Voting Against Your Own Soul

Acts 13, and we are here once again, as we were this morning, and as we may be again next Lord’s Day.

It’s hard to avoid reading all of the sermon. You will see from verse 14, where they depart from Perga, and they come into Antioch in Pisidia, and they go into the synagogue on the Sabbath, and there’s a reading. Paul then stands up and he calls them to listen.

It’s one of the fuller—not, no doubt, verbatim—but it’s a fuller account of an apostolic sermon.

And as he preaches it, you come then to verse 38. We’ll begin reading there, verse 38, where the Word of God says:

“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.

“Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets;

“Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.”

“And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.

“When the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

“And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.”

I was just praying that and thinking about that. Can you imagine that happening? Can you imagine one visit, one evangelistic effort, and a week later, it was said, almost the whole city. Almost the whole city.

Do we believe? Do we believe that it’s the same God? And it’s just as possible for such a thing to happen today as happened then. It’s happened on other occasions in other places. And we get so discouraged by the unbelief. And of course, this is full of unbelief too. It’s not full of encouragement. It’s not like everyone believes. But it’s just God stirring, stirring so that people hear the truth.

Oh, may He do it again.

Verse 45:

“But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.

“Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, it was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you.

“But seeing ye put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.

“For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.

“And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.

“The word of the Lord was published throughout all the region,

“But the Jews stirred up the devout and honorable women and the chief men of the city and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them out of their coasts.

“But they shook off the dust of their feet against them and came unto Iconium,

“And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.”

Amen.

Once again, what you’ve heard is the Word of the eternal God, which you are to receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we ask that there may be a stirring in Greenville, a stirring that will awaken sinners to give heed to the Word of God. We may say tonight, Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief.

I think of Brother Eric on the streets, or me on the streets, and my brother Logan on the streets, and others. We go there, and so often there’s just, by and large, indifference.

Lord, we would pray, let there be a stirring. Even this coming Saturday, when we stand in the city center, please give help. Let there be a stirring in Greenville. But begin that stirring in us.

We pray for the Holy Spirit. Let us be found among those who hear the truth with profit.

And should there be one here tonight still not saved, still not under the blood, may this be the night they look back and say, May 24, 2026, that was the night, that was the time when I passed from darkness to light.

So use Thy Word and give the Holy Spirit. We plead for power, for victory against every opposing force. In Jesus’ name, amen.

As you read through the book of Acts, you will discover that there is more than one way to reject the gospel. Luke details various responses of crowds as well as of individuals.

For example, in Acts 17, when the apostle stands and preaches to those of Athens, we’re told some mocked. Some mocked. You may have seen mockery in your day. It’s not new.

On other occasions, referring to an individual named Felix in Acts 24, the response is this: “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.”

So he’s responding with delay. Now is not a good time. I’m not disagreeing with what you’re saying. I’m not opposing it. I’m not mocking it. It’s just not a good time.

Others rejected like Agrippa, a man who sensed the power of the gospel reverberating in his soul, so much so that his response to the preacher is, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”

This king trembling unto the Word, almost completely convinced to give his life, as it were, and believe on another King.

How did you respond when you first heard the gospel?

Maybe some of you don’t remember, having grown up in the church. You don’t really recall the first time when you heard. You don’t have a distinct recollection of the first time. But maybe you do know of the general feeling within you when you heard the gospel.

It may have been a sense of accepting that everything was okay, until finally you’re alarmed and the realization that it’s not. Maybe there was intentional indifference toward it. You sat in family worship, Sunday school, meetings like this, and your heart was simply resistant to it. Just no interest whatsoever.

I wonder how you responded when you first heard the gospel.

But what I want us to focus on tonight is not how you responded or how I may have responded, but those that we read of, those of Antioch of Pisidia. We’ve read here, because I was, as I said this morning, reading this with the elders and deacons on Tuesday night, I was struck by this passage.

You heard part of that this morning, but a completely different theme also struck me, found in verse 46, where Paul and Barnabas, waxing bold—there’s the Holy Spirit’s influence again, right? This is not them drumming up courage. This is the Spirit of God upon these men.

Therefore they wax bold and said:

“It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you. But seeing ye put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.”

“Seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.”

What a thing to say. To stand before a people—it’s not like they had heard Paul preach hundreds of times. He was there one Sabbath, he’s there again the next Sabbath, and based on these interactions and their response to it, the apostle says, you judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.

Now what he’s not saying is that man, of himself, can be worthy of everlasting life, in the sense that in some way he does what’s necessary within himself in order to be worthy of everlasting life. But what he is saying is, you have determined in yourself that the gospel’s not for you.

So I want us to think about this: The Men Who Cast Their Vote Against Their Own Souls. The men who cast their vote against their own souls.

This is self-determined. These men are saying no.

Why? Why would they say such things? Why would they respond in such a way?

Note, in the first place, the truth they heard. The truth they heard.

The theme that I am drawing from is really that sentence I’ve already mentioned: “seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.” But I can’t look at that statement without pulling in the context.

They heard the Word of God. You see it in verse 46: “It was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you.” They heard the Word of God. It wasn’t a drama. It wasn’t special Christian music or anything of the sort, in that sense. It was just men getting up and declaring the Word of God.

There was a passage that had been read. There were all sorts of studies. You start reading the commentators and some of the more in-depth studies of this passage. You see them trying to figure out what passage may have been read that time, what’s Paul drawing from, and so on, and making arguments based on what was read.

And on that first Sabbath day, you remember the Jews, they read through the Torah every year. They go through the entire thing just reading it publicly. So no doubt that was the passage. It was one of the passages from the five books of Moses.

But what they heard expressed and declared was the Word of God. And in that, of course, there are a number of things, a number of truths that they heard.

First of all, they heard of their merciful privilege. Right? And he draws that out in verse 46 when he says, “it was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you.”

Why was it necessary? What privileges do they have that Paul can say it was necessary that this first should be preached to you?

Well, they were Jews, and they had certain privileges. And God had been merciful to them as a people, and that’s what he’s dwelling upon. This necessity was not merely some necessity of the missionary strategy of the Apostle Paul. He’s a Jew staring in the faces of his fellow countrymen, fellow Jews. And he is seeing the covenant order that the gospel is to the Jew first. It’s to the Jew first. And he is following that program.

When they go into a city, from one city to the next, the first thing they’re looking for is a synagogue. Is there a synagogue? And by and large, most of the places that the apostles go to, there is a synagogue. That’s where they go.

And practically, of course, there are all sorts of reasons why this would be strategic in a missionary sense. Because if you think about it, if you go into a city and you’re hoping for people who will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and your intention is to move on, you would want to establish there in that city people who can handle the Word.

And the most likely people in this context to be able to handle the Word and become teachers when the apostle moves away are Jews. If one of the rabbis gets converted, or some other devout Jew is converted, they know the Word of God. And so, to preach the gospel to the Jew first—some of them believe—they’re going to have way more understanding than the Gentiles who have no clue with regard to the Word of God, none whatsoever.

So it does make sense. If we get some of these Jews converted, they will become pillars, no doubt, in the church, at least initially, able to teach and instruct in the Word of God when we are gone.

But it is more. The necessity is not merely strategy.

It was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you because you are those to whom God has given the very promises that we’ve announced to you.

Verses 4 and 5, the apostle summarizes this privilege when he speaks of those who are Israelites, “to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants,” and so on and so forth. He goes on to say, “of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came.”

The Messiah came. And this is part of what you’ve been looking for.

And so they heard the Word of God as a merciful privilege that God had committed to them, the oracles of God, and this truth must first be expounded to them.

But the truth they heard was not just this merciful privilege, but it was also an honest presentation. An honest presentation.

Look at verse 39. The apostle does not shy away from saying language such as we find there: “by him,” right, by this man that we’re preaching, “by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.”

So here are people, and they have invested—I mean their whole identity is summed up in the law of Moses. Everything they are is tied to this, and all their hopes and their sense of privilege and so on is found there.

And what the apostle is saying is, this could never be the means by which you could be justified before God. Never.

He gives an honest presentation, the reality of their inability to uphold the law, to provide atonement for their own sins through the sacrificing of animals and so on. None of these things could work.

Or as Paul writes in Galatians 2:16, “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”

So Paul’s making that plain. He, as a Jew himself, with the right to stand up and speak in a synagogue, is telling them that part of the preaching of the Word of God brings to bear upon their mind and heart: the law of Moses cannot save. It can’t. It never could.

And what he brings before them, as we’ll see as we move on, is that it always is pointing to an individual who would come, fulfill all the promises, and provide a way of salvation that through faith alone they could be justified.

So as they often would go to their synagogue, and they would, who knows what they would hear, but they never heard this. And so the Word of God, as it was preached to them on this occasion, was distinct in this way. It gave an honest presentation.

It’s not enough to be Jewish. It’s not enough to adhere to the law of Moses in some outward fashion. There’s more that is necessary in order to be justified.

They also heard in this Word of God of a glorious pardon.

Verse 38:

“Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.”

Through this man.

Oh, to see the import of that. It’s through this man. It’s not through your Jewish identity. It’s not through your religious practice. It’s not through your circumcision. It’s not through your adherence to all the festivals and so on.

He’s saying it’s through this man, to the exclusion of everything else, comes this glorious promise of pardon, the forgiveness of sins. Through this man, the sole channel, the divine provision, the only way.

And that was part of the Word of God they heard.

In Ephesians 1, verse 7, the apostle writes there of Christ, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

The forgiveness of sins.

Think, just think for a moment about the value of that, knowing the forgiveness of sins.

Now you have some choices with regard to the problem of sin. You can deny it, in the sense that you can deny the very reality of sin. And people do that. They deny the reality of sin. They do so for the comfort of their own conscience.

But of course, of course, they inevitably will wander right into the contradiction of being troubled by the things that others do to them. And what can they call those things when they are wronged, genuinely wronged, wronged in a way that they could convince other people that truly they were wronged? More to the point, wronged in a way that is outlined in God’s Word.

It brings them back to this reality, that there is a problem.

The Bible calls it sin.

Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God. And we can try to redefine it, and we can try to escape it, but ultimately we will come back, and we will be a walking contradiction if we do not accept the reality of sin.

So when we come to that point, logically deducing the reality of it, then we start asking ourselves, well, what about my sin? And what is God going to do with my sin?

And the truth these people heard on that occasion is that God has made a way whereby that sin in full can be pardoned. You can be forgiven.

And let me say, let me say tonight that that promise of pardon is as true tonight as it was when it came from the lips of the apostle. The promise of pardon.

And so instead of trying to say there’s no such thing as sin, to accept its reality and then to come to the realization that Almighty God has taken on every conceivable aspect of responsibility necessary in order for you to be forgiven.

That’s what they heard. They heard how they might be forgiven.

“Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.”

In other words, we are preaching Christ, we’re preaching up the Messiah, to the end that your sins can be forgiven. This is preaching with a point, preaching with intent.

The apostles were not standing up that day to show their intellect and all their knowledge. They weren’t trying to prove themselves to be theologically superior to the other Jews that were in the synagogue that day. That was not the end. It was not all directed that they might stand in amazement at the insight that the apostle had.

When he stood up, he had a purpose: to get people to this place of forgiveness.

And you remember that when you evangelize. That’s the goal. Get them to forgiveness. Speak to them, communicate with them, articulate it as plainly as possible, and believe in the power of the preaching of the cross as sufficient.

You need pardon. You need forgiveness. And through this man, it is offered to you.

They also heard of an impending peril. An impending peril.

Verse 40, he warns, “Beware therefore.”

So there’s the presentation that through Christ there’s forgiveness, and you can see again even the distinction between forgiveness and justification. They tie in, they’re related to one another, but we’ll look at that in just a moment.

Verse 40 he says, “Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets.”

So here he draws their mind to something that their forefathers warned them of. And here it’s from Habakkuk, verse 41:

“Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days.”

He’s looking, he’s prophesying of a work that will be done, “a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.”

He draws from the prophet the very experience that they’re standing in right now, that God has promised to work a work. He’s going to do something. That work, I believe, largely ties in to not only the sending of the Messiah, but Him rising from the dead.

And that work, that work is being presented before them, which though it be declared unto you, you will not believe.

And so he says, beware! Beware. The prophets prophesied of the very response I see rising in your heart right now, one of unbelief.

And so he’s giving them a warning. Warning them not to fall into, I should say, a fulfillment of a prophecy that they themselves would not want to be part of the fulfillment of.

In the second place, the grace they rejected. Not only the truth they heard, but the grace they rejected.

Back to verse 46:

“It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you, but seeing ye put it from you.”

“Ye put it from you.” This word, these things you’ve heard, ye put it from you.

The grace they rejected.

What specific things did they reject?

Well, they rejected the promises God fulfilled.

Look at verse 32 in the sermon. He says, “we declare unto you glad tidings.” Here’s good news. Here’s good news. “How that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled.”

The same unto us, their children.

Oh, if you could put yourself there and realize so much of the Jewish mind is one of anticipation of God fulfilling His promise.

And now they stand up and they say, we declare the glad tidings. The assumption is, you will receive this with gladness. This is good news. I know how you’re feeling. I know what you’ve been taught. I understand the anticipation that you feel because I was there.

And I lived my whole life in this anticipation. And I saw it worthy of my life. And I gave myself to be a Pharisee. And I endeavored to keep the law blameless, poured my life into all of this because of this anticipation of what God has laid up for us.

And I am here to tell you that this glad tiding, how that “the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children,” and that He hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second Psalm, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”

God had fulfilled His Word. He draws a promise, a promise of Psalm 2. And the Old Testament that’s full of this fact that God is going to make provision and has promised His Son.

And He is saying, this is the good news, it has come.

And when He comes to His conclusion, that’s part of what He is saying: ye put it from you. The fulfillment of this promise, you’re putting it from you.

They rejected the promises of God fulfilled.

They rejected the Savior God sent as well.

Verse 23, if you go back there, he lays out, he gives some history—not to go back through it all—but he speaks of them being in the Egyptian bondage and their time in the wilderness and the raising up of Samuel and then of Saul and then David and so on.

And he’s leading to David, of course, because verse 23: “Of this man’s seed”—right? David’s important to them all—“of this man’s seed hath God, according to his promise, raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus.”

Now hear what he’s saying. Of the seed of David, God has raised up—he doesn’t state the Messiah explicitly. He intentionally makes use of the name given to our Lord when He was born. He is directing their attention to the humanity, because our Lord, of the seed of David, had our nature, and as our nature, was given a name.

That name is Jesus because He would save His people from their sins.

Well, they are rejecting this. He put it from you. He put it from you. This grace, the grace of promises, the grace of the Savior, He put it from you.

And of course, they rejected the pardon offered.

We’ve mentioned this already, but just to point out, this is part of the grace that they rejected in verse 38 and 39. The pardon, “through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.”

His entire purpose is to put away the penalty, to give you access to God. And what he is doing is, again, is dealing with not only the forgiveness of sins—right? The forgiveness of sins is all the wrongs that you have done, all the bad, all the sin, all the breaches of the law—that can be pardoned.

But then he says, “And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.”

The positive righteousness you need, that the law of Moses could not provide, is found in Christ. You can be justified, not just the removal of your sin, but the addition of an alien righteousness, the imputation of a standing that allows you to be accepted before an infinitely holy God.

And this, men and women, this is the gospel laid out plain.

Under inspiration, Luke summarizes this sermon that these men heard and the gracious opinions of the apostle to those that stood there that day.

And He is saying at the close of His remarks, ye put it from you. You don’t want the pardon. You don’t want the justification. You’ve rejected the promise fulfilled. You’ve rejected the Savior sent. You’ve rejected the pardon offered.

Ye put it from you.

I want you to understand that’s what people do when the gospel is preached to them and they don’t believe.

When the message comes in such an encouraging way of glad tidings—God has made promises. He’s fulfilled the promise. The biggest part of that promise is the sending of a Son. He’s fulfilled that promise. Through His Son, there’s a promise of pardon, and here it is before you—and they reject it. They put it from them.

I hope that is not true of you, that you put it from you. That here’s a gift presented and you’re putting it from you.

What a thing to do.

In the third place, the choice they owned. The choice they owned.

The apostle effectively says that you are making the choice. You’re owning this because of your response.

“You judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.” You judge yourselves unworthy. Having put it from you, seeing ye put it from you, I see what you’re doing, I know your response is evident to all, you judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.

Now they might say, well, we’re not running from everlasting life. We see the apostle will not let them—he wants to make it plain to them that in the rejection of the message that has been put before them, the deduction, the logical conclusion of it is, you judge yourself unworthy of everlasting life. You’re choosing death over life.

Now part of this rejection, of course, is seen in the fact that in their response, they chose envy over humility.

We noted that this morning in verse 45. They were filled with envy instead of humbly receiving the Word, which is an important part in the hearing of the Word. When the Word, we are to receive with meekness the engrafted Word that is able to save your souls.

If you hear the Word in any posture other than humility, you will not hear it with profit. Period. The only posture in which we can profit from the Word of God is one of humility. Never forget that.

I don’t care how bright you are, how intelligent, how learned. If you’re proud, you can learn information and still make shipwreck.

They chose envy over humility. Filled with envy. They were mad that there was such interest in what the apostles had to say. They resented that interest.

See, the Jews, so many of the religious, they were governed by how they viewed one another, not how they viewed the Lord.

In one statement, I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s one of those statements in John’s Gospel that gets overlooked. Even as I quote it right now, some of you are likely to say, I don’t remember ever reading that.

But John notes the words of Jesus: “How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another?”

What our Lord is saying is, if I can put it in a different way, you can’t believe while you are aiming for honor between one another. You can’t believe. It’s impossible.

And these men then, being so filled with pride, so concerned about their own name, their own power and influence and so on, they respond with envy instead of humility.

This is part of them judging themselves unworthy.

They also chose self-righteousness over Christ’s righteousness. When he presents in verse 39 the law of Moses versus what Christ has done, all that believe are justified, he is saying to them, effectively saying, you have a choice here. You have a choice. You continue trusting in the law of Moses, or you choose faith in Christ alone.

And by their response, they’re effectively judging themselves unworthy of everlasting life because they’re choosing. They’re choosing their self-righteousness. They’re choosing their own best effort to fulfill the law of Moses instead of the perfect life of the Son of God.

There’s no world in which that makes any sense. There’s no world in which that makes any sense.

You have this law, this expectation. God expects certain things, adherence to a law that reflects His own character.

And we fail all the time. All the time. Sometimes you know about it. Sometimes you don’t.

God in His mercy, even when He was establishing the sacrifices, established one particular sacrifice for the sins of ignorance, underlining there are times when you will sin and it will require a burnt offering, and you will know it. Sin offering, and you will know it. And so on and so forth.

But there are times you don’t know. And there may be wisdom in coming with an offering for sins committed in ignorance.

Now the very possibility of that, the very possibility—think with me—the very possibility that sins can be committed in ignorance ought to cause the soul to tremble at the possibility, if what we are trusting in is our own obedience before God.

Because by their very nature, sins of ignorance communicate the fact you don’t know you’ve done it. And you don’t know the degree to which you’re guilty of it.

It underscores and it cuts right through the pride in the heart of man.

The apostle puts before them, there’s another way of righteousness. Indeed, it is the only way of righteousness. And they chose, judging themselves unworthy of everlasting life, they chose self-righteousness over Christ’s righteousness.

Let me say to you, do not make that mistake. It’s the worst mistake you will ever make.

Now, all of us have to live with having made mistakes in life. And should we live any length of time beyond this hour, we’re going to make more mistakes. And we’re going to have to live with them. We’re going to have to repent of them. We’re going to have to try and put right our wrongs where we can.

You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to sin. You’re going to grieve the Lord, and you’re going to hurt other people.

Just don’t make this mistake. Don’t choose your own righteousness over the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Because that’s fatal in a way that doesn’t compare to anything else.

And they chose eternal death over the gift of eternal life. “You judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.”

I’m putting life before you, and you’ve chosen death. You see, it’s not about life and extinguishing your existence. It’s life and death. It’s heaven and hell.

And Paul is motivated to travel to the ends of the earth to preach Christ, that through this man you might obtain the forgiveness of sins.

And that standing of pardon and forgiveness and justification is part of this whole subject of everlasting or eternal life. And if you don’t have that, you have death.

Jesus said in John 5 verse 40, “Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”

You want life, come to Me.

And the apostle is saying, you want life, go to Him. Jesus says, come to Me. Paul says, go to Him, that you might have life.

Finally, the mercy they lost. The mercy they lost.

“Lo, we turn to the Gentiles.”

“Lo, we turn to the Gentiles.”

There’s mercy being lost, slipping away from them.

We see, in the first place, that the preacher may not always remain. The preacher may not always remain.

“We turn to the Gentiles.” It’s not that Paul and Barnabas ceased to care for the Jews. It’s based on this particular response in this particular place. The hardened rejection that they perceive, it signals to them, it’s time to move on. It’s time to move on.

Our Lord Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 10:14, “Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words,” He goes on to say, “shake off the dust of your feet.”

And this is what they do. In verse 51, they shook off the dust of their feet against them and came on to Iconium.

It’s the final message. That’s the closing argument of the sermon, that they would see them shaking the dust off their feet.

This is a profoundly significant action done in the presence of a culture that understood its meaning and understood what was being communicated.

The preacher may not always remain. You remember that. God uses preachers. Romans 10 says, “How shall they hear without a preacher?”

Preachers are a blessing. Some are more blessing than others, I grant you. But preachers are a blessing.

Every time I think of the preachers who made the gospel plain to me when first I was coming under its influence, I thank God. Think of the other philosophies that exist out there, the other religions, and all the lies.

God, in His great mercy, put me under a preacher. A preacher of the gospel.

When He takes preachers away, it’s a judgment.

Not every preacher is the Apostle Paul, but a living dog is better than a dead lion. We may not have the lions alive today like the Apostle Paul, but thank God for living dogs that explain the Word of God and put before you the message of life.

Because if you despise it, God can take it away.

It’s my concern for Northern men. God needs to work there. What will happen to our brother Kelly? Will the environment permit him to stay? Will he feel the burden to continue if the work does not strengthen? There may be other of our works that are similar.

What does it say? Let us not be found among those who reject the very mercies God sends. These things may be lost to us.

The preacher may not always remain.

The gospel may not always be near. Now, I know that some are converted, I get that. But in the sense of the preachers themselves, them moving away is taking the very message away from them. It’s putting distance between those who rejected and the men who heralded the Word.

See, God will continue His work. He doesn’t stop. He has a church to build, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. But He will have men move on and carry that message. And sometimes the gospel will not be as near as it is today.

Also, the Spirit may not always strive. The Spirit was striving.

You see what’s going on here, especially among the proselytes who followed Paul and Barnabas, verse 43. The Gentiles who are moved to make the beseech that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. “These words might be preached.” Come and preach the sermon again. You can preach the same sermon. We’ll hear it the second time.

I don’t think that’s what they meant, but you get the idea. They were responding positively.

The Spirit was striving. The Spirit was at work. Lives were feeling it. Souls were responding to it. Confession of sin was happening. Faith in Christ was being expressed among some.

But there was a large body of these Jews, a large significant number of them, that was so evident to the apostle that he says, by and large, you put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, in the midst of the Spirit striving.

And these men felt it. No doubt they felt it. No doubt they sensed it. Compelled by—I mean, there’s nothing they can say. They try to contradict and blaspheme. They try to stir up others. And again, there’s a lot of strategy here in what’s going on.

In verse 45, when they try to contradict what Paul says, that’s one approach. When they see the multitudes and see the influence, and they’re filled with envy, and they try to contradict what’s being said, but they can’t stem that tide. Their logic will not bear out. Others are being convinced regardless of what these men are saying.

And of course, they had the advantage because they were known. The apostles were not.

But then they take this other approach, verse 50. The Jews stirred up the devout, the people with reputation, the people who are known, the people who are credible, the people who have a testimony, perhaps help many of the poor, who give themselves to forms of almsgiving and so on, the chief men of the city.

They stir them up, try to bend them to their own will, to raise persecution against these men.

They’re fighting with every fiber of their being what was going on in the moment. The Spirit was striving.

And Genesis 6:3 tells us, “My spirit shall not always strive with man.”

My spirit shall not always strive with man. God is not obligated to keep these blessings before you every day. Those of you not saved tonight, He’s not obligated to give you another chance. “My spirit shall not always strive with man.”

Even for those of you who know the Lord, let those words echo in your soul: “My spirit shall not always strive with man.”

God strove with King Saul for a time, and then He strove no longer, and almost drove Saul mad because he couldn’t get a word from God. And running hither and thither, trying to get some semblance of comfort, he goes to the witch of Endor, and he knows what he’s doing is wrong, but he is so longing to hear again from God.

“My spirit shall not always strive with man.”

The horror of it, a silent God.

And the opportunity may not always return. They shake the dust off their feet. They’re signaling to them that we are going. And it’s like God’s message is moving away, and the opportunity to repent and believe is moving away from them.

These are the men that cast their vote against their own soul.

What will you do? Will you judge yourself unworthy of everlasting life? Will you say, it’s not for me?

Surely not.

Look to the cross and see the bleeding Lamb of God. See the provision God has made for you, that as a sinner, He invites a look of faith.

On Calvary’s cross, the Son of God in our nature dies, and His bleeding wounds bleed to provide a flow of His precious blood that washes away every sin and gives this promise of forgiveness.

May you come.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

However young or old, however long you’ve been in this church or under the Word of God, perhaps tonight you know the Lord is speaking to you. And it’s time for you to get to Christ, repent of your sins. You’ve broken His law. The wrath of God abides upon you, Jesus said.

But you can escape all condemnation by faith in Christ alone.

Look and live. Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

And even if you’re backslidden tonight, go to that cross again. Seek fresh cleansing. Seek a renewal, because that blood still flows with power to wash away and make you clean.

Lord, bless Thy Word. Bless Thy Word.

What may be of man, we’re happy for it as chaff to blow in the wind. But let Thy truth ever prevail, and let it prevail to the salvation of precious souls.

Have mercy, Lord. Thou knowest every heart. Thou knowest those who are running, who are hiding, who are squirming, trying to ignore the appeals of Your truth. And we pray, overcome and give deciding grace. Hear prayer.

Equip Thy church for the week ahead. Fill our homes with joy and gladness. Meet the needs of Thy people. And let us see You stirring in our own city.

Come, O God, and give sweetness in our fellowship this evening.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of all Thy people now and evermore.

Amen.