Through The Bible - Acts 13 - Part 3

Guest (Male): We've learned that the Apostle Paul, traditionally credited with authoring 13 epistles of the Bible, embarked on his first missionary journey with Barnabas in Acts chapter 13. And coming up, Pastor Brett Meador reflects on the passage, acknowledging the preparation, dedication, and application of Paul's bold preaching that make up our verse-by-verse study of today's word.
Brett Meador: The book of Acts, chapter 13. We start in verse 14. It says, "But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia and went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and sat down." Okay, now don't confuse this. This is a different Antioch. This Antioch is in Pisidia. Much smaller, nothing like the other Antioch, which was one of the top three cities of the Roman Empire. So, different Antioch. Verse 15: "And after the reading of the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, 'Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.'" Then Paul stood up and, beckoning with his hand, said, "Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience." Now, this is the first time Paul is giving a sermon. They give him an opportunity to preach. One of the things you know about a church leader: if they're ready to preach or teach in season and out of season. Paul's just got an opportunity. The door is opened. Does anybody have any word of exhortation for the people? Say it now, kind of like "Say it now or forever hold your peace." And so guess what? Paul stands up and he's ready to roll. Why? Because he's truly that kind of a leader. Are you ready to give a word? Some of you are like, "Well, I'm not a leader in the church." Yeah, but you're a leader in your home. Mom and Dad, have a teaching ready to roll for your kids when you get that little downtime, that little moment where the kids are actually being still for 10 seconds. Maybe that's the time to be ready to teach in season and out of season. So this is 14 years or so after Paul is saved and he's been studying, and now he's ready to roll. And this is Paul's first sermon. So that's really the first section of his sermon. Let's take a look. The first section is preparation, verses 16 through 25. It says, "Then Paul stood up, beckoning with his hand, and said, 'Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience. The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt and with a high arm brought them out of it. And about the time of forty years suffered he their manners in the wilderness. And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he divided their land to them by lot. And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they desired a king. And God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king, whom also he gave testimony and said, "I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will." Of this man's seed hath God according to his purpose raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus. When John had first preached before his coming the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John fulfilled his course, he said, "Whom think ye that I am? I am not he," not the Christ, "but behold, there comes one after me whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose."' This first dissertation is history. Paul's going into sort of a preparation for his main point that he's going to try to hammer home with these guys. But he reminds them of Israel's history. By the way, does this remind you of someone else's sermon that we have? Stephen, yeah, in Acts chapter 7. Remember, he went through the whole history and even more exhaustive than Paul did here. But it's similar, and I've actually have a commentary in my library that one commentator says Paul basically ripped off Stephen's rap, his sermon. Did he rip it off? Well, no, I don't think so. One of the things that I think is important to know, and some of you might say, "Well, I feel guilty if I'm sharing something that another pastor shared or Pastor Brett shared or something." There's a funny thing out there, and I think pastors, the bad side is there are pastors who plagiarize their sermons. They get them from sermoncentral.com or whatever and basically copy other guys' sermons, which is really not good. That's bad. So there's that side. But there is another side I want to remind you of, and that is, do you remember what Paul said in 2 Timothy chapter 2 when he was talking to Timothy about "here's how you minister, Timothy"? 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 2, he said, "And the things that you've heard me speak among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also." In other words, Paul gave Timothy license to say, "the stuff you've heard me say, that's what I want you to say." So if you ever use me or another pastor or similar things to preach to other people, I think we have certain license to do that. And by the way, one of the big pitfalls of this is young pastors who feel the need to come up with something new. You've got to come up with something new, something fresh, and what happens when they do that? It moves into some real whacko teaching pretty quick. Like, if it's new, it's not true. And if it's true, it's not new. And these pastors, you know, there are ones that get up there and they say these really seemingly amazing revelations that they've had about something or other, and all the congregation is like, "Oh, amazing, wow." And he even boasts about how "I received this from the Lord," and it's something new. Watch out for that. It's super dangerous. I kind of think just the good old-fashioned teaching of the Bible, and you don't have to be quotable. I think these pastors, young pastors, have a real desire to be quotable and come up with something really new. I think there's a lot of bad teaching because of that. Let's stick to like what Paul said: "the things that you've heard me speak, that's what I want you to speak, Timothy, and speak that and entrust that to faithful men." So if a young guy from our church goes to his high school and has a Bible study with some of his buddies from high school, and he uses some sermon that I've preached or outlined, but makes it his own—see, I think the key is to be yourself, just be who God's called you to be. But guess what? Hopefully, I'm not saying anything that's that proprietary. Do you understand what I'm saying? Hopefully, what I'm saying is actually repeatable by you all so you can say, "that's not Brett's, that's actually the Bible." Because if it's Brett's, then it's probably whacko and you don't want to hear it. Does that make sense? I think there's this pressure when these pastors want to come up with new sermons and new topics and really amazing quotes and stuff like that. It's a pressure to actually go off the rails and something that we should be really careful about. You know, remember, Paul, Saul was there when Stephen preached that sermon. He was there consenting, remember? He heard the sermon, and I love it that Paul's first sermon sort of sounds like Stephen's first sermon. I think that's actually healthy and I think that's wonderful. So, Paul's sermon's heard before and, I love it, the word of God doesn't go out void. When he's just sharing what the Old Testament says about the history of Israel, it's not going to fall on deaf ears. Paul can be assured that this is going to be a good word. So all that to say, when you teach or preach if you're in Sunday school or a Bible study, stand on the shoulders, not plagiarize, but stand on the shoulders of the ones who've gone before us. I've seen this in some of my favorite Bible teachers. Maybe you know Chuck Smith. I remember listening to Chuck Smith when I was younger and I thought, "Wow, what a great Bible teacher." And he was, and I loved it. It was like listening to your grandpa teach the Bible. It was awesome. But then I started reading J. Vernon McGee and Warren Wiersbe and G. Campbell Morgan and I started realizing, "Oh, now I know where Chuck got a lot of his information." And really, there's nothing new under the sun. So the reason I say that is to take all the pressure off yourself. That's why I'm so thankful I grew up in a Bible-teaching church where I took notes and listened because those sermons resonated in my heart and mind and fortunately in those years, it was just Bible teaching and I'm so thankful that I had shoulders to stand on in that way. Well, so number one, Paul's first section of a sermon: preparation. Second section is declaration, in verses 26 through 37. It says, "Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent." Remember, he's talking about, he already said who the salvation's from in verse 25, talking about the one that came after John the Baptist, who John the Baptist wasn't even worthy to loose the shoes. So we know who we're talking about: Jesus. He said, "I'm going to give you this salvation." Verse 27: "For they that dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they knew him not nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him." He's saying they were fulfilled when they crucified Jesus, little did they know they were fulfilling Old Testament Hebrew Bible prophecy. And verse 28: "And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written in him, they took him down from the tree," the cross, "and laid him in a sepulcher. But God raised him from the dead. And he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers." So this is Paul's declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, proven by his resurrection from the dead. Crucified just like the Old Testament Hebrew Bible said, proof positive because he mentions those people that saw him from Galilee. Do you remember we're told in 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3 through 8, more than 500 people saw Jesus after he rose from the grave? So Paul's giving this argument that we all give. "Hey, the reason you should believe in Jesus is he was proven to be the Messiah when they crucified him, but if that's not proof enough, he rose from the grave. That's proof that he said he would raise up from the grave, and there were 500 eyewitnesses of that." That's what he's referring to here. Jesus had over 500. You know, I always marvel at that when people say, "I don't think Jesus really rose from the grave" or "he didn't really prove that and how do you know?" 500 eyewitnesses. If you were down at 7-Eleven and you see a guy in a green little Toyota zoom up and he's got a tattoo on his forehead and a mustache and a green shirt, and he runs in and holds up the place, and you and three other people are in the 7-Eleven, and you see him, and he robs it and he runs out, well, then later the police catch him and then he's in a court of law and they want you to be an eyewitness at the court of law. So you get up there and you say, "Hey man, I saw him, he was the guy had this tattoo on his forehead, his Toyota was green, green shirt, had a mustache." Like, that's some pretty heavy evidence. You're like, "Okay, you're a good witness." But crazy, you've got two more witnesses. What if you had another person? "Well, he had a mustache and a tattoo on his head and he had a green Toyota." Like, and that happened three times, that'd be a slam open-and-shut case right there. That guy'd go to jail because of three witnesses. But Jesus had 500 witnesses. That's unheard of and it's amazing that Jesus really did raise up from the dead. Christianity's not just a philosophy of ethics, though it involves these things. Essentially Christianity is a proclamation, a declaration of the facts that concern what God has done through His son Jesus. And Paul's approaching it from that angle. He's not philosophizing. We're going to see him do that later. You probably know where. He's going to be Mr. Philosophize, but that's not going to really do a lot of work. But here he's going to just say, "Man, here's the facts," and I love that here in Paul. So, verse 33: "God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second Psalm: 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.' And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption," to decay in the tomb, "he said on this wise, 'I will give you the sure mercies of David.'" I love it that Paul, who's an expert on the Old Testament Scriptures, he's starting to quote the Old Testament Scriptures fulfilled in Jesus Christ. By the way, I've heard Mormons use, I would say misuse, verse 33 here. When it says that he hath raised up Jesus again, they try to use this because the Mormon faith believes that Jesus was a created being. They believe Jesus is not God, but he was created by God. Now, if you're a Mormon watching this and you say, "I don't believe that," you need to do your own homework on Mormonism because I'm amazed how many Mormons don't actually know some of their own doctrine, the Doctrines and Covenants and stuff like that. But this is Mormon doctrine, and they use this verse to kind of argue that Jesus was a created being. But you really can't take that from what Paul is saying here. Jesus is God. God became a man, lived among us, and died on the cross. God came, Emmanuel, God with us. So don't ever get duped by that. But Paul was saying basically, he's not talking about being raised up in creation. That's what the Mormon faith says: "He was raised up in creation." No. Paul's talking about raised up from the dead to resurrection. Paul's not talking about the womb; he's talking about the tomb. Okay, that's the difference, if you're coming out of the Mormon faith or if you're wondering about that, because you will hear that from time to time. Verse 35, he goes on and he says, "Wherefore he saith also in another Psalm," again quoting the Old Testament—you love this—"Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." That's the decay in the grave. That means a resurrection. So the resurrection is in the Old Testament and he's pointing that out. "For verse 36, for David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep and was laid to his fathers. He saw corruption. But he, Jesus, whom God raised again, saw no corruption. Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." This is Paul's declaration. Jesus rose from the grave. You say, "Well, big deal. What does that have to do with me?" Because of that, forgiveness for how much? All things. You'll be justified, all the things you've done, you'll be justified just as if you'd never sinned. That's the gospel and that's what Paul's sharing here and I just think it's so powerful. So that's Paul's first sermon. Starts with, you know, preparation, telling the backstory, the Old Testament, then the declaration of who Jesus is and what He did. And then now the final part of this sermon to verse 41 is Paul's application. Application, verse 40: "Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets: 'Behold, you despisers and wonder and perish, for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.'" Again, he now he's quoting by the way from Habakkuk. Again, how many of you guys could quote from Habakkuk right now? Like, that's not a verse—Paul's an authority on the Old Testament and he's saying through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins and, you know, we'll be justified, not like the law of Moses and and he's referring to the Old Testament for twice from the Psalms and now from Habakkuk he quotes from to help apply this. And then verse 42: "And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles"—this is Paul's sermon's done now—"when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God." Man, do you get a sense there was a hunger for the word? As Paul starts preaching it, now there's Gentiles saying, "Yeah, we want to hear more too." The Jews would not continue in the notion of grace; they would tend to fall back to the laws of the Old Testament and the rules. But these Gentiles, they're starving for truth like this, and so Paul, he's going to start applying that to the Gentile church in verse 44. "And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, 'It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you. But seeing you put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, "I have set thee a light of the Gentiles, and thou shouldest be for salvation to the ends of the earth."'" If you recall, we quoted this from Isaiah chapter 49 verse 6 just a few weeks ago. That this is all fulfilling the Old Testament, that the Jews would reject the gospel message largely, but the Gentiles would receive it with open arms, which is pretty cool. So Paul is a mighty weapon in the early church to bring the truth with a huge knowledge of the Old Testament. We're starting to see that applied practically here. Well, verse 48: "And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." Paul's preaching the word and they glorify the word. It's the word, it's the word, it's the word. There's no secret, there's no thing that we are doing that makes people love our church and all that stuff. I just think people are hungry for the word of God, and that's what these guys say. They don't glorify Paul here; they glorify the word of the Lord. And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. Don't you love that? Pretty amazing. Notice the word "ordained" there, "as many as were ordained." You might put in there those who believed. It does remind us of John 15:16 where Jesus said, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and have ordained you." So these guys are going to go and continue to share the word. Before I move on real quick, though, Paul showed wisdom by the way in not trying to spend all of his efforts to win over the Jews at this point. Did you see him sort of dismiss them? The Jews, it says they're blaspheming and contradicting Paul, and so Paul says, "I guess you guys don't want to have everlasting life," and then he just kind of leaves them. And then he goes over to the Gentiles. I think there's wisdom in that, you know? Some of you are trying to beat yourself to death to try to convince people that don't want to believe. I feel like social media is one of those places where the trolls are out there, the atheist trolls, and they just want to get Christians to start typing. If they can get you to start typing, it's a win. They don't care what you're saying on social media. And I'm just shocked how many Christians, I know their hearts are good, they're just trying to love, but I'm just going to say, I don't know too many people that accepted Christ by a little chat chain on some social media entry. Not a lot of people come to Christ that way, especially if you're a hardcore atheist coming from that. There's other ways I see atheists come to the Lord, but that's not really one of them. So I would say, be like Paul, use his wisdom to not spend all of his time trying to persuade hardened hearers. He goes to the people that are actually listening and want to hear. Well, finishing up verse 49: "And the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region." Man, I love that. "But the Jews stirred up the devout and honorable women and the chief men of the city and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them out of their coasts." Interesting, you know, that just because you're devout and honorable doesn't mean you're right. Did you see that? The devout and honorable women and men kicked Paul and Barnabas out. Just because you're honorable and devout doesn't mean you're right. Verse 51: "But they shook off the dust of their feet against them and came to Iconium." Sort of starting to make their way back toward, you know, where they started in Antioch. So I wanted you to kind of get the sense this is in the northeastern Mediterranean Sea. Did you notice it said in verse 51 they shook off the dust of their feet? The idea though is not as much literal as much as saying, "Man, if you get rejected, shake it off, man, go and find a place that will hear the good news of the gospel." So they shook the dust of their feet, went to Iconium, and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost. Even though they were persecuted, even though they were kicked out, there was still joy, and that's the result of the word of God. Amen? Amen.
Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador concluding our verse-by-verse look into Acts chapter 13, reflecting on Paul's emphasis on the true message of the gospel of today's word. And Pastor Brett will be offering a closing prayer just before we go, so I hope you'll stick around for that. But first, today's word is the radio ministry of Athey Creek Church in the Portland, Oregon area, where Pastor Brett's the senior pastor. We invite you to find out more by going to todayswordradio.com. If you missed any portion of this study, you'll find all of Pastor Brett's messages online at todayswordradio.com. Our vision on today's word is to proclaim the hope of salvation and help people know Jesus through careful study of the Bible. You can find out more at todayswordradio.com. Well, now here again is Pastor Brett Meador to conclude our study with a brief word of prayer.
Brett Meador: Lord, as we close up, I pray that you would help us to have boldness to preach the good news. Lord, would you put in all of us a fire to really be open to sharing the gospel wherever we can or the word of God. Be a church that really focuses on your word and not on a personality or not on a movement or anything like that, a ministry. We just want to focus on your word and glorify your word like they did here, Lord. And I pray for other churches to really get into your word and go verse by verse through the Scripture and really glean much from your word. So we pray your blessing upon that. We commit our lives to you and pray that this would bring forth good fruit in our lives. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Guest (Male): Amen. Pastor Brett Meador here on today's word. And that's all the time we have. Next time, Pastor Brett will share how the healing of the crippled beggar led Paul and Barnabas to be mistaken for gods, leading Paul to address the crowd of this misplaced worship.
Brett Meador: You know, I love it if you realize what Paul's doing here. He's saying, "You guys, the evidence is right there: the creation of the world." In fact, this is something the Bible speaks of over and over again. The Psalmist, Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God."
Guest (Male): Today's word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.