Blessed Assurance

The fact that Jesus Christ is Lord is central to the Christian Gospel. Let's acknowledge Him in the office that the Father has given Him, and the name that is above every name, the Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Let's stand.

It's 2.20 in Mission Praise. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is my Lord.

He is my Lord. He is my Lord. He is my Lord.

Do be seated. I'm sure the Apostle Peter would like to have sung that, because in effect that's what he was saying on the day of Pentecost, when he delivered what must be the most incredible sermon, unprepared in terms of sitting down by a desk and taking out some books, but not something that just happened, because sermons are not the product of half an hour or an hour or two hours, as you just mull over a text. Sermons or messages from God are as a result of being in His presence and knowing the unction of His Spirit.

This is what the Apostle Peter demonstrates as he makes his debut as a preacher. I guess when the Lord Jesus was walking down the seashore of Galilee and Peter, it's just been another day, you know, nothing happens much in Galilee, nothing of any great importance. No great figure ever came from Galilee, or that's what they were saying down in the south.

Can anything good come out of there? And then suddenly Peter hears a voice and a man says, Stop doing what you've been doing. Stop mending your nets. Stop fishing for fish.

Come and follow me and I'll give you a life that's dangerous and yet glorious, hard and yet wonderful. And Peter, though you couldn't believe it now, there'll come a day when you'll address thousands and you'll hold them spellbound, not by any power that's yours, but by some authority that will be given to you. If you'd have told Peter that, he would probably have pinched his skin and thought, I can't believe what's being said to me.

It just is so fanciful. Yet the day came when Peter found himself in that particular situation, addressing thousands. I tell you, and I didn't mean to say that or this, that if you would have told me when I was a 13 year old boy that I'd be a preacher, I'd have said no.

I find it so hard to be in a room with 12 people and not panic, let alone be amongst hundreds of people. It's amazing what God can do. He can take ordinary people and use them in His service, as I found over this last seven or eight days when I've been crisscrossing East Africa.

But maybe I'll link one or two of those items into my address as we look more carefully at what Peter has to say in his opening sermon. But let's read that right now. It's in the second chapter, as I mentioned, of the Acts of the Apostles in verse 14.

Then Peter stood up. When? Well, after the Holy Spirit had fallen upon the disciples, after there was such a commotion because they'd been praising God in other languages, after a crowd had gathered, he raised his voice and addressed the crowd. Fellow Jews and all you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you.

Because they had said in the 12th verse, what does this mean? The preacher is called to answer the questions that people are asking. Fellow Jews, let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I have to say.

These men, my colleagues, they're not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning. The pubs aren't open.

That's basically what he was saying. No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. In the last day, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people.

Your sons, your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams.

Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Men of Israel, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, signs, which God did among you through him as you yourselves know.

This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge. And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was not possible for death to keep its hold on him.

David said about him, I saw the Lord always before me. Because he's at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices.

My body also will live in hope because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence.

Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay.

God raised this Jesus to life, and we are witnesses of the fact, exalted to the right hand of God. He has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. Let's say that last verse together.

Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. My good friend Ray Tallman called to see me on, I think it was Thursday, after I got back from East Africa.

He told me they got an addition to their family. I think he said the addition was called Moss, but I may have got that wrong. So I said, well what about the dedication, and he smiled.

Because Moss actually is a dog, a sheep dog. So with that subtle sense of humor, for which I'm well known, I said, well, you know, bring your dog to the church because we have a dogmatics department. And Ray convulsed in laughter, of course, recognizing the hilarity of my comment and being a sympathetic American.

He continued with the conversation. Really, come to see me because we were talking about the privilege we have together to share the platform for our 28th Summer Bible School, which starts on Wednesday. And I hope you'll be present.

And Ray will come and speak this Wednesday. As Peter spoke 2,000 years ago, as I've tried to speak for so many years, dog has no relationship to the word dogma. But the word dogma is very important.

Dogma, dogmatics, dogmatism. These words are not choice in our vocabulary in as much as we would not really aim them at people because it seems as though it has an insulting connotation. He is a dogmatic person.

Sometimes you perhaps have conjured in your mind a brand of unacceptable, rigid, unbending, insensitive fundamentalism. But I want to redeem that word. And I want to tell you that this pulpit has only been open to dogmatic people.

The Christian gospel is essentially a gospel of dogma, dogmatism. The most dogmatic man who ever lived was the Lord Jesus Christ. He said such controversial things.

He made such grandiose statements. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.

Before Abraham was, I am. You ask what God is like? Have I been so long time with you and you have never known me? Time and time again, the man from Nazareth released statements which put together become the greatest mass of dogmatic pronouncements this world has ever known. Dogma.

Just by at the human level, a fluke in my diary, I found myself almost on four consecutive Saturdays, actually five, in various countries in the world, speaking to people who want to engage in the same sort of ministry, though they don't know one another. One group was in England, another group was in Scotland, another group was in Kenya, another group was in Tanzania. Put them all together and it comes to hundreds of generally, though not exclusively, young men and women.

They were prayed for. The edge of a jungle, the heart of a grassy woodland in Kenya, in the center of Glasgow, the historic city of Berrycon Tweed in England. Prayed for by people asking that God would so empower these men and women that they could go into their particular spheres of service and engage in what? Engage in being dogmatic, in telling people about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now here is Peter. He hadn't been to Bible college as such, and yet I reckon that the greatest Bible seminary in the world could not furnish the education that Peter had received, because he'd sat at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ for three years. But he hadn't gone through a traditional period of classical education, as we would define it.

And what you have presented to you in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is Peter the freshman, freshly coming to the pulpit in verticamus. And for the first time, declaring what he knew to be true. The language of if and perhaps and maybe, the language of debate and negotiating, has no room in the pulpit.

The man who taught me a great deal of what I know, and God knows that's very little relatively, he was invited once to debate the Cambridge Debating Society, the existence of God, and he turned it down. Not because he was a coward, not because he didn't have the intellectual acumen to deal with the cynical atheists and humanists that would have been part of the audience, but because of his felt conviction that God is not a suitable subject for men to debate. You don't talk about God with your pipe in your mouth, and a whiskey ready to swill around your mouth and then swallow.

Within the Christian community, there are certain things that are not negotiable. The essence of what we believe is dogma. Dogmatically we assert certain things.

And the Christian faith can be boiled down in its essence to two historic events. One, the vacant cross of Jesus Christ, on which he was pinned, but from which his body was taken down. The cross and not the crucifix is an acceptable emblem of Christianity.

And the empty tomb into which his body was placed, which was vacated on the third day. And the prime doctrines, the prime dogma of Christianity is the old rugged cross and the empty tomb. And there is a sense in which we have nothing more to say than that.

If you understand that, you understand Christianity. There is a sense that unless you're making reference to that and the implications of those events, then you should never be allowed into a pulpit. Now, all this is encapsulated, I say, in this experience of Peter.

Catapulted into a situation where he finds himself as an orator without even recognizing that he has the ability. You listen to the man and you appreciate that he's just got two particular things to say. Jesus Christ was crucified, done to death by evil men.

Jesus Christ was raised from the grave because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. What qualified Peter? What qualified him to be a preacher? What qualifies any man to come into a pulpit or any woman for that matter? I've no axe to grind in that area. And the answer is this.

That they've been with the Lord Jesus. That their mind has been saturated in what he has to say. That they have spent time in prayer.

And happily, if their circumstances are identical to that of Peter, on their left hand and on their right, there are supportive men and women who are there to back up what they have to say. Because you find Peter in this happy condition. Verse 14.

Then, when the crowd asked him what was happening, then Peter stood up with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd. He stood up with the eleven. He raised his voice.

And he addressed the crowd. He directed what he had to say to the people. It wasn't before the people in terms of, well, have a look at the menu and just pick what you please.

Preaching is not like that. Preaching is directional. Philosophy, well, yes, you place that in front of a group of students and you inquire into what one man has said and what one woman has said and you read Bertrand Russell and all the rest.

And you debate and you decide and together you analyze your philosophy. But preaching is not like that. It never was.

It never can be. Peter stood up and he had a message which he addressed to the people. What is preaching? Preaching is not just speaking.

Preaching is not just sermonizing. Preaching is getting a message from God, acting as an intermediary and directing that message to others, recognizing that it also applies to yourself. And this, you see, my dear friends, is what Peter is doing.

He stands up with the eleven. He raises his voice because he wants to be heard. And he takes issue with the question that has been put to him.

What does this mean? What are people, why are people acting as they are? Why are they rejoicing? Why are they speaking out things about God and Jesus Christ? Explain it to us. There is a sense in which all preaching is traced to this, an explanation of what has happened. Let me explain this to you.

Why are these men so jolly to the extent that you make the wrong conclusion? They've been stimulated by intoxicating liquor. It's nothing to do with spirits that come from bottles. It has everything to do with the Holy Spirit that's been poured out.

Why are these men as they are? Because of what that man did. That man who vacated the cross. That man who vacated the tomb.

This is the reason why we behave as we do. This is the reason why I'm going to speak to you. Let me explain this to you.

Listen carefully to what I have to say. Three years ago he was just a fisherman. Now he's in the greatest city in the world, the Holy City.

Just an ordinary man. And yet there's an authority here. Murray McShane was a great Scottish preacher.

He was so godly. He died prematurely in his late thirties or mid-thirties. So godly that when he entered the pulpit, sometimes people just took one look at his face and tears fell down their cheeks as they recognized a man who'd been with God.

And yet Murray McShane, with the softness and the gentleness of his character, always preached tenaciously, authoritatively, cuttingly, the word of the Lord. And you see, this is what you find with Peter, isn't it? I mean, here is the classic illustration of a preacher. Here is the sort of man you want in your pulpit.

You see, you sift his sermon, it's strong. I mean, he's no... He doesn't engage in pussyfooting, does he? There is nothing that is artificial. He's not projecting his personality.

He's not wanting you to go away with a sense of him. He wants you to have a sense of what he's saying, an understanding of that. And he arrests your attention.

Listen to me. Verse 22, men of Israel, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs.

Verse 29, brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, but with that same degree of confidence I assert that this Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. We are witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

And then, Peter, and it's amazing, really it is, I'm not exaggerating, that this man with so little educational background but empowered by the Spirit and exposed to the personality of the Lord Jesus is now able to give us a succinct summary of what Christianity is all about. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.

I tell you, if you understand that, you've understood all that Peter has to say. If a man is preaching that, he's doing everything that is required of him. You see, this message is so necessary.

It was, then it is now. It was necessary for Israel, then it is necessary for Israel now. It was necessary for the Gentiles to hear, then it is necessary for the Gentiles to hear now.

Therefore, let all Israel, a very interesting expression that, as far as I recall, unique in the New Testament at this point, though a quotation from Ezekiel, let all Israel know. Here is this trumped-up fisherman, or so he would seem, term preacher, declaring outside the temple area what the whole of Israel ought to know. What do they need to know? So the bishops are meeting at Lambeth Palace, and they're discussing and they're debating, and the Bishop of Rwanda, one of the less sophisticated areas where the Anglican communion has a stronghold, and I believe, though I haven't checked this one through, the Bishop of Uganda, and one or two more bishops have put Dr. Carey on the spot and said, look, if you mess around in terms of the teaching of the Church on homosexuality, we will break from the Church of England.

And there is a sense in which they are perfectly right. If anybody, if anybody tries to interfere with this word which comes from God, this gospel which focuses in on the life and death and resurrection and the teachings of Jesus Christ, if a man interferes with that, then he is running the risk of leading other people astray. And Jesus said it would be better for a man never to be born than that he takes that responsibility upon himself.

Therefore, let all Israel be assured that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. I want to put up on the overhead just for a moment because it's a little complex, and I thought just to repeat it from the pulpit would be rather difficult for you to follow. That word assured, I looked it up in the original, and here is the translation, or here is, if you like, the definition.

What is being shared involves freedom from fear of contradiction with an intimation of the impossibility of escape from the effects. Listen to that again, and I'll unpack it more. Here is Peter, and he's giving you the summary of the gospel.

What does all Israel need to know? What does the world need to know? Well, it needs to know that this God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. But you don't just need to know it as a sort of passing little bit of knowledge to stick at the back of your mind as being inconsequential. Surely, assuredly, this is what the world is to know, that what is being shared involves freedom from the fear of contradiction.

Peter does not allow debate. Here is concealed the impossibility of escape from the effects. Jesus has been crucified.

Jesus has been made both Lord and Christ. You cannot escape from the effects of what the Father has done to the Son. Thank you.

Maybe we'll come back to that in a moment or two. Jesus whom you crucified. See, here is Peter, and he's addressing this Jewish audience.

There is a sense in which he's addressing us, because at least theologically, if not historically, it is true to say that your sin and my sin contributed to the death of the Lord Jesus. We dealt with Him in a damnable fashion. You haven't always loved Him as your Savior, at least not the vast majority in this congregation.

Those of you who do and have loved Him since earliest childhood, your sins contributed to His death on the cross. So, from that point of view, you can identify yourself with the audience to whom Peter directs his remarks. Jesus whom you crucified.

What did you do with this man from Nazareth? This man who opened the eyes of the blind, who unstopped the ears of the deaf, this man who spoke with such distilled wisdom that Solomon seems to have been a cretin compared with Him. What did you do? Well, you roughly treated Him. Bluntly, you put Him to death.

You put Him to death. Death on the cross. Seemed an appalling human blunder.

But behind this death on the cross is the apostle Peter, who's growing in his understanding of theology. Though these wicked men put Him to death, there was the overarching purpose of the Lord. This man, verse 23, was handed over to you by God's set purpose and for knowledge.

And you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross. Well, that's what they did. That's how they treated Him.

But let all Israel be assured of this. God, the Father, He has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. And again, pardon the technicality of this, but you go back to the Greek, and it's one action.

An action with ripples, with consequences that move out towards the edge of the human story. God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ. How did He do it? Well, He raised Him.

He raised Him in the power of an endless life. He died on the cross for your sins. For three hours, the power of darkness fell.

But at the end, it wasn't crucifixion that killed Jesus. It was His willingness to allow His Spirit to be released from Him. Father, into Your hands, I commend my Spirit.

His body is placed in the grave. Bloody, bedraggled, treated so inhumanely by the Roman soldiers. But that body, that body did not decompose.

The third day, He's raised again in the power of an endless life. This man who bore the curse of your sin on the tree, this Jesus is raised again. And God has declared Him through that visible act of resurrection to be more than just an ordinary man.

Man He was, yes. Man truly. He hungered.

He needed company. He needed sleep. But not man only.

He can do what mortal men normally cannot do in His healing abilities and the wisdom with which He speaks. God has raised Him. And in the very resurrection, He has indicated that Jesus Christ is the unique man.

The proper man, as Martin Luther calls Him. God's representative on earth. Man's representative in heaven.

God has declared Him to be the Lord. David could never be Lord. Not in the sense that Jesus Christ is Lord.

David could never be Christ in the sense that Jesus Christ is anointed. What is the name in the Hebrew language that is above every name? The ineffable name. It's the name Yahweh or Jehovah.

Time and time again, and will the Watchtower Society listen to me? For God's sake, listen. The divine name in the Old Testament in its Greek fashion because the Bible, the New Testament, was written in the Greek language tells you that Jesus Christ is Yahweh. To the glory of God the Father, He has given Him the ineffable name.

He is the Lord. He is the King of kings. He is God's anointed one.

God has declared Him to be this. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.

Now, as a result of that, there are repercussions. That's what our definition says. Let's have it again.

What is being shared involves freedom from the fear of contradiction. Peter is dogmatic. His dogmatism is striking.

And there is more than just an intimation of the impossibility of escaping from the effects. Just stay with the overhead for a second. You see, this is the reason why I get a little upset about the crucifix.

I mean, it's not over-important, but it just gives the wrong impression. Jesus did die on the cross. It was a bloody and awful death, the worst death at that point in history that had ever been invented to rob man of life.

But He's taken down from the cross. Now, if that was the end, then the implications would be limited. I mean, by that, you'd have the record, possibly, of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount and that great ethical code and so forth.

But we wouldn't have the tremendous consequences that we know is part and parcel of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus had He not been raised from the dead. But He is raised. And God, in this visible act of raising Jesus from the dead, also gives Him a name, a name that marks Him out from any other mortal.

He is the Lord of Lords. He is the Christ. He is the Anointed One.

That's why, thank you, why we glory in the resurrection. You go to Mecca. I was talking to an African community that's on the edge of an Islamic community last Sunday.

And I was saying, I hope in a humble fashion, let's imagine that we could get a plane and go to Saudi Arabia. We get off our plane and we start to move towards Mecca. Maybe it's a rail journey, I don't know.

I'm not too sure how far from the airport. But we get there. What do we see? We see the most holy spot in the whole of Saudi Arabia.

The holiest spot in the world, as far as the Islamic people are concerned. What is it? It's the tomb. The tomb of whom? It's the tomb of Muhammad.

Now, if you exhumed the tomb, you wouldn't find much of his, you wouldn't find any of his remains, because obviously they would have decayed. But nonetheless, it marks the spot where his bones were. Now, let's swap air tickets.

Instead of going to Mecca, let's go to Tel Aviv. Let's get on a train and let's go to Jerusalem. Or a bus.

Ask someone in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Go down to the garden tomb area. Where is the decaying remains? Where is that piece of ground that actually the body of Jesus sort of was absorbed into? And if the guides know their stuff, or the custodians of the holy places, they will say, well, there is no such spot.

This is where we feel he was placed. His body. There is no tombstone.

Jesus was not John Brown. His body does not lie a-mouldering in the clay or the sand of the Middle East. What's the consequence of that? He's more than just a normal man.

Buddha was not raised. The great atheists, so-called, were not raised. Mao Tse-tung, you see his mausoleum in Peking.

And Lenin. Well, they're not too proud of his mausoleum anymore in Moscow, are they? But Jesus. You see, Jesus, he's the man of the empty cross.

He's the man of the catered tomb. This is the message. Now, here are these lads, these men and women in Scotland, in England, in Kenya, in Tanzania.

They could be earning far more money than they will be in the ministry. They could be politicians. They could go into a number of honorable tasks within the secular world.

But actually, what they're doing in the providence of God is they've been entrusted with the most important thing that any man can be entrusted with. And that is they're called to the ministry. They are called to a life of dogmatism.

But that dogmatism, I repeat, does not give them the right to be anything but gentle and kind and sensitive. But they will not compromise on something that is non-negotiable. Therefore, let all Israel be assured.

This is it, you see, the assurance of the gospel. If you deny that, then you deny the benefits that one day we will be with our Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. Surely, surely he has taken our sins.

Surely he has borne our griefs and our sorrows. Surely this is the definitive word of the Christian gospel, assurance. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.

Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. The Muslim would never sing that of Muhammad. The Buddhist would never sing it of Buddha.

Maria is Peter. Have you got it? I hope somehow in God's grace I've made the burden of this message. Well, not the burden, the pleasure of this message, plain, a fresher.

I wouldn't have minded if my first address had been of this quality. I wouldn't mind if I could hit it now. Here he is, and he speaks to the intelligentsia of Israel just outside the temple.

And he's got two strings to his bow, so to speak. Jesus, the man of the empty cross. Jesus, the man of the vacated tomb.

The consequences of what Jesus did on that cross and what was accomplished in that tomb, they're sure. They are certain. What are they? That Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

And when he mentions your name to the Father, you who have confessed your sins, then you're accepted into the family circle of the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed gospel. Blessed emblems.

Blessed cross. Blessed tomb. Blessed Lord Jesus.

Blessed Holy Spirit who makes it possible for ordinary people to address others about these extraordinary things. Amen. Let's sing.

Let's sing about the old rugged cross. And we'll sing to the tune of deep harmony. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died.

7-5-5. We'll stand for the first three verses. Then we'll sit.

Just stand to give you a change of position. And on the fourth verse and onwards, we'll bring to you the bread and the wine, which we invite you to participate, to take if you confess that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. These emblems to which I've made reference are meaningful and embraced in your life.

7-5-5. Let's stand for the first three. Let us pray together.

Father, we thank you that we serve a risen Savior who did not die in vain. We thank you also that this is a certain truth, certain for all people who will embrace it. And we are among the privileged to have embraced it.

We pray, Lord, that you would bless us, and as new men and women in Christ, that we will go forth today with that certainty, not with any sense of pride in ourselves, but with amazement over the God of grace who claimed us for his glory. And allow us the privilege of sharing that good news that we have received. For all of those in need that have been mentioned in these latter moments of the service today, in Sudan, in other parts of Africa, yes, Lord, in Papua New Guinea, around the world, there are people who are hurting in every sense, physically and spiritually, that perhaps we can share a touch with of the grace of God.

Help us, enable us, and may this day, the Lord's day, be marked by victory in Christ as we go forth together. In Jesus' name, amen.