Acts chapter 13, and we'll begin
reading at verse 13, and we'll go, it's a long passage, but
we need to read it. 13 through 39, Acts 13, 13 through
39. From Paphos, Paul and his companions
sailed to Perga and Pamphylia, where John left them to return
to Jerusalem. That would be John Mark. From
Perga, they went to Pisidian Antioch. On the Sabbath, they
entered the synagogue and sat down. After the reading from
the Law and the Prophets, the synagogue rulers sent word to
them, saying, Brothers, if you have a message of encouragement
for the people, please speak. Standing up, 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. He made the people prosper during
their stay in Egypt. With mighty power, he led them
out of that country and 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. 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 forty years. After removing Saul, he
made David their king. He testified concerning him,
I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He
will do everything I want him to do. From this man's descendants,
God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus as he promised. Before the coming of Jesus, John
preached repentance and baptism to all the people of Israel. As John was completing his work,
he said, who do you think I am? I am not that one. No, he is
coming after me whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. Brothers, children of Abraham
and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this message
of salvation has been sent. The people of Jerusalem and their
rulers did not recognize Jesus. Yet in condemning him, they fulfilled
the word of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. Though
they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked
Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out all
that was written about 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 was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee
to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to
our people. 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. The fact
that God raised him from the dead never to decay is stated
in these words, I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised
to David. So it is stated elsewhere, you
will not let your holy one see decay. For when David had served
God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep, he was buried
with his fathers, and his body decayed. But the one whom God
raised from the dead did not see decay. 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. Now, Paul was declared to be
the apostle sent specifically to the Gentiles. However, in
most of the places he went, He would go into a city and the
first place he would go would be a synagogue. Now I remember
being told that that was because God had said the gospel should
go to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles. I don't believe
that God gave that as a rule that we must follow. I remember
one preacher saying that, he was speaking to us there at the
Bible Institute I went to the first year, and he was talking
about whenever he witnessed, wherever he would go to a city,
the first place he'd go is a synagogue, because you should take the gospel
to the Jews first. I don't think that was a command,
I think that was just a prophecy, so to speak. Our Lord said the
gospel would go to the Jews first, and indeed it did. He said, as
our Lord Jesus was about to ascend into heaven, he says, and you
shall be witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and in Samaria and
to the uttermost parts of the earth. So it started there in
Jerusalem and then spread into Judea, Judah, and then up into
Samaria where the northern tribes had been. It just kept expanding
until now, there's hardly a place in the world that the gospel
has never been. But it began there. with the
Jews indeed in one scripture it says salvation came from the
Jews but while it came from the Jews or through the Jews however
way you want to put it it didn't come to the Jews only in fact
that's what John means when he says he is not the propitiation
for our sins only not just us Jews but for the whole world
people overall from every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation, according
to the book of Revelation, shall gather around the throne and
praise the Lord Jesus Christ, saying, Worthy art thou, for
thou hast redeemed us by thy blood." But it was Paul's practice
to go to a synagogue first. Why? Well, no one else was likely
to give him a listening, a hearing. If you want to preach the gospel,
you've got to have somebody to preach to. And these synagogues,
which the early church was run, you know, set up much like the
synagogues were. And the synagogues, they would
come together, there would be scripture reading. I mentioned
the Law and the Prophets. They would read a portion from
the Law, that's the first five books of the Old Testament, and
then from the Prophets. And then someone would speak.
Well, Paul would go in there, and remember, Paul had been a
rabbi, a teacher. And I believe that those rabbis
wore identifiable clothing. Now, I'm doing a little speculation
here, but it's plausible speculation. I assume Paul would go in these
places in the clothing of a rabbi, a teacher. That's what the word
means. And a teacher he was. Now they
didn't realize he wasn't going to teach them what nearly all
the other rabbis were teaching. But he was a rabbi. And that's
why when these strangers, Paul and Barnabas, show up to the
synagogue one Sabbath day and sit down and the law is read
and the prophets are read And I get the impression it was all
a very subdued kind of meeting. And one, you know, one of the
leaders said, there's a rabbi back there. Let's ask him if
he's got something to say. And the word got passed back
until it got back there to where Paul and Barnabas were. And it
said, brothers, if you have a word of encouragement for the people,
please speak. Well, they had just invited Paul
to give them the greatest word of encouragement that has ever
been given to men. The best news that had ever been
delivered to men, Paul was about to tell them. The best news a
Jew could ever hear was about to be told to them. And it's
summed up in these words, verse 32, it says, we tell you the
good news. Now let me point out again, this
is just a translation of the word that's normally translated
the gospel. Now we say the word gospel and
we normally think of a whole set of doctrines, a full-blown
message, and that's true, but every aspect of the gospel is
good news. And so even if Paul does not give to them the full
declaration of everything there is to know about the gospel,
what he is is going to give them the essence of it and show what
a great and wonderful message it is. And he says, we tell you
the gospel, we're going to preach the good news to you, what God
promised our fathers, he has fulfilled for us, their children,
by raising up Jesus. Now I was raised in what is called
dispensationalism and I won't even try to describe it because
just like every other ism it depends on which dispensationalist
you're talking to exactly what dispensationalism means but one
aspect of it is their fascination with the nation of Israel and
their belief that God made an everlasting covenant with that
nation But the promises that he made them have never received
complete fulfillment. Therefore, there must be another
time to come when God reestablishes his relationship, his old covenant
type relationship with Israel. He shall bring them back to that
patch of real estate over there. In fact, the fullness of all
that he promised to Abraham, which has got to go all the way
up to the river Euphrates, by the way. But He's going to give them all
that land, and the Jews are going to be this royal nation, a nation
of kings, and they, with Christ, are going to rule and reign over
the world for a thousand years. Why they didn't stumble over
this scripture, I don't know. In fact, why it waited until
I was almost 63 years before I saw this scripture in this
light, I don't know. God wrote down his truth, but
he reveals it to us when he's ready. Listen to what Paul said
about the promises made to the fathers. What God promised our
fathers, he has fulfilled by raising up Jesus from the dead. If I don't make any other point
other than this, and you don't gather any other thing out of
this message other than this, get this, the Lord Jesus Christ
is it. There's nothing more coming.
When God raised him from the dead, every promise he ever made
was fulfilled. Every expectation that any Jew
should have had was fulfilled three days after our Lord was
crucified when he came out of that tomb alive. And there's
nothing more for the Jew or the Gentile to look for beyond Jesus
Christ. And they'll say, well, yeah,
but in 1948, they set up the nation of Israel. Really now?
They set up a nation and called it Israel. I've always thought
that that nation pretty much occupied the same Israel we think
of when we see a map of New Testament Israel, or even Old Testament
Israel. When they initially set up, it was several patches of
ground. They never have occupied what they formerly occupied,
and what they formerly occupied never was the full extent of
what was promised to Abraham. Never have. And I don't think they ever will.
Why? Because whatever promise God
made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs, the fathers,
or any of the other ancestors, David, any of the others, it
was fulfilled the moment Jesus Christ came out of the grave.
And we look for nothing more than him. Now, if I were able
to preach to every professed Christian in the world, and that
were the message I preached, my, my, how many would be disappointed? Christ is all we get. I mean,
a risen Christ is a good thing, but I thought Christ raising
from the dead was just the means to the blessing. Brethren, Jesus
Christ is the blessing. And if you don't want him, God's
got nothing for you. That makes sense? If you're not
interested in the Lord Jesus Christ, if union with him is
not your interest, God's got nothing good for you. Every good
thing he has is in Christ. He's blessed with every spiritual
blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. And apart from Christ,
there's no spiritual blessings. If you're looking for something
that is not in Christ, that is beyond Christ, and I can't imagine
how anybody would ever think there's something beyond Christ,
but yes, they do. They think that Christ is just the beginning.
No, Christ is the beginning, the alpha. He's the end, the
omega. He's the whole thing. Those that look for something
beyond Christ, more than Christ, well, they don't understand Christ.
If they knew Christ, they'd never look for anything beyond him.
If they knew what unsearchable riches are in his person, they
would never look for anything else. If they knew all that it meant
when Christ raised from the dead, they would not look for any further
fulfillment of the promise of God beyond that. Now Paul preached to them, and
by the way, this is the first recorded sermon of the Apostle
Paul. I say recorded, of course not
on tape or on the internet, but somebody wrote it down, at least
a summary of it. And so we might call this, in
the scriptures, Paul's inaugural address as the Apostle to the
Gentiles as he preaches in a Jewish synagogue, but notice he includes
the God-fearing Gentiles. And here's what he told them.
He spoke to them, gave them a brief summary of the history of the
Jews. Now, why is that? Wouldn't they
all know it? Well, yes, they would know it
because they had been reading the scriptures. They would know
what God did, but they didn't understand it. And they did not
realize that all those things which God did back there in the
days of the Old Testament was not an end in and of itself,
was never intended to be an everlasting condition, but was simply a means
to this end that Jesus Christ would come that he would bear
the sins of many, he would perish under those sins, and he would
rise again and inaugurate a new world, a new nation, a new kingdom
to which there shall be no end. And so he says things like, he
says, The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers, who's
that? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He chose Abraham out of pagan
worshippers up in Ur of the Chaldeans, chose him out of all those unbelievers
and said, you go down to the land of Canaan, the land I'll
give you. And once he took Abraham out and he said, you look around,
you look as far as you can see, I'll give it all to you. It'll
all be your possession. And gave him some boundaries
that that would encompass. He chose Abraham. And then, you
know, he chose Isaac. And you say, well, wait a minute.
Isaac was Abraham's son, you'd expect. Well, Isaac wasn't the
only son of Abraham. He chose Isaac instead of Ishmael. You see, Ishmael was every bit
as much the son of Abraham as Isaac was. And we're made to kind of cast
shade as it were on Ishmael because he became the father of the Arabs
and we realize they've been against the Jews all along and still
causing trouble over there the Jews and the Arabs you know and
in the story we think they're the villains folks Ishmael was
just some guy and Isaac was just some guy so far as their nature
was concerned but God told Abraham send Ishmael away Why? Because God didn't choose Ishmael,
He chose Isaac. And so Isaac becomes the heir
of Abraham's promise. And then Isaac gets a wife for
himself. And there are twins conceived
within her. Jacob and Esau. And before they
were born, before either one of them could do good or evil,
or choose to be a believer or choose to be an unbeliever before
either one of them could distinguish themselves from the other, God
said, the elder shall serve the younger. Jacob have I loved,
Esau have I hated. God chose Jacob. And you and
I, you know, as we've looked at the scriptures all the years,
what if we discovered that Jacob was, at least from our perspective,
a worse man than Esau? That you'd have much rather been
neighbor to Esau than you would have been neighbor to Jacob.
That if it was your time to go out and buy a used mule, you'd
have bought it from Esau, not from Jacob. Because by the time
you got the one from Jacob, it had only had three legs or something,
I don't know. You never came out on top with
Jacob. But God chose him. And the promise made to Abraham
goes through Isaac and now through Jacob. But for all this, Jacob
has two wives and a couple of concubines, and through them
he has 12 sons. And for all of that, the time
comes when that little band of people, the chosen seed of Israel,
is about to starve. But God has sent one of them
down to Egypt, not in the way you would have expected. He did
not arrive in Egypt in pomp and great glory. He showed up as
a slave and sold him to slavery. But
such was his wisdom that eventually he became second only to Pharaoh
in power and authority in Egypt. And lo and behold, his brothers
show up down in Egypt because there's grain in Egypt and there's
none up there where Jacob And the Israelites live. And they
come down there to get grain. And Joseph recognizes them. But they do not recognize him. That story sound familiar? Our
Lord Jesus Christ came to this world and his brothers and sisters
did not recognize him. He came to be the one with grain. It didn't dawn on them, this
is the one, this is our brother. But they came down a second time
and finally Joseph reveals himself to them and they're scared to
death when they find out who it is and that reminds me of
the day of Pentecost when Peter preached the gospel and he says
to them, he says, be it known unto you brothers and sisters
that the people of Israel This Jesus whom you crucified, God's
made him to be Lord in Christ. And suddenly these brothers of
Joseph, they're standing there, and this one whom they had put
in a big hole in the ground, sold him into slavery, lo and
behold, Pharaoh has made him Lord over the land of Egypt,
and the sovereign controller of all that grain which they
want. They were scared. They not only
thought, we're not going to get grain, we aren't going to leave
here with our heads, and without our heads we can't leave here
anyway. And he said, don't be afraid. He said, I mean you no
harm. I mean you no harm. Now, the
entire house of Israel. Remember Israel was Jacob's other
name. So the house of Jacob, the house of Israel, the entire
house of Israel. Now we're down to the fourth
generation of this promised nation. And the whole lot of them comes
down to Egypt. Actually, there's five generations
by this point. How many do you think went down there? 70. The people of God, number 70
people. It doesn't look like God's promise
means a whole lot yet, does it? I mean, he told Abraham, your
seed shall be as the sand of the seashore, like the stars
in the sky, if you could ever count them. 70. First grader could count
them. But while they're in Egypt, God
made them to prosper, not so much by means of money. If they
prospered, they grew until some estimate that when they came
out of Egypt 400 years later, there was about 2 million of
them. And that's a lot of people, but still you can count them.
You can count them. But they came out of Egypt, God led them
out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and away from
Pharaoh they went, through the Red Sea they went, for 40 years
God put up with them. It said He bore up with their
conduct. And before we get too hoity-toity
in our judgment of the Jews and their stiff-necked nature towards
God, let's remember, He's putting up with us right now. As we walk
across this wilderness in Israel, He's putting up with us. He put
up with them. with their grumbling, their complaining, and all that.
And they finally get, in two years, they get to the land of
promise. But it comes time to go in, and
they get scared and say no. And so over the next 38 years,
God destroys that entire adult generation that left Egypt. It's still not looking good for
the Jews. So they go into the land finally under Joshua, and
under Joshua they drive out seven nations. And they take possession,
sort of, of the land that had been promised. When I say sort
of, I don't know that they ever reached up to the Euphrates. But they all had a possession,
every tribe. Nor did they drive their enemies out completely
because their enemies kept showing up again. In fact, throughout
the book of Judges, we have the stories of the Philistines, essentially,
rising up again and again to bother the Jews. So even though they possess the
land, it's only sort of. They're not at peace there. They
were at rest, yes, during the days of Joshua, but that was
it. After that, it's been trouble ever since. And they asked for
a king because they said, you know, if we had a king like all
the other nations do, we could handle these other nations that
trouble us. And so God gave them the kind
of king they were looking for, gave him Saul and he was nothing
but more trouble. And then David came. man after
God's own heart, and after David Solomon. And the kingdom of Israel
never went farther than it went in the days of Solomon. And indeed,
in the days of Solomon, while Israel's boundaries or borders
did not go all the way up to the Euphrates River, their influence
did. It's kind of like territories,
controlled areas. But you know what happened? As
soon as Solomon dies, very soon after, the whole thing falls
apart. And in fact, Paul's story here
skips over the entire age of the prophets and all that being
sent up into captivity and then coming back and all that intervening
period actually between David and Christ. Why? Because the fulfillment of all
the promises made to the fathers, it finds expression in the raising
from the dead of the son of David. Because these promises kept coming
down, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, on, on, on, on, generation after
generation, come to David, and God says to David, one of your
descendants will sit on the throne of Israel forever. And that was somewhere around
1000 BC. Well, just understand there wasn't
an unending string of kings for the next thousand years from
David. But one day there came one of the house of David, of
the city of David, born in Bethlehem, a descendant of David, according
to the flesh, God in human flesh. And that's the one to whom all
the promises were ultimately made. And he came. I realized that when our Lord
was born in Bethlehem, I don't know if there's anybody who understood
the significance of that event. It says of Mary, she pondered
these things in her heart. You know, we get the idea that
Mary was some deep theologian. No, she was a believer willing
to submit to the will of God, but that doesn't mean she understood
what God was doing here. The shepherds knew a little bit
more maybe because of what the angels told them. But as I try
to envision that scene in my mind, you know, I think, boy,
wouldn't it have been neat if you could go back in a time machine
and just be over in the corner of that room where he was born
and watch and see as he comes forth from the womb of Mary and
he's here. He's here. The one. The one seed
of Abraham to whom all the promises were really made. The covenant
surety. He's here. What a remarkable
event. But that wasn't the fulfillment
of all the promises. That's not it yet. What happens? He comes
and Paul goes on to tell him, he says, that this coming of
the Lord, it was a message of salvation. Verse 26, brothers,
children of Abraham and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this
message of salvation has been sent. What message? That Messiah
has come. But the people of Jerusalem and
their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him,
they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every
Sabbath. Why didn't they recognize Jesus
as the Messiah? Because in their blindness, they
thought that God's that the old covenant was about them. They
were chosen of God and they suddenly thought history was about them.
They were privileged of God to have all these benefits that
Paul speaks of, of having the scriptures and the temple worship
and all these things. And they were advantages indeed.
But they thought that that made the story about them and that
when God sent them a Savior, it was going to be the kind of
Savior who rode in on, you know, the big white horse in armor
and he was going to come in and he was going to throw Rome right
out. that he would overthrow Rome
and he would establish Israel as this great empire within the
world. And instead, when Messiah shows
up, he is one who is meek and lowly
of heart, who not only doesn't have a white horse, he doesn't
have a shield, he doesn't have a sword, who doesn't have a word to say
to overthrow Rome, He came to overthrow them. Big surprise. There they were with all their
rabbinical robes on, strutting around saying, it's us, it's
us, it's all about us. And the Lord said, it's not about
you at all. It's about me. And they said, well, away with
you. You're not what we're looking for. I'm sorry. You know, you
applied, but you're not going to be hired. You can't be Messiah.
And so they killed him. They laid him in a tomb. And
I love this directness, this simplicity. Verse 30, but God
raised him from the dead. In our Sunday school class, we
learned that there was a threat made against the house of Judah.
And then the king of Judah was afraid and Isaiah was told to
go tell him so and so and so and so's made threats against
you and they're going to come a war against you and all that.
It's not going to happen. It's just straight like it's
going to happen. They killed Christ. God raised
him from the dead. You can't overthrow God's Messiah. Now, here's the good news. what
God promised our fathers, he has fulfilled for us, their children,
by raising up Jesus. How did he do that? Well, first
of all, all the promises, all the promises of God, according
to Paul, are in Christ, yes. Whatever promise God has made,
it finds its fulfillment, its big divine yes, in Jesus Christ. And here's how. that raising
him from the dead was not merely delivering him from death, it
was the beginning of his ascension to the right hand of God where
he would be crowned Lord of all. You see, all the promises of
God to the fathers were not really about this world at all, were
not really about a patch of real estate over there on the east
of the Mediterranean Sea. They were about a spiritual kingdom,
a heavenly kingdom. He introduced, Paul says that
this fulfillment of all the promises is found in one who is a different
kind of king than what you expected. As it is written in the second
Psalm, you are my son, today I have become your father. Now,
the second Psalm was initially written as a description of David
being enthroned. He was the anointed one of God.
By the way, anointed one is simply the word Messiah. And it says,
why do the heathen rage? Why do the people imagine a vain
thing? God has set his king on his holy hill. God's done this. Now, the thing is, and Paul points
it out here in a little bit, he says, folks, David served
his generation well. He was a good king for his day.
He did good by the people of Israel. He served God in his
day, but he died. And his carcass rotted just like
every other human being. And if you were to go to his
tomb now and you'd open up and look in there, you'd just find
a pile of dirt, essentially, maybe some bones. That's all
you'd find of David. But this king, you are my son, today I've
become your father. Jesus, this was indicating just
as in David this day, that Jesus Christ has been exalted to the
right hand of the father and he sits there waiting till God
makes his enemies a footstool for his feet. Verse 34, the fact
that God raised him from the dead never to decay is stated
in these words, I will give you the holy and sure blessings,
look here, promised to David. Everything promised to Abraham,
fulfilled in Christ. Everything promised to David,
fulfilled in Christ. Everything promised to you and
me, fulfilled in Christ. There's nothing more to look
for. There's nothing more to happen for the promise to be
fulfilled. Verse 35, so it is stated elsewhere,
you will not let your Holy One see decay. So what did God do
to fulfill the promises made to Abraham? and to David and
all those in between. Number one, he set up a king
they did not expect. God in human flesh raised to
the right hand of the father who will never ever die. David good a king as he was.
He was king for about 40 years and he died. And David will never
rise again to be king. The Lord Jesus Christ died, rose
again as king, and will never die again. And you know what
that means for you and me, and for Jew and Gentile alike? He
is able to save to the uttermost them that come to God by him,
seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them. He's the
king who is an interceding priest, who lives forever. All the promises
are fulfilled. There is nothing God has promised
which is not had by and through the ever living Christ. He introduced
a king that never dies. He introduced a spiritual heavenly
kingdom that shall never pass away. Now the kingdom of Israel
passed away and sometimes it rises up again, it'll pass away
again. Israel's kingdom is not an eternal
kingdom, not that Israel of the flesh, but the Israel of God
forever. Peter says of the Church of the
Lord Jesus Christ, you are a holy nation, a royal priesthood. And because our King lives forever,
so shall we. Furthermore, because Jesus died
and rose again, this kingdom does not come about through obedience. That is our obedience. You see,
the Jews thought if we just obey God enough, we will usher in
the age of Messiah. Do you know what the truth was?
It was their unbelief and disobedience that ushered in the age of Messiah. Because in their unbelief and
disobedience, they crucified the Lord of glory. God didn't
use anything good about them to bring about his promise, did
he? We always think the promise of God, we can lay hold of that
if we'll just do what God says. The promise came about when the
people rejected the Lord Jesus Christ. But now that he's enthroned,
look what happens. Oh, I bet you when Paul tried
to preach this, well, maybe not, maybe not the same kind of personality
as me, but he just felt like he was about to explode. He had
such good news to tell these people. Therefore, my brothers,
I want you to know that through Jesus, Jesus, the risen Jesus,
the enthroned Jesus, the eternal King of God's eternal people,
through Jesus, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.
What sins? Well, let's start with that sin
of nailing him to a cross. Let's start with that sin of
rejecting him outright and saying, we'll not have this man to rule
over us. Let's start with that. Oh, that day of Pentecost when
Peter declared that Jesus Christ has been made Lord in Christ.
And they said, Oh, what are we going to do? And I don't think
they thought there was gonna be an answer to this. I imagine
that they thought all that Peter was gonna say is, well, there's
nothing to do. You have frittered away the day of grace. Your opportunity's
gone. Israel's lost. You all are going to hell. What wonderful words that must
have been, at least to some of them, when he said, repent. Be baptized, every one of you,
for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit. What? You mean there's still
a way in? Yeah. Now forget that way of
obedience. Forget that way of being the
covenant people. Forget that way of being this high and exalted
nation. That's not how you're going to
come into the blessings of God. You're going to come into the
blessings of God by repenting of your attitude about the Lord
Jesus Christ. Instead of rejecting, receive
him. Acknowledge him as your Lord. Acknowledge him as the
Messiah. Bow before him. And then you shall have all the
blessings that come by him. And that's what he just told
these people. Now, I know that probably nearly everyone, if
not everybody here says, who wouldn't want to hear that? I'll
tell you who wouldn't want to hear it. Nearly everybody in
the world. If this kind of message is a
joy to you, if it's good news to you, give thanks to God, because
this doesn't sound like good news to most people. Verse 39, through him, everyone
who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified
from by the law of Moses. Do you know what the response
was to this message? Now, you'd think, well, everybody
ought to just, boy, what a relief that must have been to all those
Jews who've been working so hard trying to obey God and bring
in the blessing when they realize the blessing's already come.
It's just for the heaven. After two or three weeks of this
kind of preaching and the Jews saw how many people were listening
to what Paul had to say, they got jealous. They found some
of it says the women of standing in the community to stir up trouble
and they persecuted Paul and Barnabas to the point they had
to leave town. Grace and blessing by Jesus Christ
is a despised message. It's most wonderful things ever
been declared, but it's most hated. Why? Well, because it
tells people that particularly these Jews, even though you are
of the law and specially blessed by God, by being given the oracles
of God and the worship of the temple and all that, you've never
been good enough. You've never been good at all,
but you may be forgiven of all without lifting a finger. Well,
if I can't lift a finger, I can't brag about it, can I? If the
way of salvation or the way of a good and enjoyable relationship
with God has nothing to do with me doing something worthy, well,
then how am I gonna be proud of that? You're getting the point
right there. Nothing to be proud of. A lot to be ashamed of about
me. Nothing to be ashamed of with
my Savior. A lot to be ashamed of about me. And they didn't
like it that the gospel told them, you're not good enough. You need to be justified. And
you'll never be justified by the law of Moses. You're just
not up to that task. But you may be justified through
this Jesus Christ. Now, all the promises made to
the fathers, were fulfilled in the resurrection of our Lord
Jesus Christ. But who is it that partook of
the blessing? Mostly Gentiles. Mostly Gentiles. The Gentiles were glad to hear
it. They had been so convinced by
the Jews about how filthy they were, they loved to hear the
message that they could be made clean. In the temple, those God-fearing
Gentiles, they really weren't welcome. Well, they kind of had
the court of the Gentiles, and that was the outer ring. You
guys can come this far, but only the Jews can come in this far.
They always knew there's this middle wall of partition between
them and the Jews, and no matter how much they worship God according
to the Law, they would never be on the same footing with the
Jews. It wouldn't surprise me that even in the synagogues,
there was a separation made between the Jews and the Gentiles. And
all at once it comes that Jesus Christ has been raised from the
dead. There's no longer either Jew nor Gentile. That kingdom
of Israel has been set aside. That old covenant kingdom is
done and over with because it's fulfilled its purpose. There's
a new, everlasting, spiritual, heavenly kingdom in which there's
neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, male or female, young
or old. None of that means anything.
One thing and only one thing means something in this kingdom
and that's Jesus Christ crucified, buried and raised from the dead.
Now for you and me, we never were Jews. I don't think. Of course, there's been so much
mixing, you know, and since then, who knows, there might be some
Jewish blood in us after all. But none of us, I don't think
would make a claim, go over to Israel and say, well, you know,
I'm one of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We've
never been Jews, but we've been just as lost as they are. And
we're saved the same way they are, and they're saved the same
way we are. And all that we look for and all that we should ever
hope for is in Jesus Christ, raised from the dead. And while
we have not yet experienced all those blessings that Jesus Christ
obtained for us, We have them. They are ours. And the day will
come when we'll get rid of the trappings of this life. This
tent, Paul calls it, shall collapse like every tent does. And we'll
be given a permanent home in that everlasting kingdom, in
the presence of our everlasting king. And we will be what the
Bible calls the Israel of God forever. Well, may the Lord add
his blessing to his word.