Paul Preaches Jesus, Part 2
Acts 13:23-37
Turn in your Bibles to the 13th chapter of Acts and just hold there for a moment as we look at a...an introduction to set our sights on what it is that God would say to us this morning. The Bible is the record of Jesus Christ. It is God presenting Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, the Savior of the world; and whether you're talking about the Old Testament or the New Testament, they are both equally concerned with presenting Jesus Christ. The Old Testament presents the Christ who will come. The New Testament presents the Christ who did come. Jesus Christ Himself, for example, said that He was the subject of the Old Testament when He said this, "In the volume of the Book, it is written of Me." Christ's portrait in the Old Testament looks forward. Christ's portrait in the New Testament looks backward, but it all focuses on Jesus Christ; and so both the Old Testament and the New Testament reveal the divine, sovereign hand of God as the master artist painting a portrait of Jesus Christ...
In the Old Testament, God keeps promising a Deliverer, a Savior, a King, a Messiah; and in the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth fulfills every single prophecy that God ever made of a Messiah. The ones that are yet to be fulfilled by Him will be fulfilled in His Second Coming, which we will see tonight. You go back to the very first book in the Bible, and you find in Genesis 3:15 that God says, "Through man, I will destroy the power of Satan. There will be born One of the seed of the woman." Now, if you know anything about procreation, you know the woman has no seed. There is a prophecy of a virgin-born man, and that He would bruise the serpent's head. This virgin-born man would deal a killing blow to Satan...
That was the first Messianic prophecy so beautifully fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who was born of a virgin. Isaiah had even said in chapter 7 verse 14, "A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a child," and it was Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus fulfilled the virgin-born prophecy, and He also fulfilled the prophecy of victory over Satan as He won the victory at the cross; and the writer of Hebrews says, "He destroyed the power of the devil in His own death."
The prophet Isaiah says in chapter 9 verse 6 that, "This Messiah who comes would be God." He is called the Mighty God... In Psalm 2:7, God says, "This is My beloved Son," and Jesus claimed to be both God and the Son of God; and He substantiated both claims...The prophet Micah said, "When He comes, He will be born in Bethlehem." Jesus was born in Bethlehem...Moses told us in the writing of the Pentateuch that the Messiah would be a son of Abraham...Matthew tells us, "Jesus was a son of Abraham."
Later, it tells us, "He would be son of Isaac, that the line would come through Isaac." Luke chapter 3 tells us Jesus came through Isaac, verse 23 and 34. In Numbers 24:17, it says, "The Messiah will be a star out of Jacob." In Luke chapter 3 verses 23 and 34 again, we find that Jesus comes through Jacob. In Genesis 49:10, the Bible says that, "Jesus will come through the tribe of Judah." The Messiah will be of that line...The Book of Revelation calls Him the lion of the tribe of Judah.
Again, in Luke 3:23 and 33, "He is from the tribe of Judah." The Bible says that, "Out of Judah, He will come from Jesse." Isaiah chapter 11 and verse 1, and in Luke 3:23 and 32, we find that Jesus came from Jesse. In Jeremiah 23:5, Jeremiah capped it off with these words, "Behold, the days are coming when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and He will reign forever," and that's one of many prophecies, including 2 Samuel 7 and Jeremiah 33, that the Messiah would come through the line of David; and the New Testament repeatedly says that, "Jesus was the son of David." In Matthew 2:16, He fulfills that prophecy.
In Deuteronomy 18:18, the Word of God came to Moses, "I will raise up a prophet from among the...their countrymen, like you. Like you, Moses, and I will put My Words in His mouth," and God there promised a prophet like Moses; and Jesus came along, and the people in Galilee looked at Him in John chapter 6 verse 14, and said, "This is that Prophet like unto Moses."...Psalm 1:10, God said that, "Whoever the Messiah is, He will be a priest after the order of Melchizedek. A priest, not for a time, but a priest for...what?...for eternity forever."
And the Book of Hebrews from beginning to end presents conclusively that Jesus was a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Psalm chapter 2 and verse 6 tells us that He will be a King. Second Samuel 7 says He will be a King; and it's repeated myriad times; and when Jesus arrived, they asked Him if He was a king, and He said yes; and when they crucified Him, they, not knowing what they were doing, put over his cross, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," and so people got mad, and they said, "No, put He said He is King of the Jews," and Pilate said, "What I have written, I have written," and he was right. He was a King. In Zechariah 9:9, five centuries before it happened, the prophet said Jesus would ride into Jerusalem on an ass. Five centuries later, on what we know as Palm Sunday, a week before His execution, Jesus rode into the city, to the Hosannas of the people exactly as Zechariah had predicted. Matthew chapter 21 verses 2 to 7. In Zechariah 11:12, the prophet again predicted that the Messiah would be sold for 30 pieces of silver. In Matthew 26:15, Judas sold Him, not for 29 and not for 31, but for 30 pieces of silver. Five centuries before the prophet had said it.
In Zechariah 13:7, the prophet predicted the smiting of the shepherd and the scattering of the sheep; and in Matthew 26:56, when Jesus was taken to be crucified, the Bible says, "And all His disciples forsook Him and fled." The shepherd was smitten, and the sheep were scattered. Isaiah chapter 11 verse 2 tells us the fullness of the holy Spirit would rest upon in the sevenfold fullness of the Spirit; and in Matthew 3:16 and 17, when Jesus was being baptized by John, the Bible says, "And the Spirit of God descended upon Him like a dove," fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah.
In Isaiah 35 verses 5 and 6, the Bible says, "When Messiah comes, He will give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and voices to the dumb." And in Matthew chapter 9 verse 35, it says that Jesus went everywhere in all the villages, and He healed all those sick and all those with diseases. And you read the record of the Gospels and, exactly as the prophet had said, He gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and voices to the dumb. Psalm 41:9, the prophet indicates that He would be betrayed by His own familiar fried who had eaten bread with Him; and in John 13 verses 21 to 30, Jesus sitting around the table, the last night before His death, dipped the sop and gave it to the one next to Him, who was Judas, and He ate bread with Him, and then He went out into the night and betrayed Jesus, fulfilling to the very letter Psalm 41:9. Zechariah 11:13, the Bible says that the money that was taken would be thrown down, and that it would be picked up and used for a potter's field. In Matthew 27 verses 5 to 7, Judas threw the money down. The price was taken and purchased a potter's field, exactly fulfilling Zechariah's prophecy.
Those are just a few, and all of the details of the life of Jesus Christ just fulfill prophecy after prophecy after prophecy. There's no way it could be manufactured. It's a mathematical impossibility....Powerful argument of prophecy sweeps away all doubt that Jesus of Nazareth is not the Messiah, the Deliverer of Israel. Now this becomes the secondary theme in Paul's message, and I say secondary in the order of their appearance, not in the order of their importance; and, as Paul is preaching here in the 13th chapter of Acts, he majors in this second area of his message on Jesus, the fulfillment of prophecy.
Now, lemme back up and give you a little bit of background. The Book of Acts if the record of the growth of the church. The church has exploded in Jerusalem. When it was finished there, the Lord had designed that it would go to Judea and Samaria, which were the neighboring territories; and the church went there and exploded, and people were saved and communities became converted to Christ and established congregations or assemblies of believers; and then, once that was done, a beachhead was established in the pagan world, and that beachhead was Antioch of Syria; and a group of believers were established in Antioch of Syria; and God had designed it from that little congregation in that famous city. Missionaries would be sent to reach the uttermost part of the earth.
So it took a few years until that congregation was strong enough. They had five wonderful leaders. The two key leaders were men named Paul and Barnabas, and God said, "You've grown. You've established yourselves. You are the beachhead. Now you're gonna go," and He said in chapter 13 at the very beginning, the holy Spirit said, "Separate Me Barnabas and Paul for the work unto which I have called them," and He sent Paul and Barnabas out on the first great historical event of the missionary outreach of the church as they went to the pagan world to preach Jesus Christ. And off they went, as we've seen in our previous study in chapter 13. The first place they came was the hometown of Cyprus, the home island, I should say, of Barnabas, called Cyprus. They preached the Gospel from one end of Cyprus to the next. They won a great victory over a demon-possessed sorcerer by the name of Bar-jesus or Elymas. They had seen Christ conquer.
Then the Spirit of God directed them north. They took a ship from Paphos north. They landed at Pamphylia in Asia Minor, the territory known as Galatia. The Spirit of God directed them to Antioch of Pisidia, not the same Antioch from which they came. They arrived in Antioch Pisidia after a treacherous journey through the Taurus Mountains, which Paul had been very sick... First thing they did according to verse 14, and we pick up the narrative there, "When they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and sat down." There was a ready-made audience in a Jewish synagogue. People who knew the Old Testament.
Paul, being a Jew and being a rabbi and perhaps even wearing the garb of a rabbi, knew that they would recognize him as such, or assumed so. There was also the custom that after the preliminaries that made up synagogue activity, any invited guest who was of a dignitary category would be invited to speak, and so he knew he might have a tremendous opportunity; so he and Barnabas went there. There was the ready-made audience, a great place to begin; and that became their pattern all the way through their missionary journeys, didn't it? They would go to the Jewish synagogue. I think he went there, too, because his heart ached for Israel.
So they were sitting there, and the...verse 15 says, "After the reading of the Law and the Prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, 'Ye men and brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.'" The Holy Spirit had set it up, and last week we looked a little bit at the holy Spirit's public relations activity, didn't we? Now the Holy Spirit sets up publicity and gets a promotion going to start what He wants. The Spirit of God done all...had done all the preparation. Paul just stood up to preach. He begins this tremendous sermon in verse 16, with the words, "Men of Israel and ye that fear God, listen!"
There are two kinds of people in the synagogue. Israelites and those that fear God. God-fearers, and that's a really a proper term referring to converted Gentiles. So he says, "You who are of Israel and you who are God-fearers, converted Gentiles, listen to what I say." He's about to unload a...a bombshell on 'em to put it mildly, but he's very subtle, and he doesn't get to Jesus Christ until verse 23; and if this sermon is only excerpts of what he really said, it may have been a lot longer than that.
In this sermon, he presents, as he always does in all of his life, the fact that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. Jesus of Nazareth. Now, the sermon falls into three parts. Jesus Christ is presented first as the culmination of history; secondly, as the fulfillment of prophecy; thirdly, as the justifier of sinners. Those three things.
Now, last week, we saw Paul's first point, that Jesus is the culmination of history. The question is often asked, "Where is history going?" There is the answer. It's going toward Jesus Christ. He is the fulfillment of history. He is the only one that can right the wrongs and reverse the injustices. He is the only one that can remove the curse that separates men from God. He is the only one who can give meaning to life individually and life collectively, which is history. And last week, we went into the fact that history is His story. That's history. God has been active in history. God has been designing to redeem men, and the Redeemer is Christ. If Christ does not come, men are not redeemed. If men are not redeemed, history is a mockery, going nowhere but to an eternal hell.
So in those verses 17 to 22, which we saw last week, Paul declares that history comes down to Jesus Christ. You say then, "Well, history's over. We're still going on." History is peaked out in Christ. It was uphill from there. It's downhill from there. Christ is the apex of history. They looked up to Christ as the crowning event of history. We look back to Christ as the crowning event of history, with one eye on the future, because He's coming again.
As we shall see tonight, He didn't fulfill everything the first time. He has to come again, but history resolves in Jesus Christ. That's His point. God did all this. He goes through their history. God led you out, brought you into Egypt, took care of you in the wilderness, brought you into the Promised Land, divided the nation unto you, gave you the portions that you were supposed to have. Even when you wanted a king, He gave you a king. Then He raised up His king David, and David ruled. And then you come to verse 23. Let's pick it up there.
"Of this man's seed," that is of David's seed, "hath God according to His promise, raised unto Israel a Savior." And right there, if you stop, every Jew could say, "Amen. Amen, Brother Paul, preach it." The Savior's coming through David's seed. That's God's plan. We know all of that.
Then he unloaded the wallop with one word, the last word of verse 23, what is it? Jesus. I'm quite confident they did not expect to hear that. They did expect all the rest. And, you know, Paul was wise, because the Jewish people just live for their historical place. They live for the fact that they're in the plan of God. They have based their eternal salvation for centuries on the fact that God is their God, see. And so Paul recites their history. "Yes, God is controlling your destiny. God is controlling your history. Your history is going toward a Savior, the seed of David." And they could've said, "Amen," all the way down and then, wham, Jesus...
Yes, Jesus is the culmination of history. God designed men, as we saw last week, for fellowship, right? That was their purpose, just to exist for fellowship with God, and to give Him glory. Men sinned, falling from that. God says, "I wanna recover." There's only one way He can recover them, and that's through Christ, right? And so Christ is necessary for the point of history. History was here in the beginning to create people who could worship and praise God. History is now not fulfilling its purpose. Only those who come to Jesus Christ will feel the whole meaning of the world.
So Christ is the culmination of history. Without Him, history has lost its meaning, 'cause man can never be reconciled with God; and so, yes, history will resolve in the Savior who will bring men to God, making it possible; and that Savior, He says, is Jesus. That verse 23 is the bridge to his second point. Jesus was, you know, the seed of David, wasn't he? Through the line of Mary, He had the blood of David. Through the line of Joseph, He had the right to the throne from David. So both ways He was David's seed.
Jesus is the culmination of history, and now Paul moves into a sweeping statement, secondarily. Why? Because of this...They would say, if He stopped here, "Ahhhhh, Jesus could never be the fulfillment. He didn't even have a Kingdom, and how do we know? Why should I believe Jesus is the one?" So, secondly, he says, "Because of the fulfillment of prophecy." The reason Jesus is presented as the Messiah is because He fulfilled as the Messianic prophecy. By that, I simply mean, if in the Old Testament, God says such and such will happen, such and such will happen, such and such will happen, and Jesus comes along, and it all happens to Him, He is the fulfillment of God's prediction, right? That's exactly what you have. God's laying all these prophecies about Messiah. Every Jew knew that. Jesus comes along and fulfills every one of them.
Now, he doesn't expect those Jews to just believe that because he tells 'em, so he begins then to go down the line of the prophecies. And from verse 23 through 37, Paul outlines the fulfillments of prophecy in the life of Jesus of Nazareth that qualify Him to be the Messiah.
Let's begin in 23. "Of this man's seed...of David's seed... hath God, according to His promise, raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus." Notice the word promise. God said, "I will raise up a Savior according to the seed of David," right? Second Samuel chapter 7. Do you think God keeps His promises? I think He does. I don't think He has the capacity not to. Numbers 23:19, write it down, look it up. Isaiah 46:9 and 10, God cannot lie. God has no capacity for that, and God has promised a Savior through the line of David. Jeremiah 33:15 was...well, let's just jump down to verse 17. "For thus saith the Lord: 'David shall never lack a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel.'" In other words, when the Messiah comes, it'll be through David. David's line will never peter out so that there is no descendent. David's line will never be frustrated and cease. There will always be the line of David. David will never lack a man to sit on the throne. Messiah will be of the seed of David. God said it would never be any other way. No one would ever supplant David on the throne.
Remember in 2 Samuel 7, God said to David, "You're gonna have an eternal king come out of your loins." Well, that's the first promise, and Jesus fulfilled it. He was born of the seed of David. If there had have been a king in Israel; and, of course, there wasn't because they were being ruled by outside power. If there had have been a legitimate king apart from Herod, who was a usurper, if there had a been a legitimate king, it would've been Jesus. If there had a been a legitimate king before Jesus, technically, it could well have been Joseph who had the royal right. Of course, the Herod's had been instituted as David's kingdom had been set aside until Messiah came.
But, nevertheless, Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of being of the line of David. In verse 24, Paul then moves ahead, and he is going to prove that Jesus is Messiah by the fulfillment of prophecy; and I think we have, as I say, only excerpts here, and so we'll endeavor to fill in a little bit.
Now, the first great prophecy that Paul deals with in regard to the coming of Messiah, was the prophecy that there would be a forerunner to Messiah. When Messiah was to come, there was gonna be somebody who would come before Messiah and get everything ready, right? To prepare the way. Look at verse 24. When John...and there's that somebody, John the Baptist, "When John had first preached." Incidentally, he's not called John the Baptist because he was a Baptist. There were no such things in those days. He's called John the Baptist, because he was a baptizer. The Baptists have taken their name from him.
"When John had first preached, before His coming, the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. Even as John fulfilled his course." Stop right there. God had desired that there would be a forerunner, right? Now, notice the word fulfilled. You know, that's an important word. That indicates there was a prophecy fulfilled. You see it in verse 29? Fulfilled. In verse 22, fulfilled. In verse 33, God hath fulfilled. Now, here, you see, you're talking about prophecy. Prophecy is fulfilled. The first prophecy that Paul alludes to is that of the forerunner; and he says, "When John came, before His coming, and the His there should be a capital H. The coming of Messiah. In verse 24. John was preaching the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. You say, "Well, what was that al about?" All right, watch. Before Messiah to arrive - here's Messiah's arrival. Before Messiah was to arrive, there was to a people-prepared for Messiah's arrival. Right? John, then, was preaching repentance, get ready, Messiah is coming.
There's a great principle here. John's baptism was not Christian baptism. Christian baptism didn't come in till after the death and resurrection of Christ, right? Romans chapter 6 tells us that when we are saved, we are buried with Him, and by baptism into His death and resurrection; and water baptism symbolizes that - His death and resurrection for us. Right? But before His death and resurrection, what you have here is the baptism of repentance. What is it? It's ceremonial cleansing going on among the Jews. Why? Because they were really setting themselves aside to get ready for Messiah.
John would preach, "Messiah is coming. Turn from your sin and prepare your heart to receive the Messiah." And they were confessing sin, and their being baptized was like a ceremonial outward confession to the world that they were coming apart from sin to get ready for Messiah. You got that? The baptism of repentance was a ceremonial confession of an inward confession of sin as they desire to prepare their hearts for Messiah. So John was getting a whole people ready; and was it a large group? Sure, they were flocking out there to him. John the Baptist was preparing a people so that when Messiah came, their hearts would be ready to receive Messiah.
And, you know, that brings up a good point, just as a footnote. I believe the sequence is still valid. Before anybody really comes to know Messiah, before anybody even in this age becomes to know Jesus Christ, there must be repentance. There must be the turning from sin in the heart, and then the turning to Christ. I think part of the reason that we get so many shallow confer...conversions today and have a lot more abortions sometimes when we do new births, and the reason we have so many church members who don't really know Jesus Christ, is because there is either an omission or a minimizing of the concepts of repentance.
I heard a guy on television the other night, and he was talking, and he...he kept saying, "Try Jesus. Just try Jesus." He musta said it ten or fifteen times. I don't like that statement. It was a ridiculous statement. It was like Jesus was a commodity sold on a commercial. "Try Jesus." When you come to Jesus Christ, you turn from every other thing in your life. It's a repentance from all things turning totally to Christ. It's not like, "Well, I've got a lotta things, but I'll try that for a while." ________
I...I don't respond well to those things. Repentance is necessary to be preached, and John knew it, and God knew it, and that's why God had John do it. So John was preparing for Messiah. Well, every Jew kn