Paul turns to Gentiles
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2023 · 16 April 2023
Every Jew down deep in his heart longed for freedom for guilt. He longed to experience forgiveness. And life was a cycle of sinning and getting forgiven and sinning and getting forgiven and sacrificing. And Paul has got the best news the Jews ever heard. Verse 38 says, “Brothers, listen! We are here to proclaim that through this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins.”
Verse 39 says, “Everyone who believes in Him is made right in God’s sight—something the law of Moses could never do.” All the Law of Moses did was just cover you up a little bit. That’s good news to everyone. Moses couldn’t forgive you. “But by Him”, referring to Jesus, “all that believe are justified.” The word justified means declared righteous before God by Him.
Now one thing a Jew never got was freedom in his conscience. As a Christian you have a conscience free from guilt. My sin has been dealt with by God's Son Jesus Christ and that God sees me as pure as fresh snow. And I have no condemnation because I’m in Christ. Christ is the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He is the one who mediates a new covenant between God and believers.
Do you know that the statement “all that believe” includes Jew and Gentile, and that’s what made everyone so mad. “By Christ all that believe are justified from all things.” What a fabulous thought. Colossians 2:13 says, “He has forgiven you all your trespasses.” And in verse 14 it says that the debt of sin was nailed to the cross. Now how many of my sins were future when Christ died? Every one of them.
Verse 40-41, “Be careful! Don’t let the prophets’ words apply to you. For they said, 41 ‘Look, you mockers, be amazed and die! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it.” Habakkuk 1:5 says, “Look around at the nations; and be amazed! For I am doing something in your own day that you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it.”
The passage warns against the unbelief of Israel. If Israel rejects as continually they have done with the message of God, they’re going to be doomed. Remember what God did to them in Habakkuk? He sent the Chaldeans, sacked Jerusalem, and hauled them off to Babylon, wiped out the whole country. And Paul says to that congregation in Antioch. “You better beware lest what God did then happens to you.”
It is the hardest thing for people to believe is that God is a God of judgment. There is a hell where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, where there’s weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And there’s going to be a day of judgment and it’s going to come and men don’t believe it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen. God knew many people wouldn’t believe it.
He said, “You won’t believe it even though somebody tells you.” And so the warning closes out Paul’s sermon. He says, “I’m giving you an invitation. For all who believe, all things are forgiven and you’re justified. But beware, if you don’t believe it, God’s going to work a work of judgment which you won’t believe.” So you either believe in Jesus Christ or you don’t believe what’s going to happen.
Verse 42 - 43, “As Paul and Barnabas left the synagogue that day, the people begged them to speak about these things again the next week. 43 Many Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, and the two men urged them to continue to rely on the grace of God.” There were four things that were positive. One, they were pleased. The Jews said, “Would you come back next week?”
The only issue was that all of it resolved in Jesus; and whether or not Jesus was the Messiah. The greatest compliment to a teacher is to go home and pursue what he told you on your own. But, it’s not always right to wait. 2 Corinthians 6:2 says, “Now is the day of salvation.” Hebrews 3:7 - 8 says, “The Spirit says this: ‘Today while you’re still hearing, do not harden your heart.’”
Second point, they were persistent. Again, this is a compliment to Paul. What a teacher he was, because it says in verse 43, “many of the Jews and devout converts followed Paul and Barnabas.” They said, “Come back next week.” The term “devout converts” means both the full proselyte who had been circumcised, and the one who was just a God-fearer. So there were Jews and Gentiles.
But there’s something even better. They were even professing. Apparently they had even professed to believe the message they had heard, that Jesus was the Messiah. Verse 43 at the end says, “Paul and Barnabas, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.” In some way they had professed to believe this, and so Paul and Barnabas were saying, “Now continue in the grace of God.”
What Paul and Barnabas were saying is live by grace. Now for a Jew, that was a special problem. The Jew was used to living not in the grace of God but under the law. What were Paul and Barnabas saying? They were saying this: “Hey, I’m offering you a new way. It’s grace not law. Now if you believe that, remain in the grace that you have heard about and don’t go back to the law.”
So Paul and Barnabas are simply saying, “You’ve accepted this concept of grace that you can be saved by Jesus Christ by only believing in Him. Stay with it; don’t go back.” That wouldn’t be easy, because pressure would come. Salvation is free, but if you add anything to Christ, you’ll lose Christ; and if you add anything to grace, it isn’t grace; and if you haven’t got grace, you are not saved.
Thirdly, they were present. Verse 44, “The following week almost the entire city turned out to hear them preach the word of the Lord.” Everything looked good at the beginning. But Paul wasn’t holding his breath for that, because the subsequent response begins in verse 45 says, “But when some of the Jews saw the crowds, they were jealous; so they slandered Paul and argued against whatever he said.”
They went opposite ways: the Jew, negative; the Gentile, positive. There also were Gentiles who were there that day who invited all their Gentile friends. So in verse 44, the whole city is there. And the split came just that fast. The Jews were filled with jealousy, envy. A Jew couldn’t tolerate, when a Gentiles is saved. They couldn’t take it in the Old Testament, and they couldn’t take it here.
They were prejudiced. They did not like Gentiles belonging and receiving the same salvation and blessing of God and Messiah that they had. They couldn’t handle that. It was selfishness. It was personal privilege, Jewish superiority. That was the issue. And so they got furious. The self-centeredness, and nationalism of their religion that they could not stand anybody else getting blessed.
Verse 45, “But when some of the Jews saw the crowds, they were jealous; so they blasphemed Paul and argued against whatever he said.” They were contradicting. It’s in the imperfect tense and in the Greek, the use of the imperfect is a continuous action and past-time. They were continually loud and long, opposing Paul. It was a riotous opposition. At the end of verse 45, it says they were blaspheming.
Blasphemy is the worst sin, it’s the sin of speaking evil of God and of Christ; and they did it. Do you realize they rejected their Messiah, forfeited everything for now and eternity, purely based on prejudice? People reject the gospel for many reasons, but they always love their sin. Now that sin may be different. But they’re not willing to sacrifice their ego that satisfies self.
Verse 46, “Then Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and declared, “It was necessary that we first preach the word of God to you Jews. But since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we will offer it to the Gentiles.” Paul said in Romans 1:16, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it’s the power of God unto salvation for everyone that believes, to the Jew first.”
They were God’s people, and God wanted them to be His witness nation, and so God said, “I’ll send the gospel to you first; and then if you’ll believe it, spread it.” Paul says, “It was necessary to go to you first.” In Jerusalem, he went to the Jew first, didn’t he? But he says this: “Seeing you judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, so we now turn to the Gentiles.
God is going to reach the world, and if you aren’t the vehicle, then the Gentiles will reach the Gentiles.” It is so sad where the Messiah’s people pushed the Messiah away after hundreds of years of waiting for Him. Do you know that a man who rejects Jesus Christ judges himself? God is not willing that any should perish. If a man dies without Christ, that’s because he wanted to do that.
Jesus isn’t on trial either. We know who He is. But you are on trial; and by what you do with Jesus Christ, you declare judgment on yourself. There is no place in the Bible where God sends people to hell. In the Bible God prepared hell for the devil and his angels. And if men choose to go there, they go there because they pronounced their own sentence in rejecting Jesus Christ.
And then to justify what he said, he quoted their own prophet in verse 47. He quoted Isaiah 49:6, as an Old Testament prophesy, For the Lord gave us this command when He said, ‘I have made you a light to the Gentiles to bring salvation to the farthest corners of the earth.” Jesus was the light of the nations, wasn’t He? The Messiah wasn’t sent just to Israel. He was sent to the nations.
Your own prophet said that. What are you uptight about?” So Paul just taught them truth, “You have no business being prejudiced and being so negative in responding to this because you see Gentiles coming to Messiah.” Messiah was sent to be a light to the nations, for salvation to the ends of the earth. You don’t even know your own prophets. What a sad negative attitude.
Let me show you the positive response. Go the other way on the side of the Gentiles. While the Jews were negative, the Gentiles were positive. Verse 48, “And when the Gentiles heard this” – that salvation was for them, and Messiah was for them – “they were glad, and they glorified the Word of the Lord; and as many as were ordained by God to eternal life believed.”
That says that God chose them. Right, exactly. You say, “You mean they were ordained to be saved?” That’s right. You say, “Do you believe that God chose those that would be saved?” Absolutely. The word “ordained,” means to inscribe or enroll, and that it is used to make out a list. And what it is saying is that as many as were put on the list by God for eternal life, believed.
So, “When did God write the list?” The answer is in 13:8 and 17:8 of Revelation, and it says, “Your names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life from before the foundation of the world.” That’s election. “You mean that everybody who’s saved is saved because God ordained them and wrote their name?” Yes. You say, “But you just said in verse 46 that if a man goes to hell, it’s his own fault.” Right.
You say, “Those two don’t go together.” Exactly. The Bible teaches both; I believe both. It’s God’s problem, not mine. When you are saved, God gets all the credit. When you are lost, you get all the blame. I don’t understand that, I just believe it, both of them are in the same passage. As many as were written in the book of life believed. But everybody who disbelieved was pronouncing a sentence on himself.
You have two doctrines in the Bible, human responsibility, when a man dies without Christ, it’s his own fault; and divine sovereignty, when a man comes to Christ, it’s only because God the Father drew him. And so there was salvation in Antioch. Verse 49, “And the Word of the Lord was spread throughout all the region.” Evangelism. When people get saved, they share.
Well, lastly, the results. What were the results of a negative response on the Jews’ part? Verse 50, “Then the Jews stirred up the influential religious women and the leaders of the city, and they incited a mob against Paul and Barnabas and ran them out of town.” They were so mad when the Gentiles got saved, this infuriated them more. So the Jews persuaded the women to incite their husbands against them; expelled them out.
But the sad result to the Jews is verse 51, “So they shook the dust from their feet as a sign of rejection and went to the town of Iconium.” When they shook off the dust of their feet that was an important symbolic statement. Jesus said in Luke 10, “When you go to evangelize, when they don’t hear your message, and they don’t believe the Messiah, you shake the dust off your feet and leave that town.”
Jesus meant, “Treat those Jews like they were Gentiles. You don’t want a thing to do with them; they’re just like pagans.” That in itself was the most volatile rebuke that anyone could ever give to a Jew was to assign him a place with pagans; and they did it to them: “From now on, God looks at you like heathen.” They were doomed, because they rejected their Messiah, Jesus Christ.
The positive result we see in verse 52, “And the believers were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” See the contrast? Paul and Barnabas left town, took off for Iconium. They left two different groups. God saw one group as pagans; and God filled the other group with His Holy Spirit. The same is still happening here all over the world, some will believe and most will not. Let us pray.