If you would take up your Bibles and turn tonight to Acts chapter 13. We’ve been in a series in the book of Acts for several months now and we come to this, the thirteenth chapter. You can find that on page 921 in the pew Bibles located in the pew in front of you. And Acts chapter 13 is very much the turning point in the book of Acts. The focus shifts in this part of the book from the ministry of Peter now to focus more on the ministry of Paul. And the focus shifts more from looking at Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria now to go to places like Antioch and Galatia and Macedonia and to the ends of the earth. But it’s the same story. It’s the same story.
And what links the whole thing together is the spread of God’s Word through all of those places. And you can hear it in the book of Acts almost like a refrain. So you find things like chapter 6 verse 7, “And the Word of God continued to increase.” Chapter 12 verse 24, “But the Word of God increased and multiplied.” And the passage that we are going to read tonight, chapter 13 verse 49, says, “And the Word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region.” And then you’ll find it again in chapter 19. “The Word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.” Until literally the last word of the book of Acts is the word “unhindered,” or “without hindrance.” Paul is in Rome in Acts chapter 28 and the last verse says that he was “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.” So the Word keeps going. And in these verses that we have tonight, we come to Paul’s first sermon. This is Paul’s first sermon recorded in the book of Acts. And in it, you can hear emerging some of the outline of what will become the main and central theme of Paul’s entire life. It’s what he writes in Romans chapter 1 verse 16, that “I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
And so as we study these verses tonight and hear Paul’s first sermon being read tonight, let’s ask two questions. One, “What was at the heart of Paul’s message?” And then secondly, “What made it such good news?” So we’ll see two things in these verses. We’ll see the message of salvation and the meaning of salvation. Before we read God’s Word though, let’s pray and ask His help to give us guidance and application to our lives. Let’s pray.
Father, we give You thanks for this message that we have recorded before us this evening. We give You thanks for the good news that it contains. And yet we recognize, we confess that it will not register to us as good news unless You help us, unless You open our ears and our hearts and our minds to understand it and to see the bad news in all of our hearts and lives – that we need good news, we need forgiveness, we need freedom, we need salvation. And so we pray this evening that You would give us Your Spirit to lead and direct and guide us in all truth, and that You would help us to see Jesus. Speak Lord, for Your servants listen. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Acts chapter 13, beginning in verse 13:
“Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem, but they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia. And on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent a message to them, saying, ‘Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.’ So Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand said:
‘Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. And for about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness. And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. All this took about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’ Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. Before his coming, John had proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John was finishing his course, he said, ‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but behold, after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.’
‘Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him. And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm,
‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’
And as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way,
‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.’
Therefore he says also in another psalm,
‘You will not let your Holy One see corruption.’
For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption. Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. Beware, therefore, lest what is said in the Prophets should come about:
‘Look, you scoffers, be astounded and perish; for I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will not believe, even if one tells it to you.’
As they went out, the people begged that these things might be told them the next Sabbath. And after the meeting of the synagogue broke up, many Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who, as they spoke with them, urged them to continue in the grace of God.
The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him. And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, ‘It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,
‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’’
And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district. But they shook off the dust from their feet against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
I can’t remember who said it, but it was something like, “For a book that is called ‘Acts,’ there sure is a lot of teaching in it.” And that’s true. We find that over and over throughout this book. There are sermons and there are speeches from first to last, starting almost at the very beginning. If you remember with Peter at the Day of Pentecost where he spoke up and gave his first sermon and brought about the many conversions that happened in that day. And Paul will make his own contribution to the speeches found in Acts, beginning with this one that we just read in chapter 13. But really Paul’s two main evangelistic sermons are found in this chapter, in Acts 13, and then again in Acts chapter 17. And it’s in those two places that we find Paul making these urgent pleas to believe, to believe the case for Christ that he is presenting to the people.
And those sermons, 13 and 17, they tell us a lot about the Gospel. And they tell us a lot about what was at the core of the message of the Gospel. Who was it for, and how was it received? Because Paul’s sermons in Acts 13 and Acts 17 were given to two completely different audiences. One, like we just read, was for a Jewish audience in a synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia. The other was for a crowd of Gentiles who would gather together in the Areopagus in Athens in Greece. And he’s talking here to the men of Israel. He calls them the “sons of the family of Abraham.” But that’s not what he does in Athens. No, to them he calls out, “To the men of Athens, fellow members of the human race, fellow offspring of God.” In the synagogue, how does he begin? We find that they read from the law and the prophets in the synagogue. They read from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. But that’s not what they did in Athens. Instead, in Athens, they looked to the different philosophies of the day. They looked to things like Epicureanism and Stoicism. Or really they just wanted to talk about anything that was enjoyable and fun to talk about in that setting.
And so what we find in those two chapters, in Acts 13 and Acts 17, Antioch in Pisidia and Athens, we find that Paul is tailoring his message specifically to the contours of his particular audience. That’s why, when Paul stood up after the reading of the law and the prophets in the synagogue, he began with the law and the prophets. And that’s what he says in verse 17 of this chapter. He says, “The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt. And with an uplifted arm, He led them out of it.” What’s he doing there? What Paul’s doing there is he is giving this message to the men of Israel by starting with the story of the people of Israel. And I love how he basically surveys that story. And we see so many of the Old Testament books summarized in just a few short words in this sermon that he preaches to this synagogue.
And when he says that God chose their fathers, the patriarchs, what book is he talking about? He’s talking about the book of Genesis. And then he goes on. He talks about God leading them out of Egypt. Well that’s the book of Exodus. And He put up with them in the wilderness. That’s the book of Numbers. And He gave them their land as an inheritance. That’s what we read about in the book of Joshua. Then He gave them judges to lead them for a time as we find in the book of Judges. And then they ask for a king. First it was with Saul, and that’s the book of 1 Samuel. Then it was David, the man after God’s own heart. That is 2 Samuel. Then he talks about David’s offspring. Those are the books of 1 and 2 Kings. That’s the whole story of Israel. That’s the storyline of the Old Testament that we have before us, all in just a few short words, all the way leading up to the exile in 586 BC.
Paul doesn’t do any of that in Athens. He doesn’t cover any of that ground with the people in the Areopagus in Athens. No, instead he starts with their story and he talks about the objects of their worship. He talks about their poets and he talks about the story of creation, beginning at the very beginning. He goes back to when God made the world and everything in it. Two different contexts, two different audiences, and his message looks very different at each place.
I remember an ad for American Express. It was some time back in the 90s and in it Jerry Seinfeld was doing a standup tour in London. And the commercial begins where he says something like, “So I walked off the elevator and I said, ‘What is this, the 7th inning stretch?’” And it’s just dead silence. No laughter. It died because they didn’t know anything about the 7th inning stretch. So what did Seinfeld do? He got his American Express card and he went out around London and he started to try to learn the lingo so he could mix it into his act. And you hear him going to places and he learns about things like bangers and mash and toad in the hole and at one point he swings the cricket bat and he says, “That was a wicked googly!” And maybe there are four people here who know what that means! But at the very end, he’s back with an audience and he says, “So I took the butcher up to apples and pears and said, ‘What is this, the tea interval?’” And everybody laughs because they knew what that was. It was speaking their language, speaking their lingo. He knew the context and he matched it to his message.
That’s what Paul’s doing. That’s what Paul does in Acts 13 and Acts 17. He speaks to the crowd that is there in front of them. He adjusts the message in order to find common ground with his audiences. Except for one thing. And one thing does not change. One thing was the same in both places and to both audiences and that was the focus on Jesus and His resurrection. The main point for Paul in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch was that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Jesus was the one who was the fulfillment of all of the promises that had been made to their fathers. Jesus was the promised King and offspring of David. And the thing that confirms that Jesus is in fact the Savior is what he says in verse 30. That “God raised Him from the dead.” And repeatedly, Paul stresses throughout this sermon, he stresses Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Verse 30, “But God raised Him from the dead.” Verse 32, “We bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this He has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus.” Verse 34, “He raised Him from the dead no more to return to corruption.” In verse 37, “He whom God raised up did not see corruption.” The resurrection is at the heart of Paul’s message both to the Jews in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch and to the Gentiles in the Areopagus in Athens. The resurrection was, the resurrection is the hope of the Gospel. That’s the climax of the story. That’s the climax both of the story of Israel and the story of creation. That is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Can you believe it? Can you believe that?
I was listening to a conversation recently with the writer David Brooks and he was talking about his own coming to faith, becoming a Christian, out of a secular, Jewish context. At some point in this conversation they quoted someone who, it was a lecture on preaching and this person said that there comes this split second when the preacher gets up and opens the text that someone is thinking, is he going to address the question, “But is it true?” But is it true? That’s the fundamental question.
And Paul says that it’s true. Paul says that it’s true because there were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. He says it in verse 32 and 33. “For many days, He appeared to those who had come up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem who were now His witnesses to the people.” There were eyewitnesses. There were eyewitnesses who had seen Jesus dead and buried and living again. There were eyewitnesses whose message could have been easily refuted simply by producing the body of Jesus at that time. There were eyewitnesses who staked their lives, in fact they gave their lives in distant places across the world for the sake of this message – that Jesus had died and was buried and He had been raised again.
Paul says it’s true because there are eyewitnesses and it’s true because there is the testimony of Scripture. And Paul talks about the resurrection in this chapter as fulfillment. And he points them to places in the Old Testament, places like Psalm 2 and Isaiah 55 and Psalm 16. And he says that Jesus is the son from Psalm 2. And Jesus is that king of an everlasting kingdom that was promised to David. He is the holy one who would not see corruption. But basically the point is this – the validation of Jesus’ resurrection is that it was written about hundreds and thousands of years before it ever happened. And so what you have with Jesus’ resurrection is the convergence of Old Testament ministry and Gospel history. You have the alignment of promise and fulfillment that gives proof to the reliability of the message of Jesus’ resurrection. How else could it be? How else can you explain that the events of Jesus’ life, His death, and His resurrection happened just as it was written about hundreds and thousands of years beforehand had it not really happened that way? It’s true. You can believe it.
And as Paul will say later in chapter 26, “Why would you think it’s incredible that God can raise the dead?” Of course God can raise the dead! And that’s what He did in the resurrection of Jesus. And some of the people believed. Some of the people in Pisidian Antioch, they believed, others did not. And it tells us that there were those in Pisidian Antioch who followed Barnabas and Paul that “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” But not everybody. And there were others who stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas. They ran them out of town. That’s because Christ crucified is a stumbling block to the Jews and it’s folly to the Gentiles. But, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. That’s the message. The message of salvation is that Jesus was raised from the dead. That may seem incredible, it may seem like a stumbling block and folly to a lot of people, but what Paul is saying to us in Acts chapter 13 is that there is good reason to believe. And that in believing, there is life and there is forgiveness, there is freedom. What he is saying is that there is salvation to everyone who believes. That’s why Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel. That’s why he is not ashamed, and neither should we, because the Gospel is good news.
The Gospel is good news. The message is Jesus and His resurrection. The meaning is found in verses 38 and 39. “Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” Francis Shaeffer once said – what if you could put a recorder around a baby’s neck when he was born, and what if that recorded captured every moral judgment that child made as he grew up? Every time he said, “You ought to do this. You ought not to do that. This is right. This is wrong,” that these moral precepts, they might be much lower than God’s standard, but they would still be moral judgments. And what if, what if every person one day would stand before God and had the recordings on that recorder played. And they were not being held by God’s standard but by their own moral standard. What would happen? Every person would fall far short of our own moral standards by which we hold other people.
The point is that we do things that we know are not right. We do, every person does things that we know to be wrong. Now put that in the light of God’s judgment. Put that in light of God’s standard and God’s standard of holiness. How then would we stand up? How would we stand before God’s standard of holiness and justice? We fall far short. And all have sinned and fall far short of the glory of God. And we need forgiveness. We desperately need forgiveness. And we long for freedom. We live in a world which has a great desire for complete and total freedom, maximum autonomy, do whatever you want to do, no boundaries, no limits, and yet we still cannot find freedom. And we want to break free from the thought of keeping the Sabbath Day holy and special to God, and then we buckle under the demand to make every practice and play every game and get to every birthday party that’s on the calendar. And people will say they want to be done with God’s standards and definition of gender and the Biblical standards of sexuality and then find it egregious if you do not call someone by the proper pronouns. It was an old puritan who said that, “Men think God’s laws too many and too strict, and yet make more of their own and are precise in keeping them.” Men think God’s law too many and too strict, and then make their own and are exact and precise in trying to hold other people to those laws and to those standards. We could look everywhere we want to look, we could do everything we want to do, but we cannot find forgiveness. We cannot find freedom.
Verse 38, through this man, through this one who took on our sin on the cross, this one who bore the judgments of God’s wrath that we deserve, this one makes us right with God and presents us faultless before the presence of His glory with great joy. Through this man, through this man. And by His death and resurrection, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. And by Him everyone who believes is free. The word there is justified. We are justified, made right, made free from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. That’s the meaning of the message. That’s the meaning of salvation.
And I hear it from time to time in hospital rooms, I’ve been there myself. It happened not that long ago in a pediatric ICU room with a little baby, a newborn, hooked up to all sorts of machines and having really serious and scary episodes of crying and the parent says, “I wish it was me instead of him. I wish I could go through that for him.” But they can’t. We can’t do that. We can’t take their place. But that’s what Jesus did for us. “Christ became sin for us, took the blame, bore the wrath, we stand forgiven at the cross.” And that’s what the resurrection does for us and that’s why we celebrate Easter; that’s why we celebrate the resurrection Sunday after Sunday after Sunday – because forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. And everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. Don’t be like the scoffers. Don’t be like the scoffers here in this chapter. Don’t reject the message of God’s free grace that is here for you tonight but believe it. Believe it and be saved. That’s the message and the meaning of salvation for you tonight.
And if you believe it, the message and the meaning also is this – it’s what happens in verse 43 where it says that “Paul urged them to continue in the grace of God.” Continue in the grace of God. Stand firm. Press on. Run the race with endurance. Do not be ashamed. Don’t be ashamed at work. Don’t be ashamed at school. Don’t be ashamed with your friends, with your family, in your neighborhood, on your sports teams. Do not be ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, who simply believes, who receives it with open hands and accepts it by faith. Simply by grace alone through faith alone. And what happens in standing firm, pressing on, running that race with endurance? It fills us with joy and with the Holy Spirit. That’s what the last verse of this chapter says. Verse 52, “And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.”
Let’s pray.Our Father, we long for this sort of forgiveness, this sort of freedom. We long for joy and we long for Your presence with us and for us. We long for the Holy Spirit. And wherever we look to try to find the things that will satisfy these longsing, these desires, these deep needs that are in all of our hearts, we cannot find it except for here and through this man, through Jesus Christ. And we give You thanks for the message of salvation, we give You thanks that Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel but proclaimed it here in Pisidian Antioch, proclaimed it in Athens, proclaimed it in Jerusalem, proclaimed it in Rome, and even proclaims it here in Jackson, Mississippi through the reading and preaching of Your Word. And so we pray that You would give us the faith to believe, to receive the message of salvation, to look to Jesus and His resurrection, His victory, His salvation, that it would be our salvation and that we would press on, unashamed, being bold to be Your witnesses. And the way that we live and the way that we talk and the way we share Your Word with other people, would You let the Word of God through us continue to grow and to increase and to spread through our lives and through our lips. And I pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.