Preaching the Gospel

SERMON: 2014-01-12--ac14116--preaching-the-gospel-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:32:53.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The material at both the beginning and end of the provided windows consists of continuous theological exposition and pastoral application related to the sermon's main topic. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- As we pick up this morning, where we left off several months ago in our study of the book of Acts, we find Paul and Barnabas in the middle of their first missionary journey. And I find it extremely helpful for us to realize that as we study these missionary journeys that there are three very distinct groups of people that Paul and Barnabas address the gospel to. The first group is what Paul calls in this particular passage "men of Israel." These are Jewish believers. They have settled in different cities in the Roman Empire. They have formed synagogues and they have joined themselves to synagogues for the purpose of worship and instruction. The second group is a group that Paul here calls "gentiles who worship God." Typically in the New Testament they're known as God-fearers, God-fearing Gentiles. These are non-Jewish people who for one reason or another have come to faith in the God of Israel and they have joined themselves to the Jewish worship at the synagogue. The third group are the Gentiles proper. These are people who are not Jewish in background. They do not believe in the Old Testament God of Israel. Instead, typically they are idol worshippers. And what's interesting about all of this is that Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journeys have significant success in producing Christian converts from each of these groups. And in each instance the power that brings them to faith is the power of the message of the cross. That is to say you are reconciled to God by the death and by the resurrection of Jesus. That part of the message never changes as we'll see as time goes on. What changes, however, and this is really significant, is that the way that message is presented varies radically from group to group, particularly between the first two groups, that is the Jewish believers and the Gentile proselytes and the Gentiles. We'll see as time goes on Paul uses an entirely different method of presenting the gospel to them. And as we take a look at that, Lord willing, over the next couple of weeks, we do so because it's my hope and prayer that as our understanding increases of how to communicate that gospel, we can be increasingly effective in sharing the good news of Jesus with the people all around us. You'll often hear people say, "Well, people really aren't interested in the gospel." But sometimes it's true, but sometimes it's because we haven't learned how to communicate that. And so I ask your indulgence this morning as we walk through Paul's sermon here to the believing Jews and to the Jewish converts in Pasidian, Antioch, with a view of trying to understand how to build a testimony to Jesus on the basis of what people already know. So with that in mind, let's try to walk through this passage in some detail together. The context again, Pasidian, Antioch, they are in the Jewish synagogue because in all his missionary journey, Paul always goes to the synagogues first, why? Number one, there is a naturally gathered audience there. But number two, the gospel is always first offered to the Jews, why? Because they are the descendants of Abraham and they have first digs at the good news of the gospel. As we'll see, it's only when they reject the gospel that the gospel then typically goes on to the Gentiles as well. So as we walk through this and we'll try to walk through it as quickly as we can, I want us to notice a number of things in terms of Paul's gospel presentation to Jewish believers and to Gentile converts. Notice he starts by assuming the existence of God. He starts by assuming the existence of God. Standing up, verse 16 and 17, Paul motioned with his hand and said, "Men of Israel and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me. The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers." Why does he begin with the existence of God? Because God and belief in God is part and parcel of their world and life here. They don't have to be persuaded that God exists because they know the Old Testament history. They are worshipers of God and they know that God has chosen them through his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and with Jacob. As we'll see later on when he starts preaching to the Gentiles, that is not the starting place because they do not believe in the God of Scripture. You want to keep that in mind when you're trying to share the gospel with family, friends, and neighbors because we live increasingly in a secular society that does not believe that there is even a God to whom people are accountable or responsible. Secondly, then, he reminds them that God is a saving God. That is to say a God who redeems his people. Listen as the verses go on, 17, 18, 19, and 20, "The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers. He made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt with mighty power. He led them out of that country. He endured their conduct for about 40 years in the desert. He overthrew seven nations in Canaan and gave their land to his people as their inheritance. All this took about 450 years. The main redemptive act of God in the Old Testament is Israel's deliverance out of Egypt, their journey through the wilderness, and their settling in the land of Canaan that God had promised many years earlier to Abraham." That exodus, that redemption, that settling in the promised land is of course an Old Testament prefiguring of the deliverance that one day Jesus would come to bring. He's come to set us free from bondage, to sin, and Satan, and death. He guides us through the wilderness of this life to eventually bring us into the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, the place where God dwells, where every tear will be wiped away. So he starts with the existence of God. Now he expands on their knowledge that this God is a God who wants to redeem his people. He wants to save his people, has done so historically, and then he goes on to say that this deliverance, God has always promised them a deliverer, maybe a better way of putting that is to say, God has always brought this deliverance to his people through people. And so now he traces the history of how God has delivered them over the years. Listen to these next verses now. After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet, then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin who ruled for 40 years, and after removing Saul, he made David their king. God initially ruled them through the judges. You know the story. Now and again, they would, more often than not, they would drift away from God, and because they broke covenant, the enemies would come flooding in and dominate their lives, and they'd cry out to God, and what would God do? He would raise up a judge, and the judge would defeat the enemies, and then the judge would rule over them to keep them on track in the ways of God. And eventually, after Samuel, they were tired of judges because Samuel's sons were very wicked and they wanted a king. Samuel was very upset, God was not very happy, but he gave them Saul, and you have the institution of the monarchy, and God began to rule and to deliver his people through Saul. Saul proved to be bad through and through, and so in the fullness of time, God raises up David. And concerning David, the scripture says, "I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do." And David becomes, in the Old Testament, sort of the precursor, a type of Christ, if you will, a person who foreshadows the coming of the Lord Jesus, who will be the ultimate expression of God's delivering power. So you see how the argument is building up, right? There is a God, he is a saving God, he uses people to deliver you, and now he then goes on to point out who the ultimate deliverer is. He demonstrates that Jesus, that Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of this promise to raise up a deliverer. From this man's descendants, this is David, God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus as he promised. And we spent a lot of time on that over the Christmas season, in the providence of God, because remember the promise to Abraham was what? "I'm going to bless you, I'm going to give you a land, I'm going to make you a mighty nation and through you I'm going to bless the nations of the world." God said, "Your descendants will receive this blessing." And Paul in the New Testament says that that was ultimately fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, and you and I, when we're joined to Jesus, then we belong to the promised blessings that God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We are heirs of God's promise to give us the world by faith, that is the power of the story of salvation. All the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ, and the more God gives us insight into that reality, the more our hearts will overflow with thanksgiving because what we could never do in our own strength, God has done for us in the person of Jesus. So Paul in his preaching here reminds them that all the promised blessings that God has promised to his people in the Old Testament are now realized in the person of Jesus and they're eligible because they are the recipients of that covenant God made with Abraham. That's why he goes on to say now in verse 26, if we can get that verse up, verse 26 of Acts 13, "Brothers, children of Abraham, and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us this message of salvation has been sent." So again, I'm anxious for us to follow the course of his reasoning. He says there's a God. This God wants to save you. This God saves you by bringing deliverers into your life as foreshadowed in the Old Testament. He says the ultimate deliverer is Jesus because he is the fulfillment of the promises that God made to Abraham that were partially realized in David so many years ago. So now he goes on then and notice the logic of his reasoning. It's very important to understand that. He goes on now then to prove that Jesus is indeed this promised deliverer, this promised Messiah. The word Messiah means anointed. It's the same word. It's the Hebrew word for the Greek word Christ. As you know, Christ is not Jesus' last name. It is his title. Jesus means savior. He is anointed to be a savior. Now pay close attention because now he proceeds to demonstrate to these Jewish believers and to these Gentile converts why it is that Jesus is the Christ. He uses two profound reasons. The first is he uses the testimony of the Old Testament prophets. He appeals to the Old Testament prophets. And his argument is that both the death and the resurrection of Jesus were prophesied by the Old Testament prophets, which of course they revered and which literature they read every Sabbath in the synagogue, though they might not understand fully what it was that they were reasoning. So notice how he goes on, verse 27 and 28, "The people of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him," what do they do? They fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. They fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. And though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And that the crucifixion of Jesus was a huge obstacle for Old Testament believers that stood in the way of their faith in Christ as the promised Messiah. Nothing in the reading of the Old Testament had led them to understand that he would be the suffering servant who had to die on the cross for anybody's sins. Remember, the Jews look for signs and wonders. How do they believe that God is with somebody if they have great power and great signs and great wonders, and when Jesus died on the cross, that to them was a defeat and an evidence that God was not with him. And so, this obstacle had to be overcome, and Paul overcomes it by pointing to the Old Testament prophets, and he said, "You're reading the prophets all the time, but you're missing what they're saying." The death of Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament, and far from it being an accident perpetrated by wicked and evil men, it was the fulfillment of what God had planned from the very beginning. And just to show you how that worked, remember the story of the two people on the way to Emmaus in Luke chapter 24 after the resurrection of Jesus. Remember that story? Their hearts were troubled. They had heard about the death of Jesus, and they said to each other, and we had hoped he was the deliverer of Israel, and they were downcast. Remember that? And then Jesus comes and joins them incognito. Who remembers what Jesus said to them? Listen carefully to these words. Jesus was not known for his subtlety, by the way. He said to them, "How foolish you are." How's that for pastoral care? How foolish you are! And if that wasn't enough, how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. You see, the Old Testament was full of predictions of his death, but they had never clued in because it didn't fit into their world and life here. So Jesus goes back to the prophets, and Paul here, to convince these folks that Jesus is the Messiah, also goes back to the prophets and he says the death of Jesus was prophesied throughout the Old Testament in the ritual and in the sacrifices and in the direct promises of Scripture. But he goes further than that and he says not only was the death of Jesus predicted by the Old Testament prophets, so was his resurrection. Verse 32 and 33, we tell you the good news. What God promised our fathers, he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm, "You are my son, today I have become your father." And if you read further on your insert, you see that it goes on to say, "God has raised them from the dead so that he will never be subject to decay. As God has said, I will give you the holy and sure blessing promised to David." And so it is also stated elsewhere, "You will not let your Holy One see decay." He quotes the Psalms, Psalms written by David. And then he goes on to say, "You may think that David is talking about himself, but he said it's not true because David died, was buried, and his tomb is with you today." And so he says David wasn't talking about himself, David being a prophet was talking about the Messiah. He was declaring that Jesus would be raised from the dead. So he says, Old Testament prophets predicted the death of Christ. They also predicted his resurrection. And that is one reason you should believe that he is truly the promised Messiah. But he doesn't stop there. He goes on to raise another evidence and that is he appeals to the fact that there are eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. Next verse, "God raised them from the dead and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people." How do we know that Jesus is who he says that he was? God raised him from the dead. God raised him immortal and incorruptible. Then he says there are oodles of witnesses who have seen the risen Christ. In fact, you might recall in that great chapter on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the Apostle Paul does exactly the same thing. He puts it this way. Let me just find it here for a moment. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, he says, "For what I received I passed on to you was of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures," there you have that same argument, "that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures," again the same argument, "and that he appeared to Peter and then to the twelve; after that he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born." How do we know that Jesus is the promised Messiah? Because God raised him from the dead and many people have seen him. One of the most potent arguments about Jesus is the fact that his resurrection is among the most clearly witnessed historical events. I remember years back Chuck Colson, some of you will remember him, of Watergate fame. He became a Christian after he went to prison for his involvement in that whole scandal back in the early 70s. You made the observation that when Watergate began to unravel, all the leading candidates or all the leading participants in it almost immediately turned against each other in an effort to save their own hides. But he says what's unique about the resurrection of Jesus is that while testimony to his resurrection cost most of them their lives and their eventual martyrdom, not only did they never turn against each other, they went to their grave declaring that Jesus was raised from the dead. Because of course modernists and unbelievers have all kinds of theories to try to prove that Jesus didn't rise from the dead. You can't get around the fact that he was dead and that he came to life and that he was seen by hundreds, 500 people at one time, many of whom, Paul says, to these folks in Presidio and Antioch are still alive today. So now having laid the groundwork, there is a God, he is a saving God. He saves through deliverers that he has raised up historically. Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the promised deliverer because he says I have just showed you from the Old Testament prophets and from the account of eyewitnesses that God raised him from the dead and therefore he is the only one who can truly save us from all the effects of sin. He's the only one who can bring us back to the presence of God. And so now he reaches the only conclusion that he can reach and that is this. He invites his listeners to respond in faith. In other words, he closes the deal. Therefore my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses. What's he saying? What does it mean to be justified? To be justified is to be presented before God just as if you had never sinned. Remember the circles, we've looked at them many, many times, if we can just put those up for a moment. We live in a fallen world, we're alienated from God. God sends Jesus to restore us to himself by dying for our sins so that our sins can be forgiven and our sin nature can be restored. He is resurrected before God so that by faith in him we can be presented before God without any wrinkle, spot, or blemish. And the key to justification is faith in Christ as opposed to the law of Moses. The law of Moses says do this and you will live. Keep the law. Do everything the way that God wants you to do it. And if you do it perfectly and you do it perfectly all the time, then God will take you to himself. There will be no condemnation for you and you will be justified. Don't know if you've ever tried it, kind of tricky because all the law does is it shows us how rebellious we are, how stubborn we are, how sinful we are, and how far removed from God we are. You guys who just had Sebastian baptized today, you've already got three kids, nobody needs to tell you that sin comes natural. And that all the rules in the world will not stop us from sinning because if anything rules motivate us to want to sin more because we are just rebellious to the core of our being. And part of the purpose of the law is Paul's argument in the New Testament is to show us just how sinful we are so that in our desperation we will come to Christ, cling to him, and by faith in him discover that he has done for us what we ourselves cannot do. We are justified by faith. And so his whole argument is if Jesus is really who he says that he is, if he is the one God has promised to deliver us from all of sin and all of its consequences, then the only logical thing for us to do is to put our faith in him because when we put our faith in him, not only are our sins forgiven, we are presented before God without spot, wrinkle, or blemish. We are already home no matter how far short we fall from day to day. That is the good news of the gospel. The good news of the gospel is that God has done in Christ what the law, weakened by sin, could not do. And so he says to his crowd, if you understand this, then you must embrace this because this message of the cross, which is foolishness to those who perish, is in fact the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Because when by grace, in faith, we come to the foot of the cross and we kneel and we confess our inability, our sin, our inability to be what God wants us to be, and God not only forgives us, but he declares us righteous in Christ, then all of a sudden the veil is removed, God becomes our father, he grants us his Holy Spirit, and then he begins to change us from the inside out. And we now try to be good not in order to belong, we already belong, and because we already belong, that's why we want to be good from the inside out, because he gives us a new heart and a new spirit. That's what gives joy to the Christian life, and that's what gives motivation for us to [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:32:47.040; remove through 00:32:53.000] learn to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:32:53.000; resume after this marked segment]