"Jesus, God's Savior for Israel" (Acts 13:13-41)

Transcript:

Our sermon text this morning is from Acts chapter 13, starting in verses 13 through verse 41. If you're using a Pew Bible, that's on page 1095. 1095. Hear now the word of the Lord from Acts chapter 13, starting in verse 13.

Now, Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga and 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 hands, 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 40 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 40 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 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 any 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. This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

And as you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together this morning in prayer.

Gracious heavenly Father, we have such good news this morning. We pray, Father, that when your son, Jesus Christ, by his word, scatters its seed in our midst, that it would not fall on soil marked by rockiness or by thorniness, or, heaven forbid, by absolute hardness, but rather that the seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ would fall on good soil, soft, well tilled, that it would sink in, and that you would give the growth by your spirit a hundredfold. And so, Father, we pray that by your spirit you would give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the Gospel, of your salvation in the Savior Jesus Christ. And so we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

Well, this morning we have again the great privilege I love in the Book of Acts, when we come to a sermon. Because again, even if I fail, you will not come out of here today having not heard a good sermon, because we have an inspired sermon from the Holy Spirit preached on the lips of Paul to the people. The sermon that Paul preaches in our hearing today in Acts chapter 13 in Antioch, in Pisidia, in the synagogue, reminds us of the sweep of Bible history, starting in the Old Testament and then moving into the New Testament and We have here the most urgent and important message that we could possibly give our attention to today. But what we read here today might not at first feel urgent. It might not feel important.

We are a people who are frantic in the busyness of our lives. Our to dos lists are filled, our calendars are full. Getting the kids up, getting them fed, getting them to school, getting to work on time, getting deadlines fulfilled, moving about from this meeting to that meeting, from this event to that event, coming to all the things that we're doing here at the church, one after another after another in the busyness of our lives. Is this story really worth my time? And further, I know many of you have deeply burdensome things that are affecting you as you come in this morning.

You're not coming light and unencumbered. You're coming bearing the weight of the world. You're coming with lives that are affected by your concern, by those who are dealing with deep medical issues, maybe in the hospital, maybe out of the hospital, but you're worried about family and friends and loved ones. You are here burdened by your own sins or the sins of others and the way that that has affected you. You are battling ongoing, pervasive, stumbling issues in your marriage or the problem of rebellious children, whether young or old, or watching friends and family members and loved ones walk away from Christ.

And it breaks your heart with all of the things happening not only in your personal lives, but that's not even to say about the urgencies and the importances around the world. Is this what we need to give our attention to, to these Bible stories, these stories from the Old Testament that may have been the things that you studied and considered in Sunday school? Are these really the most urgent and important things for us to hear with busy and burdened lives that we have? Indeed they are. They are.

These are the things that we must hear. Because what Paul preaches this morning is a very simple message, but it is the hope. It is the hope of all the nations. Our theme this morning, again, a very simple idea, is that Jesus is God's savior for Israel. Jesus is God's savior for Israel.

But that is the most urgent and important message, however simple it may be that you could possibly hear today or any other day. So this morning, as we consider this sermon, we'll do so in three parts. First, faithful promises. Faithful promises as we look at the Old Testament. Second, fulfillment in Jesus.

Fulfillment in Jesus. And third, forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins. So first, faithful promises in verses 13 through 25 at the beginning of this passage, we have sort of the lead up to the scene where this sermon is preached. And there are a few interesting things that we need to make note of because they will affect a lot about the rest of our study of the Book of Acts.

First we read that this missionary group, this company of missionaries, is now called Paul and his Companions. Now this is an important shift because previously it has been Barnabas and Saul. Barnabas the leader and Saul, that is Saul, we were told in the previous passage, is also known by his Roman name. Saul is a Hebrew name. His Roman name was Paul.

And henceforth he's always going to be called Paul, except one place where he talks about himself and thinking about his past and talks about himself as Saul. But henceforth we will read about Paul. But now it's not Barnabas and Paul, now it is Paul the Leader. And we don't even get Barnabas name. It's Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga and Pamphylia.

The leadership has shifted, but the mission remains the same. They are going to continue their missionary journeys, getting further and further away from Jerusalem. And particularly they're looking for every Jewish settlement deeper and deeper into Gentile territory. At the end of verse 13 we have this note and it doesn't sound like much, but it'll become significant later. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem.

This John is also, or perhaps better known as Mark. He's the author of the Gospel of Mark, and he has been traveling with Barnabas and Saul and now was one of Paul and his companions. And we read that John, Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem. Now one commentator, Peterson, notes that this word left has kind of a wide range of meaning. John left them.

And at one end of the spectrum it is perfectly appropriate to translate it, just as this word has been translated here. It's just he left them. He left them. But it can also have in other contexts, a darker meaning, meaning abandoned or betrayed them. It's the difference between I left my house for work in the morning versus someone saying, I just left my wife.

That same word can have a wide range of meaning. And what we are going to see is that what Luke does so masterly by just planting a seed here is going to come to bloom later, where we see the significance of having abandoned Paul and his companions on the mission field. But more about that later. In verses 14 through 15 we read, but they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia. This is not the Antioch where believers were first called Christians.

This is a Different place, Antioch, in Pisidia, the region of Pisidia. And we read that in Antioch and Pisidia, they came on the Sabbath day into the synagogue and sat down. Now we get here a glimpse into the Jewish synagogues which were the center of the Jewish communities. Wherever there was a Jewish settlement, there would be a Jewish synagogue and this would be the center of Jewish culture and Jewish worship. And we get a glimpse into the worship in this synagogue and the government of this synagogue or this Old Testament church.

And so we read here in verse 14 that on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. But then we see something of their worship in verse 15, after the reading from the Law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue send a message to them saying, brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it. So in terms of their worship, we are seeing that it's structured against the pattern of the Scriptures being read. And then an exhortation or a sermon preaching brought to expound what is written down in the Law and the prophets. Again, there's a lot of continuity with what we do here today with word prayer and preaching.

But we also see a little glimpse into the government of the synagogues that these rulers of the synagogues today, we would call these the ruling elders in the church. It is too much to try to cover all of this today. But this is one glimpse we have into the way that the church government that is outlined in the scriptures of the New Testament picks up the government that had been started in the Old Testament and was continued especially in the churches which were essentially, or in the synagogues which were essentially Old Testament churches, where you have ruling elders overseeing the church. You have some kind of overseer, something like a pastor who would normally lead these prayers. And this preaching, again, very much in continuity, what we have today is a continuation of what we saw in the Old Testament.

But again, that's more as we continue through our study in the Book of Acts. Let's get to the sermon itself. Here we have Paul standing up, invited by the ruling elders or the rulers, motioning them with his hand and said, men of Israel. And there are two groups here, you who fear God. In verse 16, the men of Israel would be the Jews who had been again scattered, were in a Gentile region, but were Jews.

They were born as the children of Abraham. They were circumcised on the eighth day and they were full Jews, men of Israel. But they're also God fearers, Gentiles who had come to some kind of faith in God, but had not gone through all of the rites and rituals, especially circumcision, that would have been required to become full Jews, to become part of the group known as the Men of Israel. You have Jews and Gentiles worshipping in this synagogue together, but on a different footing. And here the word of God comes to both of these people groups together.

And in the first section, where Paul starts is to give a quick sketch of the history of Old Testament Israel. And this is where we start to wonder, is this really the most urgent, the most important thing for Paul to be preaching on this day? They had their issues too. They had their busy lives as well. This is what they needed to hear these stories from the Old Testament.

And again, yes, it is. We read about the kindness and the election and the mercy of God toward his people, Israel. And he's moving very quickly, moving from the patriarchs to the sojourn in Egypt, to the Exodus out of Egypt, to coming into the conquest in the land of Canaan, to the settlement in the land of the inheritance, to the judges, all the way up till Samuel the prophet. And while this is a quick sketch, it's very important, as you grab the sermon notes, you will see this, that this passage is saturated with short quotations and allusions to very, very clear scriptural references that are being borrowed along the way. But the emphasis here is on God's mercy and election to Israel.

But what happens in the next section of this passage is that we read that as it comes to the end of the prophets, we really come to this section where he is talking specifically about David. He mentions Saul along the way, that God gave Saul to the people. But it's when he gets to David that things get really serious. Because where in verse 21 we read that God gave them Saul the son of Kish for a king, in verse 22, the first thing he said is that he raised up David. Now this word is very important.

It's going to come up in the same word to describe Jesus being raised up from the dead. He raised up David to be their king, just as he will raise up Jesus in his resurrection. But then he goes on and says this. 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. This is the second similarity to David, because if David was a man after God's own heart, to do all of God's will, so much more was Jesus.

And then finally, Paul makes the comparison clear of this man's offspring, God has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus, as he promised. Not only is he like David, he's descended from, from David. And we read that what David started, Jesus finishes. Jesus is the Savior that had been promised as the promises made to the patriarchs. That was fulfilled by the bringing out of the land of Egypt and settling into Canaan.

All those promises. A shadow of the fulfillment is happening in the Old Testament. But we find the full fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And in verses 24 and 25. Then we read about John the Baptist and it's interesting.

This is at the end of the very first section about the faithful promises that God made. Even though we read about John the Baptist in the New Testament, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, he really counts as the final prophet of the Old Testament. And that's how he's treated here. Not the Christ, but the one who is pointing forward to the Christ. I spoke just this week with a man outside of our church who shared that during his childhood he never knew what to make of the Old Testament.

Lots of interesting stories. He shared a memory. Do you all remember the flannel graphs that you had? The Bible pictures of cutouts that you could stick and they were children. You had these cloth things before real technology.

The technology was to sit cloth by static electricity up and you could put Bible figures and tell stories. It was very high tech. And all of these children's stories of Moses, Noah and Abraham and David. But it was hard to see the practical value beyond flannelgraft, especially when he got into his adult life where he was busy and burdened. But what Paul is saying is that in these stories, these are not only they are for children, but they are not only for children.

In these stories we have a history of what God did as a faithful promise maker that sets up the way in which he will be a faithful promise keeper. As the same Paul writes in a letter to the Corinthian Church in 2 Corinthians 1:20, all the promises of God find their yes in Christ Jesus. Jesus.

But what about you? You don't clearly fit into this story. But maybe you are wondering, maybe you are worried about God's faithfulness to you for the busyness and the burdens that you have brought into your heart this morning to worship. Maybe you're concerned about the stability and the provision of your job. Maybe you're concerned about making ends meet in your finances.

Maybe you are worried about the thorny, pervasive, long standing issues in your marriage or the rebellion of your children, whether young or old. And when you ask the question, how do I know if God will be faithful to me? The answer that the Scriptures give you is to consider the ways in which God has been faithful to his his people in the past. Again, our call to worship from Psalm 105 reminded us that God remembers His covenant promises to a thousand generations. If he's been faithful in the first part of those thousand generations already, he will continue to be faithful to you today.

And when God is faithful, he executes his faithfulness. Not as a token, begrudging, half hearted, feet dragging, procrastinating faithfulness. Oh, I've got to get around to that, don't I? Everything in history has been a part of his eternal plan to send his most precious, beloved, only begotten Son Jesus as the Savior for sinners beginning with Israel. But we see how that promise is extending into the world of the Gentiles.

So what then did God the Father do sending His Son Jesus? And what did he do when the Son came as a Savior for sinners? Well, this brings us to the second section, the fulfillment in Jesus Faithful promises in the Old Testament. Fulfillment in Jesus in verses 26 to 37 we read that Paul continues and here's the section divisions of this sermon where he says men of Israel are brothers. The word men appears in verse 26.

It's not translated, but it's brothers. And now we read then also again that the sons of the family of Abraham and among and those among you who fear God. So again those two groups are in view and he's addressing them again to start the second section of his sermon. 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 understood the utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning Him. There are two parts that are important for this.

First, you remember earlier in this worship service, this very same worship service as the law and the prophets had been read like every other Sabbath in a good Jewish synagogue, the law and the prophets were read. And here what Paul is saying, those prophets that you heard just earlier in this service and that you have heard week after week after week, Sabbath day after Sabbath day, after Sabbath day, those have been proclaiming God's promises that have been fulfilled in salvation provided for you by the Savior Jesus. But those who lived in Jerusalem and the rulers of them didn't get it, didn't understand it so much, didn't understand it. The second issue that they actually ended up fulfilling it not by faith and obedience, but by rejecting Jesus and by crucifying Jesus, condemning him to death. Even though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they demanded for Pilate to have him executed.

And Paul very quickly moves through this New Testament story, just as he did the Old Testament history and verse 29. And when they carried out all that was written of him, including his crucifixion and death, they took him down from the tree, the cross, and laid him in a tomb. Here we have the story of what Jesus Christ came to do as a savior, a suffering servant who was crucified in the place and as a substitute for his people. But Jesus Christ not only came to die, although that was an inescapable portion of what he came to do. Jesus Christ also came to rise from the dead, as God had raised up David as king, the same word.

Now God raised up Jesus as 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 has promised to the fathers. Don't miss that line. What God has promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us, their children, by raising Jesus.

Now think about that. This whole Old Testament history wasn't just the prelude. It wasn't the opening act. It wasn't that God was on one course, one path, and then it didn't work how he thought it would work out. And so he says, I got to try something new.

And then he went on to Jesus. The book that we have is one book. It's the same story from beginning to end. It's the patient history of through a thousand generations. God is working in the lives of his people to raise up a Savior for sinners, to call many sons and daughters to glory.

And what Paul does to prove this point, that not only the promises that were made to the fathers, but also those in the writings and the law and the prophets, as he quotes several passages from the Old Testament, he quotes Psalm 2, Isaiah 55 and Psalm 16. Now, as I was studying this passage, and we have such a long sermon to work through this morning, I want to actually set these apart. The texts that Jesus or that Paul quotes about Jesus are profound. And I'm going to come back to those on Easter morning when we return to this passage and think about the fulfillment of these promises, prophecies in particular. But the whole sweep of this, the whole scope of this is these promises were made, but could never been fulfilled by David.

And yet they were filled in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now let's talk about Easter. Let's talk about what's coming up in just two weeks, where the resurrection of Jesus, which is always before us, Lord's day by Lord's Day, will be front and center. Because the resurrection of Jesus is the fulfillment of God's eternal plans and decrees for the salvation of sinners. Paul preached this message in the synagogue because his hearers needed to hear this, because they were awaiting the fulfillment of the promises.

And they did not yet know that God had fulfilled his promises for Israel in appointing his son Jesus Christ as a savior. They did not know that the promises that God had made to the fathers he had fulfilled by raising Jesus from the dead. And because they did not know this, the synagogue was filled with lost, perishing, hellbound sinners. But because this message of salvation is not limited to Israel, it's a message for the far nations of the earth. We need to keep in mind that right around this church in Lansing and the surrounding areas, there are still so many who are lost, who are perishing, who are hellbound, who are bound up in the busyness and the burdens of their lives.

This is the most urgent and important message they could possibly hear. Now, as a church, we're starting to talk a little bit about the values of this church, the things that has made First Church what it is throughout her history. Values of faithfulness to the gospel, being zealous and bold in our conversations to sinners, to call them to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, especially by showing compassion toward the lost. And I want to challenge you. What faithful, what zealous and bold, what compassionate steps might you take in the next two weeks as we come to Easter?

I want to first urge you maybe coming on a walk through the neighborhood to pray and to knock on doors. Doesn't sound like your version of a good time. And I know that you're busy and burdened and have a lot of excuses, but I want you to think about the need of people who are just a stone's throw from this church, who, if they were to die in their sin, would spend eternity in hell. And I want you to consider, can you be here for this event to help knock on doors, to share the gospel of Jesus and invite them to worship with us on Easter. But the second thing, and whether or not you can come to that, that I want you to think about, is I want to think about all the people that you know personally who will not be in another Gospel preaching Church on Easter Sunday.

Think about the next door neighbor that you have talked to many times. Maybe you have given help to this neighbor. Maybe you have received help from this nature. There's some relationship there. I want you to think about the co worker who is clearly doing their best, but his life is a train wreck because that person does not know Jesus.

I want you to think about the family members, maybe who grew up in the church, but have some subsequently wandered away from faith in Christ. Are there three people this morning, right after church, that you could send a quick, easy text message and say, I want you to think about April 5th. Do you want to come with me to worship on Easter Sunday in the church? It's clear, it's very simple. You don't even have to do it face to face.

It's two weeks in advance, so the excuses dwindle. A simple question, a simple request. Two weeks in advance. Text them, ask them if they will consider coming to church on Easter. Easter is always a special time.

People, you would be surprised, would say yes, will say yes to this because they need to hear about the resurrection of Jesus. For Paul, it was the centrality of his message and it's still today. The power of God unto salvation. Because in the resurrection, God provides forgiveness of sins. What's the third and final section, verses 38 through 41, the forgiveness of sins.

Look at what Paul says in verse 38. Let it be known to you. Therefore, brothers, there's that word, men is still there. It's not translated men. Brothers, he's once again starting a new section, the final section of the sermon.

Let it be known to you. You need to hear this. This is urgent. This is important. I know you're busy.

I know you're burdened, but hear this. That through this man, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.

For those of us who have spent our lives in the church, it may be hard to enter into or to remember what it is like to be lost. What it is like to live with a defiled conscience that you cannot soothe no matter what you do. To live in deep dread and fear of death. Because you don't know, and you don't want to know really what stands beyond the curtain.

The most important and urgent message is that there is a God. And that you stand condemned because of your sins, but that he loved you so much that he did not spare his own son. And because his own son was crucified and died, there is forgiveness of sins. So that in verse 39, by him, everyone who believes, everyone who believes is freed or that word there is actually justified. Everyone who believes is counted righteous from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses, by doing your best, by good works.

What you're trying to do cannot bring you salvation, but what Jesus did has brought you salvation if you believe for everyone who believes. And then Paul closes with a warning. Beware therefore, lest what is said in the prophets should come about. Look, you scoffers, do not be a scoffer of the word of God. 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. Here one is telling it to you, here you are hearing about it. Do not be like those warned about in the prophets who do not believe even if someone tells them about it.

In the church, one of the greatest privileges that we have is a front row seat for the salvation of Jesus the Savior. We live a life filled with sorrows because we live in the footsteps of the man of sorrow in this valley of tears. Every week, if you follow the prayer announcements, every week there is a new person dealing with an urgent issue. And aside from what is announced in the prayer sheet, every week there are new people who are dealing with new and unexpected burdens, or whose long and unexpected burdens have finally come to the surface. And in the church, if we had no hope to offer beyond motivational pep talks, you can do it.

If we had nothing more than empty best wishes, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, if we had nothing but a bare urge to keep up, keep your chin up, and to work harder, we'd have really nothing to offer. The burdens of our own sin and of life in the body would crush us with sorrow. But what a privilege we have. I love being a pastor. Because God has not called me to give you motivational pep talks.

God has called me to proclaim to you salvation by the long awaited, eternally appointed Savior of sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came into this world, who was nailed to a tree, who bore the wrath of God for sinners, so that there might be forgiveness of sins and justification for all who believe. Because that one who was taken down from the tree and buried in the ground is not still in the tomb. He's alive, he's in heaven. And one day he will come again. Through this man, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you and by him.

Everyone who believes is justified before God. Do you long to be cleansed from your corruption? Do you long to be forgiven from your sins, O sinner, turn to Jesus Christ by faith this morning to hear the word of pardon from God's lips as they are recorded his words in this book. Has this extraordinarily good news gripped your life? Have you trusted in Christ for your forgiveness?

Do you need to schedule a meeting with your elder or with me to start working through sin in your life and to grapple with the good news of the gospel for you and for sinners? Do you need to think about who else needs to hear this gospel, believe the gospel, share the gospel, invite people to come hear the gospel preached on Easter morning? Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again. Pray Heavenly Father, we pray this morning that we would be so mindful of the salvation that we have in Christ Jesus and Him crucified. Give us Jesus the Savior appointed for Israel, for whom it was too light of a thing that he should be only a light to the nation of Israel, whom you have appointed, a light even to the Gentiles, who was lifted up on the cross to draw many to himself, and who was raised from the dead for our justification.

Give us Christ and him crucified and raised from the dead this morning. We pray by faith and we pray that you would justify many for the glory of Christ and for our good. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.