1159. Innocence From the Blood of All Men

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Every day, students are blessed by the preaching and teaching of the Bible from the University Chapel Platform. We're continuing a series from Acts 20 preached in Seminary Chapel. Today's speaker is Dr. David Whitcomb from Taylor, South Carolina.

And the passage is Acts 20, 25-27. You debate the difficult issues. This is the place where you get all of the answers so that in a few years to come when you are finally in that place that God has ordained for you to do ministry, you will have all the answers.

Maybe not. By the time you leave here and get yourself settled in the place that God has ordained for you, many of the questions have changed. So, what do you do? How do you have any confidence whatsoever? As you go out into a world that is vacillating, changing, always something new, and you need to preach the gospel to that world who is not going to show up at your doorsteps begging you to give them some kind of truth from the gospel so that they can become a faithful member of the local church.

Where do you get your confidence? Well, God gave Paul the answer to that question, and He gave the answer to that question to Timothy. In 2 Timothy 4, as Paul described the world into which Timothy was going to be ministering, your world, he described it like this, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. By having each in years that will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. How do you minister in that kind of a world? Well, actually the answer was in verse 2 of that text. Preach the word.

Be ready in season, out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching. And that was not simply an idea, a concept that Paul had picked up in seminary. All he stated there was his practice. That's what Paul practiced. So in our text here, which is part of Paul's farewell speech to the leaders of the church that was in Ephesus, he described his preaching ministry with three verbs. Two verbs describe for us exactly what he did, and one verb gives us the great confidence that he had because of what he was doing in his ministry.

What was he doing? Well first of all in verse 25 you see that he was proclaiming the kingdom to people that God had brought into his influence so that he could encourage them, so that he could teach them, and yet he confesses at this point that he knows full well the time is coming when he's going to be separated from them. Verse 25, I know, behold, I now know that none of you will see my face again. Kind of wonder how Paul knew that. Well obviously Paul, like many of the other scripture writers, yay all of the scripture writers at some point in their life, received special revelation from the Holy Spirit. In fact if you back up a couple of verses, verse 22 Paul said this, I now, behold I am going to Jerusalem constrained, how, by the Holy Spirit. So what does he know? Not knowing what will happen to me there except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. So like the other writers of scripture, Paul just had this special revelation so he was absolutely confident that when he went to Jerusalem, he was going to face some really unfavorable circumstances, but Paul didn't live 24-7 under the special revelation of the Holy Spirit.

In many ways he was almost as normal as you and I are. So what is this? Is this a revelation of the Holy Spirit? I don't think so. I think this would probably be more like what you would call a gut feeling. Just a gut feeling like, you know, if I'm going to Jerusalem, and the Holy Spirit said things are going to be difficult, likely I'm never going to see you again. But in fact, it's possible that Paul was wrong.

Gut feelings can be wrong, so you have to be very, very careful. That's why he always appealed to the scripture's authority. Because it's entirely possible that maybe Paul actually did see these people again. We know that when he went to Jerusalem, he was arrested, he was put in prison, he was in prison, Caesarea, for about two years, probably a little bit longer than two years, and then he was released from prison. We know that sometime after that release, Paul wrote to Timothy again. And when he wrote to Timothy, 2 Timothy you call the letter, Timothy was pastoring the church, where? Ephesus. And what did Paul say to him? 2 Timothy 4 verse 13, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture. You get the idea, Paul was planning on showing up at Ephesus, having been released from prison. We know in that second letter, that he wrote, while he's in prison, as far as we know, the last time he's in prison, he's at the end of his life, and he writes to Timothy, and he clearly indicates there that in that time when he had been out of prison, he had visited Corinth, Miletus, chapter 4 verse 20, he had been in Troas, chapter 4 verse 13, but did he ever get to Ephesus where he had already sent Tychicus? I don't think so. I believe if he had arrived in Ephesus and had seen these people again, he would have said so specifically in 2 Timothy. It's missing.

I'm going to assume that he was exactly right on that gut feeling. He didn't get to see these people. And that's a good lesson for us, because sometimes we go into our tasks, our ministry that God gives to us, and we go about it as though, this is it, this is the way it will always be, and it's never going to change. Things change. You don't know for sure how long you're going to have a privilege of ministering to the people you minister to.

Any more than Paul did. There's certainly no clear indication when there might be a time of separation. So we can't tell how long we're going to be with those special people that God gives to us, because God changes plans sometimes. Or if you're ministering in Greenville, you really never have any idea how long you're going to be able to minister to those people, because they keep moving. You just don't know.

Let's not blame the people. Pastors move around way too much. I don't know if you're aware of that. I know when I was in seminary, the rule of thumb was a pastor stayed in a church four and a half years.

That's not very long. It's pretty common for someone to visit our church. They've retired, they've moved to Greenville, they're going to take up residency here. I'll strike up a conversation with them, and in that conversation, I am going to ask at some point, where are you from? It's not unusual for me to get a response like this. You know, I'm from all over the place. And when somebody tells me that, you know what I say? I always respond the same way. I say, oh, you're either retired military or retired pastor. And 100 percent of the time I'm right.

It's one of the two. I'm from all over the place. I've been a community for 33 years.

I know. Your immediate response is, that guy's too lazy to move. Well, actually, in 33 years, I've learned some very, very important lessons. You know, one of the most important lessons I've learned in staying in the same place for 33 years is the joy of watching how God brings resolution to conflict. You know, if you leave in the middle of the problem, you never get the joy of seeing how that worked out.

But even with that, we just never know for sure how long we're going to be there. And therefore, we ought to go about our ministry as if this is our last day. I think that's how Paul might have felt as he was talking to these men. You look at the context of his statement and he is very direct with them as if it's true.

These are the last words I'm going to give you. Kidderminster, there's a statue, a little town that's about 15 miles southwest of Birmingham, England. It's a statue of one of my heroes, Richard Baxter. When he was only 16 years old, he was called a minister in this town of Kidderminster. At that time, there were about 850 families in the town. And he ministered there for some 19 years to those people and he preached to them three times a week. He catechized each one of those families every year. Well, then the English Civil War came along and Baxter moved from place to place. In fact, he was a chaplain with the army for a while.

1650, he went back to minister again at Kidderminster. He finished his ministry there, had a time when he was in prison because of preaching the gospel. But in that town is this statue. It stands before the building where he preached.

It's still there. And on that statue is a plaque that gives us the philosophy, the essence of Baxter's ministry. It says this, I preached as never sure to preach again and as a dying man to dying men. That's how we do ministry because we just never know.

What do you preach? Well, Paul says, I've gone among you in and out, verse 25, proclaiming the kingdom. Now to go in and out among these people indicates that he was with them. In fact, it's a really interesting word. Go look up the verb. It's a word that would describe a flood overflowing its banks and then the water touches everything. It's a great word to describe the news about Jesus that went into every town in every region.

It just goes. And Paul says, this is the way I did my ministry. I was with you.

I was among you. We read the story in Acts chapter 19. We read how he went into the city of Ephesus for three months. He had the privilege of preaching in the synagogue. That was typical. He was thrown out of the synagogue.

That was typical. For two years, he was able to rent a school, the school of Tyrannus. And he taught people there for two years. In fact, some manuscripts say that he did that five hours a day.

We can't really say that for sure. And God really did an amazing work while he was there. God changed the hearts of those people through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And it was such a radical change that they lived it out. So much did they live it out that they got together and they had this bonfire where they brought together all of the trinkets and all of the booklets, I'm assuming, or something, the writings. Anything that had to do with the acceptable pagan religion they were a part of. And they destroyed these things. Fifty thousand days wages worth is what we read.

Now it's hard to make that comparison, but that would probably be about six and a half million dollars. You think God did a work? Why? Well, it's because of what Paul was doing. He said, I announced, I proclaimed the kingdom. And proclaiming the kingdom, he uses a word that is one of my favorite words in the whole New Testament. It's the verb, caruso. And that word describes for us the work of a very special person in the Greek and Roman cultures. He was the carus. The carus was a person who was chosen, picked, handpicked by the king to be his spokesman, to be his messenger. So the king would pick somebody who had particular characteristics. And to pick this person, the king was looking for someone who was articulate. Someone who had the voice to be able to proclaim the message of the king.

Someone who was intensely loyal. Someone who was going to be accurate with the words that he was to proclaim, because the king didn't want this man imposing his own opinion on the king's message. The king wanted to be sure that when he sent the message out with his messenger, that his subjects were going to get exactly what he wanted them to have.

So he picked this guy particularly. He had to be a courageous man. Because sometimes the subjects were not going to be amiable to the message the king gave. He had to be intensely loyal, faithful, dependable, trustworthy, responsible. And all of those characteristics were required of a man who would be the spokesman of a mere, dying, earthly king.

How much more should these things be true of us? Who God has chosen to give the eternal message of the eternal king. We should be faithful to declare the king's authority. The king's message.

That's what Paul said. My message is about the kingdom. What is the kingdom? The kingdom is the story about Jesus Christ the king ruling in the hearts of his people, his subjects. The story is about salvation.

The story of the kingdom is how you can get into the kingdom, how you become a citizen of the kingdom only through the miracle of regeneration. And Paul said, I went in and out among the people and I consistently gave that message over and over and over and over and over. And God did an amazing work. And therefore, Paul was able to face these people and say, now, because of that, I testify, I'm innocent of everyone's blood. He had a clear conscience. Paul made that same statement standing before a king sometime later. He was a man who had been a blasphemer. He'd been a man who was a persecutor and yet God in his grace saved him, changed him, blotted out all his sins, gave him a clear conscience. And Paul said, from that point on, I've ordered my life in such a way to maintain a clear conscience before God.

And he did that for two and a half years. Boldly affirming the truth about the king's kingdom with the result that he was innocent of the blood of you all. Wow. That's almost scary. Obviously, this comes from the picture that's given to us in Ezekiel 33, one through six, where the Lord said of his spokesman, if you're going to be my prophet, you proclaim my message. I am sending you to my people to warn them about their sins and the consequences if they don't forsake their sins.

And the gist of the principle is this. You carry out your responsibility. You warn them. You tell them. The onus is on their own head.

If you don't warn them, you're guilty. God said, I will hold you accountable for their blood. That's a pretty serious responsibility, because that means we are serious. We are responsible for eternal souls that God puts in our sphere of influence, our circles.

You know what's going to happen? This is so human. You get a burden for that and you say, you know, I'm really serious. I'm really responsible. I need to carry out this responsibility that God has given to me. So week after week after week, you're diligent. You work hard. You prepare your sermons.

You try to be as accurate as you possibly can be. And week after week after week, you try to get the best arguments that you can possibly get from the Word of God so that you can convince people. And week after week after week, you get up and you preach that sermon, and the same guy goes to sleep every week. And the same kid gets up and goes to the bathroom. Ever notice that? It's always the same ones. Almost the same time in the sermon. They get up. They're a distraction to everybody else around you. And you begin to wonder, is anybody listening?

And you can get really discouraged until something happens like this. It just happened yesterday. My wife, who's my secretary, forwarded an email to me. It came from somebody I never heard of. I don't know who he is. All I know is he lives in Texas. And this is what he wrote. Dr. David's preaching is God's true hope to all listeners.

I love listening to him online in Texas almost 24-7. When I read that, I sat in my seat overwhelmed. And I thought to myself, that's almost the scariest thing I've ever read. I better be more accurate. I better be more sure. I better be more diligent as I am proclaiming the kingdom. Because it's an eternal matter. Let's close with the second verb that Paul uses to describe his ministry. He declared the whole counsel of God, verse 27. He says, I never shrank back. I did not shrink from declaring to you.

Never gave second best. He preached whether it was convenient or not, in season, out of season. He kept on reproving, rebuking, exhorting. He kept on exercising that complete patience in teaching, announcing faithfully. That's what the word means to all the people. What did he announce? The whole counsel of God. Not the preacher's message. It's so easy to resort to personal preferences. To announce what someone else announced and it sounded good and it went over well, so let's announce that. Or an axe to grind.

Or a hobby horse. You don't have to attend a church very long to realize a pastor has a hobby. It comes up in every text, seems like. Paul didn't preach for human approval. He said, I'm declaring, I'm announcing the whole counsel of God, and that is God's plan for salvation. It starts in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. Where at the outset of sin, God said, I'm going to provide the Savior, the seed of the woman, He is going to crush Satan's head. Wonderful promise, that's where it starts.

You know where it ends? Revelation chapter 22. You come to the end of the whole story of salvation, and you read, Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and that they may enter this city by the gate. Preach all the Bible.

Not the easy parts. I talked to a pastor one time, one of these guys moves around a lot. He says, the reason I move every four years is because that's the only number of messages that I have. He's not preaching the whole counsel of God. Preach all the Bible.

I've had the privilege of preaching in the same place for 33 years. And the Lord's just given me this incredible privilege to just preach through almost the entire Bible, verse by verse. Now I'm in Deuteronomy right now, and I'll finish that sometime next year, and then I'm going to Ecclesiastes.

I'm in Luke, I'm just kind of starting Luke, I'm in chapter 6, and I'll finish Luke. And one day, by God's grace and through a miracle, I have to preach through Leviticus. I am so afraid of preaching through Leviticus. Because I know that God has great truths for us there, and I know so much of Leviticus, talking about the sacrificial system, is talking about how we worship God. In a sense I want to get there, but yikes, some of that stuff.

If you want to know what I'm talking about, go read Leviticus 14, when the leper thinks he's healed from his leprosy and he goes to the priest. Why? How do you make that?

You go read it, that's your homework. And say, how do you make that relevant? It's a challenge. Preach all the Bible, even if it's difficult. Preach what the Bible says. Careful exegesis, careful teaching. Because you're going to run into some things in the Bible. I call them divine tensions.

Probably there's other names for it. Infinite truth, that a finite human mind cannot fully comprehend and cannot put together. Truth like, Jesus of Nazareth was fully God and fully man.

Put that together. Because one week you'll be preaching in a text that shows he was fully man. He was weary, he was tired. And the very next week you may be preaching in a text that says he stood on a storm-tossed sea and commanded it to be still.

And someone's going to say, wait a minute, last week. Or, God is love, we know that here in his love, not that we love God, he loved us. And he pours out his wrath on sinners. You see, you hit these divine tensions.

One of the most classic, and you have to deal with this. God is absolutely sovereign, having chose who will be saved before the foundation of the earth. And the sinner is absolutely responsible to believe. You know, think ahead how you're going to preach Romans chapter 9. I mean the whole chapter of Romans chapter 9 is God is sovereign, he chooses Jacob over Esau and he even chooses to use Pharaoh as an example of wickedness. And you come down to the last three verses and God says through Paul, and you know what Israel, it's your fault.

You don't believe. You stumbled over the stumbling stone Jesus. Preach all of the Bible. And preach what it says. Even the divine tensions, because I don't know if you saw this, but that showed up in our text.

Do you see that? Why is Paul innocent of the blood of all people? Well Paul could have been Calvinist about it. He said, wow God, you elected everybody. But he carried out his responsibility to the glory of God and he said, I proclaim the kingdom. I announce the whole council of God. Therefore I am innocent of the blood of you all. Now that is God's plan for us. Our plan is to trust God and trust his message therefore so much that we just literally pour our lives into that. This is the answer.

These are the solutions. This is why I just choose not to preach topically. I just don't. I just choose to preach verse by verse, exegetically, expository through the scriptures.

Why? Because sooner or later we're going to hit every sin. I always had this strange feeling, this strange theory, that if I was preaching topically Satan would determine the direction of the church.

Because I would just want to attack whatever the issue is. But if you just preach through the whole council of God, you'll hit all the issues. And it will always be in God's timing. So that dear saint can come up to you after the service and say, boy, you were sure picking on me today.

And I can say, probably we need to talk because I don't know what you're talking about. That's how God does his work with his council. And we need to preach it. Father, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for giving it to us. Thank you for helping us to understand it. Help us to preach it. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a message by Dr. David Whitcomb preached in Seminary Chapel at Bob Jones University. Join us again tomorrow as we conclude this series from Acts 20 here on The Daily Platform.