Sermon Transcript
All right. Good morning. So this morning we are in the book of—Who wants to guess? All right. You read the bulletin. We’re in the book of Acts. Turn to chapter 13.
There is a time in everyone’s life when they experience rejection. You felt it. I have felt it. It can be one of the worst feelings on the planet.
Now imagine a world where the greatest figure to have ever walked the planet—and you’ve seen Him. Imagine living in first-century Israel and you have seen Jesus. You’ve seen Him preach. You’ve seen Him teach. You’ve seen Him perform many mighty miracles. You saw Him resurrect Lazarus. Maybe you have even been one who has seen Him in His resurrected state. And all of this has been beautiful to your eyes, except you walk in a lonely place because you’re a Gentile. And your whole life, you’ve been told that the Jewish Messiah would only be for the Jewish people. That would be the greatest blow of rejection you could ever feel.
But today we learn that the opposite is true. Today we learn that we get to experience the beautiful joy that the first Christmas was the arrival of the hope of all nations. The first Christmas was the hope, not just for the Jew, but also for the Gentiles.
If you were living in that first-century world today, you’re going to learn that there is hope for you, and it has come from a Jewish Messiah, and He loves you. That is the message we, as Christians, preach, Church. But this message of salvation will also bring a new kind of rejection. This is a rejection that doesn’t come from the Messiah. This is a rejection that comes from the world when you proclaim the message of salvation that the Messiah delivers.
So the main point of today’s sermon is that we must spread joy at Christmas—despite rejection—because it reminds us of God’s plan for global salvation. I’ll say it again. The main point of today’s sermon is that we spread joy at Christmas—despite rejection—because it reminds us of God’s plan for a global salvation.
So please rise with me as we read Acts 13:44–52.
The following Sabbath almost the whole town assembled to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what Paul was saying, insulting him. Paul and Barnabas boldly replied, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first. Since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we are turning to the Gentiles. For this is what the Lord has commanded us: I have made you a light for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.” When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and honored the word of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. The word of the Lord spread through the whole region. But the Jews incited the prominent God-fearing women and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from their district. But Paul and Barnabas shook the dust off their feet against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. (Acts 13:44–52, CSB)
This is the word of the Lord, Church.
You may be seated.
Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus. I ask that today You would reign supreme, that You would be here. Lord, I ask that You would claim this service as Your own and that we would see and feel Your presence. Father, we have done this time and time again, year after year. For over 2,000 years, we have celebrated the birth of our Savior. And today, we need You to renew in us the joy of the salvation that is offered because Christ has come in human form, defeating death and finding for us salvation from the penalty of our sins and being embraced by You as one family, Jew and Gentile, into the family of God. But we need You to break through our hard hearts and our calloused brains because we have heard this story so many times our whole life. We might be quick to forget how beautiful it truly is. I ask You, Lord, to please catapult our minds to the heavens and help us to see today’s event from Your throne. Help us to, Father, forget about the pain of what we’re currently going through, whether that’s school, whether that’s therapists, whether that’s doctor’s appointments, whether that’s heartache and broken pools. Father, whatever is going on, I pray that we would think very quickly right now about the birth of our Savior, who is our God, and worship You appropriately. And please help this preacher. Help me to be Your servant today and for my mind to be focused squarely on the thing at hand. And I pray that, Father, if there’s anything that must be said that was not planned for, that the Spirit of God would speak through me and that You would let my mouth be shut, my heart be open, and for You to speak very clearly for us today so that we can leave these doors with a renewed vigor as Your ambassadors and Your missionaries to the world. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.
All right, Church. So where are we? Well, currently it’s Advent season. And so far, we have celebrated hope and peace. And then this week, we celebrate joy.
Now, with joy comes a lot of questions. Here we are in the middle of Christmas. There’s still a war going on between Russia and Ukraine. There are Christians being locked up in China. There are Christians who are being murdered in the Congo, in Nigeria. There’s civil unrest. There are political pundits on the news always trying to, what seems to be, stir up civil war. And there does not seem to be peace in America. There is certainly no peace around the world.
And yet we as Christians, we still gather in this hall, in this beautiful place where Wake Union Baptist Church has been for over 200 years. And we relish the beautiful joy that is offered on Christmas. And here, we must understand that our joy is firmly rooted in what we see in God’s word. This is the sweetest book you’ll ever read. It comes with magical powers and it has the ability to make you a wonderful and a magical person because a magical Savior wrote it for you as a love letter.
So I want you to be reading this [i.e., the Bible]. And today we’re going to see what this book has to say for us regarding the joy of Christmas. And our passage is in the book of Acts in chapter 13.
Chapter 13 in the book of Acts is smack dab in the middle of Paul’s first missionary journey.
You see, Paul is called in Acts 9. He used to be a murderer. Well, not really, but he was guilty by association. He stood over the murder of Christians and he rejoiced in it. That was his joy to see Christians killed because we were all heretics in his eyes at the time, until the Lord broke in, opened his eyes, and he saw that Jesus is truly the Savior.
If you do not understand that Jesus is the Savior of the world, my hope is that you would.
But this man, Paul, he was called to be a missionary. When he was called to be a missionary, very clearly it says that he was going to preach to Jew and Gentile (Acts 9:15). But as his missionary journeys begin, we quickly see that that begins to shift.
Now, our passage here, he’s just finished up preaching a magnificent sermon in chapter 13. You see, in v 14, he arrives with Barnabas in Antioch in Pisidia. And actually, this place—this is where the book, the letter of Galatians, would have been written to. We spent the first half of my first year here going through the book of Galatians. And I’m happy to say that this was a sermon that Paul would have preached to the same people who received that letter. So we’re coming full circle.
And now we are—and Paul has just preached this beautiful sermon. And in this sermon, we see in v 26 that he’s pronouncing the message of salvation that was even known to the father Abraham. And he’s preaching to Jews in a synagogue. So there are no Gentiles that are present at this moment. And he walks them through the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible.
In vv 32–35, we see that Paul has told them that the coming Messiah, Jesus the Lord, that He was promised in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. This is nothing new.
But in v 27, it says that the Jews missed it. And they killed their Lord instead. And he warns them in v 41. He quotes Habakkuk 1:5.
And he says in v 40, “Look at this. So beware that what is said in the prophets does not happen to you.”
Look, you scoffers, marvel and vanish away, because I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will never believe, even if someone were to explain it to you.” (Acts 13:41, CSB)
You see, this was the Jewish people were no different from the rest of humanity. They had a long history of rejecting the Lord that loves them. And unfortunately, they do. They reject the message that Paul is giving them. And we see that very clearly in our passage.
You see, when he has finished preaching that sermon, they love it so much, they say, “Paul, will you please come back and preach again? We want more of this.”
And so you have Jews and God-fearers (these would have been Gentiles who converted to Judaism). And so they might not have been Jewish by blood, but they were Jewish by practice. And they’re following Paul and Barnabas because they want more of this teaching about this Messiah, this Jesus.
So what do they do? They follow him and then they return. But when he comes back to preach the next Sabbath again, what does he find? The crowd is so large, it’s almost the entire city. So he cannot teach in a synagogue now. He must teach out in the open, and the Gentiles are there to witness it. Because the week prior, they would not have been allowed in the synagogue, not without converting to Judaism. But this time they’re there, and they get to hear the message that they’ve never heard before.
You see, the world that they knew before this was that the Jews kept to themselves. They did not like the Gentiles, and the Gentiles did not like the Jews. But there was a man named Jesus who had been on the earth, and they had seen incredible things, and they wanted a piece of this family. But the family He belonged to kept saying, “No, you don’t belong.”
But now they get to see Paul preach. And this is a gift.
And while they’re doing this, the crowds get so big, it says that the Jews see the crowds and are filled with jealousy (Acts 13:45)
Look at the end of our passage in v 52. What does it say? The disciples—we’re going to get there who they are—but the disciples, they’re filled with the Holy Spirit.
The author of this book wants you to see a sharp contrast. You were either filled with evil things like jealousy, or you were filled with the Holy Spirit. You cannot have both.
These men are filled with jealousy. Why? Because these men are getting the attention that they want for themselves. This is the problem.
Now, you’re going to hear me say “the Jews” a lot. If I’m saying “Jews” a lot, I’m only just talking about this text. I do not want anybody in this room to think that I’m thinking that Jewish people are bad. I’m not at all. Nor, if you are Jewish, do I want you to feel responsible for what’s in this text. But we are talking specifically about these first-century Jews.
What did Jesus say about the first-century Jews? He says in Matthew 23:5, “They do everything to be seen by others. They enlarge their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.” They do all of this so people look at them. They are not in the business of loving the Lord. They’re in the business of loving themselves.
So, when these men see that Paul and Barnabas have a crowd, they envy, they get jealous, and they begin to kick them out. They are rejecting the message.
So, Paul and Barnabas, it says that they are boldly—they are boldly proclaiming this message. And this boldness—this boldness is coming from the fact that there is opposition. I looked it up this week. When this Greek word appears, “speaking with boldness,” it only appears, except one time, it only appears in the context of opposition. And that woke me up. You cannot be bold for Jesus unless people are opposing you.
So if you talk about Jesus to only people who agree with you, you cannot call that courage. That’s just speaking. And anybody can talk. But Paul and Barnabas are said to be bold because they’re doing it in the face of opposition.
And they reject him for it and they kick him out. But the saddest part about all of this is that they are putting themselves in a spot where they cannot receive eternal life.
Look what Paul says. He says in v 46, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you”—that is the Jews—“first. But since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we are turning to the Gentiles.”
He says, “Since you reject it”—this is a verb where you are taking something, crumbling it up and throwing it away. You’re trying to put distance between you. This is not a person who is thinking, you know, cerebrally, in my head, that doesn’t sound like a very good argument. I don’t think that’s for me. That’s not what this is. This is, “I hate your message, get it out of here.” They want space between them and the message of salvation.
And Paul says, “Since you are doing that and you were trashing the gospel, we are now going to turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46).
But Paul says something else. And this tells me, Christians, it’s okay to be a little bit ironic and sarcastic sometimes. Because that’s exactly what Paul does here. He says, “Since you consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life.”
These Jewish people, first-century Jews, of course they think they’re worthy of eternal life. But Paul is saying, when you discard this message, you are throwing eternal life away.
This is a dire warning for us. All of us want to believe that our unbelieving friends and family, that they’re going to die and everything is going to be okay. I am here to tell you, when your unbelieving friends and family die, having rejected the message of eternal life, they are rejecting eternal life with God.
The Lord says in Acts 4:12,
“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.” (CSB)
Oprah is dead wrong. They do not all lead to the same God. There is only one God who was born of a virgin, came to the earth, and bore the penalty for our sin. There is only one. Even if they are real, they could not hold the vast amount of love that is required to pay the penalty for an innumerable amount of people. There is none except the Maker of heaven and earth. That is the one who came and was born in Bethlehem. That is why we have joy for Christmas.
But these men, they rejected that. And you and I, we all know a lot of people who are like that. And I pray that we would have the boldness of Paul and Barnabas to be able to boldly proclaim that God loves them through Jesus Christ even though they will reject us at family dinner.
Who is your loved one that you’re too afraid to say Jesus is the only way? Do you love them enough to tell them that if they do not turn to Jesus, there is no hope for them? I pray that you will.
1. God Planned for Rejection (Acts 13:44–46; see Isa 6:9–10; Acts 28:23–28)
That is why the first point on your bulletin is that God planned for this rejection. This did not come by surprise to God. And Paul knew that. He knew that.
You see, this is not the first time that God is rejected.
a. We Rejected Yahweh First (Gen 3; 6:5; 11; Exod 15–17; 32; Num 11–14; 1 Sam 8:6–7; Isa 1:4)
Humanity rejected God in the garden (Gen 3). We rejected first, we rejected Yahweh. That’s the next point on your bulletin. Yahweh.
If you don’t know who Yahweh is, Yahweh is the great I Am of Exodus 3. You see, Moses was called to rescue the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. And when he says to God, “Who shall I say sent me to rescue them?” And the answer is, “I Am who I Am.”
Now this word in Hebrew, this phrase, “I am who I am,” is ehiyah ehiyah. And we go from this, and we go to chapter 6 in Exodus, and we see that He calls His name the LORD in our English translations. But when your English translation has every single letter capitalized, what you need to understand is, behind that is the Hebrew word Yahweh. And this comes from the same verb in Hebrew that ehiyah ehiyah comes from. Yahweh. They are related.
In Yahweh’s name, it means that He is the God who is with us. God is always there. He never leaves you or forsakes you. No one is alone for Christmas. No widow is alone for Christmas. No orphan is alone for Christmas, even if they reject the God who loves them. Because He is omnipresent, he is always around. He fills every space of this room. He’s with you in your car. He’s with you when you go home.
Yahweh—He’s the God who is with us.
But we rejected Yahweh in the garden in Genesis 3. When the serpent comes to Eve and says, “Did God really say?” And he gets her to question that God had her best interests in mind. And he says, “He just doesn’t want you to be like Him, knowing good and evil.” And she eats because she wants to be Yahweh. She rejected Him. And then her idiot husband follows suit. Her idiot husband is me, by the way. Like, that’s every one of us. We’re all idiots without the Spirit of God in us.
So, but then you see the pre-world, the pre-flood world also rejects Yahweh. It says in Genesis 6:5,
When the LORD saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, (Genesis 6:5, CSB)
You don’t believe that your children come out with original sin? Genesis 6:5. Everybody’s a sinner. So, take that trash that we’re all genuinely good people somewhere inside and throw it away. It’s garbage. The Founding Fathers of America knew that, and that’s why we have checks and balances in our government. I hope they can hear me.
Then the Tower of Babel. We reject Yahweh in the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11, right? They wanted to build a name for themselves. They made it all about them. Sound familiar? They wanted to replace God, so they reject Him there.
Then God saves the Jews, the Israelites, out of slavery, and they make a golden calf, like, immediately. That’s how foolish we are as humans. Five o’clock, God saves us from everything we hate. At 5:05, we’re making idols. That’s humanity.
I mean, we do this, right? Like, some of you are going to leave here, and you might be tempted to just go shopping for yourself. Like, that’s how quick the human heart shifts from adoring the Lord to making it all about us.
So it’s not just Israel, it’s not just the Jews, it’s a human problem. They do it in the wilderness, they’re scared, they constantly fear, they reject the Lord’s goodness, and then also 1 Samuel 8:6–7, this is the verse of all verses. This in my head, when I read the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, I read that and I go, this is where everything changed. This is when it was like the peak of rejecting the Lord. That’s not necessarily true. For some reason, this verse just like rocks me to my core. Listen to this.
The Jewish people, they tell Samuel the prophet, “Give us a king to judge us.”
You have the Maker of heaven and earth. The Maker of heaven and earth—He is your King. What do you mean “give us a king”? “Give us a king.”
When they said, “Give us a king to judge us,” Samuel considered their demand wrong, so he prayed to the LORD. But the LORD told him, “Listen to the people and everything they say to you. They have not rejected you; they have rejected me as their king. (1 Samuel 8:6–7, CSB)
So, humanity has repeatedly rejected Yahweh.
b. Then We Rejected Jesus (John 1:10–11; Mark 8:31)
And not just that, we rejected Jesus.
He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. (John 1:10–11, CSB)
But just like in our passage, this was all part of the plan. Rejection was planned for. This did not take God by surprise.
Then he began to teach them that it was necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and rise after three days. (Mark 8:31, CSB)
c. Now They Reject Us (John 15:18–20)
And Church, now they reject us. First it was Yahweh, then it was His Son, Jesus, and now it’s us.
“If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. (John 15:18–20, CSB)
At the end of the book of Acts, Paul is in prison because they’re persecuting him. He’s in prison, and he continues to try and talk to the Jews, and he’s showing them in the Bible, in the Hebrew Bible, saying, “Look, Jesus is the Messiah of Genesis all the way through Malachi. He’s been here all along. It’s always been the plan,” and they’re still rejecting him.
So in prison, he tells them, the Holy Spirit was right in saying to your ancestors, to the prophet Isaiah, “Go to these people and say, ‘You will always be listening, but never understanding.’” (Isa 6:9–10)
They don’t believe because this was part of the plan.
And he says, “Therefore, let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles. They will listen.” (Acts 28:28)
So with all of that, Church, you go, rejection was part of the plan, and it did not catch God by surprise.
If you haven’t memorized this verse, I really recommend it. It’s at the end of Genesis. After Joseph is thrown into prison and his brothers come and they reconcile, he looks at them, and he says,
“You planned evil against me; God planned it for good.” (Gen 50:20)
So there is this dichotomy, this tension between man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty. We don’t always know how they work. We know that they intended it for evil, and God sovereignly used their evil intentions for His good.
And this is the same thing. The Jews’ rejection of Jesus does not catch Him by surprise, and He’s using it. And we Gentiles get the benefit.
2. Rejection Gives Birth to Joy (Acts 13:47–49)
So that’s why we can say that with this rejection that God knew, this rejection gives birth to joy in your bulletin. Rejection gives birth to joy.
You see, Israel’s rejection of salvation redirects the mission efforts to the rest of the nations. Whenever you see the word “nations” in the Bible in your English translation, this is the same word for Gentiles. Or in Hebrew, you might hear your Jewish friends call them the Goyim. And we rejoice. We rejoice because through their rejection of the Messiah, we have hope.
Jesus’ mission is our mission because we are ambassadors of Christ. I love this point.
So look at v 47 in our passage.
“For this is what the Lord has commanded us: I have made you a light for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 13:47, CSB)
Isaiah 49:6 is part of one of the four servant songs in the book of Isaiah. And this is where we get the most beautiful passages, prophecies about our coming Messiah who came and saved us.
But in Isaiah 49:6, the Lord speaks to the Messiah who would come to Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. 700 years before Jesus, He says this. So if we were to fill in the guy we know, He’s talking to, we’ll just plug in the name Jesus.
“I have made you, Jesus, a light for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.”
He’s saying that the Gentiles are now going to receive this salvation. But He’s speaking to the Messiah in this. “You”—that is, the Messiah—so why does Paul say “the Lord commanded us”? This is a mission for the Jewish Messiah. Why is Paul saying that the Jewish Messiah’s mission is a command for Paul?
And that is because we as followers of Christ, we are ambassadors for our King and His kingdom. And the Jewish Messiah’s mission is our mission.
So when Paul says “He commanded us,” he’s saying that the thing that was given to the Messiah is now ours. Jesus is fulfilling His mission of salvation and eternal life through you. When you work, Jesus works. That should be sobering. Your life is not about you. It is about Jesus. All of it, everything you do is about Jesus.
And His mission is your mission. When you go to the grocery store, you’re shopping for Jesus. Guys, I’m serious. When I go places, my best places in public are when, before I get out of the car, I say, “Jesus, I’m going in this place. Help me to be a light for You. Help me to be a missionary in this place. Don’t let me stop being an ambassador when I walk in those doors.”
a. Joy Erupts Because Christmas Reveals That God Always Planned to Save the Nations! (v 48; see Gen 12:3; 18:18; Gal 3:16)
And when I do that, almost every time I’m meeting somebody and I’m talking to them. And it’s beautiful. It’s sweet. It’s very clear that it was from the Lord. So, with that in mind, we can look at the next point and see that joy erupts because Christmas reveals that God always planned to save the nations.
Look at this, v 48:
When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and honored the word of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. (Acts 13:48, CSB)
Why would they do that, Church? Now, what does it mean when it says, “when they heard this”? When they heard “this.” Paul had already been sharing the gospel message with them out in public. But Paul just says something that makes them rejoice. What did Paul say? He says, “The Lord has commanded us,” and then he cites Isaiah 49:6.
Whatever Paul just said is what caused them to rejoice. It’s not just the gospel message. What I’m about to tell you, if you are not Jewish, I want you to hear this very clearly.
When Paul says, “the Lord has commanded us to go to the Gentiles to bring this message of salvation,” and then he cites Isaiah as a proof text, Paul has just revealed to the Gentiles that God always had a plan for them, that saving the non-Jewish people has been a part of God’s plan from the ancient times, and that is why they were rejoicing, because Paul has just told the Gentiles, “You were part of God’s plan of salvation 700 years ago.”
And so remember how we opened this sermon. I said, imagine you were part of a world where you saw Jesus out in public, saw the miracles He was doing, how He was touching the sweet orphans and the widows, and healing them and giving them something the world cannot give them. And yet the Jews around you were saying, “He’s not for you.”
And Paul says, “You’re quite wrong. That Jesus is for everyone.” And they heard that, and they rejoiced. That’s Jesus. That’s the joy of Christmas. Jesus has come as a Jew, but He is for everyone. He loves Jew and Gentile.
Listen to me. You can be a part of the family of Abraham and receive all the promises of Abraham and belong to the family of God for eternity through Jesus Christ.
In fact, this was always a part of the plan with Abraham.
If you look at Genesis 12:3, God tells Abram,
All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. (CSB)
And He says again in Genesis 18:18,
Abraham is to become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. (Genesis 18:18, CSB)
You jump forward to Galatians 3:16, and you realize that the reason Abraham’s covenant is a blessing to all the nations is that it would be through his seed, who is called Christ.
So through Abraham would come Jesus, and through Jesus, all the nations would be blessed. So it has always been—Abraham has always been a plan of salvation for every tongue, tribe, and nation around the world.
I love that, and I’m so excited that we serve a God who has always been moving every event in history toward our salvation and birth into eternal life. That’s the God who loves you.
So if you are struggling right now and having a hard time, I want you to know that there is not a single thing happening in your life that God did not put there for you to go through so that you could enjoy the sweet bliss of eternal life.
And let me tell you what this eternal life is about. You see, this Messiah was the Messiah who was going to come to restore the people of the land. In fact, this is made clear in that servant song that Paul just quotes in Isaiah 49. You see, it was promised that the Messiah would come, be anointed with the Holy Spirit, and through this Holy Spirit, He would actually become a covenant for the people. Where in anywhere in history has a person been a covenant, but this Man would be, and it’s said that He would be an atonement, a sacrifice, and He, listen, He would restore the land (Isaiah 49:8).
This phrase, “the land,”—haaretz—you have to understand what this means. This is a reference to the promised land. This is a reference to the Garden of Eden.
This Messiah that we worship would be restoring all of creation back to its original intention. When you belong to Jesus, you get the blessing of living in the new heavens and the new earth.
And as Gentiles, we go, “What? I’m a part of that. I belong.”
I am not rejected, and neither are you. You are embraced.
I don’t care who’s rejected you throughout your childhood. I don’t care how many husbands or wives you might have had. I don’t care if you’ve been cheated on. I don’t care if people hate you. In the Lord Jesus Christ, you get the sweetest hug you could ever dream of. And it’s eternal. He loves you.
And we know that because of the joy of Christmas.
b. Joy Creates an Authentic Salvation Movement! (vv 48–49; John 3:8; Ps 16:11; John 15:11)
The joy that we have we see it clearly in the people that Paul is preaching to in our passage. In fact, we see that their joy creates an authentic movement.
[A]ll who had been appointed to eternal life believed. The word of the Lord spread through the whole region. (Acts 13:48b–49, CSB)
We again see the difficult tension of human responsibility and God’s sovereignty. Just as Israel’s rejection was part of his sovereign plan to save the Gentiles, so also here we see God sovereignly appointing the Gentiles to eternal life, and if they were appointed, then they believed in Paul’s message. But Jesus has already informed us,
The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8, CSB)
Regardless of how belief is born, genuine belief is always coupled with joy (Gal 5:22). Now, the joy the Gentiles experience turns into the spread of the Gospel. The same is true for us today. If we want to see the world improved, then the Gospel needs to spread, and if the Gospel is to spread, then we must have joy in it. To some degree, you could say that we are not spreading the Gospel because we do not have joy in it. But when there is joy, an authentic movement is born. This is why the Psalmist can write:
You reveal the path of life to me;
in your presence is abundant joy;
at your right hand are eternal pleasures.
(Psalm 16:11, CSB)
3. We Create Joy Through the Mission of Christmas (Acts 13:50–52)
And we help this joy come full circle through the Mission of Christmas. We create joy through the mission of Christmas.
I want to remind you that the mission of Christmas is to tell everyone that Christ was born to give those who believe eternal life through the forgiveness of sins that He made possible.
That’s the mission of Christmas. It’s not gifts, it’s not Santa, it’s not eggnog, it’s not your favorite treats. Sharing the gospel—that’s Christmas.
And we, as ambassadors, like Paul, turn with joy in our hearts, and we go, “Now I’m telling everybody. We are on a mission.” Jesus’ mission is our mission.
But Church, in v 50, you see that Paul and Barnabas, the Jews, incite the prominent God-fearing women and the leading men of the city, and they turn them against Paul and Barnabas.
A great thing has just happened. There are great crowds watching Paul and Barnabas. Paul is preaching. Hearts are being moved. They’re being pricked. Joy erupts. And now all of a sudden, the Jews are turning to the people in power and saying, “You’ve got to get rid of them. They’re doing bad stuff.”
This is what people do when they feel threatened. This is what happens when jealousy replaces the Holy Spirit in your heart. And so they try to get them out.
Church, this is a warning for all of us. In this time of season of joy, when we’re telling people about Jesus, I want you to remember that persecution will persist in your life.
But…
The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. (Acts 13:52, CSB)
All these new disciples had just been made. They had become followers of Christ Jesus, and these Gentiles are erupting in joy in the midst of Paul and Barnabas’ persecution.
We might be persecuted, but we are leaving in our wake the joy of salvation, a hope in future eternal life. We are leaving that in our wake.
Church, we are world shakers when we do our job.
Church, we don’t leave people to be the same when you act in the Holy Spirit. Tell me I’m wrong.
I mean, the people whom I’ve spent the most time with in this Church, I’ve seen your lives change since we’ve been here. The Holy Spirit moves, and He makes new people. He turns you into an ambassador.
I mean, you get all the privileges of working for the embassy. You are loved. You are royalty. You are part of a holy nation, a priesthood. You have access to God directly.
You just remember that, okay?
When they tell you, “No, you can’t come to Christmas dinner. You’re too weird. You’re not invited.” Here’s what I want to tell you. You take the dust off your shoe, and you do this. Because that’s exactly what Jesus commanded us to do:
If anyone does not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. (Matthew 10:14–15, CSB)
That’s privilege.
So, don’t weep for yourself when they reject you because you’re weird, because you talk about Jesus. You weep for them because they have just considered themselves unworthy of eternal life.
So, Church, I want you to embrace this rejection as we go out of here as ambassadors, and we are on a mission to spread the message of salvation, of eternal life through Jesus.
The Lord loves you.
Will you swim in the joy that is offered to you this Christmas season? Will you swim in it?
I mean, I want you to just be basking in the glorious sweetness of God’s salvation for Jew and Gentile.
And know that God, the God who made everything, has called you to be a part of His family. And it all happened because Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of being born in Bethlehem.
Let’s go to Him and praise Him.
Father, I thank You so much that we get to be a part of Your family, that You love us, that You have called us and You give us the sweet joy of being Your disciples. And You have called us and You have revealed to us that we can rejoice in Christmas because You have always planned for us to be a part of Your family.
And we can rejoice, and I pray that You would please give us the boldness and the courage to share the gospel with all those in our family who do not yet believe. And as the gospel of John says, I pray that You would, Spirit, move in their direction and give them new life.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.