We continue now with reading. We're going to read from God's Word, and this morning we continue in our study of the book of Acts. We're reading from Acts chapter 21 from verse 17 to 26. Acts 21, 17 to 26. It's on page 930 if you're using one of the church Bibles. This is the account of Paul returning to Jerusalem at the end of his third missionary journey. When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly. On the following day, Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified God. And they said to him, You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs. What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come. Do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow. Take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself also live in observance of the law. But as for the Gentiles who have believed, We have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them and went into the temple, giving notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for each one of them. Amen. And we thank God for His holy and inerrant Word, and we're going to have a brief prayer before we come to study this passage together. Please do keep it open so that we can study the verses together. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that all Scripture is God-breathed And we thank you, O Lord, that it is the living Word and that it is powerful in your hand, powerful to convert sinners and to bring men and women from deadness to life in Christ Jesus our Lord. and powerful enough to sanctify us and enable us to make steady progression in holiness and godliness of character. We pray, O Lord, for all of this. Even now, as we open up this particular passage, this particular portion of Scripture, we ask that your Holy Spirit would be present with us, enabling all that is said and enabling us to have ears to hear and eyes to see and the faith to behold the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask all of this in His precious name. Amen. I was speaking recently to a friend, a friend in another church, and he was sharing with me just how deeply he'd come to appreciate one of the elders in his church. An older man who I think had been something of a mentor, really a mentor and a friend to my friend for 20, 25 years or so. And after this friend of mine had finished describing what had been particularly special about this man, the guidance that he'd provided and the godly example that he'd been to him over the years and so on, I responded, I suppose just trying to sum things up in a way, by saying, in other words, this man is a man worth following. A man worth following, my friend responded by saying, yes, that's exactly right. He's a man worth following. What was interesting about all of this, this conversation, was that, as I suppose is so often the case when someone describes a person who's had a significant Christian influence or significant Christian impact on them, was that he didn't really speak very much at all about this man's giftedness or about his intellect or about what this man happened to have done over the years. What he spoke about was this man's character, what he is like as a person as opposed to what he knows, as opposed to what he is able to do, or as opposed to what he may have done. I suppose the biblical version of that would be those great words in 1 Samuel 16, verse 7, where it says, the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, all of those things, the intellect, the abilities, what someone may have done, but the Lord looks on the heart. the Lord sees, not as man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." Well, all of that to say, if ever there was a man worth following for those same reasons, reasons of the heart, reasons of the character, as opposed to reasons of mere outward appearance, it was surely the apostle Paul. There's no question that Paul was a supremely gifted preacher of God's Word. There's no question that Paul was a man of incredible knowledge and insight. There's no question that Paul was used powerfully in the hands of God to bring forth his purposes in the world. But one of the things we can very easily overlook is that maybe more important than any of his skills or abilities or things that we would automatically think of when we consider a man like the apostle Paul is the fact that Paul was fundamentally a man who, by the grace of God and in Jesus Christ, was like a pillar of godliness in a fallen world. If ever there was a man who lived out the course of his Christian life with his heart and his mind fixed upon God himself, who exuded the virtues of the Christian faith, Paul was surely that man. And this, I believe, is something which very much comes to the fore in these events that we are told about in the passage that we just read together. Paul had just returned to Jerusalem at the end of his third missionary journey, his final missionary journey. Upon his arrival, he immediately went to meet with James and the elders of the church in Jerusalem, presumably in order to hand over the money that, remember, he'd been collecting from the various churches during his travels, but also, presumably, to enjoy fellowship with them and also to relay in their hearing all that had happened during his missionary exploits. Shortly after this meeting, seven days later, to be precise, Paul would then be arrested, and he would pretty much spend the majority of his remaining years thereafter on trial and being persecuted for his faith. We're gonna read about that next time. But just before we get to all of that, what we see here in Paul's encounter with the church at Jerusalem are two wonderful examples as to why Paul is a man we would do very well to follow, two expressions of a godly character or a man who exuded the fruit of Christ's righteousness. Firstly, his humble spirit, and secondly, his gracious spirit. First of all, in his humility, Paul was a man who clearly sought the glory of God and not of himself. He sought the glory of God and not himself. It says in verse 19 that after greeting James and the elders of the church, Paul related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified God. Paul had been to many places, and he had done many things. He had demonstrated heroic bravery in the face of violent and sinister opposition, something he would continue to do for the rest of his life. His knowledge of God and of the gospel of Jesus Christ was second to none on the planet at that time. We know that his ministry resulted in many, many conversions. But in the story that he told the church, his emphasis was on what God had done. through his ministry as opposed to what he may have been able to do of his own accord. His desire was to point the people to the work of God and not to his own accomplishments. And you notice there's really two results, two outworkings of that humility and that focus that we see in the apostle Paul. First of all, he says, It says, he related one by one the things God had done. In other words, he was specific, he was earnest, he was precise, as opposed to exaggerating or hyperbolic in the things that he actually described. And secondly, because his focus was on what God had done, we then see that those who were listening in to Paul followed the very same pattern. It says, and when they heard it, they too glorified God. You get the sense that because Paul was so God-saturated and God-centered and God-exalting in the way that he expressed himself and related these things to the people, so the people were then God-glorifying in their response to him. You remember how elsewhere Paul wrote to the church in Corinth saying, what then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything but only God who gives the growth. Now, elsewhere in 1 Timothy 5, Paul would later go on to say, "'Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.'" And so Paul was clearly not a person who minimized or who undermined the importance of the office of preaching and teaching in the church. Of course not. He recognized that this is precisely God's own means of converting sinners and building up the saints for the work of ministry. But think about this. What was the problem that was evident in the church at Corinth that was not evident in the Apostle Paul himself? At Corinth, the people had become carnal. and man-centered in their thinking, to the point where they were elevating certain characters in the church. They had become worldly in their thinking. They were attracted to flamboyance and dynamism, and those whom they deemed to be super apostles. on the basis of all the things that the world out there applauds. But the focus of the apostle Paul was on the glory of the living God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Why? Why? Well, because Paul had come to understand what he really was before God. He understood that he was a sinner, who was saved by grace alone. He understood that the only reason he was preaching and teaching in the first place was because God in his mercy chooses the low and the despised things of the world in order to shame the wise and the proud. He understood that the only reason that any of his efforts had ever proven fruitful over the years was because of the power and the blessing that comes down from heaven, as ordained by God in heaven by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers build always, every time, in vain. And for that reason, his desire was to point people away from himself. to God, to his God in heaven, that he would receive all the honor and all the praise, which is due to him alone. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, meaning that we were made in his image and then we were remade in Jesus Christ to magnify him for the rest of our days. And yet how quickly in our sin nature and in our unbelief, how quickly we can lose sight of this great purpose that he has for us in the way that we think, in the way that we speak, in what we get most excited about in life. Sometimes it stems from self-idolatry and the desire to elevate self Other times we idolize others and we elevate them. This is often a major problem in church circles, in denominations. But not the Apostle Paul. His whole life could at one level be summed up by that great doxology that we have on the wall in the foyer. For from him and through him and to him are all things. To God be glory forever. Amen. So first we see that the apostle Paul had a humble spirit, and he therefore sought the glory of God. The second thing we see in the text is that Paul had a gracious spirit, And therefore, he went beyond the call of duty for the sake of peace in the church. And this really explains all that James asked Paul to do, all that Paul then did from the second half of verse 20 through to verse 26. The situation was that amongst the thousands of Jews who had been converted to Christ, there were evidently some men within that number who were guilty of spreading false reports about the apostle Paul. In particular, they were accusing Paul of having gone around forbidding people from circumcising their children or from observing the various festivals and customs associated with the Mosaic law. But Paul had actually done nothing of the kind. He preached a salvation that was by grace alone and through faith alone, of course, But because he was also sensitive to the fact that this was a time of transition in redemptive history, What he actually taught, as we see elsewhere in places like 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14, what he actually taught was that those believers who no longer followed the Jewish rituals and customs, those believers needed to be sensitive to those who continued to believe in their importance. And this was very much the situation which had developed in Jerusalem. Many of these Jews were genuine born-again disciples who believed in a salvation that is by grace alone and through faith alone. But because of their Jewish ancestry, they continued to hold onto some of the customs and some of the patterns associated with the old covenant. none of which were actually condemned by the apostle at any time in his ministry. The problem was in amongst those genuine Jewish believers were false teachers who were trying to stir the people up by persuading them that Paul was actually condemning those practices associated with their Jewish heritage. they were trying to stir the people up. They were trying to stir them up by playing into their association with these past practices and patterns and norms. And yet what is very significant about Paul's response to all of this is that even although those false teachers were spreading lies about him, Even though he was under no real spiritual obligation to follow those norms, to follow those customs and patterns, yet nevertheless, he responded by doing that which he did not have to do. Why? So as to minimize the possibility of him causing offense to the Jewish believers, and also, to minimize the opportunity for these false teachers to go on making accusations against them. Now, in the end, it didn't work. It didn't work. We know that from the passage that we're going to look at next time, a passage which underlines the fact that those who are out to discredit and do harm to the saints Rarely do they operate on the basis of what is reasonable, what is rational, what is factual, what is true. So intent were these men on doing away with the apostle Paul, at one level, it didn't matter what he did. There was no way they were ever going to be appeased. They were like those that Paul, later on, mentions as he speaks about end days, days of real godlessness, and one of the characteristics he associates with such people is he says, they are unappeasable. Doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter what you say. You can be as rational as you could possibly be. But they're fundamentally opposed. And that's what we see happening, and we'll take up that next time. But here's the point. Here's the point that we mustn't lose sight of. By acting in the way that he did. purifying himself along with these other men and then presenting the offering in the temple and so on, what did Paul demonstrate? He demonstrated a spirit of grace and generosity towards his weaker brothers in the fellowship, those who continued to hold on to some of the rituals associated with the old covenant. And as far as it depended on him, he sought peace, even with those who were spreading slanderous reports about him and who wanted him killed. Dear old John Stott said this. He said, we can only thank God for the generosity of spirit displayed by both James and Paul. They were already agreed doctrinally that salvation was by grace in Christ through faith. And they were agreed ethically that Christians must obey the moral law. The issue between them concerned culture, ceremony, and tradition. The solution to which they came was not a compromise in the sense of sacrificing a doctrinal or moral principle, but a concession in the area of practice. We have already seen Paul's conciliatory spirit in accepting the Jerusalem decrees and by circumcising Timothy. Now, in the same tolerant spirit, he was prepared to undergo some purification rituals in order to pacify Jewish scruples and for the sake of Jewish Gentile solidarity. It's as if Paul had already learned at this juncture in his life the importance of what the Holy Spirit would later reveal through him in his letter to the Philippians when he said, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. And where does this mindset ultimately come from? Well, he tells us, doesn't he? Have this mind among yourselves, which is in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. In other words, If there was one thing that the Apostle Paul held very clearly in his mind and wanted to demonstrate and wanted to pass on to the church at large, it was an understanding of the fact that the way of Christ and the way to Christian maturity is always marked by a downward trajectory. What I mean by that is that a life which is increasing in the love of Jesus Christ is one where lowliness and humility and servant-heartedness are becoming more and more apparent to those who are nearest and dearest to us. That's surely the great challenge in all of this for all of us, is it not? We mustn't come away from church as if we've simply been filled with some more head knowledge. Sometimes concerns me when I hear people speaking after a service, not necessarily here, but anywhere, and people will speak in such a way it's as if it has just all been about amassing some more intellect. ticking another box on the knowledge chart, gaining more information, getting our doctrine all squared away in neat little bundles. And of course, all of that's very important, it's crucial. It all begins in the mind, and doctrine is absolutely fundamental. But the question is, the big question is, what then? What then? After the knowledge has gone into the mind, and after we've got our doctrine sorted out, what then? What about the heart? What about our character? Are we increasing in Christ-likeness? Which direction are we going in this morning? Are we humble people with a gracious and generous spirit? Do we have in us the mind that was in Christ Jesus? who, even though he was God and is God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, something to be lived out and assumed, but instead emptied himself. He lowered himself, taking on the form of a servant, born in the likeness of men, even dying on a cross. And all of that, why? All of that for the sake of his bride, for the sake of those outside of himself. As you know, one of the tasks, challenges, privileges of ministry is taking funeral services. over the past 10 years or so, I've noticed that when you meet with the family before a funeral, one of the things I always try to do is just spend some time trying to get a very clear picture of the person's life, a kind of biography, if you like, I think it can actually be a source of some comfort to people, for them to just have that opportunity to walk through the life of the person that they loved so much. And so you'll speak about the person's childhood, and you'll speak about their time at school, and you'll speak about their employment. what they enjoyed and hobbies and sports, other interests. If they're a believer, of course, there will be considerable time spent on their faith in Christ and church life and how they came to be converted and so on. But then right at the end, I always try to ask this one final question. How will you most remember this person? How will you most remember this person? Tell me what he or she was really like. And nine times out of 10, this is when the tears begin to flow. It's as if everything else pales into insignificance as they begin to remember the character. of the person who has died, their love, their generosity, their loyalty, their encouragements, their virtues. And the reason is because in the final analysis, after faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, this is the most important thing. That's what my friend was speaking about when he described the elder who'd had such an impact on his life. And that is what God himself is most keen to cultivate in us, in Jesus Christ our Lord, as he sanctifies us from one day to the next, and as he prepares us for life in the glory of his kingdom, which is to come. May God give us the grace. May he pour out his grace. May he fill us with the Holy Spirit in such a way that we would eagerly pursue this above everything else. Let us pray together. Let's pray. Our Father and our great God in heaven, We thank you for the example which you have set forth before us in the Apostle Paul and the way that, though he may be dead, he still speaks. We thank you, O Lord, that he is always a great example only in a secondary sense, only insofar as he points us to our greatest role model, to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and to His grace and lowliness and humility in being willing to condescend to this earth for poor sinners such as us. We confess, O Lord, that sometimes we can become wholly taken up with our justification, with being ransomed by the blood of Christ, but we are slow to think about our progressive sanctification and your great purpose of not only bringing us from death to life, but then perfecting us in life, growing us in holiness, and taking us to that point where we will be made ready for the glory of your kingdom, where there is no more pride, where there is no more sin. and where all your people will be eternally made perfect and able to enjoy our perfect and holy Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, more fully than we can even imagine today. We pray, O Lord, that you would bless and seal this Word to our hearts, and that it may truly produce fruit in our lives in the coming days. We are conscious, our Father, as we bow before you, that there are many known to us who are struggling in these days, some who are struggling with grief, and some who are struggling with illness. And to that end, our Father, we want to commit them to you. We remember Donald MacAskill, his brother Alistair at this time, We remember Libby Olsen's nephew's son, and we thank you for a successful operation. We remember young Noah Evans and his brain tumor. We think of Debbie's mom in Edinburgh. We remember Gina Rager down south and her cancer, her husband Josh. Others, O Lord, who are struggling with long-term illnesses and weaknesses of the body, of the mind. We remember Anne Mitchell and Iain Cameron and Donald Mackay. Father, those who are grieving at this time the loss of a loved one. We remember Dreena and Jimmy Mackay and Mike Drew and Peggy Suter. John Mackay, Father of so many people with difficulties in a fallen world, with sadnesses and sorrows and griefs to bear, we thank you that you are a God who is willing and able to undertake. We commit them all to you. And we pray, O Lord, for those who are ill, that you would grant restoration, that you would grant the grace to cope with physical limitations and pains and toils and hardships. For those who grieve, O Lord, draw near and comfort them, we pray. Show yourself to them, O Lord, as a faithful father as one who delights to care for his children, as the shepherd who tends his sheep. We pray, O Lord, for our country at this time We pray for every nation, particularly in the wake of the coronavirus, and we pray, O Lord, that you would grant wisdom from on high to our leaders in political office, that they would make wise decisions based upon true fact. And we pray, O Lord, that in your mercy you would return our nation to better days. We pray for the preservation and the liberty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray that you would grant repentance and faith and a fear of God amongst our political rulers. That your word would once again be upheld. that your gospel would be allowed to flourish for many years to come. Lord, we think of the younger generation. We think of generations that will follow, and we are so burdened and concerned when we think about the things they are being taught. in schools. We think about the decadence and the evils of these days, days in which that which is good is held up as bad and that which is bad is held as good. Lord, we pray that you would reverse these trends in our society and throughout the world, in your mercy, that you would grant the power and the ministry of your Holy Spirit to come down and grant men and women and boys and girls the faith to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, our Father, for the remainder of this Lord's Day, that it be a day of rest and renewal and blessing and strength and encouragement for all your people here in Perth, throughout Scotland, and to the very ends of the earth. And we ask all of these things in the glorious and wonderful name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.