Now let us turn together in the New Testament Scriptures to the end of the book of Acts in chapter 28 as we read the short verses, verses 28 through 31 and also a short passage from 1st Corinthians chapter 15 verses 9 through 11. Acts chapter 28 verses 28 to 31 and 1st Corinthians 15 verses 9 through 11 Acts 28 verse 28, therefore says the great apostle Paul I want you that is the Jewish leaders there in Rome who were Paul's audience therefore I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles and they will listen. For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. And in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 9 through 11 where we read a snatch of Paul's own personal autobiography as he reflects upon how God has called and equipped him for his great ministry. For I am the least of the apostles, he writes, and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether then it was I or they, this is what we preach and this is what you believed. May God himself bless to our understanding these two portions of his own inspired and infallible word. Now this morning we have finally reached the last exposition of all in our series through the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. And I don't know how you are feeling this morning but for myself I must say that it is with a sense of regret that we have come today to this particular point in our expositions. And as your pastor there is a very real sense this morning in which I feel that I have never really preached the Acts of the Apostles at all. And I find that the more I read and study this great book, the more I feel I could go back again and again and again. Because one of the amazing things as you would realize about the Word of God and part of its uniqueness is just this. That there are fresh aspects of light and truth that the Holy Spirit is constantly breaking forth from His Word every time we look at it. Now I'm sure that with me you share at least the sense that there is much that you have learned in these long months of our study through it and you like myself have been both humbled and encouraged and enabled I trust more clearly to see the purposes of God for his church and his purposes in your life also as we have shared these studies together. Now last Sunday morning you recall as we began to draw to its great conclusion in Acts 28, we looked at the true meaning of the book, which was that it is an account of the acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ himself. And we saw the transitional ministry of the apostles, their uniqueness, and the fact that God had chosen them as the human instruments by which the gospel should be advanced that the acts of Christ in heaven should be as it were enfleshed upon the earth in the ministry of these great men. And we saw above all else that its theme was the triumphant message of the gospel as it spread from Jerusalem and Judea through Samaria and finally to the utmost ends almost of the Roman Empire and the civilized world. Now this morning I want you to think again about the concluding words of Acts 28 verses 28 to 31 but with me to range much more widely than simply these words. But to see in them the record of the Apostle Paul's amazing achievement in the course of his life and ministry. When you think of it He found the world a pagan and a dark place. And within the space of only 30 years, the blessed message of his master and the banner of his master had been unfurled in no lesser place than Caesar's own palace in the great mistress city of the world, the city of Rome. And when you think about this beloved, It surely raises the question in your mind and my mind, what was the secret of this man's marvellous work? Because a marvellous work it most certainly was. If you simply think of Paul's record as a traveller It's absolutely astonishing and astounding even for these days in which travel is relatively easy and communications are good. When you think how he traversed much of the Roman Empire in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and crossed difficult and dangerous mountain passes and travelled on bandit infested roads and went into areas that were uncivilized and endured the hardships of the wayside inns and the suspicion and the dislike that everywhere met a member of the Jewish race to speak of nothing of the persecution he underwent as a Christian. It's an incredible record. But when you think of what he accomplished in his first and his second and his third great missionary journeys where it seems he stood like a colossus with one foot in Asia Minor and another foot in Greece and spread the gospel as far even as Yugoslavia to the north. When you consider his final journey to Rome by land and sea, a journey you remember of some 1800 miles in length, in the course of which his prayers and faith were the instrument by which he saved the ship's company, and his arrival eventually in Rome, where under the shadow of Caesar himself, he remained the ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ and brought the gospel into Caesar's own household. When you think of these things, the record is simply astonishing and astounding. When he came to that world, as I said a moment ago, it was a world being carried to its grave, in spite of all the philosophy of the age, in spite of all its literature, in spite of all the legislation to endeavour to control the moral decay of the Roman Empire. It was a world on its way to the grave, but when he ended it, The seeds of life and salvation had been spread through the whole Roman Empire and were maturing in every place to a ripe growth. So that only after three centuries duration, that great pagan empire was to become Christian. When you think of these things, you must ask the question, what was the secret of his most marvellous work and witness and testimony? Now this morning, in conclusion to our series as I say, I want to answer that question in the light of 1st Corinthians 15 verses 9 through 11 and the ending passage of Acts 28. And though there are many things that we could look at in the life and ministry of the great Apostle, I want you to focus your attention with me this morning upon four great characteristics of this man. As we look at the question, why was the Apostle's ministry so much owned of God to this great end? The secret of course of the gospel spread as we said last Sunday morning was the acts of the risen Christ. But in the acts of the risen Christ there must be the human instrument as well. And I suggest to you therefore first of all that part of the secret is found in the sense of divine commission from God that this great apostle received and owned. Now look at this with me for a moment this morning if you will. As I say there could be many answers to the question what is the secret of this man. you can think of his background that he was more than any other of the Apostles cosmopolitan in his background he grew up in a Greek culture in other words he had contact regularly with Roman civilization yet he was himself a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin and proud of his Jewish ancestry Or you could think again of his fine education that he sat at the feet of the great teacher Gamaliel. Or you can think of his eloquent speech as being part of the secret of his great usefulness and the blessing that accompanied his ministry. And so we could go on and on. But you see when you begin to look at the Apostle Paul, this amazing man, surely one of the first things that you see as characteristic of him is the sense of divine commission from God that drove him on earnestly in the work of the gospel. It seems to put it another way that in the forefront of this man's mind and of his daily living was the vivid remembrance that he had received the unmerited mercy of the Savior that had been shown to him on the Damascus road. For instance in his writings he says we obtained mercy when he's in the course of a passage explaining the reason for his indomitable courage. He calls himself the chief of sinners in another of his letters. Less than the least of saints in writing to the Ephesians. To whom this grace was given to proclaim the gospel among the Gentiles and the unsearchable riches of Christ. It was as though he could never forget, you see, the day in which he was arrested on the Damascus road as we learn in Acts 9 verse 5 and again in verse 15 of that passage. How deeply he had sinned before that time. How strenuously he had resisted the light that broke down from heaven upon him on that day. and he was constantly returning to the great motivating thought of the divine commission in the grace of God that had reached him and arrested his cause. And you see as you look at his expanding ministry, at the very heart of it is this thought. How can he ever despair of the conversion and regeneration of pagan men? since he himself had received the divine unmerited mercy and was the recipient of the great commissioning call of God. How could he faint when the same grace that laid hold of him was ready to lay hold of others as well. And you remember how this came to him. in Acts 9 verse 5 where Jesus said to him I am Jesus whom you are persecuting now get up and go into the city and it will be told you what you are to do And how in verse 15 of the same passage the emphasis comes out again as Jesus addresses Ananias with the command to go and lay his hands upon the apostle that he may receive his sight. And Jesus says to Ananias, this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before Gentiles, kings and the children of Israel and I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. So from the very beginning of his ministry, he is conscious of the commissioning hand of God's grace upon him. Through to its very close, as we see there at the end of Acts 28, for two whole years he stayed in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance, he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. the memory of his call, what he had been saved from, what he had been saved to, was his constant incentive in the spread of the gospel everywhere. Now you see as you think of this, and I think of it this morning, it well for us too, to consider the implications of it. Our lives are so busy very often, aren't they? They're filled with bustle and rush from morning's dawn to evening's arrival. And what we need to do beloved, more and more as Christian men and women and boys and girls, is stand where Paul evidently constantly stood beneath the cross of Jesus. and see again the marvel of the divine choice and commissioning of ourselves. What mercy and grace reach me we are to say. And as we see as it were by faith, every drop of blood falling from every wound in the sacred body of our Saviour. It is to say to us that we are to spend ourselves and be spent for the same cause that the apostle counted so dear to him. And you see when we do that, we come to the realization that it's not ourselves, but it's the grace of God and the power of God with us which will uphold us in the doubtful race and enable us and energize us as his grace works within us and that anything else that we may do in the energy of the flesh is like wood and hay and straw and stubble to be discounted in the last day. Do you see what I'm saying to you this morning my dear friend? The great motive you see for us as the Apostle is the divine calling and commissioning of God. And there's a sense in which all our care, like all the care of the Apostle, should be only to purify ourselves in the Master's service and all our desire to yield ourselves and our members instruments of righteousness. but his holy will might be done in all the world because we have the divine commissioning of our God upon us. Now secondly, if there is a second characteristic in the life of this great man that I think we are to see it is this, and it's closely connected with the first one. It is his deep conviction of heart. Now you find this for instance in 1st Thessalonians 2 verse 4 and 2nd Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 12 where Paul says not as pleasing men but God who tries our hearts and then again but the name of our Lord Jesus Christ might be glorified. Well what was the deep conviction of his heart? His deep conviction was none other than God should be glorified through Christ in all that the Apostle did. Now I suggest to you that's the second great picture of the servant of Christ that we see in the pages of the book of Acts and again it's reflected in many of his epistles such as the ones I quoted to you a moment ago. For instance, when you see him in the book of Acts, in the city of Pisidian Antioch, in Acts chapter 13, at the very beginning of the first great missionary journey. The gospel is preached gloriously in the Jewish synagogue. Many of the Gentiles, remember, come to hear the apostles preach. But then persecution breaks out and he moves on. He goes to Lystra and he's stoned there. He goes into Derby and there he receives a much warmer reception from the Jews. In the second great missionary journey he's beaten in Philippi but he goes on again to preach the glorious gospel in the cities of Greece in Thessalonica and in Corinth and in Athens and so on as we saw. And at the end of his third great missionary journey as it draws to its close he arrives in Jerusalem and he's practically lynched by mob violence. But he goes on to witness to Christ before rulers and Roman governors and finally arriving in Rome itself in the presence of the great Caesar himself. Well what is the great motive that drives him on and ever on? What bends all his energies in this great task to which he's been committed? Well it is the great motive, the deep conviction of his heart that God is to be glorified through all in Christ. Now you see, that's very vital I think for us to grasp. because in living our own lives today so often we feel as Christian men and women well there must be results to what we do and if we see the results we're encouraged and of course we can go on to live to the glory of God but where we don't see the results then it's so much more difficult to live for his glory and we become discouraged and we feel we're out of the way and other lesser motives come in and dominate our lives and our thinking But what you see in the Apostle Paul by contrast is this, that outward results mattered very little to this man. What men said about him he didn't mind, what they did to him he didn't mind. Beaten with rods in Philippi, stoned in Lystra, persecuted, driven out of the city and out of that one. so long as he had the inward testimony, you see, that he pleased God and he was living to the glory of God, he was satisfied. Not as pleasing men, he says, but God who tries our hearts. and again in 2nd Thessalonians 1 verse 12 that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ should be glorified. And the longer he lived you notice through the book of Acts the more passionate that great ambition became in the Apostle's life. Now let me say to you my dear friends this morning what is your single undivided aim as you live your Christian life today? what strength and consolation I suggest to you would be imparted when you have this as your great motivating force for living. If we simply sought the good pleasure of God and the glory of our Master, you know what would happen? We would be possessed with the realization that we succeed even in the midst of apparent failure. and that we are more than conquerors. Even when on the surface it seems that we are fleeing for our lives. Now you see that's the great difference that this principle makes in a man's life. In the eyes of the world Paul was the offscouring of all things. He says we are cast down but we are not destroyed. and he says in what I think is one of the greatest apostolic testimonies of the New Testament in 1st Corinthians 4 verses 3 through 5 with me, listen, with me he says it's a very small thing but I should be judged by you or by man's judgment he says I judge not even mine own self but he that judges me is the Lord wherefore judge nothing before the time until the Lord come who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the heart and then shall each man have praise from God. Are you living like that? I asked you this morning. To each of us you see a heavenly stewardship has been committed. Something is required of us. And it's not the fulfilling of my own desires as a Christian man or my dreams. But what is required of me is the faithfulness that through thick and thin, through dark days and bright days, through evil as well as good, the deep conviction of my heart is that I am here upon this earth for the glory of God. And what ultimately matters is only one thing. the smile of my father's good pleasure upon me in the work that he has certainly appointed for me to do. So the second thing you see is his deep conviction of heart that the glory of God should be sought in every situation in which God's providence have put him. Now there's a third thing that I think we've learned in our study of the Acts of the Apostles concerning this great man and that is his devoted care of his converts. Remember that we're answering the question, what is the secret of this man's great and pervasive influence in the early church? What made him that mighty instrument in the hand of God for the advance of the gospel? And the third answer is His devoted care of Christ's converts. Now you remember that this has been a lesson that is repeated all through the three missionary journeys of the Apostle. Taking you back into Acts 14 as Paul and Barnabas, his companion, retraced their steps through the places they had visited on the outward part of their journey. The city in Antioch, and Derby and Lystra and Iconium and these other places they retraced their steps in order remember to establish elders in every church and to comfort and strengthen the believers the care of the converts and then in the second great missionary journey in Acts 16 how did it begin? do you remember it began unostentatiously by Paul and his new companion Silas visiting the churches that they had been enabled to establish in the province of Asia. They went strengthening the churches says Luke, the care of the converts. And in the third journey after Paul's long stay in Ephesus for three years where he built and strengthened the church he goes on to Greece and then returns through the churches that he's planted again strengthening and establishing the converts before he journeys finally back to Jerusalem and his imprisonment there. Now his practice is summarized you may recall in Acts chapter 20 where we spent several Sundays and he says addressing the Ephesian Christians I warned you day and night with tears and he charges the elders feed the flock after his own example evidently he has not hesitated to proclaim to them the whole counsel of God and so he commits them to the word of God and the word of his grace that can build them up and give them their inheritance among the saints. Now what does all this mean? Well it means you see that the apostle had an intimate personal care for those who were one to faith in Christ. He puts it a different way in Colossians 1 verse 28. Whom we preach, he says, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man mature in Christ. Now how he dwells, beloved, on every man warning every man, teaching every man that we may present every man mature in Christ Jesus. And you see in contrast to what I call today the almost reckless haste that pastors and evangelists of today have to go out and shake the boughs of the fruit trees to obtain an instant harvest. He knew well the danger of damaging the newly formed bloom. And he gathers his fruit in every case as if it has been hand-picked. Do you see what I'm saying to you? Warning every man, teaching every man, that we may present every man mature in Christ. there is a carefulness, there is an intensity, there is a tearfulness in this man's ministry. Because he knows that one soul for whom Christ died is more precious than a universe of worlds. And we see the eloquence of this man's tears. Remember, he says, that for the space of three years, both day and night, I warned you, every one of you, with tears. and every word I suggest to you is significant. His devoted care of converts. You know, I believe in this age, if ever the gospel is to prosper and become strong in the life of nations and of churches, we need that same devotedness. And some of you at times, and I can understand it, may grow impatient with the patient exposition of the scriptures. But beloved, let me remind you, that is part of the carefulness with which a pastor watches over his flock. His devoted care of converts. As James Montgomery puts it in that great hymn, Pour out thy spirit from above, Lord, thine ordained servants bless. He says in one of the stanzas, as I've reminded you before, To watch and pray and never faint, By day and night strict guard to keep. to warn the sinner, cheer the saint, nourish thy lands and feed thy sheep. That's what the ministry is all about. And that was the carefulness of the great Apostle Paul. In one of the commentaries that I read, I came across these words. Listen to them. it's an exposition on that part of Acts 20 where Paul has said for three years by day and night with tears I minister to you do not complain says this writer of his importunity that his carefulness the intensity with which he looked after the Ephesian Christians do not complain of his importunity you who are unthankful He disturbs you but once. His own repose is broken every night. If not for you, for others. He's weeping over you. Nay more, whatever you are, He will not let you go until He has obtained what? Some favor or kindness? Ah, the greatest favor, the greatest kindness you can manifest is to be converted to the Lord Jesus or to serve him with greater faithfulness. You refuse him? You repulse him? Notwithstanding his entreaties? But before you leave him, look at him. He weeps. He weeps over the sins in which you continue, over the injury your example does to the church, over the stumbling block you set before the world. And above all, for the future you are preparing for yourself. What do you say to this apostle in tears before you? I was going to say prostrate at your feet. The God whom he serves once summed up in a single sentence all that his apostle ought to be. Behold, he prayeth. Now you in your turn, you to whom he preaches may sum up all that he does for you in a single sentence. Behold, he weeps. It's a very eloquent testimony, isn't it? To the carefulness with which he watched over his converts. My dear friend, are you as careful over the state of your soul? Do you weep over it as Paul wept over the state of those who were to be the elect of God's grace? Now fourthly, we've seen the divine commission from God and the deep conviction of the Apostle's heart and his devoted care of Christ's convert. But finally, there is the developing character of Christ within this Apostle. Now again you look at this man and surely the fourth great secret of his fruitfulness lay in this. That he was able out of his weakness and self-forgetfulness to draw strength. It's the portrait of a character developing in Christ. Now I suggest to you there's nothing more remarkable about the Apostle than this. Of men, none were more gifted. Intellectually, you only need to read his epistles to see that. Gifted in terms, as I said to you, of his cosmopolitan background, equally at home in the Greek and Roman world as he ever was among his own people, the Jews. For strength of character unsurpassed, for natural gifts abounding for energy incredible and gifts of thought and speech that were second to none. But the great characteristic of this man that comes before us both in the Acts of the Apostles and in his letters is none of this but it's the picture of a man who is glorying not in his natural abilities but in his weaknesses. And if it wasn't for his infirmities and weaknesses beloved he would never have become the apostle to the Gentiles or ever have been such an instrument in so splendid a work. Why? Because his own testimony is that he would have relied upon his own achievements and acquirements. He would have been filled with his own natural self-confidence that he had in the days before he became a Christian. In zeal he says, persecuting the Church of God. and he would have relied on his own extraordinary natural endowments and not upon the supply of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. And I suggest to you therefore the fourth and final secret for his great fruitfulness and usefulness was the humbling of this man. Down, down, down he goes. from Saul of Tarsus, the proud Pharisee, to Paul, meaning literally in Greek, the little one. playing second fiddle to Barnabas in his ministry in Antioch of Syria. Until the day when his description Barnabas and Saul becomes Paul and Barnabas. Till he's been humbled and broken and is able to be used as the instrument in the hand of his Saviour that he was destined to become. And remember when he came to the Corinthians, they said of him, his bodily presence is weak and his speech is what? Contemptible. And this is a very different picture, isn't it? From Paul, the proud, persecuting Pharisee. He had become utterly dependent, you see, upon the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let me say, as we draw to a conclusion, this. After these things, my dear friends, let none of us complain. The only thing that we need to be sure of is that we are the recipients of God's grace and in the place where God has put us. But you say to me this morning there are so many hindrances and limitations in my life and around me. Paul gloried in those things. You say it's impossible for me to accomplish the task that I feel God is calling me to. Paul saw in that impossibility according to the flesh the very evidence that God had indeed called him to accomplish that which was otherwise impossible. And in other words you see we are to do by faith what others do by human strength. And that's the secret of the great apostle's life and ministry. First Corinthians 15 verse 10 that we read this morning. By the grace of God I am what I am. And his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain. Now if you're in that position this morning you're in the position my friend of being able to do much for God and it's my prayer as we end this long series through the acts of the apostles that you will rise to higher heights as God's people and stand more strongly as God's flock as you too realize, that in weakness is my strength made perfect. And in conclusion let me say that here is the secret of all of Paul's fruitfulness and usefulness. His divine commission, his deep conviction, his devoted care of God's people and his developing character in Christ. And these words I suggest to you apply not just to him but to every one of us who is in Christ here this morning. Let's pray. Our gracious Father we thank you for the example of this great man unsurpassed in the pages of the New Testament Scriptures. We're thankful for every characteristic that you have been pleased by the Holy Spirit to set out for our instruction in the life and example of this godly servant of Christ. Enable us our Father to rejoice that we may also be dealt with in the same way that he was dealt with and come to that same position of ever humbled usefulness in the service of our Saviour today. But the gospel, the glorious message that alone sets men free may through us spread indeed to the furthest ends of the earth. May it be so, in Jesus name, Amen.