpit
for that. Paul says, I determined not to
know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That man that preaches best is
the man who stands before men and declares with clarity, this
I know. I know that God has saved me. I know God has visited me. My
days have been long or short, but I have had visitations from
God through the Spirit. And the Lord has told me this.
The Lord showed me this. The Lord made clear to me this.
What I know. That's what I'll tell you this
morning. Alright, and thirdly, and this
is the way we ought to witness to other people. Do not try to
match wits with unbelievers. You don't find Paul. Paul here,
as we said earlier, he was a very learned, intelligent man. He
could wax very rhetorical if necessary. He had the ability.
He had the ability to say whatever he wanted to say, but you don't
see him using that at all. And he wasn't trying to match
wits with these unbelievers here, or to argue with these people
about vain questions. He just told them what God had
done for him, how God had visited him, how what God had done for
him. And so you tell people, you don't argue with them. You
can't argue with a blind man about the colors in the rainbow.
He's not going to pay any attention to what you're saying. You just
simply tell him what God has done for you. Tell them what
you know and what you've experienced. I think that's the most powerful
defense in the world. That is the most, I say, powerful
defense of the gospel, is to tell what it's done for you.
One thing I know. I want you to turn with me to
the Gospel of John. I want you to listen to the testimony
of this man who was born blind. and God saved him and I want
you to the Lord gave him back his sight I believe he was saved
and this man had a good testimony you know the Pharisees came on
the scene and they wanted to know all about all about how
it had happened how it had happened how this man had received his
sight and this man in John chapter 9 They said unto him in verse 10,
how were thy eyes open? How did you get your eyes open?
You were born blind. How did you get your eyes open?
He answered and said, a man that is called Jesus made clay. He anointed mine eyes and said
unto me, go to the pool of Siloam and wash. And I went and washed,
and I received sight. Then again, the Pharisees ask
him how he had received his sight in verse 15. He said to them,
he put clay upon my eyes and I washed and do see. And they ask in verse 19, saying,
ask this boy's parents, this young man's parents, saying,
is this your son who you say was born blind? How then doth
he now see? His parents answered them and
said, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But by what means he now seeth,
we know not. Or who hath opened his eyes,
we know not. He is of age, ask him. He shall
speak for himself. These were the words that his
parents spoke because they feared the Jews. And they agreed already,
if any man did confess that he was Christ, that he was Christ,
that he be put out of the synagogue. So they weren't going to say
too much. They didn't want to be excommunicated from the synagogue.
So they said, he is of age, you ask him. Now I'm getting to something
here. Then again, call they the man
that was blind and said unto him, give God the praise? Do
you give God the praise? We know that this man is a sinner.
They're talking about Christ. We know that Christ is a sinner.
Well, they didn't know any such thing. He was no sinner. The only time when the Son of
Man, the Son of God, became a sinner was when He was on the cross,
when my sin was laid on Him. That's the only time He was ever
a sinner. He became the greatest sinner that ever lived on that
day when God made Him to be sin for us. When He numbered Him
with the transgressors and when He was slain by the hand of vengeance,
God's vengeance on the cross. That's the only time the Lord
Jesus Christ had anything to do with sin was when He was made
to be sin for us. And they didn't know anything
about what they were talking about. And he answered, verse 25, and
said, whether he be a sinner or not, I know not. I don't know. I'm not tutored and taught and
spiritually educated. I don't know that much about
this man. One thing I know, I want you
to get this, one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now
I see. Now I see. Now, that's plain,
isn't it? Now, beloved, you can argue with
me all day about what I read, what I've read somewhere. If
I read a book someplace and I go trying to tell you about what
I read in that book, you can argue with me if you want to.
And if I get up here this morning and tell you about something
I heard, you can argue about it all you want to. But if I
come up here this morning and I tell you of my experience,
If I tell you what I know and what I've experienced, you can't
argue with that. You don't have to accept it.
You don't have to believe it. But there's one thing about it.
You cannot argue with my experience. What I've experienced before
God, I have experienced. And I believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. And I believe that when a man
believes on Christ, that God begins from that time to treat
that individual just like they were Christ. I believe that God
takes them to his bosom and he loves them, and I believe that
their sins are forgiven, put away, never to be brought up
against them anymore, and that God no longer imputes sin to
them, that they're justified, that they are justified before
God. And I'm here to tell you today
that whereas I was blind, now I see. Now I see. Now that's
just as simple as I know how to put it this morning. I know
what I've experienced. Do you know what you've experienced?
Have you ever had an experience with the Lord? Have you ever
been born of the Spirit of God? Do you have life in you? Is the
Spirit of God in your heart? Does He dwell in your soul? You
know, the Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit that
we are the children of God. Now, it's wonderful to have some
memories, isn't it? To have some experience. To have
something. that you know is true, that's
real in your life. I want you to turn back quickly
with me to Acts chapter 21. And I want to talk to you just
a little bit about an old disciple here and what his name meant
before we take the Lord's Supper here this morning. And I think
this fits in with what we've been talking about. But here
in the 21st chapter of the book of Acts, Paul was going to Jerusalem,
and there were brethren that were trying to talk him out of
going. And in verse 14, and when he would not be persuaded, we
ceased saying, the will of the Lord be done. And after those
days, we took up our carriages, went up to Jerusalem. And there
went with us also certain of the disciples of Caesarea. and brought with them one Manasseh
of Cyprus, an old disciple with whom we should lodge. And when
we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. Now here is an old disciple. These are charming words, are
they not? An old disciple. And if I live, To be an old man,
and if I live long enough, I will be an old man. If you live long
enough, you'll be old, too. Somebody said, well, I'm not
so sure I want to get old. Well, if you live long enough,
you will be old. But here was an old disciple,
and if I live long enough, I'd like to be, I'd still like to
be a disciple, regardless of how old I get. I want to be a
disciple. The old disciple's name was Manasseh,
and it means One who remembers. One who remembers. That's the
meaning of his name. Now this old disciple, he had
seen, heard, learned, experienced much of the Lord Jesus Christ. Much of his redemption and his
grace. This man understood it. He had experienced it. And his
name means remembers. Now his heart was full of precious
memories. He was an old disciple, and I
think that Luke, who is the human instrument that God used to write
the book of Acts, that he implied here that this man was old as
far as his years are concerned. Not only was he a long time in
the faith, and according to the historians, this man was alive
when Jesus was crucified, when Jesus was among the disciples. This man was alive at that time. And here he is, many of his old
brethren in the faith have gone on, but Peter, John, and James
are still here, Paul's still here, and this old man is still
here. He's an old disciple, heart full
of memories, name means to remember. And though he was an old man,
he was still a disciple. Now that means a whole lot. That
means he was still learning. It means that he was still learning
and following his master, even though he was an old man. Now,
what we're about to do here in taking the Lord's Supper is a
teaching ordinance. This is a teaching ordinance.
you can learn something by this ordinance. And not only can you
learn something by this ordinance, this should be an experience
that you have in your memory. The Lord's Supper, what it means. Well, this man was still following
his master's steps, still growing in his master's grace. He had
not outgrown his need of Christ. He had not outgrown his desire
to follow Christ. or his love of the gospel. Though
he grew old, he did not grow weary of Christ. He persevered
in the way of faith, and though he was an old disciple, Manasseh
was a useful disciple. He was, as he grew in years,
I think he grew in grace. He was generous. He was a hospitable
man. When Paul and his friends now,
when they came to Jerusalem, Manasseh put them up in his house.
This old man's acceptance of Paul carried some weight among
the Jewish brethren because they readily received him as a believer,
as a disciple. Verse 17 there we read, tells
us that. And because Manasseh, the honorable
old disciple, opened his heart, his hand in his house to Paul,
the church at Jerusalem received him with joy. Now, I read this
and I thought it was good and I want to give it to you. Somebody
said this about Manasseh. They said, God help me as I grow
old to grow wise. As my strength declines, let
my faith increase. As my eyes grow dim, let my vision
be clear. As my hair turns white, let my
heart be warm. As my joints swell with rheumatism
and arthritis, let my soul swell with the love of Jesus. When
my body is filled with weakness, let my spirit be filled with
Christ. Now, beloved, as we take of the
Lord's Supper this morning, we do so in memory of our Lord Jesus
Christ. We do so because we, through
what the Word of God teaches, believe that the body of our
Lord Jesus, that that body was broken, crushed under the wrath
of God for us. And because we believe that the
blood of the Lord Jesus without which there is no redemption
that that blood was separated from the body of Jesus and that
brought death to Jesus. His blood separated from his
body. Now beloved we're here in celebration
of that. And I want you to turn your Bibles,
if you will, to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, or chapter 11 it
is. And I want to invite Mike and
Larry to come forward, the deacons of the church. I want to read
beginning with verse 23 of 1 Corinthians chapter 11. This supper is for
all believers in Christ. All those who believe that Christ
has saved them. They have trusted Christ. and
they're followers of Christ, they're His disciple, this supper
is for them.