Paul’s Sermon - Acts 13:13-52 - Part 22
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning! Welcome to CHCC. I hope you all had a very happy Fourth of July! Thank you to everyone who helped with the float and were part of the parade.
This morning we will finish up chapter 13 of the book of Acts. Last week we began our journey alongside Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark as they made their first missionary journey together, departing from the port city of Seleucia and making their way to the island of Cyprus, docking at the city of Salamis. From their our companions traveled from the east coast to the west coast of the island proclaiming the Word of the Lord. They eventually make their way to the other side of Cyprus into the city of Paphos where they are met by the proconsul (essentially the governor of Cyprus), a man by the name of Sergius Paulus. The passage makes it clear that he desires to hear this message that Paul and Barnabas have been preaching. However, alongside the proconsul is a man known as Bar-Jesus or Elymas. He was a magician and he was bent on turning the proconsul away from the faith.
This leads to a true Spiritual battle as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, turns his attention towards Elymas and calls him out.
But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.” Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.
Following this remarkable sign, alongside the sound teaching of the Lord, Luke tells us the proconsul believed.
Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.
An archaeologist by the name of Sir William Ramsay reported inscriptions bearing the name of Sergius Paulus to have been found on the island of Cyprus confirming that he was a Christian and that his entire family also became Christian.
This missionary journey is a reminder of a couple of things for us today. Number one, the opening section of chapter 12 shows us the vital importance to church unity. As Paul and Barnabas are sent out by the church in Antioch, they pray over them and lay hands of them. They fully support and encourage the work they are doing and where the Holy Spirit is calling them.
Secondly, we are reminded of the reality of spiritual warfare. Cyprus may be a beautiful island and a desirable destination for vacationers, but that does not mean the work of the ministry will be easy. Paul and Barnabas face the dangers of traveling as well as the dangers of the enemy seeking to stop them from sharing the gospel.
And the struggles would continue as we will get to this morning. This is a great reminder for us today that even though we may be walking in God’s will, and even though we may be obedient with what He is calling us to, we will likely face trials and difficulties. Our tendency in Westernized Christianity when we face any sort of pushback or hardship that God wouldn’t want this for us!
But Paul’s ministry is a continual example that hardships will arise for faithful and obedient believers. But even in all the setbacks Paul faced, he concluded:
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
So let us journey on with our missionaries this morning as we conclude chapter 13 of Acts.
PRAY
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.”
We’ve reached the halfway point of Paul’s first missionary journey and if you recall, it was Barnabas, Paul, and John Mark together that took this journey. However, we are told that as they set sail from the west coast of the island of Cyprus and headed north to Perga, that upon arrival, John Mark decided to return home to Jerusalem.
Luke (through the direction of the Holy Spirit) decided it would be wise not to air out any dirty laundry here in his writings and so we don’t know exactly what happened that caused Mark to make this decision. We do know, however, that it did not sit well with Paul and would cause a dispute to arise between Paul and Barnabas before the second missionary journey.
Scholars have proposed several possibilities that would have led to Mark’s departure. Some suggest he may have been homesick; we know he grew up rather wealthy and perhaps he concluded that the hardships of the trip were just too much. Others claim that perhaps Mark had decided to journey only so far and there was simply miscommunication in the group.
Others propose that he resented the shift of leadership from his cousin Barnabas to Paul. Some have made the argument that he fell ill; after all we know that Paul himself caught sickness while in Galatia on the same trip. However, I do not think sickness would have gotten Paul so worked up to the point that he would vehemently refuse Mark’s companionship on future missionary journeys. I believe the geographical context of their journey offers some insight.
And I will say I do not want to infer too much from any lack of text. This is simply my suggestion after leafing through many theologians writings. We know that the route that Paul and Barnabas would take from Perga would lead through the Taurus Mountain Pass and this particular stretch of road was dangerous in a couple of ways. First off, it had some precarious bridges that would need crossing and some steep drop offs. Furthermore, it was a well known road to be infested with thieves—so much so that even the Roman military struggled to gain complete control over it.
This, alongside Mark’s comfortable upbringing, as well as Paul’s outward frustrations with Mark lead me to conclude that his departure had less to do with health or miscommunication and more to do with comfortability and hardships.
With that said, we do know that the relationship between Paul and Mark was eventually restored and they were reconciled as we see in Paul’s second letter to Timothy.
Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.
The reason I wanted to spend time on this is that I find this such a wonderful example that although the Church is united in Christ, are one in the Spirit, there will still be disagreements and frustrations. The reality is John Mark’s departure was ill timed. They could have used his help in the ministry and I believe Paul’s frustration is merited. However, I also think it is crucial to see that those frustrations did not turn to bitterness. Paul would write to the Ephesians to put away things such as bitterness.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
The author of Hebrews also warned against it.
See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;
It is encouraging to see that even though Mark’s departure affected them for a time and even stirred up such a disagreement that Paul and Barnabas would go their separate ways, that Paul and Mark would reconcile and that Paul would even say that Mark is very useful to him for ministry.
So Paul and Barnabas make the journey together, one man down, to the city of Pisidian Antioch. This isn’t the Antioch we’ve read about earlier in Acts, hence the clarification that it is Antioch in Pisidia.
To journey here they would have to travel inland and northward from the sea and climb to much higher altitudes. Pisidian Antioch was an important civil and military center of the Romans and it was 3,600 feel about sea level. It actually belonged to Galatia but resided near Pisidia which is why it got its name.
Paul will preach his first sermon here and he tells us why it was here that they paused their journey in his letter to the Galatians.
You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first,
Sir William Ramsay suggests that Paul had caught malaria in the lower altitude regions (which was very common in this area during this time) and so they traveled to the higher altitudes of the north in order to recover, although there is no definitive proof of that. What we can confidently deduce is that Paul was sick and therefore he stayed in this region to recover and thus was able to preach while he was there.
What is quite interesting is that there was one particular family who was extremely wealthy and had a business in Pisidian Antioch and it was none other than the family of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus, who we just read last week was converted to the faith due to the miracle and gospel teaching of Paul and Barnabas.
S. Mitchell, an expert on the archaeology of the area, writes: “We can hardly avoid the conclusion that the proconsul himself had suggested to Paul that he make [Antioch] his next port of call, no doubt providing him with letters of introduction to aid his passage on his stay.”
So while here in Pisidian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas go to the local synagogue on the Sabbath as was customary and there is an open invitation to speak. With this, Paul uses this opportunity to present Jesus through the Old Testament. And if you haven’t read through the Old Testament, Paul gives us a speed run on the survey of the Old Testament and ultimately how it connects to Jesus. So we are in for a treat. Verse 16.
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.
I want to walk through this together because it is so necessary to understand the importance of the Old Testament and how it leads us directly into the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. Ultimately, Paul alludes to no less than 12 Old Testament books recounting the Lord’s relationship to Israel.
While Paul’s sermon covers much of the same ground as Stephen’s did back in chapter 7, his focus is entirely different. Stephen wanted to explain that the old ear with the temple and the Law of Moses had given way to the New Covenant. Paul’s focus is to show how God’s activity in history climaxed in the coming of Jesus.
In verse 17, Paul reminds the people that God CHOSE Isreal. “The God of this people Israel CHOSE our fathers…” This is found in the book of Deuteronomy. And God didn’t choose Israel because they were greater than others or more in number or more righteous.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,
And in Christ Jesus, God has chosen us! It wasn’t because of anything we did, right? No! For Paul would write to the Romans:
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And to the Ephesians:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
John, too, would echo this truth.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
And Paul continues as he walks the people through history: God not only chose them, but He delivered them.
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.
He delivered them from slavery in Egypt, escaping across the Red Sea and into the wilderness where they would be for forty years. The entire book of Exodus is dedicated to this.
And guess what? Through Christ, God has delivered us! No longer are we bound to our sin, but through faith in Jesus we are set free; we are redeemed.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.
The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
If you are here this morning as a believer, you’ve placed your faith in the atoning work of Christ, then you have been redeemed and you have been delivered from the penalty of sin which, as Paul reminds us, is death.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul then brings the people to the longsuffering of God in verse 18.
And for about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness.
Have you ever had to “put up” with something? Maybe at work or your kids are driving you up a wall? Maybe it was some ailment or injury? You get to a point, though, and you begin to think, “I don’t know if I can put up with this any longer…”
God “put up” with incessant whining from the Israelites for FORTY YEARS! I couldn’t do that. “Alright, you want to go back to Egypt so bad? Here you go!”
But praise God, he is longsuffering! He is patient and He is loving and He is working. Even in their complaining and lack of gratefulness, God sustained His people because He loved them more then they could ever grasp. In an attempt to explain the love of God, D.L. Moody once said,
Joy is love exalted; peace is love in repose; long-suffering is love enduring…
Someone once said,
Hell is God’s justice; heaven is his love; earth, his long-suffering.
Isn’t that the truth? And how wonderful a truth for us. For many of us, it is because of God’s longsuffering that we find ourselves in the fold of His grace today. Perhaps we wandered spiritually for forty years and even so, God’s love remained. He was longsuffering with Israel and He remains longsuffering with us today. Paul then moves into the book of Joshua in verse 19.
And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance.
It took forty years of wandering and the first generation dying off before they could see the promise of the land fulfilled, but God made a way for them. Nations stood in the way—nations far greater than Israel at the time, but it did not matter, for God is greater.
And likewise, we can experience the blessing of God today. Paul writes of this in Ephesians:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
For the believer, the blessing is eternal life in Christ Jesus and there is no greater blessing! Let us continue through Paul’s survey of the Old Testament. Verse 20.
All this took about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet.
Paul now moves into the leadership of the nation throughout the centuries. He gave them judges. The judges themselves are a sort of proto-example of Christ. They were people appointed and anointed by God and enabled by His Spirit to deliver His people.
The book of Judges stands in sad contrast to the book of Joshua. Where we see God blessing a faithful people and they are conquerors over their enemies, the time of the judges we see the nation falling into idolatry, debauchery, and all sorts of sin. In short, they have fallen away from God.
Yet, even so, in judges we see that God never fails to love and rescue His people when they repent of their wickedness and turn from their sin and call upon His name.
Paul then moves into the time of the prophets, beginning with Samuel. Judges, prophets, and this essentially makes way for kings.
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.
Ultimately, Paul walks the people through the history of the relationship of God and Israel to bring them to the very feet of Jesus. They wanted kings like the pagan nations around them and God gave them kings beginning with Saul. But Saul would falter (as all men do) and this would then lead to David’s ascension to the throne. And through David the promise was made of a future Messiah—who is, of course, Jesus.
The short implication to all of this is that Jesus fulfills Jewish aspirations. He is the fulfillment of the Scriptures and they, in fact, point directly to Him. Paul is laying the groundwork here for the rest of his sermon where he will argue for the validity of his claim here at the end of verse 23 that Jesus is the promised savior.
You can really see his educational training and his strong ability for debate here in this sermon. So let us see how Paul brings this to Jesus.
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.
You may have noticed how Paul addresses the people in the synagogue. In verse 16 he said, “Men of Israel and you who fear God.” Here in verse 26 he says, “Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God…” Here in Pisidian Antioch it is a Gentile majority, although there are Jews in the region as well. Those who would be at synagogue on the Sabbath would consist of Jews as well as proselytes (Gentiles who have adopted the Jewish faith).
And I mention this because it will come into play by the end of chapter 13 and ultimately be the launching point of Paul’s focus on Gentile ministry.
Paul now begins to expound on the death of Christ in a way that we have seen on occasion here in the book of Acts when it is presented to Jews. Ultimately it is summed up as such: Jesus was innocent and His death has fulfilled Old Testament prophecy.
And similar to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, Paul also gives exposition on the resurrection of Christ which is strengthened by the eye witness testimony of many people, thus providing credibility to the claim.
Following the proclamation of His resurrection is the call to forgiveness as we will read, beginning in verse 32:
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.
I love how Paul pulls so many passages from Scripture to strengthen his statements. He quotes from Psalm 2:7, Isaiah 55:3, and Psalm 16:10 as well as references in 2 Samuel.
And by doing this, Paul walks them through the exposition of Christ as an offer of forgiveness and justification. Ajith Fernando points out:
Verse 39 contains ideas that are typical of Paul’s letters: belief, justification, and the inability to be justified by the law of Moses.
Paul then concludes his sermon with a dire warning—quoting from the prophet Habbakuk.
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.’ ”
What we’ve just read is Paul expressing God’s plan of salvation for the world through the progress of history. He begins with deliverance and salvation of the people at the Exodus and he continues to reveal how God systematically kept unfolding his purposes until He came to Christ and how His purposes are ultimately fulfilled in Christ.
So how did the people respond? Up to this point for Paul, it’s kind of been a coin flip. He’s been met with attempts on his life as well as people coming to faith in Christ. Here we get a sort of combination of the two. Verse 42 as we reach our conclusion.
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.
Here we see the two responses to the gospel. Some believed and came to faith. Others were filled with fury. But in the responses, Paul’s calling became clear. He would be the apostle to the Gentiles.
So let’s quickly recap what we just read here. The people’s initial response to the gospel was to hear it again. And so Paul shares the message again the following Sabbath. However, word got around and now nearly the entire city shows up to hear it!
This response arouses jealousy in many of the Jews and they oppose Paul’s teaching. This rejection to the gospel by the Jews is something that doesn’t sit well with Paul and is something that he would explore in later writings, especially in Romans 9-11. However, the receptiveness of the Gentiles spurs him towards gospel work.
Luke tells us that the Gentiles received Paul’s words with rejoicing and glorifying (edoxazon) the word of the Lord. This translates to mean that they “gave glory to the Lord for the word they had heard.”
Many had heard, received, and believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ and had thus been added to the number of the Church.
Others were so opposed that they formed a group and began persecuting both Paul and Barnabas and eventually drove them out of the district. But on their way out, Paul and Barnabas would shake the dust from their feet against the people.
David Williams points out that “strict Jews performed this symbolic action on entering the Holy Land from abroad, lest they be contaminated with the dust of profane places.” Now, by doing it against Jews, Paul and Barnabas “declared them in effect to be no better than the pagans among whom they lived; these Jews were profane and no longer part of the true Israel.”
The reality is that rejection of the Gospel will come. He’s preached the word twice and they have rejected it to the point that they are driving him out from their presence. This sign of shaking the dust was commanded by Jesus to his disciples as well as they went out two by two to surrounding regions to minister.
And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.
It essentially is akin to washing our hands of it. It is symbolically leaving behind the guilt, judgment, and rejection of that particular home or town.
As we close this morning, we have walked through the Old Testament with Paul and have been reminded that God has chosen us, delivered us, sustained us, blessed us, led us, and saved us. And this is done through the person and work of Jesus Christ. We have a Savior and thus we have hope as the author of Hebrews tells us:
We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain,
Paul has walked us through the gospel of Christ. We have redemption in His name if we come to Him in faith. I want to close with the words of Paul to the Romans:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
PRAY
