Transcript
One point in our experience is someone that we know, someone that we love, someone that we trust.
And I suspect that it is for this reason that the heart of Christians has always responded so positively to the twenty-third Psalm.
The Lord is my shepherd. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.
And if there is anyone who can lighten the darkness and tension and fear of that climactic period of life, it is certainly our Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well that leads me to a question that I want to ask you tonight.
Supposing that a Christian in the weeks and months that precede his death has been walking out of fellowship with God, out of touch with his Shepherd, walking in spiritual darkness, when that Christian passes through the valley of the shadow of death, will the Shepherd be with him?
And the answer that certainly is yes, He will.
The Bible says that He hath said,
I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
But I think we would all agree, would we not, that if indeed a person passes through that climactic period of life out of touch with the Lord Jesus Christ, out of fellowship with his Shepherd, he will not have the capacity to realize and to appreciate and to rely upon the presence of his Shepherd.
The Shepherd will be there, faithful to his sheep, but the capacity to enjoy that, to rest in it, will obviously be lost by a Christian who is walking out of touch with God.
And yet the fact remains that whether a Christian dies in fellowship with God or out of fellowship with God, all Christians wake up in exactly the same place.
They wake up in the presence of God.
They wake up in the presence of their heavenly Father.
And they wake up to an experience of fellowship with Him.
You know I was thinking as I was preparing this message that it has been a long time since I saw a caterpillar.
But when I was a little boy I used to see them all the time out in our yard.
And it never ceased to amaze me that that fuzzy, slow little thing could crawl inside of a cocoon and that it could emerge from that cocoon as a beautiful, exquisite butterfly that could wend its way up to heaven.
And I believe that in the transformation that occurs inside that cocoon we have an illustration or a parable in nature of the miracle of regeneration.
You see in a very real sense these physical bodies in which we live are like a cocoon.
And when we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as our own personal Savior a marvelous transformation takes place.
That old inner self that was corrupt and sinful and evil ceases to exist.
And a new self, a new creature created in Christ Jesus, comes into existence.
A creature that is inherently exquisite and fit for the presence of God, but still in the cocoon.
And the problem that that creature has is precisely the problem of being inside the cocoon.
You know if you go to the mirror the morning after you were born again and look in the mirror, you will see the same person as you saw the day before.
Because when you are born again nothing happens to the physical body.
What has happened is a supernatural rebirth that has taken place inside of the physical body.
And because you are a new person inside by the grace of God, there begins at that point a struggle with the cocoon, a struggle with the body.
And I think that the Apostle Paul has expressed that struggle as aptly as anybody who wrote in the Word of God.
Remember that in Romans chapter 7 he says,
I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I find another law in my members, that is in the members of my body, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
Frustrated by continual defeat he cries out,
O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I’m living in a body that seems dead. Who is going to rescue me from it?
The great struggle that Christians have is that they are new people inside an old body.
Not all Christians are completely successful in learning the path to victory over the impulses of the body.
There is victory. It is available through the power of the Spirit of God.
But sometimes Christians do not experience it.
Now I know that there are people abroad today who are telling us that there is no such thing as a carnal Christian, that there is no such thing as a defeated Christian, there is no such thing as a Christian walking out of fellowship with God.
But I’m astounded that anyone could tell us that.
Obviously they are not reading the New Testament with their eyes open.
There is a struggle. The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.
And as long as we are in this body, in this cocoon, the struggle will go on.
But here is the marvelous thing.
The minute the cocoon opens, there emerges the butterfly.
And there is a perfect creature that is released from the cocoon and is fit immediately for the presence of God and is capable of standing before God and enjoying fellowship with Him because of the transformation that has taken place.
And even if a Christian dies out of fellowship with God, the moment he leaves the cocoon he leaves all sin behind.
And he is a perfect creature entering immediately into the fellowship of the presence of God.
But for an unsaved person when the cocoon breaks open in death, it is entirely different.
Because no transformation has occurred inside and no butterfly comes out.
Same old spiritual worm crawls out, the same old corrupt self.
It was so suited to the corrupt body but never really knew that deep struggle the Christians know because they are new creatures in Christ.
And because the worm comes out, it cannot go where God is.
It is not fit to soar up into the skies with the butterfly and instead goes down into a place of separation and punishment from God.
And that is why it is so different, so different, for a Christian to die with sins unforgiven and for an unsaved man to die with sins unforgiven.
The man who has unforgiven sins is a man who sins form a barrier between himself and fellowship with God.
For a Christian, even if in this body he knows this barrier, the moment he is released from the body, the moment the butterfly moves upward, sin and all of its barrier is left behind.
The perfect fellowship with God begins.
Not so for the unsaved person.
The unsaved person dies in his sin.
And though he is separated from his physical body, he is a corrupt being who cannot have fellowship with God because of what he is.
Therefore he must go into a place where no fellowship with God is forever possible.
Now in the last few weeks we have been talking about the unusual aspects of forgiveness that came to certain people who meet us on the pages of the book of Acts.
Remember that we talked first of all about the Apostle Paul.
We found reason to believe that the Apostle Paul was born again when he met the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.
He was evidently forgiven for his sins three days later when Ananias came to him and said, “Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.”
The question might be raised, suppose the Apostle Paul had died in Damascus before Ananias reached him, born again but without his sins forgiven, what would have happened to him?
The answer that was certain they’d be he would have gone up to heaven because now there was a butterfly inside the cocoon who once released it would be fit for the presence of God.
Last week we looked at some Jews on the day of Pentecost.
And we discovered that though when they repented, changing their attitude toward Jesus and recognizing Him as Lord and Christ, though when they repented they were born again, yet they did not receive the forgiveness of sins until they were baptized.
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 Ghost.
The question could be raised, and in fact it was raised, supposing that someone who had repented died before they could get baptized.
I don’t think anybody did, but it is a good question, a good theoretical question.
What would have happened?
There could only be one answer.
They would have to have gone to heaven.
There was a butterfly, and once released from the cocoon, able to leave behind all of the things that hindered its fellowship with God and would have soared upward into the presence of God.
This is why we have tried to stress, and when we think of regeneration, eternal life, when we think of the forgiveness of sins, when we think of the gift of the Holy Spirit, we must understand that these things, while they occur for us at the same moment, are distinct.
When we have eternal life we are admitted into the family of God and that new creature comes into existence.
When we receive the forgiveness of sins we are admitted into the fellowship of God.
And when we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit we are admitted into the body of Christ, into the Christian Church.
But there were people in the book of Acts, and I think that this is a fact that stares us plainly in the face in the book of Acts, there were people in the book of Acts who apparently did not enter into fellowship with God at the very moment that they were born again.
We suggested to you that there was a special reason for this because of the special guilt that clung to the Jewish people to whom the Apostle Peter preached.
Now I suspect that one of the questions you have been wanting to ask me throughout this series of studies is this.
Is there any sense in which it can be said that a Christian has a perfect forgiveness of all sins, past, present, and future?
Is there any sense in which a Christian’s forgiveness can be described as perfect?
My answer to that is yes, there is such a sense.
And that such a forgiveness is available the moment and becomes ours the moment we are baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Remember that the Apostle Paul teaches us that by union with the Lord Jesus Christ we are buried with Him, we are raised with Him, and not only that, we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places.
And you stop and think about that for a moment.
If this is our spiritual position, if we are actually seated with Christ in the heavenly places, there can be no possibility of a barrier between ourselves and God.
There must therefore be a perfect forgiveness which we enjoy as seated, risen, and ascended in Him.
And of this I think the Apostle Paul speaks.
In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.
But the key word there is “in whom.”
That is, in Christ, joined to Him, united with Him, as therefore risen and ascended and seated in Him.
In Him we have this perfect forgiveness.
And nothing can ever mar that relationship.
There there can be no barrier between ourselves and God.
And therefore that forgiveness is perfect and eternal.
But listen, that is a positional forgiveness.
What we have been talking about the last three or four weeks is experiential forgiveness.
Let me try to illustrate.
Let us suppose that I had a rich uncle, which unfortunately I have never had, but for purposes of this illustration we will imagine that I have had.
And my rich uncle hit the proverbial bucket and he leaves behind a legacy designated for me of twenty million dollars.
I don’t know about your financial affairs, but that kind of a legacy would take care of all my needs, past, present, and future.
But now let us suppose that my uncle believes that a man should not be entrusted with large amounts of money till he is very mature.
And consequently he puts this legacy into a trust fund which I cannot touch until I am fifty years of age.
Now there are a number of years back I used to think that fifty years of age a person was an antique tottering on the brink of the grave.
But in recent years I’ve changed my mind about that.
You know my mother has just turned seventy years of age and her project for this year is to learn French for the first time.
And she is studying French at the age of seventy.
And if she can do that at seventy I think that when I reach the age of fifty I could be productive and creative even at that age.
So a person is simply mature at the age of fifty.
That’s the way my imaginary rich uncle thought about it at any rate.
And he left me that trust fund.
But I can’t touch it until I reach that age.
Now there it is. It’s mine. But I don’t experience it.
What do I experience? The paychecks that come from the seminary.
You know all of the paychecks I’ve gotten from the seminary as well as all of the paychecks I’ve gotten from anybody anywhere at any time doesn’t come close to twenty million dollars.
But it is more useful to me at the moment than a trust fund would be because I need it right here and now.
And it is something that I can experience now.
Even though I don’t experience that trust fund, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect my life.
As a matter of fact as I near the age of fifty the chances are good I wouldn’t worry too much about saving money for my old age.
And the chances are good as the years gap narrowed I would make some big purchases knowing that I could pay them all.
But still this was an anticipation when I really experienced.
Well that was that regular payment which I got from my employment.
Now let me put it to you this way.
The forgiveness that we have in Christ is like a trust fund.
I realize this is not a perfect illustration.
But what we’re saying is it is not something that we experience.
It is something we know is true.
I don’t experience being seated with Christ in the heavenly places but I know it’s true.
Therefore I don’t experience the forgiveness of sins that I have there but I know it’s true.
And it can profoundly affect my life and my attitude toward God and my attitude in relationship to the things of Christ.
But what I experience is the forgiveness that I get here and now like the regular paycheck.
The first time I ever experienced the forgiveness of sins was when I became a believer.
And at that point God gave me the forgiveness of all the sins of my past life right away.
But then I need forgiveness every day.
And every time I commit a sin I’m called upon to confess that sin.
God extends to me, shall we say, at the paycheck that I need.
He extends to me the experience of forgiveness that I need.
And that’s regular.
Jesus told us to think of forgiveness of sins as something that came day by day, something that we needed just like we need our daily food.
He taught his disciples to pray,
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, as we also forgive those who sin against us.
Yes, a Christian has a perfect forgiveness in Christ.
We don’t experience it however.
What we do experience is the experience of forgiveness as we need it.
And therefore day by day I maintain my fellowship with God by getting the forgiveness which I need.
Now it is very important that you should understand that when we come to the book of Acts and when we discuss the forgiveness of sins in the book of Acts we are not talking anywhere in the book of Acts, so far as I can tell, about positional forgiveness.
The book of Acts has nothing to say about positional forgiveness.
The book of Acts is talking about the experience of forgiveness.
The experience of different people experienced forgiveness in different ways.
Cornelius began to experience forgiveness the moment he believed in Christ.
Saul began to experience forgiveness the very moment that he was baptized.
But that was three days after he was born again.
The Jews on the day of Pentecost began to experience forgiveness after their baptism.
That is when the experience of this began.
We suggested to you that there was an important vital reason for this because this was a generation of Jews.
This was a group of people to whom Peter could say that all the house of Israel know assuredly God has made this same Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.
Now the question can obviously be raised, if the Jews of the day of Pentecost had to be baptized in order to enter into fellowship with God, what about Jews today?
Granted that Gentiles have the experience that Cornelius had so that we enter immediately into the experience of forgiveness of sins, fellowship with God, the moment of faith in Christ.
What about Jews today?
Must they be baptized before they can be in fellowship with God and members of the Christian Church?
And my answer to that would be no.
And that is the reason that I have directed your attention to the thirteenth chapter of the book of Acts.
In the thirteenth chapter of the book of Acts the Apostle Paul is addressing a Jewish audience just as Peter was addressing a Jewish audience in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.
Only this is a different kind of Jewish audience.
The Jewish audience in Acts chapter 13 is an audience that is found on the Gentile mission field.
This is a synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia.
These are Jews therefore who are not natives of the land of Palestine.
And it is important to keep this difference in mind when you compare the sermon in Acts 2 with the sermon in Acts 13.
You will find that there are some striking similarities.
And I think that the writer of the book of Acts is trying to impress upon us the similarity between the Apostle Paul as an apostle and Peter as an apostle.
And yet though there are striking similarities between these two sermons there are also striking differences.
I want to call your attention to two of them.
The first difference is that Paul does not charge his audience with guilt for the crucifixion of Christ.
Notice it very clearly beginning in verse 27.
That guilt rests with the Jews in Jerusalem.
For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him.
And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain.
And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre.
But God raised him from the dead.
And he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people.
And we declare unto you glad tidings.
Notice this.
When he comes to the guilt of the crucifixion of Christ it is not the audience in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia that is charged with this.
It is the Jews at Jerusalem.
They did this.
They crucified him.
They denied him before Pilate.
They fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament Scripture.
And there are witnesses unto them.
But now says Paul, “We,” that is he and Barnabas, “declare unto you good tidings.”
Notice that he puts them therefore on a different footing from the way in which Peter treated his audience on the day of Pentecost.
Now look at the second difference.
And you will find it down in verse 38.
Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.
And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.
Now notice.
Peter had offered to his Jewish audience the forgiveness of sins.
Paul offers to his Jewish audience also the forgiveness of sins.
But Peter conditions the forgiveness of sins on the day of Pentecost on baptism.
Paul has nothing to say to these Jews about baptism.
The suggestion of the text is that the forgiveness will be offered directly to them.
No mention of the requirement of baptism.
May I suggest to you that this confirms the suggestion that I began to make last week.
The requirement that the Jews on the day of Pentecost be baptized was a requirement that was directly related to their special responsibilities in the crucifixion of Christ.
Here was a people, a nation in the land of Israel that had been exposed to the ministry of John the Baptist which was a baptizing ministry.
They had been exposed to the ministry of Jesus which was also through his disciples a baptizing ministry.
When they had publicly rejected the Lord Jesus Christ they had renounced those ministries and rejected them.
Now God was willing to bring them eternal life through faith in his Son.
But He was not willing to admit them into fellowship with Himself until they were willing to go back to the beginning as it were and to accept baptism.
But that apparently was directly related to their responsibility in the crucifixion of Christ.
And here are Jews on the Gentile field.
They do not have that kind of responsibility.
They were in no way personally involved with the crucifixion of Christ.
Therefore they are offered the forgiveness of sins without any stipulation about baptism.
And listen carefully what I have said through these four messages about baptism amounts to this.
That God insisted on baptism for Jews who were living in the land of Palestine or who had come to the land of Palestine and were in some way involved in the rejection of Christ and for nobody else.
And the difficult passages in the book of Acts that specify baptism in this connection are confined to exactly such situations.
Outside of those passages, and I have in reference Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, outside of these passages there is no requirement for baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
And that is a very very important observation.
What then of Jews today?
Well surely they are in the same situation as the Jews in Antioch of Pisidia.
Nineteen hundred years different distance.
They have no responsibility, no personal responsibility, in the crucifixion of Christ.
And therefore the special condition could not, as far as I can see, apply to them.
Jews therefore today and Gentiles today have the experience of Cornelius.
When they are born again they also at the same moment receive the forgiveness of sins and begin fellowship with God.
And at the same moment they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and become a part of his church.
And then perhaps I should not say “and then” but in addition to these things they receive justification by faith.
Verse 39. And by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.
For as far as I am aware this is the only reference in the entire book of Acts to the subject of justification by faith.
Appropriately it is found on the lips of the Apostle Paul.
Because as we know he is the great exponent of justification by faith, particularly in his great epistle to the Romans.
And if you will permit me before I bring my series to a conclusion I would like for a moment to discuss with you the subject of justification in relationship to the things we have been talking about the last three weeks.
And I would like to suggest a very simple thing.
Justification and forgiveness are not the same thing.
In the passage that we are looking at there is certainly no reason to think that they are the same thing.
What he says is that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.
And by him all that believe are justified from all things.
Forgiveness of sins is one thing and justification is another.
What is the difference?
I suggest to you that this is the difference.
Justification has to do with our legal relationship to God.
Forgiveness has to do with our personal relationship to God.
Justification is judicial.
Forgiveness is personal.
If you were arrested and hauled down to court and stand before a judge the issue of forgiveness does not arise between you and the judge.
The basic question that arises is are you guilty or are you innocent?
If you are pronounced guilty obviously you are called upon to pay the penalty for your guilt.
If you are pronounced innocent you are cleared of all charges and you are free.
Someone has said that justification can be defined as just as if I had never sinned.
That is a pretty good definition in my opinion.
Justification clears us legally from every charge.
Justification is judicial.
Forgiveness is personal.
It is conceivable that a person might be justified and not forgiven.
Let me try to illustrate this.
Almost all the students at the seminary know that I am an ardent red-hot baseball fan who is devoted to the Cincinnati Reds.
And as some of you undoubtedly know the best player that the Reds have is an Oklahoman by the name of Johnny Bench.
I’m sure that you folks as Oklahomans will appreciate an illustration that has some relationship to him.
Johnny Bench by the way just lost his bachelor’s degree and was married in a very large marriage ceremony in Cincinnati.
I sincerely hope he finds marriage a happy experience and hits a few extra home runs and drives in a few extra runs next year.
Well let us imagine for the sake of my illustration that I am down at a store looking over a shelf of magazines and I find a sports magazine with Johnny Bench on the cover of it.
So I pick up this sports magazine and I begin to read the article on Johnny Bench.
I get so absorbed in that article that I walk out of the store with the magazine without paying for it.
And a cop who is standing there looking for shoplifters pinches me.
And I am arrested and taken down to court.
So I stand before the judge and the judge hears my case.
And I am able to introduce quite a few character witnesses who will say two things about me.
Number one I’m completely honest.
Number two I’m terribly forgetful.
I’m an absent-minded professor.
And there are so many people to testify to this that the judge is convinced that I did not deliberately pick that magazine up and walk out of the store with it.
So he clears me.
I’m justified.
Now when the trial is over the judge comes down and before I get out of the courtroom he pauses and he says, “You know something,” he says, “I’m a Cincinnati fan too.”
And I said, “Well that’s wonderful. I said we ought to get together sometime and talk sports.”
Well the judge says, “I had thought about that but,” he says, “I had even considered inviting you over to the house for dinner but,” he says, “I’ve got a lot of sports magazines around my house and I’m afraid I don’t just feel that I could have you to dinner for fear I might lose some of them.”
And so he walks out the door.
And that leaves me with mixed emotions about that judge.
He cleared me.
He justified me from the bench.
When he came down off of the bench he didn’t want to have fellowship with me.
He didn’t want a guy like me in his house.
Now I realize once again that this is not a perfect illustration but maybe it will help.
When God justifies a man it is always by faith.
It clears us of every legal charge that can be leveled against us.
But still God has a perfect right to determine the grounds on which He will have fellowship with us.
I couldn’t complain if the judge didn’t want to have me to dinner.
That was his right.
May I point out to you that ever since the beginning God has always justified men by faith.
Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness.
Paul uses him as the great model of justification.
No one has ever been justified any differently than by faith and faith alone.
But listen.
God has laid down the conditions of forgiveness differently from time to time and place to place.
In the Old Testament when a man committed a sin how could he get forgiveness?
Well he brought a sacrifice and acknowledged his sin in connection with that sacrifice and he was forgiven.
On the day of Pentecost how did God extend forgiveness?
Well to the Jews of Jerusalem because of their special guilt he insisted on baptism.
For us we receive our initial experience of forgiveness at the moment of faith.
But if we sin subsequently the condition is that we confess our sin.
And all I’m really saying is this.
God always justifies men by faith.
But He has a right to tell us on what terms He will have fellowship with us.
Therefore when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ we should recognize not only that we have a wonderful gift of eternal destiny imparted to us, that we are justified, that we are regenerated, but that very very graciously God admits sinners like ourselves instantly to fellowship with Him.
You know if I had been a Jew on the day of Pentecost and had understood that I couldn’t get into fellowship with God till I had been baptized I don’t think I’d have complained about that considering the guilt that was there.
That was a simple step to take.
And I certainly can’t complain as a Christian when God tells me now I won’t have fellowship with you unless you confess.
That is a simple condition.
What we should understand here is the magnificent grace of God extending his fellowship, which is this privilege, it is personal to us on such very simple and gracious terms.
I think I began this whole series by telling you a story that I heard related at a campfire at Greenwood Hills.
I would like to end the series by telling you another story that I heard at a campfire at that same place.
There was an elderly godly Christian woman who stood up one night at the campfire to give her testimony.
She was either Scotch or Irish.
I forget just exactly which.
But she had this interesting testimony to give.
She said years before when she had been in the old country she had been a Methodist.
And as a Methodist she had the conviction that when she sinned she lost her salvation.
And this was a very very discouraging thing for her.
She had to start all over again every time she did something wrong.
But then something very nice happened to her.
A young fellow began to court her.
This young fellow was from another church and believed in the security of the believer.
And as they were out on their dates and walking the roads and sitting down on the benches and whatever they did in those days on dates they did a remarkable thing.
This young man sat down with this young woman and he began to explain to her out of the Scriptures how when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ we are eternally secure.
And gradually she came to understand that her salvation was secured to her.
Eternal life was hers forever the moment she trusted in Christ.
And to make a nice story even nicer she married this fellow.
And now years had passed and she was standing up at the campfire.
There was every evidence in her life and bearing that she had walked along with the Lord.
And what she thanked the Lord for, she thanked the Lord for the security that God had given to her in Christ.
She said that is the only basis on which she had ever been able to live a successful Christian experience.
You know it is a strange strange thing that there are so many people today who seem to feel that if we assure men of their eternal destiny because they’ve trusted in Christ that we would destroy their incentive for Christian living.
And the very reverse is the case.
Fear has never been an adequate motive for obedience to God.
But a real comprehension of the grace of God, the wonderful security that is imparted by faith in Christ, has always been the profoundest and most influential of motives for successful Christian living.
Maybe you haven’t completely understood everything that I’ve said in this series.
But one thing I have certainly said and it is this.
That all men in every age and in every place when they have trusted in Christ have found an eternal life by faith that they could never lose.
Conditions for fellowship may vary.
But it is wonderful to know that when we fail God we do not lose our heavenly Father.
We just simply lose sight of his face.
And we can find that face again by confession to Him.
Whether you understand everything that we have said or not I think you will at least agree with me in this.
Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.
Shall we pray?
Father seal to each and every one of us all of the possible profit of these weeks together and be glorified in our lives as a result of the things we have thought about together.
We ask in Christ’s name. Amen.