The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why
marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own
power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and of
Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus;
whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he
was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and
desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of life,
whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses. And his
name, through faith in his name, hath made this man strong, whom ye see
and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect
soundness in the presence of you all. And now, brethren, I wot that
through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. But those things,
which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ
should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.
Acts 3:12-18
We have considered the sermon preached by Peter on the day of Pentecost,
and now we turn to his next sermon. These sermons are important for us
because here we are face to face with the authentic Christian message, and
above everything else, as we have seen, this is what the world needs
today.
In our last study we left the once lame man going into the temple, healed,
?walking, and leaping, and praising God.? This, of course, led to great
excitement. The people knew who the man was and were amazed at what had
happened. As the man held on to Peter and John, all the people ran toward
them in Solomon?s Porch in the outer court of the temple. When Peter saw
this, he began to preach to them.
The crowd had gathered, and they wanted to know what had happened to the
lame man. So Peter took advantage of the opportunity and told them about
this new phenomenon that had come into being?the Christian church?and he
explained its message. This is what is so wonderful about the Scriptures.
We have the picture, the dramatic incident, and then we are given the
explanation?a sermon, teaching. We need that too.
First, I want to deal with the sermon in general. It is such a rich
sermon, an amazing sermon. Of course, what we have here is the essence of
the message. Undoubtedly, the total sermon was much longer. Here in Acts
we are given synopses of the great sermons preached by the apostles at the
beginning. So what is the teaching?
The first great principle, one that stands out on the very surface, is
that Christianity is a phenomenon. It is not primarily, nor essentially a
teaching only. There is teaching here?that is what the sermon is, but
Christianity is essentially something that happens?something that has
happened, something that is happening, something that is going to happen.
Again I take you back to the first chapter of Acts: ?The former treatise
have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,
until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy
Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen.? ?I
have already told you,? says Luke in effect, ?of all that Jesus began to
do. I am now going to tell you what He continued to do and what He is yet
going to do.
We see the crowd staring at the beggar, and ?they were filled with wonder
and amazement? (v. 10). This is repeated in verse 11: ?All the people ran
together unto them ? greatly wondering.? We saw exactly the same thing in
the second chapter when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and
the others, and they began to speak with other tongues. We are told that
at the time devout people were gathered together in Jerusalem from
different parts of the world, and ?they were all amazed and marveled,
saying one to another ? And how hear we every man in our own tongue? ? And
they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What
meaneth this?? (Acts 2:7?8, 12). That is what I mean by a phenomenon. That
is how Christianity began?something happened.
This is the point that so many miss at the present time. This is one of
the most grievous and fatal misunderstandings of the Christian message and
of the whole purpose of the Christian Gospel. People are forever reducing
it to ethical or political teaching or, perhaps still more serious, a kind
of religious teaching, one of the great teachings of the Bible, which they
put into a series with the so-called great world religions?Confucianism,
Buddhism, Islam, and so on. Now those religions are nothing but teachings.
They do not claim to be anything else. They are teachings with regard to
how people should live, philosophies that take a religious form. And the
danger is that people put the Christian faith into that category. They
reduce it to a point of view, an attitude with regard to life. But here,
at the very beginning, we are reminded that this is not true. Christianity
is unique. It is historical. It is phenomenal. It is primarily something
that is done and then is followed by the teaching that explains what has
happened. This is not only true of the New Testament?it is equally true of
the Old Testament.
The Old Testament is primarily a book of history. It tells us of things
that have happened. Look, for example, at the story of Moses in Exodus
chapter 3. Moses had had to escape from Egypt, and he had been in the land
of Midian for forty years, earning his living as a shepherd. So there he
was, guiding his sheep to fresh pasture over the mountains, and no doubt
he was feeling quite hopeless. He had perhaps stopped thinking about his
people in the land of Egypt, from whom he had had to flee. He had
forgotten all about his great days when he had been brought up as the son
of Pharaoh?s daughter and all the glittering prizes that had dangled
before him; all that was past history. Now he was just a shepherd tending
his sheep like every other shepherd.
So on that day he took the sheep to ?the back side of the desert? (Exod.
3:1), near Mount Horeb, and suddenly he was arrested by God. He did not
sit down, as it were, and read a book. It was not that he began to
meditate and to ruminate about life, to try to see if he could draw up a
plan of living and a philosophy of existence. Not at all! In the midst of
a most ordinary vocation he was suddenly confronted by something. By what?
A phenomenon, a burning bush, a bush burning and yet not being consumed,
and he said, ?I will now turn aside, and see this great sight? (v. 3). He
was about to investigate when the voice spoke. This was a meeting with
God?a phenomenon.
We must get rid of the old notion that Christianity is a kind of
theoretical teaching. This can never be said too frequently to an age like
the present one that boasts of its intelligence and learning. Christianity
is not a philosophy. Indeed, its greatest enemy is philosophy, whatever
form it may chance to take, whether the formal philosophy of the
university or the pseudo-philosophy of the newspapers and the journals.
Christianity is something that happens, something that confronts us,
something that is there facing us. That is why the people in Acts 3 came
together. It was because of the event of the miracle, the man healed, just
as on the day of Pentecost people came together because of the event of
the baptism with the Holy Spirit and the strange results produced in the
apostles and in others.
Has Christianity ever come to you as a phenomenon? If it has not, you know
nothing about it. You can have a theoretical interest in Christianity;
many people have. God forgive me, so did I for many years. I had a mere
intellectual interest in it, and that can be very fascinating, but it is
not the real thing. One becomes a true Christian when one is confronted by
something that is a phenomenon, something arresting, something shaking,
something inexplicable. So this is the first thing that strikes us at
once, and of course this is the very essence of the message. The Christian
church herself is a phenomenon that has baffled the ages and the
centuries. She is baffling this pres-ent age. Why does she still exist at
all? Why does she still continue when so many other institutions have come
and gone?
The Christian faith is something that changes the lives of men and women.
It produces saints. It is a series of phenomena. Read this book of Acts,
read the history as far as it is known in the early centuries, and that is
what you will find. There was something about these Christian people. Not
only could nobody understand it, they could not put a stop to it either.
The Jews tried to do so, and so did the Romans. There were grievous
persecutions so that the church was repeatedly driven underground, and yet
she still went on. They murdered the Christians, they tried to murder all
the leaders, but ?The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church.
In the early eighteenth century the conditions in Britain were, if
anything, even worse than they are today, morally and religiously. You can
read an account in a book called England Before and After Wesley. There
was degradation and vice and sin. The book describes the gin shops in
London where you could get drunk?if I remember rightly?for a ha?penny or a
penny, and if you paid just a little extra you were given the straw as
well on which to lie in your drunkenness and recover. Moreover, in that
Hanoverian period devil worship was rampant. But then something happened,
a phenomenon took place, a mighty revival; and the face of England was
changed as men and women were taken up out of the degradation of the
gutters of life and were washed and cleansed and changed to become new men
and women. You cannot explain the history either of the nineteenth or the
twentieth centuries except in the light of that event. And it all happened
through the Christian church.
That leads me to ask you a question: Have you ever been arrested by the
Christian message as those people were in Jerusalem, or do you feel that
you understand the whole thing? Have you been confronted by something that
made you stop and think? That is always the first step in becoming a
Christian.
But now let us listen to what Peter said to all this. What was his
reaction? He was the mouthpiece of God on this occasion. First of all, it
is really interesting to notice what he did not say. I am sorry that there
is such a grievous misunderstanding of Christianity that we have to start
with a negative again. Some people might say this would have been a
wonderful opportunity for Peter to preach about miracles, to offer to heal
others. ?A man has just been healed. Anybody else want to be healed? Come
along.? He did not do that, though today that often passes as
Christianity. People are offered physical healing, friendship, guidance,
experiences of different kinds. But that is not Christianity. Christianity
does do things like that, but it does not preach them. That is what the
cults do. Indeed, that is precisely the method of the cults. They come to
you and say, ?What is your problem? How are you feeling? Come along, we
can put you right.? Christianity has so often been turned into one of the
cults. The church in her folly, because she wants to attract people, has
presented herself in that guise. But that is not what Peter did, and we
must not do it.
Rather, Peter gave the explanation of the miracle. He dealt with what had
happened and showed its significance. He did not, to use modern language,
cash in on what had happened. He did the exact opposite. In effect, he
said, ?You are marveling and looking at us, and I want to explain to you
what has happened.
This is how Peter began: ?Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why
look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had
made this man to walk?? Peter started by addressing the wrong explanation
of this phenomenon. He said in effect, ?I am amazed at the fact that you
are surprised at this. Why do you marvel at it? You should not. If you
understood things as you ought to, you would not be marveling. Still less
would you be looking at my friend John and myself as if we, by our own
power or holiness, had enabled this man to walk.
In other words, Peter understood the congregation to which he was
preaching, and he knew that their greatest danger was to regard him and
John as miracle-men. There were people like that in the ancient world. We
read about the magicians in Egypt, and Luke refers to other magicians,
such as Bar-jesus (Acts 13). There were clever men who were regarded as
seers and as strange and extraordinary people. They had some curious
powers whereby they were able to treat people and heal their diseases or
charm away a curse that had been put upon them. That kind of thing has
been very common not only in the East but in this country also. I remember
a man in Wales whom everybody called ?the wise man,? and people used to go
to him for help. In those days a farmer might suddenly find that his cream
or his milk kept turning sour, and then he believed that somebody had put
a curse on him. So he would go to the wise man, this man with
understanding who had books and signs, and after paying a fee, he would be
given a message. Sometimes the wise man would make people write their
message on a piece of paper, fold it up, and sew it inside a shirt or
other garment. If they did not look at it for a given number of days, it
would supposedly act as a charm, and the curse would be dispelled, and all
would be well.
That kind of thing was rampant in the ancient world, and Peter recognized
this at once. He said, ?We are not miracle-workers. We do not have some
strange power such as these other people claim to have. You must not
explain it like that. Neither must you attribute the healing to some
extraordinary piety on our part, our own power or holiness or godliness.
Indeed, in a sense it has nothing to do with us at all.
Peter was anxious to make that clear, and it is equally necessary that it
should be clear at the present time. When people become Christians, it
cannot be explained in any human terms. No one can make another person a
Christian. People foolishly talk about being ?So-and-So?s convert??what a
ridiculous thing that is! People can persuade one another, of course. They
have persuaded others to join churches, but that does not mean conversion.
No human being can change a soul or regenerate a soul or give life to
somebody who is dead spiritually?which is what makes a man or woman a
Christian. Men and women can be used as instruments, as Peter and John
were, as Paul was, as the great preachers through the centuries have been,
but they have been nothing but instruments, and they do not want personal
followers. They are not interested in that, and they do nothing to
advertise themselves. They keep out of sight. Oh, it is not us??Do not
look at us; look to Jesus.
In the same way, it is made equally clear that there is no formula that
can be taught and that we must apply. You know the sort of thing I
mean?the cults again or psychology. Here is a man who is having trouble
walking. There is nothing really wrong with him, but it is imaginary, and
what do you do with him? Some would say, ?If you do what I tell you, you
will soon get rid of this difficulty in walking. Say to yourself, ?Every
day and in every way I am getting better and better.? Repeat the formula,
go on repeating it, suggest it to yourself.? And the man suddenly finds he
is all right. It is nothing like that here! That is not Christianity.
Psychology, I suggest to you, like philosophy, is one of the greatest
enemies of Christianity.
So what made the beggar walk? It was, said Peter, something that happened
to him. It happened quickly, immediately. It was not a course of
treatment?it was an action. ? ?His name [Jesus], through faith in his
name, hath made this man strong? (v. 16) and has given him this perfect
soundness in the presence of you all.? This was an entirely different
category.
So Peter told the people not to believe the wrong explanation of the
beggar?s healing. But as you read Peter?s account of the true explanation,
does his sermon come as a bit of a surprise to you? Here was the man who
had been healed, now walking, leaping, and praising God, holding on to the
apostles and embracing them, and the crowd gathered. Have you been rather
surprised at Peter?s words? ?Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or
why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we
had made this man to walk?? Then notice: ?The God of Abraham, and of
Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son
Jesus.? Here is the very essence of the whole matter, and to the natural
person it is one of the most astonishing things.
Peter?s words are surprising for these reasons: First, what Peter was
saying to them is, ?You are concentrating on the wrong thing. It is not
the miracle, as miracle, that is important. The vital thing is that to
which it points.? Humanity in its cleverness is always interested in the
phenomena, and these people came rushing together crying out, ?This is
wonderful!? You can always get a crowd if you produce some kind of a
phenomenon. They want to understand and investigate. That was the very
thing Moses was tempted to do when he saw the burning bush, and indeed he
was beginning to do it. There he was, leading his sheep, when suddenly he
saw the phenomenon. He was a very able man, and he had been trained in
Egypt. He knew something about the magicians and the lore and learning of
the ancient Egyptians, which was considerable. Egypt was a great
civilization. And Moses, with the science of those days, said, ?Ah, I
shall turn aside. I?m going to investigate this phenomenon.
But out of the bush came the voice: ?Put off thy shoes from off thy feet;
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground? (Exod. 3:5). The
phenomenon is a phenomenon, yes, but not for our detached, academic,
scientific investigation. ?Ah yes, I?ll get a book out of the library on
Christianity. I?ve read the others. I want to evaluate it all.? But if you
continue like that, you will never become a Christian. ?Take off your
shoes. The ground on which you are standing is holy ground.? The
phenomenon in itself is not important; what matters is that to which it
points.
I repeat, this is not mere theory. If you have not felt something of awe
and amazement and wonder, you have not even started yet. Peter did not
give a discourse on miracles. That is what modern men and women like??Is a
miracle possible?? ?Is it any longer possible for the modern, educated,
scientific person to believe in the supernatural and the miraculous??
These are the great debates, and we are tremendously intrigued. But Peter
did not preach on miracles. The Bible does not defend miracles; it is a
record of them. It just tells us they have happened. It confronts us with
them. As long as you think that with your intellect you can understand
them, you have not started; you are outside. You must take your shoes off
your feet. You must be humble. You must become as a little child.
So Peter did not preach on miracles, nor did he attempt to give
explanations. He said in essence, ?Look at this, yes, but what does it
point to?
But I must go even further, and to me this is in many ways the most
astonishing thing of all. Peter?s sermon did not even start with the Lord
Jesus Christ. Have you even been struck by that? Peter had healed the man
?in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth?; yet when the people said, ?What
is this?? Peter?s answer was: ?The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of
Jacob.? I speak carefully because I know I am liable to be misunderstood
at this point, but this to me is a very vital part of Christian teaching
and of the Christian message. You do not start with the Lord Jesus Christ.
I wonder if perhaps most of our troubles in the Christian church today are
due to just that. We must start with God. We start with the whole message
of the Bible.
There is a modern conception of evangelism that regards it as simply
saying to people, ?Come to Jesus.? This view says you do not need to talk
to people about repentance; rather, if they are in trouble or are unhappy,
you just tell them to come to Him. You start with Him and end with Him.
But that is not Christian preaching. Here we see Christian preaching. A
miracle had just taken place, and the great apostle was preaching, and he
started with God??the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.? This is
how all these apostles preached. The apostle Paul did exactly the same
thing.
In Acts 14 we are given an account of Paul in a place called Lystra. Paul,
too, had healed a lame man, and the people were so carried away by this
that they began to worship Paul and Barnabas, calling them Mercury and
Jupiter. We read:
Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and
garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people.
Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent their
clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, and saying, Sirs, why do
ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach
unto you ?
What did they preach?
? that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made
heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein.
Acts 14:13-15
That is Christian preaching. You do not start with the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is even a danger of people turning Him into nothing more than some
kind of miracle-worker. No; you start, as Peter started here, with the
whole message of the Bible.
The first step in Christian preaching is to tell men and women that they
and all their problems must always be considered in connection with God.
That is the whole message of the Bible. You do not start with particular
problems, but with men and women as they are in this world. How are they
to be understood? It is in their relationship to God. So when people come
together because of a miracle or anything else, you do not talk about the
miracle, you
do not even talk about the Son of God, you talk about God and man.
Yes, but notice that Peter did that in a special way??the God of Abraham,
and of Isaac, and of Jacob.? Why do you think he said that? This is the
very essence of the matter. I have already referred to that great
experience that came into the life of the brilliant mathematician Blaise
Pascal. Some think he was probably the greatest mathematician of all time.
He was a brilliant philosopher, a genius in every sense, who lived in
France in the seventeenth century. But he was not only a great scientist,
he was also a godly man, a man who was seeking God, and one evening he had
an overwhelming experience of God. This is what he wrote: ?I have met the
God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, not of the philosophers.? That
is it.
I sometimes think this is the greatest lesson needed by this world of
ours. Our trouble is that we do not know God. That is our first need?not
the god of the philosophers, not the god of speculation. There are clever
people writing books about God at the present time?Honest to God, New
Reformation, Down to Earth?1??all those clever books, and what are they?
They are nothing but speculation. What is God? Well, we are told that He
is ultimate reality. He is the ground of all being. He is the uncaused
cause. But that is not the God the apostle Peter preached. No, no. He is
?the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers.?
Peter?s God is a living God, and He is a personal God. That is what these
philosophers are writing against today. They laugh at us. They say, ?You
think of God as some old man up in the heavens. You describe God as ?up
there? or ?out there.? But that?s primitive, that?s childish. God is not
personal. Where there is love, that?s God. Where there is kindness, that?s
God?the ground of all being, ultimate reality.
Thank God that is a lie. God is personal. He is living. He is not an
abstraction. He is not a number of theories or categories or concepts. God
is eternally different from all that, and entirely unlike the false gods
of the pagans. They made their gods out of wood or stone or silver or
gold. They carved them in the likeness of a man or a beast, and they
erected a temple around them. Then they worshiped them and took their
oblations to them. But there is nothing there. There is no life, no
reality, no power. Those gods are vanities and emptiness. But God is the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the God who says, ?I am that I am?
(Exod. 3:14). He is a living God. He is a personal God, and He speaks as a
person. But it does not stop at that. The God of the Bible is the God who
has created the universe. ?In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth? (Gen. 1:1). He is a God who acts, a God who does things, a God who
plans, who thinks, and who orders.
But, thank God, by using this term Peter tells us something even more
precious for us, something much more wonderful. God is the God who reveals
Himself. He is the God who appeared to Abraham when he dwelt in pagan Ur
of the Chaldees. He spoke to Abraham and called him out. The philosophers
have been trying to find God from the beginning, but ?the world by wisdom
knew not God,? said Paul (1 Cor. 1:21). The philosophers cannot arrive at
God. The more intelligent may come to a point at which they may say that
there must be a God. But they cannot get further. They cannot arrive at
Him because, by definition, they cannot. He is inscrutable. He is eternal.
He is everlasting. He is infinite in every respect.
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendour and girded with praise.
William Chalmers Smith
What human being can arrive at Him or any knowledge of Him? None can. But
the whole message of the Bible is to say that God is a God who reveals
Himself. There would not be a Bible but for that. There would be no
history of the Jews, there would be no Christian history but for that; nor
would this beggar have been healed at the Beautiful Gate of the temple.
God makes Himself known, and all we know about Him is what He has
revealed. ?The God of Abraham??he appeared to Abraham, and to Isaac. In
Genesis we read the story of Jacob running for his life from his brother
Esau. Tired at the end of a day, he felt he could not go another step.
There was no bed there. He had to gather stones together to make a pillow.
But when he fell asleep he had an amazing dream and vision of a ladder
from earth to heaven and angels going up and down. He woke up and said,
?This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven?
(Gen. 28:17). God had spoken to him. That is the God of the Bible. In His
infinite grace and kindness He draws back the veil and gives us a
revelation of Himself.
Let me go further. He is a God who can be spoken to. Read the story of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Look at them when they were in trouble and did
not know what to do and everybody was against them. What did they do?
Thank God, they could turn to Him and speak to Him. He is a God to whom
you can pray.
When all things seem against me
To drive me to despair,
I know one gate is open,
One ear will hear my prayer.
Oswald Allen
You can have fellowship and communion with God. You can address Him. You
can listen to Him?the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Further, still more wonderful, though He is so high and great and lofty
and eternal, He is a God who is concerned about the state of this world.
That is something that He keeps on making plain and clear to us. Men and
women in their folly have rebelled against Him and brought chaos down upon
themselves, but Christianity brings the message that God is concerned and
is determined to do something about it. So we do not start with Jesus
Christ but with God, who thought out a plan of redemption before the
foundation of the world. It is the most comforting and consoling fact that
though statesmen fail, having done their best, though clever men propound
their theories but do not help us, and though civilization advances but
immorality increases, in spite of that, all is not lost and all is not
hopeless because the everlasting God is concerned.
Notice those wonderful words in that third chapter of Exodus. God told
Moses to take off his shoes and not to come near, for, He said, ?I am the
God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob? (v. 6). So ?Moses hid his face? because ?he was afraid to look upon
God.? (Have you ever known the fear of God? You will never know His
salvation until you have.) Then we read, ?And the Lord said, I have surely
seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their
cry by reason of their taskmasters??and this blessed phrase??for I know
their sorrows? (v. 7). And it is my privilege to tell you that God knows
your sorrows. That is why He gave His only begotten Son. He put it like
this to Moses: ?I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the
Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a
large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey? (v. 8). Oh yes, He is
concerned. He erupts into the world and its affairs. He intervenes. He
comes down.
But Peter also said to these Jews, ?Ye are the children of the prophets,
and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham,
And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed? (Acts
3:25). He is a God who has a great plan and purpose, the God who has
determined to do something about this world, to restore it to the
condition in which He made it. He will not let the devil triumph. God has
a plan, and He has made an agreement?that is, a covenant?with men and
women. He made it especially with Abraham. He visited Abraham and said,
?In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed? (Gen. 12:3). He
repeated the promise of that covenant to Isaac, and then to Jacob. That is
why Peter talks about ?the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.? ?I
am the covenant God,? the Lord says. "I am the God who has determined
before the foundation of the world to redeem men and women and to restore
this world to its original perfection."
Now I offer you this thought?the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?three
generations but only one God. He did not merely reveal Himself to Abraham.
He did not only act for Abraham, for Isaac, and for Jacob; he also
appeared to Moses. ?I am come down,? He said (Exod. 3:8). He took the
people of Israel out of the hopeless captivity and bondage of Egypt. He
reminded Moses that He was the same God. He always was, and He always
would be, from eternity to eternity.
In Sinai He gave the law. He revealed Himself. He gave the plan. Later He
spoke through the prophets. The same God who starts, continues and will
finish. Then, ?When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his
Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under
the law? (Gal. 4:4?5). If you just stand there and look at the baby in the
manger in Bethlehem and try to understand, you are a fool?like Moses going
to examine the burning bush. What is the message? Well, it is this: The
same God is continuing the carrying out of His plan and purpose. Here it
is in its supreme form, in His Son Jesus. Peter said, ?Unto you first God,
having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you? (Acts 3:26). God
sent His Son into the world. It was part of the ancient plan, the promise
to Abraham repeated to Isaac and repeated to Jacob, that in Abraham?s seed
God would bless all the nations of the world. Ah yes, but that Son was
killed. But, said Peter, ?This Jesus hath God raised up? (Acts 2:32).
Then the Son ascended into heaven. Was God finished? No, no, for on the
day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was sent down. God is still active. He
has gone on throughout the centuries. What is a revival? God acting?the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the same eternal, changeless God, the
God who is ?the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither
shadow of turning? (Jas. 1:17). What has the miserable science of the
mid-twentieth century to do with this God? He is everlasting. He is
absolute?the same covenant God. And He will keep working until the times
of revival shall come, the times of refreshing, yes, and until the
restitution of all things has taken place, and God is all and in all.
That is the message, though this is but a specimen of the activity of that
God. Do not stop at this phenomenon of the beggar who was healed. Do not
exercise your cleverness in trying to dissect miracles. This is God, the
eternal God, at work. His plan is certain and sure. Nothing can stop it;
nothing can deflect it from its course. ?Why do the heathen rage,? says
the psalmist, ?and the people imagine a vain thing? ? Yet have I set my
king upon my holy hill of Zion? (Psa. 2:1, 6). The God who can defy and
conquer death in the resurrection will bring His purpose to pass. That is
the message.
Did you know that you are in the hands of this God, that He made you, and
that the world is His and not yours? Did you know that ?It is a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the living God? (Heb. 10:31)? He is the
God who at the beginning said, ?Let there be light: and there was light?
(Gen. 1:3). Do you know God? What is your relationship to Him? You have to
give an account of your life to Him. This covenant-keeping God calls upon
you to repent and to turn to Him, to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was
His only begotten Son who came into the world to die for you and your sins
and to reconcile you to God according to God?s plan and purpose and
covenant. At this moment He will receive you unto Himself if you but turn
to Him. Blessed be the name of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the
God of Jacob!
Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (2000). Authentic Christianity (1st U.S. ed.) (224).
Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.
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