The Word of This Salvation

The Word of This Salvation Acts 13:13-43 by William Klock Last Sunday, in the first twelve verses of Acts 13, we saw the Spirit and the church at Antioch send out Saul and Barnabas with the gospel.  Barnabas took Saul to his home country of Cyprus.  They began preaching the good news about Jesus in the synagogue in Salamis and from there they went deep into Roman territory at Paphos.  Kind of amazingly, the Roman governor asked to hear their message.  Elymas, the Jewish magician and false prophet tried to get in their way, and was struck blind.  The governor, Sergius Paulus, believed—and not so much, Luke stresses, because he saw his court magician struck blind, but because he was astonished at the teaching, at the message that Saul—now Paul—and Barnabas were proclaiming.  And last week I stressed the—perhaps—counter-intuitive way Paul and Barnabas went preaching the gospel.  They didn’t go straight to the market place to confront the pagans.  They went to the synagogues and preaches to their fellow Jews.  And I said that this is because the good news is first and foremost Israel’s good news, and I said that we’d see this as we now get into the rest of Chapter 13. Luke didn’t get into the specifics of Paul’s and Barnabas’ preaching in Cyprus.  There he introduced us to the pattern of their mission: to the Jew first and then to the Greek.  This week Luke shows us why.  So look at Acts 13:13.  [Page 1095 in the pew Bibles]. “Paul and his companions set off from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia.”  Pamphylia is on the southern coast of Turkey, so they’ve taken a ship from Cyprus and sailed north.  “John, however, left them and went back to Jerusalem.”  Luke doesn’t tell us why John Mark left.  Paul described it later as a betrayal and he was upset with him over it.  Maybe he was scared.  Maybe he was homesick.  Whatever the reasons, he abandoned Paul and Barnabas.  And Luke goes on, “But they went on from Perga and arrived in Antioch of Pisidia…”  Pisidian Antioch was inland in the province of Galatia.  And it was very much Roman territory and a city dedicated not just to Rome and Roman culture, but to the cult of Caesar.  But they don’t go to the town square to confront Romans.  Luke says, just as in Cyprus, “they went into the synagogue on the sabbath day and sat down.  After the reading of the law and the prophets, the ruler of the synagogue sent word to them. ‘My brothers,’ he said, ‘if you have any word of exhortation for the people, let us hear it.’” Paul’s reputation as a learned scholar who had studied under Gamaliel probably preceded him.  Barnabas was a Levite.  I suspect that both of them dressed the part.  But good hospitality meant inviting such prestigious guests to speak to the synagogue and, I think, they got more than they bargained for that day.  Verse 16: “So Paul stood up and motioned with his hand for attention. ‘Men of Israel,’ he said, ‘and the god-fearers among you: listen.  The God of this people Israel chose our fathers, and he raised the people up to greatness during their stay in the land of Egypt. Then he led them out from there with his hand lifted high, and for about forty years he put up with them in the desert.  He drove out seven nations from the land of Canaan, and gave them the land as their inheritance for about four hundred and fifty years.  After that, he gave them judges, up until Samuel the prophet.  After that, they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man from the tribe of Benjamin. He ruled for forty years, and after God had removed him he raised up for them David as king.  He is the one to whom God bore witness when he said, ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will accomplish all my purpose.’ So Paul stands up in the synagogue rehearses their history. This was the story they all knew well.  It was the story that defined them as a people—specifically as God’s people.  And Paul rushes through it up to David: From the Patriarchs to Egypt to Caanan to Judges to Saul all very quickly.  But notice what Paul puts all the stress on in the story: God chose.  God made Israel great.  God brought them up out of Egypt.  God was patient with them in the wilderness.  God gave them Canaan.  God gave them judges.  God gave them King Saul.  God raised up King David.  What’s Paul doing?  Brothers and Sisters, he telling Israel’s story as a story of grace.  Long before God send his son, he was establishing his pattern of grace.  We often get the mistaken idea that the religion of the Old Testament was a religion of works and that Jews were trying to earn salvation.  And that’s simply not true.  Paul stresses it here: The old covenant was all about God’s grace.  He chose his people, he saved his people, and he sustained his people.  And in that story we not only see God’s grace at work, but we also see his faithfulness revealed.  Brothers and Sisters, God’s grace has a purpose. Verse 23: “‘From this man’s offspring [that’s from David], in accordance with his promise, God has brought a saviour for Israel: Jesus!  Before he appeared, John had announced a baptism of repentance for the whole people of Israel.  As John was finishing his course, he said, ‘What do you suppose I am? I am not the one.  But look: someone is coming after me, and I am not worthy to untie the sandals on his feet.’” So that question again: Why did Paul first have to preach to Israel?  Here it is: Because you can’t announce Israel’s Messiah without first telling Israel that in him, the God of Israel has kept his promises.  Jesus couldn’t be a Canaanite or a Greek or a Roman or a German or an Egyptian or anything else.  Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel.  Jesus is the climax of Israel’s story.  Jesus is the great proof of God’s gracious faithfulness.  And so Jesus’ mission begins with setting Israel to rights.  That’s why John called the men and women of Israel out to the wilderness, to pass through the waters of the Jordan in baptism as an act of repentance.  The great exodus of which their exodus from Egypt was just a shadow, the new Passover of which the old was just a shadow, the King of whom even the great King David was only a shadow, had come and John was calling the people to a great reset, a great act of national repentance in preparation for what God was about to do—an act that he’d been preparing his people for since the beginning. Verse 16: “‘My brothers,” Paul continued, “sons of Abraham’s family, and the god-fearers among you: it is to us that the word of this salvation has been sent!  The people who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, didn’t recognize him, and they fulfilled the words of the prophets which are read to them every sabbath by condemning him.  Even though they found no reason to condemn him to death, they asked Pilate to have him killed.  When they had completed everything that had been written about him in prophecy, they took him down from the cross and put him in a tomb.  But God raised him from the dead, and he was seen for several days by those who had come with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to the people.’ Luke noted before that there were gentile god-fearers in the synagogue along with the Jews, but Paul makes a point of it here as he addresses them and says, to us this word of salvation has been sent.  It might be a little subtle, but I expect they picked up on it.  Paul’s including these uncircumcised gentiles in the story.  And then he continues with Jesus: The people in Jerusalem and the rulers of Israel refused to recognise him as the true King.  Men who had read the prophets their whole lives, men who believed the prophets, nevertheless were completely oblivious to the prophets even as they fulfilled them by condemning Jesus to death. And the Jews sitting in this synagogue in Pisidian Antioch listening to Paul, they read those same prophets, they know those same prophets, they believe those same prophets, so there’s a warning in Paul’s preaching here.  It’s entirely possible to know God’s word inside-out, backwards and forwards and still fail to understand the story.  The Jews in Jerusalem rejected Jesus.  They ruled that he was a false Messiah and insisted Pilate crucify him.  And then the great reversal—another one of those “But God…” statements.  If you want to sum up all of human history, it’s “But God…”  Human beings did this, human beings did that, but God…”  They killed Jesus, and then Paul says, “But God raised him from the dead.” The Jewish people rendered a verdict against Jesus.  The Jewish rulers rendered a verdict against Jesus.  Pilate, the Roman governor rendered a verdict against Jesus.  And just as everyone thought it was settled, God rendered his own verdict.  God gets the last word and God’s word is resurrection.  And Paul stresses—because now is the moment when these people in the synagogue are going to have to choose whether they will reject Jesus or whether they will repent and believe the gospel—Paul stresses that there were witnesses to God’s verdict. And then, verse 32, this is what it means.  This is why it’s important: “‘We are here now to bring you the good news which was promised to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to us, their children, by raising Jesus. This corresponds, indeed, to what is written in the second psalm: ‘You are my son; this day I have begotten you.’ That he raised him from the dead, never more to return to corruption, conforms to what was written: ‘I will give you the holy and faithful mercies of David.’  Because, as it says in another place, ‘You will not hand over your Holy One to see “corruption.’  Now David served his own generation, and in the purposes of God he fell asleep and was gathered to his fathers.  He did experience corruption.  But the one God raised up did not experience corruption. Brothers and Sisters, this is the good news: The God of Israel has done what he promised.  I ran across this gem written by Tom Wright in his Acts for Everyone, “It is fatally easy for the church to tell the story of Jesus while simply ignoring the entire story of Israel. That is the way to produce a shallow, sub-biblical and ultimately dangerous theology.”  If you ignore or strip out the story, the good news ceases to be the good news.  Paul quotes from Psalm 2, Isaiah 55, and Psalm 16 and he doesn’t just throw these passages out as prooftexts.  They are the story.  They’re what make the good news truly good news.  He quotes from Psalm 2, “You are my son…”  Psalm 2 is one of the royal psalms.  It’s about King David.  The king represented the people and if Israel was God’s beloved son, then so was the king.  In fact, the king became the embodiments of that beloved sonship.  And Paul is now telling these fellow Jews—and the gentiles in their midst—that when he raised Jesus from the dead, he publicly vindicated Jesus as the Messiah and, not only that, he enthroned him as the promised, eternal Davidic King.  I suspect Paul makes an especial point of Jesus as the King here, because this was Pisidian Antioch, also called Colonia Caesarea—Caesar’s colony.  It was a city devoted to Caesar—temples, monuments, the name.  It was all about King Caesar and the Pax Romana he brought.  And in that city Paul announces that the God of Israel raised David’s son from death and installed him as creation’s true King.  God’s promises to David are now being fulfilled in Jesus.  Good news. And then Isaiah 55:3.  “I will give you the holy and faithful mercies of David.”  We can’t unpack all of Isaiah 53-55 this morning, but this is where God promised that one day new life would break out all through creation on the basis of the work of the suffering servant (Isaiah 53) and that he would come and renew his covenant (Isaiah 54).  “Ho, everyone who is thirsty!” shouts Isaiah, “Come to the waters!  Come and drink!  It’s all free!  And it’s for everyone!”  And Paul reminds them of this prophecy—one they surely knew well—to say that these mercies of David are being thrown open, not just to Israel, but to any gentiles who will repent and believe this good news as well.  Because God has been faithful to his promises in and through Jesus, this good news can go out to the entire world.  And in that, the promise of Isaiah 55 is being fulfilled: God’s word is going out into the world to renew and heal and transform—to set all of creation to rights.  Good news. And just in case they’re thinking “No, this Jesus can’t fulfil the prophesies about David, because the Messiah isn’t supposed to die,” Paul reminds them of Psalm 16, “You will not hand over your holy one to corruption.”  And he argues very simply: David served God’s purpose, David died, David was buried, David decayed to dust.  So David cannot be the ultimate fulfilment of the promise.  The greater David has come.  Jesus the Messiah, whom God raised from the dead.  And if Jesus is King, that’s not just some interesting historical fact or theological truth to affirm and file away.  So Paul—I imagine him being pretty animated at this point—he goes on in verse 38: “So let it be known to you therefore, my brothers and sisters, that forgiveness of sins is announced through him, and that everything from which you were unable to be set right by the law of Moses, by him everyone who believes is set right.  Beware, then, lest what the prophets foretold comes true of you: ‘Look out, you scoffers—be amazed, and disappear!  I am doing something in your days, a work which you wouldn’t believe even if someone were to explain it to you.’” This is the great announcement: “Let it be known to you therefore…”  And as they say, when you see the word “therefor”, ask what it’s there for.  Jesus is David’s promised son.  God raised him from the dead.  In him the scriptures, Israel’s story, have been fulfilled.  Therefore, forgiveness is announced through him.  Again, “forgiveness of sins is announced through him, and that everything from which you were unable to be set right by the law of Moses, by him everyone who believes is set right—or we could translate it “set free” or even “justified” or “acquitted”.  Good news. To be clear, what Paul is not saying is that Judaism is a religion of works and Jesus has now, in contrast, established a covenant of grace.  Paul has made it clear that God has been working through grace all along through Israel’s story.  The God who gave the torah is the same God who chose Israel, delivered Israel, gave Israel the promise land, sustained her in it, gave her kings, and promised her David’s son.  Torah was a gift of grace that created a holy people fit for God’s greater gift of grace: his presence.  So what Paul is saying here is that the law of Moses was God’s good gift, but it could only take Israel so far.  It could expose sin, restrain sin, order the life of Israel, and provide a means of forgiveness.  But it could never ultimately solve the problem of sin.  It could not raise the dead.  It could not bring Israel’s story all the way to the promised goal.  It could not create the renewed people through whom Abraham’s blessing would finally go out to the nations.  Because the law was written on tablets of stone.  What the people ultimately needed was the law written on their hearts.  And God has finally done that in Jesus—and in the Spirit, although Paul doesn’t carry the argument quite that far here. Paul says, “Everyone who believes…”  He’s been addressing sons of Abraham, and he’s been addressing the gentile god-fearers in their midst, and now everyone is set to rights in the Messiah.  And this was the astounding thing that Barnabas saw back in Acts 11 when he first went to Antioch and reported back that he saw there the grace of God.  How could uncircumcised gentiles sit at the same table with Jewish believers?  Why would Barnabas look at that and say, “I see the grace of God?”  It’s because the boundary of God’s renewed people is no longer circumcision, no longer torah, but Jesus the Messiah.  Everyone who believes the good news about him is set to rights through him—is made pure and washed clean by his blood to be a dwelling place for God himself in the Holy Spirit.  And in that, God in the Messiah has accomplished the very thing he so gracious promised he would do through Abraham: he would make his name known to the nations and take his blessings to them. But the flip side of this good news is a warning: Paul warns them with the words of Habakkuk 1:5, “Look out, you scoffers—be amazed, and disappear!  I am doing something in your days, a work which you wouldn’t believe even if someone were to explain it to you.”  Habakkuk had warned Judah about the work—the judgement—he was about to accomplish through their conquest by Babylon.  Now Paul applies that same warning to them: The Jewish people and rulers in Jerusalem spent their lives hearing the prophets every sabbath, they knew them inside-out, and yet when God sent Jesus to fulfil them, they refused to recognise or to acknowledge what God was doing.  And Paul’s now saying to these people: Don’t do the same thing.  Don’t be the next people in whom a prophetic warning is fulfilled! And remember, Paul’s speaking from experience.  He was as immersed in those scriptures as anyone ever was.  He was as zealous for Israel’s God as anyone was.  And he still found himself standing in God’s way.  Last Sunday Elymas became a mirror of Paul’s old self.  This Sunday Paul’s warning the synagogue and basically saying, “I know what it is to think that you’re defending God, when you’re actually resisting what he’s doing.  Don’t do what I did! And the people, they seem to have recognised that Paul preached with authority—not unlike Jesus himself—and they heeded his warning.  Luke finishes in verse 42: “As Paul and Barnabas were leaving, they begged them to come back the next sabbath and tell them more about these things.  Many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed them once the synagogue was dismissed. They [that’s Paul and Barnabas] spoke to them some more, and urged them to remain in God’s grace.” They urged them to remain in God’s grace.  Brothers and Sisters, what is grace?  I hope that after hearing Paul’s preaching here we can see that it’s not just God blessing people who don’t deserve it.  That’s kind of the dictionary definition of grace: God’s unmerited favour.  And that’s not wrong, but it doesn’t go far enough.  Paul stresses here that there’s more to it than that.  God’s grace is his covenant faithfulness overflowing.  Not just blessings in general, but the blessings of his covenant overflowing to Jew and gentile alike because his Messiah has dealt with our sin.  This is what Barnabas saw in Antioch as Jews and gentiles became one family in Jesus.  It’s what Paul’s now preaching in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch. God chose, God rescued, God promised, God gave King David, and God gave King Jesus the saviour.  And when sinful, rebellious men and women rejected and crucified him, God raised him from the dead.  And in that, God sets everyone to rights who repents and believes this good news.  That’s the word of salvation and that’s why Paul first went to his fellow Jews.  Because the good news is the fulfilment of God’s promises to his people.  Because God has kept his promises to Israel in Jesus, the promise he made to Abraham can now reach its intended goal: blessing for the nations.  And when we come in faith to this God who is unlike any other, perhaps at first simply out of amazement and to give him glory, he welcomes us to be part of this new people centred in the Messiah.  Brothers and Sisters, this is grace.  The realisation of the covenant faithfulness of the God of Israel.  As Paul says here: Remain in it.  Live in this wonderful thing God has done.  Trust the King whom God has raised from the dead.  Finally, become the people God is creating by his grace: a single people, purified by the blood of Jesus, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and a witness to the nations of God’s amazing grace. Let’s pray: Almighty God, who fulfilled your promises to Israel by raising Jesus the Messiah from the dead, and through him proclaims forgiveness to all who believe: Grant us grace to receive the word of this salvation and to continue steadfastly in your grace; that, set right by your mercy and made one people in your Son, we may bear faithful witness to your faithfulness before the nations; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.