SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/21/2017 8:07 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
5th Intro to the book of
Acts
We have here the final part of John MacArthur’s sermon on
his introduction to the book of Acts from January 2014.
“Now we’re not going to cover all of this tonight, we
never intended to. This is for us to work on over the next few, but let’s
just take a look at the message. To effectively carry on Christ’s work,
you have to begin with the message. The message has to be right.
And if I can piggyback on what we were saying this morning, it all starts with
the words of Jesus. Correct? It all starts with the words of
Jesus.
“That’s why there are four gospels. So we can get
as many of the words of Jesus as the Holy Spirit wants us to have. Plenty
of people running around with the wrong message. They are
wearisome. Aren’t they? Cults and corrupt versions of Christianity,
misrepresentations of Jesus and the gospel. It’s important to have the
right message. I’m not talking about biblical ignorance here. I
remember there was a test given to college students some years ago to try to
find out how they – what level they were familiar with the Bible.
“The answers were really incredible. Sodom and
Gomorrah were lovers on some answers. Who were Sodom and Gomorrah?
Lovers. Who was Jezebel? One answer was Ahab’s jackass. Who
was Eve? She was a woman created from an apple. One college student
said Jesus was baptized by Moses. I’m not talking about that kind of
ignorance. That’s everywhere and far worse today than it’s ever
been. Biblical ignorance is at an all time high.
“Sadly, there’s an awful lot of ignorance about the
message, the gospel message, even in, quote unquote, the church,
evangelicalism. I don’t need to belabor the point, but when Jesus began
his work, it included teaching Verse 1. It included teaching. And
Luke is a great model for this because Luke wants the exact truth. I love
that about him. He is the precise historian.
“I’m writing,” he says, “So you have the exact
truth.” And the only place we can go for this is the Scripture. And
when you have that confidence in the Scripture, that it is the exact truth,
you’re launched as an effective communicator of the gospel. When you know
the word and you believe the word, you’re powerful because you’re not
equivocating. There are all kinds of people who write books that critique
Christianity, call things into question, deny the inspiration of
scripture. These are from so-called Christian writers, Christian
scholars. I would remind you that those kinds of people are
impotent. They’re just another guy with another opinion.
“When you hear powerful preaching, when you hear powerful
representation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, you know one thing for sure:
There is a preacher who believes in Scripture because he boldly proclaims
it. That’s where the ministry has to start. If we’re going to build
the church, we can only build the church on the truth of the gospel.
Right?
“Faith comes by hearing the truth concerning Christ, the
word of Christ (Romans 10). How will they hear without a
preacher? But the preacher has to preach the message concerning
Christ. So I don’t need to beg that issue any further. You get
that. You know that. Everything begins with the teaching.
That’s why there’s a seminary across the patio because you have to get it
right.
“If anybody preaches another gospel, let them be
what? Let them be damned, cursed. If anybody preaches another
Christ, let them be cursed. But there’s another little word there, too,
and it says that Jesus began to do and teach. And while we can’t do what
Christ did, miraculously, that’s not what it’s talking about. What it’s
talking about is the power
of his life to draw people. You remember it was He who said, “If I
be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.” He was attractive not only
because of his teaching, but because he personified what he taught. He
was consistent with his message. And I simply want to make that an issue
for your thinking that if the Lord is going to use us, there’s going to have to
be the right message in the right package, the right messenger.
“And always remember that statement by the German
philosopher. Show me your redeemed life, and I might be inclined to
believe in your redeemer. Pretty hard to make the gospel believable
unless it’s believable when somebody looks at you. Not that you have to
be perfect, but you have to demonstrably be committed to the truth you
teach. There are lots of people who talk about Christ but don’t live a
life that points to his power.
“I remember reading an article year ago where a writer
said, “Personally, I’ve discovered that Jesus probably had a lot more class
than most of his agents.” It is a familiar knock on Christianity that I
wouldn’t want to be a Christian because there are so many hypocrites, and while
that’s a pretty lame excuse, and it won’t stand up before God, there’s some
truth to it.
“Powerful preaching comes from the overflow of powerful
demonstration of the transforming gospel. So that’s where you have to
start. You have to start with the right message, clearly. And so
Jesus, until the day he was taken up to heaven, Verse 2, after he had by the
Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen. What is that
saying? That is saying that Jesus continued to live the message and teach the
message until the ascension. Until the ascension, he was the
personification, the incarnation of everything he preached and taught.
This was the priority. I just would like to make the point that Jesus
didn’t spend those final 40 days feeding poor people, although that’s a noble
thing to do.
If you look at the next
verse, end of the verse, for 40 days, he was speaking of the things concerning
the kingdom of God. This school was in. I would have loved to have
been in that seminary, 24/7 for 40 days with a risen Christ. You’d hang
on every word. You’d absolutely hang on every word. But this is
where all of our work begins. It begins with the right message. Understanding
the truth of the gospel, the truth of the kingdom, and living it as we proclaim
it so that from the time that Jesus arose and met with his disciples in that
upper room on the resurrection night, for the next 40 days, he had those chosen
apostles with him, instructing them in the things concerning the kingdom of
God. That’s what they’re going to be doing if they’re faithful. They’re
going to be instructing others. That is discipleship at its most profound
point. And they had a lot to learn. Didn’t they? You go back
and look at how they lived and how they were so confused all the time and how
he taught them lessons – the same lesson, again and again. They didn’t
seem to get it. They were so ill prepared for what was going to come that
even when Jesus was arrested, they all fled and scattered. They were hard
pressed to believe even when he appeared to them risen from the dead.
Thomas who wasn’t there said, “I’m not going to believe that.” They
didn’t believe on the road to Emmaus. They were beleaguered. John’s
gospel ends with them going back to their fishing nets even after Jesus had
appeared to them and taught them, to some degree, some of those 40 days.
“They were hard to communicate to, but these were
desperate times. This was it. This was it. When the 40 days
were over, it was over. How urgent it is that the message be
communicated. That’s the priority. So for 40 days, he taught them
the message they would have to preach. But by the way, even with the
right message, they weren’t ready to go yet. They weren’t ready to go.
That’s why he had previously said, “Don’t go. Stay where? Stay in
Jerusalem until you’re empowered from on high.”
“So the message is essential, and the living of the
message is essential, but I will promise you one thing. Even with the
right message and doing your best to conform to that message, your own human
power isn’t going to make the difference. I love what Spurgeon
said. “We might preach until our tongue rotted, until we exhaust our
lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless the Holy Spirit uses
the word to convert that soul.”
“So it is blessed to eat into the very heart of the truth
until at last, you come to talk in scripture language, and your spirit is
flavored with the words of the Lord so that your blood is bibline, and the very
essence of the Bible flows from you. But you still need the Holy
Spirit. School was in, and the truth was taught. There’s one other
thing that I would add, and then we’ll stop. A second point: You
have to have the proper confidence.
“Now remember, they didn’t have a Bible, except the Old
Testament. They knew now because they had the gospels that the prophecies
of the Old Testament had been fulfilled. And what did I tell you was the
marked characteristic of the early apostolic preaching in the Book of Acts?
Their use of what? The Old Testament. They get it. Made that
point in the first message we talked about Acts. You see quotes from the
Old Testament all over the place that you never see in the gospels. They
didn’t know that the Old Testament was being fulfilled until here. Now
they know. And so you – they all of a sudden start using Old Testament
prophecies and saying, “They’re fulfilled, they’re fulfilled, they’re
fulfilled.” So they did have confidence now for the first time that Scripture
was fulfilled in Christ. But where was their confidence that the plan of
God would go to the next generation, the next level of fulfillment? Here
it is: Verse 3. “To these, he also presented himself alive after his
suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over 40 days.”
Where did their confidence come from? The what? What event?
The resurrection. The resurrection. Over a period of 40 days
between his passion and his ascension, Jesus appeared to them. Not all 40
days, but in intervals during those 40 days. And manifested himself to
them not as some kind of apparition, not as some kind of ghost, not as some
kind of ethereal being, not as some kind of a vision, but he appeared to them
alive after his suffering with the wounds by many convincing proofs. He
really was alive from the dead. He really did live. Paul lays out
in 1 Corinthians 15 the urgency of the resurrection. If Christ is not
risen, we’re of all people most miserable. If Christ is not risen, all
gospel preaching is foolish. If Christ is not risen, we have no
hope. Everything is lost, and that’s what they were saying on the road to
Emmaus. “We thought he was to be the one.”
“So he keeps coming back over 40 days and appearing to
them in infallible, incontrovertible convincing evidence that he is
alive. That’s a critical reality. That’s their confidence.
And you say, “Well, what does that do for me?” What it does for you is it
gives you the very same confidence because the record of those proofs and
appearances are given in holy infallible scripture. So you have the same
experience.
“Only difference is you, loved one, you have not seen,
whom having not seen you love. Is there ample proof in the New Testament
for the resurrection? Yes. If you have any questions about that, go
look at the litany of sermons on resurrection Sunday that have been preached
here in the last 40 some years. The proofs of the resurrection are all
recorded in the gospels, written down for us.
“That was an absolutely essential confidence. They
were so exploded into joy by the resurrection of Jesus Christ that that’s what
elevated them. That’s what looses them from the despondency and the fears
and the doubts and the questions and all the wondering about whether Jesus was
the messiah. So if you’re going to be effective in carrying on the work
that Jesus began on his own and then passed onto the first generation and every
other generation until we got to century number 21, you start with knowing the
message, the right message, which is of course the word of God and the gospel, and having the right confidence
that Christ is alive.
And he is building his
church, and he wants to use you to do that. That’s how the history
goes. Well, that leads us to the next and really what is the compelling
point. You have to
have the right power. We’ll keep that for next Sunday. Let’s
pray. Father, thank you again for your word to us. I say that
almost every time because I’m so overwhelmed with gratitude for the shear
blessing of scripture. No matter how I search it and search it and mine
it and think about it, study it, it never disappoints. Never.
“It always
fulfills its promise to be alive, transforming truth. We’re so blessed to
be a part of what you’re continuing to do of your unfinished work. We
thank you that you finished the redemptive work, but you’re not finished with
the redeeming work. You continue to do it through us. May we be
useful and faithful. Thank you for such a privilege. Amen.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Angel” (Luke 2:10-11).
Today’s Bible
question: “The king of what country
called Balaam to curse Israel?”
Answer in our next SD.
6/21/2017 8:17 AM
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