Acts 12:23
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Well, it was, as I understand it, at one of these evening prayer services in what now feels like many years ago that this church prayed for my salvation. So it is such a joy to be with you all tonight, opening up God's word with you to be doing this. I am so grateful for you. The Lord has used you to grow me. You have cared for me in ways that I could not do justice with words.
So it is such a joy to be with you tonight doing this, and I praise God for you. But I also say that, even more importantly to say, as an encouragement, as a reminder that the work that you're doing tonight matters. Praying for friends, for family members, for neighbors, for students to be saved from sin and death, to come to know the Lord.
It has a real impact. So don't ever let what we're doing here tonight become monotonous. Don't ever let it just become merely a routine. Let it be regular, but not just merely a routine. Don't ever take it for granted. Don't ever let it pass you by. So keep being faithful with where the Lord has you in your life. And praise the Lord that as evidenced by tonight and the year in review that Greg just sent out a few days ago, that while not perfect, this church is about what Jesus says to be about, and that's making disciples of him.
So keep holding fast to the gospel, church. as we hold each other to the gospel and then out to the rest of the world. So keep going. Keep sending in those prayer requests. Keep being faithful with where the Lord has you, especially in light of our passage. And I also say that, and because of, and even more importantly to say, about the awesome, transforming power of the Word of God. Let's turn to it now. If you open up your Bibles with me to the book of Acts, chapter 13, verse 23.
Acts 13 23 of this man's offspring God has brought to Israel a savior Jesus as he promised of this man's offspring God has brought to Israel a savior Jesus as he promised what I'm trying to convince you of tonight in other words hopefully the point of me being up here for the next few minutes is going to be the point of our passage, and that is that God will do exactly what he says he will do. God will do exactly what he says he will do, so we can trust him. So we can trust him. We're going to have two main reflections tonight in light of this.
First reflection, our God is a God who saves. Our God is a God who saves. And second, Our God is a God who keeps his promises. So first reflection, our God is a God who saves. So the Apostle Paul, after being saved himself, he meets the risen Son of God, literally on a road. He stops persecuting Christians and now, sometime later, he's been sent out, authorized by Jesus on the first of his missionary journeys.
a persecutor of christ now a planter of churches for christ so paul and barnabas go to a place called pisidia they're in a synagogue there and one of the leaders of the synagogue actually asked paul to preach big mistake but what an opportunity for the gospel and our passage tonight is the mountaintop of Paul's sermon. I'm not going to read the whole sermon, not only because I'll get lit up like a Christmas tree in service review, but also because we simply don't have the time, and it's not our passage. I deserve it.
Actually, I don't even think we have service review, do you? So maybe I'll read it. No, i'm kidding i'm kidding but what's paul's point though what is he concerned with who is he speaking to don't these people know god paul's point is the most important thing they would ever hear i assume a lot of the people thought they had it all figured out that they knew god i assume that a lot were comfortable that they were content even they thought they were happy but they were far from it deceived lost I'm sure that's someone you know as we've prayed for tonight maybe it's you for some it was like water to a dying man years of waiting years of questions like Greg talked about this morning, generations of waiting even. Yet here we have the answer,
God's answer to all the pain and suffering in the world stemming from the fall. Adam's ruined race, a lineage of sin and destruction, a history of rebellion. It was our ruin. Our self-inflicted failure. And then God's answer. The Lord's promise with his undeserving people.
The hope of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The knowledge of salvation, as Luke calls back to from Zechariah in Luke chapter 1. It has been given in Jesus the Nazarene. God has come to forgive sins because he is tender with mercy. And he could have rightfully left us in darkness. Yet he is merciful in the blood of this man from our passage.
Paul's point here is the culmination of the entire timeline to this point. Even in humanity's worst moment, in the fall, when Adam rebelled against the God who gave him everything. In Genesis 3, there was a promise. Even when brother killed brother, or when God flooded the earth in judgment, there was a promise.
Or when the people of God were subjugated in Egypt, enslaved, or even after when they were faithless in the wilderness, there was a promise. When the people of God wanted a king and they finally got a great one, and even he fell in adultery and then killed the husband, there was a promise. And when the throne of David sat empty, the people of God seemed done for, carried off in a Babylon even.
There was still a promise. Just look at our passage. Jesus would be the one man that the line of David leads to and ends with. It ends with one man who would also be the God who created them. And he would bear the weight of the judgment for all those men before him. And he would stand in the place of countless millions of others.
He had to come, and he had to die, and he had to rise. Because God will do exactly what he says he will do. Our God is a God who saves. He does it through the gospel of Jesus the Nazarene. When this took root for Paul, it changed everything for him, just like it does for us.
Church, we have the greatest thing that there is to offer. There's nothing better. How else would we approach our friends and our family, especially the ones we've prayed for tonight, in all the festivities of this time of year? For our youth here, there's nothing out there in the world that's better. The world will offer up all sorts of things, but nothing compares to its creator and your redeemer.
And if the gospel is true, and it is, then what else would we do than make disciples with our lives? Our God is a God who saves. It's what drives us when we pray for everything we did tonight. It's what we remember when we take the Lord's Supper as we're getting ready to tonight. And our God will do exactly what he says he will do. So our God is a God who saves.
Second reflection. Our God is a God who keeps his promises. It might be the most important thing for us to know. Yet it seems to be what we're quickest to forget. I think that happens, as Greg alluded to this morning, Because of how hyper-focused we are on ourselves. We're so concerned with the day-to-day, the right here and right now.
But something we can chew on, and I double-checked with chat GPT on this. The time between Abraham and Jesus. So the promise that God made to Abraham and then Jesus. 2,000 years. The time between David, who our passage references, and then Jesus, who he also references, of course. A little over a thousand years.
It's so easy for us to be wrapped up in everything going on immediately. We need everything to be right immediately, especially in our culture. Look at the last three words of our verse. How often do you act as if God doesn't keep his promises or can't be trusted?
What's going on in your heart when that's happening? What habits are in your life that leads you to that? Church, if he took care of your greatest need, your greatest problem, as he promised, then how could he not be trusted with every other need and every other promise?
Problem, excuse me. That too. Man tries his own way, time and time again. We act as if we're on the throne. I know I do. We trust in our own way, in our own strength. We have a God who keeps his promises. He said he would come to crush the power of sin and death. And he did.
He said he would come to wipe away every tear from our eyes, to make all things right, to make all things new, and he will. If you want to know God better, if you want to trust him more, cherish his word, or have your faith increase, then through life, through its disappointments, even through its unspeakable losses or hurts, What do you do?
You ask the Lord to keep you because he is the one who keeps his promises. He is the one who saves and not anyone else. Not me, not anyone. The ground of our hope is not in our circumstances, our successes or failures, but it's in the God who will do exactly what he says he will do. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? As Paul encourages us, our God is a God who keeps his promises, even when it seems impossible. I'm sure it did for Noah, as we read about in Genesis a few weeks ago, on the ark. Whether it was day 20 or 120, you don't think Noah began to wonder?
As we know it did for Abraham and Sarah, we know they didn't think God would keep his promise. Or when the people of God were slaves in Egypt, or in the wilderness, or carried off into Babylon, Ask yourself, where have you failed to trust in the promises of God, to believe that he is trustworthy? I mean, what is sin after all? What leads us to it? And then ask yourself, where has God ever failed in keeping his promises to his undeserving people, even when they have failed?
Why else do we covenant together at 3rd Avenue? Why do we give to our church, send people around the world with one main purpose? Why do we support a youth group or send people from this church to that campus? Why do we support a program to train future pastors, Lord willing? Why do we meet here every week to pray for all these things? Church, it's because God will do exactly what he says he will do.
He keeps his promises and he saves. So let's live in a way that our hope really does rest in that. And let's live our lives with an urgency that also reflects that. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we praise you that you are faithful and you keep your promises even though we don't. We thank you for being a God that saves, that redeems sinners, and that keeps promises to his undeserving people.
We pray that we would live our lives in a way that reflects that. We pray these things in the name of your son. Amen.