THE PERSEVERANCE OF THE APOSTLES

Acts 5:42.

The Word of Truth once declared, “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” If God’s people should have to endure in their own strength then the end would be sad. Anxious fears often fill their heart as to whether they shall endure. The hypocrites are not concerned about that.

They don’t know themselves, and they are also strangers to that heavy warfare which God’s people have here. They are usually more firmly assured than the most experienced of God’s people. But God’s true people are, as long as they are here upon earth, exposed to the arrows of satan; and indwelling corruptions constantly raise their head to draw them away from God. But, nevertheless, all of those people which are known of God from eternity and have been purchased and redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, shall never perish. They are kept in the power of God through faith unto salvation. God Himself enables them to endure unto the end because He will vouch for His own work and also crown His own work. And what is most important, God’s honor is at stake. With that object and purpose, He has formed His people that they should show forth His praise. And now His honor does not allow Him to withdraw His hand from His people.

And thus it was with the Apostles of the Lamb. Through the power of Christ, they were enabled to persevere in the holy ministry into which they had been placed. Once and again they had already been called to answer before the Jewish Sanhedrin. They had been cast into prison, and the last time they were even scourged, but neither one thing nor the other daunted or discouraged them. On the contrary, there it was also evidently confirmed “Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee; the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain.” Psalm 76:10.

The anger and wrath of man shall not obtain its object, yea, they shall rather serve to praise and magnify and glorify the Name of the Lord. According to His just sentence, God makes the rage and the wrath of His enemies, who in their blindness seek only to dishonor God’s Name and to destroy His church from the earth, subservient to His glorification and to the deliverance and perfection of His church.

God Himself had placed the apostles as watchman upon Zion’s walls, and they would not keep silence day nor night. Christ had called them to be witnesses, and now it was impossible to put them to silence.

Here it was the same as if we would tell the ocean “Your tide may rise no higher,” or command the sun “You are not to shine.” They did not cease. They did not wait a moment. They had to obey God rather than man, whatever the consequences might be. And because faith was active, and the love of the Spirit burned within their hearts and the honor of God had the preeminence in their hearts, they did not yield to all those threatenings of men. They could not keep silence.

And that not only on the Lord’s day, but every day. They did not think about a vacation, oh no, for it would have been torture to them if they had to sit still. God does not give vacations to His servants. At times they may rest for a while in a desert place. But on the other hand, God calls His servants, not to sit still, but always to abound in the work of the Lord as those that know that their labor shall not be in vain in the Lord. I Cor. 15:58.

There remains a rest for the people of God, and for all the faithful laborers in God’s vineyard. One day they may rest from their labor, and their works do follow them. Rev. 14:13.

But while here we must labor as long as it is day. Drowsiness, shall clothe a man with rags, and that is also applicable in God’s church. Didn’t those apostles need time to prepare their sermons? I once heard of a preacher (he passed away long ago) who, after having preached day after day for several weeks, said, “Since I have laid out so much, it is now necessary for me to stay home to take in some more.” What must we think of that? The answer to this is not so difficult. The apostles had been placed in an extra-ordinary ministry and office. They were called and sent at an extraordinary time, and they also had to perform an extraordinary task. They were founders of God’s church. Eph. 2:20. For three years they had been prepared by the King of the Church, that Great Prophet and Teacher of righteousness. They were adorned with a special measure of God’s Spirit, grace and gifts. In many respects they had an immediate administration, and therefore, it was possible that they could preach the gospel everyday. The circumstances in which they were required that. But then the Lord gives also strength and grace. The Banner of the cross of Christ had to be displayed everywhere, and the newly established church of the New Testament needed a daily ministration. God strengthened those apostles to go out everyday and … to them it was a service of love.

The office of the preacher now is not to be put on the same level with that of the apostles. Paul was the last one. That office no longer exists in the church. There are still some who call themselves apostles but that is only foolishness and pride, since they lack everything which the apostles in the days of Christ possessed. We need not waste any more words on that since it is clear enough to us that the office of apostle in the church of God bore only a temporary character.

The preachers of today need preparation by all means. In special cases God can and does influence in a special manner, and then sooner or later it becomes evident that it pleased God to use it for a special purpose. But that is not the usual way. We can never search the truth enough, but most important, and most necessary, at all times, are the enlightenment and the explanation of God the Holy Spirit. It is a blessing if we may look more upward than in our books. The constant instructions of the Holy Spirit are fruitful for both preacher and congregation. If a preacher is constantly anointed with fresh oil, then he constantly catches fresh fish: and that is what God’s poor people ever look for.

The apostles did not cease to preach every day in the temple and at the houses. They did not speak in closed meetings, but publicly in the temple, throughout the whole city, at the houses, i.e. from house to house. God gathers His people in the Temple. There the congregation comes together. God provides a place where His servants may preach the Word. And the Lord also wants to dwell there. The Lord Jesus Himself has said, “Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.” That is the place where He wants to catch His own in the net of the Gospel, and to which He also binds them. They love the habitation of His house and the place where His honor dwelleth. Psalm 26:8. They have desired one thing, to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of their life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple. Psalm 27:4. At that place God’s people may receive food for their hungry soul. There the riddles of their soul are solved, and there the knots of their heart are untied, and there the Lord wants to meet His people. I will make them joyful in my house of prayer.

It is there that they hear God’s voice at times, and exercise communion with God through Christ Jesus, and also receive union with the militant church, and with the church triumphant. At times it is a vestibule of heaven for God’s Church. It is the language of their heart:

O how I long, yea, faint to see
Thy hallowed courts, Thy dwelling place:
For Thee my heart and spirit sigh
For Thee, O living God, I cry.

The apostles went also into the houses. O what a blessing it is when the door is open. That is proof that the heart is open. Later on we see it so clearly in the case of Lydia in Acts 16. The Lord opened her heart during the preaching of Paul, and as a fruit of that we read, “And when she had been baptized, and her household, she besought us saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there. And she constrained us.” If God has the highest room in our heart, then His servants and His people receive the best place in our house.

What a blessed time that was. The things of eternity stood in the foreground. There was time and place for it. That people could not get enough of it. And whenever it is thus it is no hard work for God’s servants either. The apostles had a great income, and for that reason they could dispense much.

The oil flows only as long as there are empty vessels. But if there are no more empty vessels, then the oil stays. As long as there are consumers it is easy to distribute. And those consumers become distributors in God’s time. They did not cease to teach and to preach Jesus Christ everyday in the temple and in the homes.

It is fortunate when there are people in the church and in the homes who feel the need of instruction. Neither rain nor dew falls upon the mountains of Gilboa. If we think that we know it all and need no more instruction, then it is sad indeed.

It is such a blessing when God’s Spirit makes us receptive to that heavenly instruction, and we need that instruction more and more. We read of Mary that she sat at the feet of the Lord Jesus to hear His Word, and that is the best place. Those lessons are sweeter than honey, yea better than the honey comb. Our foolishness is so great, and it becomes manifest that we are blind in the ways of heaven. Although Paul had learned much, still that man was so greatly favored, that his soul’s desire was, in Phil. 3:10, “That I might know Him.” He realized how little he knew of it, and hence that true desire of the soul.

The apostles preached Jesus Christ. Their conversion, justification or experience did not stand in the foreground. Ah, it becomes so dead when a person, even though he has truely been converted and instructed by God, continually brings himself to the fore. The people begin to loathe it, and run away from it, but it is different with the preaching of Jesus Christ. That is the substance of the mandate which God has delivered to His servants, and with which He has entrusted them. And we will never get to an end with that. When it concerns that Blessed Person Who is true God and true righteous man, then that will always remain new. Then new things will constantly come to the fore, and new mysteries which shall deeply humble us, at which we will be so astonished that we will have to cry out with the Queen of Sheba: “The half was never told us.” It was a pleasant task for the apostles to preach Jesus Christ. They had learned to know Him as their Savior, Who had forgiven all their sins and removed all their iniquities. They knew Him as the Messiah, as the Anointed of the Father, in His offices as Prophet, Priest and King. And now it was their calling to proclaim that Mediator in the glory of His Person, and in the fulness of His ministration. That which they had seen with their eyes and had heard with their ears, and had handled with their hands of the Word of life, they could make known from day to day. Those apostles could draw out of a well which never becomes dry: they could speak out of a fulness which can never diminish. An endless eternity is necessary for that.

Eternal life consists in the knowledge of that Mediator. Not a speculative and historical knowledge of Him, but a saving knowledge of Christ can fill our hearts, and the actual personal union with Him is unto salvation. And only through that we learn to know Him as the unspeakable Gift of God. 2 Cor. 9:18.

He satisfied God’s justice and finished all that God’s righteousness demanded, and also what was necessary for the salvation of lost sinners. Christ carried away the curse of the law, fulfilled the law, so that He obtained eternal life for all His own. He also glorified the law, so that all of God’s children have a delight in the law of God after the inward man.

Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness for all that believe. He silenced God’s wrath and quenched His anger. He has obtained an eternal righteousness through His passive and active obedience. Zion’s King has bruised satan’s head and acquired everything which they had lost in the first Adam. Out of His fulness the church receives grace for grace, because He is not only the Obtainer, but also the Applicator of salvation. And in Him, God’s discovered and uncovered people find everything they need for life and godliness. He is the One given by the Father unto Wisdom, justification, sanctification and perfect redemption. O how much those anointed apostles must have said of that. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, and in that liberty they were favored to proclaim the full Christ.

Who would not become jealous of that? But, O beloved, room must be made in our hearts for that proclamation. What shall we do with Jesus if God’s Spirit is not a Spirit of judgment and burning within us? It is the work of God’s Spirit to make a dead sinner alive, but it is the same Spirit Who convinces the quickened sinner of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

By nature Christ has neither form nor comeliness to us. It is absolutely out of the question that there is any desire after Christ as long as we are living in sin and in our natural state, and that Divine wonder of grace has never been glorified within us. While we are still living out of our conversion, there is no need for Christ.

Only to the poor the gospel is preached. We must lose our wealth, and start learning that by the works of the law no flesh can be justified before God: we must become Adam before God. We must perish and become receptive to Christ and to His blessed Mediatorship. Only then shall that proclamation be as a good tiding from a far country, and as cold water upon a thirsty soul. The apostles saw precious and delicious fruit upon the preaching of Jesus Christ in the temple and in the homes. How little is seen of that in the times in which we are now living. May God increase the number of those who proclaim the gospel. May the need of that be truly realized. But may God also powerfully work with His Spirit in the heart of many so that there may be a cry from everywhere:

Give me Jesus else I die.
Without Jesus is no life

But an eternal soul’s destruction.

People of the Lord, may God prepare our hearts by His Spirit so that there may be more and more room in our hearts for that preaching. Then we shall be nothing, but His Name shall receive all the glory forever. Amen.

None were more lowly than the primitive Christians in their dispositions, or more lovely in their conversation.

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