Acts 13:13-25

13 From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, where John left them to return to Jerusalem. 14 From Perga they went on to Pisidian Antioch. On the Sabbath they entered the synagogue and sat down. 15 After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the leaders of the synagogue sent word to them, saying, “Brothers, if you have a word of exhortation for the people, please speak.”

16 Standing up, Paul motioned with his hand and said: “Fellow Israelites and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me! 17 The God of the people of Israel chose our ancestors; he made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt; with mighty power he led them out of that country; 18 for about forty years he endured their conduct[a] in the wilderness; 19 and he overthrew seven nations in Canaan, giving their land to his people as their inheritance. 20 All this took about 450 years.

“After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. 21 Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. 22 After removing Saul, he made David their king. God 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.’

23 “From this man’s descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as he promised. 24 Before the coming of Jesus, John preached repentance and baptism to all the people of Israel. 25 As John was completing his work, he said: ‘Who do you suppose I am? I am not the one you are looking for. But there is one coming after me whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.’



Dig Deeper
One of the interesting things about watching certain movies on DVD is all of the extra features that they add to a disc in addition to the movie itself. Occasionally you will watch a movie that has an interesting ending only to go to the extra features on the DVD and find that they have an alternate ending or several alternate endings. I remember watching one movie that had something like five or six alternate endings. It’s always a bit interesting to watch those different scenarios but sometimes the alternate endings radically change the way the movie ends or even changes the way that you look at the whole movie. There has been a few times where I have watched the alternate ending and almost felt like it ruined the experience of watching the movie for me and seeing it come to a satisfying conclusion. I always have to wonder just how important the story actually was and how tightly was it written if it can end in multiple ways.

As we have already seen throughout the book of Acts, most notably in Acts 7 with Stephen’s account, the early Christians most generally relayed the gospel to others through the vehicle of telling story. This is especially true when they were speaking to Jews but it certainly wasn’t limited to that. Stories connect with people and invite them to join in and find their own place in the narrative and how they can carry the tale forward into the future. As human beings we seem to be programmed to connect with and be moved by a good story. I know of no one that will pay $10 to sit in a darkened room as interesting facts are scrolled on a screen but we will do so readily in a movie theater if we think that we are going to see a good story. Despite the fact that the gospel is rarely preached or told as a story in our day, that was the primary way that the early church shared about Jesus the Christ.

They usually did this by telling the story of Israel and brining out certain aspects to show that God’s story was moving in a specific direction the whole time. What really made this story unique, though, was the fact that it simply could not have an alternate ending. If told correctly, the story of the Old Testament can only end properly with Jesus Christ. Without Christ it is an incomplete story and without the true gospel about Jesus Christ, the story just does not come together rightly. This is precisely what Paul was getting at in Romans 8:29 when, in the middle of explaining just who God’s people are, he says that “those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). In other words, from the beginning of time it was God’s plan to have a Christ-shaped family. The story of God’s people could only end with Jesus as the Messiah because that is precisely where the story was heading the entire time. If you change the ending the story became meaningless. That is what the early Christians wanted people to see and understand.

Luke begins this section by slipping in the detail that John Mark left the work as they arrived in Pamphylia and returned to Jerusalem. He doesn’t give us any details on why John Mark left and so any speculation on our part is nothing more than just that. Luke has slipped in this small detail here, though, because what seems insignificant right now will become important in the end of chapter 15 when a dispute will arise over this very incident.

It seems that by this time, Paul has come to the forefront in leadership which seems to be indicated by the fact that Luke refers to the group as “Paul and his companions” rather than “Barnabas and Saul” as he has fairly regularly up to this point. The usual practice for Paul on his missionary journeys was to start his base of preaching in the synagogues and work outward from there. This time was no different as he began preaching in Pisidian Antioch (a different Antioch than the one that served as the home church for Paul and Barnabas) on the Sabbath, the easiest time to find groups of Jews and Gentile God-fearers (Gentiles that respected certain aspects of the Jewish religion and even worshiped with them but had not become circumcised and were not considered to be full members of God’s family) gathered together. Paul jumped at the opportunity to speak, although whether this chance came about through common courtesy shown to visitors or if it was that those at the synagogue had heard of Paul and his gospel and were curious to hear it, we are not told.

Stephen spent a good deal of time expounding on the story of Israel, focusing on Abraham, Joseph, and Moses to make the point that Israel’s story was always pointing to a Messiah like Jesus. It was where the story had to end. Paul is going to make the same point but focus on different aspects of God’s story. He will do that by spending a great deal of time talking about Israel’s first two kings, Saul and David, and thus emphasizing Jesus’ kingly heritage.

There was no question in Paul’s mind that the one, true God had chosen Israel to be his people. He would preach that point strongly to Jews but also to a mixed crowd of Jews and Gentile God-fearers like this one. God had called Israel and brought them out of Egypt, patiently enduring their idolatrous conduct and bringing them into the land of Canaan. Paul stresses that God had worked patiently and slowly throughout all of this, taking, in fact, 450 years to bring this all about.

God continued to show patience and work slowly to bring about his ultimate plan through the time of the judges. This was a time when Israel repeatedly drifted from God only to cry out to him and experience his merciful deliverance. Again, though, God was slowly moving the story ahead that would culminate in his Messiah.

But God’s deliverance and mercy wasn’t enough for the people of Israel. They wanted a king and so God granted them one. He gave them Saul who ruled for forty years but God removed him as one who did not embrace God’s purposes and will. He then gave them David, not a perfect or sinless man, but a man who would seek God’s will in his life and during his reign.

David was the recipient of some key promises from God that tucked neatly into the original promises that God made to Abraham. Specifically, God had promised David that he would have an offspring that would come after him that would rule forever (2 Sam. 7:12-16; 22:51; Ps. 89:27-29, 35-37; 132:11-12). If this promised one was the one that would rule forever, then it only followed that this was the Messiah that would bring salvation to the people for eternity and bring about God’s long-promised family. To follow the story of God in what he did patiently to bring about David as the mighty king of Israel and then to look at the incredible promises that God gave to David, was to realize that this story could only culminate in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Messiah. The descendant that would rule forever could not have been referring to Solomon or any other of David’s descendants. It just could not have been a reference to any normal descendant or king. It had to refer to Jesus’ eternal rule over the world from the kingdom of God. He was the only possible way for this story to move forward. Take away Jesus and there were promises made by God that he would never fulfill and that simply could not be. If God failed to come through on his promises then he was no longer God.

But God would not send the promised king without him coming properly announced. That was John’s role. Repentance was a word used in the ancient world primarily in the military setting and often denoted one who was surrendering his way of life and joining the other army to avoid being annihilated. Baptism during the Old Testament times was used as someone was leaving their people and pagan gods behind and joining the people of Israel. It was a symbolic cleansing as one came to the God of Israel and joined the Jewish people. That John was using those terms was no small detail. The repentance and baptism that he declared were also symbols that would prepare people for the coming of the King. When the King came, the eternal repentance and the true baptism into the Messiah (that is why the New Testament writers were clear that water baptism into Christ by a believer was no mere symbol) would soon be available. John was pointing people to the next chapter, the coming of the Messiah as the fulfillment of God’s story. From David to John, all of the plot points of this story were pointing ahead to the only possible ending, the Messiah Jesus Christ.

The early Christians were masterful story tellers who consistently made the story of the gospel relevant to their audience. We face that same challenge today and it is our challenge to find new and relevant ways to show our audiences today where they fit into God’s story.


Devotional Thought
Have you done the work of being able to tell the story of God in the world and his Messiah in a way that includes and connects with people today? Spend some time contemplating what that might look like and how you might be the most effective that you can be in sharing the gospel with those around you that really need to hear it.