Today we had the wonderful opportunity of
going to the Ulster Museum here in Belfast, where they had formally commemorated Dr. Sproul
in a picture there in the museum as one who took the gospel and the Sproul name to the
States as a Presbyterian minister. He has the Bible in his hand, and what a wonderful
testimony to Dr. Sproul and indeed to this region. With that, let's turn our attention to the
Word of God, to Romans in chapter 10. Paul's epistle to the Romans in chapter 10,
and we'll begin at verse one. This is the word of God for you, His people: "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to
God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal
for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of
God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that
is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says,
'Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?" (that is, to bring Christ down)
or "Who will descend into the abyss?" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? 'The word is near you, in your mouth and in
your heart' (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with
your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the
dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified,
and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, 'Everyone who believes
in him will not be put to shame.' For there is no distinction between Jew and
Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For 'everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved.' How then will they call on him in whom they
have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom
they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are
sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet
of those who preach the good news!' But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, 'Lord, who has believed what
he has heard from us?' So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through
the word of Christ." Well the grass withers, the flower falls,
the Word of our Lord stands forever. Let's pray together: Our sovereign and gracious Lord, holy and
loving Father, we thank You, O Lord, for Your love for us which abounds to us in Christ. And we thank You, Father, for the power of
Your Spirit who indwells us, who helps us, Lord, not only to understand Your Word, illumining
Your Word to us, but also who helps us to love Your Word. And so, even now Lord, as we sit under the
ministry of Your Word, as we study Your Word together, we ask, Father, that by Your Spirit
You would help us to love You more, to worship You more, to love one another as ourselves,
that You, Father might get all the glory from our lives. For it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Conferences are not ultimate. We're not here, ultimately, to have a conference,
are we? We are here fundamentally as churchmen. We are here as believers. We are here together this night to worship
the Lord and to give glory to God. We are not here to build a name for ourselves
or to establish any sort of self-flattering kingdom. We are here to give glory to our triune God,
that as Christians, as believers that we as churchmen would come together and praise the
Lord to give glory to the Lord that His name might be known in all the earth. That's really what the Reformers were all
about, weren't they? They weren't fundamentally about their own
names, about their own kingdoms. They were not fundamentally about the name
of Luther or Calvin or Tyndale or Wycliffe or Hus. Patrick wasn't about Patrick, Columba
wasn't about Columba. These men and all our faithful forefathers
were first and foremost about the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that God would get
all the glory and that God alone would get all the glory. That's what the Reformation was all about. We could speak about various causes and the
various reasons for the Protestant Reformation but the reality of it is, is that the reasons
behind the Protestant Reformation were the same reasons that Patrick did what he did,
that Columba did what he did, that all our faithful forefathers have done what they did
in order to give glory to God. The Reformation was about the glory of God,
and so it was necessary. It was necessary to reestablish and reassert
and to hold up the Word of God as our only infallible rule for faith and life. It was necessary to contend earnestly for
the faith and to contend earnestly for the gospel which had been obscured, which had
been displaced, even eclipsed, even forgotten. It was necessary to affirm and to contend
for justification by faith and what Rome made us defend and contend for, was that necessary
qualifier, though it need not be necessary, that necessary qualifier, sola. Because we had to insist that justification
is by faith and faith alone, wherein God declares us righteous, not wherein God makes us righteous,
but that act wherein God pardons and accepts us, that act wherein God declares us righteous
because of the finished work of Christ. But all of the doctrines of the Reformation,
all of the solas, all of the doctrines of salvation that our forefathers contended for
and some died for, Latimer and Ridley, that which they contended for and which they died
for was all fundamentally for the name of God, for the glory of God. And the way in which God gets His glory is
by making His name known to a people that He has called, a people that He has foreknown,
a people that He has elected before the foundation of the earth, a people that He has said are
His. God gets glory from His name being known by
those who belong to Him. The promise to Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant
and that promise at the outset of Genesis 12 is that God would use Abraham to make a
name for God. And that call, that covenant, that promise
as it is carried out throughout the Old Testament where God's mission to make His name known
would not be thwarted no matter what sin, no matter what rebellion, no matter what idolatry
of His people, no matter what doubts and what murmurings, no matter what divisions among
His people, God would not allow His mission to be thwarted, because His mission was all
about His name being known to the ends of the earth and about God getting all the glory
from His people in all the world. Too often when we think of the Reformers,
when we think of Wycliffe, Hus, these forerunners of the Reformation, Tyndale, when we think
of Luther and Calvin, when we think of Knox who prayed earnestly, "Lord, give me Scotland
or I die," the fervency and the passion of these men didn't come from within; it came
from the Spirit of God. It came from God working within them to say,
"I want glory for Myself." John Knox's concern and his prayer was not
for John Knox's fame but for the fame of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the gospel would go
forth and that God's people throughout Scotland would know the Lord. Calvin was concerned throughout his life and
throughout his ministry, and as one scholar suggests, really through the last ten years
of his life, Calvin was consumed with the mission of God. Throughout Calvin's life and ministry, as
he was there exiled to Geneva, serving in Geneva, sent with other churches throughout
Switzerland more than 1200 pastors, establishing and planting upwards of 2000 churches throughout
his native France. And Calvin's life and ministry, he with the
other churches as they partnered together, as they worked together, as they raised the
funds, as they trained up men, sent them to Italy, and to Poland, and to Hungary, and
to the Netherlands, to city states in the Rhineland, and even to Brazil. They were concerned for the glory of God and
that God's name would be known not only in their own neighborhoods, not only in their
own cities, but to the ends of the earth. My brother Michael Haykin in his book To the
Ends of the Earth highlights some of this and traces some of Calvin's emphases and the
missionary zeal of Calvin and other Reformers -- Calvin. And God wants His grace to be known to all
the world, and He has commanded that the gospel be preached to all creatures. We must, as much as we are able, seek the
solution of those who today are strangers to the faith, who seem to be completely deprived
of God's goodness. Let me ask you a question this evening. Are you concerned about those who are strangers
to the faith? As we have made our way through many cities
and towns in Ireland the Republic and here in Northern Ireland, as I have looked at the
faces and have gazed into the eyes of so many that I've passed, not only the homeless but
the wealthy it seems, there's a lostness in their eyes, there's a despair. It seems to come out of their souls, into
their eyes, a sadness, just wallowing in the mire of lostness. Are you concerned for those who are dying
and going to hell without Christ? Do you have a heart for the lost? If you're here, the likelihood that you are
Reformed and that you know what that means and that you care about what being Reformed
means and that you care what the biblical doctrines of salvation are, that you care
and you understand what the sovereignty of God is and how it permeates everything we
believe, not just salvation, but everything. The truth of the matter is that not only does
the world hate us, and Christ said that it would, but so much of the church and so many
so-called Christians despise us as well. And many refer to us as, at least they do
in the State's "the frozen chosen," because they think we're coldhearted, they think we
are people who don't care about the lost, that we don't care about the stranger who's
dying and going to hell without Christ. Because sometimes what happens to us is once
we begin to study the Word of God and recognize that we are among the elect of God, that we
are those who before the foundation of the world have been chosen in Christ in love. When we study the theology of Scripture, when
we come to understand our confessions and we come to understand the depths of our theology,
and when we study the Scriptures to show ourselves approved, what happens is that over time we
begin to develop a certain sort of pomposity and arrogance thinking that, "Well, the truth
of the matter is, yes, I know it's all by grace. But you know, God was really smart to choose
me. He was very wise to choose me. It was good that He got me on His team and
I know I didn't choose Him. It's apparent to me why He wouldn't have chosen
that person." And that sort of Reformed smugness and arrogance
begins to creep up in our souls, and the devil begins to sit back and relax. Reformed arrogance is oxymoronic. We are to be the most humble people, not because
we set aside our theology or not because we even set aside or theological differences,
not because we say they don't matter, not because we suggest that secondary things because
they're secondary really aren't that important. No, we fight and we argue and we fuss and
we disagree even over secondary and tertiary matters, don't we? And we ought to, because they're matters of
the Word of God. But we, as God's people, are called to be
a humble people who are theologically robust, strong in all we affirm, knowing our theology,
knowing the Word of God, knowing our creeds and confessions, being able to stand on them
and contend for them and even disagree and argue with other believers walking away knowing
that we are brothers and sisters of our same Father in heaven, knowing that our love is
our greatest apologetic in this dark and miserable world. As Jesus said, "They'll know you are My disciples
by your love for one another." Too often in our day, people want us to set
aside our doctrinal differences. They want us to compromise for the sake of
peace but Luther insisted, "Peace if possible, but truth at all costs." Because we can only have real peace, we can
only have real unity because of the truth, not in spite of the truth, not putting the
truth on the back shelf, but rather insisting on truth and striving for the truth, striving
to contend for the truth and at the same time striving to be a people who are one. That unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace
that we are called to strive for as God's people, as the family of God, as the body
of Christ. But too often our look and our gaze is inward
rather than upward, and when we gaze upward at the glory of God, if our concern is with
the name of God and the glory of God that His name would be praised and His name would
be known, then we would have a similar concern, a similar passion, as did our faithful forefathers. That our concern would be indeed a heart for
the lost, because it's not ultimately a heart for the lost that we want to have, but a heart
for the lost that those who are the children of God from before the foundation of the earth
would praise God. That we would be so jealous for the praise
of God, that we would be so consumed with the glory of God, that God's name would be
known, that it's for that reason we would have a heart for the lost. You see, too often in our day, too often we
set people into two different groups. We set people into the group of those who
care about theology and have a heart for God, a heart to learn the things of God, and we
set into an entirely different and even opposite group of people who have a heart for people,
those who have a heart for the lost. And so what we typically do is we say, "Those
who have a heart for God and a heart for theology, a heart to learn, they want to learn the things
of God, they want to know truth and contend for the truth, those are people who are consumed
with theology." And over here we have those people who aren't
really concerned about theology and don't really seem to study theology a whole lot,
don't seem to really be concerned for contending for the truth, those are the people that,
well, they're sweet and they're nice and they have a heart for people, they have a heart
for the lost. John Calvin said, "A good missionary is a
good theologian, and a good theologian is a good missionary." We should be one and the same. And the more we study theology, and the more
we study the history of our theology and the forefathers who studied the Word of God and
helped to understand and to explain the theology of Scripture, these were those heroes of the
faith that sacrificed and served and gave themselves as martyrs, and the blood of those
martyrs was and still is the seed of the church. You look at so many of the expansions from
Calvin to Geneva because of persecution, so many of the Puritans to the New World because
of persecution. It was that they might worship God according
to His Word, that they might worship God according to the way God commanded that they would worship
Him. Why? Because they were consumed with the glory
of God, they were consumed that God's name might be praised, not the way in which man
demanded or restricted, but the way in which God commanded and delights in. Paul had a heart for the lost. The Apostle Paul had a heart for his kinsmen. He had a heart for those who were dying without
Christ. Now if we were to look at any chapter in Scripture
and we were to point our friends who don't understand Reformed theology, who don't understand
the doctrines of grace, and we were to point them to one chapter in Scripture and say,
"You need to read this chapter in Scripture. In fact you need to study it, you need to
read it ten times and study in depth and then come back and we'll discuss it," what chapter
would that be? I think many of us would suggest chapter 9
of Romans. It could be said that chapter 9 of Romans
is one of the most difficult chapters in the New Testament. But have you ever noticed what comes just
before that most difficult portion of Romans 9 and what comes just after that most difficult
portion of Romans 9? Look with me at the outset of chapter 9, Paul
writes, "I am speaking the truth in Christ -- I am not lying; my conscience bears me
witness in the Holy Spirit -- that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed
and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsman according to the flesh." It's similar to what Moses prayed in Exodus
32 after the great sin with the golden calf. Moses even prayed, "Lord, if You would, if
You would make atonement, even blot my name out of the book." Paul is saying, "I wish I myself could even
be accursed for them." Paul's heart for Israel, Paul's heart for
those who were dying without Christ, and then at the end of chapter 9, working through God's
sovereignty in all of salvation, and election, reprobation towards the end now and ignoring
the chapter division at the outset in verse 1, "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer
to God for them is that they may be saved." Do we have this heart's desire for our fellow
citizens, or do we despise them? Do we walk down the street and look these
people in the eyes and say, "To hell with them, they deserve it anyway"? Or are we brought to prayer? When was the last time you prayed for the
lost in your city? When's the last time you prayed for the lost
in your family? You know for most of us, we give up on people. We stop praying for them. We just give up, because it's not always easy
to keep praying, it's not always easy to be that effectual, fervent prayer. We don't pray for politicians, we don't pray
for celebrities, we don't pray for people who we think are just so far gone. We don't pray for those who are our enemies,
we don't pray for those who hate us, we don't pray for those who disagree with us typically. We pray typically for people whom we like. We often pray for people who are like us and
people who look like us. But we are called even to pray for terrorists
like the Apostle Paul. We are called to pray for those who seem far
gone, knowing that God's grace is more powerful than the most stubborn and hard heart. Paul had a heart for the lost. He had a heart for his kinsmen. He had a heart for those who were dying without
Jesus Christ. Spurgeon says, "If sinners be damned, at least
let them leap over hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our
arms wrapped around their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, let it be filled in
the teeth of our exertions and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for." Paul writes, and this is so often the case
for so many who are so religious all around us, even those who have no real religion they
say they're spiritual, don't they? That they're a man of faith or a woman of
faith. Or they have their own religion, they have
their own relationship with God, they've sort of worked it out. Have you talked with these people? "I know God, He knows me." Their thinking is, "Well, you know I'm okay,
and I'm not that bad and God's a good God, right? He is a merciful God. He's a God of love, so why wouldn't God love
me? Why shouldn't God love me?" And so, they have their own God. They have their own sort of self-conceived
religion, this deal they've worked out, they think, between them and God. They have a knowledge, but it's a knowledge
that will lead them to condemnation. Paul writes in verse two of chapter 10, "For
I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, being
ignorant of the righteousness of God." That is, they're ignorant of God's character,
His holiness, what God demands. That's what people are ignorant of. They don't understand, and they don't realize
what God demands and who He is, as a holy and righteous being. They don't understand His standard. They think they're good enough, or they hope
that they're good enough. And they don't realize, they don't understand,
they don't have real knowledge of the righteousness of God. And so they seek to establish their own way
so they don't have to submit to God's righteousness, for God is the, Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone who believes. Christ is the fulfillment of the law. Christ is the culmination. "For Moses," Paul writes in verse five, "he
writes about the righteousness that is based on the law that the person who does the commandments
shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says,
'Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?" (that is, to bring Christ down)
or "Who will descend into the abyss?" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? 'The word is near you, it's in your mouth
and in your heart' (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)." Now if you're like me and reading that passage
right here this evening, you say, "What on earth is Paul saying? It's a little confusing. Paul, what on earth are you getting at?" Well, there's a great deal that Paul is doing
here. But one of the, one of the simple things that
he's doing here is he's bringing us back to Deuteronomy where Moses is talking about the
law and obeying the law and the command of the law, suggesting that the law is near. Well now what Paul does is he puts Christ
in that place as the end of the law, as the telos, as the culmination, the fulfillment
of the law. And he says, "Christ is not far away." You don't have to go over the sea to find
Him. You don't have to go down into the abyss and
bring Him up. You don't have to climb your way to heaven
to find Him there and attain Christ. No, Christ is near. Christ has come. Christ is close. You see, every religion in all the world says,
"We have got to make our way to Christ. We've got to make our way to God. We've got to make our way to righteousness. We have got to climb some ladder. We have to go down even through the fourfold
path and the old eightfold way of Buddhism through suffering and misery. Christianity is the only religion in all the
world that says God has sovereignly worked all things together to come down and to reach
us because we could not, in our own strength and by our own will and by our own knowledge
or intelligence, work our way to Him. He came down and condescended to our weakness
in that while we were yet sinners against Him, hiding from Him, running from Him, even
killing Him if He showed up in our face, which is precisely what we did. And He came down. He's not far off; He's close at hand. He's near us, because Paul says, and he reasons
in such beautiful and such simple terms in verse 9, "Because if you confess with your
mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you
will be saved." Once and for all, by faith and faith alone,
in Christ alone, all as Paul has established in chapter 9 by the grace of God alone, "For
with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." It's that simple. Those who complicate the gospel are doing
the devil's work, and there are a good many of them standing in a good many pulpits in
a lot of churches in our day, particularly in the United States. We not only have outright and rank heretics
filling the pulpits of so many churches in the States, but what's much worse is we have
people who are sort of shuffling the gospel to the back or playing games with it, trifling
with it, complicating it, adding to it, making the gospel so difficult, making this simple
message of the gospel so incomprehensible that children certainly couldn't even understand
it. When we contend for the gospel, when the Reformers
contended for the gospel, it wasn't simply, it wasn't simply that they might retain the
gospel, but that they might retain the simplicity of the gospel. Because it's a simple and beautiful message
and if we ever lose that, we've lost. If we ever lost the simplicity of the gospel,
we've lost the gospel, you see! Because as some have said the gospel is so
rich, so deep that the greatest theologians can never out-study its riches, yet it's something
that even little children should be able to understand. Beware of those who complicate the gospel. The gospel is the simple announcement, that
proclamation of what God has done for us in Christ, and all by the power of the Spirit. And Paul is making it as simple as he possibly
can in this magnum opus of his systematic theology and then he quotes from the Old Testament
and brings us through this amazing tight logic and reasoning in verse 11 and following, "For
the Scripture says, 'Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.' For there is no distinction between Jew and
Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved." For all who trust, to call for rescue, for
help, and salvation. "To everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord," what does this mean? That the gospel is for everyone. This is something that Nicodemus in John 3
and many others did not fully grasp; that the gospel is for everyone. Yes, to the Jew first because it was to the
Jew to whom the Word of God, the oracles, the prophets, the Law of God was given. But the gospel is for all, for whosoever would
believe. So, everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord, that means that Christ is accessible to all and the gospel must be preached to
all, because it is for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, to the Jew and also
to the Greek. "How then," Paul asks in this beautiful logic,
"How then will they call on him on whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in whom they have
never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?" You know it seems so simplistic, doesn't it,
this reasoning of Paul's? We almost want to say, "Paul, why tell us
such obvious things? Why tell us such plain and simple things?" Because I think we are so quick to forget
it. God is the primary cause. He is the one who causes all things. God, in His sovereignty, is the one who has
foreordained all things that come to pass, and He is the one who is actively, sovereignly,
and providentially working all things out according to His perfect will, according to
what pleases Him. You know, we don't know why God does all that
He does in particular, but we do know ultimately why God does what He does, don't we? Because God tells us it is all according to
His good pleasure and all for His glory, as we read in Romans 9. And Paul helps us understand in this very
clear reasoning that requires preaching, that is the secondary means. God has commanded and God has ordained this
means to be used in the conversion of lost souls and the conversion of those whom He
has foreordained before the foundation of the earth. This secondary means, the preached Word, the
preached gospel is that secondary and ordinary means of grace that God has ordained to use
in the salvation of souls. Now, one thing that ought not be missed is
what Paul has already mentioned it earlier in chapter 10, that is prayer. Something that we too often forget to do,
because prayer isn't easy. But Paul prayed for them. Paul prayed that they would be saved. Paul prayed to God that they would be saved
because Paul didn't believe, nor should we believe in the power of prayer, we believe
in the power of God who answers prayer. And so we beseech God, we go to Him and we
pray to the Lord of the harvest not only that He would send out workers into His harvest,
but we pray to the Lord of the harvest that He would bring the fruit, because ultimately
what we are called to do in being faithful to God is to plant, is to water, knowing that
the Lord will bring the increase if He so chooses, in His time, and all according to
His perfect will. And that means we have to be patient. That means we have to be steadfast. Praying and preaching, and these ordinary
means of grace that God has ordained that go forth from mouths. Many of you have heard, and perhaps some of
you have quoted that line that is attributed to Francis of Assisi, "Preach the gospel at
all times, and if necessary use words." Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary
use words. Now it sounds good, doesn't it? Because we understand the impulse behind that,
don't we? The impulse behind that is that we as Christians
would live in such a way that we would bear fruit in such a way in our spheres of influence,
in our families, in our communities, in our churches; wherever we are that we would bear
such fruit that we would be the salt and light of the world so as, as people see that fruit,
as people see that light, as they bear witness to our salt, as they bear witness to the fruit
that they would glorify our Father in heaven, right? That's sort of the impulse behind that. There are two problems with that quotation. First of all, Francis never said it, and secondly,
it's not biblical. Because words are absolutely necessary in
the proclamation and in the preaching of the gospel. It's not to set aside how we are called to
live before the watching world, by no means. But the only way in which lost souls are converted
to Christ is through the preaching of the gospel. And you know why so many of us don't preach
the gospel in our day today? You know why so many of us don't start up
conversations in the workplace, at family gatherings with those fathers, mothers, sons,
daughters, brothers, and sisters who are not Christians? It's because it's hard. Anyone who suggests that preaching the gospel
to sinners dying and going to hell without Christ is easy is probably crazy. When we were growing up, what did our parents
teach us? Or at least what did our mothers teach us? "If you don't have anything nice to say, then
don't say anything at all." Perhaps you have something similar to that
here. And so we grow up, and we are taught to be
kind. We're taught to be polite. We're taught to have good manners. We're taught not to say anything mean that
would hurt anyone's feelings, aren't we? And if we really know what we're saying, then
we can recognize that the hardest thing in the world is to tell someone who is dying
and headed straight for hell that if they do not repent, they will perish. It is hard to go up to people, not just to
strangers, not just to people in other countries and other sides of the world, but to our friends,
to our loved ones and to say, "My friend, my son, my grandfather, I know you think you
know Christ, I know you think you have God in your life, I know you think you're going
to be okay but if you are not trusting, and depending, resting on Jesus Christ and His
works, not your own, for salvation, you have no hope." And that's hard to say. That's hard news to preach because when we
preach the good news, we have to give the hard news. Because if we don't give the bad news and
the hard news, then the good news almost seems useless. If we're not talking about sin, if we're not
talking about what we're saved from and the wrath of God and the eternal condemnation
of God, then what are we preaching at all? We're just preaching a good life and peace. Well, the world preaches that. Preaching the gospel is hard, but it requires
preaching. It requires having a heart for those who are
lost and dying without Christ. Those who belong to Him from before the foundation
of the world, foreknown by God, foreloved by God, in the mind of God, known by Him,
chosen in Christ. It means that we'll pray, and it often means
for most of us who don't care as much as we should and grow too often complacent and apathetic,
we need to first pray that God would actually give us a heart to care for those who are
lost and dying without Christ, so that we would have what it takes to preach to them,
the good news of Christ. Because faith comes by hearing, hearing the
word of Christ. And when we preach the gospel, when we plant
the gospel, a church grows. And when the church grows, and the church
is about the business of doing that which church is to be about, as we read about the
lovely depiction of what the church is in Acts chapter 2, "The church gathering together,
devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, and the breaking of bread
and the prayers, awe came upon every soul in the church, and many wonders and signs
were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had
all things in common. They were selling their possessions and belongings
and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need." Mind you, this is not the government taking
money from some and giving it to others. These are Christians who are generously, graciously,
out of the goodness of their hearts sharing it with those other Christians who are truly
in need because they couldn't get jobs because of persecution. They took care of each other. They loved each other. This greatest apologetic to the watching world,
their unity, their care and their love. They sold, they gave out of generosity. "And day by day, attending the temple together,
breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God, and having all the favor with all the people." And the church being the church in a very
ordinary and simple way, not having to come up with constantly new themes and schemes,
constantly having to change the way they do this and that, constantly having to sort of
make the gospel relevant, but just being the church in a beautiful, ordinary, and simple
way preaching the gospel, being concerned with the Apostles' doctrine, eating together,
loving each other, caring for each other. The Lord added to their number day by day
those who were being saved. Dearly beloved, we are called to be faithful. We are called to know the gospel, to love
that gospel, and to proclaim that gospel. And whether we're Christians in the United
States, or Christians here in Belfast, or wherever we are, we are called to remain steadfast
in the contending for the gospel and the proclamation of the gospel because this is not ultimately
about anything else than the very glory of God. The Reformation was about the glory of God
and the name of God, that His name would be known to all the earth. And may we be about that same end, that we
and all the elect of God from all the nations that God should call them, that we might all
together glorify God and enjoy Him forever as we rest in the finished work of our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Our Lord, we thank You for Your grace. It is indeed amazing. We thank You, O Lord, for Your sovereign love
by which You have loved us and called us. Help us, Father, to have this same missionary
zeal and impulse. Not for the sake of our name, but for the
sake of the name of Jesus Christ, for Your name our triune God that You, O Lord, would
get all the glory. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
