Good News of Grace (Acts 13:42-52) | Sermon by Gray Gardner

Scripture Reading (Carrie Stapleton)

Acts 13:42–52 (CSB)

42 As they were leaving, the people urged them to speak about these matters the following Sabbath. 43 After the synagogue had been dismissed, many of the Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who were speaking with them and urging them to continue in the grace of God.

44 The following Sabbath almost the whole town assembled to hear the word of the Lord. 45 But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what Paul was saying, insulting him.

46 Paul and Barnabas boldly replied, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first. Since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we are turning to the Gentiles. 47 For this is what the Lord has commanded us:

‘I have made you

a light for the Gentiles

to bring salvation

to the ends of the earth.’”

48 When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and honored the word of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. 49 The word of the Lord spread through the whole region. 50 But the Jews incited the prominent God-fearing women and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from their district. 51 But Paul and Barnabas shook the dust off their feet against them and went to Iconium. 52 And the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.

Introduction (Gray)

Have you ever gone to a big sporting event, a Panther’s game or college football game, where you arrived late?

Walking up you hear the crowd erupt in a mixture of cheers and boos. You run to get inside to see what happened, to ask the people sitting next to you, or to pull it up on your phone and watch the replay.

Our passage today is the response of the crowd. Listening to the passage is like walking on the outside of the stadium and hearing the eruption of cheers and boos.

What’s happening? Here’s the context: **QUICKKKKK!!!

Crowd gathered in Pisidian Antioch.

Not the Antioch we’ve read about before in Acts, which is “home base” for the early church’s missionary movement.

The key actors here are the Apostle Paul and Barnabas.

Barnabas had gone to Paul’s home of Tarsus hunting for him, because he wanted him to go with him on this missionary journey.

Barnabas is the “Son of Encouragement.”

Where would we be if Barnabas wouldn’t have gone to hunt for Paul? Paul - who spread the Gospel throughout the entire Western world of the day? Paul - who inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote 16 of the 26 books found in our New Testaments?

Do you have a Barnabas in your life? Who could you be a Barnabas to? You never know the outcome.

Paul and Barnabas go on what scholars now refer to as Paul’s First Missionary Journey.

He had three journeys. This one led him mostly through the region of modern day Turkey, which was then a Roman province known as Galatia.

He travels from city to city, preaching the Gospel in the local synagogues where the Jews gather to worship.

Makes his way to the city in view here: Pisidian Antioch.

The capital of Galatia.

The most influential city in the region.

Here, Paul preaches his first recorded sermon in all of Scripture.

I remember my first sermon. It’s not recorded anywhere for anyone to ever hear again.

But Paul’s is recorded for the world to read for all millennia, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Acts 13:16-41 records his sermon. Our passage in focus today highlights the response to this sermon.

Here are the questions we need to answer:

What did Paul say in his sermon that elicited the response we read about in verses 42-52?

Why did his message make some people want to kill him, and other people rejoice?

And is there any relevance to that message - or the response of the Jews and Gentiles - to our lives today?

Today I’m going to walk you through three truths we see in this passage.

The first has to do with the content of Paul’s message - the gospel. The last two have to do with the responses that come from his message.

As you’ll see, I think these truths have relevance even for us sitting here today, several thousands of miles and years after the fact.

1. The Gospel is the good news of God’s grace.

Acts 13:42-43

42 As they were leaving, the people urged them to speak about these matters the following Sabbath.

43 After the synagogue had been dismissed, many of the Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who were speaking with them and urging them to continue in the grace of God.

What we find is that “the grace of God” is the main takeaway from his message.

Here’s Paul’s message in 60 seconds....

....

Then he said these words, which are the crux of his entire message:

Acts 13:38-39

38 Therefore, let it be known to you, brothers and sisters, that through this man (Jesus) forgiveness of sins is being proclaimed to you.

39 Everyone who believes is justified through him from everything that you could not be justified from through the law of Moses.

The heart of Paul’s message is that God will graciously forgive us of our sins and free us from the power of sin by justifying us through if we place our faith in Jesus Christ.

What does this mean?!

——

Justification by Faith defined

Justification is a legal term - God as Judge declares us to be right in His sight.

Two parts of justification:

1 - God forgives us of our sins.

God declares that we have no penalty to pay for sin, including past, present, and future sins.

Become morally neutral, but needing positive righteousness.

2 - God gives us Jesus’s righteousness.

Jesus led a life of perfect obedience to God. He never once sinned, though he was tempted as we all are. He always loved God and his neighbor perfectly.

Think about justification by faith like it’s your personal finances:

Think about sin like debt.

Justification by faith says that when you trust in Jesus - you believe in Him, his death for your sins, and his resurrection, and give your life to Him - he forgives all of your debt. Past, present, and future.

Not only that, but he gives you access to a new debit card. It’s a card with endless supply of money, so that should you ever get in bind because you still fall into sin, your bank kicks in an instant transfer to cover the debt.

No matter what you do, your future debts (or sins) are covered.

How amazing would that be if someone offered you that for your personal finances?

God has offered you that in Christ for your eternal salvation.

Think of the things that keep you up at night. The decisions you’ve made, the regret or shame you carry, the motivations in your heart that make you cringe. That - all of that and more - the Creator God looks at you and says, “Completely clean! No sin here!”

On what basis?

—> On the basis of our faith in Jesus.

God is so effusively gracious that he actually wants to forgive us. He actually wants to freely offer us this forgiveness and righteousness. The gift of grace is there and available to us, if only we will trust in Christ. We give him our sin, he gives us his life, his righteousness.

If you’re thinking, “This sounds too good to be true...” Then you’re starting to understand the Gospel.

That’s probably why so many who hear Paul preach this message were eager to hear him teach more on it.

Justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. The most unique doctrine of all religions. Your judgment day need not await for you in the future - if you trust in Jesus, your judgment day happened 2,000 years ago at the cross.

—> It’s possible you’re thinking, “This is just abstract religious thought. Theological musings with no bearing on my actual life.”

The Gospel of God’s grace doesn’t just justify you from what the law of Moses couldn’t justify you from — it justifies you from all that YOUR LAWs can never justify you from.

You may not think much about God’s law, but I assure you you think and act EVERY SINGLE DAY in accordance with YOUR LAW.

YOUR LAW:

Examples of your law:

Your law is whatever it is you think you need to do in order to be good enough, to be at peace, to be secure in your life.

It could be that you’re a student and you just need to keep good enough grades, and that will be your gateway to a peaceful and secure life where colleges accept you and you can get a good job and provide the kind of life you want for yourself and your future family and get your parents off your back in the time being.

It could be that you’re climbing the corporate ladder chasing promotions and pay increases, buying more and more toys and moving to new and better homes in order to keep up with whatever standard you have for yourself in the hopes of finally having everything you desire.

It could be that you’re a single woman just trying to get into a relationship with a man who will love you and validate you and affirm for you your worth and identity so that you have peace.

You get the picture: Your law is whatever the standard is that you’re chasing — whether you’ve ever consciously stated it or not.

Some of you are doing a really good job justifying yourself by following your own law.

Life has been up and to the right.

You’ve had success.

Life is good.

But even then, the cracks are there and the gaps are widening. Nobody’s perfect - there are shortcomings.

And each of you, when living by your own law, are constantly trying to justify yourself.

When faced with your shortcomings, you justify your poor performance by thinking of ole so and so, whom you’re definitely doing better than.

When climbing the ladder, you view all other people as threats to your desired position and goal, and work to push them out so that you can achieve the spot you want, then justify your actions as necessary evils on the path to your desired salvation.

When looking for a date, you justify lowering all of your standards to date someone you shouldn’t because its better to be validated at a standard lower than you’ve originally set than to be left all alone and forced to face the reality of what that must reflect about you and your value.

Your law will crush you. It will force you towards either prideful over-performance or lazy nihilism which says nothing in this world is worth living for.

The Gospel of God’s grace doesn’t just justify you from what the law of Moses couldn’t justify you from — it justifies you from all that YOUR LAWs can never justify you from.

When you’re forgiven by God and made righteous by believing in Him, this grace transforms your life.

So you don’t have to justify yourself.

You can stare your weaknesses in the faith and like Paul say, “When I am weak, then I am strong, for his power is made perfect in my weakness.”

You can work hard without pushing everyone away as threats to your promotion, because your identity is not in your work, but in Christ.

You can stay single or married no matter how difficult the situation because your value and worth is not determined by what someone else says to you, how others justify you, but in how God justifies you and calls you his.

All this by faith.

The good news of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. This was Paul’s message.

—> Now why was it so offensive? Two thoughts on grace that help explain further what Paul meant, and why it elicited the response it did.

2. Grace offends the self-righteous, but transforms the unrighteous.

This is looking at the heart, and how the heart responds to grace. We see two options in this passage.

Acts 13:44-48, 50

44 The following Sabbath almost the whole town assembled to hear the word of the Lord.

45 But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what Paul was saying, insulting him.

46 Paul and Barnabas boldly replied, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first. Since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we are turning to the Gentiles.

47 For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”

48 When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and honored the word of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. . . .

50 But the Jews incited the prominent God-fearing women and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from their district.

If you’ve spent your entire life being good enough, performing well, and being better than those around you, then grace is offensive.

1) Because it’s not fair. (Matter of justice)

Jews: circumcised their children, obedience to the law, synagogue every Sabbath, following Torah… they were better than all the pagans around them.

“I’ve earned this! How could you give away the same reward to them!”

How could God possibly be just by saying that all the other people who hadn’t been as obedient as they were could freely come to him without doing all the work?

Self-righteous people think God isn’t fair to allow people into the kingdom with all their mess.

Example: Prodigal son vs. older brother

2) Because it levels the playing field. (Social / racial dynamic)

They had reason to be prideful — God had chosen them centuries before. They were the chosen nation. They had to be set apart from all the other nations.

They are jealous, they’re filled with jealous rage, they abuse and revile Paul and his message.

Self-righteous people think they deserve special privileges because of their life, but nobody else does.

3) Because it can be abused. (Fear of misuse)

You can imagine the fear here — if you tell them it’s all by grace, they’re going to abuse it. They’re going to say they’re God’s people, then go and live like they always do with the rest of the pagans, profaning God’s law and defiling his people.

Self-righteous people don’t understand the power of grace to transform the human heart.

And so the Jews were offended. They were angry. They were out for blood.

They couldn’t believe they would be lumped in with the Gentiles - the sinners whom they were so much better than.

Think about the worst person you know.

Who is it? Why do you think they came to mind?

Now how does it make you feel to know that that person, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done, is just as deserving of grace as you are?

Why? Because nobody deserves grace.

The truth is: Grace isn’t fair.

We all deserve hell! But God took that upon Himself in the flesh of Jesus.

Who isn’t grace fair for? It’s certainly not fair for God!

Grace isn’t fair. That’s what makes it grace. It’s not fair — it’s free.

Grace must always be a free gift to be received rather than earned — otherwise it isn’t grace.

Ray Ortlund: “It’s hard to accept grace because we’re all deeply worried about our own self justification. “At least I’m not that bad” we say, looking at others. This offends God and divides us from one another. We don’t want to believe that we need the same mercy as everyone else. It’s hard to see yourself down among the very people you most despise. But down among the sinners is exactly where Jesus meets us with the grace we all need.”

The Jews could not imagine that they were in as much need of grace as “those Gentile sinners.”

So they pushed back hard against Paul’s message in Antioch.

Acts 13:45

45 But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what Paul was saying, insulting him.

Fast forwarding a bit, we learn that soon after Paul and Barnabas left Antioch Pisidian, the Jews began to talk the Gentiles out of believing what they heard.

They convinced them that it really was too good to be true — that actually, they had to follow the Jewish laws and customs if they wanted to be justified and forgiven their sins.

Back in the hamster wheel of religious, moral, and social performance.

So a few months after our moment in Acts, Paul had to write them a letter. It’s in your Bible as the letter to the Galatians. This is what he said to them:

Galatians 1:6-7

6 I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.”

He shows us something important here: that any time you try to add works to the Gospel, you’re actually turning to a different Gospel.

Here’s how many of us distort the gospel: **the Catholic understanding of the Gospel****

Faith + Works = Salvation

But that’s not the true Gospel. Paul goes on in correcting the Galatians by saying this:

Galatians 2:15-16

15 We are Jews by birth and not “Gentile sinners,” 16 and yet because we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus. This was so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.”

In other words, the true gospel is:

Grace + Faith = Salvation

We see Paul echo this message in his letter to the Ephesians:

Eph 2:8-10

8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—9 not from works, so that no one can boast.

Those who were unrighteous and knew it — who knew they couldn’t measure up — received the word with joy.

Acts 13:48

48 When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and honored the word of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. . . .

When you reach the end of yourself, and you know you have no hope - you latch onto help it when it comes.

The gospel frees you to be yourself, weaknesses and all, because your judgment has already occurred - 2,000 years ago on the cross.

No more striving. No more performing. Frees you from the power of sin so that you can fulfill the law (fruit of spirit Gal 6)

No more masks. No more performing. No more striving. No more competing. No more belittling. No more us vs. them.

Justification by faith is the great equalizer which says, “No one is so bad that they cannot be justified by him, and no one is so good that they need not by justified by him.” (Ray Ortlund)

—> But how does grace transform the unrighteous? What does it change, practically, in a person’s life? That leads us to the final point:

3. Grace joyfully received leads to grace freely given.

Acts 13:47, 49

47 ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’...

49 The word of the Lord spread through the whole region.

Those who joyfully receive grace always share it with others.

Grace is a change agent.

This is how grace transforms your heart:

1 - By freeing you FROM the trap of self-justification and performance, the power of sin and death.

2- By freeing you TO walk in the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control - for the sake of others.

The Gentiles, newly freed by this belief in God’s grace for them through Christ, go and spread the word throughout their region.

Salvation goes to the ends of the earth — where it was always meant to go.

When you know that you are just as much a sinner in need of grace as the worst people you can think of, you’re free to build bridges to them rather than walls.

You can freely go to other people who are not as socially alike, or put together, or religiously aligned, and show them grace.

You will want to. You will want them to hear this Good News of the Gospel!

The mistake that self-righteous people make is where they place works:

Faith + Works = Salvation

Works are only for themselves. Even their good deeds are selfishly motivated.

We said earlier that the true gospel is:

Faith + Grace = Salvation

But this isn’t complete. We need to see how works fit in. A complete picture would look like this:

Faith + Grace = Salvation + Works

Martin Luther: “God does not need your good works, but your neighbor sure needs them.”

We see Paul echo this message in his letter to the Ephesians:

Eph 2:8-10

8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—9 not from works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.”

Grace doesn’t just forgive you and justify you, it transforms you so that you live for the good of others.

—>Self-righteous people hoard grace for themselves because they think nobody else is deserving.

—> Unrighteous people transformed by the saving grace of Jesus freely give grace to those around them, because they know they are no better.

They say, “But for grace, it might be me.”

Story about hoarding grace???

Option 1: Guatemala in La Limonada. Kids taking food from us and sharing it in tiny pieces with all of their friends and families.

“Abundance mindest versus scarcity mindset.”

“BC living versus AD living”

Story about not sharing due to scarcity???

Example: Not sharing with others about a cool restaurant or new place to go so it doesn’t get crowded, change?

“One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

Jesus commands us to go and make disciples of all nations. To share this good news of God’s grace with the entire world. If you’re not sharing it with anyone, then have you really received it? Have you really been changed by it? Do you really see it as good?

Closing

Acts 13:52

And the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.

Self Examine:

Picture yourself at this first sermon of Paul’s. You’re walking up late, you see and hear the eruption of the crowd. Boos and cheers. You hear his message.

What response do you make?

Full of joy, or full of jealousy?

Full of the Holy Spirit, or resistant?

Justifying yourself, or trusting in Christ to justify you?

*Tie “Yet Not I, But Through Christ In Me”