Ron Bailey - Part 1 — Ron Bailey

I think we'll pass it for these afternoon sessions, it's maybe different, more direct. We'll just get in, get on with it. I've written a line some years ago, I was in Malawi, working with some African pastors and we had quite a few meetings that we were having and these dear African brothers have discovered the word seminar and everything that was advertised was a seminar.

So there was a seminar here, there was a seminar there everything was a seminar and I was a little bit mischievous at times and I said, well, I've never been to university. I said, I don't know what a seminar is, what's a seminar?

One of these African pastor spoke to me and he said we don't sing choruses at the seminar so that's my definition for this afternoon we won't sing choruses, we'll just make a stack. We give you prayers we gather together and we thank you again, for the access that we have into your presence through the merits of our Lord Jesus.

We thank you for our Holy Spirit's energies and advocate divine. We thank you Lord, that we meet here genuinely in your presence and you are in the midst we speak to your church as we open the book to us open your heart to us open our ears to you in this time, a time which rocks something in our hearts in which something significant is heard from God something significant is done in our hearts through this very evening's afternoon you will glorify our Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm 50 miles away, 7 o 'clock. I slept very well last night partly because I took a rest in the car. So this is a surprise for me that I'm speaking today and I need to ask your forgiveness for not being properly attired as some of you are.

But my tie is in Lannock not my house, which is more interesting. Would you like to turn with me to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 20. I'd like to begin by looking at this meeting that Paul has with these men who are elders to the church in Ephesus.

Paul's Final Charge to the Ephesian Elders

He calls them to him at this place called Maionetus and he has something that he wants to destroy to them, he doesn't expect ever to see them again. This is their last meeting he will have. And these are the things that he wants to acknowledge in their hearts.

These are his last words in a sense to the church in Ephesus. Of course they're not the Lord's last words to the church in Ephesus. And a little later on we shall find another word that the Lord has to speak to the church in Ephesus.

Commended to God and the Word of Grace

But I'm going to start in chapter 20. Therefore I did not cease to mourn everyone night and day with tears. So now brethren I commend you to glory which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among those who are saved.

When he speaks to these men he doesn't expect ever to be able to speak and he says I commend you. So now brethren, verse 32 I commend you to God when he spoke of the word of God's grace. Well he didn't because he hadn't written it 1st and 2nd Corinthians.

Because he hadn't written those. He didn't mean Romans because he hadn't written that. I commend you to God and to the word of his grace which is able like this. But I want to make a point that we sometimes describe grace as being unmerited favour God's unmerited love towards us.

And that is true in as much as it goes but it doesn't go far enough because grace is not just God's attitude towards us. Grace is God's imparted enabling. So God makes it possible for us to do and be what we would never do and be if God did not speak to us speak the word of grace to us.

The Dynamic, Transforming Word of God

There's enabling power in the word of God. This isn't theology. I'm speaking to you. This is the way that God intended his church to function. He intended it to function in the way that Jesus functioned when he said do you remember in the temptation at one point he said man shall not live by bread alone.

Now notice the tenses please if you will man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that is proceeding from the mouth of God. That's to say he saw the word of God as a dynamic thing, not just something locked in a book, I love this book.

I spent most of my time with this book and I have a passion for it. But he wasn't just thinking about the book. He was thinking about the way in which God brings his word into the situation, his transforming word, really does alter all the possibilities all kinds of things that may have been locked into position and you thought that's it.

We're stuck with this, it's always going to be like this when the word of God comes it changes, it changes all the potential, let me give you a very simple illustration a very clever illustration when the Lord Jesus was in the synagogue during the days of his earthly ministry on one occasion there was a test case that took place where a man was discovered with a withered hand and they wanted to see what the Lord would do with this man and the Lord requested, commanded that he should come into the midst and then he said to this man stretch forth your hand for the man to say that that's my problem, this hand doesn't stretch forth it's a withered hand.

Jesus' Command and the Power to Obey

That's why I'm here, I need you to do something for me, he's already done something he's spoken to you the moment he speaks to you you can do impossible things. You can stretch forth with this hand you can go and sin no more.

You can walk on water. You can do anything if the Lord just theorists, not theology but where God speaks one of the things that Paul believed in was, he believed in the Holy Spirit that was his confidence in the way he led these churches.

The Holy Spirit Brings God's Word to the Church

He didn't believe that they were dependent upon his ministry alone and that where Paul was absent everything was for the priesthood. He believed in the personal presence of the Holy Spirit and believed that the Spirit of God would bring the Word of God so he commends them to the Word to God and to the Word of His grace which is able to build your purposes and to give you inheritance.

Do you believe that God is able in this day and age to steal? Do you believe there's still power in the Word of God? I'm not talking about Bible verses. I'm talking about the way that God addresses something to your situation.

God's Word Speaks Directly to Human Need

The old Quakers would have said that God speaks to you of need what they meant by that was that God doesn't just kind of aim roughly over the head so that you can pick up what you can but he has a way of speaking directly to the hearts of men.