And I want to invite you then to turn in your Bibles. Speaking of the nations, turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 13. Now, we are in a miniseries on the Apostle Paul's first missionary journey. That's what we're going to be studying this summer. As we just studied the book of Ephesians, we basically talked a lot about the grace of God and how it comes to us and how it changes us.
Now, Acts is going to send us out to tell the message of grace and share the message of grace with others.
Acts chapter 13, and we're going to read just the introduction to this passage. And because it's a lengthy passage, we're going to break it up and walk through it point after point. But we're going to begin with setting the stage, and even the setting of the stage is inspired by God himself.
So, Acts chapter 13, verse 13. As we read, let's remember this is God's Word. "Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem. But they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Syria.
And on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. After reading from the Law and the Prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent a message to them saying, 'Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.' So Paul stood up and motioning with his hand said, and we'll explore the rest as we go.
Pause with me for a moment of prayer. Lord, I do pray that You would help us, even though this text may seem disconnected, this message that Paul gives to this group of people about 2,000 years ago has so much relevance for us today. I pray that it would not stay disconnected from our lives, but it would be brought into the pages of our lives, as it were, that we might see gospel renewal through the city of El Paso, to the city of El Paso, and throughout the world. In Jesus' name, amen.
Now, I want to pause here before we read the speech because I want us to notice something about the text that would be easy to miss. Notice the unexpected opportunity that Paul and Barnabas receive on this particular morning. Now, as we've seen from the beginning of Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas were sent out of their church in Antioch, and they were sent initially to Cyprus, which is where Barnabas was from, and they successfully went through and shared the gospel with everybody on that island and had a confrontation with a Jewish magician, and it was dramatic and exciting. You should go read that. But now, they leave and find themselves in a different city named Antioch, Pisidian Antioch, as it were.
6 · The preacher unpacks the cultural and liturgical context of the synagogue service to emphasize that Paul came as a worshiper, not a preacher
And they, as it was their practice, they just went to the synagogue. Now, there's no indication that they were at the synagogue to preach. In fact, it says they sat down at the synagogue. In other words, the idea is that they just came to attend church. So imagine you just, you come to attend church, and in that era, the Jewish synagogue would consist of, saying the Shema together, reciting some things together, doing a series of Old Testament Scripture readings. And then they would have one or more people explain or expound on some of the texts that were read.
7 · The preacher uses a hypothetical scenario—being tapped to preach on the spot at this church—to help the congregation feel the surprise and pressure Paul would have experienced
So imagine Paul and Barnabas show up at church and it would be something akin to right before the service I walk over and I tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Hey, listen, would you mind sharing today?' And you're like, 'What? Now? Today?' Right? And I don't know how many of us would respond like, 'Uh, I'm not prepared. I didn't prepare anything for this. You know, I don't feel qualified to do this.'
8 · The preacher explores two possible reasons for the invitation—Paul's scholarly credentials or curiosity about the controversy surrounding him—while maintaining that regardless of motive, the opportunity itself was unexpected and providential
And it's unexpected as well because of the conflict between kind of the Jerusalem Jews and the early Christians. And so they actually, they kicked out the early Christians from Jerusalem, which is why everyone was scattered all over the place to begin with. But there may be a reason for this. Paul was a highly trained Jewish scholar, studied with Gamaliel, widely considered the most prestigious scholar of the first century in Judaism. And so, perhaps they just thought, 'Okay, well, he's a very trained guy.' You know, it's almost similar to like, 'Well, we've got an Oxford scholar on the New Testament. Why don't he come and share with us today?' And so, they invite him to come share. Or it may have been that they were actually intrigued that they had heard the controversy about Paul and thought, 'Well, let's hear him for ourselves.' But either way, Paul is on the spot and they have an unexpected opportunity to share something.
9 · The preacher bridges from Paul's unexpected opportunity to the congregation's everyday experiences, offering concrete examples of gospel opportunities disguised as ordinary conversations
Now, I don't know about you, but we may not be the Apostle Paul. I'm not the Apostle Paul, and we are likely not going to be invited to share suddenly at a Jewish synagogue, but we all have providential opportunities to share about Jesus. These opportunities may be big or they may be small. They may be a coworker that expresses hopelessness after a divorce. It may be a family member that perhaps not even very kindly asks you, 'Why do you always spend so much time at that church of yours? Why couldn't you come to my prima's, you know, my prima's birthday party with her second cousins?' You're just like, 'What?' Yeah, sorry, that's an El Paso thing. If you're from El Paso, you get invited to these birthday parties and you're like, 'How am I related to this person?' But that's okay. You go anyway. And if you don't, your aunts will talk to you. They will speak to you afterwards. 'Where were you, mijo?' I'm like, 'I'm sorry, I was at church again.' 'Again? Why you always go there?' Maybe that's it. Maybe that's your opportunity. Maybe it's a college kid asking for advice or a high schooler finishing high school wondering, 'Man, what do I do? You got any life advice?' Whatever it is, we face many opportunities.
10 · The preacher names the central pastoral problem the sermon addresses—failure to recognize providential gospel opportunities
The problem is we often don't recognize them as opportunities and therefore miss them.
11 · The preacher offers a transparent personal failure story—missing an obvious gospel opportunity with the projectionist—to illustrate the problem named in the previous unit
This happened to me a few years ago where I had previously, before the pandemic, worked at a local movie theater as a kind of a fun thing, as doing movie hosting. So I'd host movies there, and I got to work with a great team of people that normally would never show up and go to church. The other people that were hosting movies or doing projection work, a lot of them were, were not the kind of people that are just Googling, hey, how can I find a good church in El Paso? They're not looking for church at all. And so it was a great opportunity to build relationships with them. And a few years later, during the pandemic, we decided to have as a fun thing for our church staff and their spouses, we decided to rent a small theater. That's when they were like trying to give the theaters away 'cause nobody was going. And we rent a small theater and do our Christmas party there and watch a movie, a Christmas movie together. And it just so happened that one of the guys that I had actually built a little bit of a relationship was the projectionist for that event. And so I thought, okay, cool, so-and-so, I've worked with him, he'll be good. And we have the party. And we're talking about the gospel, we're talking about the year, I'm trying to encourage our staff that the Lord's still at work, that the Lord's going to preserve us through this time. And of course the projectionist just has to sit in the booth and hear everything that's going on so they can, you know, play the next slide. And maybe at the back of my mind I thought, 'Oh, maybe this is kind of cool that this guy is going to hear a ton about the gospel and a ton about Jesus because, you know, he's having to wait for the next slide.' So if you're sitting there and you're thinking, this sounds like a perfect opportunity, well, you'd be right, and I did not see it. And so at the end of the time, he comes up and he goes, he says something like, hey, man, you know, everything's squared away, you should be good to go. And I said, hey, thanks so much for helping us today. It was so funny that you ended up being the projectionist for this. You know, I haven't seen you in a year or so because of the pandemic. So good to see you, man. And it's so cool that you ended up being here. And he said something like, I can't remember exactly what it was, but he said something like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was really interesting, you know, listening to you guys talk.' Now, if you're a gospel-minded person, you're thinking, 'There it is. That's an opportunity. Ask him a question. Why is it interesting? What was interesting about it? Have you ever been to church before? What's your background with church? You know, what did you think about what we were saying?' Anything, something. You know what I said? I said none of those things, and instead I said, 'Yeah, cool, man. Catch you later.' Right? Just— it's like the pitch just comes, and I'm just watching it sail by. Oh, that was a strike. You know, like that's what I felt like as I got into the parking lot and thought, oh, oh, I should have talked, you know.
12 · The preacher diagnoses why gospel opportunities are missed—life's busyness crowds out awareness, or we feel unequipped when the moment comes
And I think so many of us, because often when we live life, our minds and hearts and eyes are filled up with, 'What's the next thing I have to do? I got to go from here to here. I have things I need to do. I have places I need to be. I have people I'm trying to take care of. I've got a full life.' And sometimes these opportunities present themselves and we either do one of two things. We either miss the opportunity in the first place, which I think this text shows us that sometimes the Lord in his providence just provides these opportunities and he's still in the business of providing these opportunities, or in that moment we just think, 'I don't know what to say. What do I say?' And that's where this text can help.
13 · The preacher establishes the hermeneutical approach—Acts 13 as a model sermon—and signals the sermon's structure: four transferable principles from Paul's speech
This text is one of the longest preserved speeches from Paul in the book of Acts. It's a model, in a sense, of how he preached the gospel, especially to the Jewish people. But it has a lot to tell us and teach us about how we can speak the word of the gospel when the Lord provides these providential opportunities. Now, I want to just say upfront, there's so much text in this message that I wish I could comment on every verse and kind of pull out every reference, but instead what I'm going to try to do, in light of the fact that our summer series is focusing on gospel proclamation, what I'm going to try to do is give us 4 simple principles that Paul integrates into what he says that you can use to talk to anybody about the gospel.
14 · A brief pastoral reassurance that directly addresses the congregation's felt need—'I don't know what to say'—and promises help
If you think, 'Man, I don't know what to say in that moment. Even if the moment comes, I'm not sure what I would do or say,' this hopefully will be helpful.
15 · The preacher announces the first principle ('the history of us points to him') and reads Paul's opening historical rehearsal from Acts 13:16-21
So, first, first thing Paul does is he says the history of us, the history of humanity, the history of who we are points to him. Look down at verse 16. 'Men of Israel, you who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. And for about 40 years he put up with them in the wilderness, and after destroying 7 nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. All this took 450 years. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for 40 years.' Now, pause there.
16 · The preacher unpacks Paul's rhetorical strategy—starting with shared history to build common ground and credibility
Now, you might be thinking, 'Okay, what does this have to do with anything? Why does Paul start here?' Well, first, notice that Paul starts where they are. He understands where his audience is. He understands that these are Jewish people. He's building common ground with them. He's rehearsing the story of God's people, showing them, 'Yes, you may have never met me before, but we share so much in common. These are our forefathers. This is our story.' And people up until this point would have been like, 'Yeah, amen. That's right. He did, you know, that's what happened. That's what happened. That's right. I can see why he's a highly trained scholar. What a great summary.'
17 · The preacher traces the repeated pattern of divine agency in Paul's retelling ('God chose,' 'He led,' 'He gave') to show that Paul is reframing history as God's story, not merely human events
But notice what Paul is also doing in his summary. There's a phrase that goes over and over and over again, many phrases rather, that happen over and over again that highlight the hand of God, the decisive hand of God in history. Notice in verse 17, it says that God 'God chose Israel.' That's how Israel began. Verse 17, 'He led them out of Egypt.' Verse 19, 'He gave them their land.' Verse 20, 'He gave them judges and gave the prophet.' And verse 21, 'Gave them kings.' He raised up David, as we'll see in verse 22. And then further, he talks about how God fulfilled his promises, how he raises up Jesus. And this is what Paul is doing. Paul wants his audience to remember that history is not random. It's not just a random series of events that we review and remember. No, the history of the world and the history of the Jewish people in this case is the history of God's activity in and among human beings.
18 · The preacher makes the universal theological claim latent in Paul's historical rehearsal explicit: recognizing God's rule over history is the necessary starting point for understanding reality
And no matter who you are, no matter where you are, you must see the reality that God rules and reigns over history. You cannot understand the world without understanding and seeing the hand of God. And what Paul is doing is he's reminding his audience that God is the decisive reality in the history of Israel. God is the one ruling and reigning. God is the one over all things.
19 · The preacher introduces a visual aid (his own drawing with a crown representing God's rule) to illustrate the theological point
Now, go ahead and show the drawing, Kathy. Now, I got to warn you, please don't laugh. This is my drawing. And before you ask, yes, this is the best I can do. This is like version 3.0 after me erasing and redrawing it several times. And this is what Paul is laying out. He's retelling the history of the world, but you notice the crown up there? That's my way of trying to represent God is in charge of the world. God made the world, he's in charge of the world, and that reality is where we start talking to people about the gospel. And to not acknowledge the reality that the world exists under the rule and reign of God means to miss the most important decisive reality in the universe.
20 · The preacher constructs a sustained hypothetical analogy—arguing with someone who denies the wind despite its obvious effects—to illustrate the absurdity of denying God's activity in creation and history
Think of it this way. Imagine that you have a friend who does not believe— a neighbor rather. Your neighbor does not believe in the wind. And so you leave your house in the morning, you're walking out, you see him walking out, and you say, you remark, 'Hey, oh man, it's pretty windy out there. Watch out.' And he goes, 'What? What are you talking about?' And you're like, you know, the wind. It's so windy. And he's like, 'I don't see anything. What are you talking about?' Like, you know, the wind. 'I don't believe in the wind. What's the wind?' You know, what is the wind? And you're like, well, the wind— you can see the wind. I mean, the trees are moving back and forth. How do you— what do you think's moving the trees? He's like, 'I don't know. It's a mystery.' And you're like, no, it's the wind. He's like, what's the wind? It's an invisible force that pushes and pulls things. 'Oh, right, an invisible force that's pushing and pulling everything. Sure.' And you're like, 'Okay, well, listen, the wind— you can't even explain the world without the wind. How do you think all these plants get planted in the desert? The seeds have to go from one place to somewhere else. Who do you think scatters all the seeds? The wind scatters the seeds.' And he goes, 'Listen, I don't know how the seeds get scattered. I guess we'll never know. It's a mystery.' Right? And you're like, 'Ahh!' Like, 'I don't understand how to explain this to you, but if you just look outside, you'll see branches moving back and forth and you can feel it on your skin. That's the wind.'
21 · The preacher applies the wind analogy back to Paul's method, then directly addresses non-Christians in the congregation, arguing that God's activity is evident even in their own stories and in the existence of beauty, goodness, and the universe itself
And in a similar way, this is what Paul is doing. He's highlighting the history of Israel, but through the lens that God is the one doing this, and doing that, and doing this, and doing that, and doing this, and doing that. That is kind of the foundational reality that you need to see in order to help somebody understand the good news of the gospel. And if you're here today and you're not a Christian, man, let me just say that this is still just as valid. You may not be reviewing Israel's history or have a particular connection ethnically to it, but you can see the hand of God all across history, even across your history. There are so many unexplained things that make no sense, like how did the universe start in the first place? Why do beauty and goodness exist in the world? There's no evolutionary purpose for them. You can see the ripple of the leaves. And maybe you're here because you're seeing some of that and you're wondering, 'Man, what do I do with that?' There's got to be more. That's where we start. We start with the history of us points to him.
22 · The preacher announces the second principle ('the worst of us points to our need') and reads Acts 13:22-29, which moves from David to Jesus and culminates in the unjust execution of Christ
Second, the worst of us points to our need. Verses 22, please. 'And when he had removed Saul, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, "I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my own heart who will do all my will." Of this man's offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior Jesus, as he promised. Before his coming, John had proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John was finishing his course, he said, "What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but behold, after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie." Brothers, sons of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him. And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.'
23 · The preacher unpacks the undercurrent of Paul's historical rehearsal—Israel's persistent rebellion despite God's faithfulness
Now, Paul highlights— there's a lot going on here, but the thing I want you to get is that Paul highlights the need for a Savior before helping draw that connection from their need to the Savior Jesus. And this need he holds out as being present in the history of Israel first. And so, he talks about my favorite phrase, I think, potentially from his whole sermon, is that among all the great acts of the Lord, that God chose and God did this and God did that, Paul includes as one of the great acts of God in verse 18 that he put up with his people. It's almost like— and if you've ever been a parent, you're like, 'That is true. Putting up with things is a great act of the Lord sometimes.' That's what he's saying. He's saying, 'Look, our forefathers were not— God chose them. They weren't just this, "Of course, yes, Lord, whatever you want." No! They rebelled again and again and again. That's what the whole Pentateuch is about. And then the undercurrent, the subtext of Paul's review of Israel's history is the brutal period of the judges where God gives them a whole land, and then yet God's people still keep turning away from him. So he sends a judge to save them. And then they turn away again, and they cry out again, and he sends another judge to save them. And then the people are like, 'Well, you know what the problem is? We want a king, but we want a king that's tall and handsome and like the other kings the nations have around us, not like you, God. We want a real king.' So he gives them Saul, and then they see, oh no, we don't want this kind of king. So then he gives them David, right? And so threaded through the history of Israel is this need. The need is this, and Paul is highlighting Israel is not the hero of history. That they, in a sense, illustrate how deeply humanity needs a hero. That's what you should be getting from Israel's history.
24 · The preacher highlights the pathos in Paul's indictment—Paul includes himself ('maybe Paul himself') in the guilt of crucifying Jesus, then uses a factory illustration to capture how Paul lays out Israel's failures publicly
And then very almost, you can almost see him with grief and sadness knowing that he himself was part of this. He talks about how his countrymen, his people, maybe Paul himself, took an innocent man as an illustration of how deeply broken the Israelite people were. They take this innocent man, this teacher Jesus, and they kill him unjustly. And you just think, man, it's almost like, man, he's spreading— I remember we had a pastor one time who worked in a manufacturing plant in Wadis, and every time something went wrong at the manufacturing plant, they would stop the work and whatever was manufactured incorrectly, they would lay it out on the floor of the factory and then line everybody up to look at it. And the bosses would be like, 'Do you see this? Do you see this?' And so all the sins or mistakes or failures of the factory were laid out. Somebody came and berated them. In a sense, this is what's included in Paul's presentation of the gospel. He's saying, 'Listen, our people— listen, I'm an Israelite. I'm grateful for it,' he would say in other texts, 'but we need to repent.'
25 · The preacher unpacks John the Baptist's ministry as corroborating evidence of Israel's recognized need for repentance
And that's what the whole ministry of John the Baptist was about. He was a popular figure because John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance. Anybody who came to John the Baptist, why did they come? They came because they saw in their nation and in themselves a need to repent, a need to come to the Lord and say, 'Lord, I'm sorry,' right? And Paul is helping them see their need and then pointing them from their need to a Savior. That's what Paul is doing.
26 · The preacher introduces the second visual aid showing humanity with the crown (self-rule) and resulting brokenness
Now, look at this second drawing. This is what Paul is trying to help them see. He's trying to help them see that when humanity— I know, I know, you're like, I'm looking at the same picture you are. I joked in the first service that we're going to auction these off for charity at the end of the meeting. And so you think, man, I got to have that hanging on my wall, and we can make that happen. We'll start the bidding at $1.25 and we'll raise exactly that, probably. This is what Paul is laying out. The Israelite people, right? The best of the world, in a sense. God's chosen people. They're just as broken as everyone else. They might think, 'Well, we're not like the Gentiles.' Paul is showing them, 'No, man. You just put an innocent guy to death.' The most popular figure in recent memory is a guy preaching repentance, and people are coming out and saying, 'Yeah, we're broken.' And when the world— when we remove God as King, what happens is we put the crown on our own heads and the world is deeply, deeply broken as a result.
27 · The preacher steps out of exposition to address the congregation's potential hesitancy about speaking plainly about sin
And Paul is— and please hear me when I say this— it is loving and right that Paul tells the world this. I think sometimes in Christian churches we are like, 'Listen, we don't want to be too, like, talk about sin because people might get offended,' you know. Here's the reality: Paul talks freely and openly about sin because we all know there is something deeply wrong with it, all of us. Look, that is an inescapable reality. We might say, well, I don't believe in sin. I don't believe in religious sin. Then why are we still burdened with guilt, with shame, with fear of being exposed? Why does every time somebody does something we— cancel culture basically is us saying, oh, they're unrighteous, not like us, we're righteous. We got to cancel them. You got to get on social media and be like, look, I'm not them. I'm better than them. Why? Because deep down we know there is something wrong with us. And we're terrified of somebody finding out.
28 · The preacher makes explicit the theological structure latent in Paul's method: the good news of the gospel cannot be received without first confronting the bad news of sin and separation from God
So Paul is saying this is it. Our need points to our need for him. To receive the good news, we must honestly grapple with the bad news that we are broken, sinful, and as a result, we've been cut off from the world that God made. In saying, 'We don't want you, God,' we're cut off from the world that God made in Genesis 1.
29 · The preacher directly addresses non-Christians in the congregation, applying Paul's method by inviting them to examine their own lives for evidence of moral failure
Look, and if you're not a Christian, I just want to encourage you. Let's take an honest look at the history of humanity. Take an honest look at the history of your own life. Are there things that you have done that you know you shouldn't have done, maybe you keep doing them? Are there things that you know you should do that you don't do and you haven't done? If so, your history and the history of humanity and the history of Israel all— man, it's like that meme online. It's like, what's the difference between these two pictures? Nothing, they're the same picture. Your portrait, Israel's portrait, humanity's portrait, all the same portrait.
30 · The preacher announces the third principle ('the best of us points to one better'), highlights the pivotal 'But God' of verse 30, and reads Acts 13:30-39
Third then, doesn't leave us there, thank God. Aren't you glad Paul doesn't end his sermon there? 'So then they killed him. Have a good Sunday.' He just walks off. No. Three, the best of us points to one better. Oh man, right at the worst of Israel's failures in crucifying the Son of God himself, God intervenes in mercy. Verse 30, 'But God,' Listen, the mover, the actor is not Israel. They don't save themselves. Verse 30, 'But God raised him from the dead. And for many days he appears to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus.' as it has been written in the second Psalm, 'You are my Son, today I have begotten you.' And as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way, 'I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.' Therefore he says also in another Psalm, 'You will not let your Holy One see corruption.' For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption. But he whom God raised up did not see corruption. Let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.
31 · The preacher unpacks Paul's rhetorical strategy of using David—Israel's greatest king—to show that even the best of humanity is flawed
Now, there's a lot there, but I think that the main kind of thrust of Paul's argument is what I'm summarizing in point 3: the best of us points to one better. Now, Paul, for much of this sermon, speaks about David. Now, perhaps that was because David was actually one of the texts that was read, or Psalm 2 or Psalm 16 was one of the texts read in the synagogue, and so he's drawing connections there. And the nation of Israel would have seen David as the high point of their history. Verse 22 calls him 'a man after God's own heart.' So, you think politically, militarily, ethically, David is the high point of Israel, right? And you're like, 'Yes, if only we who are burdened under Roman occupation, scattered across the Roman world, if only we had a David who could lead God's people again.' That's what God's people were longing for and looking for. But the subtext was what? Well, David himself, the best of Israel, failed. Right? This man after God's own heart, he took someone else's wife and murdered them. I mean, that's the best of them.
32 · The preacher captures Paul's move from David to Jesus ('don't look at David, look through David') and emphasizes that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promise through David's line
That's why Paul so quickly says, 'Listen, what you're looking for, what you think you see in David, no, no, don't look at David, look through David, because there is one after him.' that the best of David points us to. He says in verse 23, 'Of this man's offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised.'
33 · The preacher offers a personal anecdote about childhood fascination with Benjamin Franklin and then unpacks Franklin's use of 'erratum' (printing error) to describe moral failures in his autobiography
Now, I remember this week that when I was a kid, for some reason I really liked Benjamin Franklin as a kid. I know that's a weird thing. Most kids are like, 'I like Michael Jordan,' you know, and other people are like, 'I like this rock band.' And Ricky Alcantara, you know, age 10, is like, 'I like Benjamin Franklin.' You know, that's— I know, it's weird. And so, but I think the story about the kite was pretty big for me. You know, I was like, man, that's so cool. The guy electrocuted himself for science. That's awesome. And so I read some of Poor Richard's Almanac. I thought it was funny. And so I was like, man, this guy's amazing. One of the founding fathers, a statesman, a scholar, an inventor. And so I was excited in school eventually to read his autobiography. And one of the things you learn about Ben Franklin is he was— he started out as a running a printing press. And he, in his autobiography, used this term of the printing press called 'erratum' whenever he got to failures in his life. Now, I respect Ben Franklin because he doesn't try to hide all of his failures in life. There were some that were just bad. Like, there was one instance where literally he has a best friend, his friend, his best friend has a girlfriend, his best friend leaves, Ben Franklin steals the guy's girlfriend while he's gone, the guy comes back, is heartbroken, and then Ben Franklin is like, 'Eh, actually, it's not going to work out between us anyway,' and discards the girlfriend. And you're just like, 'Bro, what is wrong with you?' And he refers to that as an erratum, meaning a copier's error. So when you'd look at the— you know, you'd have a page that the printing press was making, and there'd be a splotch or a stain, or the letters would be mangled, and you'd think, 'Ah, I can see what the page was supposed to be, but I also see where it's typeset incorrectly.' So anytime he gets to one of these sections, he goes, 'Okay, it's just an erratum. It's like I intended to do this, but I splotched the ink all over here.'
34 · The preacher extends the printing press metaphor to capture humanity's repetitive cycle of producing flawed leaders—even the best have splotches and stains
And that, that is the cycle that humanity has been in since the dawn of time. The best of humanity, the Davids among humanity, you can see, okay, this is what they should have been, and yet there's an error, there's a splotch, there's a stain, there's this messed up. And the printing press for humanity has been running for thousands of years, making person after person after person, and some kind of copies seem more stained and some seem better. And you're like, 'Oh, it's almost there, but you've got this huge splotch over half of the page. The other part of the page is perfect.' And over and over and over, running this press again and again and again and longing for it. Man, if we could just get one, if we could get the right ruler, the right king, the right leader, we would finally be saved. And that's why every politician is like, 'I'm that person.' And then their biography comes out and they're like, 'Eee, not that guy.' Right? Never read a biography of one of your heroes because you're just going, 'Oh, no. Oh, not that guy again.' I've just stopped reading biographies of anybody I like. I just won't do it because you realize, man, these people are broken and flawed just like the rest of us.
35 · The preacher makes explicit Paul's argument from Psalms 2 and 16: David himself points beyond himself to Jesus, the true King who never saw corruption
And that, that's where Paul goes in and says, 'Listen.' Look at Psalm 2. Psalm 2 was talking about the Davidic kings, but really it points to a true and better King. Psalm 16 talks about one who never sees corruption, but really it's pointing to one not just who wouldn't see corruption in kind of a basic sense. No, no, every single person sees corruption. David himself is decaying in the ground. Your King of Kings, he's dead, being turned to dust. And therefore, he's not the one you're looking for. You're looking for someone better. And he arrives in city in Antioch with the good news. There is one better, a man after God's own heart who never failed, who never fell, who never sinned, who never messed up. The page is perfect.
36 · The preacher extends the printing press metaphor to capture substitutionary atonement: Jesus' perfect page traded for our flawed one
And not only that, he offers himself, as he'll say, for our sins. In a sense, we bring our broken, splotched, messed-up page to God, and God must judge it and send us away. But instead, Jesus goes to the cross, His perfect page traded for ours. He takes ours, He goes to the cross, He's unjustly killed, and we receive His page and gain entrance to forgiveness and freedom.
37 · The preacher returns to the text of Acts 13:38-39 to ground the theological claim in Paul's explicit offer: forgiveness and freedom through Jesus, which the Law could never provide
That's what Paul is proclaiming. Look at the offer of what he says, verse 38, 'Let it be known therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.'
38 · The preacher introduces another visual aid—bungee cords representing humanity's futile attempts at self-salvation
Look, all of our best attempts— can you, Kathy, can you find the bungee cord slide? That one in point 2? That's what I got. This, look, you got to put up with my artwork for the rest of this message. I'm almost done. See these little bungee cords on the right there? Look, the best of our attempts to deal with our broken condition are no better than somebody taking a bungee cord and running as hard as they and fast as they can in a direction only to be yanked back. And the further and harder they run, the harder they're yanked back, right? And so humanity, for generation after generation, tries everything. We'll try debauchery. Maybe we'll save and elevate ourselves through debauchery. Nope. We'll try being perfectly religious. We'll try that. Nope. Doesn't— none of these things can assuage your issue of the forgiveness of sins and desire for freedom. You can try religion, you can try debauchery, you can try whatever you want, all of them, bungee cords out and back, out and back, out and back.
39 · The preacher introduces the final visual aid showing the cross as the bridge from brokenness back to God's original design
But Jesus offers something better. Go to the next slide, Kathy, the cross slide. This is what Jesus offers: a king who lives perfectly under the kingship of Jesus, who brings the kingship of Jesus, who then that down arrow dies in our place on the cross, but then does not stay dead. Is raised by God to new life so that we have a path from the brokenness of our lives in this world back to the design that God intended for us originally. Do you have one with all three of them? Man, this is the path. We're created, we're broken, Christ comes and redeems, and we have a path now to what we were created to be.
40 · The preacher announces the fourth and final principle ('all history and all of our story point to a clear decision'), transitioning from exposition of the gospel offer to Paul's closing call for response
That is what Paul is holding out here. And with that, and fourth and lastly and very briefly, all history and all of our story point to a clear decision.
41 · The preacher reads Paul's closing warning from Acts 13:40-41 and names it as a 'surprising left turn'—shifting from the offer of forgiveness to the danger of rejecting it
Now, Paul ends his message in what seems to us to be kind of a surprising left turn at the end of this message. I mean, because I don't know about you, but he gets to the end and he talks about freedom and forgiveness and you're like, 'Amen!' And Paul has them. And then verse 40 he says, 'Beware.' You're like, 'Whoa, okay, where did that come from? Beware?' And he warns them, 'Beware, therefore, let what is said in the prophets come about.' 'Look, you scoffers, be astounded and perish! For I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will not believe even if one tells it to you.' What is he doing? He's warning them at the end that when you hear the gospel, there is a danger.
42 · The preacher uses the visual aid to illustrate the binary choice Paul's gospel demands: reject Jesus and remain in brokenness, or accept Him as Savior and Lord and be restored to God's design
Show the graphic with the two paths. There is a danger when you encounter the gospel. You never are left where you are. You either encounter the truth of the gospel and say, 'You know what? No, I'm not going to do it. I won't accept him as Savior because I won't—' I won't admit that I'm a sinner, and I won't accept him as Lord. I want to run my own life. And so you just circle back to the circle of brokenness. Or you say this: I am a sinner. Those splotches and stains on my life, I can't get rid of them, and I can't pretend they don't exist. But I'll take Jesus' offer of trading his perfect life for mine, and I will accept and rejoice in Jesus as King. 'Because I've made a mess of my life trying to run it myself.' When you do that, then you return, you begin to be returned through redemption to the design of God for you.
43 · The preacher directly addresses non-Christians, reframing their presence as providential ('God brought you here') and pressing for a decision
All history and all of our stories point to a clear decision. And so if you're not a Christian today, it's not an accident that you ended up here. You didn't just wander in here. You might think, 'Well, I just happened to be here.' No, you didn't just happen to be here. God brought you here. And you have a decision to make. Which circle do you find yourself in today, and which circle do you want to live in? Because if you want to live in the restored world that you were meant to live in, the only way to do it is through the cross, through the forgiveness and freedom of Jesus Christ.
44 · The preacher reads Acts 13:42-45 to show the historical fulfillment of Paul's warning—some believed and followed, others rejected and reviled
All right, let me end with this, verse 42. 'And they went out. The people begged that these things might be told to them the next Sabbath. And after the meeting of the synagogue broke up, many Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who, as they spoke with them, urged them to continue in the grace of God. But then continue to verse 44— verse 45, rather. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him. So what's the end result? The end result is this: people encounter the cross and they go one of two ways. They either accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, or they reject him and say, you know what, I don't need a Savior, and I'm my own lord. Those are the only two things you could do when you encounter Jesus.
45 · The preacher transitions from exposition to practical application, introducing the three-circle gospel framework as the summer's evangelism training tool
And so here's what I want to encourage you with. These three simple circles represent the basics of the gospel story. And so one of the things we want to do this summer is equip every single member of the church, every single part of our church, with these three circles. You can go ahead and show the three circles. This is what we're going to try to impress on our hearts over this summer so that in those moments where the Lord gives you an opportunity, perhaps it's unexpected, perhaps it's out of nowhere, you will begin to have an understanding of the gospel. God made everything, the world is broken, and Jesus is the only way to fix things. And any one of those three circles you can connect with people. You can say, 'Man, why do you think this exists? Why do you think the wind is moving things around? I don't believe in the wind.' 'Really? Well, talk to me about that.' 'I don't believe in God.' Okay, well, how do you— tell me about that. What's your view? We take people from their brokenness to the Lord. Man, why do you think humanity is broken? Why do you think things are messed up? Why do you think things are going wrong in our country? You know, we talk about redemption, like, who's your hero? Who's the person you respect the most? Right? We begin to work our way from these things, from where people are, to the gospel.
46 · The preacher offers a second personal story—this time successfully seizing a gospel opportunity at a coffee shop—to illustrate the principle of readiness
Now, I will say this week, as I began to work on this message, I was so convicted about the story of the movie theater and me missing that story, I just— I prayed that I'd have, like, a better version of that story for this Sunday. So I went to this— I was going to a coffee shop, and I was going into the coffee shop, and I felt led, 'Lord, I'm going to pray you give me an opportunity in this coffee shop to share the gospel,' you know. And so I'm ready. My heart's filled up with the gospel. I'm ready to go. And I'm there, and things are happening, and, you know, I have conversations with people. And all of a sudden, you know, I'm running out of time, and I realize I got to go. And so I have to go from a meeting to another meeting. And I get in the car and I drive off and I realize, nope, yeah, it didn't happen. Yeah, no gospel opportunity. So I'm kind of discouraged. So the next day I'm going to another coffee shop, I'm meeting somebody, we're talking for a bit about a project, and at the end of the conversation— and I'm just thinking, man, I'm not going to get an opportunity this week, oh well. I'm not going to be able to finish the story. I'm going to leave it unresolved. And as I'm leaving, the guy I'm talking to says, hey, hey, listen, listen. 'Hey, you know, as you go, I just want to say real quick, it'd be awesome if you could just be praying for me.' And I was like, 'I mean, sure, about what?' And so he just began to share, 'Yeah, I'm having some hard things going on in our family, and yeah, so just, yeah.' And it was almost, it was so weird, it was almost like the guy didn't want to share, but he kind of felt like, 'Okay, yeah, if you could say, sure.' And I'm asking him for details and he's just like, and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I think this is an opportunity. So like, I used what I knew of his life. I had just been reading Isaiah 35, so I tried to draw a connection to that. And I tried to give him hope that, man, God's in charge. He redeems broken things. That's the hope of Jesus. Like, and then he got a phone call and had to go. So it wasn't like in that moment he was like, yes, what must I do to be saved? He was like, I'm sorry, I gotta go. But at that opportunity, I think I was ready.
47 · The preacher issues a final charge to the congregation: pray for opportunities this summer and be ready to share the three-circle gospel
And so as we end, let's pray, church. Let's pray that this summer, as we're moving and going and we're having more cookouts and connecting with family and seeing neighbors, the Lord would give us opportunities and that we would, like Paul, be ready to share. God's in charge. Our world is broken. There's a hero who's come whose name is Jesus, and you got to decide what you're going to do. Amen?
48 · The preacher prays for non-Christians present, rehearsing the entire gospel using the three-circle framework and the printing press metaphor ('stains and splotches,' 'exchanged pages')
Now, would you stand? Let's pray. Lord, I first pray for anyone who came today and is not a Christian. I pray that they would hear the truth of the gospel through the Word of God, through this ancient sermon by the Apostle Paul. Lord, there is a word for them as well. And I pray that your Word would go to work, that they would feel the truth that there really is a Creator who made everything, and he made everything good. We see him in the sunset and in the sky and in the good things. But our world is also deeply broken, and our portrait is the same as the portrait of humanity. We have stains and splotches and errors all over the place. And I pray that in light of that, Jesus and his coming would be good news, that there really was truly a righteous person who's, who's whose life never resulted in failure. And rather than receiving what he could have, just glory and adulation, he laid his life down for us. He exchanged pages with us that we might, if we believe in him as Savior and Lord, be forgiven and freed. God, I pray that they would feel the offer of the gospel and would not put it off, but decide today to follow you as Savior and Lord. Lord.
49 · The preacher prays for Christians in the congregation, asking that they would see gospel opportunities as divine appointments rather than interruptions
And, Lord, I pray for all of us who are Christians. Lord, so, so often it's easy to forget the majesty and glory of the gospel. Lord, I thank you for Neil reminding us of how he was saved. You interrupted his life through this providential book. Lord, we all have a story like that where the truth of the gospel somehow interrupted our lives. So then, Lord, I pray that we would never see gospel moments as interruptions that we're meant to avoid or grit our teeth and get through, but rather opportunities from you that we might be ready to share the good news. Lord, it is good news. It is the news that our city and our country and our world long to hear, that someone has come bringing forgiveness and freedom. Lord, that's the world our city and the world need. I pray you'd help us be faithful with it. Amen.