Acts Part 19

Acts Part 19

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning. This is the twenty-ninth chapter of Acts, the third recording. Everything about our life. Everything. Our training, our existence, our future is all about the word. All about the word. You are witnesses. We are witnesses to the word. Our lives, our lips preach the word. It is all about the word of God. I've already said it. The word of God, the Bible, has two words of teaching in it, and only two. There's law and there's gospel. Law is anything that is expected of you without giving you the power to do it. Yes, you can do some things people tell you to do, but you don't do it from the heart. You don't. Some people may think they do things from the heart. They don't. Some you know, parents, some children honor their parents from the heart. I don't think they do. I really don't. Not unless you're a Christian. Because from the heart has to be something that you do that you're not getting anything out of. That's my opinion. And the gospel is anything that is given to you from above and comes with power to perform it from the heart. You truly from your heart want to do it, and you get nothing out of it. So true preaching seems foolish. But you have to remember that as we go through what we're going to go through, preaching is our only protection. It's an invisible force field of words that protects us. I've shared this illustration with a couple of my grandchildren when I was doing my student teaching. I was t absolutely terrified to go there every day and be in Billy Ann Rakoff's classroom and ugh, it was just horrible. I was anxious. I was scared to go to school. And I remember, you know, staying a long time in the shower, just pretending that the water cascading over my body was like a mason jar that was protecting me. And so I've shared that with a couple of my grandchildren. That the idea is, you know, a mason jar is glass and it lets appropriate things out and doesn't allow inappropriate things to come in and harm you. And that's how we need to see the word of God. The word of God is our mason jar. It's a force field that keeps us safe. It lets appropriate things out, the word of God, and it does not allow inappropriate things in to harm us. When we're attacked, when we're lied about, when we are reviled, those things don't are not allowed to come in. So preaching is our only protection. Now the law seems more powerful and effective to the natural man. Keeping in mind the natural man, what we call the old Adam, is a person that only sees life as it is under the sun. It doesn't see above the sun, that is, into heaven. It only sees life and it looks at life as if this is all there is. And so to the natural man, the law seems powerful. The law is extremely impressive to the natural man. Especially, you know, people that want to have power over others and people that want to, you know, make money, get rich. The law is impressive. But they don't understand that the law only goes so far. And the law is important. Absolutely, the law is important. Because without the law, we would be in chaos. But again, the law does not give you the power to do things from your heart. Now listen carefully to all false preaching, and you will hear and you will feel that false gospel preaching is law-based. Every sermon, if it's not giving you just syrupy nonsense, that everything's fine and rosy and polyanish-ish, it says, do this and you will be blessed and you will succeed. Do this and you will succeed. My preaching can't be wrong. If it ain't working for you, you just ain't working hard enough. So it's a whole series, it's a barrage of guilt trips. A lot of people in these false churches, they love to feel bad. They love to go to church and show beat up. It's like soothes their guilty conscience for an hour. But the whole thing is willworship. It's will worship. All false religion, all philosophy, all morality schemes. It's willworship. It's the exaltation of self. It takes a whip to your backside to make you climb further and further up the ladder to Godlikeness. But all they're really whipping you to do is to feel good about themselves. They get to brag about you. They get money from you. But it wears you out. I climbed that ladder until I was 27 and finally broke. I fell off the ladder. I exhausted myself climbing that ladder. And they don't care if you exhaust yourself and fall and break your neck. They don't care. So it's will worship. True, we need will worship. That is, we need others who impose and enforce their will over ours to the end that in frustration and exhaustion we learn to say, thy will be done. Thy will be done. When you don't get your way, you should be happy. You should be happy. You need to know when to say thy will be done. Yes, there are times to fight for your will if you truly think you're right. But you're not always right. Why do you fight for everything? You have to find everything? Everything has to be your way. Some things you should fight for. But even then, if you think they're right, you need to know when to stand down and to be silent and to shut up. You need to be happy when you don't get your way. You have to give up. Give it up. Give it a rest. Let God's will be done. Be happy when your will is not done. Oh, true gospel preaching is a sermon of weakness. In the eyes of natural man, true gospel preaching is a sermon of weakness. It makes it seems weak. I'm telling you, that's why the false Christians today they want nothing to do with the truth about baptism and communion because it doesn't exalt their will. Oh, you're telling me some water save me, and I don't have to make myself a better person. You're telling me that some crumbs of bread and some drops of wine are all I need to live a Christian life? Oh, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. I want to make my New Year's resolutions. I want to resolve. I want to walk the aisle and make a determination. So it looks weak. But to the spiritually mind, it's the power of God to salvation. The word power there comes, we get the word dynamite from that word that Paul uses for power. But it's dynamite in God's hands, not yours. The natural man wants a stick of dynamite in their own hand to dynamite themselves unto perfection and glory, to be esteemed and applauded and googled over. But it's in God's hands. So you have the word of God. You are a witness to it. But you have to allow it to be in God's hands. It's not in your hands. So Paul brings the concepts of weakness and power, law and gospel. And remember, there are only two words in the Bible. Everything in the Bible is either law or gospel. Law is telling you what to do. Gospel is giving you the power to truly do it. Gospel is good news. It's something that you have been given. You have been given Christ. You are given communion. You have been given baptism. It is something that you have been given. It's not something you have to work for. It's not a list you have to perform. There's nobody listening to this that performs everything on their list. You don't do it. Take the most important thing in your life, and you really want to be better at it, and you don't do it. Really? Well, you may say, well, I have the gospel. I believe in Christ, then why don't I do it? Well, if God allowed you to do it, you would be probably a worse person. You'd brag about yourself. You would exalt yourself. You would think that you did it. So Paul brings these two concepts of law and gospel into what I would call a not so neat package. Paul said, when I am weak, then am I strong. But we hate weakness. The human being hates weakness. We can't stand it. If I haven't said this before on these tapes, I'll say it now. All human beings are headed from a position of inferiority to a position of superiority. Period. We hate inferiority. We can't stand it. The child is always looking to be an adult when he can do the things that adults do. He can drive where he wants to drive, he can buy what he wants to buy, he can go where he wants to go, he can be what he wants to be. Then you get old. You get old and you look back, oh, it was kind of neat when I was strong, could do whatever I wanted to do, had the strength to do it. Now I've got to deal with not having the energy to do the things, all the things I want to do. Just like the Israelites when they were being chased by Pharaoh, go back and read about the Exodus. God set up the Egyptians, God fooled them, God set the Egyptians up to chase the Jews into the sea. But for a moment, the Jews were being were between the Egyptians and the sea. They could either drown or they can be slaughtered by the Egyptians. But there was a third way. God created a path through the Red Sea. And the Jews walked over on dry land. But for that moment they were weak. But God is strong. So the gospel makes Christ front and center. Law makes the person front and center. The gospel sets one truly free. The law is nothing but a ball and chain which we hate. You need to see the honesty within your own soul. You hate having to do anything. You may think you love it because you're looking forward to getting a reward out of it or to avoid a punishment. But if you if you really are do a courageous evaluation of yourself, we do not like anything that is imposed on us, anything that is expected of us. We only do it because we see an advantage to us, or we don't want to bear the punishment. The law is truly bad news. Again, if God gave you a list, or create your own list, and if you had the assurance that that list would get you to heaven, is that good news? It's not good. It's bad because you can't do it. You can't even accomplish the things in life you really, from your heart, you want to accomplish. You can't do it. Why is a list good news? It's not good news, it's bad news. The whole purpose of the law is bad news. It's to make you feel helpless and weak and to turn to God. It is bad news. False preaching makes you feel powerful. True preaching makes the Lord feel powerful in you. Now that's good news to the Christian. When you're weak, but you have this power in you that helps you do the things that you truly should do when God wants you to do them. My definition of true preaching is this it's an utterance originating in a zealous heart which is forced of its own accord onto the lips and seeks nothing less than the praise of Christ to the glory of God. Not a single word of this utterance is in conflict with the revealed word of God and unfaithful teachers or faithful teachers who have expounded God's word. This utterance bears fruit, period, and accomplishes the will of God in ways the speaker cannot see or perceive. There are things that when we follow Christ and preach his word and live out his word, we don't even see the ways that God uses that. It's as if the things that we don't see are for God's eyes only for a period of time. One day, like Paul says, we will know even as also we are known. We will see all the ways God used his power in us. We will see that someday, but not yet. So again, this preaching is our only true and reliable protection. It's a force field of words. So we will be protected against those without natural affection, which is oh just terrifying today. It's just without natural affection is the worst indictment about the last days. Without natural affection. These people are heartless in the last days. Heartless. It's just heartless, heartless. Don't expect any free passage. Don't expect any sympathy. No, your smile ain't gonna help you. Your kids aren't gonna help you. All the good things you've done for the people aren't gonna help you. Don't expect any free passage. Don't expect any pity, any sympathy. No way. So this is our force field of protection against these people today who are heartless and hard hearted. Gonna protect us from haters, gonna protect us from Satan. And it's going to protect us from ourselves. We are our own worst enemy.