I invite you back to Acts chapter
20 and verse 27, where I have not shunned to declare to you
all the counsel of God. The title of my message is that,
all the counsel, all the counsel. Paul is declaring here an astounding
statement when you think about it. Paul preached the gospel
to many people. Paul wrote many epistles and
many millions have read his words. And of everyone who's heard his
preach and everyone who's read his words, he can clearly say,
and not boastfully, but honestly say, I am pure from your blood. I am free from your blood. You
can never stand before God and accuse me of not telling you
everything you needed to know. about God and about you and about
salvation, which he declares to be all the counsel of God. Now, he didn't preach to everybody,
so he's only talking about those whom he preached to and those
who, in the years that followed, have used his words and preached
the gospel. Every preacher seeks to say this
in his own heart, in his own mind, because he knows he must
give account for those who hear him. He must give account for
their souls. And the only way he can give
account for their souls and do it rightfully is to tell them
the truth when he gets up behind this desk to declare the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The preacher of the gospel does
not employ the inventions of men. does not use psychology,
does not employ sleight of hand, nor does he handle the Word of
God deceitfully. What he does is foolish to the
world. It makes no sense to the world. And what he does is food
for the children of God. What he does makes him pure or
free from the blood of all whom he is preached to. The preacher
of the gospel has a method, a means, and a music, and a message, and
it's all centered in, grounded upon, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And that's what Paul preached.
He said to this church in Coleridon, he said, I determine to know
nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. How
can Paul make such a bold claim? How can any preacher say that?
How can I look at you and say I'm free from your blood? You
can't stand before God and accuse me of not telling you everything
you need to know. There's only one way I can do
that. There's only one way I can do that. Paul says that he's
pure from the blood of all men because he's not shunned to declare
unto those who hurt him all the counsel of God. Now that may
seem like a huge and big subject, and it is in this sense. We'll
never fully delve into the glories of it. But God has revealed to
us what we need to know, and he's revealed it in this book.
The word shun is the same word that is translated kept back
in verse 20, when he says, how I kept back nothing. how I kept
back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you
and have taught you publicly, and from house to house. Paul
says, I have not kept back any of the counsel of God. Many years ago I was in Ashland,
Kentucky, and there was a young fellow who said he was a preacher
of the gospel, and we were riding in the back of Paul Kuhn's station
wagon, And he started talking about all the counsel of God,
and I said, well, what is that? He says, well, you've got to
preach the law, and you've got to preach dietary laws, and you've
got to do this, you've got to do that. And I said, no, that
don't have anything to do with the counsel of God. I said, you preach the
counsel of God when you tell men who God is, who Jesus Christ
is, why He came, what He did, where He is now, what men are.
And that's telling men the truth. He said, well, I believe the
gospel is contained in the word of God. I said, no, the word
of God is contained in the gospel. He was just backwards on everything
he thought. All the counsel of God. This is one of those phrases
that ensnared the minds of theologians. Can I tell you the number of
times I've been accused of not preaching all the counsel of
God because I didn't preach the law as a means of justification.
or for a rule of life, or times my good and well-intentioned
Baptist buddies have charged me with not preaching all the
counsel of God because I didn't spend enough time on preaching
on ecclesiology or doctrine of the church, or times I've been
accused of not preaching all the counsel of God because I
didn't preach enough about the responsibility of men, or the
times I've been called on the carpet or told I was not preaching
all the counsel of God because I refused to take a particular
side. in some little theological spat
that's going on among preachers. I preach the law, but I preach
it as fulfilled by Jesus Christ in his death and fulfilled in
his people by his Spirit through the preaching of the gospel,
which is all the counsel of God. If being a Baptist was part of
being a part of the counsel of God, I'd preach it. I really
would. If I felt it was part of it, I'd preach it. I do preach
ecclesiology. I preach about the church, but
I'm pretty well restricted to what the Bible says about it.
Christ is the head of the body, and the body is his church made
of all believers from all ages who are redeemed by the blood.
And Scripture says his body is the fullness of him that filleth
all. That's quite a statement when you think about it. I don't
preach the responsibility of men as men would have me do because
I've found that over the years that what men mean by preaching
responsibility is a little more than a regurgitation of personally
held religious convictions by which they mean to have others
adhere to in order to goad men into the path they feel will
gain them personal righteousness. But I do preach responsibility.
God owns you. You are responsible to Him. You
are responsible to worship Him and love Him and be thankful
to Him. You breathe His air and eat His
food and walk in His universe, which He is going to end one
day. You owe Him gratitude. You are responsible to worship
Him. You're responsible to do that. If you don't do it, shame
on you. Shame on you. I declare that God has commanded
all men everywhere to repent, and has commanded all men everywhere
to believe the gospel, because He has. And because He has declared
it, and because He's Lord God, and because He owns you, and
has rights to you, and holds your destiny in His hands, You're
responsible to believe the gospel and to repent. Repentance toward
God is the life of the believer. It's not a one-time thing. What
it means is to radically change your mind about what recommends
you to God and to do that every day of your life. And it begins
with faith in Jesus Christ and continues every day as the believer
seeks to turn from his idols, mortify the deeds of the flesh,
and with a purged conscience to serve the living God. Every
day, I have to remind myself, no matter what I do, nothing
but Jesus Christ recommends me to God. Nothing but Jesus Christ
recommends me to God. That's true repentance, and it's
a lifelong endeavor. The heart of idolatry is the
worship of another god. Since there is but one God and
he is the sole proprietor of all that is, an idol must be
an invention of man's imagination. Generally, we think of idols
as stone gods and wooden deities and crosses and religious doodads
and such. These are all idols but do not
truly address idolatry, which is covetousness. You see, man
must make an idol in order to have an idol. He got to do it
himself. He got to whittle it out. He
got to chip it out or sculpt it. In order to have an idol,
he's got to make it himself. That God is merely a reflection
of himself with a smidgen of deity stirred in the mix. Idolatry
at its core is pleasing one's self and justifying one's own behavior. Men by nature do not trust the
idol they make. They trust themselves as they
have made the idol. Their idol is the God they seek
to pacify, and his throne is their fallen conscience. We repent of idolatry. To repent
toward God and believe on Jesus Christ is seeking to please God
and not yourself, and that only in the manner that God declares
he is pleased. How is God pleased? One thing
in Scripture says is said to please God. Know what it is? By faith we please God. By believing
Him. By believing Him. So that don't
seem like much. Well, if you had faith, you'd
understand what that means. You'd understand. Christ said, If any man will
follow Me, let him deny himself. And that's what repentance is.
Denying yourself. I'm talking about self-denial.
That's what people preach and that's what people use to get
people to believe they're righteous because they don't shop at a
certain store or don't drink beer or don't smoke cigarettes
or don't go to movie shows and that makes them feel righteous
because they don't do those things. But that's not self-righteous.
That's not denial. Denial of self is denial of you
as having anything to do with ever-pleasing God In fact, the
only way you please Him is by the gift He has given you of
faith. That's it. What does Paul mean when he speaks
of declaring all the counsel of God? He's not talking about
secret things of God because those belong to God. That which
is revealed belongs to us according to Deuteronomy 29. He's not talking
about finding out things about God which by searching cannot
be found out. Men come up with a whole lot
of things. God is like this and God is like that. God is like
nothing. There's none like Him. God is individual, unique, out
there, holy, righteous, pure, perfect, and we don't have any
concept of that. He's certainly not like us, and
we're certainly not like Him. So when Paul said, I preach to
you all the counsel of God, it sounds big, it sounds huge, but
he's not speaking of some dark mystery that's hidden in a corner
that we'll have to search all our life to find out. You cannot,
by searching, find out God. God must find you out, and then
you will find that you have found him out. Clearly, if under the
inspiration of the Spirit he claims to preach all the counsel
of God, then God has a counsel. He must have one. And Paul says
he preached all of it, and that counsel can be declared according
to this. He said, I did not shun to declare unto you all the counsel
of God. So first they say you can't ever
get there. Yeah, you can, and you better. Every time you tell
somebody about Jesus Christ, you better tell them lies. You
better tell them the truth. He's not speaking of great swelling
words and theological terms. He's not speaking of man's wisdom
or the span of man's philosophy, which has led the esteemed among
men to contemplate their belly button or to sit around some
forum of intellectuals and ponder which came first, the chicken
or the egg, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
The word counsel, it generally means this. I preached unto you. I did not shun to preach unto
you all the purpose of God. the purpose of God. There are some things we can
know about the purpose of God according to Isaiah 14 verse
24. It's going to be done. Isaiah
14 verse 24 said, The very thoughts of my heart shall come to pass. Isaiah 46 verse 9 through 11
said, He declares the end from the beginning. What he has spoken
shall come to pass and what he has declared will stand. Nebuchadnezzar
said this, He doeth his will in the armies of heaven and among
the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand, or
say unto him, What doest thou? God has a purpose. God is a God
of purpose. The first thing you learn about
God is He's the God of purpose. And He does everything on purpose. There are no accidents, there
are no occurrences, there are no mistakes. People make mistakes,
but all that's within the counsel of God. All that's within the
purpose of God. The scripture says of God's people,
everything, all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them of the call according to His purpose. Everyone who
loves God, everyone who's called according to His purpose, everything
works for their good. Now I know we have hard times
in this world. There are things that break our heart. Debbie
and I wept many tears as we, in the last days of Mary's life,
she suffered so. We wept for Donnie. We have hard times in our life.
We get sick. People we thought ought to hang
with us betray us. Children don't turn out like
we thought they would. Plans we make for people. Stupid to
start with, but we do it all the time. We have plans for things. They never work out. And yet
all of it's for our good. Look at your life. I know there
are things you regret. Things you wish you had never
done. Things you wish you could do over. What one of them, if you knew
they worked for your good, what one of them would you let go? And if you let go of that, what
would it do to the whole council? of your other brothers and sisters
who everything is working for good. Because everything in your
life and my life and the life of every child of God and the
life of this world and the course of this universe works together
for good. What do you want to let go of? You can't let go of
nothing. It's all there. God's purpose. From these few
just verses here, it is clear that God's purpose will be done.
What we just said in Isaiah and Daniel. No one can change his
purpose, nor disrupt his purpose, nor disannul or frustrate it. It is about God's pleasure, and
he always does what he pleases, when he pleases, with whom he
pleases. And since the Bible declares in no uncertain terms
that God does as he pleases, then his counsel will stand.
What God wants to do, God does, or has done. God's Son pleases Him. I always
do that which pleases the Father, Christ says. What pleases Him
has to do with His Son. His true pleasure is in His Son.
Faith pleases Him because faith is in His Son. The word counsel
means purpose. It comes from the combination
of several words that mean this, a deep, fixed mindset. A deep, fixed mindset. The counsel
of God is the deep, fixed mindset of God. Paul says that he has not shunned
to declare the deep, fixed mindset of God. What a statement. I've
declared God's thoughts. So it's crazy for a man to say
that. It is, unless that's what he's done. And he does that through
the preaching of the gospel. Such thinking ensnares the theologian
because he just loves the idea of something different something
new, something that no one has yet discovered. Paul says he
kept nothing back that was profitable to them. He declared it all,
and the result was that no man could ever charge him otherwise.
The deep mindset of God, all the counsel of God is both understood
and believed and possessed by the awakened elect of God. They
understand these things. They understand these things. And the counsel of God is found
to be all that they need and all that they want. If you're
a believer today, you understand. The world don't understand. The world can't understand. The
natural man can never understand these things. But you understand
them. First Corinthians chapter 2,
this is often put off as talking about heaven. or some mystery
out there, and Paul did call it a mystery, but it's a mystery
that's revealed to the children of God. Verse 9 of chapter 2
of 1 Corinthians says, But as it is written, I have not seen
nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things
which God hath prepared for them that love him. And that sounds
like nobody knows, but that's not what it's saying. The next
word is but. But God hath revealed them unto
us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all
things, yea, the deep things, the deep mindset, counsel of
God. We understand the Scriptures.
You say, well, but it comes, you know, I get in a fix and
somebody asks me something, I can't come up with something. Don't
worry about that. You understand it. Thank God you understand
it. Thank God you understand it.
All the counsel of God is all that God has revealed concerning
His Son. And He's revealed a lot from Genesis to Revelation. But
Paul was a man of narrow vision. He had tunnel vision, if you
will. And he's not speaking when he talks of all the counsel of
God or some seminary course when he speaks of declaring the purpose
of God. He has defined what all the counsel
of God is in many places. And it is declared in every word.
He went the result that he is pure of the blood of all men
because he has done so. He's preached the counsel of
God. What is all the counsel of God? It is what Paul and every
preacher and everyone who loves Jesus Christ does when they are asked about
God. They are the ones who preach
the divine commission under the auspices of the divine commission.
Paul said in Romans chapter 1, I am not ashamed of the gospel.
because it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that
believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. For
therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith. For it is written, The just shall live by faith. Paul said, Woe is unto me if
I preach not the gospel in 1 Corinthians. And over in 2 Corinthians he
said it this way, in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, Verse
5 and 6, he says, For we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ,
or Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake. For God, who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts. In other
words, he's commanded light to shine in our hearts. To do what? To give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's why we
have the gospel. And that's what it is to declare
the gospel. That's the gospel declared. All
the counsel of God can be summed up in one word. Gospel. Gospel. It is the record, the
declared record of how God glorifies himself in the salvation of the
elect by the substitutionary propitiatory successful finished
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is in the business of glorifying
himself, and he glorifies himself one way. There is a glory of
God in nature, there's no doubt about that. We've seen it. This
week we've seen the leaves that were yellow and red and brown,
as Henry Mahan said, blue one time. We've seen them covered
in snow. The wise preacher said, has thou
entered into the storehouse of the snow? Nobody knows what that
really means. What is the counsel of God? God
glorifies himself fully only one way. That is in the salvation of his
people by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if that's not
the message, then you've missed the message, you've missed the
understanding. It is the record of how Christ
answered the demands of God's law. God's law said the sinner
must die. God requires death for sin. Christ satisfied that when He
gave up the ghost voluntarily. He satisfied God's wrath and
fixed it so that God could be just and right to justify you. God doesn't have to back up and
say, look, I left this guy off on this or that. He said, no,
He'll tell you, and He does in His Word, that He has punished
every sin you ever committed, if you're His. And whoever will
commit, Every sin has been punished, where? On the cross of Calvary.
All the counsel of God is precisely as narrow and precisely as wide
as the gospel. And all the counsel of God is
bound up lock, stock, and barrel in the person and work of the
Lord Jesus Christ. God loveth his Son, and hath put all things
in his hand, he said in John 3.35. This is what it is to preach
all the counsel of God. Paul was a learning man. He was
a lawyer who studied the feet of Gamaliel. He was of the Sanhedrin. That was a bunch of smart people,
the Sanhedrin was as smart as a Jew could get. He was given papers to go out
and kill everybody that named the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and he met the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. But
he was a smart man. But you'd say, wouldn't we say,
well Paul, tell me about the law. Because you're a lawyer.
You studied the law at the feet of Gamaliel. Here's what I want
to tell you about the law, Paul would say. I'm dead to the law
by the law. I'm dead to the law. God created
this world by simply saying be. I know the guy over in Rome has
the funny hat. He thinks it out differently
now. I read a thing he read online where he said that God didn't
call the world into existence by just saying it. He said God's
not a magician. We know where he stands. Scripture
says he did. Let there be light and there
was light. Let there be firmament above the earth. Let there be
an earth and let there be men and women to occupy this earth.
Let there be animals to feed the men. Trees to bear fruit
after its own kind. It's what the Lord did and he
simply did it by saying be. Why? Because he's God. Now, if
you have a diminished God, who is weak and frail, and it
can't do anything unless men let him, then you might come
up with some silly notion like that fellow did. God made from
the dust of the earth, man. Man sinned against God and plunged
the entire human race into utter ruin. Man proved himself totally
depraved and was born into this world without any interest or
inclination toward God whatsoever. That's how you were born. Later,
to himself, man would have stayed that way exactly. He would stay
that course until he wound up in eternal damnation had God
not stopped his progress. You can't change and neither
can I. Can the leopard change his spots? Can the Ethiopian
change the color of his skin? Then how can ye who are accustomed
to do evil do good, Scripture says? You have to be changed,
and that by the power of God. A man left to himself will go
to hell. That's all you've got to do is
leave him alone. All God's got to do for you to go to hell is
just let you be. Just leave you to your sin, because
that's where you'll end up. Can't help you see. Can't help
you see. Before man was made and before
the world was, God chose out of a race that did not even yet
exist. A fallen race, a number that
no man could number. He chose them and He chose to
save them. In the eternal counsels of God,
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit covenanted.
They struck hands to accomplish the salvation of His people.
Christ became the surety. He signed His name to the debt
that they owed before they even existed and before they drew
their first sinful breath. He had already signed their name
to this debt. The elect came to this world, sinners all worthy
of death, but not accountable to God. Why?
Because somebody had already signed their sin debt. God didn't
look to you to pay for your sin. Did He? Does He? You better hope
He don't. You better hope somebody signed
that note and has taken full responsibility for your sin,
because if that's not happening, you're going to have to take
responsibility for it. When Christ was our surety, our surety, what
was our sin debt? Death. We owe debt to God. Christ
paid it. God predestinated to make all
of his people like his own son. He predestinated them to be through
the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto himself and would
in time give them a new birth, spiritual and eternal life, something
they could never begin to understand or explain. Get somebody sometime
who has been saved by God's grace, who has been brought to a knowledge
of himself and of God to explain how that happened. They can't
explain how that happened. They just know it did. They just know
it did. We have instances of it here
in this church. My own conversion, that night, that blew me away. I was a preacher. Thought I knew
God. One night I met Christ. A whole different ball game, I
can tell you. God gives his people life, spiritual
and eternal life. How? By the Spirit. Through the
preached gospel, it's an amazing, wondrous thing.
God does stuff that no man can explain. Paul said, I'm free from your
blood because I preached all the counsel of God. Christ came
to this world and lived among sinners like us, yet without
sin. He lived that way for 33 years.
He never sinned. He never had an evil thought.
He never did an evil deed. Everything he did, he did for somebody else.
Everything he did, he did to please and glorify his Father,
which was in heaven. And at the time appointed, he
made his own soul an offering for sin. He allowed himself to
be bruised, to be mishandled by human beings. He allowed himself,
volunteered in fact, as a human being who was both God and man
to undergo the wrath of God for all his people. At the time appointed,
he hung on what we just sang about, Calvary's tree. He hung
suspended between heaven and earth on a cruel man-made cross
with Roman spikes shoved in his hands and his feet, not wrapped
in a cannon tea towel, but naked. He couldn't put his hands together
and cover his personal parts because his hands were nailed
to a cross. So he hid there for people to
laugh at him and mock at him. They did, they stuck out their
tongues, stuck out their lips. They said, if this man be the
son of God, let him come down from the cross, let him save
himself. He said he was the king of kings. And there on that cruel cross,
in three hours of darkness, He answered what was required of
us in an eternal hell when God bared His holy arm of
wrath and beat His Son to a pulp for our sin. He came out on the
other side forsaken by God because God cannot look on sin, He's
too holy. Christ said, well, I've done
it now, it's finished. saved my people, I've perfected
them, now I'll die because that's the one thing necessary that's
left to satisfy God's law. I must die." And so he died voluntarily. Life gave up life. I don't know
how that works. But by that sacrifice, he put
away the sins of his people. He didn't make it possible for
their voluntary act to put them away. He put away the sins of
His people. He paid the uttermost farthing
of what they owed. He finished their salvation.
He redeemed them, bought them back from the slave market. He
justified them so they would stand before God just as if they
had never ever even sinned or even thought an evil thought
or done an evil deed. And he sanctified them, he made
them holy, he was made to be their sanctification. Wisdom,
righteousness also, and redemption. Because he was made to be sin
for them in that perfect substitutionary propitiatory sacrifice. I don't
know how to explain imputation, it means charging somebody with
something, that's the little interpretation. But it's as if,
if you are a child of God, God took all your sins, past, present,
and future, and picked them up off of you and laid them on Jesus
Christ. And then punished Jesus Christ
for your sins. And you'll never be punished
for them, because they've already been punished to you. cannot
twice demand payment at my bleeding surety's hand and then again
at mine. In time, as you went along your
merry way and I went along my merry way in my life, caring
only about what I wanted and what I could do. Oh, I had moments
of philanthropy and moments when I did kind deeds, but I always
wanted to remind people that I had. Call it just somebody's
remembrance so we know it was dead works that caused it. But in time, God would send some
of those he had saved to tell others of what he had done. Paul
made three missionary journeys, established over 50 churches, preaching the gospel. God sent you somebody. to tell you what God had done.
What a treat it was to hear it if He gave you faith. They came declaring all the counsel
of God and by the gospel men were called to repentance and
faith by the revelation that they had been redeemed. When
you don't believe you can do something or that something is
possible, you believe something's been done and it was for you. They were given faith and granted
repentance and now they are kept forever by the power of God.
Everyone for whom Christ paid this debt was redeemed on Calvary
and shall believe on Jesus Christ alone for all that God requires. Nothing profitable has been held
back from them. They have been told it all. They
had all the counsel of God declared to them. This is what it means. This is
how Paul could say, I've left nothing back. I've not held it
back from you. I've not given you something
to do when there's nothing for you to do. I've not held out
some hope that as you progress in this world and live this world,
you'll become more righteous, because you won't. Your righteousness
is Jesus Christ. Your holiness is Jesus Christ
also. I've told you how God saves sinners. With you doing nothing
and Christ doing everything, that's how God saves sinners.
Paul said, I'm free from your blood. Can't accuse me of not
telling you the truth. Can't accuse me of leaving something
out. I preached unto you all the counsel of God. I'm not shunned to declare unto
you the deep mindset of God in this book. Pray God, He'll give you ears
to hear, eyes to see, faith to believe, and a heart of repentance. Because if you're His, He has
and He will. Father, bless us to understand
and pray in Christ's name. Amen.