Transcript
Tonight, in the will of God, we begin a four-week series on the subject of baptism and the doctrine of salvation in the book of Acts. It is quite possible that you have friends who belong to the Church of Christ, and if you do, and if you ever sit down and talk with them, the chances are excellent that they will tell you that it is necessary to be baptized in order to be saved. Possibly one of the verses that they will quote to you is one of their favorite verses in Acts 2:38: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
We wish, eventually, to look at this particular verse very directly and very specifically. But before we can do so, I think it is necessary to lay some foundation, and, in particular, to study a passage which I believe presents to us the normative experience of salvation as it is given in the book of Acts. And therefore, I’m starting somewhat backward by asking you to turn to the tenth chapter of the book of Acts.
Acts chapter 10, beginning to read at verse 1:
There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway. He saw in a vision evidently, about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, ‘Cornelius.’ And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, ‘What is it, Lord?’ And he said unto him, ‘Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter. He lieth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the seaside. He shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do.’
And now shall we skip down in our reading to verse 30 of the same chapter. Peter has now arrived at Cornelius’s house, and Cornelius said,
Four days ago I was fasting until this hour, and at the ninth hour I prayed in my house, and, behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing, and said, ‘Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God. Send therefore to Joppa, and call hither Simon, whose surname is Peter. He is lodged in the house of one Simon a tanner by the seaside, who, when he cometh, shall speak unto thee.’ Immediately therefore I sent to thee, and thou hast well done that thou art come.
Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God.’ Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, ‘Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him. The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: He is Lord of all: that word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him. And we are witnesses of all things which He did, both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree.
Him God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead. And He commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is He which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins.’
While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, ‘Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?’ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord.
Then prayed they him to tarry certain days.
And the apostles and brethren that were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the Word of God. And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision contended with him, saying, “Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.” But Peter rehearsed the matter from the beginning, and expounded it by order unto them, saying,
I was in the city of Joppa praying: and in a trance I saw a vision, a certain vessel descend, as it had been a great sheet, let down from heaven by four corners, and it came even to me. Upon the which, when I had fastened mine eyes, I considered, and saw fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And I heard a voice saying unto me, ‘Arise, Peter; slay and eat.’ But I said, ‘Not so, Lord: for nothing common or unclean hath at any time entered into my mouth.’ But the voice answered me again from heaven, ‘What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.’
And this was done three times: and all was drawn up again into heaven. And, behold, immediately there were three men already come unto the house where I was, sent from Caesarea unto me. And the Spirit bade me go with them, nothing doubting. Moreover these six brethren accompanied me, and we entered into the man’s house. And he showed us how he had seen an angel in his house, which stood and said unto him, ‘Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter, who shall tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved.’
And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning. Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.’ Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as He did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I, that I could withstand God?”
When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, “Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.”
Quite a number of years ago, I was sitting by a campfire on the grounds of the Greenwood Hills Bible Conference in Pennsylvania, and I was listening to a speaker who had formerly been a missionary to Persia. He was a very distinguished-looking man, a short man, white hair, white beard, a very distinguished little goatee. His name was Richard Hill. I had often heard Richard Hill preach the Word of God, but this particular night, by the campfire, he told me a story that I have never forgotten.
He said that years before, while he was a missionary in Persia, he had come on one occasion to a remote village in the interior of that land. He had never been to this village before, and as he was either sitting or standing in the public square, he was approached by an inhabitant of the village, a native Persian. The man greeted him cordially, invited him to his house, and offered him lodging. Mr. Hill was a little surprised by this unexpected hospitality, but he accepted it.
When they had an opportunity to sit down and talk together in this man’s house, the man told Mr. Hill this. He said some time before he had had a dream, and in his dream he had seen a figure, and the figure said to him, “A stranger will be coming to your village. When he arrives, receive him into your house, and he will tell you the true way.” I need hardly tell you that Mr. Hill wasted no time in opening the Word of God to this native Persian, explaining to him how the Lord Jesus Christ had come down to earth to die on the cross for his sin, explaining how he could have eternal life by faith in the Savior. Not too surprisingly, that very night this Persian became a Christian.
Now, sometimes when I hear stories like that, I am inclined to wonder about their accuracy. But I knew Mr. Hill to be a sober man of God, a man not given to flights of fancy or wild imagination. And I knew that if Mr. Hill said that that incident occurred, that incident had occurred. And why shouldn’t it? For all over the world, wherever there are men and women, however remote they may be from the Word of God or from the preaching of the gospel, if indeed they really and truly want to know the true God, God will see that they get the message, because the Bible says God is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.
And I am sure that you were able to recognize the striking similarity between the story that I have just told you and the story that we have read about this evening from the Word of God. Cornelius, however, was not in a far-off country. He was actually in the city of Caesarea, on the coast of Palestine, a city that was the capital of the Roman province of Judea, only about 65 miles northwest of the city of Jerusalem. And because Cornelius had the good fortune to be stationed so close to the heart of the Jewish religion, he had obviously fallen under the influence of the Jewish faith. And according to the description that the Bible gives of him, he was now a devout man, one that feared God with all his house, who gave alms to the people of God, and prayed to God alway.
And yet, despite his deep religious devotion, Cornelius was not saved. We know this because, when the words of the angel are quoted in chapter 11, verses 13 and 14, those words are quoted by Peter this way: “Send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter, who shall tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved.” And I would like to begin this evening by alerting you to a fact which I think we sometimes forget, and it is this, that a man can become genuinely religious, sincerely religious, even before he is saved. A man can become genuinely and sincerely religious even before he is saved.
And that is why the Apostle Peter is able to say at the very beginning of his sermon, chapter 10, verses 34 and 35, “I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: for in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.” Now, I happen to know that this is a well-taught Bible church, and I’m sure that some of you are going to ask me the question, how can Peter say to a roomful of unsaved people that God accepts the fact that they fear him and work righteousness? Doesn’t the Apostle Paul say in Romans chapter 3,
There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one
? Doesn’t Paul say that? And indeed he does.
But may I remind you of a very simple fact? Paul is describing man in his natural state apart from God. Paul is describing men as they are uninfluenced by the truth of God. Paul is describing men as they are before the Spirit of God has begun to work in their heart. And it is obvious, if we look very closely at the story that we have read tonight, that Cornelius was a man who had been profoundly influenced by the truth of God. He was a man, obviously, in whose heart the Holy Spirit was working to lead him in the direction of his own personal salvation.
According to chapter 10 and verse 6, when the angel told Cornelius to send for Peter, he told Cornelius, “He will tell thee what thou oughtest to do.” And according to verse 31, when Cornelius himself quotes the words of the angel, he quotes those words as saying, “Thy prayer is heard.” Notice, not “thy prayers are heard,” but “thy prayer is heard.” And in a very real sense, apparently, all of the prayers of Cornelius were, in essence, one prayer. And apparently Cornelius was a man who was seeking after God and wanted to know what he really ought to do.
Some of you may already know that I preach regularly in Dallas at a small church, a large percentage of the members of which are of Mexican-American descent. When I stand up on Sunday morning and look out at my typical audience, I can see people like Carlos and Juan and Marcia and Mary. And these particular people that I happen to be thinking of have one thing in common. All of them first started coming to our meetings while they were adults. Coming, as they usually did, out of Catholic backgrounds, it was difficult for them to grasp the simple way of salvation, the way of assurance through faith in Christ. And they came to our meetings for quite some time before they got saved.
Whatever may have been their original motives in coming, I’m persuaded, from the experience of each of them, that after a while they got interested in what they were hearing, and they got concerned about their personal salvation. And it would not surprise me if, in those particular days, some of them occasionally gave money to the church, or perhaps prayed a little bit more than they were used to doing, or perhaps looked at their Bible, which they were unaccustomed to doing. And in all of these cases, these religious activities were activities that expressed their search for God, expressed the influence the truth of God was having upon their lives, as God was leading them to an understanding of the way of salvation.
And that is the way we ought to look at the experience of Cornelius. And when the Apostle Peter says to him, “I see that in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him,” he certainly does not mean that God accepts people into heaven because they fear him and work righteousness. The Bible is too clear about that:
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us
But God saw the sincerity of Cornelius’s prayers, and He accepted those prayers, and He accepted the alms, as the sincere expression of Cornelius’s desire to know what God really wanted him to do. God accepted him, therefore, as a seeker after Himself. And that is why Peter was there, to tell Cornelius words whereby he and all his house should be saved.
But I want you to notice very carefully that after Peter has spoken the words that we have just quoted from verses 34 and 35, he goes on in verse 36 to say this: “The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ.” And despite all of his religious activities, despite his earnestness and dedication, the crucial thing that Cornelius lacked was peace. And I presume that in an audience like this, that most of you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior. If you are here tonight, that may indicate that you are more religious than someone who happens to be at home watching a television program, but it does not necessarily indicate that you have peace.
And peace is not to be found in religious activity, however devoted and regular that may be. It is only to be found in the word of the gospel which is preached about Jesus Christ. And although Peter says to Cornelius, “God accepts you in the sincerity with which you approach Him,” the very first thing he wants to proclaim to Cornelius is the word that God sent, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, because it was peace that Cornelius needed.
I know that you all know the story of Martin Luther, but it is such a good story we could afford to hear it again. In 1505 he was less than 22 years of age, and he entered a Roman Catholic monastery at Erfurt in Germany. The monastery at Erfurt had never had a monk like Martin Luther. He devoted himself to self-denying practices as no monk had done before him. He prayed long hours into the night. He fasted excessively long periods of time, and he confessed his sins to his father confessor so frequently and so exhaustively that he exhausted himself and confounded his confessor.
And later on Martin Luther wrote, “If ever a monk could have gotten to heaven by his monkery, I would have made it. All of my brothers in the monastery will bear me record that I would have killed myself if I had continued in vigils and prayers and fasting and readings and other good works.” But despite all of his intense activity religiously, Martin Luther still did not have inner peace. Years passed. Now he was a teacher of theology at the University of Wittenberg, and he was a priest in that city, and he was listening to the confessions of other people, and he was sometimes shocked at how little penitence they seemed to feel for their sin, how eagerly they wanted to escape punishment. And still Martin Luther was searching for his own personal salvation.
And then one day, as he was studying the Scriptures in preparation for a lecture at the university, he came across that famous verse in the book of Romans,
The just shall live by faith
And that was like a key that unlocked the door at which Martin Luther had been knocking all those years. And later on he wrote, “Finally, God had mercy upon me, and I saw that the righteousness of God was that gift that God gives by which the righteous man lives, namely faith. The just shall live by faith.” And out of that wonderful insight, to a very large extent, the Protestant Reformation grew.
And if we were to understand the story that we are looking at tonight, we must understand it as the story of a sincere religious seeker who had not yet found peace. And in the moments that remain to me this evening, I would like to call your attention to three significant blessings that came to Cornelius when he did find peace. And I want you to take special note of these blessings, because we must understand them distinctly and separately if we are to understand the more difficult passages that we will be looking at, the Lord willing, in the weeks ahead.
Three blessings that are associated with his peace. And the first of these is suggested in verse 43:
To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins
Forgiveness of sins. And I’m sure that I’m not telling you anything when I tell you that no man can enjoy peace with God until he knows that his sins are forgiven.
You know, last month I did something that I’m very embarrassed about, and I would not even tell you about it tonight if it did not make such a good illustration of what I want to say. But last month I forgot my mother’s birthday. It was on a Tuesday, and on the following Wednesday evening someone just happened to ask me, “When is your mother’s birthday?” And then it occurred to me that it was the day before. And on Thursday morning I rushed out to the Western Union, and I sent her a box of candy and an apologetic telegram. And on Thursday evening I called her up and apologized again, and wished her a happy birthday a couple of days too late.
You know, if I were a married man, I would never make it. I would probably forget my wife’s birthday, and our wedding anniversary, and all those other little things husbands need to remember in order to have happy marriages. But my mother is used to me. She’s known me for many, many years, and she used to tell me when I was young that I would forget my head if it were not fastened on. Dr. Walvoord once relieved my anxiety by telling me that absent-mindedness was an important qualification for a professor, and if that is the major qualification, I have it in abundance.
But you know, I’m happy to tell you tonight that my mother is not holding my forgetfulness against me, and my relationships with her this month are just as peaceful as they were before I forgot her birthday. May I offer you a very simple definition for the forgiveness of sins? The forgiveness of sins is the experience we have when God does not hold our sins against us in any way. And maybe you always felt that that is what you understood forgiveness to be, but before this series is over that precise definition is going to be very, very important to us, and I want to repeat it again, and I want to point out to you that I said nothing about going to hell.
Forgiveness of sins is the experience that we have in which God does not hold our sins against us in any way, in which sins are not a barrier in any way between us and Him. I think all of us will readily concede that if a person is unsaved, obviously his sins are unforgiven, and they stand as a barrier through which he cannot pass into peaceful relationships with God. We first experience forgiveness of sins at the moment that we trust Christ as our own personal Savior.
But I think you also realize that we continue to experience the forgiveness of sins even after we are saved. Even though God, at the moment of our salvation, wipes the whole slate of our past life clean, even after we are saved we oftentimes offend God, and these sins can be a barrier between ourselves and Him, and between peaceful relationships, preventing those relationships, unless we confess those things. The Bible says,
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness
Even if my mother had been holding my forgetfulness against me, she would not have been planning to punish me. I’m too old to be punished by my mother at this point. And she certainly would not have been in the mood to cast me out of the family. If she had been holding my forgetfulness against me, there would have been a barrier between my mother and me that I would have had to get over or around in some way. But there was no question of my losing my status in the family.
And if we are in the family of God, if we have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and been born into that family, when we sin and fail to confess those sins, those sins indeed are a barrier between ourselves and God, but they do not mean that we are cast out of the family, or that we lose the eternal life that God has given us. And I want you to keep both of these facets in mind, therefore, when we talk in future weeks about the forgiveness of sins. Basically, a definition of the forgiveness of sins that will cover our whole experience of that particular blessing would be that God does not hold our sins against us in any way. And this was necessary for Cornelius to experience if he was to enter into peace with God. It is the first of the three major blessings of peace that are mentioned in this passage.
But there is a second. No sooner were the words that we have read in verse 43 spoken than, apparently, Cornelius and everybody who is listening to Peter speak believed the message that Peter proclaimed. And then something happened that was very, very surprising, and I want you to notice it in verse 44: “While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
Now, mark this well. No one was particularly astonished that God should offer the forgiveness of sins to the Gentiles. “To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins.” That was not the surprising thing. The surprising thing was that in addition to the forgiveness of sins, God poured out on the Gentiles the gift of the Holy Ghost.
When I phoned my mother to apologize for forgetting her birthday, she forgave me, but she did not offer to send me a box of homemade cookies. Would that she had, but she didn’t, and I didn’t have any right to expect it. All I was hoping for was forgiveness. And all Cornelius might rightfully have hoped for on this occasion was forgiveness, the removal of the barrier that he sensed lay between himself and God by virtue of his sin. And he got that. But he got more than that. He got also the gift of the Holy Spirit.
When the Apostle Peter went back to Jerusalem, he explains how he understood that gift. He said when that gift was poured out on the Gentiles, he remembered the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, how Jesus had said, “John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” And Peter understood the gift of the Holy Spirit as the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit of God. And what is the significance of that work? Well, according to 1 Corinthians chapter 12,
By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, and have all been made to drink of one Spirit
And what the work of the Holy Spirit in baptizing us into the body of Christ really does is to bring us into the church, into the Christian church, which is His body. And it is at this point, and at this point only, that Peter now speaks of water baptism. And he turns to the other Jews who have accompanied him to Cornelius’s household, and he says, “Who can forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost the same as we?”
Now, I’m happy that I am speaking tonight in a Baptist church, because I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, and I know that almost all of you will agree with me that baptism is something that ought to be reserved for those that we know belong to the body of Christ. When somebody in our little church comes to inquire about baptism, we always like to take them aside and find out if they have put their trust personally in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we know that if they have, they have also been baptized by the Holy Spirit and brought into the body of Christ. And if they are members of the one true church, who can forbid water, that these should not be baptized, who have also been baptized with the Holy Ghost?
And this, I suggest to you, is the normative relationship for our day and age between the gift of the Holy Spirit and the baptism that takes place with water. It is the normative experience. But we shall see other experiences in the book of Acts before we are through. But notice that the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, in this case, precede baptism with water. And so Cornelius was not only forgiven for his sins, that was the first blessing of peace, but the second blessing of his peace was that he was baptized with the Holy Spirit.
But there was a third, which in some ways is the most fundamental of all. When the Apostle Peter returns to Jerusalem, he is criticized by the people in Jerusalem, some of the Jewish Christians there, because of what he has done in fellowshipping with Gentiles. And he explains everything that has happened, and the work of God in the household of Cornelius, emphasizing particularly that God has poured out the Spirit upon the Gentiles just as He did upon the Jews. And when he’s finished, his audience in Jerusalem draws an interesting conclusion, an important conclusion. Notice it in verse 18: “When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, ‘Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.’”
And here is the third great blessing of Cornelius’s peace: life. God has granted unto the Gentiles repentance unto life. Now, it is very, very important for us to understand that although the experience of Cornelius brought to him, at one and the same time, forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and life, that these three great blessings are not by any means the same thing. Forgiveness of sins is not the same thing as receiving the Holy Spirit, and receiving the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as receiving eternal life.
When Jesus was living here upon the earth, He offered eternal life to all those who would trust in Him.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me hath everlasting life
He did not say, “He that believeth on Me shall have everlasting life,” but “he that believeth on Me hath everlasting life.” Therefore, when anyone believed on the Lord Jesus while He was here on earth, they received eternal life, but not the Holy Spirit. John is very clear about this, because he tells us in chapter 7, “The Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
It is one thing to have eternal life. It is an additional thing to have the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this is very, very important indeed. But when the Jerusalem Christians heard that God had given the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles, they concluded that He must also have given them life, the most fundamental blessing of all. “Then hath God granted unto the Gentiles repentance unto life.” It seems that my parents are getting into my message quite a bit tonight, and I don’t apologize for that. I’m very happy to have the parents that I do, and let me use them one more time.
They gave me my Christmas present this year early because they felt I needed it before Christmas came, and I think they were right. It was a very nice gift, and I felt that they didn’t need to give me anything else. But you know how parents are. They didn’t like to think of me sitting in my apartment on Christmas morning not having anything to open, so they sent me a lot of little knickknacks to open on Christmas morning: a box of Christmas cookies, a red tie, which I’m not wearing, red socks, some chamois towels to wash my car off with, whether they were hinting, I don’t know, that I should get to work, a special bar of soap, a couple of other things.
And I suspect that I and my brother are probably the only two people in the whole country that got more than one gift from my parents on Christmas. But it’s very simple to explain that. My parents are the people who gave us life, and because they gave us life, they like to give us other things as well. May I suggest to you that when God gives us eternal life, that most basic and fundamental experience of salvation, when we are born into the family of God and have God’s life, God likes to give us other things along with that. And He does. He gives us the forgiveness of sins. He gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. And along with the gift of the Holy Spirit, which baptizes us into the body of Christ, He gives us all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
But it is very important to understand that underlying everything that God does for us at the moment of our salvation is that basic impartation of life. And the Christians at Jerusalem were driving to the very heart of the matter when they heard the experience of the Gentiles. They said, well, God must have given them life, because it is not until a man has been brought to life from his deadness in trespasses and sins that God is willing to bestow upon him these other wonderful and bountiful blessings.
Do you have the three blessings that came with the peace that God granted Cornelius? You’re going to need them in the weeks ahead as we deal with some very difficult passages. When Cornelius found peace, he found the forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and, most fundamentally of all, he found the gift of life.
We have just finished the month of January, and I suspect that some of you know where the name January came from. It was named for a Roman god named Janus. And Janus is the only god that I know of in Greek or Roman mythology that could be called a two-faced god, not in the sense in which some people are two-faced and we can’t trust them. Janus actually had two faces. He is represented as looking in two opposite directions. And Janus had a temple in the forum at Rome, and the statue of Janus stood in the center of that temple. And at either end of the temple there were a set of folding doors, double doors, that stood open, and one face of Janus looked at one set of doors, and the other face of Janus looked out the other set of doors.
And they had in Rome a very interesting custom with regard to those doors. Those doors always stood open unless Rome had peace on land and sea throughout its entire empire. One of the great Roman historians, Suetonius, tells us this interesting thing. He said that those doors of Janus, which had only been shut twice in the history of the city of Rome, were shut three times during the reign of the great Augustus, because on those occasions Augustus had won peace for Rome on land and sea.
If I could summarize what I’ve been saying to you tonight, it is this, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace who is able to close all of the doors of hostility between man and God. He closes the door of death by giving us life. He closes the door of guilt by giving us the forgiveness of sins. And He closes the door of distance by bringing us near to Himself through the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit, which unites us with Him in His body.
My sincere wish for everybody in the audience tonight is this, that as you sit and listen to the Word of God, you are personally, experientially, enjoying peace with Him, “the word that God sent, preaching peace by Jesus Christ.”
Shall we pray.
Father in heaven, we thank thee so much for the blessing of peace with thee through our Lord Jesus Christ, and through faith in His name. And as we have reviewed tonight, our Father, these fundamental truths, how thou dost bestow life and the gift of the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sins upon those who put faith in the name of Your Son, we pray that in some sense, in some measure, we may value the greatness of these gifts, and that we may have the wonderful experience, day by day, of enjoying peaceful relationships with thee, our God and Maker and Redeemer. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.