Clough Acts Lesson 33

Paul’s First Recorded Sermon – Acts 13:14-41

We continue our study of Paul’s first missionary journey. In the book of Acts we’ve studied how the Holy Spirit has guided and one thing that we have tried to emphasize again and again is that the Holy Spirit used common sense factors. These apostles did not look for God’s will to be written in glittering gold on the ceiling. The apostles simply took advantage of local factors, of course praying about them, of course applying doctrine, but nevertheless they were still local factors; factors such as family wealth, factors such as social contacts, factors such as the various Roman colonies that were placed at strategic points throughout the Roman Empire, on the great trade roots of the world. They used the cultural bridge of the Jewish people for everywhere there are Jews there are people who know the categories of Scripture. And everywhere there are Jews since they’ve dispersed there are people who know the language and the customs of the locality. The Jewish colonies within the colonies then became the vehicles for evangelism and missionary work. Paul used these; this is something that is not being used in today’s missionary strategy and tactics.

Another thing that today we will see is Paul’s first recorded sermon. Acts 13, from verse 14 on is as important to Paul as Acts 2 is to Peter. They, in both chapters, show how these men approached their generation with the Word of God. Now their generation was a little different than ours and therefore our approach won’t exactly be their approach. But nevertheless, there are some common factors, things that they did in their day that often we don’t do in our day in evangelism, and so what are some of the things that Paul did.

One of the things that Paul did in his message was to hold to the unity of the thing. To give you an illustration of this let’s go to the bombing raids over Hanoi with the deployment of how the B-52s flew in formation. Now due to the various tactics that were used what I am going to draw doesn’t correspond with what actually happened in the skies over Hanoi, but nevertheless we have the bomber planes going in in a certain formation. These formations had been worked out in advance so that each bomber would cover its neighboring bomber. They would surround themselves with a field of ECM, electronic counter measures, that would be used to thwart anti-aircraft missiles, the SAMs, and because they used this type of ECM they had to cover themselves and not only themselves but certain ranges of their neighbor, and the particular formations were set up to maximize this coverage. So say plane number four flies in and the pilots knew and all of a sudden he sees one of these flying telephone poles coming at him and it’s a game of nerves as to whether he is going to trust the prearranged pattern of flight or whether he’s going to break formation to take his own personal individual evasive action to physically try to avoid the oncoming missiles. Now if plane 4 breaks formation he exposes plane 5 to enemy attack, and therefore no one can drop out of the formation without exposing his fellow flyers. And for this reason it takes great teamwork and great loyalty to make sure that these planes will stay in formation and everyone will receive protection. In most cases over Hanoi our planes did that and for that reason, though 52s were lost the rate of loss was extremely low, something like 2 or 3%. In Hanoi the formations had become tighter, the techniques had been worked out better than in World War II. This is a picture of the value of keeping all the pieces locked into a formation so that your enemy can’t pick you off one by one which is exactly what any enemy wants to do with a bombing formation, pick off the outer planes and dismantle the organization of the formation so then all of them are sitting ducks.

Well, in apologetics and in evangelism and in presenting the Christian faith the same strategy has to be used, same idea. The Christian message has pieces in it, just like the Hanoi raids have various planes in them, and all of the pieces of the Christian message have to stay in exactly the right perspective to one another. Let’s take, for example, creation. Genesis 1 and 2; creation is a sector or a domain of Christian truth. If you allow or compromise because you’re embarrassed about Genesis 1 and 2, if you allow Genesis 1 and 2 to drop out of your presentation, then other parts of your message become vulnerable to attack. For example, if you allow Genesis to drop out the idea of verbal revelation also is subject to attack because now language has no connection with God’s ideas toward man. So it’s terribly important that when Christianity is laid out before a hostile world that it be laid out as a unit.

Cornelius Van Til, one of the foremost apologists of our time is fond of using the bottomless wastepaper basket illustration. And that is when someone comes up to you and here stands Mr. Unbeliever; Mr. Believer comes to Mr. Unbeliever and he projects a missile or a particular part of the Christian faith to him; Mr. Unbeliever grabs it much like a basketball and he flicks it over his head into the bottomless wastepaper basket in back of him. And then the Christian presents another piece of data and Mr. Unbeliever grabs that and lobs it into his bottomless wastepaper basket, and this can go on and on and on without the unbeliever ever being significantly touched with the force of the Christian message. Why? Because you have presented the message one unit at a time, disconnected from the other units; it would be like the B-52s trying to fly over Hanoi one at a time, it couldn’t be done, they’d be mincemeat, we’d lose all of them.

And so it is when Paul begins to preach his first sermon in the synagogue at Antioch, that he follows the strategy of holding all the pieces locked into a unit so he has an invulnerable perimeter. He doesn’t open himself up for enemy attack at any point. Now let’s watch how Paul does this. First, reading a few verses into the sermon to get the flow.

Acts 13:14, “But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and sat down. [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. [16] Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience. [17] 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 an high arm brought He them out of it. [18] And about the time of forty years suffered He their manners in the wilderness. [19] And when He had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, He divided their land to them by lot.

[20] And after that He gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet. [21] And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years. [22] And when He had removed him, He raised up unto them David to be their king; to 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. [23] Of this man’s seed hath God according to His promise raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus: [24] When John had first preached before his coming the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. [25] And as John fulfilled his course, he said, Whom think ye that I am? I am not he. But, behold, there cometh one after me, whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose.”

Paul resumes at this point the formal address made at the beginning when he begins his final challenge, [26] Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you fears God, to you is the word of this salvation sent. [27] For they that dwell at 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. [28] And though they found no cause of death in Him, yet desired they Pilate that He should be slain. [29] And when they had fulfilled all that was written of Him, they took Him down from the tree, and laid Him in a sepulcher. [30] But God raised Him from the dead: [31] And He was seen many days of them which came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. [32[ And we declare unto you glad tidings,” or the gospel, “how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, [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.

[34] And as concerning that He raised Him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, He said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. [35] Wherefore He saith also in another psalm, Thou shalt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption. [36] For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: [37] But He, whom God raised again, saw no corruption.” And Paul issues his final invitation, [38] Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: ]39] And by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. [40] Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; [41] Behold, ye 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.” which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.”

That is a synopsis of what Paul spoke; we don’t know exactly if Paul spoke… he spoke all those words but whether he spoke more or not we don’t know, Luke’s style is abbrevative, he tends to say and select our from Paul’s messages the main highlights. So here we have the first sermon of Paul. Now watch his method; watch what he does that we don’t do. Watch some of the tactics that he uses to protect his flanks, to guard his perimeter, to make sure his opponents don’t discredit his message.

Verse 14 gives you the background, “they came to Antioch in Pisidia,” which is some 3600 feet above sea level from that marshy shore land, on the south side of what is now Turkey, they came up this mountain pass to a place called Antioch, not Antioch of Syria but Antioch in the area of Galatia. That’s, by the way, one of the cities to which the epistle to the Galatians was later written. This area was the one God apparently chose Saul to reach the Jewish people. They go “into the synagogue on the Sabbath day,” and they wait for a particular part in the synagogue sermon, or the synagogue polity of the service. A synagogue service as best as we can construct it from first century materials goes like this: first the congregation arose and they said the Shema, the Shema is the Hebrew imperative for “hear,” it comes from Deuteronomy, “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is the LORD alone.” And it’s that famous pledge of allegiance of the nation, the monotheism of the great nation of Israel. So they would recite this and then they would go to a prayer led by one of the rulers of the synagogue. And after the prayer they would go to the blessing; the Baruk, the blessing that would be given to all the people for various reasons, the blessing on the nation and so on. And then they would have the reading of the Scriptures. During the reading of the Scriptures they would read according to a lectionary; that means they would read according to a reading program that to this day can still be found in the margins of the Hebrew Bible. You have in the Hebrew Bible the main body of the text and then along the side you’ll have markers like this: those are “s” and “p” and those are the markers of the great ancient Jewish lectionary system of reading the Torah. If they divide the text such that in three years a person would read, say from this paragraph down to here, and then the next Sabbath would read here, in three years you would finish reading the Torah, that is the first five books of the Old Testament. And then they had a similar system of reading the prophets. Scholars believe on the basis of Paul’s sermon that this particularly Saturday morning when the congregation got together, or Friday night, whichever way it was, when they got together they read Deuteronomy 1 from the Torah and read Isaiah chapter 1, that happened to be up for the lectionary for that weekend.

Now the other significant thing if you review this order of worship is that from our point of view as Christians that doesn’t seem to be much worship; there are no sacraments, no ordinances, nothing, just a little footnote about how Jewish people used to worship and something that is missing, sort of, in our own setup but nevertheless be aware of it. When they did their real worship, when they had what we would call the ordinances, such as Passover, it wasn’t done in the synagogue; it was done by the father in the home. Passover was not a synagogue function; Passover was a home family function, which shows that their major worship was not done in the synagogue; this is kind of exhortation and training. That’s why they came together. The worship was left in the home, showing the major section.

Well, the synagogue this particular day, notice in verse 15, “After the reading of the Law and the Prophets,” so it was the last part of the service when the address would be made. Now the rulers of the synagogue didn’t just pick anyone to come forward and say a few words out of their depraved empty heart. The rulers of the synagogue would first evaluate people to see whether they had the training and were capable of an address. And if they weren’t they wouldn’t be asked. But Paul, being a rabbinical student under Gamaliel, was obviously one who was qualified and therefore he was asked to come forward. It says “sent unto them,” the rulers did, this is at the end of the service saying okay, it’s your time to do your thing. So Paul stands up in verse 16 and begins his sermon.

Now the first thing to notice about this sermon is the amount of Old Testament that he uses. I have said previously that an exercise you can do to make yourself a little bit more sensitive to how the first Christians in the first century taught is to take a light colored pencil and very lightly shade the text in these major addresses where the Old Testament is quoted to give you a sensation for how much they relied… if we were to do this we’d have to go to verse 17 at the end with s “an high arm brought He them out of it.” That is a quotation of Exodus 6:6. Verse 18, “about the space of forty hears He put up with their manners in the wilderness,” that’s a composite quotation from Exodus 16, Numbers 14, Deuteronomy 1. Verse 19 we’d also have to shade because that’s a quotation from Deuteronomy 7:1. The end of verse 22 is a quotation, “a man after Mine own heart,” from 1 Samuel 13:14. We would have to shade verse 33, “Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee,” because that’s a quotation of Psalm 2. The last part of verse 34, “I give you the sure mercies of David,” a quotation of Isaiah 55:32. Verse 35, “Thou shalt not allow Your Holy One to see corruption,” that’s a citation of Psalm 16:10, and verse 41 at the end because that’s a quotation of Habakkuk 1:5. Other than that Paul didn’t use any Old Testament.

So obviously he relied very heavily upon the Old Testament to begin to fix people’s minds in the right categories. It’s very important that people be introduced to Christ the right way. This is why Dr. Peters, for years and years at Dallas Seminary has tried and tried and tried and tried to get missionaries to translate Genesis before they translate Mark. It doesn’t do any good to talk Jesus stories to people who have no context, and it doesn’t do any good to walk out in Lubbock and tell Jesus stories either; people aren’t ready for Jesus stories, they have to be introduced to the person of God first, then we talk about Jesus. It doesn’t do any good in Child Evangelism to give Jesus stories unless you first deal with God’s character and then move to Jesus.

You’ll notice in verse 17 Paul does not begin with a Jesus story; he begins with a God story, He begins with a particular point in God’s revelation in history. And since we’ve studied so much around here the divine viewpoint framework and we have said that there are certain events that ought to be linked to certain basic doctrines of the faith it’s very interesting to compare the framework we’ve been going through and going through with how Paul goes through it. You’ll notice Paul says in verse 17, “The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers,” that is the doctrine of election, that is the doctrine to be associated with the call of Abraham, again and again in Scripture, a concrete picture in history of the particular doctrine is always linked and here we have the linkage going on. Notice again how Paul follows it up, in verse 17 he says, God brought them out of the land of Egypt. What is that but the doctrine of the event of the Exodus, and that deals with the doctrine of the Substitutionary blood atonement, the doctrine of judgment/salvation. That is the doctrine to be associated with the event and Paul just simply goes through the Old Testament divine viewpoint framework which today you have to fight and claw, yell and scream to get Christians to learn. But Paul insisted that the Christians be taught this before they go with their Jesus stories.

Let’s look how he did this. He started by saying, verb, “God elected,” he dealt with the doctrine of election and he refused to deal with anything else until he had taught that God is sovereign over history. It goes like this, thinking of our formation over Hanoi again of the planes, if you take every event, every fact in history, God arranges these facts in a plan and you cannot talk fact, fact, fact apart from the overall plan. You can’t talk about the resurrection of Jesus, as an illustration; you can sit there and very eloquently talk to your non-Christian friend and say here I have all the historic evidences to show that Jesus rose from the dead. And do you know what your intelligent non-Christian friend is going to say to you after you have proved Jesus rose from the dead? Send it in to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, it’s interesting, weird things do happen in this universe.

Now all of a sudden you feel like you’ve been disarmed. Now why did all that power, the resurrection of Christ just go down, pssss, like that? Because you taught it wrong; you kept it as an isolated fact apart from the overall plan of God and it’s like those bombers, if one fact is let loose from this grid the whole grid collapses. And so Paul doesn’t permit this, he starts with the doctrine of election, which states God’s sovereignty over every fact of history. Now we studied the doctrine of election in the past, let’s review the five points in the doctrine of election.

Summarizing what the doctrine of election says, in order that we can understand why Paul uses it and maybe when we’re through why we ought to have the same view of history and not allow the non-Christian to slip and slide and grease his way around the particular points of the Christian faith.

The first thing we said about the doctrine of election is that election depends completely on creation. If you’re not straight in Genesis 1 and 2 you can’t be straight when you talk about election because election deals with how God sets up, runs, and brings history to a conclusion. Now how are you going to talk about that if the universe wasn’t built the right way in the first place. An example of this: modern men always say well, I just can’t buy the inerrancy of the Bible, the Bible’s got to have errors in it because after all the Bible was made by men and to be human is to err. Really now! Jesus was human, did He err? Well, He was an exception. How do you know that He was an exception? Did you ever meet Him? No. How do you know that Jesus never erred? Well, I read about Him in the Bible. But you just said the Bible was written by people who make mistakes, maybe they made a mistake and Jesus did err. How do you know for sure that Jesus doesn’t make mistakes? Because I read about it in the Bible. But the Bible is a fallible document, how do you know that Jesus doesn’t make mistakes; you’re basing that claim on what is to you a fallible document that has errors in it. You have no right to make that claim because you can’t be sure if the Bible has mistakes in it.

So you see, once you cut the umbilical cord of inerrancy everything falls and the reason men believe it this way and why a lot of liberal clergymen believe it this way, why a lot of neo-evangelicals who are going into every Christian organization under the sun believe this way is because they are weak in Genesis 1 and 2. They don’t really believe that God made Adam the way the Bible says and Adam, a language speaking creature and God spoke to Adam in language. And God invented and created language so that He could speak to man down through the centuries. But no, we just kind of apologize for Genesis 1 and 2 and maybe God could have used evolution and maybe we could do this and maybe we could pack eight million years between Enoch and Noah and a few other things, maybe we could compress this if we squeeze it and twist it, and tear it up hard enough we can make the Bible fit modern science. Okay, you go ahead and do that, but then we come along and we start talking about God, well I can’t really believe God speaks because language is an evolutionary product and God would have to work in, through and around His own language.

So the whole thing that I’m saying is that you release grip on Christian doctrinal system here and you pay the price over here. Paul refused to do this; the doctrine of election rests completely on creation. Isaiah 55:8-9 expresses it this way: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are My ways than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Every fact of history is dependent upon God’s plan. 2 + 2 is 4 cannot be correctly understood apart from its place in the plan of God. That’s true of every fact of history. This is why people still do not understand why here at Lubbock Bible Church we talk about politics, we talk about economics, we talk about music, art, philosophy and the whole bag. Why do you bother with that? How else can we bother with it; didn’t God’s Word come into real history; didn’t God’s Word touch music in the area of song; doesn’t God’s word touch philosophy in the area of the book of Ecclesiastes. Doesn’t God’s Word touch history in the area of the accounts. You mean we’re not to talk about this even though God’s Word does talk about this. What kind of a compartmentalized religion is this? Well, it’s the compartmentalized religion of most fundamentalists, that’s what it is and we don’t want that; we want God’s Word to control every fact, every classroom, every book, every thinker. God’s Word is total; if you violate God’s Word at one single point you’ve violated God’s Word at every point and therefore the doctrine of election is important; it rests completely on the way the universe runs.

Second thing about the doctrine of election is that the election is God’s basic promise to me and to you. If you are a Christian all the other promises in Scripture won’t do you a particle of good unless you can really be sure in your heart that they apply to you. And how can you be sure that all the promises apply? Maybe they apply to your neighbor. How do you know they apply to you; the only reason you know they apply to you is because you know that you are in the plan of God, that’s why they apply to you. But if you have no assurance that you are in the plan of God then it is stupid to talk about the promises of Scripture. This is why in Luke 10:20, when the disciples had had many great spiritual experiences, we’ve even cast demons out in the name of Christ, great spiritual experiences, surely we can rejoice in that. And Jesus says in Luke 10:20, stop rejoicing, that the demons are subject to you; rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven. Jesus ordered the disciples to place their ultimate joy, their ultimate trust in the plan of God, not even in their own experience.

The third thing we said about election is that it’s 100% certain; it’s like a gigantic steam roller that flattens everything before it. Nothing stops God’s election. Jesus said the gates of hell shall never prevail against the Church. Every government that tries to crush the Christian pays a horrible price. Why is it the great exalted socialistic agricultural system of the Soviet Union is incompetent to feed itself when the Ukraine was at one time the bread basket of all of western Europe? Because socialized agriculture proceeding off the same anti-Christian base of communism has persecuted the Christian and now the Russians starve. Justice to those who persecute Christ. Election is 100% sure, as Isaiah 43:12-13 puts it, “I have declared and I have saved; I have showed, when there was no strange God among you; therefore you are My witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God. [13] Yea, before the day became, I am; and there is none that can deliver out of My hand; I will work, and who dares stop me?” That is the expression of God’s elective sovereignty; 100% certain.

The fourth thing that we’ve said about God’s election is that it’s His holy free choice. Say what you will about volition, say what you will about human responsibility and God does render the creature responsible, obviously, or He wouldn’t judge us, you still have to answer this question. No matter what you say about volition of man I will always have a second question and that question is: why did God chose to create history in which He knew there would be men who would reject Him? Now we don’t know why, we just know that He in fact did choose to create history in which there would be certainly men go to hell. And therefore that’s what we mean when we say sovereignty is the basis of volition. If it were not for God’s sovereign choice there wouldn’t be any volition in history; the fact that the creature chooses itself is a choice of God; God has chosen to create this kind of history.

Now this is expressed in Romans 9:15 with the words, “I have mercy upon whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” What’s He saying? He’s saying that is My right to choose who shall be saved and who shall be damned and on whose basis it will be… for example, God could have made a plan of salvation that went something like this. He could have said all people with the following shade of red hair will be saved; all other people will be rejected. He could have done that but He didn’t. He chose instead to design a plan of salvation where His mercy would come upon those who responded to His grace and damn those who didn’t, but whatever the system of salvation is in history God says I’ll have mercy on whom I will have mercy; it’s My business. God’s election is His own free choice. There was nothing outside of God, no big mirror in back of God in the throne room and God said let’s see, how ought I to create the universe, and consulted some outside external authority. He consulted only Himself.

The fifth point in the doctrine of election, careful to balance the doctrine, and that’s given in the sense that election always shows up… always shows up in history as creatures choosing for God’s plan. It’s expressed well in Genesis 18:19, talking about Abraham, “For I have known Abraham to the end that He may command his children in his household after him, that they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice, to the end that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken of him.”

So Paul in Acts 13:17, by saying at the beginning of his sermon, “God has chosen,” he has done what the B-52s did over Hanoi, he is now going to come in, he’s going to bomb his opposition and he’s going to keep every point of his position in perfect relation to every other point so no one can undercut him at any point because the whole thing is one network that holds together under God’s election and sovereign plan. He proceeds then, he says, you know that God “exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt,” so following the divine viewpoint framework where does Paul go? He goes from the call of Abraham to the Exodus, and then he deals with salvation, “with an high arm brought He them out of it.” That is God in all His glory in judgment salvation; again we have a doctrine of association with an event. The first one dealt with the foundations of history; we think, for example of election day and we use the word “election” in a democratic sense, democratic meaning man rules. Does man rule? No, there’s no such thing, really, as democracy. Man does not rule. The Greeks thought he did; well I’ve dropped my ballot in the box, I didn’t see God down at the precinct box, where was He, His vote wasn’t cast. Oh, it wasn’t? Who do you suppose causes the various slips during the campaign. Who is it, do you suppose sets up history to just come out the right way at the right time. Who is it after all that ordained certain men be created with certain characteristics? Is that the product of man or is that the product of God. And if you answer God, then I say to you there is no such thing as a democracy because a democracy means that man has the final say in election. No he doesn’t, God has the final say, even in a so-called democracy.

So God is framed as the author of history at this point. Then Paul, when he proceeds to the Exodus in judgment/salvation deals with the problem of what does it mean to be saved; we’ll see the importance of this in a moment, and therefore we have to go back through and review another doctrine which we haven’t reviewed in a while and that is the doctrine of judgment/salvation. Those two words must always be taken together; learn in your vocabulary to put these two words together or you’re going to be a sucker in what goes on in evangelical evangelistic circles when they say Jesus saves. And once in a while you’ll see a poster along the side of the road, “Jesus saves.” The reason they’re able to do this obviously is because “save” has been totally evacuated of real significance and meaning, it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. Saved from what? The word “saved” doesn’t mean anything. So that’s why you’ve always got to bracket the word, “salvation” with the other twin word “judgment.” Saved from judgment, that’s what, saved from something. What is this, how can we state it.

Again we have five propositions by which we express our belief in judgment/salvation. The two events in Scripture history that stand out to mirror judgment/salvation, if you want a concrete picture, you want to draw a picture to children that will communicate what judgment/salvation is, the flood of Noah and the Biblical Exodus. Two beautifully complete pictures of real judgment and real salvation; nothing psychological about it, nothing subjective, this is a real objective judgment/salvation.

We express it in five ways; we say first of all there’s always grace before judgment. God offered a peaceful proposition to Pharaoh, now Pharaoh, if you’d just kind of let My people go then it’d be all right, but Pharaoh if you don’t, I’m going to break you. Pharaoh said no you’re not, I’ll break You first, and the contest was on. But God was gracious before He judged. God is being gracious right now to the human race. For one thousand nine hundred years the gospel of the Christian has been taught all over the world; God is being gracious before someday the human race wakes up too late and all of a sudden, as the book of Revelation says, the sun glows four times brighter than it ever has in history before and the earth is wracked with geophysical phenomenon of judgment, and men are assaulted with epidemics the like of which we’ve never seen in history. And all of this and men will cry out why, why is this come upon us? For one thousand nine hundred years you were told it was coming; what did you do during that time, human race? Grace before judgment.

The second thing about this is God has perfect discrimination in His judgment. There’s nothing statistical, nothing chaotic about the way God judges. Yes, the floods can destroy the whole antediluvian world and the angel of death can smash the society of Egypt, but no one is killed by accident; all are killed by God’s sovereign decree.

A third thing is that when God judges there is only, always and everywhere, one way of salvation. When you speak of this in the light of the gospel people say oh, Christians are just old bigots, your a Christian narrow-minded fundy gospel, there’s only one way to be saved, what arrogance, there’s only one way to be saved. Now would you object if I said 2 + 2 is 4 and not 5; is it arrogant to assert that there is only answer to that equation. Not at all because that’s just the way it is. And so therefore it’s the same thing with the Christian gospel, there’s only one way to be saved, not because we’re arrogant. You’re not arrogant because you insist on getting a right answer at the end of an equation. And so theologians aren’t arrogant because they say there’s only one way to be saved. There only has been one way; were there three arks floating around in the ocean to see who could beat one another into the new world? Were there blood and paint put on the doors of Egypt, and a few other things, maybe somebody coated their house with fiber glass and that would have kept the angel of death out. No, there was only one source and that was blood, so there only, always and everywhere will be one and only one way of salvation.

Another thing about this judgment/salvation, is that every time God judges and offers man a way out, the way out doesn’t come to man automatically. Noah, finally, had to take those plans, wherever he got them, he had to take those plans and build ark, trusting that the thing would really work after he built it, didn’t he? He went aboard the ark seven days before it began to rain, everybody laughing at him. The people in the Exodus had to take the blood, you know they could have said, gee, I don’t know if this blood thing is going to work, why don’t I just take a long vacation up the Nile some place, that would have been an option, but instead they chose to trust, to appropriate by faith the way of salvation. And so men are always saved the same way; they must in the end trust God’s promises.

Finally, the fifth thing about judgment/salvation in the Scriptures is that whenever you have judgment or salvation occurring, all of nature is involved with man. It’s not just a psychological salvation. In Egypt you have the tremendous plagues all over the land and if Immanuel Velikovsky’s research is right, you go to the Norsemen and the Scandinavian legends of northern Europe, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and you find the great Scandinavian legends of ambrosia from heaven. What’s that? The same thing as the manna that came down during the days of the Exodus; this was a global catastrophe that happened, the earth was almost destroyed during the Exodus, a tremendous thing. Years later when you have the long day of Joshua the people tut-tut, that’s just a little ancient myth. Oh really, isn’t it strange that in the western hemisphere the Indians in the North, South and Central American areas have the legend recorded of a long night, as Velikovsky remarked it’s strange how mythology varies longitudinally. So there is historical evidence that these things did occur; both nature and man were affected.

With that background Paul begins to set the framework for his appeal of trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation. He goes on and he says in Acts 13:18 that God put up with them for forty years, [18, “And about the time of forty years suffered He their manners in the wilderness.” Verse 19, the conquest of the land, [“And when He had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, He divided their land to them by lot.”] Notice he’s following the divine viewpoint framework. One correction, in verse 20 you’ll see four hundred and fifty years. [20, “And after that He gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet.”] That should be connected to the verb in verse 19, “divide the land,” otherwise you’re going to have a conflict with 1 Kings 6:1. “ Four hundred and fifty” does not belong to the verb, “gave judges,” it belongs to the verb “divide land.” History buffs and chronologists who like more data on this I refer you to the footnotes and resources in Appendix A of the third framework pamphlet. [21, “And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years.”]

Verse 22, “And when He had removed him,” that is Saul, got rid of the king, notice, God has moral judgment in history, “He raised up unto them David to be their king;” and then he says David is “a man after My own heart, [which shall fulfill all My will.]” Now verse 22 ends the preparation for the Jesus story. Everything you read from verse 16 on through verse 22 is just prepatory to announcing Jesus Christ. Please notice how much time the apostle prepares people for the Jesus story. He doesn’t waltz in and discuss sweet little Jesus, holding lambs in His lap. That is not the place to begin.

Notice again before we leave the passage, look at your verbs beginning in verse 17; notice the subject, the verb, the subject, the verb, in verse 17, God chose, God exalted; verse 18, God suffered; verse 19, God destroyed, God divided; verse 20, God gave judges; verse 21, God gave them Saul; verse 22, God removed Saul, God raised up David, God said…” who’s the prime actor in history according to election. God is, and so having carefully prepared people, and in fact said to them, now people, this is my framework of history, this is what I come to you with. Now within this big framework of history, now I preach Christ to you. See, Christ can’t be preached from the framework you people pick up in the 7^th grade by some humanist teacher some place. That’s not the framework you can preach the gospel to, or some high school teacher, not that all high school teachers teach this way but there are many in the system that do; basic humanists, that history is just a pile of facts, you just learn the pile of facts, you kind of assemble it at 2:00 a.m. in the morning for the text the next day, you regurgitate it all out on the exam and then you forget it. And that’s the picture of history most people have. Grocery list, that’s all it is. But that’s not the way God wants us to learn history; there’s movements in history, God has a plan for history, it’s all connected together; the tragedy is we’re never told this because after all, the public schools must remain neutral.

So Paul, beginning with a true divine viewpoint of history starts with verse 23 and here he introduces Christ, “Of this man’s seed” and in the Greek it’s emphatic, not any man’s seed but “this man’s seed,” “this man’s seed,” not a chance. Here he’s emphasizing election once more; “hath God according to” not “His promise,” “according to promise,” it’s anarthrus, without the article, he’s not talking about a particular promise, he’s emphasizing again doctrine of election, doctrine of God’s sovereignty, God is in control of this thing, “God raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus.” Now when he uses the word “Savior” in verse 23 his listeners understand, oh I see Paul, you mean salvation, not from my psychological disturbance that I have, not that I’m paranoid and if I just invite Jesus into my life I’ll have a big chest. That’s not the kind of salvation that is mentioned in the gospels; this is salvation from moral rebellion against God; the same kind of salvation, the bloody kind of salvation that was given in the Exodus. So the word “Savior” here in verse 23 means “Savior” in the Old Testament sense of the word, not in the 20^th century sense of the word.

And thus in verse 24-25 he has to spend some time on John the Baptist because remember, he’s preaching in Galatia, this is close to a John the Baptist cult; remember John the apostle has to deal with John the Baptist cult, a group of people running around Asia saying that John was the Messiah and that’s why in verse 25 he says John is not the Messiah, he said I am not He, I am not even worthy to unlace His shoes. So that’s a little diversion he had to cope with, which, by the way, shows you when Paul taught the gospel to a group of people he had done his G-2. He had done his work and knew oh-oh, there’s going to be some people in this congregation who have been snowed by the Baptist cult, that’s John the Baptist cult, not the Baptist Church, by John the Baptist cult, and so therefore I’ve got to deal with this thing. And so I’ll just turn this right off at the head of the pass so we won’t get static on down. [“When John had first preached before his coming the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. [25] And as John fulfilled his course, he said, Whom think ye that I am? I am not he. But, behold, there cometh one after me, whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose.”

Now in verse 26 he comes to his final announcement of Christ and His ministry and His challenge to the nation. He returns to the formal address, he says that the message is to all, not just Jews but includes Gentiles there in the synagogue that Saturday morning, [26, “Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you fears God, to you is the word of this salvation sent.” Verse 27, “For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not,” now he’s getting set for a little surprise at the end, and that’s why when you read verse 27 it sounds like kind of a round about way of getting to the gospel. What’s that got to do with the whole thing? Because the rulers didn’t know him, they have fulfilled them [in condemning Him.]” They didn’t know the Word but they fulfilled the Word. What’s that saying? Same thing that he said before, who’s in charge of history? God or man. Is it man who says to God, well God, you know I know that’s what you said but after all you know, Satan said that we could eat of the tree and Satan said if I eat of the tree maybe… maybe I won’t die. You say if I eat of the tree I’m going to die, so I in all my autonomous intellect am going to sit here and I’m going to design a test to make sure God or Satan is right. I will be the ultimate arbiter between God and Satan; that’s autonomy. The very fact that I have said I am going to decide between God and Satan is already sin. It’s already saying God, Your word isn’t trustworthy so I have to add to your word a little test to make sure because maybe you don’t really mean what you say.

It’s the same thing Paul’s coping with in verse 27. He knows what’s going to happen; just as soon as he unloads his little goodie about the Messiah, that congregation is going to go bananas, and the tendency they’re going to do is they’re going to say well, that’s Paul’s opinion, that’s what he says, we don’t bother with what he says, after all, there’s a lot of good people, godly people, pious people, that don’t believe that way. So we’ll let Paul have his belief and we’ll have our belief and we’ll all trot along our merry way, each having our own independent and opposite beliefs. But Paul knows that that’s exactly what they’re going to do, so at the very beginning of his address he begins to bulldoze the foundation of that house by saying that you are going to fulfill God’s Word whether you know the Word or know. Sorry, it’s not my opinion, Paul says to the congregation; it happens to be God’s opinion, and therefore you people are doomed.

You can sit there and say well, that’s Paul’s opinion, but that’s exactly what the people said in Jesus’ day. Jesus made His claims, Paul said, and Pilate and Caiaphas and Judas and all the other apostates said well, that’s just what Jesus said, that doesn’t really grab me, that doesn’t touch my life. It doesn’t? Now isn’t it interesting that Pilate, Caiaphas and Judas fulfilled Jesus’ words perfectly. Rebellion, and here’s the basic principle behind all this, rebellion of the creature does not thwart the sovereignty of the Creator. Rebellion by any creature does not thwart in the least the sovereignty of the Creator. Somebody put it this way, God’s plan is like flipping a coin and the way it goes is heads, God wins; tales, you lose. And that’s exactly the way history is and that’s what Paul’s warning; don’t sit there and say it’s just my opinion because you people will be blessed by submitting or you’ll be damned by not but either way, God will have His way. God is glorified by the people that fry in hell for eternity because He has displayed His great character to them and they have rejected. And then God is also blessed by the people that dwell with Him forever in heaven because God has shown them His character.

So he goes through, verse 28 and 29, please notice the vocabulary again, [28, “And though they found no cause of death in Him, yet desired they Pilate that He should be slain.”] Verse 29, “And when they had fulfilled all that was written of Him,” “they had fulfilled all that was written, “they took Him down from the tree, and laid Him in a sepulcher.” Notice the emphasis on fulfillment. Then notice verse 30, the prime actor of history, “But God raised Him from the dead.” Verse 31, “And He was seen many days of them which came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people.” Verse 31 is an attempt to show the evidences, so that people can say that this really happened in history, it wasn’t that Paul had a Damascus Road experience, which is basically conspicuously absent from verse 31. Paul does not mention that he saw the resurrected Jesus; that could be explained away too easily, he says I refer you to the objective witnesses. [32, “And we declare unto you glad tidings,” or the gospel, “how that the promise which was made unto the fathers.”

Verse 33, look at the verb, “fulfilled,” again the prime actor and plan of history, “[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.” He quotes Psalm 2, the coronation hymn of the Messiah, and moves quickly to verse 34, “when I will give you the sovereign mercies of David.” That’s what that’s talking about, “the sovereign mercies of David.”

[34, “And as concerning that He raised Him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, He said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David.” The Davidic Covenant God said, My promise I made to David isn’t going to be undone by little Herod the Great wiping out the babies in Bethlehem; do you think I’m going to be swayed by little peon Herod the Great? Not at all. Do you think I’m going to be swayed by Pontius Pilate, he kills My Son? Do you think that’s going to stop My plan? Not at all.

Verses 35, 36 and 37 recreate and repeat the argument of Peter in Acts 2; there in Acts 2 you’ll recall how Peter quoted exactly this verse, verse 35, “[Wherefore He saith also in another psalm,] Thou shalt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption,” and he drew the same consequent argument, 36 and 37, that Paul does. [36, “For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption; [37] But He, whom God raised again, saw no corruption.”] Do you know where both of those guys got it from? Jesus, in Luke 24. Jesus taught these men how to handle the Old Testament. Some scholars even believe this, and there is something to be said for this because of the way the text is constructed. Some scholars have said that there was a document, a little handbook that was passed around in the early centuries of the Church before the New Testament, and as you went through this handbook, all the handbook had was quotes out of the Old Testament. It was a verse list given to the Church by Jesus Christ before He ascended to heaven, and that’s why all these sermons use the same set of Old Testament quotes. Again and again these guys are using the same verses which indicates they must have been taught from the same teacher.

Acts 13:38-41 is his invitation. It’s not Just As I Am, but it is an invitation. Invitations are scriptural; even the song, Just As I Am is fine, the problem is that people misuse it, it’s a manipulative device, the song is very beautiful, in many places very Scriptural. 38-41 is Paul’s system of evangelizing. Now we do not have to go through all the details, the fine points, but I want you to look at these verses and notice the tone… the tone of these verses and look how different the tone is from many evangelistic invitations today. It’s been my impression of listening to some evangelism today that Jesus is kind of a beggar, poor Jesus, on His knees outside your heart’s door, hoping that you’re going to turn and come to the knob to open it because poor Jesus just begs for you? Is Jesus a beggar or is Jesus a majestic king? Now look at the tone of this invitation. There’s no begging here.

Acts 13:38, “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins,” so he ties all salvation to the person of Christ, no outside escape. Verse 39, “And by Him all that believe are justified from all things,” for advanced students of the New Testament verse 39 is one of your proofs that the apostle Paul, early in his ministry, arrived at the doctrine of justification by faith; it was not a doctrine developed late in the Church as the later epistles were written. Right at this early point, his first recorded sermon, right off the starting line Paul is teaching justification by faith. Justification by faith, what is that? A good question because a lot of people don’t know what justification by faith is. After all, it’s been since the 1500s that this was used in Europe; it started wars, this doctrine. It still is, what do you think Northern Ireland is all about? A lot of it’s political but there are people in Northern Ireland who do think there’s a difference between the Catholic view of justification by faith and the Protestant view and they think it’s worthwhile enough to shoot somebody over, which may indicate a lot of things but at least it indicates that they think pretty much of the doctrine. What is the doctrine of justification by faith? There’s two views; for your own edification you ought to know these two views, even if you don’t buy the Protestant position, even if you are like a lot of the evangelicals who are basically Catholics in their heart.

There are two ways of looking at justification by faith; one is the way you meet with Roman Catholicism, and the way you see it in the charismatic circles and some good old fundy circles, and that is that here’s my heart and God injects grace by regeneration in my heart and God does a work in my heart, and on the basis of God’s gracious work in my heart, on that basis I am accepted with God, because God smiles as He looks down in my heart and He sees the Holy Spirit there and He sees Jesus in my heart, it causes Him to accept me. Now that is widely prevalent in evangelical circles, I’m not just being sarcastic against Romanism. This is widely present in our own circles and if Martin Luther and John Calvin saw it they’d vomit because this is a blasphemy. Luther had to go through hours, days, weeks, months of agony in a monastery because of this doctrine. You say I don’t see anything wrong with it. You don’t? Is the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ in the heart; have they done a complete work in any living human being’s heart yet? They have not, and therefore how do you dare to say that you are acceptable to God on the basis of what is being done in your heart that is still not finished. And Luther knew that; he knew his sin nature enough to know that he was still a sinner, that his heart was still depraved, that therefore he could not depend upon that for a sure standing before a holy, righteous and just God, and therefore it drove him almost loony before it drove him back to the text of Romans where he finally recovered and said ah, that’s not what the Scriptures taught ever.

You see, the real doctrine of this says bologna on the heart, let’s go to the Father’s right hand. Who is our high priest who takes his finished work before his heavenly Father and says the cross has paid for that person’s sin completely and totally. On that basis I have righteousness from God and it’s sure because it’s finished, the work of Christ on the cross is finished. The work of Christ in my heart is not finished and I can’t base my salvation on something unfinished; I have to base my salvation on something that’s complete, complete, complete! And the only thing that’s complete is Christ’s atonement on the cross and that atonement is being presented perfectly in heaven before the Father, right now, by His Son, the high priest, and there’s the basis for justification. You are never justified on the basis of the indwelling Spirit; you are never justified on the basis of being born again; you are never justified on the basis of Jesus in the heart. You are only and ever justified on the basis of Christ’s finished work, presented before His Father in the throne room of God. Protestantism looks to heaven; Catholicism and the charismatics and some evangelicals look to the heart. One looks up and the other looks down; take your pick but you can’t have both. Either one or the other school is right and a lot hangs on how you decide which one is right.

Paul looks on the Protestant position. He said, in verse 39, you “are justified from all things,” meaning a perfect and complete justification, and that you could not be justified by works; [“from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.” Now verse 40 and 41, as he finishes his invitation he doesn’t say now folks, that Jesus has done this great work, please accept Jesus. He doesn’t close his invitation with a plea; he closes his invitation with a threat. [40] “Beware therefore,” logical conclusion to a message, “Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; [41] Behold, ye despisers, and perish: for I work a work in your days,” that’s a quotation from Habakkuk 1 and it refers to the Assyrians coming in to discipline Israel in 721 BC, a horrible time of judgmental suffering because of rejection of God’s grace. And verse 41 is a command to the nation in Paul’s day, keep on rejecting Christ, people, and you’ll meet Him, but you’ll meet Him not as Savior, you’ll meet Him as your judge.

That’s a threat type of invitation, and if we’re to be honest with the text, and if we’re to be honest with the God of Scripture, the God of Paul, the God of Abraham, that God doesn’t come to you and He doesn’t come to me on His knees begging. That God comes to us from down, He looks down at us, we don’t look down at Him, we look up to Him, and we see our King, our Savior and our Judge. And he says I am sovereign over all facts in your life, over every area of your life. I ask for you to respond by grace, I ask you to respond to Me and to My offer, but whether you do or not, be assured of this, I’ll have My way in the end. Now that’s the God of the Scripture, that’s the God of Paul, no begging, no knocking, he just tells you and you can take it or leave it. That’s the message of Scripture. The only way, as he says in verse 39 is believe, that whoever will believe, those are the people, and only the people that will receive blessing.