Our passage today, well, we'll start with verse 16. We ended with verse 16 last week. It's a bit of a transition verse, so I'll read that again, and then we'll go on through the end of the book of Acts, verse 31 in chapter 28. So this is Acts 28, beginning at verse 16. And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself with the soldier who guarded him. After three days, he called together the local leaders of the Jews, and when they had gathered, he said to them, brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans. When they had examined me, they wished to set me at liberty, because there was no reason for the death penalty in my case. But because the Jews objected, I was compelled to appeal to Caesar, though I had no charge to bring against my nation. For this reason, therefore, I have asked to see you and speak with you, since it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain. And they said to him, we have received no letters from Judea about you, and none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you. But we desire to hear from you what your views are, for with regard to this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against. When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening, he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved. And disagreeing among themselves, they departed after Paul had made one statement. The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, Go to this people and say, you will indeed hear but never understand. You will indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull and with their ears they can barely hear and their eyes they have closed. Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them. Therefore, let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles. They will listen. He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. Father, I also pray, Lord, as we close this book of Acts today, that we would receive from you what you have for us here, understanding that we never do come to a complete, full, plenary understanding of your word. There's always more for us to mine. There's always more for us to discover. Help us, Lord, as we absorb and remember what you have taught us through this book of Acts, and prepare our hearts even now, Lord, what you would speak to us today by your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Well, here we are at the 53rd and last message in the book of Acts. That's a whole year's worth of messages plus one. You know, of course, with various other messages interspersed throughout that time, we've spent about 16 months total going through this book. And I truly hope that this time in Acts has been as much of a blessing to you as it has been to me. Now as I've so often done in these narrative passages of scripture, we'll say a few things first about the text that shouldn't go ignored, and then we'll get into our main points. Now some of you, the first thing, some of you more perceptive folks may have noticed In this text, it actually skips from verse 28 to verse 30, unless you happen to be reading out of a King James or New King James Bible, both of which contain verse 29. So some of you may be using some sort of a study Bible or maybe something that's a little bit more expansive than our pew Bible, so to speak, that doesn't include verse 29 within the text, but it actually has a footnote. And so you'll see it at the bottom of your page. And that verse 29 may read something like, And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, having much dispute among themselves. Now, this kind of situation can be confusing for a lot of people, for people especially who don't understand the way the text of scripture has come down to us through history. If that's the case, they can start thinking things like, look, look at this modern translation that is deleting verses from the Bible. But the only way you can really think of these verses as being deleted from the Bible is if you've already assumed that your standard is the King James Version, that your standard, and if you assume that your standard is the King James Version, Well, then it will look like verses have been removed and frankly anything but the King James is going to be bad if the standard of what's good and right is the King James. But the King James is not the standard. The original manuscripts are the standard. And for the New Testament, The oldest manuscripts that have been discovered do not contain this verse 29. And it makes sense to see why it could have been added later on by a copyist, someone who was copying the manuscript into another manuscript, which was done by hand, as you know, up until right before the time of the Protestant Reformation, a big factor in the explosion of the understanding and going back to the sources and going back to the Word and the availability of the Word and the availability of teaching about the Word was the invention of the printing press in the decades leading up to the Protestant Reformation. So these were all being done by hand before that for all of the decades and centuries and even millennia that those scriptures had existed. New Testament, obviously, not as long as the Old Testament. But you can see why a verse like that would have been added. It doesn't make as much sense to have removed it. Why would you remove something like that? But you can add it because you might smooth out. It looks like from verse 28 to verse 30 is a little abrupt. Verse 29 makes a little bit more of a smooth transition, literarily, and it probably is the kind of thing that actually happened. But was it original to the manuscript? No, we don't believe it was. And the verse numbers themselves are not part of the inspired originals. The verse numbers were not actually added until a few decades into the Protestant Reformation in the 1550s with the addition of the Greek New Testament that was published by a man whose name was Stephanos. So as more of the older manuscripts were discovered, especially in these past two centuries, and newer translations have since been published based on those older manuscripts, it makes sense to keep the same verse numbering as you have in the older translations, so that you can still match up verse by verse. Because this, you know, this comes at the very end of the book, but what if this was in the middle of a chapter? You would still want to be able to match one verse to another from version to version. And so this way, as I said from the beginning, it does look like we're missing verse 29, when in fact it's far more likely that the manuscripts that were used by the translators of the King James Version had added that verse when you compare it to the original manuscripts. So remember then, the King James is not automatically the standard. Now, one other aspect of this passage I wanna direct your attention to is something important for us to discuss almost whenever we can, almost whenever we can. This passage helps demonstrate God's Trinitarian self-revelation, His Trinitarian self-revelation. And the reason we want to highlight that whenever we can is that in God's Trinitarian self-revelation, it's rarely displayed to us as the primary point of a passage. It's rarely the primary point of a passage. Sometimes it is, but rarely. but that Trinity is so woven throughout scripture, especially in the New Testament, it's important for us to see it where it is and to acknowledge it and to rejoice in it when we're confronted by it. Now, you might be asking yourself, how is this passage Trinitarian? Well, if you recall just a bit ago, Hezekiah read for us out of Isaiah chapter six, And our verses 26 and 27 here in Acts 28 are very nearly a direct quotation from verses 9 and 10 of Isaiah 6. So if you look at Isaiah 6 verse 8, you see the voice of the Lord spoke to Isaiah. The voice of the Lord. And this Lord that Isaiah sees is indicated in our Bibles, in our English translations, again, by that all capital word, Lord, L-O-R-D, all in capitals. That is the covenant name of the Lord, Yahweh, we would say. They used to say Jehovah, but it's more properly something similar to Yahweh. And even the seraphim, they call him the Lord of hosts. Yahweh Sabaoth, we sang about that in the verse in The Mighty Fortress. The Lord of the heavenly armies. Clearly, this is the covenant Lord of Israel that Isaiah sees and that the seraphim are exalting. In our passage today, in Acts 28, we're told by the inspired Apostle Paul that the Holy Spirit spoke those words to the prophet Isaiah. The voice of the one true God, Yahweh Sabaoth, in Isaiah 6, is also the Holy Spirit. Isn't that interesting? So we see Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, is also the Holy Spirit. But I said this passage is actually Trinitarian, didn't I? Where does the sun show up in all this? Well, if you're wondering that, feel free to turn to John's gospel with me in John chapter 12, just one book. toward the front of the Bible from where you are in Acts, John chapter 12. And I'm going to begin reading here in the middle of verse 36. When Jesus had said these things, when Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him. so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. And then John goes on to quote here, Isaiah 53 verse one, Lord who has believed what he heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. And then going on to verse 39, therefore, they could not believe for again, Isaiah said, now look at this, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them. This is, again, very nearly a direct quotation of part of Isaiah 6, verse 10, which we just saw also in Acts 28. But look at what John has to say in verse 41. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. He saw his glory. Whose glory did he see? Well, if you're just reading Isaiah 6, we would say Isaiah saw the glory of Yahweh, the Lord of hosts. John 12 here tells us that Isaiah spoke about Jesus. He saw the glory of Jesus. John is saying that because the Jews who saw the signs and wonders of Jesus, that He worked and still didn't believe in Him, that happened to fulfill these two prophecies from Isaiah, because Isaiah had seen the glory of Jesus. It's stunning when you look at it like this, isn't it? Friends, don't let anyone ever badger you into believing the Bible doesn't teach the Trinity. It clearly does. This combination of passages, Isaiah 6, John 12, and Acts 28, makes it abundantly apparent, just one of the many places across the scripture, that we see God's Trinitarian revelation. The glorious Yahweh is seated on his throne. This Lord speaks to Isaiah, but the Holy Spirit actually speaks there. And the glory Isaiah saw was the glory of Jesus. The triune God, one in essence, three in person. Is there mystery in that? Yes, absolutely there's mystery in that. We'll never fully grasp how God is one and three. And no analogy from God's creation will ever truly fit because God's triunity is completely unique to himself. But we believe what the scriptures teach because the Lord has chosen to reveal himself to us in his triunity. Let God be true, though every man were a liar. So having pointed that out to you, let's examine the more apparent content in this last passage of the book of Acts. We saw last week, and again, here in verse 16, that Paul has arrived in Rome. Remember that whole ship, the voyage, the shipwreck, the many days and nights that they were wondering whether or not they were going to survive, the shipwreck on the island of Malta, Paul surviving the snake bite miraculously, and then the three months that they served each other there, and then went on to Rome. So now he's made it to Rome, he's under house arrest. And immediately we see what we've seen since the very beginning of his ministry after his conversion, which is that he seeks out the Jewish population in Rome in order to bring the gospel message to them. And the interactions he has with the Jews in Rome are very similar to what we've seen previously in the Book of Acts. Again, he goes through, he's in chains here for the hope of Israel. This is all about, Jesus himself is the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies, everything that was the hope of Israel. And some of the Jews were convinced by his words. They believed the gospel, as we have seen throughout the Book of Acts, but others didn't. and the two groups disputed among each other. We've seen this ever since his first interactions with the Jews in Damascus, right after his conversion. And as we just discussed, he sees fit to quote the prophecy from Isaiah about the mission to the Jews being one that led to blind eyes, deaf ears, and dull hearts. So because the Jews have continued to reject their own Messiah in large numbers, God has already seen fit to send this salvation through the Jewish Messiah Jesus to the Gentiles. And that's often where we see the Jews really get riled up, right? That was the reason that they accosted him in many of these other places. That was the reason they hounded him out of the temple and had him arrested. He will continue to send his light to the Gentiles, Paul says here, and those Gentiles actually will listen in larger numbers. Well, it's a theme we've come to recognize well from this book. But what might surprise you about the very last two verses is this book seems to come to a very abrupt end. Paul's under arrest here. What happened? We've been saying ever since, what, four or five chapters ago that God has determined he will go to Rome because he will testify to Caesar. Did he ever get to testify to Caesar? I mean, we see that he made it to Rome. What was the result of that? I want closure. So when we think like that. We do betray some of our more modern Western sensibilities, which is that we want, for example, we want biology, not biology, biographies to be chronological, and we want them to be hyperfactual. We don't want them to leave out any information, and we definitely want closure. We want a nice, in literary terms, we want a nice denouement. But this was not necessarily the ancient pattern. And so, first of all, we have to understand, remember back to the beginning of our study in Acts, the book of Acts is not really a biography of Paul, even though it has seemed that way for these last many chapters. We didn't even meet him until the end of chapter seven. He didn't become a main character until about chapter nine, and he didn't become the primary character in the book until chapter 13. The book of Acts is all about the continuation of the fledgling church after Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension. And we've seen numerous major and semi-major characters up until that time after Jesus' death. Peter, we've seen Stephen, we saw Philip, and Barnabas, and Silas, and John Mark, Apollos, and Priscilla, and Aquila. All of these in addition to Paul. All of them had a role to play in the story, in the mission. This book of Acts, remember, the official title is the Acts of the Apostles. It's really the Acts of the Risen Lord through his apostles. And you know what we can wholeheartedly affirm about the mission of the Acts of the Risen Lord? The mission goes on. The mission never ends. Well, the mission will end when Jesus returns, but that's the point. We're going to proclaim the kingdom of God until it's fully consummated when Jesus returns and he once again dwells bodily in the midst of us in his glorified form. The book of Acts doesn't seem to have much of an ending because the mission has not ended. We see a bit of the nature of this continuing mission, even in what's left of Paul's life, because we believe he wrote a handful or so of his letters that have made it down to us in the New Testament during this period of house arrest in Rome. We've talked about that a little bit. And Hezekiah read to you from one of those letters, part of the first chapter of the letter to the Philippians. And remember what Paul writes there in Philippians 1, especially verses 12 through 14. His incarceration, As lenient as it was and as much favor as he received, his incarceration, he wrote, has really served to advance the gospel. And he writes, so that it's become known throughout the whole Imperial Guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. Paul writes here that the mission goes on even while he's under arrest. In fact, the arrest has allowed the gospel to spread through the entire Praetorian Guard and to everyone else who has heard about them there in Rome, about him. That's what being on mission looks like. That's a popular catchphrase. It's probably, you know, already gone out of fashion in our current society. Spreading the gospel to all the guards who rotate through that duty of guarding, to actually being physically shackled to him. That's preaching the word, as he writes in another letter, in season and out of season. Now, I will say that the New Testament never actually reveals Paul's eventual fate. We don't learn the fate of many of the apostles from the New Testament itself. Most of what we know about what happened to the apostles after this era comes from early church fathers and traditions that sprung up about the various apostles. We do believe, especially from the writings of Clement of Rome, who wrote at the very end of the first century a very popular letter that was considered for a little while to maybe have a place in the canon of scripture, but was eventually determined it did not. But Clement of Rome wrote, he wrote this at the very end of the first century, so a few decades after these events, that Paul was eventually martyred. but that he was actually likely released from this first imprisonment, probably because his accusers from Jerusalem never showed up to accuse him in Rome. And if that were the case, well, the trial would just, there would be no accusers. But it seems he was imprisoned again at some later date, maybe even more than once. and eventually beheaded in about the year 67 or 68, after having written what we believe to be his last letter, 2 Timothy. That just provides us some closure for our own sake. The mission here goes on. Even after Paul, the chosen vessel of the gospel to the Gentiles, even after he dies, the mission goes on. And that's an implicit invitation to you and to me. We're called to be an active part of this continuing mission. And I believe that there are two other aspects portrayed in this passage that can help us to focus our minds and hearts on this continuing mission in our present day. These two aspects, they might especially apply to those who most labor in preaching and teaching, but I think as we've seen from this very book, the mission of the gospel belongs to the entire church, not just to a certain chosen few. Certainly there are some who are gifted by the Spirit to preach and teach and evangelize, but this mission indeed belongs to the entire church. The first aspect we see here that can help us focus within this ongoing mission is that, as we see in verse 30, Paul welcomed all who came to him. He welcomed all who came to him. We see over and over that Paul hasn't given up on his Jewish brothers. It's kind of amazing when you think about it. In fact, every The very letter he had written to the Roman church a few years prior to arriving here, he expresses his anguish for the Jews who have repeatedly rejected their own Messiah. He says in Romans chapter nine verses, well, verse three and a few verses after that, he wishes he himself were cut off from Christ, accursed, for the sake of his Jewish brothers and sisters, to whom belong, as he writes, the adoption, the glory, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, the Messiah, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen, he says. Even with their repeated rejection of the gospel and all of the persecution he experienced from them, Paul continued to welcome all who came to him. That almost surely includes some Jews as well as the Gentiles that came. He didn't withhold the gospel from the Jews who had approached him just because other Jews had rejected it. This is the same pattern we've continued to see. He would go to the Jews, A few would believe him, the rest would reject the gospel and attack him, and then he would go to the Gentiles in that region, and he would start that pattern over, and in a new city, he would do the same thing, same thing again. In this setting, under house arrest, he's not as free to go out and about, and so he welcomed and ministered to all who came to him, including even these Roman praetorian guards who were shackled to him as their duty. Well, we can absolutely translate this into our present day. Have you ever had an experience where you've shared the gospel and it was rejected? Maybe that rejection came from someone of a particular ethnic background, or maybe it was someone in your work environment, or in your school environment, or in your family, or some whatever particular sphere of your life. And because they rejected the gospel, you've decided it's too hard to share it with any more people in that group. Well, I say to you out of Acts 28 verse 30, welcome all who come to you. Be open to every opportunity that comes your way, even if that person is part of some group that has rejected your gospel presentation in the past. Is there someone new at work that is engaging you in conversations that could lead very naturally to the gospel? Don't categorically shut them out or withhold the gospel from them just because others at work have rejected your message. Is there someone of an ethnic group in your circle or maybe someone who practices a different religion? And by different religion, I just don't mean, you know, a different denomination of Christianity. I'm talking about like, you know, Mormonism or Islam or Jehovah's Witnesses or something that's clearly outside of the Christian faith. Don't dismiss gospel opportunities with those people just because others in those groups have dismissed you in the gospel in the past. The second aspect of this passage that we can embrace today, it's similar though I don't think it's quite the same thing. When we're looking for certain results in ministry and we don't see the results we're hoping for and praying for, we should not be discouraged. We should not get discouraged. Remember the gospel itself is cause for stumbling. It's a cause of offense. See it here in verses 26 and 27, Paul's quotation from Isaiah. Paul also wrote to the Corinthian church that Christ crucified is, how does he say, the stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. Even Jesus himself, when questioned by the disciples of John the Baptist, he encouraged them, and by extension was encouraging John, who was in prison at the time, say, blessed is the one who is not offended by me, not offended by Jesus. The one who is not offended by the gospel of Jesus Christ is blessed by God. That means, and if you do any evangelizing, you know this from experience, not everyone is blessed by God so that they don't stumble over the gospel message. So friends, don't get discouraged when people don't respond positively to the gospel. In fact, I think this is, on our Reformation Sunday, this is actually one of the most encouraging benefits of the Reformed faith. Now, listen to me closely on that. I don't mean it's a specific reason for us to believe Reformed doctrine. We should believe our doctrine based on what we believe the Scripture teaches. But because we believe the Scriptures teach Reformed doctrine, this is one of the most encouraging benefits. Friends, Those whom the Father draws to Christ, they will come to Christ. We're not responsible for giving them hearts of flesh in place of their hearts. So we can't do that. We're incapable of doing that. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. And He will do that for all whom the Father draws. and for all those, same group of people, for whom Christ effectually died. The salvation that is all of God is just as Trinitarian as any other act of God. The Father elects a people, the Son atones for that same group of people, and the Holy Spirit applies salvation to that very same group. Perfect harmony in the Trinitarian act of redemption. And one way we can remind ourselves of this encouragement is this. Ask ourselves, does God need anything from me? Does the Lord of the universe need anything from me? Well, let's allow the Apostle Paul from the book of Acts to answer that question for us. He says, In a couple of verses of Acts 17, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. So we can rest in the fact that God needs nothing from us, nothing from me, nothing from you. Nothing from anyone. That's what makes him God. He is the one who is completely self-sufficient. But at the same time, he does still require things from his people. Certain things. And the requirement is not to change people's hearts, as we just discussed, but to share with them the truth, the hard truth sometimes, to proclaim his kingdom and to teach them about the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he required of Paul, his chosen vessel to the Gentiles, and that's what Paul did. That's what he also requires of his church. his chosen people, adopted into the family of God through Christ as co-heirs with Christ. He requires us to proclaim the kingdom of God in a dark world and teach lost people about the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's what we can take encouragement in. Don't focus on results, focus on obedience to the call. Are you proclaiming the kingdom of God in your spheres of influence? Parents, are you proclaiming the kingdom of God in your homes to your children and teaching them about the Lord Jesus Christ? Don't focus on their results moment by moment. Just keep being obedient to that call. Find every teachable moment you can. That's not just true in the home. It's true in your work environment. People will come to you. with a question. You know what? The Bible has an answer for that. And you can teach them about the Lord Jesus Christ and God's kingdom and God's lordship over his creation. When your children are disobedient, teach them about God's call on their lives to submit their lives, not just to you, but to him. When people around you are suffering, you can present to them the Savior who suffered in their place so that sinners like them and like you and like me can be delivered from the curse of sin and eventually be delivered from all suffering. We don't have to beat ourselves up over what we perceive as lack of results. If we continue to strive to be obedient and proclaiming the kingdom of God, As professor and commentator Craig Keener writes, those who share in the mission must also share in the cross. Our ministry is not always going to be easy. We may not always get the results we're hoping for. But as stewards of the gospel, God simply calls us to be found faithful. I think we can foster that attitude about our very local church as well. Are many of us a little disappointed we still don't have our own building? Yeah, I'm sure we are. I am a little bit. Are we a little discouraged that we can't yet meet in the mornings on Sundays? Because we know that's hindering our growth a little bit, and it's kind of cramping many of your homes and your schedules. But here's the question we have to continually ask ourselves, and we can ask this about our local fellowship. Are we being faithful? Are we being faithful? Are we faithfully proclaiming the gospel? Are we honoring the Lord Jesus Christ? Are we teaching the scriptures with consistency and accuracy? Are we getting in each other's lives, encouraging one another and supporting one another? These are the questions we have to most ask. Because those are the actions that we can control the most. And that's what God calls us to. He simply calls us to be found faithful. Friends, let's pray. Father, you don't need anything from us. From eternity past, you are God. and had a perfect, loving relationship with yourself, with your triune self, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You created us, you created your whole world simply out of your goodness and desire, not because you needed us or because you were incomplete. And Father, then you've even called out a people to yourself These days we call that the church, the gathered people of God. Again, out of your own goodness, out of your own free will, not our free will, our will is in submission to yours. And so Father, we pray. that you would enable us and empower us and embolden us to be found faithful. That's what Paul continued to do. He was bold. And even in the book of Philippians, it says that those who witnessed him and witnessed his boldness in chains were themselves made all the bolder because of it. And so we pray, Lord, for that boldness. And we also pray as well that like Paul in that setting, nothing would hinder your gospel message from going forth through us. We pray that the forces of darkness in our communities would not hinder the gospel. We pray that the schemes of Satan, who hates your light, and hates the forgiveness that you've made available to mankind through Christ. We pray that he could not hinder the gospel going forth in this community. To the leaders in our community, to the businesses in the community, to the schools in the community, even to the apostate churches in our community, Lord, let your gospel not be hindered. And I pray that you would find us faithful to use us in doing so, in Jesus' name, amen.