Dennis Tuuri

# Acts 13: Evangelism and the Gospel

Turn today to Acts chapter 13. This is the first recorded sermon that Paul preaches at a synagogue. This is in Antioch, Turkey—in what is modern-day Turkey—and he has come from Antioch, Syria. So that’s our present geography. And this is the first of his missionary journeys. This is the very first recorded sermon, so it has significance for us. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

I’ll be reading Acts 13:16-52.

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 for 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 utterance 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.’

And 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 through 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.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, it is our desire to be filled with joy in the Holy Spirit today by a consideration of what you do in history. We thank you that you are the Lord of history, that you are moving all human events to the fulfillment of your promise—once brought to us in the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus and now being brought about through the preaching of your word over the whole globe. Bless us, Father, with joy in the Holy Spirit as we consider your text. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

You have to be careful what you ask for. Last night I was listening to a sermon by John Piper, and whether it was my computer or the way they recorded it, but he had this echo thing going on, and it reminded me of Obama—how sometimes our president speaks and there’s an echo device being used. And I thought, listening to John Piper, “Boy, if I had an echo, that would be really cool tomorrow.” And as I read this text, there’s this echo going on, and it’s disconcerting—hopefully not to you, but anyway. No, I’m not complaining, sound guys. I’m saying you’ve got to be careful what you pray for.

What is the gospel? So the purpose of these sermons is partly to help us be prepared to enter into speaking to our friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc., about the Lord Jesus and encouraging them to come to belief in the Savior and become disciples of Jesus. And so it’s really about spreading the gospel.

What’s the gospel? My son, Elijah, texted me this week and was looking for a definition of the gospel that would fit in 140 characters. And I haven’t done it yet. I haven’t written that up. I think I’ve got some ideas. But as we go through these messages of Paul’s evangelism and his missionary journeys, we’re going to see what the gospel is and different aspects of it.

There are certain aspects of the gospel today that will be stressed. The gospel is, you know, comprehensive. It’s multi-perspectival. I mean, it’s got a lot. It’s like a diamond, right? There are lots of facets you could describe it from. But there are some highlighted elements in the scriptures. And so we’ll look at some of those as we go through this series of sermons.

So I hope that the end result of this is that you’re prepared, first of all, to preach the gospel to yourself, right? We need to do that. Our joy is based on the gospel, and so if we don’t know what it is, it’s hard to preach it to ourselves. And then, also, to speak to neighbors about this. So what’s the gospel?

You know, there are a couple of verses I could read very quickly. For instance, in Acts 2:12, we read that the disciples were preaching the tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ. So there, the gospel is a kingdom reality—the good news of the kingdom now put into effect through the work of Jesus.

In Acts 8:35, we read that they evangelized the good news about Jesus to him. So here, the gospel, of course, is central to Jesus and his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.

In Acts 10, then we read that “the word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.” So the gospel is a message of peace—the right ordering of our lives. Human flourishing is a term people use these days—peace and well-being, a peace that is all the blessings of God moving in the context of our lives.

And so there are various aspects or terminology that we could talk about in terms of the gospel. In today’s text that we read, Paul said that “we declare to you the promise which was made to the fathers; God has fulfilled it.” So in Acts 13, we read that the gospel is that God is faithful to his word. He’s faithful to his word, and so this is gospel—God has fulfilled his promises, and he fulfills them in Jesus. Right? So again, Jesus is central to the gospel.

Acts 14:15 says, “We preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God.” So good news preaching is a call to people to turn away from following useless idols and to serve God. That’s where peace is. That’s where blessing is. That’s where freedom is—in serving the God who created us for purposes in this world that can only be discerned properly in right understanding of him and his word.

So the good news is that Jesus has come, has paid the price for your sins, and as in today’s text we’ll read, he has freed you. And in this freedom, you can now serve God in his kingdom. You can have peace and shalom. You can have blessings that are comprehensive in your life. And this is what the kingdom of God is all about.

So this term gospel—I’ll attempt to come up with some definitions as we go through this series of sermons in the book of Acts and Paul’s messages. But you know what is the gospel? Talk about it in your community groups. Talk about it in your family, families particularly with people with younger children. Begin to teach them what the gospel is in simple ways and then in more developed ways as well.

So the gospel, by the way, in one last text—Acts 14:21—when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and where else—the idea is the gospel is intended to produce the response that people become disciples.

So the reason you share the gospel doesn’t end with people being saved in some sense of not having to go to hell. Rather, the purpose is you don’t find peace, freedom, fulfillment, deliverance—all that stuff—apart from being a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. So what’s the gospel? And we’ll be talking about that. And again today, as we go through the text, we’ll look at these elements I’ve already focused on, but more: how do we communicate the gospel? How do we speak that into our culture?

Well, again, we’ve stressed listening. I watched some more episodes of the TV series Portlandia this week. Charity came over, and we watched, I think, three episodes. And now most of you are not doing city transformation sort of work. You’re not involved in planting churches in Portland. But maybe you do have friends who are part of the Portland ethos.

And you know, watching a series like Portlandia—which, by the way, is not family-friendly; you don’t want your kids watching it—but it is a good way to listen to the city. When we get to Acts 17, Paul has an idea of what Athens is about. He studies it. And if you want to know what’s going on in Portland and the ethos, listening to the city—one way to do that is Portlandia. So bringing the gospel to that particular city or to people who are involved in that particular kind of ethos, you’ll be helped by knowing how to communicate to them as you watch Portlandia.

And then, how do you communicate on the front of your order of worship? We have a print—hopefully my echo doesn’t get unbearable out here. This is a print of an altar painting in the church in Wittenberg, the main church that Luther preached at. Behind him was a huge altar painting. This is it. This is a reproduction of it. This was printed by a man named Cranach, and he was a Renaissance painter, a Reformation painter, well accepted by the secular world as well as the religious world.

But this was part of the way they communicated the gospel. People weren’t generally literate, and so they used pictures. They used picture books, okay? And when you came to church every Lord’s Day to hear Luther preach, you would see this picture, and you would see that the foundation for the three panels is the preaching of the word of God. Luther is in the painting. It’s the bottom part. He’s preaching Christ and him crucified, right? We preach Christ crucified.

And so you’d know, you’d be reminded just by looking at the front of the church, what the gospel is. It’s the message of Christ crucified. And in that crucifixion of Christ and his resurrection, true wisdom comes to the Greeks who desire wisdom, and true power—good deeds, the ability to change the world—comes to the Jews who sought for a sign of power. Where all those things are manifested is in Jesus Christ. And you’d be reminded that’s the foundation of the church—the gospel of Christ crucified.

Now, you’d also be reminded of the marks of the church. There are three marks to the church, and you’d see them here. You’d see the preaching of God’s word, which is one mark. And then you’d see the correct administration of the sacraments. You’d see a baptism being performed here. Actually, Melanchthon is the guy doing it here. So you’d see baptism, and then you’d see the Lord’s Supper. So the correct administration of the sacraments are marks of the true church. This is about who we are. Disciples of Jesus are into the church, and they’re into the marks of the church. They’re into the preaching of the word being central to everything, and they’re into partaking of the correct use of the sacraments.

And finally, you’d see this panel over here, which as we’ve said for the last couple of weeks is a missing panel in today’s churches. What’s happening here? It’s funny—I read a description of this on the internet. They said, “Well, this is the sacrament of penance going on here.” No, it’s not. What’s going on here is Luther is exercising the keys of the kingdom. And one man is being blessed by being in the kingdom. And another man, even though he’s powerful and he’s rich and he’s got a sword, he’s being kicked out.

So discipline is the third mark of the church—the preaching of the word, the sacraments, and discipline. And so in the Reformation period, to communicate the gospel, you would use pictures. Now, primarily you use the preaching of the word, but you’ve got to communicate to people what that word is. And one way to communicate it was Cranach’s popularization of the Reformation doctrines through paintings. And this would give everyday people the ability to sort of see and remember what Luther taught them about the marks of the church.

Notice, too, it seems a little audacious, I suppose, to us, for Luther to allow himself to be painted in and Melanchthon over here. What’s with that? Well, I love that. And the reason I love it is the same thing that goes on in Paul’s sermon today in Antioch, Turkey. And that is, that God is involved in history.

When Paul gives his sermon in Antioch, Turkey—remember, they come from Antioch, Syria, and they go on their missionary journey. They go through here and then end up in what is present-day Turkey at a different Antioch. That’s interesting, isn’t it? It goes from Antioch, the center of the church, to now Antioch, a new center of a new church. So you’ve got the same names in the providence of God in history.

Antioch, by the way, was apparently the father of Seleucus, one of the four generals who divided up Alexander’s kingdom. So again, it’s a name that reminds us that what’s happening is the empire of Christ is supplanting all other empires.

But God is a God of history. Paul begins his sermon with a history lesson. He talks to them about this period of time—and then God did this in history and then he does this in history. You guys rebelled. You wanted the wrong king—just like Adam falls and then we have the second Adam. Saul is a bad king and David is a king after God’s own heart. He talks to them about history.

Now, Paul’s purpose in that is to remind them that God is faithful to his promises, right? I mean, we just read about all this history that goes on, being culminated in God sending his son. This God—these promises God has made—Paul said he has fulfilled in sending his son, Jesus. God is a covenant-keeping God. He keeps his word.

But notice how long it takes him to keep his word. That’s troubling, isn’t it? I mean, in our day and age—4,000 years. 4,000 years—I thought he not too long. “Adam lay in bond and in a bond.” Adam’s fall took 4,000 years to definitively turn with the coming of Christ. Yes, they were prepared. God was merciful and gracious all along. People were coming to a knowledge of him and serving him. But ultimately, it took 4,000 years to fulfill that promise.

What does that tell us about God? Well, it tells us he’s a God of the long line. He’s a God of the long view, the big picture of things. He doesn’t listen just to three-minute songs. I may enjoy those on the radio, but he listens to classical. He’s used his Holy Spirit to create classical pieces of music that go on for an hour or more. And you listen and listen, and there’s a long thing happening and developing in classical music pieces. Not that I like it that much, but I’m just saying in terms of an art form. I like long movies. Yeah, a good three-hour movie is fine with me if it’s good.

Well, God is a God of the long line. And this is important for us because we’re a people who got these smartphones. I can ask Google right now and get an answer on the way in. “What’s the origin of the term Antioch?” Boom. It tells me it comes from Seleucid. We’re a people of instant things, but we’ve got to recognize that we’re made in the image of God. He wants us to be patient, and he wants us to work in the long line of things.

But coming back to the picture and why Luther and Melanchthon—and why I like it so much—because what Paul is doing is he’s putting that group of people in the synagogue in Antioch, Turkey into the picture of history. He’s painting them into the portrait of what God is doing. Now, it’s come to you, he said, and you’ve got to respond to this. This is great news I’m giving to you, but be careful lest you reject it.

So Paul takes us, and he took his audiences in these various sermons we’ll be looking at, and he places them into the picture of what he’s teaching them. And that’s what Paul does with us as well.

So to understand the gospel and then to understand how to communicate the gospel, think of the picture. Don’t just rush into a theological lecture to your neighbor. Think about what God’s doing here. You know, think of the authorities that he’s citing. For instance, here he’s talking to people that already have said, “We believe the Bible.” That’s why they’re there, to hear the teaching of God’s word in the synagogue.

But in Acts 14, he’ll be going to some people that had no commitment to the scriptures—who are kind of what we would call gross idolaters, polytheists—and he doesn’t cite the Bible to them. And then in Acts 17, he’ll talk to really educated, smart philosophers, the PhDs of the city of Athens, the great cultural center. And so here again, he doesn’t do what he does here, which is to cite the scriptures. He’ll get them to the word, but he begins with other things.

So one of the first things we learn about the presentation of the gospel in today’s text is that—and you know, it’s more than this, but it is partly this—Paul is using commonly accepted understanding of things to reach his audience for Jesus. And with those who have a commitment to the scriptures, he starts talking about Bible history and then he quotes from various sections of the Bible. But when he talks to rank pagans, he’ll do something different. He won’t start with the Bible.

There’s no magic in just reading some Bible verses or reciting them to people if they have no context or no commitment to the scriptures yet. So different ways of communicating the gospel. And honestly, you know, after the kind of public school education that so many people are receiving today—and this isn’t a put-down, I think it’s just reality—there’s been a gradual dumbing down of people. And you can’t expect, you know, we’re almost back to where we’ve got to use pictures.

So how do we communicate what is the gospel? And what are some of the implications? On your outline today, what I’ve done is I’ve listed it—basically the same thing. It’s a little bit changed from last week. And I’ve added a little description that has two elements behind every point. When it says “For Us,” those are things that you might want to consider. What I mean is, for us—as we try to share the gospel with people—these are things that we should consider. And when I say “For Churches,” I’m taking into account that in this particular presentation by Paul, he’s speaking to a church. He’s talking to people who are committed to the scriptures and committed to Messiah coming. And because of that, Paul’s telling them, “Here he is. He’s here.”

So he’s expanding their knowledge of the scriptures in relationship to who Jesus is. And what I’m suggesting is that for our church at least here in Oregon City, and for presentations to other Christians, the “For Churches” side is stuff that it seems like the church today is kind of not so good at. And maybe what God has given us the gift of understanding some of these things. And there are things other churches understand better than we do, and they can bring those gifts to us.

But these are some things that the text, I think, could help us in terms of talking to other churches about. And so we went over these last week, but again, I mentioned last week this commitment to church discipline. I mean, this is one of the three marks of the church. And if churches don’t do that now, what does that tell us?

Well, we could say there are no true churches left except maybe a handful. Or we could say, well, they’re true churches, but they are really deficient in this particular area. And how can we expect to have a culture where people are ordered and disciplined and justice prevails if there’s no justice in church? Where people who are impenitent sinners—who just sin against Jesus—come to church anyway? If they’re just allowed to be in that position without the exercise of the keys by the elders of the church, that creates the culture we have where, you know, injustice prevails.

So this is an example of a message to the church from this particular text: optimism in evangelism, right? So, you know, this whole thing over and over again, Paul says, “Well, you—the Jews did this in Jerusalem, but they were fulfilling God’s word. You did—they did this in fulfilling God’s word, condemning him. It was still the ordained will of God that they were fulfilling.”

And then he says that even in terms of who becomes Christians, it’s only those who are appointed by God to become Christians. And the whole point of the first part of the sermon is again this message: God fulfills his word.

Okay. What does that mean to us? And again, it’s a long line sort of thing. It means in the midst of the sort of present difficulties that our culture has or that your family may be experiencing or whatever it is, we can be optimistic. In fact, if we’re not optimistic in the long term—in the long run in history—if we’re not optimistic, we’ve missed the message of the gospel. The gospel is optimism.

Now, it doesn’t mean there’s not suffering and trials and tribulations and difficulties. It’s not, you know, whistling past the graveyard. But I mean, if you don’t get the message that the gospel should produce a healthy optimism, you know, the word of God—Christ crucified—undergirds the church here and what it’s doing. And at the bottom of your life should be a reliance upon the knowledge that Jesus, by his death and resurrection, has freed you and freed the world and is bringing the world to human flourishing.

That’s what is happening in history. And if we have the long line at the bottom of our being as we go through whatever trials and tribulations God gives us this week, we’re going to have optimism—a sense of hope in the biblical sense of the term—a sure belief that God is bringing to pass what he intends in the world and in our lives, in our communities, in our families, and in our workplace.

So an optimism absolutely undergirds the missionary activity of the church, whether it’s local, whether it’s foreign, whatever it is. And it undergirds a sense of God’s sovereignty in our lives. You don’t want to get involved in an abstract theological discussion about Calvinism and Arminianism. Usually you want to get involved in: can we be hopeful or not? And then you want to get involved in conversations that—we’ve got the message of hope and optimism for the world through the work of Jesus Christ, it was the fulfillment of all these promises of God. That’s the kind of thing. That’s the application of the sovereignty of God in terms of our basic attitude toward life—whether we’re optimistic or pessimistic.

How about you? See, this is what I mean. We need to preach the gospel. It’s not a gospel just of your personal salvation and that it’ll be okay in the long run with you. It’s the good news that God is involved in human history fulfilling his promises. And if you’re not optimistic as you go through this week—and I don’t mean, you know, I mean, we’re going to have difficult times—but if we’re not, if we don’t have an undergirding sense of hope—let me say a better word: hope in our lives—preach the gospel.

Preach this gospel that Paul preached to people that were believing in the scriptures: that God is a God who is involved in history. He’s involved in your life. And it is positive. He’s bringing you toward freedom and human flourishing. And it is a gospel of peace to you. So undergirding this is an optimism.

Now one last thing about this optimism. You know, I listened to a good sermon the other day, and the guy was talking about this. He was talking about Daniel 1. He was talking about the necessity for hope—one of the ways we’ll thrive in Babylon. And he said, “You know, well, he snuck a peek at the end of the book. You’ve heard this before. End of the Bible, Revelation—guess what? We win.”

And by that, a lot of times what people mean is that history goes like this, and then when history is done, then we finally win. That’s not Paul’s view. That’s not my view. That’s not the gospel. The gospel is assurance of knowledge. He had a good illustration. It doesn’t mean we’re like Jiminy Cricket, “I hope, I hope, I hope.” Hope in the Bible is “I know, I know, I know.”

That’s what hope means in the Bible. But we know what? We know not just that at the end of history God will make all things right. We know that’s what he’s doing now in history. Our optimism isn’t about some faraway time when we’re going to die and go to heaven. Our optimism is that God is present in history today. And you’re in that history, and God is bringing to pass the good news of his fulfillment of his promises to the human race after the fall of Adam and Eve.

So it’s that kind of optimism that undergirds the evangelistic mission that we’re to carry. And let me tell you something: in the world in which we live today, is this a world that needs hope, optimism, that needs to know that everything’s going to be okay? Oh yeah. To live out our lives of simple hope again—not “I hope” in the sense of maybe it’ll happen, but a sure knowledge that history is moving in the right direction—to live out lives like that is one of the best messages of the gospel, the good news, to your neighbors you can give them.

We’re happy. We’re joyous. We’re sad about injustice and all that stuff. There’s problems, yes, but God is at work in history fulfilling his promise. We know that. And so we should have a healthy optimism that, probably, one of the best motivations for people as they respond to the gospel is, one motivation is a desire to see hope in some direction and a desire to see peace, right? In a highly polarized world, a desire to see unity and peace.

Okay? So in the first part of Paul’s sermon, he preached the good news that God has fulfilled his promise, and that undergirds his optimism to tell others about Jesus.

We should know our Bible. Paul gives Bible stories here, right? I mean, it’s history. It’s true history. It’s true truth. But he’s not delivering necessarily a theological lecture. He’s using a story. He’s using a narrative about God’s work in history in the long haul and what he has done in their particular day and age.

And so in order to effectively communicate the gospel, we want to be able to tell the stories that the Bible tells. We need to know our Bibles and have a sense of narrative. And people—many people in our culture will respond to that sense of narrative that’s similar to what Paul presents here.

Israel’s history is our history. You know, he says, “Brothers, children of Abraham and you god-fearers.” They’re all linked together in one of his addresses when he calls them brothers in this sermon. So what he’s saying, Paul knows that since Messiah has now come, the Jew-Gentile distinction that God has built into the world is now going away. And they’re joint brothers now together. But what that means is when he’s talking to God-fearing Gentiles in Antioch, Turkey, he has no problem talking to them about our history and what God promised to us because the Gentiles are brought into the one body of Christ. And Israel’s history in the Old Testament is our history now. It’s our history. It’s part of our lives. It’s part of our understanding of the world.

Paul uses the word corruption. Oops, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve gotten a little ahead of myself.

So we’ve talked about the history that’s involved here. Let me just make a couple of comments on the text. So if you look at your Bibles in Acts 13, I want to make a couple of comments on some of these verses. Look in verse 17. Verse 16 is the address: “Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen.” Shema—big ears.

Verse 17, he says, “The God of this people, Israel, chose our fathers.” What’s the first thing you can infer from God about Paul’s first missionary sermon? It’s the sovereignty of God. God’s choice, not their decision. God chose our fathers. That undergirds everything else he’s going to say here. And that’s the message that repeats throughout this first half of his sermon: that God sovereignly, graciously, lovingly is putting up with an obstinate, rebellious sort of people.

He chose our fathers and he made the people great. How can we be made great today? Only through God’s making us great. What’s our problem if we’re not great? Our problem is God, right? I was singing that Jackson Browne song. “I don’t worry about Madonna or the next thing she might do. And I don’t worry about Mama—my problem is you.” Well, our problem is God. It’s not our president. It’s not the Syrians. Those are real difficulties we’ve got to work with, but, you know, our problem is God. We, if we want to be made great individually or as a nation or as a church, our problem is that we need God to do that.

And then it goes on: he led them out of it, right? He led them out of the land of Egypt about 40 years. He put up with them. So we have this wonderful message that is theological, but he tells it in narrative. And what you get as you listen to the story is God’s the actor. We’re involved in the painting, but God is acting. And his acting is sovereign. He chooses us. He loves us and does things with us, and he puts up with us. He’s gracious.

Right? What does it say? It says that for about 40 years he put up with them. How many years has God put up with you? How many days? You know, since you yelled at your wife and didn’t say you were sorry, or maybe did that with your kids or your kids toward you, or gossiped about somebody—how long is God putting up with you? He puts up with us all the time. He’s gracious.

And then look what he does. He destroys seven nations in the land of Canaan. That’s the fullness. It’s a picture of what will happen when Jesus comes to the whole world. All the nations of the world will be made disciples of Jesus—so bring them back to their senses as Nebuchadnezzar became sane under Daniel’s ministry. But God chooses out a land for us, plants us in an inheritance, takes care of our enemies.

This is the kind of God he’s talking about. He gave them their land as an inheritance. He gave them judges. What’s their response? They ask for a king. And they want a king like the nations around them. A king isn’t bad, but they wanted a king like the other kings—like Ahaz, the serpent king, right? That was the guy they saw threatening them. So they wanted a, you know, a wily king who could know international intrigue and who could figure out, you know, realpolitik and who could choose the right way to get out of a mess without having to rely upon God.

So they got Saul. God gave them what they wanted. You know, sometimes the worst thing in life is answered prayer. Well, they asked for this king and he gave it to them. But then in his grace, what does he do? Verse 22, he removes Saul and he raises up David. Like Adam, second Adam, right? So first king bad, second king good.

Is David a sinner? Oh, yeah. We know all about David’s sin. But what’s the difference between David and Saul according to this text? Well, it says that David is someone who is after my heart—a man after my heart who will do all my will. He loves me. God says the difference between Christians and non-Christians isn’t that some sin and one doesn’t sin, and one doesn’t. It’s whether we love God and whether we repent from our sins. Saul wouldn’t repent.

So David—and he gives them a king. Right? So he’s gracious, putting up with their sins. His promises are being fulfilled to them in spite of their rebellion. And then he says that of this man’s seed, or offspring, God has raised to Israel a savior, Jesus, as he promised. There’s the payoff.

What is he teaching them? God has fulfilled his promises. And the fulfillment of those promises is a savior. What’s a savior? That’s a big question. It’s like, what’s the gospel? And for too long, evangelicalism has truncated a savior to somebody who just pays the price for our sins so that we don’t have to go to hell when we die. That’s exceedingly important. That’s exceedingly important. I don’t want to minimize that in any way, shape, or form. But if you look at this history, a savior is far more comprehensive than that.

Why are we here? We weren’t here to dog paddle until we get to heaven. We weren’t put on earth. Adam wasn’t put on earth just to hang out and see if he could make it through life, okay? And then end up in heaven finally. Adam was put here for a task—to be God’s image-bearer in the world. Wonderful picture of what man is to be: exercise dominion properly, beautifying the world, right? He was to take that garden image and beautify the whole world.

That’s what we’re called to be. We need a savior not just to free us from eternal damnation, but to make us what we always were intended to be as men and women, image-bearers of God here on this earth, doing wonderful things for him, beautifying the planet, producing culture, art, business, and commerce. These are all the things we’re to be engaged in as image-bearers of God.

And Jesus has saved us from our sins—from the punishment of our sins and from the guilt and shame of our sins that keeps us bound so that we can’t do those things correctly. Jesus is a savior, a comprehensive savior.

And then he talks about John’s gospel being preached to them, that he’s not the Messiah, but Jesus is. And then in verse 26, “Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham and those among you who fear God.” You see, in his missionary journey—the epistles of Paul are meant to bring together the division between Jew and Gentile. So we got brothers. Now Messiah has come.

The breakdown in human relationships pictured in Adam and Eve and then later in the Jews and the Gentiles—that breakdown is now going to be done away with, and now we’re going to be brothers together. Not Jew, not Gentile in isolation from the other. He unites them. And what is this message? He says, “Brothers, to us has been sent the message of this salvation.” So the message of salvation is comprehensive to the unifying of the human race as well.

And then he talks about how—as I mentioned earlier—that they, even the people that killed Jesus, they’re doing it according to the plan of God. They carried out all that was written of him. Even though they were rebelling against God, God uses sin sinlessly to fulfill his promises.

And then we read that God raised him from the dead. So the gospel is death—Christ crucified—but resurrected. And then we have this corruption thing going on, right?

Verse 32, “We bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, he has fulfilled to us.” So this is the good news of the fulfillment. And part of this good news has to do with corruption.

So verse 34: “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 in another psalm, ‘You will not let your holy one see corruption.’”

Verse 36: “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.”

And verse 37: “He whom God raised up did not see corruption.”

Four occurrences in just a few verses of this word corruption, decay. Right now, one thing he’s doing is he’s saying David wasn’t the Messiah. He was a picture of him. David’s body rotted. Jesus’s body didn’t rot because God raised him from the dead, and he’ll never see corruption. So that’s one thing he’s doing here, you know.

And by the way, before we get to the other thing he’s doing, do you see that Paul is trying to lay out a series of arguments? He’s not just asserting that Jesus is Lord. “You better repent and believe right now.” He’s giving them reasons and he’s giving them an understanding of the differences between David and Messiah. He’s explaining things to them.

When you go to Portland or when you go to just about anybody in Western culture these days, you’re going to go to people that don’t want to hear that you just say, “Okay, that’s it. That’s the word of God. You got to repent.” And you know, Paul was willing to take his message and build a case. And when you build a case for people, you’re really, you know, treating them with honor and respect. You’re trying to prove to them, you know, from either the created order—as we’ll see with Paul next week—or from the word of God for those who believe the word of God. You’re trying to help them to understand. You’re laying out a case, an apologetic for Jesus as the man that they should become disciples of.

Nothing wrong with that. You know, there’s nothing wrong with that. And in fact, there’s everything right with that, particularly in our day and age when all truth claims are perceived as attempts by you to exercise your personal power manipulatively over them. Truth claims are seen today as an attempt to manipulate and as an exercise of your power. Now, that’s not what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to bring people to their greatest delight. You’re trying to talk about the authority of God’s word. He has power, yes. But they’re going to see it from you. So just as Paul lays out an argument, be prepared to lay out arguments, to have conversations, and to make proofs. Don’t reject that. You know, do that.

But what else is he doing? Okay, so one purpose he uses this term corruption four times is to distinguish David and Jesus. When you talk to people, you should be aware of how long they can listen.

But what’s the other thing he’s doing? Corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption. No corruption with Jesus. Do you care about your body? Oh, yeah. You know, whether you admit it to yourself—and in this culture, we’re real good at not admitting it to ourselves. We don’t see corruption anywhere. We hide it off in a cemetery. We burn up the body real quick. Whatever we’re going to do when people die, we don’t think about corruption.

But God—Jesus—Paul wants them thinking about corruption, and he wants them to know that the answer to the human dilemma—that none of us will get out of this alive, right? None of us will get out of this alive, and all of us will rot. I’m looking at you now, but in a few years—not very many in the space of human history—when I look at you, your body will be rotten. Yeah, we pump it full of chemicals. We try to keep it looking good. But for a little while it works. The bodies rot.

Now, that’s a real problem. That’s a—I’m 62. It’s a bigger problem for me. You’ll be here shortly. No matter how young you kids are. So what Paul is doing—I think by using this term corruption four times—he’s reminding them of their great need for salvation from the death and corruption of their bodies that Jesus will bring, right?

And so as we’re disciples and united to Christ, we’re united to his resurrection. And we know that while I’ll still see your body rotting in 50 years—most of you—but when Jesus returns, you’ll have a brand new body like his body, right? So he takes care of the existential angst we have that usually isn’t, you know, brought to the forefront of our minds—the fear of death and death specifically in rotting.

You know, you watch a horror movie. They always show rotten bodies because it’s a real fear for us. And so Paul is telling them that the savior has come and your fear of your body rotting has now been fixed because Jesus will raise it back up just as he was raised from the dead.

So Paul uses this word corruption—C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N. He uses corruption four times. And this is a reminder to us that Jesus has taken away the punishment for our sins. Why do our bodies rot? Because we sinned. And God is punishing us by death. And Jesus has taken away the punishment that’s properly ours.

And this is part of the gospel, the message that Paul brings to them.

Then he says, “Then let it be known to you therefore, brothers.” Again, he now gets rid of the Jew-Gentile distinction altogether. He started Jew, Gentile, then he said brothers—Jews and Gentiles. Now he says brothers. So in that simple movement of the English language, see what a good speaker this guy is and how well put together his sermon was. He talks about the division that exists. Then he says, “Well, there’s division, but you’re brothers.” And now by the third address—the last time he addresses them—he just calls them brothers.

It’s the gospel. The gospel means that people’s divisions through sin are being removed and we’re being welded together in the person and work of Jesus. A little tiny thing, but it’s the beauty of God’s word. I just thank you so much for letting me study this word and paying me to do it, giving me the time to do it. I love it. And hopefully, you know, some of this is communicated to you—the beauty of the way the Bible unveils itself in just a couple of words: division, together, and brothers, now just brothers.

So when Paul addresses them this time, he says, “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.”

Okay, so now he’s kind of heading toward the end. Always summing it up. And what he says is forgiveness of sins. You’ve got sins. They make you feel guilty. They make you feel ashamed. And you know you should get whipped for your sin. You know it. You go to bed sometimes and you think, “Why did I treat my wife like that? Why did I say that to this guy from church? It was really mean of me. Or why did I talk about that?” You know, you go to bed, you feel guilty for your sins, right? And you feel ashamed of it. And you know that punishment is due to you.

Jesus Christ died so that we could be forgiven of our sins—freed from the guilt, the shame, and the fear of punishment that we all feel apart from the grace of God. So forgiveness of sins. And as a result of the forgiveness of sins and the removal of guilt, shame, and fear, he goes on to say, you’ve been freed. Freed. Now in the King James version, it’s justified.

Okay. And the word can mean both things. Justified is this kind of legal imputation of righteousness thing. You know, we’re not just freed from our sins. We have the imputed righteousness of Jesus. When God looks at us, he sees the righteousness of Jesus, right? So that’s a kind of a technical thing, but the term is broader than that here.

And so the ESV, the New American Standard, translates it freed. He has freed you. What’s the significance of that to our generation? What did we say has happened in Western culture a couple weeks ago? We’ve gone from a culture, you know, that used to be all concerned about guilt and innocence in the Western culture. But that’s not the gig anymore. Now the gig is—can we express ourselves? Do we have freedom to express ourselves, or are we being repressed from our expression? That’s what the thing is.

And when you talk to people in Portland, if you have to know that, or if you talk to most of your neighbors or co-workers, you’ve got to know that freedom is the gig. That’s why people are going to vote for homosexual marriage next year, probably, because it’s a commitment to freedom. Now, it’s the wrong freedom.

What this text tells us is that we have exactly the answer to what Portlandia desires: freedom. Jesus, through the forgiveness of sins, has freed you. And he’s freed you from what? The best moral code, the best law system, the best ideas and philosophy—the Mosaic law ever created, because it came from the mind of God. It came from the hand of God. That system, apart from a savior, cannot bring you freedom. The best of man’s systems, or God’s system in this case, can’t bring you the freedom that Jesus Christ does by forgiving you your sins, by dying for your sins, being raised up, and ascending to the right hand of the Father.

Okay, that is the only door to true freedom. Now, I know that people don’t understand that. I know that when you tell them that, they’re going to reject it, and they’ll talk about, “No, that’s not freedom. I still have to do what God wants me to do.” But, you know, if you’re designed for a purpose, what could be more freeing than to do what you’re designed to do? And what could be more oppressive than trying to do things that you’re not designed to do? You keep breaking, and it doesn’t work.

So this message here in Acts 13 says that we’ve got exactly what the culture that desires to express itself freely what they want—ultimately they’re made in the image of God—and the Bible says Jesus gives us true freedom. And he does that because we’ve been forgiven of our sins.

What does it say again? We’ve talked about this over and over in Hebrews. Jesus took on human flesh so that through death he might save, release those who through fear of death were held in bondage all their lives. Portlandia doesn’t know it, but their fear of death—the lack of forgiveness for their sins, their present sins and distant shortcomings from God—that produces a bondage in their lives.

And we come along, you know, we’re like the Hobbit with the magic sword that’ll cut off the windings of the spider that has enslaved most of the people in Portland. We’re liberators. Jesus is liberator. Jesus brings true freedom. He brings us to a proper relationship to the Father who has made us and called us.

Jesus Christ brings true freedom. And that’s what this message tells us.

Again, so he’s kind of blown it up now, and he says, “This is the deal. This is the culmination of the good news. The gospel is that you’ve been freed to do what you were made to do.”

But then comes a warning. He doesn’t stop there. He says, “Beware, therefore, lest what is said in the prophets should come upon you. ‘Look, you scoffers, be astounded and perish.’”

Perish. He says, “This is the gospel. I can’t give you any better news than telling you can be freed and forgiven and not have to worry about corruption and all this. I can’t bring you better news than that to a humanity that’s been created by God for this very thing. This is wonderful news I’m giving to you. You should respond. But you know what? There’s one last thing you need to hear. If you don’t respond, you’re going to perish.

Don’t blame God. He brought the gospel. Don’t blame him. You’re perishing because of your sin, your rebellion against God. You would rather rule in hell than submit in heaven. Of course, you won’t rule in hell. You’ll be ruled over. But that’s what some people do. And so he warns them. He warns us—preaching the gospel to us just like he preached it to them.

The wonderful message of Jesus and freedom and liberation that comes through forgiveness of sins. But he warns us: don’t scoff at this, don’t mock it, don’t think against it, don’t, you know, make fun of it. Accept it, believe it, be freed by it, rejoice in it.

The last thing Paul does: then comes the division. Jews like it at first, but then that envy thing gets rolling. What a warning that is. That’s another sermon. Be careful of envy. But the Jews get envious of the success of the preaching of the gospel. They persecute Paul and Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas shake the dust off of their feet against them.

What is that? That dust is death. They’re proclaiming to them—just like Paul had proclaimed to Elymas—that the judgment of God has come upon you and you’re going to die. The preaching of the gospel—the pure preaching of the gospel that Paul brings to them—produces division, as some accept and some rebel against God. And the end result of that is the fourth horse—the horse of death—comes through against all those who won’t take the wonderful freedom that Jesus Christ has brought.

And that’s what Paul does. He warns them of that. And then he shakes off the dust of his feet. But then what’s left? Well, what’s left in history are those who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who’ve been freed to do what they’re going to do, and those who rejoice. That’s us. We’re left. We’re left.

The meek inherit the earth in time, in history. God is moving, and you have a part in that story, right? You’re in the painting. And what God is doing is he’s delivering the earth to the meek.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord God, to be able to articulate these things one to the other in small groups and to our friends and relatives. Help us to teach our children what the gospel means and how to share it. Bless the sermon series, Lord God, that we’d be effective communicators of the incredibly great news that is Jesus.

In his name we pray. Amen.