Crucified, buried, resurrected
Acts 13:26-37 · Vern Peterman · Nov 19, 2017
Acts (2017-18), No. 41
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49266956823

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. I'd like to thank Roger and Mike and everyone else who allowed Nancy and I to have some time away with family, mostly in California, as it turns out. Now, when Nancy and I were down in Texas, they referred to California as the land of the fruits and the nuts.

But as Nancy and I found out there with October's fires, and more recently they've actually had quite a bit of rain there, so it's now the land of the fires and the ruts. So anyway, it's been quite a time, and actually while we didn't deal directly with any of the fires, there was still a lot of what we did that dealt with that indirectly.

A huge number of homes were impacted, thousands. I gave the example of in Santa Rosa where 230 doctors are now completely without homes, their whole everything burned. Where we were in Redwood Valley, extensive damage in some areas, some stretches in there. Just home after home after home, completely gone. Any vehicle that they weren't able to drive away was also completely burned up.

As the fire was going on, people could stand at a distance and hear the propane tanks and the tires going boom, boom, boom. So anyway, it was quite an intense event. And going there even for a visit was a bit intense. But anyway, so thank you for allowing us that time there with family and offering some at least secondary assistance.

So getting into our act series here to kind of bring us up to speed what's been happening upon clear direction of the Holy Spirit both before and after Barnabas and Paul and Mark were sent there. They went from Antioch, and to be specific, this is Antioch on the Orontes River. This is different from the one that we'll be talking about shortly, Antioch in Pisidia. And so they were sent off in what is often called Paul's first missionary journey to the Gentile lands. They went first to the Isle of Cyprus and then to Perga, on the continent, and at that point John Mark had left them.

We'll talk more about John Mark as time goes on. He drops out at this point in time, but the Lord restores him, which fits very well with the topic that we covered in our elective here. The goal of love is restoration. In Pisidian Antioch, Paul began speaking in the synagogue, going from Abraham to John the Baptist, but he wasn't done. He actually just, as we went through this passage previously, he had just introduced his topic. Here you have, and it should be on the top of page one in your handout, here you have a map of the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas in this case. And this is extending from April 48 to September 49 AD.

They begin in the Antioch. Again, it's Antioch on the Orontes. And just like our own time, there are over, by the way, a half dozen different cities in the United States called Denver, right? And so this is one of those cases where it could easily be confusing. So they went from Antioch to Antioch, but it was a different Antioch, right?

And so this is the first part of the trip that was taken with that. They left Cyprus and then went from there, Paphos, where they had left. They went from there to Perga in Pamphylia. And from there, they moved on to Antioch in Pisidia, or sometimes called Pisidian Antioch. So we'll hear that name for it as well. Some of these names can get confusing, so you have to work to keep them straight. So that's why we use the Pisidian Antioch.

I can remember some years ago, I used to communicate electronically with a fellow whose name was sort of a nickname, Bugs Bunyan, who lived in California, Maryland. So anyway, confusing names are possible. Be sure to keep these straight. They're two different places.

So here's the Perga Ant Archaeological Park, just to give you an idea of what that was like. Here is an archaeological reconstruction, so this is kind of an artist's rendering of what Pisidian Antioch used to look like. Here's a possible site of the synagogue where Paul is speaking. It's uncertain, however. One of the anomalies in archaeology is that sometimes you have to leave what's underneath untouched in order to leave what's above it in place. So in this case, it may never be known if that is exactly the synagogue.

You have on the bottom of page one a chronology of Paul's first missionary journey. As we mentioned, that went from April 48 to September 49. At this point, they're in Pisidian, Antioch. So for what is approximately a year and a half long missionary journey, they're at about six months through it, roughly, just starting off by the time we get the Apostle Paul speaking here.

So from last week's passage, we have Acts 13.22-24, and it says this, After he had removed him, he raised up David, removed Saul, king Saul, to be their king, concerning whom he had testified, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my heart, who will do all my will, from the descendants of this man, According to promise God has brought to Israel a Savior Jesus.

So this is the Apostle Paul's first introduction of Christ as the Savior. And then he says, and after John had proclaimed before his coming, that is Christ's coming, a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. So now, we get into today's passage here. Though Paul had mentioned David previously here, and had named Jesus as the Savior, he's now going to go backtrack to David for a particular reason here.

And we'll soon see what that is. King David wrote 73 of the 150 Psalms, so that's nearly a half of the Psalms, and so a couple of those are quoted in this passage. Psalms, one way to look at it, is Israel's national hymn book. It's important for us to understand that it's Israel's national hymn book and not the church's national hymn book, so that we take truth from it but don't simply try to apply it directly.

So Paul is going to present in this passage, as Courtney read for us, the death and burial and resurrection of Christ, who is, as he's previously said, the Savior, as prophesied by David and other Old Testament prophets. And so from here, Paul is going to head his message towards salvation by grace, based on the work of God through Christ. That's as we proceed into it next week here. In doing so, the Apostle Paul is going to make reference to the Jews' father Abraham and to the Jews' law of Moses, all 613 of them, but he's going to summarize it as the law of Moses. Paul is going to present salvation by grace through faith based on the totally adequate work of God through Jesus Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection.

So here's Acts 13.26, Brethren, sons of Abraham's family and those among you who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent.

So he's continuing on as he talks to them and he draws them in by addressing them. And he starts off with brethren, sons of Abraham's family. So he talks about those who are gathered in the synagogue as brethren. And by the way, I might add something here. The Greek actually has male brethren. He's specifically addressing the men here and calling things to their attention.

Brethren was a customary term, and what you'll find as we go through the book of Acts, you have to look at the context, because here the Apostle Paul uses brethren to refer to his fellow Jews and not necessarily Christian believers. Peter had spoken this way as well, to his fellow Jews, and used that term brethren, and that was in an evangelistic context like this. And so as we look at the context, we'll see, is this a Jew talking to fellow Jews, or is this a believer talking to fellow believers? And so the context here makes it clear.

He's talking, especially as he says, sons of Abraham's family. He's looking at those who are descended from Abraham. So there's actually in the Bible four different ways to be a son of Abraham, and we're not going to talk about those. In this case, Paul is addressing those who are fellow ethnic Jews as sons of their biological father, Abraham, through the line of Isaac and through Jacob. And then he says, those among you who fear God, so he talked to them, specifically referring to the Jewish men. And now he's turning and addressing another group who is gathered there.

So the book of Acts makes the most of those who are God-fearing Gentiles. And I think there's a reason why that becomes fairly obvious as we go through it. Dr. Luke himself was a God-fearing Gentile. And so we'll see, as we see here, repeated reference to these God-fearing Gentiles. An example that we saw of exactly that was back in Acts chapter 10.

It was the house of Cornelius with his own Gentile household there in Caesarea. So those among you who fear God are the God-fearing Gentiles. term there. They ranged actually from those who were simply sympathetic to the Jewish people, and there were those who were sympathetic even to the point of providing funding and providing protection, to Gentiles converting to Judaism. So we had a range of what is a God-fearing Gentile And so it includes that range, and we'll actually see within the book of Acts that full range of people.

And he talks to us, this message of salvation is the next line there in Acts 13.26. And so this message of salvation was entrusted to Barnabas and Paul to convey to the Jews and Gentiles in these Gentile lands. And the pattern is, and Paul spells it out three times in Romans 1 and 2, to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles. In Romans it's stated to the Greeks, and they were the representative Gentiles in that portion of the Roman Empire.

But the pattern was to go to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles and we see that here So the Greek text here just not it has not just the idea that these guys are message carriers But rather this messages of salvation this specific message of salvation the once-for-all accomplished salvation Is being referred to that specific message and Then he says, has been sent. Now, in English, we have this word sent, and it's very generic. The word is very generic.

We'll say, did you send the email? Yes, I sent the email, and it went to everybody on the list. We even have blind copies. And so you can blind copy a bunch of people and directly copy a bunch of people, and we can send something. We can take a bunch of letters and put them in the mail, a whole bunch of them, and they go out to all sorts of different people. And so we can do things fairly generally and generically. That was true in their day as well. We had people whose job it was to simply be a messenger, to go from one place to the next carrying a message. We have people who, for example, in the legal realm are message carriers from one office to the next.

That's not what Paul is saying here. He's choosing specific words to say that he and Barnabas were specifically entrusted with God's message of the salvation, the message of the salvation commissioned by God Himself. That's what this language is conveying here. It's not generic, we're messengers, but rather this specific message was sent to us. We are on a mission. That's what he's telling them.

Here's Acts 13, 27, and 28. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, recognizing neither him nor the utterance of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning him. And though they found no ground for putting him to death, they asked Pilate that he be executed.

So, he starts off with those who lived in Jerusalem, and he uses, as we pointed out previously, a word that means not just those who were in Jerusalem at the time, including visitors, but specifically those who are long-term residents. We might even say permanent residents of Jerusalem. And then not only does he use that term, he says, and the rulers. The rulers are called the Sanhedrin, sometimes called the council, other times referred to as simply the rulers of the people, and similar kinds of terms. The rulers of the Sanhedrin here that were specifically Jewish men who were of the Pharisee party, as well as those of the Sadducees, were the most powerful ones.

And one of the things to keep in mind, okay, the Sadducees only hung around Jerusalem and Israel. It was the Pharisees who went out to all the adjacent lands. Two-thirds of the Jews during New Testament times lived outside of Israel. And in those places outside of Israel, there are virtually no Sadducees. They were all of the Pharisee persuasion. That is, they all believed in a resurrection, among other things.

Then, with rare exception, the Jewish people didn't recognize who Jesus was or what he came to do. With rare exception. They didn't recognize who He was or what He came to do. So the inhabitants of Jerusalem, those who were long-term dwellers in Jerusalem, and the rulers of the people, didn't recognize as the long-promised Messiah and the Savior of the people, nor what was written about Him in multiple places in the Old Testament. That was true even if they heard and saw Jesus personally. People would talk to Him face to face and they wouldn't get it.

They would witness miracles and not get it. Jesus healed a man who was from birth blind. And so what do they do instead of saying, Wow! Jesus healed a man who was blind from birth. He must be the Messiah! Instead, what do they do? They say, who sinned? Right? That's their question. Who sinned? They want to look for fault.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. And instead of people going, Wow! What a phenomenal thing! Jesus raised him from the dead. Instead, what you have is, let's kill him. Right? Let's kill him. They didn't even get it when scripture told them something directly. They didn't understand. So instead of understanding the scripture, they would fulfill it by killing the Messiah. They would kill the Savior.

Even after hearing what Jesus said, even after seeing Jesus heal people, they actually saw People beheeled, they saw people raised from the dead and didn't believe. Their leaders still didn't get it, even after hearing all the Old Testament scriptures. about Jesus, Sabbath after Sabbath after Sabbath, after having them read, they still didn't get it. Jesus went to the synagogue at Nazareth. He read from Isaiah, chapter 61, verses 1 and the first half of verse 2, and He says, this is fulfilled in your hearing.

And instead of saying, wow, the Messiah is among us, you know what they did? They said, it's time to kill you. They tried to at the moment. They still didn't get it. All the standards of evidence and justice were pushed aside. They demanded that Pilate condemn Jesus to death. So they made false accusations. They couldn't come up with anything real. The witnesses were conflicted because it was all made up. It was phony.

In addition to that, their asking, as he put it actually politely here, was in the form of rude demands and false allegiances to Caesar. Oh, we have no king but Caesar, said all these Jews, even though Caesar claimed to be a deity, right? We have no king but Caesar.

So the Jews kept shifting their claims, they shifted their demands, and they shifted their strategy until they finally got the outcome from Pontius Pilate, which is what they wanted, which is a death sentence for Jesus. That's what they're looking for at any price.

Here's Acts 13.29, and when they had carried out all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him at a tomb.

So, the Old Testament Scriptures said so much about Jesus well in advance that Jesus could tell the disciples on the road to Emmaus about them for quite some time. This was definitely well over an hour, and probably a couple hours at least, telling them again and again and again about the Scriptures that Jesus had fulfilled. For instance, Psalm 22 describes the crucifixion of Christ about a thousand years before it actually took place. It is amazing the description and the comparison with Christ's death by crucifixion and written at a time when crucifixion was not the way people were executed. Zechariah 11 says that Jesus would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. written centuries before Jesus was even born. Many, many more details could be added. These are just a couple of examples.

And so the Old Testament repeatedly gave broad descriptions as well as fine details about how Jesus would die and be buried and resurrected. So a member of the Sanhedrin Joseph of Arimathea, Arimathea by the way is a village not too far away from Jerusalem, took bold steps to have Jesus' body taken from the cross. We say bold because he actually had to step forward, get permission from Pontius Pilate in order to take the body off the cross. Nicodemus, mentioned only in the Gospel of John, He paid enough to have Jesus be given a rich man's burial, about a hundred pounds of burial materials. By the way, that was about three times the usual. So, a rich man's burial at the expense of Nicodemus. The tomb was new and unused. It belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. Even that detail fulfilled scripture.

We give Isaiah 53.9 and Matthew 27.57-60 as prophecy and confirmation about that. So these were physical history and spiritual history in these prophecies. A key point here, as Christ was born in a virgin womb, Christ was raised from a virgin tomb. Got that? As Christ was born of a virgin womb, Christ was raised from a virgin tomb, a tomb that had never been inhabited, as you would say, by any person prior to his death.

Here's Acts 13.30 and 31, but God raised him from the dead. For many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now his witnesses to the people. So one here is God raised him from the dead. As a matter of fact, if you look through scripture, you can find multiple instances very easily of God the Father and even Christ himself saying, I will raise myself up. So God the Father and God the Son involved in raising up Christ.

So this stands in opposition to the Sadducee party and the Greek culture in general. There will be no physical resurrection of anyone at any time ever. It was standard Greek culture that there is no physical resurrection. That's just standard Greek culture. The Sadducees, as opposed to the Pharisees, were influenced by Greek philosophy and by the Greek culture. Therefore, they came up with the idea that there is no resurrection. The Pharisees were not so influenced, and that's why we see the Pharisees continuing to believe in a resurrection.

This is a one-page summary of the resurrection passages, if you'd like to take advantage of that. It's available as a supplement on the cabinet to the right. as you exit this room. It talks first about the evidences on what we would say Sunday, Sunday, April 5th, 33 AD, of the empty tomb, and then people from that very same day witnessing Christ resurrected for the next 40 days. So anyway, that's available as a supplement if you'd like to look at that in more detail.

Pardon? Oh, it got included in the handout? Okay, well cool. It wasn't what I had in mind, but that's fine. So now, one of the things that's very clear from what I see is in your handout, is that the twelve apostles listed in Acts chapter 1 were officially witnesses to the resurrection of Christ.

And all but James, the brother of John, still remained. So what you have here is Paul talking. He knows that James has had his life taken by the sword, but he's saying the other eleven apostles are still witnesses, and then all the others who are witnesses, and actually himself included, witnesses to the resurrected Christ. And the Apostle Paul could appeal to all of those.

What's very interesting is there's no evidence that people disputed this claim to resurrection. Indeed, most of the more than 500 who saw Christ alive again, this would be in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, We're still living at this time just 15 years after Christ had been raised from the dead. So if we were to compare it to our own time, it would be about some event that took place in about 2002. You would expect in a typical population, I would say that the ones of us here now, today, who are around since about 2002, with the exception of some of the youngest ones, And the same would be true then, that most of those 500 were still available to witness to Christ's resurrection at this point in time.

And so the Apostle Paul appeals to that. And here's Acts 13, 32-35, and we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, this is the gospel, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children and that he raised up Jesus as it is also written in the second psalm, you are my son, today I have begotten you.

As for the fact that he raised him up from the dead, no longer to return to decay, he has spoken in this way, I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David. Therefore, he also says in another psalm, you will not allow your holy one to undergo decay. So what he's quoting from here is three passages. Psalm 2, 7. I will surely tell you of the decree of the Lord.

He said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. What does he mean by that? Jesus was always the eternal Son of God from eternity past on into eternity future. He has become in this sense, today I have begotten you, means in this sense I have begotten you since you have been resurrected now physically. From this day forward I have begotten you, it's pointing to His resurrection. Isaiah 53, 5 says, Incline your ear and come to me, listen that you may live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you according to the faithful mercies shown to David.

And Psalm 16.10, for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, Sheol being the Hebrew word for the place of the dead, nor will you allow your Holy One to undergo decay.

And then Acts 13.36 and 37, for David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay. But he whom God raised did not undergo decay. So Paul told the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles that were gathered there that day that just as the Old Testament had foretold that the Savior would die and be buried and raised, so Christ was that Savior, the descendant of David, who is raised for us for all eternity.

So in spite of the ill intent of men, these are the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the rulers of the Jews that he referred to, God had good intentions for us forever. One of the words that's going to come out in the elective in Ephesians is God's kindness towards us. God has good intent even if others do not. So here is what Paul is going to tell them. And this is next week's passage.

The ethnic Jews had been hoping that their being descended from Abraham was just the ticket for being in the kingdom. There were many Jews who said, hey, I'm a descendant from Abraham, that's good enough for me, that'll get me in, and so I'm good with that. And so they counted on that descendancy from Abraham to have them be given entrance into the kingdom. There was even a myth among the Jews. This was a story that they told not out of the Old Testament. A myth among the Jews that Abraham on the last day would stand at the gate of hell to make sure that no Jew ever went in. Right? Is that true? Not so. Not so. And so Paul is making that clear.

Others of the Jews were hoping to do their best to follow the law of Moses, all 613 laws. Have memorized? Who would buy them entry even a special place. One of the things that I've seen recently, and this is among churches, even churches that call themselves Bible churches or community churches and whatnot. One of the things that I've heard quite a bit of lately is the law is written on your heart, okay? Among churches where they ought to know better.

That's not so. By the way, do you have all 613 laws memorized? Okay, you're ready to recite them? Neither am I. The law is not written on your heart. That's not the truth. And abiding by the law of Moses wasn't even going to save these people, right? Not that they could.

Paul is about to tell them that believing in God's salvation through Christ is the only way to be freed from the ominous debt of sin. The only way. Now, there are more things to come here in these verses and passages ahead of us. In the verses soon to come, we'll see that it is believing in God's provision for salvation through Christ's death, burial, and resurrection is the only way to salvation, but without any tweaks. Why do I say without any tweaks?

Because a great many people have been told other things than just this basic salvation that Scripture talks about. I talked to one man here locally, not that long ago, who said, I was told to list all my sins before I was baptized and then I would be saved.

He says, I forgot one, so I'm not saved. Can you imagine that? He forgot one. So he says, I'm lost forever because I forgot one. Others will be told, well, you really have to be careful so that you don't mess up because you might lose your salvation. And so there are those who are teaching and who have been taught that, that you have to be very careful or you'll lose it. And so make sure you don't slip up. And then there are others who say, well, if you slip up, then that means you never were saved in the first place, right?

And so there are those who are teaching that. One very popular teaching these days is, when you give the gospel, you need to lay people under law. You need to say, okay, here are the Ten Commandments. Do you abide by them? And so what we're going to find out as we go through this passage and in the next chapters, in the book of Acts. We're going to get answers to these very questions.

Do I have to believe the gospel and then do a bunch of stuff? Do I have to believe the gospel and then keep from doing a bunch of stuff in order to be saved? Or is the gospel just the gospel? Is the gospel alone and simply stated sufficient? If I believe that Christ died for my sins, was buried, and rose again, am I saved forever or is there more to it? Or is there even less to it? So we're going to be seeing some really amazing and clarifying insights into the content of the gospel and the issues before unbelievers.

We're going to see again in Acts chapter 14 and 17 that in neither case does Paul lay the Ten Commandments or any of the law on people. But he does something very consistent in both cases. He refers them back to Genesis 1 through 11, and we're going to see why when we get there. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that with these issues of salvation that you have, in fact, made it clear in spite of the confusion that people have. And we thank you that we can count upon once having believed that you will keep us eternally saved. We thank you for that assurance. We thank you for that clarity. And we also pray, Lord, that we would understand this is salvation by grace and it's not a license to go out and sin, but it is, Lord, assurance for us and motive to live lives as those who are forgiven. And we just thank you for that forgiveness. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.