A Divine Assumption – Acts 20:28

I suppose that as far as spouses go, husbands are not as faithful as wives in telling the other about their love.

I usually tell Judy that I love her several times a day,

but I confess that 95% of the time it comes after she has first told me that she loves me.

On the other hand, I am quite often the first to initiate a kiss.

So I suppose that in comparing these two, we have reached some sort of balance after 36 years.

I bring this up because it points out the fact that our lives often run along on various assumptions.

The husband thinks, “I don’t have to tell my wife that I love her, she knows that I do.”

“I do a hundred things every week which tell her that I love her, so I shouldn’t have to say it.”

Well actually, YES, YOU DO HAVE TO SAY IT, and you should say it often.

You may not think that it’s important, but most wives do,

and thus you should say it with gusto every once in a while.

As I say, there are many areas of our lives, where we run along on assumptions.

And the House of God is one of those places.

Not only do the members assume that other members will take care of the maintenance of the building.

For example, there is no need to mention to anyone that the light bulb in the girl’s bathroom is out,

because someone else will notice it and fix it.

But then three weeks later it still hasn’t been replaced.

For some reason people expect the news of their illness to reach the ears of the pastor and rest of the membership without that sick person ever mentioning the subject to anyone.

I guess that it’s supposed to spread through the church by way of osmosis or something.

And we certainly don’t want to be accused of gossip about someone’s illness.

And when a visitor comes to church, it is assumed that he believes the cardinal doctrines of our faith.

There is no need to preach on the deity of Christ, because this is a Baptist church,

and all Baptists are firmly convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

All Baptists believe that for Christ to be the Son means that He is deity.

But actually, we’d be better off assuming that NOT ANY visitor believes our doctrine.

Today is the 4^th of July weekend.

I was never present for this service, so I don’t know how it was handled,

but I understand that on this Sunday, your former pastor preached the same sermon every year.

I have been told that it was a simple outline of the major doctrines which are believed by this church.

This is an excellent idea, although it’s not one which I have made into one of my own habits.

And its not a church tradition,

but I certainly don’t have a problem with the concept.

We shouldn’t assume that when we come to the house of God everyone around us has reminded themselves of all the important doctrines of our faith.

And we shouldn’t assume that when the preacher refers to a verse or a subject that everyone visualizes the same thing.

It is important therefore that amidst the study of the exciting and interesting things of the Word of God, that the fundamentals be preached as well.

As we read the letters of Paul, the sermons of Peter or the histories of Luke, we notice that sometimes there are things which are assumed even by those men, without directly pointing to them.

On other occasions those subjects are directly addressed and expounded.

But sometimes, if OUR eyes are half closed, WE don’t see them at all.

Acts 20:28 is one of those verses which are full of Baptist doctrine, but they are basically only hinted.

There are at least a half dozen sermons and lessons contained in these 36 words.

And they aren’t the quirky, entertaining, fun kinds of sermons either.

These are subjects which lie right at the heart of our Baptist faith.

We probably WON’T be having six messages from this verse, but we will have at least two.

And I begin with what may be the most important: The Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul did not come out and say right here, “I believe that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the One whom we call “Jehovah” throughout the Old Testament,” but he could have.

He was talking to the pastors of the church in Ephesus, men whom he probably helped ordain.

He knew what they believed and what they had been preaching, so it was not necessary to be specific.

But it behooves US to be specific once in a while, and this verse gives us that opportunity.

“Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”

It wasn’t the Holy Ghost who purchased the Church of God with His own blood.

From what you know about the rules of grammar to whom do the last two pronouns in this verse refer?

“Which HE hath purchased with HIS own blood.”

Forgetting for a moment what lays behind the words “church of God,”

Who was it Who made that purchase with His own blood?

Ordinarily, a pronoun refers to the last mentioned noun.

And the last mentioned noun was “Theos” or “God,”

and then the only other noun-reference before that was to the “Holy Spirit.”

“Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”

Doesn’t this verse say that God purchased his church with his own blood?

Taken at face value, this poses some theological problems.

God the Father is a spirit according to what the Lord Jesus said in John 4:24.

And of course the Holy Spirit is a spirit too.

And again, according to the Lord Jesus, “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

Spirits, whether holy or unholy – spirits whether the Holy Spirit or demons, have no flesh, bones or blood.

And yet this verse says that the church was purchased with HIS blood; Whose blood?

This verse is not talking about either God the Father, or God the Holy Spirit, when it says that the church of God was purchased with blood.

Furthermore, there isn’t a hint on any page of any Bible which says that God the Father, or God the Holy Spirit ever died or shed blood.

The only conclusion that a thinking person can make is that the Jesus Christ – whose death is the focal point of every page of the Bible – Christ Jesus purchased the church of God with his own blood.

And therefore Paul was saying that Jesus Christ is God; Christ is deity.

Like the Apostle Peter before him, Paul believed that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of God.”

And when the Bible calls Jesus “the Son of God,” it is a reference to the eternal deity of Christ.

This is a subject which is particularly hated and opposed by Satan.

If the Devil can keep people from understanding and accepting the deity of Christ, then he knows that those people will never willingly bow their knees to Him.

I think that this is the primary reason that there are so many different versions of the scriptures.

Very early in church history Satan induced some influential men to edit their Bibles to eliminate references to Jesus’ deity.

Eventually those Bibles were gathered and promoted by men like B.F. Westcott and F.J. Hort, and on came the onslaught of various REVISED and NEW versions of the scriptures.

Nearly all modern versions of the Bible either directly or indirectly attack the deity of Christ, and nearly all of them come through the efforts of Westcott and Hort.

So I freely admit that if someone came into our service this morning with an American Standard Version of the Bible,

He might say that – rather than “church of GOD,” Acts 20:28 in his Bible says “church of the LORD.”

Some modern versions say “church of the Lord” and a few even say “church of CHRIST.”

Certainly, I believe that God’s true churches are churches of the Lord and churches of Christ,

But that is NOT what this verse says; this verse calls the church of CHRIST, the church of GOD.

What a subtle way to keep people from saying that it was divine blood which purchased that church:

“The Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of the LORD, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”

“The Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of CHRIST, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”

Unfortunately for Satan and his friends, the vast majority ancient copies of the scriptures read just like our Bibles: “the Church of GOD.”

The “Majority Text,” the “Received Text,” the “Textus Receptus” uses the word “theos” – “God.”

And ironically, in his hatred of this truth, Satan sometimes over does himself.

The three oldest manuscripts – the primary manuscripts which were used to produce his Christ-denying Bibles are the Alexandrian, Sinaiticus, and Vatican manuscripts.

Very often modern versions of the Bible explain their change words from our King James Bibles by saying that “the oldest manuscripts” have something different.

But in the case of this verse, at the bottom of the page of the American Standard Version, we read, “Some ancient authorities, including the two oldest manuscripts, read “God.”

In other words, two of the three oldest New Testament manuscripts still in existence,

plus the vast majority which were used to produce the King James Bible agree that

“the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of GOD, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”

Satan breaks his own faulty rules in his hatred of this doctrine.

And in the process he proves that it’s not truth that he desires.

He simply hates the doctrine of the deity of Christ.

The Bible teaches, Paul believed, and this church believes that Jesus Christ is as much God, as God the Father is God.

And if you don’t believe that, but you are trusting Christ to save your soul, you are trusting a false Christ.

If your faith is not in a divine Saviour, then you, in fact, have no capable Saviour at all.

I agree with thousands of Bible scholars who say that the New Testament is filled with Paul’s testimony of the deity of Christ.

Sometimes these are direct attempts to teach and prove that deity.

But more often that not, he ASSUMES that we who are reading his letters already believe this truth.

Paul begins his letter to the Romans with an indirect declaration of the deity of Christ.

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,

(Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)

Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”

Some people try to get around this declaration of Jesus’ deity by pointing to the words “Son of God.”

They foolishly say that “SON of God” makes Christ less than deity.

But that is not what the people in Paul and Jesus’ day thought.

When Christ Jesus called himself the Son of God, the Jews picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy.

“We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.”

When Paul called Jesus “the Son of God” he was saying that he was the eternal Son, co-equal with the Father.

Later in Romans Paul wrote:

“I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,

That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.

For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:

Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;

Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.”

Those who hate the doctrine of the deity of Christ, say that Paul was only saying that God had blessed Christ.

But every capable scholar whom I have ever read agree with this statement from A.T. Robertson:

“Who is over all, God blessed for ever.

A clear statement of the deity of Christ following the remark about his humanity.

This is the natural and the obvious way of punctuating the sentence.

To make a full stop, and start a new sentence for the doxology is very abrupt and awkward.”

Romans 9:5 is a declaration of Paul’s faith in the deity of Christ.

And then there are the unmistakable words of Colossians 2:6-9:

“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:

Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

Earlier in Colossians Paul described the Lord Jesus as having authority and power which could only belong to God:

“Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.

For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.”

My heart thrills whenever I hear or read the words of I Timothy 3:16:

“These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly:

But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”

I believe that Paul was the penman of the Book of Hebrews which opens with the words:

“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

And then there are the words of Titus 2 which are so very similar to our text here in Acts 20:

“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”

Once again, some people say that this is talking about the appearance of both God and Jesus.

But not only will we never SEE God the Father,

As Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say,

“There is but one Greek article to “God” and “Saviour,” which shows that both are predicated of one and the same Being. “Of Him who is at once the great God and our Saviour.”

I could multiply statements from the lips of Christ and other New Testament pen-men,

but this morning, I want to stick with Paul.

And what I would like you to see is that here in Acts 20:28, Paul is saying “Jesus Christ is God.”

At this point, I think that I’ll not get into the idea that “Christ purchased the church of God with His blood.”

But I will point out that it took the blood of the Divine Son of God to save sinful souls.

Once again, I ask that you listen carefully to Paul’s words to Titus:

“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;

Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”

From cover to cover, the Bible teaches that the remedy for man’s sin was the blood of the God-proscribed sacrifice.

Leviticus 17:11 – “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”

Hebrews 9:22 – “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”

But the Bible is just as clear in declaring that it’s not just any blood and any sacrifice which God will accept.

In the case of the Old Testament illustrations of Christ, the animal to be sacrificed had to be the very best available.

It had to depict absolute perfection, even though perfection is impossible in this world.

It had to be perfect, because the final sacrifice, the Lord Jesus would be perfect in every way.

But again, I remind you that perfection is impossible in this world.

Yet in the case of Christ Jesus, perfection is His middle name, because He is God, the Son.

“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.”

“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”

Sinners who want to be delivered from their sin have no choice but to turn to God’s only proscribed remedy.

And that remedy is Christ Jesus and His shed blood.

This Jesus is the eternal Son of God; this Jesus is Jehovah; this Jesus is divine.

And for a sinner to deny the deity of Christ, is also to deny one of the necessities for His salvation.

Do YOU believe that Jesus is God?

Fine, but I remind you that the devils believe this as well.

The important question for you is:

Have you placed your faith on this Divine Son of God to deliver you from the penalty of your sins?

Have you repented toward God and is your faith in the Son of God and his sacrifice for your sin?

Are they?