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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim, Pastor
Together in prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank You for this day. We praise You for who You are. You have shown us Your goodness. You have proven Your righteousness. You have demonstrated Your mercy and Your loving kindness.
We are very blessed.
To be brought together today.
According to Your purposes to glorify Your Son by Your Holy Spirit, to be given this Word that is clear and true, a gift to transform us, to conform us to the image of Your beloved Son. We ask that today that You would accomplish all this and more, that You would grant us many graces as we gather around this table today to commune together with You by Your Son in Your Spirit.
Help us now as we look to Your Word that we would understand it and rejoice in it, that there would be an amen in our hearts of the truth here in this text, that You would have Your way in us. We pray for all of these mercies, looking only to Your Son, Jesus Christ, with whom You are well pleased.
Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts 13. And we'll be reading verses 26 -30 this morning. Acts 13, verses 26 -30. The title of this morning's sermon is derived from the passage The Word of Salvation to You.
The Word of Salvation to You. Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Born of the Virgin Mary, fully man and fully God, anointed by the Holy Spirit, He came forth preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
And this gospel was accomplished in His death and resurrection. And He committed this same word of salvation to the church, by which all nations are to be made disciples. To the Jew first, and also to the nations.
The power of God unto salvation is made manifest in the grace of preaching of the person and work of Jesus Christ. This word of salvation long promised by the prophets in ancient Israel has been sent by God to you.
This is the word of salvation good news to you. This is essentially the message that Paul the apostle, along with his brother in Christ, Barnabas, bring to the Jews and God-fearers in the synagogue on that Sabbath day in Antioch of Pisidia.
I invite you to stand with me as we read God's holy word and hear the message of Paul, the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Verse 26 of Acts 13. This is the word of the Lord. Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent.
For those who dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not know Him, nor even the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, have fulfilled them in condemning Him. And though they found no cause for death in Him, they asked Pilate that he should be put to death.
Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a tomb. But God raised Him from the dead. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
You may be seated. I distinctly remember in college having a very difficult time making friends or keeping them. Various folks have experienced that at various stages in life. But the few friends I had bore patiently with me and felt sorry for me and tried to get me involved in all manner of things I had no business being.
On one occasion, I remember a friend invited me to a birthday party and as a poor college student, I thought I was dining high going to Zio's Italian Eatery. Some of you know better. I learned that the occasion was a birthday party for a young man I didn't really know, but I was acquaintances with his friends.
Somehow I got invited. I was just happy to be there. I was just chatting and making jokes and laughing, having a great time. And all of a sudden, the guest of honor, the birthday young man, said to me,.
Why are you here?
And then turned to somebody else and said, why is he here? And suddenly all conversation stopped. Yeah, why was I there? That wasn't the only occasion either. One time I was invited as a fourth in a car trip out to Phoenix, Arizona to attend a wedding that apparently I had not been invited to.
And my arrival was the cause of great bridal fury. Why was I there? How could this possibly have happened? Well, arrangements had been made. My friend said I could come. Now, perhaps my friend was a bit importunate, trading on goodwill and influence that my friend didn't really truly possess.
And at each occasion, at each table, I was an offense to the host. I was an offense to the guest of honor. My friend's name, my friend's advocacy could only suffice in drawing out a begrudging allowance for me to stick around a little while longer.
If only I wouldn't talk so much I could stay at Zio's. Okay, fine, you can come to the wedding, but none of the surrounding functions. It would have been preferable if I had not come at all. What a difference it is to come in the name of Christ, by the grace of Christ, to the table of Christ.
How has it happened that you have come to this table? Who has made the arrangements? Who is it that speaks for you? What is the manner of your reception by the host, by the very guest of honor? What word has brought you here?
Paul preaches to those at the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia, and he preaches to them the word of salvation. Salvation arranged by God in Christ through the Spirit. The word of our salvation is spoken by God, and it is settled by God.
The word of our salvation is found in God's word. Where else can we go? And the word of our salvation is fulfilled by God's will. How else could it be? Let's look in our passage again and look at verses 26 through 27.
Listen to the way in which.
Paul addresses his audience. Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent for those who dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers because they did not know him, nor even the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath have fulfilled them in condemning him.
So notice, first of all, that Paul addresses his audience according to creation and ethnicity, covenant, and religion. They are men. They are made in God's image. They are of mankind. They are his special creation.
They are Paul's brothers. They're part of this larger family that have the same ancestors and share similar culture. They are the sons of Abraham through whom is the covenant of circumcision full of promise.
And with them are men who fear God, who participate in this religious reverence unto God every week. To hear something, a word of exhortation from the Tanakh, from the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Kethuvim, the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament as we call it.
So they are special. They are unique and very basic. What is Paul saying to them? Addressing them to the full degree.
Of who they are.
Here's the whole scope of who you are in this world. Your full identity just laid out. Your whole resume. And you need a word of salvation, which means what? You're in danger of damnation. You're a sinner before a holy God.
How unique you are. How special you are. All of your resume laid out very quickly and yet how basic your need is. You're a sinner in need of a Savior. Christ came as the great physician for those who are sick.
A Savior for those who are sinners. We notice secondly that these men, it is to them and thus their wives in the room just over on the other side of the synagogue. To their children they are gathered.
It is to them, to their wives, to their children that the word of this salvation has been sent out. Notice in the text this salvation. To you the word of this salvation has been sent. What is this word of salvation?
We see Paul's sermon thus far in verses 16 through 25. What is he talking about in verses 16 through 25? He calls all of that this word of salvation that has been sent to you. This word of salvation is that according to the promise, God has raised up for Israel a Savior, namely Jesus.
You see that in verse 23. God has raised up for Israel a Savior, Jesus. He's the culmination of the covenants. He is the preeminence of all the promises. The word of this salvation is that this Savior, Jesus Christ.
I'm fond of saying Jesus is the good of the good news and he's the news of the good news. It's not that we have a magic formula by which we are to ascribe in some ritual and thus we have accomplished the craft of salvation.
We don't have a ritual. We don't have a formula.
We have a Savior.
We have a Savior, Jesus Christ. And the good news is who he is and what he has accomplished. Who he is and what he does. And the word of this salvation is this Savior, Jesus. As was said earlier, there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
There is only one Savior. This word of salvation is singular. It is unique. It is unlike the other words of salvation that were common in Paul's day and are common in our day. How many times a day are you bombarded with solutions?
If you only knew this, if you only had that, then all these problems would be solved. Here's some good news, good news, good news, good news. Notice, third of all, that this word of salvation, which is all about Jesus the Savior, was sent out to them.
Sent out to them. The verb is much like the noun, apostle, apostello. Meaning that this message, this word of salvation was ordered to go to an appointed place. That's different than being simply broadcasted.
That's different than simply being published to see who might be interested. It's different than just being put out there.
In the ether.
It is divinely ordered to a place and to a people. The word of this salvation was divinely orchestrated to be brought and heralded and heard by these very men sitting before Paul at that very moment. In other words, this word of salvation is not a bingo ball.
It just happens to fall right and mark down by the savvy. Happenstance. This is a royal edict sent specifically to humble the proud and redeem the sinner. Heaven sent. Notice, fourth of all, that in God's goodwill, this word was sent all the way to these men for...
Notice that in verse 27. Here's the explanation. Here's why the word has come to you. Here's one of the reasons why. Verse 27 begins with an explanation. To you, the word of this salvation has been sent for the Jerusalem dwellers, the most holy of all the Jews, those who live closest to the temple, the ones who are to be most respected.
These Jerusalem dwellers have rejected this word of salvation. The word of God has come to you because those who dwell in Jerusalem have rejected this word. They don't even know their own Messiah. They don't know their Savior.
Because they don't even know.
The voice of the prophets.
The prophets are read to them every single Sabbath, and Paul is in a synagogue on the Sabbath. The words of the prophets have just been read, and he says, you know,.
The words of these prophets.
Are read every single Sabbath, but the ones who dwell in Jerusalem, the Jews in Jerusalem,.
They don't even know.
What in the world the prophets are talking about.
They don't even know. And because they don't know.
What the prophets say, they don't know who the Savior is.
You see?
You don't know what the Old Testament means. You don't know who Christ is.
You see what he's saying?
So they rejected the Savior. Did they thereby cause the Word of God to be of no effect? God forbid. They merely, notice verse 27, in their rejection of the Messiah, they merely fulfilled the Word of God bringing to pass in their rebellion what God had already eternally decreed.
The very person and work of Jesus Christ.
They couldn't undo it.
So we know that this Word not only is to sinners, not only is it singular and unique, not only is it sent, but it is also brought by God's sovereignty. Now think about what this means. Paul is saying to these men who are specially created and ethnically related and covenantally rooted and religiously devout, and he is saying to these men,.
You need a Savior.
You are lost in your sin. As unique as you are, as special as you are, it's pretty basic. You need to repent and turn away from everything that you would trust and all the excuses that you might make, make a pile of all of your good deeds, make a pile of all of your bad deeds, and flee it all for Christ and Christ alone.
You're flailing in darkness. The wrath of God abides upon you. Dead in your trespasses and sins, you have the devil as your father. Without God's gracious orchestration, you will only ever continue to stumble through the prophets' veiled faces, clogged ears, not knowing who speaks nor of whom.
And not just any Savior, but the Savior declared in this word of salvation. Think of the supremacy of our Messiah. These are prestigious men and devout men, but they need a Savior. And what a Savior is presented to them and declared to them.
No other Savior will do. None are so exalted. None are so glorious as this Jesus of Nazareth, who is the only Savior that God has sent into the world, the one mediator. So this word of salvation is the only word so divinely ordered and orchestrated, a light unto darkness, salvation for sinners like Paul, like Barnabas, like John Mark, like these religious men, God-fearers, Jews who attend the synagogue every Sabbath, sinners like you and me.
We see that they live in a prestigious Roman colony, Antioch of Pisidia, where the emperor's euangelion, his gospel, is broadcasted from the marketplace by heralds season after season. The procouncil must implement this new policy, this new good news, this new gospel from Rome every single time it comes through.
Festival after festival, the good news of the Roman emperor is declared in this Roman colony. He is declared to be curios in soter. He is Lord and Savior. These are the titles of the Roman emperor, Lord and Savior.
Why do you think the book of Acts is so filled with the declarations of Jesus as Lord and Savior? Because the temptation is that we will look around for a politician, we will look around for a magistrate and say, oh, here's our Savior, finally.
He'll fix what's wrong with our world, our culture, our nation, our community. Those who have ears to hear, let us hear. We don't have a Savior other than Jesus Christ. Consider, these men, they gather weekly in their synagogues.
They hear readings and prayers and blessings. They search the Scriptures. They've invited Paul to give any word of exhortation there or they're up for anything, whatever you might have to share. Something in there will help us.
Something in there will deliver us from our problems, we're sure. But they do not understand what they are reading. Many men will look at the Scriptures and say, I find value in these things. Oh, it's so full of helpful thoughts and wonderful pictures.
If only we would live our lives a little bit more in line with the Bible, how better our culture would be. Well, the rabbis would agree, but they don't know the Savior. So why does this matter? It matters because no matter who you are, if you have heard the word of this salvation, it has been sent to you by your Almighty Creator.
It matters because this word of salvation in which Christ is King and we must bow the knee, this word of salvation in which we are confronted with our sin and the righteousness of God and Christ, it matters because this word invades and stuns.
It crucifies and raises. It's a word that lifts up and spreads out. A word that draws us nigh and bows us low. It is a word, the word, that brings us to this communion. And we are to hearken to this word.
We are to bow before this King and trust in this Savior and eat at His table. You've not been brought here this morning by a friend of low esteem. You've not been invited here this morning with a word that has no weight.
By a plan that has no merit. So do not eat at this table with half a heart in some terrified penance or with some groveling promise that somehow you'll make God happy with you. Eat as free sons and daughters.
Eat as beloved children. Or don't eat at all. Do not eat at this table with an evil eye upon your fellow, considering them to be unworthy of your kindness, of your service, or of your love. Eat as brothers and sisters adopted by the grace of God.
Or do not eat at all. In other words, come to this table only with every confidence in Christ. And then we will look upon one another in the liberty of love. Such is the word of this salvation. It is found in God's word.
Where else can we go? And it is fulfilled by God's will. How else could it be? Verses 28 through 30. Paul continues about these who dwelt in Jerusalem, who didn't know the voice of the prophets and thus rejected the Savior.
Verse 28. And though they found no cause for death in him, they asked Pilate that he should be put to death. Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.
But God raised him from the dead. So notice first of all that these prestigious inhabitants of Jerusalem, these authorized caretakers of the temple, these who were the foremost stewards of the old covenant, they are both ignorant and responsible.
They did not have eyes to see. They did not have ears to hear. So when the eternal word became flesh and came to his own place, his own people did not receive him, they did not know him, yet they condemned him to die knowing that there was no just cause for this hateful action.
It was observed by Jonathan Edwards. What is the degree of the depravity of man? How do we know how evil man is? Did you know how bad off man is? That if he had the chance to kill God,.
He'd take it.
If you think that's hyperbole, think about what they did to the son of God, Jesus Christ. Did they not leap at the chance.
To strike at God?
They found no cause for death in him, which means what? Here are those who are known.
As the people of the book,.
And yet though they claim to know God's word, by the very laws of Moses that they loved to boast in, they could find no cause to condemn the Christ. Not by any measure, but by the one measure that mattered, the Lamb of God was pure, sinless, without fault,.
Thoroughly righteous,.
And those who put him to death and offered him up to Pilate and screamed, crucify him and his blood be upon us and our children did so in direct violation of the word of God. Notice, second of all, that their God-hating rebellion against the Messiah, their manipulating and utilizing of Pilate to kill the Christ turned out to be a fulfillment of what God promised to perform.
When the Father declared of the Son by the Spirit through the prophets that he would be crucified, that he would be condemned unjustly, pierced with nails, buried, not only dying among sinners, but buried among the rich, and raised the third day, notice that these things were brought about by the means of sinful men.
The church themselves, they confessed in prayer to God in Acts 4, verses 27 and 28, for truly, they prayed, for truly against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed, Messiah, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were all gathered together and look at what they do in their depravity.
Look what they do in their sin. Verse 28, to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. That's how powerful and sovereign and pure and good God is. That he can take the most evil action that was freely committed by men doing exactly what they desired and use that to bring about the greatest good.
This is all according to promise, Paul says. We have to live our lives by promises. Promises shape our faith. Promises incite our love. Promises pull us on in hope. But what if you don't believe the promises?
What if you think that your pain is too strong for these promises to really come true? What if you think that your problems are too complex? What if you think that your personal perdition.
Is just too deep for God?
You're just too special to be saved. No, you're basic. Not too much for God. Not too much for God. Having trouble believing the promises of God? Look at the two words that follow.
But God.
Verse 30. This wonderful phrase, but God. Without these two words, where would you and I be today? Without these two words, we'd have no hope. The word of this salvation would have no more force than the flutter of a fly's wing if it hadn't been for this, but God raised him from the dead.
Joseph's evil brothers tried to off him for a profit. And Joseph said in the end, but God meant it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive. Saul hounded David every day, but God did not deliver him into his hand.
The wicked plague the poor, Job says, but God draws the mighty away with His power. David says, my flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. The nations ranged.
The people plotted vain things. The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ. They crucified the Lord of glory,.
But God, but God, but God.
Raised Him from the dead. On this our salvation depends. The word of our salvation is fulfilled by God's will. How can we be saved? How can it be possible for anybody to be saved? The disciples ask their Savior, and He says, with man is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
He was in the world. The world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him, but as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,.
But of God, but God.
So shall we come to the table of our own initiative and our own design? What rights do I have to come to the table? What merits can I claim? Shall I invite myself? Shall I announce my own arrival and designate my own seating arrangement?
Is my name so weighty? Is my influence so great? I but a condemned criminal before the judge, a sinner standing before the face of my creator, my hand upon my mouth, my face not daring to look to heaven.
I have no word, I have no recourse, but mercy, mercy speaks from the bench. And God says, no condemnation you have now to dread. As far as the east is from the west, so far I have removed your transgressions from you, for you stand in the merits of Christ's sacrifice and Christ's mediation.
You stand not guilty, but it doesn't stop there, because we have the same judge speaking grace upon grace. Not only are you not guilty, but you stand righteous altogether in my sight. And what's more, you are my adopted child in the merits of Christ.
That's the way we come to the table. Consider well how you have entered into the kingdom of heaven. Consider well how you may enter into the kingdom of heaven. You come as poor, little children, born again.
Our salvation is by the power of God. This is why the word of salvation can only be fulfilled by the will of God. The word of our salvation is found in God's word. Where else are we going to go? And the word of our salvation is fulfilled by God's will.
How else could it be? Let's keep these things in mind as we come to the Lord's table in communion. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the time you've given us in your word. We thank you for a word of salvation preached preached to those in far off Antioch of Pisidia, preached to those like us, far off in both time, geographical, cultural distance, and yet, despite every possible reason that our salvation would just be too hard, it's because of you and your power and your will and your grace for your glory that we are saved.
And we give you the praise here this morning. In Jesus' name that we pray, amen.
