To The Uttermost

Acts chapter 13. We are looking at Acts chapters 13 and 14 as God revealing to us the sending to the uttermost of Paul and Barnabas and also a picture for us of what He wants to do with us, with each one of us. You and I are His disciples just like Paul and Barnabas are and He is sending us just as He sent them. And as they go to these different cities, which is how we are looking at this study in Acts 13, we are seeing various ways in which the Lord works in either preparation of the disciples or in the presentation of their message or in the protection of the disciples. We are going to try and keep you

up on where they are on a map that you can't read, I know, but bear with me and I will try my best to show you where they are. They began in Antioch in Syria, which is north of Israel, north of Jerusalem. That's where the church is now headquartered for the most part and the disciples are moving out from there. Antioch was the place of preparation, the place of preparation as we began our study. It's a place where in chapter 13 verse 1,

Luke writes that the disciples, the Christians that were there, ministered unto the Lord and fasted. Their hearts were prepared and we have encouraged that that's what we need to be doing as the church. It's not just simply expecting God to do for us, but we are ministers unto the Lord. We are His kingdom of priests and that's our primary function as believers is to minister unto the Lord. As they ministered unto the Lord, God prepared their hearts and

said separate out for me Paul and Barnabas for the work that I have prepared for them to do. So Antioch was a place of preparation, Antioch in Syria. Next the disciples went to Cyprus, came down to Seleucia and got on board a ship and went to Cyprus, which is right here. They landed at Salamis and Cyprus is their place of opposition, the place where they were really first hit the opposition once they were sent out. Barnabas and John

Mark, Barnabas was from Cyprus, had family there since John Mark is Barnabas' nephew. They're his family too. We talked about how there was probably rejection from family as they came to Cyprus at Salamis. Nothing is recorded in the words so we don't know what effect if any was made by the disciples at Salamis or what resistance they had. We don't

usually opposition, especially in spiritual things, especially if you were saved before they were, the rest of the family or whatever. There's just kind of some opposition there. So they received opposition as they hit Cyprus. And then they traveled 90 miles across land to Paphos, the capital of Cyprus, where the opposition became more blatant and more satanic as Elimas the sorcerer faced them off and tried to turn the procouncil's heart away

but during their missionary journeys, they were robbed. They were put upon. And so it's not hard to imagine that they possibly were accosted in a cross-country foot trip from Salamis to Paphos. So they received a lot of opposition. And once you set your heart to serve the Lord, once you set your heart to minister to Him and to be separated by Him to go to the uttermost, if necessary, whether that's the uttermost of your job

or the uttermost parts of your school or the uttermost parts of your family or the uttermost parts of your neighborhood or the uttermost parts of the world, whatever, you're going to face opposition from the enemy in both covert and overt ways. Next, they traveled by boat across to Pamphylia, the areas of Pamphylia. And they came to the city of Perga, right on the edge of the coast. And all we read there in verse 13, in chapter 13, is that's where John Mark left. And last week we talked about seven possible reasons

why John Mark would have turned tail and run. Up in Acts 15, we're going to see that Paul was disgusted with him because of it, that he felt like he deserted. And we talked about Perga being the place of decision, the place of decision where we'll have to decide either whether to go on with the Lord or we're going to desert. We're just going to turn tail and run. Several reasons possibly why John Mark did that. If things didn't go as

they thought they might in Cyprus, there would have been some discouragement because things didn't go as planned. If they ran into different circumstances, perhaps rejected by family, plus the thing with the sorcerer and no telling what kind of signs and stuff he did. Plus if they were accosted on the road. Plus between Cyprus and Perga, there was warnings of the Cilician pirates who were very brutal and who robbed the ships, killed the people and sank the ships. Plus when they got to Perga, the coast itself was hilly, rocky. They would

have had to climb up to the city itself. And just the conditions could have been that that John Mark felt like, well, I quit. This is too much. Or he lost track of the sovereignty of God, that God was sovereignly in control in spite of the circumstances. Or just he was young and he just had not experienced enough of walking with the Lord through detrimental

situations. Whatever. There were a number of reasons why John Mark could have turned tail and run, but it was a place of decision. And you and I face that in our Christian walk regularly. We decide to follow the Lord, to draw close to Him, to minister to Him, to go where He wants us to go. We begin to face opposition and that will come in any quantity of ways, in any number of ways, and that can be discouraging. And you and I have to decide

in spite of the circumstances, in spite of the opposition, I'm going on with the Lord. Paul and Barnabas went on, even though John Mark left. And you and I will face that. You and I will face many purgas in our Christian walk. So Paul and Barnabas went on. They made the decision to go on and they went across country again up to, here's another Antioch, but this is the Antioch and Pisidian. The area surrounding it is Pisidian. And so there's

an Antioch of Pisidian and an Antioch in Syria. Two different Antiochs, but they're at the

synagogue and they sat down. And after the reading from the law and the prophets, the synagogue rulers sent word to them saying, brothers, if you have a message of encouragement for the people, please speak. Now, as was the Jewish custom in the synagogues when travelers would come, visitors from a foreign area, not from the homelands, and they would come to the synagogues, they were treated as special guests. The rulers of the synagogue, the synagogue ruler would usually either, he would read a section from the Torah and then ask the visitor to share, or he, in Jesus' case, when Jesus went to Nazareth, asked Jesus to come and Jesus shared from the Torah and then expounded on that particular section. So here you read

that the synagogue ruler sat down, the people sat down, and verse 15, the synagogue ruler read from the law and from the prophets, read from the two different sections, two of the main sections of the Torah, and then seeing that Paul and Barnabas were visitors, asked them if they wanted to speak a word of encouragement, asked them if they had anything to share. Now chances are, word has gotten around the different areas. We know that Apollos and some have moved through the different areas, disciples moving out from Jerusalem during the time that they were dispersed from Paul's, when Paul was Saul, his initial attack of the church. Word has gotten out to the surrounding countryside that something's gone on, and

things have been unclear, I'm sure, and so with Paul and Barnabas there, any news, any encouragement that you can bring, what word do you want to share with us? And Paul and Barnabas now have an opportunity to make a presentation of the gospel. And this is Paul's, it's really the first recorded sermon, if you will, one of Paul's sermons. It's the first one that we have recorded in the book of Acts. It's the first place that we see

that Luke has recorded for us that Paul has spoken concerning the Lord. Now he's spoken many times. We've already shown that they left from Antioch, went to Cyprus, from Salamis to Paphos to Perga. They've shared in all those different places, but for some reason the Holy Spirit has not recorded for us what was shared in particular. But now as they come to Pisidian Antioch, for some reason the Lord prompted Luke to record this message.

Now if there's one thing that will hinder us in your study of the Word, it's familiarity. You come to a certain section in the Bible and you come to it and it's marked up, you've got markings in your pen, circled stuff and circled words, and you come to that and there's a real tendency in your heart when you get there and you go to that section and you go, oh yeah, I know that, and you kind of skim it, you kind of read over it. Let me encourage you, if you're doing devotional reading, just kind of asking God to speak to your heart, maybe get a Bible that's not marked up. I mean, this is your study Bible, this is the one you want to use to mark and stuff and when the Lord really shows you something,

mark that up. But just to read, get a blank Bible, maybe a one-year devotional Bible or just a blank Bible that you can read that doesn't have all the markings on it. Because it's real easy to think, well, yeah, I've read this, this is really familiar. And if you do that, like even with real, real familiar things like the 23rd Psalm, it's on everything, everybody, all the heathen know the 23rd Psalm. And it's real easy when you come to the 23rd

Psalm to think, I know that, and skip it. When God may have something fresh He really wants to impart to your heart, but because you think you know it, you skip it. And this may be true with this section in chapter 13. I mean, it looks familiar. And when you go back, you can go back to Acts chapter 6 and 7 and when Stephen is brought before the Sanhedrin, it's very much like what Stephen said. And after all, it's just a rehearsal of their

history and then Jesus is coming. And you can see it as just something kind of bland and familiar. And let me really exhort you where that's concerned to not do that, because God's Word is fresh and new, even if you've studied it before, even if you've got all the verb tenses circled and you've got all these other things circled, and I'm going to have you circle something else while we're going through this today. But it's fresh and

within his heart. He hated the Way. He hated these Christians, as they would later be called. He hated these Jesus followers. They were an affront to Judaism. They were another sect and they were drawing people away from the truth as far as he was concerned. And so to hear Stephen, I know he was just raging inside of himself. And then we see at the end of chapter 7 that Saul is the one at whose feet those who were going to stone Stephen cast

their coats. And Saul gave his assent to the stoning by holding the coats and watching Stephen stone. But realize Saul heard Stephen's message. And God's Word will never return to him void. And so even though you read chapters 6 and 7 with Stephen's dissertation about the history of Israel and all and their rejection of God's promised Messiah, and you think how

many at that time were really reached. He had such a short ministry opportunity. I mean he says it and he's stoned to death. And yet God's Word hung in Saul's heart even while he was hauling Christians in to be destroyed. And as Saul was on the road to Damascus and God dropped him there to his knees, blinded him and spoke to his heart, I'm sure Stephen's words just burned true in his mind. So much so that the first recorded message that we

have that Saul spoke, the first recorded one is almost a synopsis or a summary of Stephen's sermon because God used his Word and honored it and burned it deep into Saul's heart. I think this is probably an example of what Saul did every time he went into a synagogue, every time he comes to a new city. So the Holy Spirit doesn't have to show us everything every time that Saul began to share because I believe this is just how Saul began as he began to reason. Now this we're going to label presentation. The city in Antioch is

the place of presentation because you and I on our walk to the uttermost will come to a point where we will have an opportunity to present the gospel. God will give us opportunity to present the gospel, to share our faith with somebody else. And this is where Christians feel the weakest. This is where just about if you ask any Christian they feel the weakest in actually having to share the gospel with someone. That's why programs are so big because

we feel like if we can just learn a program, if I can just have the tract on the Roman Road or if I can just go through the Colossians 2.7 program or if I can just go through Evangelism Explosion or if I can just learn the bridge illustration and all, and those are good tools. Those are real good tools. But we feel such a weakness where the presentation is concerned and it really can be just very basic and very simple. This is Paul's presentation and if you sit and read from actually verses 16 where he starts to verse 41 where he concludes, it doesn't take but a couple of minutes and that's about all the time he would have taken to present it. But it's a good illustration of a biblical presentation of the gospel.

So I want us to look at that this morning and just kind of consider it as we go through it. He actually gives it in almost a three-point sermon. Really. We're going to come. He's ready to share now. Standing up, Paul motioned with his hands and said, Men of Israel and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me. And here he gives his first point, point one. Point one is that God has prepared everything to this point. God's preparation. God has

prepared everything to this particular point that he is sharing now with his hearers. The God of the people of Israel, I'm just going to read through it and then we're going to go back and look at some things here. The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers. He made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt. With mighty power, he led them out of that country. He endured their conduct for about 40 years in the desert. He overthrew

seven nations in Canaan and gave their land to his people as their inheritance. All of this took about 450 years. After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel, the prophet. And then the people asked for a king and he gave them Saul, the son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled 40 years. After removing Saul, he made David their king. He testified concerning him, I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart.

He will do everything I want him to do. From this man's descendants, God has brought to Israel the Savior, Jesus, as he promised. Before the coming of Jesus, John preached repentance and baptism to all the people of Israel. And as John was completing his work, he said, who do you think I am? I am not that one. No, he is coming after me, whose sandals

seen the movie The Ten Commandments, so they know Moses in the wilderness. And they probably maybe have heard of John the Baptist. And you're thinking in your mind, how is this relevant? What, in this presentation, what's happening? How can I make it personal? How can I apply it? You can go through the history of Israel, but more often than not, you won't do that. In the brief, when you go up to have lunch with, you know, you're on lunch break

and the person that you work with says, so, how can you be so happy all the time? What is it? You know, I know you're a religious person, but you've got something more than just a religion. What is it you have? You have a window. And you have maybe 20 minutes, maybe 10, that you can share with that person. And you don't want to go back and say, well, let's see, let's start with a history in Genesis. And you want to briefly say some things that

get them to think, and you don't want to lead them off on things they have no idea that's going to, it took you years to figure out, and you're going to hit them with it in 10 minutes. You want to just briefly lay out for them a couple of things. And the first thing you want them to see, and what Paul is leading here, is not simply a history of Israel. It's a fact of the sovereignty of God. The first thing he tells them is God

is in control. The reason I have a hope in me that I have is because I know that God is in control. Let me show you what I mean. Let me read with some emphasis here, and here's what I'd like for you to circle or mark or underline, however, is all the areas in Paul's

nations in Canaan, and you can imply the, and He gave their land to His people as their inheritance. All this took about 450 years. After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked for a king, and He gave them Saul, son of Kish, tribe of Benjamin, who ruled for 40 years. After removing Saul, He made David their king. He testifies concerning Him, I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after

my own heart, and he will do everything that I want him to do. And from this man's descendants, God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus as He promised. You see, all through that section, Saul, Paul is saying, God did it. God has prepared everything right to this point that I'm standing in front of you and sharing about this. God has made preparation for all of this and everything that He's done. And you can tell someone that when you have

that opportunity to share. You know, this isn't just a coincidence that you're asking me this question, because I believe in a sovereign God, a God who is in total control of everything that happens, and God has made an opportunity for us to share right now. God has sovereignly been at work in your life and in mine, bringing us to this point of this opportunity now to hear the gospel. And then you can share with them some examples in your own life. You,

I know, before you came to Christ, experienced God's sovereign hand in your life. Even if you didn't articulate it real well, you knew something, someone beyond you was doing things that you had no explanation for, and you knew that He was protecting you and guiding you and caring for you and providing for you, and you didn't acknowledge Him as such. You just maybe made a brief acknowledgement of, boy, that must be God, and went on. And it's in that, as Paul is telling the Jews who are aware of the existence of God, he's telling them that from their own perspective, from their own scriptures. Later we'll have a good

example on Mars Hill in chapter 17, where Paul uses the sovereignty of God to talk to people who don't know anything about God. And this is an example of what that is. He's telling them about God's sovereign hand, God who made the times and the seasons, God who set the boundaries of nations and the boundaries of oceans. That's what he'll say in chapter 17, sovereign God. You know those times. I remember a time when I was in college in Colorado,

in Boulder, at the University of Colorado, and it was Thanksgiving time, and I was driving a group of friends to the airport in Denver, and they were flying out to go home. And I had six people, so there were seven of us in my car that was designed, back then they designed them to hold six, so I still had one more than I should have had. And these are college students, and they're, you know, everybody's talking and having a good time and really getting loud, and we're going down the Boulder Turnpike, which then it was the Boulder Turnpike, it's just Highway 36 now, I think, the freeway. And they were really getting loud, and I was trying to, come on, you guys, quiet down, quiet down, and they

were not getting quiet, and I just, I don't know why, I just was driving 70 miles an hour, and I just took the wheel, and I went crank, and crank, and we skidded sideways into the other lane, and got control, and skidded sideways, and went back into the other lane, and then we're driving along, and everybody got quiet. Real quick. And I thought about what I'd done then. I didn't think about it before, I just did it, because I was mad. And what could

You've read that before. It's with cords of loving kindness that He draws us. How does He do that? It's with different circumstances, through different people interacting, through different things that happen that are beyond our description. It has to be God. It's sovereign God moving in our lives. And that's what Paul is saying here. God sovereignly has brought

our nation to this point. Now, something else I want you to notice, as he says in verse 18, God endured their conduct for about 40 years in the desert. He gave them the nations in Canaan, seven nations He destroyed in Canaan, gave the land to them, and after this God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Well, they would have known from their own background that the judges were the ones that ruled and the people did whatever was right in their own eyes. They were turned their back on God, and as soon as the judge

died, then God would raise up another judge, and they were okay for a while, and as soon as the judge died, they did everything that they thought was right in their own eyes, much like today in all the different things you read in the newspaper. Just yesterday's paper, the governor in our governor's race and the challenger both know, as a matter of fact, the whole country knows, that the entire issues are this year based on morality. But now we come down to the question of whose morality? Who makes the determination on whose morality we have to base everything on? Well, see, that's a people who does everything that

they think is right in their own eyes, who have disavowed the absoluteness of God's Word. We know as Christians that there's an absolute Word, there's an absolute moral base from which you move. And when we talk about morals, we talk about morals based on a biblical basis. But most of society today that are not Christians, or even those who say they are, but they don't want to follow the things of the Lord, will say, well, that's your shoving your ideas down my throat, and how can you tell me what you think this says and what you think we

people just complained because they wanted a king, and now they got one. He's a mess, and so God finally raised up David, a man after his own heart. Well, what he's saying in there is that he's bringing out the sinfulness of man. It's a man-rejected God. And in that presentation, your presentation, as you talk to people about the Lord, God sovereignly brought us to this point. He's prepared everything to this point, and you know, He knows us.

He knows that we are frail and that we, you can use the word sin, and they probably will

that it's wrong. I mean, we feel like a failure. We just, much as we try, we just keep failing. But God knew that was going to happen, and He made a plan. He made a provision for what He called a Redeemer, a Savior, who's Jesus. Now Paul goes to point two of his message. Brothers, verse 26, children of Abraham, and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that

this message of salvation has been sent. The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, and yet in condemning Him, they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have Him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written about Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a tomb. But God raised Him

from the dead, and for many days He was seen by those who traveled with Him from Galilee

He says, you read about Him every week. Every week in condemning, they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. In verse 27, every week you've read about Him. You've read about Him in Isaiah. You've read about Him in the Psalms. You've read about Him in your section of the Chronicles, the Chronicles of the life of the kings and the prophets. You've read about Him. Everything that's in there talks about Messiah. Everything

that's in the Word testifies to Jesus. Everything. You can go back to Genesis and from chapter 1 on through, everything in the Word of God points to Jesus. We've been in 2 Chronicles on Wednesday night, and we just finished the part where David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. And we mentioned, we went through just a brief time of talking about the Ark

of the Covenant. You get to that in Exodus and Leviticus, the Ark and the tabernacle and the priests and the sacrifices, and you really get bogged down, if you're reading from Genesis on through that way. That's the place you get bogged down. You go, why is this here? Well, it's there because it tells you about Jesus and how God wants to be worshipped and how He is to be approached. And the only way that He can be approached

is through a proper sacrifice. Otherwise, you can't approach Him. You can't come into His presence. And Jesus is that sacrifice. Not only is He the sacrifice, He's the priest that offers the sacrifice. He's the sacrifice and He's the priest. And not only is He the sacrifice and the priest, He is the God, the Lord who receives the sacrifice. He's everything.

And as you look at the Ark, the Ark is just a simple box. It's just a simple box, just a small little box, and it's made out of acacia wood, just a simple wood, but it's overlaid with gold. Now, why was it made that way? Why did God give directions for it to be made that way? It was made that way because in just its simple manufacturing, it projects the dual nature of Jesus, that He was fully God and fully man. In being made of wood,

the natural, it shows His humanness, His humanity. He was fully man. But it's overlaid with gold, the most precious of metals, the richest of metals, showing that He was fully God. Now, there are not two boxes there. There's only one box made out of wood overlaid with gold. But in that box, you have a picture of His humanity and His divinity all in one. Theologians

have a big lingo word for that called a hypostatic union. It just means that He wasn't 50-50. He wasn't half God, half man. That's the freak of the mythology. He was fully God, a hundred and a hundred, fully God, fully man. And just looking at the Ark of the Covenant, it pictures that. Now, there was a lid that sat on the Ark that was made out of pure gold, a hand-hammered

designed gold, full gold. It would have been very weighty, very heavy, very majestic. And that picture is His regalness in reigning as He is atop this. He is ultimately going to rule and to reign. On top of that would have been hammered out two angels. And if you saw the Raiders of the Lost Ark, the angels that you saw depicted there with their wings outstretched are very probably something similar to the way that was, the way that it was made.

And between the two angels were carved into the Ark pictures of three different elements. One was a picture that was carved in there of the broken tablets of the Ten Commandments. You remember Moses received the tablets, and he came down after receiving God's Word in the tablets, and as he comes down Mount Sinai, the people are all gathered around the golden calf that they have talked Aaron into making, and they're worshiping, and they're going through all kinds of sexual revelry and everything right there in mass, and Moses is disgusted, and he throws the tablets down, and they break. Well, those tablets were then later taken and placed in the Ark. And it was a picture of how man initially said, God said, I'm going

to give you my Word, and the people, of course, they all gathered around and said, everything that you say, we will do. And then no longer was, no more was Moses up on the mountain for 40 days, and they went off and disobeyed His Word. So the picture on top of the Ark of the Covenant shows a total disregard, reminds the people of a total disregard for God's Word, and the tablets are inside the Ark. Then secondly was a picture of a pot of manna, a homer of manna. Now you remember where the

manna came from. After Sinai and the receiving of the Word, Moses led the people through the wilderness, and they didn't have any food. And they woke up one morning after Moses prayed, and God had provided a white substance on the grass, on the dew of the grass every morning, that the people could eat. And the people got up, and they looked out at it, and they said, manna, which means, translated, what is it? And they ate it, and it gave them substance,

and they were carried on through the wilderness by eating the manna. But you know, you eat peanut butter and jelly every day for six weeks, and you get a little tired of peanut butter and jelly. Well, they got tired of the manna, and they started complaining about the manna. God just left us out here to die, you know, and manna in the morning, and manna in the evening, and manna at supper time. And they're sick of manna, and they complained,

and God brought the quail in, and they thought at first they had a feast, and they ate so much that they got sick, and thousands of them died because God was judging them for their lust. But He was also showing them that they were complaining about His provision. They complained about His provision. And so in the Ark, when God gave Moses the design for the tabernacle in the Ark of the Covenant, one of the things that was to go in the Ark

rod, their sheep rod, bring it, place it inside the tent, place it inside the tabernacle overnight, and in the morning I'll show you whom I've chosen to be the leader. And so they all did that. They collected all the staffs of all the leaders and laid them inside the tabernacle. And the next morning they came to the tabernacle, pulled out all the staffs, and Aaron's staff had grown branches off of it with leaves on the branches. And

not only that, it had fruit on the end of the branches, fresh fruit. And God said, this

that Aaron's rod in there, which represents God's leadership that was rejected. And so inside the Ark now you have a picture of God's word that was rejected, God's provision that was rejected, and God's leadership that was rejected. And that's the basis of sin from the Garden of Eden. God provided his word to Adam and Eve, and he said, you can stay in the garden and till the garden, and of any tree of the garden of which there's fruit you may eat, except the tree that has the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. And

they rejected his word. They went off and ate that fruit. They rejected God's word. God provided them every tree. He said, you can have this, every tree, and yet they still wanted that one. And so they rejected his provision. God said, I will be with you. He walked with them in the cool of the evening, whatever that would be like, that would have been cool. They had his presence, they had his leadership, they could ask him anything

and he would tell them. And yet the serpent beguiled them and they rejected God's leadership and went ahead and disobeyed God's word and disregarded God's provision and took the fruit from the forbidden tree. And that's the basis of sin that's been handed down through the birth of every human that's ever been born, all the way down through the subsequent generations. That's the basis of sin. Now it's interesting that those elements were inside the Ark of

the Covenant as well as carved on top of the Ark, because in 2 Corinthians, Paul writes that Jesus took our sins upon him. God made him to be sin who knew no sin. Now we don't know how he did that, but by the picture of the Ark, we can have some kind of an idea that somehow when Jesus went to the cross, God took our sins, even though we weren't born yet, and somehow laid them on him and he took them into himself. He bore our sin.

He became sin for us. Now the angels on top, the one angel represented God's righteousness and God's righteousness looked down on the sin, on the elements that are on top of the Ark of the Covenant, on top of the mercy seat, and said, my righteousness is violated. There has to be some judgment that comes because my righteousness has been violated. The other angel represents the fact of God's justice that says because God's righteousness is violated, there must now be judgment against the sin. Something has to die to get rid of this sin.

So once a year on the Day of Atonement, when the high priest would come in with the blood from the sacrifice of atonement, he would not only sprinkle the blood around the Ark, but he would cover then the top of the mercy seat with blood, covering those elements inscribed into the mercy seat. And so that once a year, there was a kofar, there was a covering that was made, and the angel of righteousness could then say, I no longer see the sin. The sin has been put away. And the angel of God's justice could say, my justice has been appeased.

There's judgment that's happened. I see the blood. There has been death as a result of the sin. And God's righteousness and his justice were then appeased. Now Jesus is our mercy seat. He is our propitiation. He's borne our sin upon him. It's his blood that's been shed that has provided a covering for us. And Paul said, every time you read the scriptures, everything you read, every time you come, it's fulfilled. You read this

every week and every Sabbath it just testifies to the fact that God has provided the atonement through the Messiah. And then some things I really like, and this is just kind of a side note, in the next few verses he interprets scripture. He says that, in verse 33, he says he has fulfilled for us, God's promise has been fulfilled for us, their children by raising up Jesus, as it is written in the second Psalm, Psalm 2 verse 7, you are my son, today I have become your father. If you're reading King James today, I have begotten you. Now that used to be a

puzzlement. You know, you'd read that particular Psalm and this is, you are my son. I knew he was speaking about Jesus. This day I have begotten you. Paul says that's referring not to his incarnation, but to the resurrection. You have become my son. I have begotten you today. I have raised you up today. You are now my son, literally, never to die again, never to be separated from me again. He says the fact that God raised him from the dead,

never to decay, is stated in these words. And then he interprets Isaiah 55.3, I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David. And he says this isn't Solomon that he's talking about or any of David's sons. This is Jesus. This is the Messiah. So it's stated elsewhere, verse 35, you will not let your holy ones see decay. That's in Psalm 16. And the Jews, the Pharisees and all, had a rough time thinking about who he

was talking about. They were thinking somehow the psalmist was talking about David, that David was writing this about himself. But Paul goes ahead and interprets it here, for when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep, and he was buried with his fathers, and his body decayed. But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay. So he finishes his presentation of Messiah. And you don't have to go through

all of that. I mean, you know, if you've got the time and you can take some time, over a period of time with discipling, you can go through all of that. But God sovereignly

who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from, by the law of Moses. When you're talking to somebody and presenting the gospel, one of the things they're going to think is, yeah, but you don't know my background. You don't know what I've done. You don't know what I've been through. You don't know the drugs that I've taken, the times, the sexual things I've done. You don't know the stuff I've been involved in

with the gang. You don't know the stuff that I did when I was at home, you know, to my

because we're pressed for time. We went there first service. In 2 Chronicles 30, Hezekiah, one of Solomon's descendants, has become king of the southern half of Israel. Israel, after David died and after Solomon died, was split, much like the United States was during the Civil War, northern and southern kingdom. Northern kingdom finally carried away into captivity by the Assyrians, and 100 years later, the southern kingdom would be, right

and says, come down, you guys from Manasseh and Issachar and Dan, you guys come on down and worship with us at the Passover, because we're so excited, we're getting back to the things of God. Now, according to the laws, there had to be a time of consecration, a time of cleansing before you could eat the Feast of the Passover. If you touched dead bodies, if you'd been into idol worship, if you'd done anything apart from the Lord, you had to confess it, and then there was a time of separation and cleansing, usually for a seven-day period before you could participate in the Passover, in the eating of the Passover. But they all came down and the priests went ahead and sacrificed, and they sacrificed

for themselves and they sacrificed for the people's sins, and then they were sacrificing the lambs and the people began to eat. And then they realized that all these people from the north, from Dan and Issachar and Manasseh that had come down, hadn't been cleansed,

this is how it has to be done. And here's the people trying to follow the law and follow the law and follow the law. And God said, I lay this out because I want you to know you can't do it. It's only as you fall on your knees before me and ask that I'll bless. And God showed His mercy during the time of Hezekiah, even when they didn't do it according to the law, He blessed and He forgave them. And I don't know what you think you've done

or whoever you're talking to will think that they've done, but you can assure them that God will forgive them through His Messiah, through their faith in the work of Christ, they will be justified. Now, He gives them a warning, verse 40, take care that what the prophets have said does not happen to you. And then He quotes Habakkuk chapter one, look you scoffers, wander and perish for I'm going to do something in your days that you would never believe even if someone told you. Now, what Habakkuk was doing at the time of Habakkuk, he was seeing all the people going nuts in the land and all the degradation and the people running after everything that they were wanting to do. And he literally cried to God, don't

you see this? What are you going to do about this? Much like today, we look at the decadence in our society and you almost want to go, God, how long are these people in authority going to reign like this and cause the havoc that they're causing? And God told Habakkuk in verse five of chapter one, He says, Hey, I'm doing a work that even if I told it to you, you wouldn't believe. And what he was doing then was preparing the Babylonians to

come in and judge the Southern kingdom. They were going to come in and rip them apart. Now, it's interesting to me because Paul applies that scripture to this particular section and you can apply that to any particular listener. God's doing a work. Listen, today's the day you need to receive. You need to ask Jesus in your heart right now because God's doing

a work. He's doing something right now. You can't see it, but you wouldn't believe it if I told you and he's even told us what's coming and you won't believe it, but you need to accept him because judgment's coming and we know it is. We know it's rolling through quickly. Paul and Barnabas, as they were leaving the synagogue, the people invited them to speak further about these things on the next Sabbath. Well, the congregation was dismissed.

Many of the Jews, the leaders and the devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas who talked with them and urged them to continue in the grace of God. And on the next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. And when the Jews, now these are the leaders again, saw the crowd, they were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul was saying. And then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly, we had to speak the word of God to you first, since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life. Now, that's quite a statement, isn't it? Somebody rejects the gospel,

in a sense, not considering themselves worthy of eternal life. We now turn to the Gentiles, for this is what the Lord has commanded us. I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord. And now like this, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord spread

through the whole region, but the Jews incited the God-fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city, and they stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. And so they shook the dust off their feet and protest against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Summary, preparation, presentation now. God is sovereign, and he's designed everything to this

particular point for your hearing of the word that we're sharing with you right now. God knew your frailty. God knew that you couldn't do anything that was necessary. And so he provided a Redeemer, whose name is Jesus, who took your sins, who took your wrongdoing upon himself, no matter how bad it was. And he died and rose again to give you life by your simply believing

that he's done that for you, by your simple faith in his finished work on the cross. Now you need to take time and realize that you need to receive it now, because God's bringing a work of judgment that you would not believe even if you could see it. It's coming soon. And there will be those who will reject, but all those who are appointed to salvation will be saved. I can't explain that. We can dialogue about theology on that. All I know

is that's what it says. And Paul and Barnabas could leave even after they'd been run out of town, and they could rejoice, filled with joy in the Holy Spirit, because they knew God was in control. God hadn't called them to save Perga. God hadn't called them to save Pamphylia. God hadn't called them to save Antioch. God had just called them to give out his word, to speak the truth in love,

and to disciple those that came forth. Listen, God didn't call us to save Ark City. God didn't call us to take the state of Kansas in the name of Jesus. God didn't call us to take this country back in the name of Jesus. He did not do that. It's not in here. And if you get caught up in that, it's a wind of doctrine that sounds really good, and the authority of the believers, and we're

going to go out and do that, and you're going to get involved in some cause to go do that. God didn't call you to do that. Example after example after example is just like what we went to today. He called you to take his word to the uttermost, and let him do the work. And some people are going to receive it, and some people are going to reject it. But praise God, he's in control,

and those who have been called to be saved will be saved. And you can rejoice in that. You can let God do his work. Father, there are those sitting here this morning who need to respond to that offer. They may not have tomorrow, and they wouldn't believe what you're bringing if it were told to them. So God, I pray in Jesus' name that those who need to respond this morning will

respond and receive eternal life. And Father, as we come to your table to celebrate the communion with you, God may you just stir up in our hearts that flame that may be flickering, that you'll stir up that zeal that may be faltering, Lord, that you'll just let us burn fresh and new with that love that you've given us, and that commission that you've called us to, Lord. We're not called to save this city. We're called just to be light and salt in the midst of it, and to tell the people that you bring across our paths, to share with them, to present the gospel, the good news that there is a Savior. So Lord, help us to be faithful with that. We recommit

our lives to you fresh now, in Jesus' name. Amen.