The Apostle Paul was determined to go to Jerusalem. He had reason to go and he felt it was the will of God. It is true that he was warned along the way that he would become a prisoner, that great danger lay ahead of him. Again, I marvel at his courage and his boldness. Paul made it very clear he was ready even to die if necessary in the cause of the Lord Jesus. He did go to Jerusalem and one day going into the inner patio which was reserved only for Jews. He was accompanied by others and that day there were also some men present from the province of Asia who knew Paul and his ministry in that great province and they were sure that his companions were not Jews. The result was a great riot in the temple and we mentioned yesterday They almost killed him. The Roman soldiers got him out and took him up to the fort beside the temple. There were a number of men in the city who made a decision they would not eat until they finally killed this man. And the news was brought to Paul. It was passed on to the officer of the day. And that very night under heavy guard, they took Paul out of Jerusalem and down to Caesarea. He was there for two years. The great men of that time, they interviewed Paul. They had great conversations with him. One said, you almost persuade me to become a Christian. Another said, I can find nothing wrong with this man. There's really no reason for him even to go to Rome. But as he has appealed to the emperor, we must send him to Rome. So that journey began. It was a long journey. along the coast of the Mediterranean, but at some point you had to go right across to reach what we call today Italy and make your way up to the city of Rome. It was on that journey that there was a tremendous storm. Luke writes about it, gives the impression he was also present on that trip in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter twenty-seven. And down in verse twenty, Luke writes, Acts twenty-seven in verse twenty, Now when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest beat on us, that's a rather quaint way to say this was a great storm. But Luke says in this verse, No small tempest beat on us. All hope that we would be saved was finally given up. Now, we started this day with torrential rain, but it wouldn't surprise any of us if before the night falls there will be a moment of sunshine. The sun always comes out, it seems, in Florida for a little time each day. But here are men on a ship for many days. and there was no light came from the sun, no light was seen from the stars at night. No sun, no stars appeared during that long time. The waves were large, the wind was fierce, and Luke says, we gave up all hope of being saved. I remember years ago in the city of Vancouver when I was a young man that we went for more than a month with tremendous rain. and winds and clouds, and we never saw the sun, and we never saw the stars at night for over a month. And finally one day the sun came out, and the next day in the newspaper there was a large tidal, strange orange object appeared in the sky yesterday. It was the sun burst out again after many days. In a situation like this, in a very small boat, in this fierce storm, no wonder they all gave up hope of being saved. It happens in the moral, in the human sense, very often, perhaps more often than we realize, that men and women live their lives, and there is no ray of light. There is no ray of hope, and finally there seems to be no reason to go on living. Not far from where we live in the Dominican Republic, a man who'd been married for many years got up one morning and his wife said to him, I want you to leave. I don't love you anymore, and I want you to leave this home. Great way to start a day. And this man went out into his usual activities, wondering what had happened to his wife. The next morning it was exactly the same. I told you yesterday, I want you to leave. I do not love you anymore. I want you out of this house. And this went on for days. And this man living in a very small world that was made up of his home, his wife, his work, finally came to the conclusion there is no hope, there is no light. And one morning he got up and he killed his wife. and then he took his own life. There was no light that had appeared for a long time in his life, and he brought it all to an end. I've read this portion this morning because this is the same verb that Paul uses in Titus chapter two when he speaks about the grace of God. And we're going to dwell on verse eleven this morning of Titus chapter two. We read the portion yesterday, but I would like to read once more this morning, Titus chapter two and verse eleven. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared, there's the verb, has appeared to all men. Paul is thinking about the coming of the Lord Jesus, of that there is no doubt because the grace of God is manifested in its perfection in the Lord Jesus. And Paul writes in other places, just at the right time, in the fullness of time, the grace of God in person appeared in the world, and it was a beautiful thing. It wasn't understood at the time. Poor men who were shepherds outside of Jerusalem They were given a special message about the meaning of the birth of this child. And there was a choir from heaven joined the angels, and they sang, worship to God, because the grace of God had appeared finally to men in a very special way. You have old men like Simeon who had yearned for years for the coming of the Messiah. It's an interesting story, the story of Simeon. I don't think he was a great prophetic student. I don't think he went into the Old Testament and figured out the whole puzzle and understood that a virgin would eventually give birth to a child in Bethlehem and so on. He simply received the conviction from the Spirit of God. The Messiah is coming. And then one day with that conviction, references made to this man that he lived under the guidance of the Spirit of God. So you have a man convinced by the Spirit the Messiah is coming and also convinced you are going to see this great event. And then one day he got up as usual and he was moved by the Spirit of God to go up to the temple. The phrase almost makes you think it wasn't the usual day he went, but that day he was moved to go. by the Spirit of God. And when he went into the temple yard, there was Joseph and Mary and the baby. And he took the child in his arms. And as an old man, a senior citizen, he said, Now, Lord, let your servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen your salvation. The grace of God had come, and the old man had seen it, and he was ready to go. into the presence of God. The grace of God appeared, and it was a beautiful coming into this world. And right away you find that Paul adds the thought, the grace of God came into our world for the purpose of salvation. Something I think we have to emphasize over and over and remember the message about the character of God. Back in Exodus chapter thirty-four, where you have that special revelation, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious. Then in your King James Version, you have the word long-suffering, followed by abundant in goodness and truth. The New International Version reads there, as do many of our versions in the Spanish language, slow to anger. That is the meaning of long-suffering. slow to anger. It's not just a question of patience. The subject is wrath, anger, and God is slow to anger. That is followed immediately by the thought great in grace or mercy and truth. The contrast is awesome. God is very slow when it comes to anger. But grace and love just pour out of His character towards this world. The grace of God came down into the world for the purpose of salvation. The Lord Jesus, either the Lord Jesus Himself or possibly John the Apostle wrote those beautiful words, God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world. but that the world through him might be saved. Again, you have the longing, excuse me, the longing in the heart of God. Salvation is God's special work. In the prophecy of Isaiah, the prophet refers to anger, and he says it is God's strange work. That is, it is something that must be done, but his heart is not in it. It's his strange work. Picking that thought up, Martin Luther added, His own work is love and mercy and grace towards the human race. So you find that God in His grace comes down not to judge but to bless. I remember reading years ago of Martin Luther when he was a young boy around twelve years of age. He would cross the street so he didn't go near the church building. He never wanted to hear the word God. or the word Jesus Christ, because he lived in the time when painters were paid to make great paintings depicting the horrors of hell and purgatory. And this young boy, the very name of God would startle him. The name of Jesus Christ brought to his mind the thought of vengeance and of judgment. What a horrible representation of the message of God's word. because God is slow to anger. He is abundant, great in grace and in truth, and He comes down into our world for the purpose of salvation. That's the whole message of the Old Testament. You have about two million slaves. They're down in Egypt. They've been going down and down and down. They really can go no farther down on the social and economic level. They are at the very bottom. There's about two million of them, and the slavery is getting harder, more cruel day by day. That's when God comes with his outstretched arm and his hand, and he brings out from under the most powerful monarch in the world about two million slaves. and puts them into the desert on a road that will take them eventually to a new destiny of prosperity and glory. God is a saving gun. Jonah found that out in the personal sense when he was swallowed by this great fish. I couldn't imagine another situation where one would feel there is absolutely no hope whatsoever. But after that was all over, he wrote a poem written as if he was still in that great fish. And it ends up with the climax. Salvation belongs to God. God always acts in salvation towards this world that is lost in sin. So Paul says, the grace of God has appeared. It brings salvation. And then he adds the most remarkable term to all men. Now those of us who are here this morning with long years of activities in North America and other parts of the world, we know that not all men today have received the benefits of the grace of God. You look around about you and you sometimes wonder where the Christian influence is today in the society in which we live. Any of those of you here with your background in Europe Know that in Europe it's far worse than it is here. There are people who openly tell us today we gave up the whole thought of God and of the Bible years ago. We no longer believe in things like that. So how the Bible can say the grace of God which brings salvation has appeared to all men, giving the sense that all men can be brought in and blessed, sometimes raises the question in the mind and the heart of those who read a verse like this. But it's a beautiful verse. You must ponder it just for a moment. You must never put limits on the love of God. There are no finite dimensions to the grace of God. If you begin with that beautiful verse, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. You can't find a term that includes the whole world that is better than that very word, world. The whole human race is the object of the love of God. He did not look down and love those of a certain type or those of a certain time or those of a certain culture or language. God loved the world and He gave His Son for the world. And it is in that sense today that we too should love the world. I know there is a sense in which we must not love the world. But in this sense, following the example of God, our hearts as Christians must reach out to the whole world. There is no discrimination. The message is for every human being. There are many beautiful insights into this matter in the New Testament. Paul refers to God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now there's no way you can change that very clear language. This is the longing of God. This is the heart of God expressed in love and grace. God desires that all men be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. And it isn't something found just in one writer in the New Testament. Peter, for instance, he deals with the subject almost in an identical way. And he says God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. So you read in the Bible this great message about the will and the desire of God. You go back into Ezekiel, God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked. What he wants is repentance and men to turn back in faith and to become the objects of his love and of his grace. Well, this grace that came into the world potentially can reach out to all men. What a tragedy. that the same man who wrote these words had to write in Romans, but not all obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus. Not all. But because men reject the message, never reflects on the grace and the love of God. It is vast. It is measureless. It is the grace that comes out, and as I've mentioned, potentially it can touch the whole human race. Most of us here today are senior citizens. Don't you wish sometimes you could go back and be a young person again? Not so much because you want to rectify things in the past, but this is an exciting time to live. Scholars and scientists today remind us that we are now on the eve of the twenty-first century. That is just around the corner. Most of us here are not going to see very much of it. Some of us might never even see the beginning of the twenty-first century, but it's right there. And scientists tell us that within the next thirty-five to fifty years, the population of our world could very well move from about five point nine billion where it stands today to very near ten billion human beings. There are some scientists that project right up to fourteen billion. Now that is a tremendous increase in the population of the world in just the next thirty-five to fifty years. The major increase will be found in Latin America, in Asia, and in Africa, not so much in Europe or North America. But that exploding population is the world that our young people today, our children and our grandchildren who know and love the Lord Jesus, that's the world that they have to face with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. It's frightening. It is so large. The problems are so complex where the water will come from, where the food will come from. We have technology today where you can grow great crops. You can make cars and machines without a human hand touching the whole process. The technology is all there. But if you put that technology into work, what do people do in Asia? and Latin America and Africa. Men and women who work the land and their little farms and their small crops, what would they do? The problems today are complex and difficult, but the population is going to explode in the next very few years. And when you think of that, what great comfort to remember that the grace of God, which appeared in our world two thousand years ago, for the purpose of bringing salvation is potentially wide enough, vast enough to reach this whole world that is just right around the corner. I know the Lord Jesus could come tonight, but don't let that thought take away from your mind and your prayers the challenge before the Church, because we still do not know the moment of His return. but we know what surrounds us in this world and the need to take the gospel and to present it to that great mass of human beings. We seem so insignificant, so few in number sometimes, but let me encourage you today by reminding you that in Latin America, where I live, and in Asia, and in Africa, the Church of the Lord Jesus is growing dramatically. and there is a whole army of young men and women who've never seen North America, they've never seen Europe, but they have met the grace of God in the Lord Jesus. And this is the generation in the will of God that will stand up and take the gospel to those that surround them in the coming years. But the grace of God, it brings salvation, it has appeared, and it is wide enough for all the human race. I like the words of Faber. There's a wideness in God's mercy, like the wideness of the sea. We sometimes narrow it down because of prejudice, because of background and culture. But when you come to the Bible, the grace of God is wide and it is vast, and it reaches out today through His people to those that surround us and very soon to that coming great population explosion. We're going to leave this morning our meditation there and tomorrow we want to go in and think about the grace of God after you've been converted. Because verse eleven is really conversion. That's when the grace of God dawned in your life and in our closing moments I would like to take you back and ask you, do you remember That day, I don't know what the darkness was in your life, but there was a moment when the grace of God shone into your heart and into your mind. Paul talks about it in his own experience when he says, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ That was what shone into his heart. That was the grace of God that reached his inner being and changed his life radically. It happened to you in a Sunday school class, in a meeting, reading quietly the Word of God. There was a moment when the grace of God touched your life and filled you with beauty, with new thoughts, with new life, with hope. That's conversion. We dwell sometimes on the great stories, and I just bring to your mind because we're going to sing his hymn this morning. John Newton, who was a young man, was a very, very wicked young man. He actually eventually himself, a white man, was sold into slavery for a number of years. But as you know, he eventually became a captain of a slave ship. and he brought slaves from Africa into the part of the world where Grace and I live today. Their descendants are still part of our population and some of them are our choice friends today in the Christian community. It's hard to imagine a man more wicked, more committed to great and wicked things than John Newton, but the grace of God came down and touched him, radically changed him And one day, years later, he wrote those beautiful words, amazing grace. And can it be, and you can go on and read all of the verses speaking of the grace in his life. Now, you may not feel that you were like Paul. You may not feel like you were like John Newton. But your own life, when that moment came, in your situation and your background, surely you responded in the same way this His amazing grace. This is the outpouring of the love of God, that He should come down and touch me, and pick me up, and make me one of His choice children. So take your hymn book this morning, and we're going to sing hymn number, and thirty-two. Three hundred and thirty-two. Amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. T'was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. We'll just sit quietly and sing hymn number three hundred and thirty-two. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that makes a wretch like me. I was not lost, but now I'm found, was life by T'was grace that of thy heart is dear, And grace, my dear year, the all-right Lord believe. Through many dangers, foils and snares, I have They praise the Lord, he praise the Lord, and praise will lead you home. When we let him come, I am drawing me down And now to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now