Verses 27 through 33. But before we read the Word of God, let's go to the God of the Word and let's ask for His blessing. Please join me. Sovereign Lord, we are so thankful that you haven't left us to wander about in the dark. You have given us your word. It is sure, it is sound, it is true in everything that it teaches. And Lord, we ask that you would help us to understand it tonight. We pray, Lord, that we would fix our attention upon it. We know, O Lord, that the devil is always at our right hand whenever the word is being preached. Truly, O Lord. As we sit and we hear the word preached, spiritual warfare is going on. Our three great enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, do not want us to benefit from your word. And they will throw anything that they can to take our mind off it, to cause us to think on other things, have bad thoughts, Lord, about the Word or the preacher, to take offense at something, Lord, or simply to daydream, to have our mind go roving to and fro throughout the world and the universe and everything that is ahead of us. Lord, don't let that happen. Please, Lord, don't let the Word fall on the stony ground, Lord, or on the path and do us no good. May it find instead a heart that's been prepared for it, and may it produce a rich harvest. And we pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Acts chapter 11, and I'll be reading 27 through 33. I remind you, this is the word of the Lord. Then they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to him. And they said to him, by what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority to do these things? But Jesus answered and said to them, I also will ask you one question. Then answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men? Answer me. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, if we say from heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him? But if we say from men, they feared the people, for all counted John to have been a prophet indeed. So they answered and said to Jesus, we do not know. And Jesus answered and said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word about God will stand forever. One of the most irritating things, I mean, it's always irritating to get a response back from somebody that you know is a lie, when they just outright lie to you. But it's even more irritating, I think, sometimes when somebody, you know they know the answer, but they won't say it. When a child, for instance, breaks something and then says, oh, I don't know how it happened, or what do you think we should do in this case? Oh, I don't know. Or what's the answer to this question? I don't know. Or, you know, simply a question where you ask them after they've come back, they've been dealing with their classmates all day, they've undoubtedly had many, many adventures and so on, and you ask them, so what happened at school today? And they say, nothing. And you just want to walk over and shake them and say, why no, that's not the truth! Why won't you tell me the truth? But they don't want to, because perhaps the implications of what telling the truth or giving the answer that they know to be true would entail. And this is exactly one of those situations. Just to set the context a little, you'll remember the little while earlier we've read about how Jesus had driven the money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals from the court of the Gentiles. Now in doing so, he was cleansing his father's house of the merchants who had made it into that cave of thieves, cave of bandits. And he was once again making it possible also to do something else that was very important. Not only was it now, possible for the Gentiles to come once again into the court of the Gentiles and to pray, but it was also now possible for him to teach and preach in the colonnades that surrounded the court. There were these areas outside, not part of the main temple, but there were these areas that were supported, that had a roof that was supported by pillars, so it would keep the heat of the sun off of your head or the rain. and you were able to actually teach. That was one of the reasons why they were put up there. That was the Court of Solomon, the place where supposedly the king... It was built after the old model of the temple where King Solomon would supposedly walk and dispense his wisdom. We are told of the colonnade, these porches were beautiful and huge. They were covered colonnades that ran all around the inside of the wall of the vast temple complex. Or to put it differently, these halls were bounded on the outside by the temple wall, on the inside by the court of the Gentiles. And John tells us that Jesus frequented that particular section of the temple known as Solomon's Porch on the east side of the temple in the colonnades. That's where he sat to teach the multitudes who would come to him. Now, instead of being drowned out by the noise of all of these sacrificial animals or people, you know, sellers repeating the exchange rates and things like that, people would once again be able to come and to learn in God's house. And of course, that is one of the singular purposes of God's house, that we would be able to come and hear His Word and have it explained to us. That was one of God's intentions. You'll remember that as we read through Nehemiah, there was that wonderful moment when Ezra the priest stood up to teach in the temple that was being rebuilt and then we had the Levites once again speaking the Word, explaining to them what these things meant after Ezra would read it. And so now Jesus is teaching. Now roughly 21 years earlier, it's kind of ironic, Jesus himself had come there to converse with the rabbis. You remember his family had gone up to Jerusalem for the feast. He was roughly nine years old at the time, eight or nine years old, and they'd lost track of him in the caravan of pilgrims who'd gone up, and they're on their way back to their home in Nazareth when they suddenly realize You know, it's kind of like when the mom wakes up and realizes, Kevin isn't with them on the plane. The parents suddenly realize Jesus wasn't with them in the caravan. They've no doubt assumed he was with friends and so on, but gradually it dawned on them that he came rushing back to Jerusalem very upset. And we read in Luke 2, 46, now, so it was that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. He had this preternatural understanding of the scriptures, but of course pointed to his divinity, the fact that he was not an ordinary child by any respect. He was, in fact, the Son of Man, the Son of God. Now, once again, Jesus is about his father's work. And the religious authorities aren't happy about that at all. First, of course, he kicked out the business that they had established in the Outer Temple. And he is now teaching in a way that they hate and they're afraid, of course, that there's going to be an uprising at any moment. And so they're doing anything they can to get rid of him, but they are afraid of the multitude, so they send a delegation to question him. And, of course, when they question him, they don't really want to hear the answers. They just want to trip him up. They're asking him trick questions, gotcha questions. They ask, by what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority? And who told you, essentially, you could come and cleanse the temple and then teach as one having authority in this place? And they figure this is a can't fail to trap him question because they know that Jesus does not, first off, have a degree from a rabbinical college. Unlike Saul the Pharisee, who we read about this morning, he didn't go to Gamaliel school. He didn't sit at the feet of another rabbi. He obviously asked the rabbi's questions, but he was not formally trained in a rabbinical college. But the religious authorities also are hoping, of course, that he would answer with something else. They're hoping that he would answer with something along the lines of, I do these things by the authority of God himself. It is God who has given me this authority. Now, that would have been a true answer. But it would have been one that would immediately have allowed them to accuse him of blasphemy and have him hauled away under arrest. But instead of falling into their trap in front of the people, what happens? He says, okay, I'll answer you. Now, rabbis often did this. When somebody would answer a question, they would say, well, let me ask you a question. hoping to get at the heart of the matter, so he turns it around on them. I'll answer this question for you if you'll answer me a question. And here's the question he poses. He says, the baptism of John, where is it from? From heaven or from men? At that moment, of course, everybody who's listening to this exchange turns from looking at Jesus to hear his answer to looking at them to hear their answer. And they immediately, I'm sure, began to sweat copiously at that point, because they knew that the very people listening to Jesus, the crowds regarded John as a martyr and a folk hero. This was somebody who was highly exalted in the eyes of the Jewish people. And so they don't know what to say, because you see, the priests don't believe that. These are Sadducees, or what we would call today simply theological liberals. They don't believe in any of the prophets. To them, Judaism consists simply of rituals outlined in the Torah. You do these things, you keep these rules, you're a descendant of Abraham, boom, you're a good Jew. Being Jewish was a ritual and cultural thing. In fact, amongst the majority of what are called Reform Jews today, that is still the case. Judaism is a cultural thing. It's an ethnicity. It is not actually a supernatural thing. God didn't speak the Sadducee's thought with people. He did not choose people to carry his message. There was no new revelation to be had. There was no afterlife, no soul, no resurrection, no angels, no miracles. And from their perspective, who was John? John was just a religious nutcase. Somebody who rose up, and they'd had plenty of religious nutcases, stirring people up, upsetting the status quo. He was an upstart troublemaker, and they viewed him the same way that people today view, you know, the guy with the sandwich board in the big city, standing on the street corner, ringing a bell, saying, repent, the end is nigh, or screaming into a speaker as people desperately try to get around him without making eye contact. That's really who they thought John the Baptist was. Now, some of the, as it says, the elders of the people who've gone up to question him would not have been Sadducees, they would have been Pharisees. And any time, of course, when you have the Sadducees and the Pharisees working together, if something very bad is going on, it's impossible a supposition as Republicans and Democrats working together on anything. And if Republicans and Democrats are against you, wow, you're in trouble. But in this case, the Sadducees and the Pharisees have joined forces. But the Pharisees, of course, were different from the Sadducees in their core beliefs. The Pharisees did believe in prophets. The Pharisees did believe in angels. They did believe in an afterlife. They did believe in the resurrection. But they agreed with the Sadducees on a number of things, and the first and foremost of them in this case, with Christ's question, was that John couldn't have been a prophet. There was no possibility whatsoever that John the Baptist was a legitimate prophet. How did they know that? Well, first and foremost, he'd said nasty things about them. He had called them a brood of vipers. He called them the children of snakes. You're a bunch of poisonous reptiles. Now, no true prophet would have called the holy Pharisees a bunch of snakes. That's not possible. And even worse, perhaps, than that, he had then pointed this John the Baptist to Jesus and said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now, if they admit that John was a prophet, then they would also have to admit that his prophecies were true. You see, this is back in the day when prophecies had to be 100% true. They had to actually come about where the person was a false prophet, all right? So if you were a prophet, the things that you said were true, the things that you said were going to happen took place. And if they said, John is a prophet, then QED, Jesus is the Messiah. Because John had pointed him out and said, this is the Messiah whom you have been waiting for. And they knew Jesus wasn't the Messiah. They hated Jesus. Jesus contradicted their traditions. Jesus had said nasty things to them and said, well, he'd said woe to them. He'd called them hypocrites. He'd pointed out their flaw, their lust, their greed before the people. He'd said that they weren't righteous in and of themselves, that they couldn't keep God's law, but rather every single day they broke it. and that there was no hope of entering into heaven by their teachings. And worse yet, he had said that not only were they not entering into heaven, they were running ahead and closing the door, barring it so that others couldn't get into heaven either. So by that they knew that this Jesus could not have been the Messiah, and therefore John could not have been a prophet. So both the Pharisees and the Sadducees actually agreed that John's baptism of repentance and the rest of his ministry, it was merely the work of a man, and not just a man, but a madman. It was nothing at all. Better forgotten. Thank heavens, Herod chalked his head off, and he's out of the picture. They did not believe it was a ministry ordained by God. It was something that they, if you had told them that this actually, this John the Baptist, was the Elijah whom God had said would be the forerunner of the Messiah, who would come before him, and who would straighten the paths in the wilderness, who would ready the people for the ministry of the Messiah, they would have laughed you to scorn. But what are they gonna do? I mean, if they said that, they would cause a riot. Let me give you an example. For them to have said in the midst of the temple complex, there in Solomon's Porch, for them to have said, surrounded by these crowds, John was not a prophet, would be like me going into the Grand Mosque in Mecca and shouting at the top of my lungs, Muhammad was not a prophet! And then expecting to walk out with my life. It simply would not happen. So they are not going to do that. So what are they going to do? They can't say, oh yeah, we think John was a prophet because we'd be giving the whole game away. So instead, they feign ignorance. They plead the fifth. On the advice of my lawyer, I am not going to incriminate myself. They say, we don't know. When in fact, they're sure they know. It's a lie. And so Jesus listens to their non-answer. And he says, well, if you're not going to answer me, why? Why should I answer you? It's not going to do any good anyway. Now the Pharisees and the Sadducees had refused to believe in John. They'd refused to believe in him even when they saw the work of God manifested in the changed lives of harlots and tax collectors and so on. And Jesus said, that is how you judge a prophet. You judge a prophet by the fruit of their ministry. You judge them by the fruit they bear. And they could not possibly have not seen the good fruit that the ministry of John had borne in their midst. And yet they still pointed to him and they said, bad tree. And they would not relent because believing in him entailed believing certain things that they just couldn't admit because they had not gone through that process that we spoke of this morning. We talked about that Greek word. What was the Greek word that I mentioned this morning? It was... Metanoia. Metanoia meaning a change of heart, a change of direction, repentance. That had not happened in their lives. They had not been born again. Their understandings remained darkened and they were holding on to the formulas and holding on to the traditions and they would not go against them. That's very sad because it meant that salvation was closed off for them. And that, brothers and sisters, is something that, I mean, when we are opposed by religious authorities, when we're opposed by people who mock the faith, who deny the faith, one of the things that we need to remember is that we should be full of pity for them, because they are on their way to hell. They are destroying their own lives, and their judgment is going to be terrible. The judgment of false prophets, we are told, again and again in Scripture, will be worse than the judgment of, say, murderers. Because what did they do? Murderers murder the body. False prophets murder the soul. These were people who stopped people from getting into heaven, who refused to preach the truth. And so, therefore, they are the wickedest of men. Now, the religious world, and I'm gonna give you just two applications, I think. The religious world hasn't changed much since the days of Jesus, essentially. The world today is still full of religious authorities who have titles like Pope, who have titles like Archbishop, and Bishop, and Metropolitan, and Patriarch, and they have all... this grand regalia. They have cassocks. They have gowns. Most of them have honors and degrees and they teach in renowned universities and so on. And they say they have great authority. They claim great authority in matters of faith. And yet, they are just as much the formalists, the hypocrites, and sometimes even more liberal than the Sadducees of Scripture. What do they do? They pour their scorn, by and large, on fundamentalists. They too would be appalled at the street preachers today. They call miracles superstition. They deny the deity of Christ. They deny the accuracy of the Bible. And yet they claim to have greater authority than the Bible. They can contradict it and say, I know better. For instance, after the Church of England conducted a funeral in Westminster Abbey for an outspoken British politician and atheist, Michael Ramsey, then the Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest position in the Church of England, second only to the monarch, who is technically speaking the head of the Church occupying the the space that the Pope used to occupy in medieval England, he answered the criticism that he received for, why are you honoring this atheist in the prime cathedral in the Church of England? Why were you telling people that this man has gone to heaven? And his answer was, heaven is not a place for Christians only. I expect to see some present day atheists there. And all the liberals of the age, he made that statement in 1960, clapped their hands at this tolerance. Oh, well done, sir. Well done. Well said. How very tolerant of you. But in so doing, if that was true, if what Michael Ramsey said there was true, then everything that Jesus taught in his ministry is false. Because you remember, Jesus said, you must be born again when Nicodemus, one of the highest members of the religious establishment, the Pharisee of Pharisees, came to him. and spoke to him and talked to him about religious matters. Jesus said to him, not, now Nicodemus, I know I'm going to see you in heaven because you're such a good and religious man. He said to him instead, he told him the truth, he must be born again. Unless he believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, he would go to hell just as surely as somebody who had no interest whatsoever in religion. Jesus said, we remember, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. There is only one way to heaven, and that is by faith in Jesus Christ. And yet, it's become part and parcel of what so-called religious authorities declare on a regular basis to deny what Jesus said about the exclusivity of the faith, about his nature. In 2018, it's not just in 1960 with Michael Ramsey, in 2018, Pope Francis Told this little boy, and it was heartbreaking the kid is crying he comes up to him. You know what's the matter well his father died and his father is an atheist and so he's worried he's in hell and The Pope scooped him up in his arms And he said God has the heart of a father your father was a good man. He is in heaven with him He told that little boy that he should trust in a lie. He said something that was wicked and deceitful and horrific because it contradicted the words of the very man he said he was speaking in the name of at that point in time. Brothers and sisters, that was a great sin. But it's something that we see repeated all the time. Now, while religious authorities these days are open to any belief, there are some beliefs they vehemently deny. A teacher of mine, he's since passed away, his name was Ronald Nash. He took one of his students to hear a Methodist bishop preaching. He was coming into the area and the man was making a big splash with his teachings and so on. He said, you want to go hear him? Because he was teaching apologetics, and they were dealing with religious, they were dealing with Christian liberalism at the time. And the kid said, sure. So he went to this man's sermon, and the bishop essentially stood up and said, it doesn't matter what you believe. As long as you sincerely believe it, as long as you're following your conscience, just believe, you'll be alright, you'll go to heaven." That's essentially what he said. And of course, after the sermon, the man went to the back door and he was shaking the hands of everybody who came out. And the student, now Ronald Nash, being a professor, knew better than to do something like this, but the student didn't. He had a very concerned look on his face. And he looked at him and he said, do you believe that? Asking the bishop this question. The bishop said, do I believe what? He said, do you believe that it doesn't matter what you believe, you're all alright, you don't have to believe in Jesus Christ necessarily, you're still gonna go to heaven? And that every belief is equally true? Do you believe that? And the bishop said, yes, I believe that. Young man, what do you believe? And he said, I believe you're going to hell. And the bishop said, well, I should have said that everybody except you is right in what he believes. And brothers and sisters, that happens far more often than we would ever believe. Now as then, the people who really believe what John the Baptist taught and what Jesus taught about salvation are the one who the religious leadership generally pour their scorn upon. The more you believe the word, the more you believe Jesus, the more likely you are to be mocked for that belief. Certain things don't change. But know this, it doesn't matter what the religious formalists believe. It doesn't matter how many cassocks and croziers and pointy hats they have. It doesn't matter how much regalia they have, how many degrees they have, which colleges and institutions they've been to, how much people fawn after them, how they run after them and want to see them in their, you know, pokemobiles, waving their hand. or hear them, and so on, be seated next to them. It doesn't matter what the world thinks. What matters is what God says in His Word. And brothers and sisters, we know that John the Baptist was telling the truth when he said of Jesus that he is the way, the truth, and the life. You remember John the Baptist stood up and he warned all men that they were sinners. He warned all men that judgment was coming. He told men though that they could be saved. And then he pointed to Jesus and he told men it was time that they repented and believed in him. He was the one who would baptize not just with water but with fire and by that he meant the Holy Spirit. That, brothers and sisters, is the way of salvation. And although, you know, John did not have the robes and the stoles and the cassocks and the croziers and all of the vestments and the regalia and the rings and the degrees and so on, he knew the truth. He had the Holy Spirit indwelling him, and he preached the word fearlessly. And although it cost him his life, he pointed men to Christ. He pointed his own followers to Christ. We remember that the earliest followers of Jesus had been followers of John. And they went and they followed Christ. Let me give you a word of encouragement from a religious figure who was a true religious figure. I spoke against one bishop just now who didn't know the truth and who spoke against it. Let me point you to another bishop who did know the truth and who spoke it. It was an Anglican bishop by the name of J.C. Ryle. He was the first bishop of Liverpool. He essentially established the scene. He was long known as a man who was of the evangelical party in the Church of England. As a result, he was treated with contempt by many of his bishops. And had it not been that this bishopric was created for him in Liverpool, he probably would not have been that well known. But he became very well known for his evangelistic preaching, a man who was a contemporary of Spurgeon and somebody who would have agreed with him on almost every point except for church government and perhaps the sacraments. He said this, he said, let it be a settled principle in our Christianity that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is infinitely willing to receive penitent sinners. It matters nothing what a man has been in times past as he repent and come to Christ. Then old things are passed away and all things have become new. It matters not how high and self-confident a man's profession of religion may be. Does he really give up his sins? If not, his profession is abominable in God's sight, and he himself is still under the curse. Let us take courage ourselves. If we have been great sinners hitherto, only let us repent and believe in Christ, and there is hope. Let us encourage others to repent. Let us hold the door wide open to the very chief of sinners. Never will that word fail. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's first John 1 9 that he was quoting. That's the truth, brothers and sisters. That's the simple truth that we should all be proclaiming to the world. And brothers and sisters, it's the truth we need to believe. I pray that you do today. I pray that you've heard what John the Baptist said, that you've heard the word of Christ whom he pointed to, and you believe it in your hearts. If you do, you have nothing to be afraid of. But if you don't believe that, it doesn't matter how many degrees you have, it doesn't matter how many people affirm you, you are not saved. You are in as great a danger as those people who were outside the ark when the rain began falling. And more so because they, brothers and sisters, they were in danger of drowning. Someone who is outside of Christ is in danger of hellfire. So I pray that you would now turn, that you would repent, that you would humble yourselves if you have not already. A profession of faith is nothing. The reality is what matters. Let's go before the book now. God, our Father, I do pray, Lord, that we would listen to the words of that great prophet, John the Baptist, the greatest of all the prophets who preceded Jesus. For he pointed to him, he saw him with his own eyes, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And we know that's exactly what Christ did. He went to the cross bearing our sins, and He paid the full price for them. And by His blood we are washed. It does not matter what we did prior to coming to Christ. There is no sin so great that your grace through Him is not greater still. There is no stain so dark that it cannot be washed away by the blood of Jesus. O Lord, may we be washed in His blood and given His righteousness. that we might stand before you on that final day and hear those words we long to hear. Well done, O good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord. May that day come quickly. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen.