Acts 14:44-52 - The Happy Gentiles

You are listening to Recast Church of Madawan's Podcast. Listen in as our lead pastor,

Don Sopec, is in a sermon series entitled, Solid Foundation, A Journey Through the

Book of Acts. I want to start off just as we're going to come to worship and the band is going to come,

I like to introduce kind of the subject, the topic for the morning, and then read the passage that we're going to be in.

Here at Recast Church, we value truth and we believe that God's Word is truth, and so we come to that every week.

You're not going to hear me, you're not going to see me show a clip from a movie and then preach on that movie. Or to read you a poem and then exposit that poem and walk you through the meaning of that poem, unless that poem happens to be a psalm in the

Bible or something like that. We stick to God's Word and we're going to follow through a passage of God's Word and that's basically what we do every week.

If you talk with somebody who's here every week, you're going to find that what you get here this morning is pretty consistent. It's walking through God's Word and letting

God filter what we view about life, rather than the other way around.

So much of our world is looking at what goes on out there and trying to filter God through it. Does that make sense?

Rather, we come to God, figure out who he is and who he's shown himself to be, and then we work to go out and to demonstrate that and live in that truth.

So that's what we mean when we talk about our core value of truth. You can see our core values on the back wall. Community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

Those are the things that drive us as a church. As we jump into this, first and foremost,

I want to say that the church is a group of gospel people, centered on the good news, very simple truth, that Jesus came to earth, died on the cross for our sins, was raised again victorious three days later, and offers that same resurrection to all.

That anybody who would come by faith can actually have the hope of eternal life and forgiveness of sins based on what

Christ has done. A very simple truth. So as the church gathers, we are a group of gospel people. We gather to reflect on the gospel.

We should go out from here with the intention of living out that good news. We should be a people who speak the gospel, who pray the gospel, who demonstrate the gospel by the way that we live.

And this means that our identity as a church here at Recast is wrapped up in the gospel.

We are people who have gathered together because of our interest in Jesus Christ. And I recognize that at any given time that we gather together, we've got all different kinds of people gathering together from a variety of backgrounds, different things going on with your week.

Some of you, if I were to ask, I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but if I said, did you have a rough week this week? Some of you, this would be the week where you would raise your hand to that.

Some of you, if I said, are you having a great week? Was this a good one? Did you get some good news this week? Some of you would raise your hand to that.

And some of you might raise your hand to both of them. At any given week, we can get good news and bad news at the same time.

But we are a variety of people. From those who are here just because they're curious, to those who are here because they have been living a life committed to faith in Jesus Christ for years, and they want to carry that on in community.

So they are here for that reason. But whatever your reason, ultimately we are a people who have gathered together because of a central interest in Jesus Christ.

We are a people who live the gospel by taking up our cross and following Him. And that means that we follow

His example by dying to ourselves, by serving others in a sacrificial way. I'm introducing this text this morning by speaking so much about the gospel because we will see in our text this morning the power of the gospel to save.

And that salvation comes by an act of God. That salvation comes by His movement in our history.

Paul and Barnabas, we're going to see these two guys in our text this morning, guys that were alive in the early church, that were helping to get that established and God was using them.

And they lived this way. They lived out the gospel.

They were constantly proclaiming the words of life. They had the gospel for breakfast.

They had it for lunch. They ate the gospel for dinner. If they woke up for a midnight snack, guess what they were chomping on? The gospel.

It was everything to them. So I want you to turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 13.

Acts 13, 44 through 52. If you want to use the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you, we have those there.

And it's a little bit easier. It's page 790 in that Bible. And you can follow along.

If you do not own a Bible, I recognize some new faces here. If you do not own a Bible, you can take that one with you when you leave.

It's a gift. And we have those there. We've given about 100 of those away since we started two years ago. And so we want you to have a

Bible. Follow along as we read Acts chapter 13 starting in verse 44 to the end of the chapter.

The next Sabbath. Now, that tells us that we're going to have to have a little bit of historical background as we jump into this.

But the next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the

Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him.

And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly saying, it was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you.

But since you thrusted aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the

Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us saying, 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 began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and drove them out of their district.

But they shook off the dust from their feet against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the

Holy Spirit. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. If we remember last week, some of you were here, some of you weren't, so I can't get you caught up to speed.

Paul and this guy named Barney or Barnabas traveled to Antioch last week.

It's in modern -day Turkey, kind of in the central section of modern -day Turkey. And we're talking about 10 to 15 years after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So that puts that in a historical context. These guys had been sent out by a church to go and proclaim the good news, to start new churches out into new territories, and that's what they're doing.

Last week we saw them, they met in a synagogue, a Jewish place of worship, and they opened up the

Old Testament and proclaimed that Jesus Christ is the answer. That He is the Messiah, He is the Chosen One, the

One who has been given by which all people are to be saved, and there is no salvation outside of Him.

And so they declared this, and they basically gave this what amounted to be a super sweet sermon.

And it was so awesome that the people literally begged them to come back. They said, stay in our territory, stay in our town this next week.

We want to talk with you all week. They basically had groupies following them around all week asking them questions about this, this new message.

They were just blown away by it, and they said, could you come back to the synagogue next week and tell us more?

And that's where we come in right into our text this week, verse 44, the next Sabbath. So that's kind of the setting, that's what's going on, that's what's happened, and so we're here, and we are at the next

Sabbath. And almost the whole city, the text tells us, comes out to hear the message.

Now we know from historical accounts that the city was predominantly Gentile, that is, not Jewish people.

To the Jewish mind, everybody in the entire world was categorized as two different distinct types of people.

Either you were a Jew and you're one of us, or you're a Gentile and not one of us. And they had this really, really rigid you're one of us or not one of us kind of mentality that was going on back in that day and age.

So that's what's going on here, predominantly a Gentile city, which means that if the majority of the city comes out, what's the crowd like?

The majority of the crowd would be Gentiles. But they're coming to basically a

Jewish worship gathering. They're coming to the synagogue, they're coming to this, but the word had spread like wildfire throughout the territory and throughout the area.

So you have a predominantly non -Jewish crowd at a Jewish worship service. And there was a theater in that time that's been uncovered by archaeology that seated about 12 ,000 to 15 ,000 people.

So it's a fairly large theater and it's likely that this group, this gathering ended up there. Now they might have started out at the synagogue, but as you can imagine if we had all of a sudden, we were expecting a normal Sunday and we had 1 ,000 people show up, we might have to do something a little different too.

So that's probably what they did. It's quite possible, quite likely that the gathering took place somewhere other than the synagogue by this point.

But the word has spread that these guys have this amazing message, and the amazing message they're calling the word of the

Lord, which is basically the gospel. And everyone starts off with a significant interest in this message.

They've been hearing about it all week. They're like, I want to know more about this message about Jesus Christ. There's anticipation that's going on there.

Now the phrase the word of the Lord or the word of God occurs four times in just this short text.

Whenever you see repeated words in scripture, it should make us kind of think, okay, I think there's a theme here.

I think there's something that's going on here. The word of God occurs four times, and this is ultimately the good news.

This is why I started off my introduction focusing on the gospel, which is the word gospel means, it's translated, good news.

So that's what it means. The gospel ultimately of salvation through Jesus Christ that I talked about earlier, his death for our sins, his paying the penalty, his being the sacrifice for us, and that is the gospel, that is the message that Paul and Barnabas had preached the previous week to these people.

But something happens that's very common in our human experience. So this speaker, these speakers come from out of town, and they draw a huge crowd, and somebody gets jealous.

Is that your experience? Have you experienced jealousy with success, with your own success?

Have you experienced jealousy with the success of others? I mean, one's on the good side, one's on the bad side.

It's kind of like, when there is success in human endeavor, jealousy is not far behind.

Would you say that that's accurate? That's what we see in our text here, anyways, is that jealousy just, boom, it's right there.

The Jews in particular are filled with jealousy, the text tells us, which is an interesting word in Greek, because the word that we translate jealousy is actually a word that implies religious zeal.

It's that they're enthusiastic about something. It's not that they're just frustrated with this large crowd, not just like something petty like, well, you've got a big crowd and we don't.

There's something that's a little bit more driving behind this word jealousy. What's implied by this zeal is that their jealousy arises out of a desire for everyone to be excited about their message, about the

Old Testament law. And people are not excited about their law. And so, they haven't been able to grab these

Gentiles from their community with their law. And they're kind of saying, well, wait a minute. It's as if the

Jewish leaders are saying, we can't fill the synagogue with the preaching of the law, but some new teaching comes in, and the

Gentiles come out in droves. There's another thing that I think is going on here in this religious zeal.

I just got done saying that there's a big division between the Jews and the Gentiles at this time. So, how are the

Jews going to respond to a large crowd of those unclean Gentiles in their midst?

Those who worship emperors and statues and all the different crud and stuff in society that just gets messy and difficult.

And they're like, well, we're the pure ones. Can you imagine how that could happen? And now we've got this large crowd that we've got to deal with in our worship gathering.

How dare they come in? Kind of get the gist of that? That's a little bit, I think, of what's going on here, too, is the zeal for the law is like, well, some of that is

I don't sit next to Gentiles. It's their mindset. There's a lot of that going on. But the

Jews then begin to heckle Paul and Barnabas. So Paul and Barnabas get up to speak and proclaim the words of life, the gospel, the word of God.

We see that in verse 45. They begin to contradict them, even revile them, the text says.

Revile is a really strong word, a word that has overtones of blasphemy. It's a religious word, again.

And they are speaking religiously abusive terms to Paul and Barnabas.

It's important that you understand that this is not just them kind of disagreeing with a little nuance here or there, like somebody here stands up and says,

Don, I think what you just said grammatically was a little incorrect. Please don't do that, by the way. Take notes and tell me afterwards if you've got something to say.

That would really disrupt my flow, I think. I'm disrupting my own flow right now. So Paul and Barnabas, they're there and people are standing up and disputing with them openly and literally disagreeing with the fundamental tenets.

And not only that, but in a blasphemous way is what this word implies. If you have in your mind that these guys are standing up in the midst of this assembly and there's some genteel debate that's going on and somewhat formal, well,

I would disagree with that. That is not, you're missing the mark of what's going on here. These Jews are insulting

Jesus. They're insulting Paul and they're insulting Barnabas' mom.

Now I just added the last one for dramatic effect. You're not going to see that in the text. But they are insulting them and insulting their religion and insulting everything that they stand for.

Insulting the message of life that they're bringing. That's going to be important because we're going to see Paul and Barnabas roll over and play dead here.

Look at the text. They're Christians, so they just timidly retreat, being sure that they're not offensive to anyone.

Because everyone knows that Christians are always supposed to be quiet. You're always supposed to be polite. You're always supposed to be even keeled, right?

Is that what the text says? No, okay. Yeah, I think I missed something there. Obviously not.

Because Paul and Barnabas are going to light up these Jews with boldness. Okay, it says they are bold in what they say next.

Saying in essence, we came to you first because that was the way God wanted us to roll. That's what

He desired of us. That's our MO. We come to the Jews first. When we come to a new territory, God has asked us to come in to the synagogue first.

So we come here. And the emphasis in the sentence is, to you. That is the focus.

As if to highlight that they're valued in God's eyes. That they are the chosen people of God from the

Old Testament. That there's been centuries of history. So we came to you first. Expecting.

There's an expectancy that you should embrace this. You should understand this. Your Messiah has come.

To you we bring the message. But you have, the text tells us, thrust it aside.

You judge yourselves. Another way of saying that phrase, is judge yourselves, is prove yourselves unworthy of eternal life.

And then Paul and Barnabas say, therefore we are turning our focus over to the Gentiles. You who should have embraced this message, it came to you and you have rejected it.

Here's the logical flow of what they're saying in essence. We brought to you, Jews, the

Word of God. But you have violently rejected it. The word thrust aside is not like they just put it over on a shelf.

They just set it aside. We'll get to that later. It is a violence. A shoving it away.

A throwing it on the trash heap. Never to address it again.

Like the stuff that you take to the recycling place over here. Some of you take stuff to recycling. Do you put a lot of thought into that after you drop it off there?

You don't put a lot of thought. Or you throw it in your garbage bin and roll it out to the curb. How many of you spend the day thinking about the things that you threw away?

Okay. Do you? Because nobody's really... I'm not getting a lot of feedback here. That's creepy.

I'm sorry. But if you're putting thought into that, it's thrust aside. Totally rejected.

Put away. Not to be thought of again. And since you reject it, he says, since you have done violence to it and rejected it, you prove that the message was not for you.

We're going to see in a moment that those who believe prove that they've been appointed to eternal life. But those who are rejecting it are proving by their behavior that they are not appointed for eternal life.

And that's what we're seeing here. Yeah, we're going to get into that. So, he says, because you prove that the message is not for you, we now turn to those who want to hear it.

Sometimes we need to literally practice this in our personal relationships. Don't pester people with the

Gospel. Don't pester them. Don't bug them. Don't get under their skin with your presentation of it.

Don't constantly have that in front of them and just perpetually badger them with it.

I am honestly, even as I say that, I'm less afraid that you're doing that and more afraid that you're not presenting it at all.

Do you get what I'm saying? So, I say that kind of on one side of the equation.

Don't pester people with it. But on the other side of the equation is make sure they understand it. Go ahead and declare it.

I know that there are situations and there are people in your life. Raise your hand if there is someone in your life where you're like, religious topics come up with that friend, with that acquaintance, with that co -worker and you can tell that there's an anxiety about that discussion.

Raise your hand if you've got somebody like that in your life. So that when that topic comes up, you're nervous and anxious, they're nervous and anxious and it's just kind of like, this is awkward.

And you just quick, you know, go to the weather or go to something else because, or how did the baseball game go or whatever and there's little topics that you can talk with them and they're comfortable.

That's the comfort zone. And there's other things that are just like, okay, this is getting into that territory where I know.

What about this? What if you literally just said, listen, especially if it's a friend, especially if it's a co -worker, someone that you see on a regular basis, listen,

I feel like this is tense at times. So could you, could I do something?

Would you allow me the freedom to do this? I think your friend would listen to you on this. Rather than me badger you, rather than there be this awkwardness between us, could

I just tell you what I believe? In one time? Just one time. Just lay it out for you and tell you what

I believe and then I promise I won't badger you about it. I won't pester you about it anymore but I just, it's important to me.

It's valuable to me. You're valuable to me. So let me just share this with you and leave it up to you.

And if you want a Bible, I'll get you a Bible. You can come to church. You don't have to come to church but could we just, could we just talk this through one time?

What do you think they would respond to that? Do you think they might say, okay, yeah. I mean if you're a friend, who wouldn't, if your friend came to you and had something valuable that,

I mean, wouldn't you listen to their sales pitch? I mean if that's what you call it but you know what

I'm saying. Wouldn't you listen to what they have to say if they're a friend, if they're a neighbor, if they're someone who says they care about you and hey,

I just want to let you know. You know, people will share business opportunities with us all the time and I'm certainly not saying that Christianity is a business opportunity but you get what

I'm saying. I mean, it's not pestering people but making sure that you are up front and just clear and take that tension out.

I'm getting some blank stares. Does that resonate with you? I mean, does that make sense to just kind of clear the air and just say, I mean,

I encourage you to try it. I mean, if I could, I'd ask you all to just be guinea pigs and give it a shot.

I don't know that anybody's really doing that out there just saying, listen, can I just do this one time with you? Can I just talk with you about this and clear that?

But that's what I would encourage you to do. Clearly speak the word of the

Lord. Pray for them. Be available to answer questions and if they thrust it aside, you know where they stand and they know where you stand and not only that but now they know where to come if they've got questions about it.

So if they want to know more about Christ, if they're curious about things or if they just have a question about the Bible, they're more apt to come to you for that because you've demonstrated someone who knows something about it.

Try that. In verse 47, Paul does something that is very unique on the entire scope of the

New Testament and it's unique because theologians pick apart passages and get all these nuances.

I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of it but what he does is he takes an Old Testament prophecy about Israel and he applies it to the

New Testament people of God, to the church. Basically saying that the church is now carrying on the role and the responsibility of what

Israel used to be called to do. He quotes from Isaiah 49 .6

where Israel is told that they are to be a light for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth but here in essence,

Paul says you Jews are not being the light that you have been called to be and so we're going to carry it forward.

We're going to do what you've been called to do by your own scriptures, by your Old Testament. If you were to read it you should be a light to these

Gentiles who have gathered together but instead you are actually darkening their minds and trying to be a stumbling block to the message and so therefore we are going to be the light to the

Gentiles. So we as followers of Christ are carrying forward the salvation that Jesus provided through the cross to all the nations which was a fulfillment of the promise that was actually made to Israel through Abraham centuries before even these events that we're studying here came to pass.

It's likely that verse 47 by the way is the most offensive thing that Paul and Barnabas say to the Jews that morning at that gathering because they understood that they were being told they are not doing what

God wants them to do. They are supposed to be the light and instead they are not.

So can you imagine how the Jews would have responded to that? They're in this crowd. The majority are Gentiles. They've stood up.

They're reviling them. They're insulting them. And now Paul and Barnabas kind of get bowled back and lash back at them.

So what do you think the Jews response would be? Do you think they'd be fairly upset? Just being told you're not doing your job so I guess we'll do it.

And not only that but you've been declared unworthy of eternal life of life in the age to come. Would you think they'd be upset?

Okay. Just maybe a little bit. Whatever happens they are going to fall away. We're not even going to see them further in the text really because at this point any complaint from that Jewish minority in the crowd would have been drowned out by the sounds of rejoicing and praise from the most unlikely source present and that is the

Gentiles. The large group who have gathered. Now there's been this dialogue. If you get this in your mind it's kind of like there's been this tennis match going back and forth between the

Jews and Paul and Barnabas. And the Gentiles are sitting there going are you guys going to get done with this so we can hear this message or what?

But at some point they begin to listen in to this dialogue that's going on and they start to hear words like Gentiles, salvation, light, hope.

And something dawns on them that wait a minute. They're talking about that stuff available for me.

For us. For those who have been considered to be far off from God. Almost unworthy of the message in the

Jewish mind. And we have hope. And there's a rejoicing that begins in the crowd here.

Those considered by the people of God to be far off and away from the covenant. Those who are considered unworthy of the message of God.

These unclean worshippers of emperors and statues rejoice in the words that provide eternal life.

That's what the text tells us. They get excited about it. And now we see what is commonly referred to as the most clear statement in all scripture.

That salvation is a work of God. From beginning to end. He initiates it.

He starts it. He carries it through. And he even gives us the belief and the faith necessary to embrace him.

Something that can be uncomfortable in Christian circles. How many of you have heard the term

Calvinism before? And the opposite of that would be Arminianism.

And those two things have been like a battle in the church for centuries and centuries and centuries maybe for millennia is this idea of man's free will versus God's sovereign will and all of that.

This text deals with it. We're going deep here. So hold on tight. Take a deep breath. Because we're going to dig in for a second.

And if we don't come out the other side with our heads spinning then we haven't been paying attention. You'll have to go back and listen to this again.

It gets kind of crazy. Look at verse 48. Again, what you're reading is one of the most clear statements of the

Calvinistic side of God's sovereignty in Scripture. And when the

Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorified the word of the Lord and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

As many as were appointed carried through on their end of the bargain and believed.

Does that strike anybody as a little bit confusing? A little bit different than the way that we view salvation?

A little bit different than maybe the Great Commission to go out and to tell the Gospel to everybody and say, what's going on here?

Well, hold on tight and we're going to get through this. I want to point out that the word appointed here is clearly, who is the one that does the appointing?

Who do you think? Look at the text. Who's the one that does the appointing? God is the one who does the appointing.

And fortunately, the word appointed in the text means appointed. Okay? Chosen.

Selected. Designated. Picked. Like, think back to the two captains on the playground.

Okay? Kickball time. It was always kickball for me. I don't know, what is it in your mind?

Is it, you know, picking sides for soccer or whatever? Whatever you played at the playground. Some of you just got a cold sweat and remembered all those times of being picked last.

Right? Like me. And then there are those of you who just got all arrogant because you and your best friend couldn't be on the same team so you had to be the captains because, ugh.

And if we were on the same team we'd totally rock you guys. And whichever side of that equation you were on, get over yourself.

This is an illustration. This is that kind of appointed.

Selected. Chosen. Appointed. Seems kind of, again,

I'm going to let this sit with you for a minute. There's no way around it. What the

Greek states in a very open and clear way is that only those who were appointed believed.

Only those who God selected believed. Does that cause anybody a struggle?

I mean, be honest. Does that cause you to struggle? It should cause us to struggle. I hope you're struggling.

I hope you're sitting there going, where is he going with this? I want to unpack this concept by a couple of conclusions that come from the text, from what we're looking at, from the

Bible. This is not my opinion. This is not my thought. This is where we're going. God appoints some to eternal life.

That's what the text tells us. He appoints, he chooses some to eternal life. And the word eternal life, by the way, that we saw earlier in the text and here as well, is technically, literally, if we were to translate it just thought for thought, just the concept there, is life in the age to come.

It's a beautiful word picture. It's like we're in act one of a play, right now, this life, act one.

And there's another act and the curtain is going to be drawn on this act and it's going to be closed off and the set's going to be changed and it's going to be a really awesome set the next time through.

And then the curtains are going to open again and some will be in act two. Life in the age to come.

Some will make it to act two. But not everybody. Everybody's in act one right now.

Would anybody dare challenge God's right to choose?

Would we dare to challenge His right to choose? Now, what we could challenge is His love in choosing.

That's what people more often do is they'll go to His love and they'll say, well, how can He be good and kind if He chooses?

Right? Do you see what I'm saying? But I don't think we can challenge His right and so I don't think anybody's probably there going, well,

God, you're not, you know, that's not your right, not your right to choose. The second thing that I want to point out, and there's four of these by the way, the first one is that God appoints some to eternal life.

The second thing is those who were appointed did believe.

Those who were appointed believed. They acted. And it is even implied that they believed because they were appointed.

Those whom God has chosen will believe. The third thing, there's a limitation on those who believed.

And it's clearly along the lines of God's decision. As many as were appointed, by God, but only as many as were appointed.

I told you this was going to get deep. Fourth thing, the appointment is to what in the text?

Appointment to eternal life. Appointment to life in the age to come, technically.

It is the final outcome of their life that is appointed. It is not that they are appointed to walk an aisle and come forward to be saved or to pray a prayer or they were appointed to even a certain model of lifestyle.

They weren't appointed to the law. They weren't appointed to righteous living. They weren't appointed to all of these things. They're appointed to eternal life.

The end result of their life is what they're appointed to. Not anything to do with Act 1.

They are appointed to be in Act 2. Why do I say that?

God will not lose anybody that is appointed. All who are saved will make it to Act 2 because that's what they're appointed to.

Are you getting the logic in that? They will make it. If you are in Christ, you are secure in Christ.

He is the one that is saving you. It is the final outcome of their life that is appointed. In other words, every one of these

Gentiles in our text will make it to the life that is to come. Not one of them will be lost.

You getting it? Anybody struggling? No? Okay.

Let's pray. You know I'm not going to do that. I love it if you're not struggling.

If I'm making it that clear, this is God through me then. This is tough stuff. What I've just done is

I've given you the foundation of the last four Reformed doctrines. We've got Calvin College right up the road. We've got Hope College over in Holland.

You ever heard of those two institutions? They ascribe to a doctrine that is often used. There's an acronym.

Anybody know what the acronym is that explains the doctrines of grace? Tulip. T -U -L -I -P.

It works really well for the Tulip Festival and stuff like that. It's a really Reformed doctrine that starts with total depravity.

Total depravity is not mentioned in our text, but it's one of the things I've often said this. My theology professors have said this.

It's one of the only doctrines in the Bible that can be basically scientifically proven. We're all sinners. It's one doctrine that everybody takes for granted.

We are sinful. But it's not in this text, but it's all the way over throughout Scripture.

But now the last four, the U, the L, the I, and the P. Did I spell that right? The U, the

L, the I, and the P of Tulip are all in our text. All wrapped up and rolled up in this one verse.

Here they are. If you're interested in what the acronym is, you want to write it down and study it more, you have some questions for me about it later or whatever.

It's total depravity. It's unmerited favor. T and U. The L is limited atonement.

The I is irresistible grace. The P is perseverance of the saints. And what

I just walked you through, one through four, all of those were wrapped up in there.

They're all present in this one text. And they're also present in many other texts as well. Not just this one.

Anybody sweating over this? Not yet. The text exists to glorify

God. That's why it's here. And it glorifies His sovereign control over salvation.

But I want to explain four realities that temper what many consider to be a harsh and heartless doctrine.

Many see this as harsh. Many see it as heartless that God would choose some and therefore by implication not choose others.

Isn't that what the point of the whole kickball lineup is that you pick who you want on your team and the others are not chosen.

Didn't you ever feel what that was like to be left out? It's reasonable that people consider this harsh and heartless without understanding it.

Without really putting God in proper perspective. The first thing I want to temper this with is that we are never told anywhere in scripture to wait to confirm that we have been appointed or that anybody has been appointed.

You get why that's important? We're not told to wait. We are told to respond to the gospel of grace.

We are told to repent. We are told to call others to repent. We are told to go out and share this message. And what people have criticized about Calvinism, about this doctrine is that why would

I go out and share my faith with anybody because if they're appointed they'll be saved. But what about God appointing us as the means to lead them?

Does that make sense? Or that just strictly we have commands in scripture to go out and to share this good news with others.

The call is consistent. Turn away from your sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. So that's the first one.

We are never told to wait to confirm appointments. The second thing. All who believed had been appointed.

So we flip that around. From our finite human perspective we can't wrap our minds around what's going on behind the scenes working in the universe.

Right? I cannot tell you how the will of God interfaces with your will.

You ever been curious about that? How do I find the will of God? What I do? What I eat? Where I go to school?

Where I work? Who you marry? All of these questions. And how many of you have been stressed about that at some point in your past or maybe even present where you're just kind of like, how do

I know the will of God? I can't tell you how that interfaces. But I can say with some confidence in passages like this that God appointed these

Gentiles and they wanted to believe. He didn't arrest them away from what they desired in their own will.

Nobody in the crowd was left saying, I wanted to believe, but God wouldn't let me. I just wanted

Him, but He just denied me. He rejected me. And He said, no, you're not appointed. Nobody in that crowd that day, in that synagogue or in that open air theater, none of them were in that position.

But equally there was nobody saying, I don't want to believe, but God made me. He forced me to believe.

How dare He? It's a doctrine called compatibilism that God's will ultimately is compatible with our will.

And that the two in a mystery, again, I don't know how that interfaces, I don't know how that works, but somehow our will and His will work together to get the job done.

But some would even go so far as to say that there will be nobody in hell who didn't want to be there. Can you see how that logically flows out of this?

Nobody there who didn't want that, who wanted to be separated from God, who wanted to do it their own way and said, shake my fist at you for eternity.

They wanted to be there. They wanted to go it alone. The third thing,

Paul and Barnabas preached the same message to everybody. They didn't have special heart goggles that they put on to see whether people are appointed or not or to look into people's hearts and figure that out.

They could not identify who was appointed. Our role is to proclaim the good news like a farmer who is sowing seed all over the place and we leave the harvest up to God.

And it's only after people respond that we know whether they were appointed or not. Get that?

Fourth thing, the last thing that I want to point out is that from a human perspective we cannot function as a follower of Jesus Christ without a sense of choice.

It's human life. Don't we live as though we have free will? Don't we live as though we actually make choices that matter?

Isn't that what Scripture implies all throughout in calling us to repentance and calling us to walk in the

Spirit and calling us to follow hard after God? So we live that way.

But God is a very big mind -numbing reality. Do you agree with that?

And occasionally in Scripture, God peels back and gives us a glimpse of what's going on behind the curtain.

And that's what we're looking at here. One time where He just kind of peels back the curtain, kind of like the Wizard of Oz and you see

Him working the controls of the universe. And it's like, whoa. What is going on there?

And our minds, we see these little glimpses of what's going on and our minds hurt for the rest of our lives.

Our head spins and it's like we caught a glimpse of God and it's like, I can't function.

I can't deal with that. Like Moses, whose face shone so brightly from being in God's presence on Mount Sinai at the giving of the law that he literally had to wear a veil because everybody was blinded by looking at his face which was just a reflection of God's face.

Think about that. Or Isaiah, who in Isaiah 6, beheld the glory of God.

He was taken in a vision before the throne room of God Himself. And he falls on his face and he declares, woe is me!

I'm undone! Because he beheld the glory of God and he saw

Him as He is, seated, lofty, exalted, majestic, sovereign. And he was like,

I'm unraveling because I've seen God. Or even to take it a step further,

Job. How many of you have read the book of Job in the Old Testament? How many of you know about Job?

Job was this dude who went through all kinds of hardship. His family was taken from him, his property, his health, everything.

He was just decimated. And he basically issues some challenges to God in that.

Now, it's interesting to note that he's able to issue these challenges and not sin in it, but he says, God, I know You haven't done this to me because I've sinned.

I know You're not judging me based on sin. You are just doing this because You're sovereign. And I want to know what's going on up there.

I want You to peel back the curtain for me in essence and show me a little bit to justify Yourself. And he challenges

God to justify Himself. So God appears to Job. And you know what Job ends up doing in the end of that interplay?

He sees God. He talks with God. God reveals and pulls back the curtain a little and shows a little bit of Himself.

And by the end of that, Job says, I place both of my hands over my mouth.

I've spoken about things that I didn't understand. And I'm convinced that when we get to see God, we will find that we have underestimated

His holiness. We have underestimated His sovereignty. We have had no clue about what grace, mercy, justice, love, care, concern, compassion, none of these things.

We have underestimated God. And we will not shake a fist at Him, but we will be on our faces going,

I missed it. I have underestimated You in every capacity, in every character.

And I have not understood the word sovereign until now. And so we live in a perpetual state of trying to understand an infinite being in the midst of finiteness and brokenness and our own pettiness and our day in and day out.

Do you get this? How majestic is our God? How awesome. If we see

Him, we will be done with the questions. No more questions.

Because I'm convinced that one of our perpetual problems inside of us, in our culture, in our society, even in our church, everywhere we go because we are humans, fallen, we always underestimate

God and we always overestimate ourselves. That we think more highly than we ought of ourselves.

So that I would encourage you, as you think and contemplate and consider Calvinism, Arminianism, sovereignty of God, your free will, press hard, far, deep, into the sovereignty of God.

He is all that. And you will never stand before Him and go, oh, sorry,

I guess I overestimated your sovereignty. Convinced we will all find that we have been woefully lacking in our understanding and our view of this awesome

God. In verse 49, whoo!

All right. Sorry. For those of you who are here the first time, I think that's the first time I've done that in a long time. So I don't usually yell.

I'm not going to apologize for it. In verse 49, we see that those who were appointed, believed and they didn't keep the message to themselves.

They couldn't keep it contained. They were so enthusiastic. They were so excited about it that it spread like wildfire across the

Roman countryside. We're not given a time frame for how long this happened. But man, the message just goes out to their district, to their area and the gospel is spreading.

But during that time of the spreading of the gospel, opposition comes in from the Jews. Again, they're back at it.

They're the minority. They've got to work through some back channels because they know that they're overpowered by all these

Gentiles who are embracing the gospel and are rejoicing. So the Jews incite these leading women.

These leading women are Jewish women. I'm sorry, they're Gentile women who are most likely in leading positions or their husbands are in leading positions throughout the community.

They incite these leading women who rile up the leading men, the leading men stir up a physical persecution against Paul and Barney.

And we're going to see with the end result that the two ministers were driven not just from the city but are driven out of the district probably for fear of their lives.

There's threats against them. Paul and Barnabas made a symbolic public display before they left in verse 51.

It says they shook the dust off their feet. This is a physical, I mean, they literally did that and it's a symbolic display of saying we want to remain undefiled by the unbelief of these

Jews. We don't want that unbelief to defile us. Ironically, that was a practice that was most often applied by Jews towards Gentiles.

So it's a real twist in that because a Jew going into a Gentile town or in a

Gentile situation or if they rubbed up against one in the marketplace or whatever, they would clean themselves. You've been undefiled by your filth.

And here it's unbelief that is seen to be the filth. And so they dust themselves off from this and say you have violently rejected this truth and not only that but you're trying to kill us in the process.

Paul and Barnabas, it says, head to Iconium about 90 miles south and east. But the disciples, these new followers who had been appointed to eternal life, it says were filled with joy and with the

Holy Spirit. Despite the persecution that's going on around them, despite their new leaders being run out of town, they are full of joy.

It's interesting to note, the archeology says that the church was well established in this town of Antioch where we're talking about.

There have been three churches that have been uncovered that date just to a little after this time frame. Three churches established and growing out of this event.

I love studying these passages in light of Recast where we're at right now. God is growing this church here in a small community.

Two years in, we've seen lives changed. I rejoice. It is awesome. I'm often very moved to think about what

God has done in people's lives here and continues to do in people's lives here. Those appointed to eternal life here have believed.

And that continues to happen, and I pray for many more. But it's our desire that Recast grows through the

Word of the Lord like it did here in our text. Not through disgruntled Christians looking for something new.

How many of you know churches can grow pretty quickly on that alone? Somebody's frustrated out there at their church and they're just going to find something new and off they go.

I actually was kind of afraid that that was what was going to happen here. And it hasn't. And I just rejoice that a lot of you that I look out at here were not attending a church before you came here.

And I rejoice, and we were praying for you even before you came. But the fact is,

I can't work this alone. It takes the church, us, believing the

Gospel, proclaiming the Gospel, and living the Gospel. And I know that that's been a common application throughout the book of Acts.

And I don't set out each week to try to get a way to convince you to share the Gospel with the people around you.

It's just apparent that that's what God wants us to be hearing because as we're marching through the book of Acts, it's often the application that the text draws out.

So it's apparent to me that that's what God wants us to be hearing about right now is telling others. And so I have to ask you a question.

Are you looking for chances to tell others about the hope that you have for life in the age to come?

Are you telling others about what Jesus Christ has done for you? In our text, friends invited friends to come to a gathering to hear the words of life.

Think about how that happened. Those Gentiles had been in their homes that week. Chilling, going to the market, doing their thing.

And somebody along the way said, hey, there's this thing going on down the road on Saturday.

Do you want to come and join me? And it took people asking people and people talking to people, and eventually, they came in.

They were excited about what God was doing. And even despite the opposition, hearts were opened.

The Gentiles in our text came in curious that morning. And they left filled with joy and filled with the

Holy Spirit, the text tells us. And that is the power of the good news of Jesus Christ.

That we would go out and share and talk and interact and engage.

Not pester, not badger people, but be forthright with this message.

Seeking out those who maybe have been appointed to eternal life. And if they are, they'll respond.

And if they're not, you just leave that up to God. Maybe you're not the one. Maybe somebody else is going to follow up after you.

If you're here and you haven't given your life to Jesus Christ, obviously, you need to contemplate and consider these claims on your life.

The message is for all to repent, to come before God and recognize that He has made a way for our sins, for our broken lives to be made whole through Jesus Christ.

That He is the answer. You don't need to raise a hand. You don't need to come forward. I'm not going to call anybody out like that.

I shouldn't say never, because there might be a time when I would. I'm not going to do that this morning to you.

But if you're sitting here, and you're saying, I need this. You can just simply talk to God.

You don't need a mediator. You don't need me here. You do need a mediator. The mediator's name is Jesus Christ, and you need to talk with Him.

You need to say, I need you to stand in my place. I need what you did on the cross for me. If you're in that situation, you can sit right in your chair and say,

God, I want to put my trust in Jesus Christ. I want my sins forgiven. I want to be made whole and be made right in Your eyes.

I recognize that Jesus Christ is Lord, and I want to follow Him. You don't even have to say that necessarily.

If you believe it in your heart, you would confess that Jesus is

Lord. You can be saved. Let's pray, and then Rob's going to come up and introduce communion for us.