Well, good morning to everyone. Little clouds this morning take this take the heat off. Greg Ramey was at my house yesterday and he said, how's things going? I said, what's been hot? You know, it's been hot. He said, you know in heaven everything's gonna be perfect. He said, we won't have anything to complain about. What are we gonna talk about? I thought that was a pretty good point he made there.

We're gonna be continuing our study in Acts 13 this morning, verses 42 to 52, looking at this really good section of the beginning of Paul's ministry as recorded in the book of Acts. He and Barnabas in Antioch of Pisidia are making the gospel clear. That's what we saw last week. 

1st Corinthians 10:31 says, “Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” It is our pursuit as believers in Jesus Christ to do all things to the glory of God, to live our lives in a way that glorifies Him in every aspect and every way. 

There's an interesting application for me in this concerning how we conduct our business, how we raise our animals, how we farm. Over the past few years, I've thought a lot about how God would have me do these things and how what I do or do not do brings glory to Him. 

One of the most interesting things I've come across and attempted to apply is raising animals and working the land in a way that follows God's intention according to His revelation to us and through His creation around us. He's designed a pig to root in the dirt, to wallow in the mud, and to create a disturbance in the soil on the landscape as he goes about his business being a pig. A chicken is meant to scratch the dirt, to peck at bugs, and to eat grass as he goes around being a chicken. 

These animals bring glory to God as they express their nature according to their design and do what He created them to do. The beauty of this is that they all work in symbiosis to facilitate fruitfulness. One of the major patterns that we observe in God's creation to follow on our farm is the continual movement of the herbivores across the landscape, followed by the birds. We see this with wild herbivores like bison, always moving, always disturbing the soil, and always followed and accompanied by birds. 

So we rotate our cows in small paddocks utilizing portable electric fence and allow them to eat the tall grass down and disturb the soil with the concentrated action of their hooves. Then, after a couple of days, we bring the chickens behind them to eat the parasites and bugs that have developed in the manure and scratch that fertilizer all around to facilitate the growing of the grass. We use our hogs to root up soil, clear small brush, and allow light in to start the grass growing.

The reason I bring all this up is to illustrate a simple point. What we see in God's design and creation in so many places is that in order for there to be growth, in order for there to be fruit, there must be a disturbance. In order for seeds to come up in the soil and for light-limiting brush to be removed, there must be the action of the hooves of the animals, the scratching of the chickens, the rooting of the hogs. Then growth and fruit comes in abundance.

What I've been thinking about in this chapter, as I see Paul go into Antioch and what happens, is that this principle is true concerning the Gospel also. Last week we looked at the necessity of making the Gospel clear. We saw Paul preach the clear truth to the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles in the synagogue, speaking of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that He is the fulfillment of all of the promises made to Israel, all that the prophets wrote about and God promised in His word. 

Then we saw Paul appeal to them to believe Jesus, to come to faith, and warn them that rejecting Christ, failing to believe, would result in judgment, would result in destruction. In our text today, we're going to see the implications of that Gospel made clear. We're going to see the disturbance that causes growth when the Gospel is made clear and men are called on to believe and warned against unbelief. 

Let's look at our text together in Acts 13:42. It says, “So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. Now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who speaking to them persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.” 

On the next Sabbath, almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, “It was necessary that the Word of God should be spoken to you first, but since you rejected and judged yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.” 

“For so the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have set you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.’” Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the Word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. And the Word of the Lord was being spread throughout all the region. 

But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city, raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. But they shook off the dust from their feet against them and came to Iconium, and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

I have four points for you on your outline from our text. First, we see disturbance. Second, we see desire. Third, discontentment. And fourth, delight.

Well first in our text, we see disturbance. This is a fascinating truth for us to study in the context of our world, and even within the Evangelical Church in America today. Among men, there's a great desire for peace and harmony. How many songs have been written about peace and love and harmony? How many Miss America contestants have wished for world peace? 

There's at least a professed desire among men for peace and harmony, and men have over time, with philosophy and psychology and their various wisdoms, attempted to build a sort of pseudo-peace, a mirage of peace and harmony, masking evil hearts and schemes that always exist in the hearts of men and governments and organizations of this world. But this peace is always built on false premises. 

The men of this world never deal with the true heart problem, but lie to themselves thinking themselves better than they are, denying the one true God. Thus, their peace always crumbles, and war and fighting always persist. Somehow, this desire for harmony among men, even on false premises, has infiltrated the church in our thinking as well. It exists in the form of ecumenism—a desire for everyone to get along, to exist peacefully together, to emphasize our commonality and lay aside our differences. 

The application of this varies in degree, but we've seen over the course of recent history in the church an embracing of false doctrine, false churches, and unbelievers for the sake of unity in the so-called church. We've heard mantras like “doctrine divides,” and we've been counseled simply to love one another. But my friends, there is no love apart from truth. The fact is that doctrine is simply teaching about Jesus, telling us who He is and defining what He's done. God desires unity in the church, but that unity must be based on truth according to His word, and that truth divides from what is false. 

We are to speak the truth and speak it in love, but the two cannot be divorced or compromised. The fact is that when truth is spoken, when truth invades the false harmony designed by men, then there is a disturbance. There is a breaking up of the soil, and those who work hard to build and promote the false systems of this world, the facade of peace and harmony, tend to war against the truth. 

This was exactly the situation in Acts 13 when Paul and Barnabas came to Antioch. Antioch of Pisidia was a very interesting town. It was a strategic city due to its geographic position— a border town sitting on a hill at the crossroads of trade. It became an important city in the Roman Empire in the time that Paul and Barnabas journeyed there. It was a very diverse city with many different ethnic groups who inhabited it, and it historically had been a volatile place. 

Great efforts were made under Roman rule to keep the peace, to promote harmony among all the factions, much like was the case in Jerusalem. The one thing that Rome would not tolerate was disturbance, was a breaking down of the false peace, the enforced peace they created in their regime. But that is precisely what the Gospel did then, and it's what the Gospel does now, my friends, because the false peace of men is built on lies and foundations of sand. Therefore, it will inevitably crumble when the truth is spoken. 

There is a destruction of these lies, and therefore the Gospel is an offense, it's a stumbling block, it's foolishness to those who are perishing. That is exactly what we see in the ministry of Paul and Barnabas— truth spoken, the Gospel made clear, inevitably resulting in disturbance in the peace in the hearts of men. 

The implications of the Gospel made clear are always twofold in response: there's either belief and salvation, or there's rejection. We can frame this in our text with two words since they begin with D: desire and discontentment. 

Let's look first at the positive response in our text to the Gospel and the desire of the Gentiles. Paul and Barnabas came into town, they went into the synagogue, they made the Gospel clear, and we have the desire of the Gentiles when they hear the words of truth spoken. Verse 42 says, “So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.” Now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who speaking to them persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. 

On the next Sabbath, almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God. Here we see one response to the Gospel made clear—a great desire to hear more, to understand. This is such an encouraging, wonderful thing for those of us who preach the Gospel, for believers who are set on leading men to Christ, to having as many as possible be saved for the glory of God. 

When you have an opportunity to witness, to tell someone about Jesus, isn’t your hope that they will hear? That they will have a desire to understand and know the truth? You can see that response when men are listening, processing, asking questions, trying to understand when they have an open heart to the truth, to Jesus Christ. This is one implication of the Gospel preached—desire, a drawing of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men to come to the truth, a willingness on their part to hear more. 

It says they begged Paul. This word speaks of a fervent desire and interest. But we will see that this interest does not always result in conversion. Sometimes there is an emotional response, a quick springing up, such as with the rocky soil in Matthew 13 where there's no root. But it's always encouraging when men have a desire to hear more, to consider the truth, to sit down, open the scriptures, and discuss the Gospel. This certainly was the case after Paul's sermon. It says that many Jews and Gentiles followed Paul and Barnabas out. They were crowding around them; they wanted to hear more, and they wanted to come back the next week to speak more of these words. 

They all returned on the next Sabbath. It says the whole city came out. This is so encouraging for these preachers of the Gospel! They came to hear the Word of God; what an opportunity! 

But as we see in the next part of our text, there's another inevitable implication of the Gospel being made clear: rejection or discontentment. Look at verse 45: “But when the Jews saw the multitudes”—everyone crowding around, everyone coming to Paul, everyone begging Paul, interest in what he had to say—“when they saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul.” 

Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, “It was necessary that the Word of God should be spoken to you first. But since you rejected and judged yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.” 

Look at verse 50: “But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and chief men of the city, raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region.” But they shook off the dust from their feet against them and came to Iconium. 

When the truth is preached clearly, boldly, with no apology, when the Gospel is made clear and men understand and they hear the truth, there are many times a positive response. But there is almost always a negative response as well. 

We see this here from the Jews who became envious of the crowds that Paul and Barnabas drew with the Gospel of Christ. So we see that when we preach the Gospel as we go about our daily lives, praying for, seeking opportunities, and seizing those opportunities when they come to preach the Gospel clearly, we should expect many times for many people a negative response. 

Jesus made a profound statement when He said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Jesus brought the truth. And the truth will set you free, my friends. But as that sword of truth hacks away at the lies and the false peace of men, those lies undergird, there will be a negative reaction, guaranteed. 

Because men love darkness, because their deeds are evil, and when the light of the truth is shown on them, they will fight back and rebel against the truth and against the truth speakers. This is exactly what the religious Jews did here and will continue to do throughout the course of Paul's missionary journeys, kicking him out of every town that he goes to. If we're making the Gospel clear, we should expect the same in our ministries, my friends, from family members, from co-workers, from religious men in our communities. 

When the truth is spoken clearly, it acts as a sword, dividing men into two groups—those who believe, who respond positively, and those who reject and respond negatively, and sometimes openly fight against the Gospel. 

Now, there are a couple of verses in our text that are truly theologically loaded. They're significant. I want to just touch on those and discuss the balance that they present concerning salvation. The first is verse 46. It's an enlightening verse. It says, “Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said it was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first.” 

Look at these words. Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And look at these words: “And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” We had a lively discussion on this. 

I'm going to read it to you: “Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said it was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first.” Look at these words: “And as many as had been appointed to eternal life”—we had a lively discussion on Thursday night in our Bible study as we began the study of 1 Peter. 

Peter makes a statement at the beginning of the epistle that the believers to whom he writes are elect according to the foreknowledge of God. Now, this statement, this doctrine of election, can give us a lot of heartburn, but it need not. I believe in 1 Peter that the primary reason that Peter makes this statement is because he's writing to believers who are experiencing tremendous persecution and trials under Nero. 

He wants to assure them that they are secure in Christ and that God is preserving them by His power, and that they can count on the promise of God and the end of their faith, salvation at His coming. He's writing to believers to assure them. So he brings up the true doctrine of election, that God chose them, that the Spirit sanctified them, set them apart, and that Jesus sealed them with His blood when they believed. 

I was amazed in light of our discussion Thursday, and how difficult these truths can be for us to digest and understand that we have verses 46 and 48 right here in our text this morning. I could have just kind of skipped over these, made light of them, skirted around the hard stuff. But it's vitally important that we have a biblical view of the doctrines of election and free will, human responsibility. 

I don't want to spend a great deal of time on this because it's not really the subject of the text, but it is most certainly present here in these words that Luke penned. Verse 48 says, “As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” He seems to almost say it offhandedly. Certainly, he's not focusing on teaching some great doctrine here. He just mentions in the context of God turning to the Gentiles with the Gospel of grace that those who were appointed to eternal life believed. 

I think that truth dominates the text and the context, that it's always been God's intent to bring salvation to the Gentiles. And now He, in the new covenant with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is sending messengers directly to the Gentiles to hear, to believe, and to be saved. That's the main point here. But I don't know how else to take the statement in verse 48 other than what it clearly says: “As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” 

You see, the problem comes for us when we take these two doctrines of free will and the choice of every man to believe or reject the Gospel and the sovereignty of God in salvation, and we try to reconcile the two in our minds. When we try to design a system that explains these things, we do tremendous violence to the truth and cause unbelievable confusion and damage to the cause of Christ. 

We see this vividly in the system of theology called Calvinism, where men have emphasized the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, listen now, to the exclusion of the doctrine of the responsibility of man—the will of man to believe or reject the truth. Conversely, we see in the system called Arminianism, the emphasis on the will of man to the exclusion of the sovereignty of God. 

But in the scriptures, in so many places, we see these two things exist side by side with no apparent conflict in the mind of God. Listen to Acts 2:23, speaking of the crucifixion. It says, “Him, Jesus, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death.” 

In this one verse, we see the sovereignty of God determining the crucifixion before time began, and we see the choice of lawless men taking Jesus and putting Him to death. This is the settled condition that we must come to, my friends, to believe both and to take both doctrines as revealed in the scriptures and let them be, not to explain them, not to try to fit them into our puny little brains and conform them to our logic, but to believe what God has revealed. 

Let God be God. Take them both with equal faith. This always makes me think of the deity and the humanity of Christ. Why do we not have divisions and denominations and so many books written on the deity and the humanity of Christ? We can't explain it. We don't understand it. We take it by faith, because God told us it's true that He's fully man, and He's fully God. 

This is the conclusion that the great preacher Charles Spurgeon came to after scathing, rebuking words for the Calvinists. He says, “I think a man that gets a little nearer to God discovers that he does not know everything. He is quite clear that he can no more compass the whole of divine truth than he can hold the ocean in the hollow of his hand. I have long felt that I shall never understand where the two great truths of free agency and predestination meet. I believe them both. I believe them with equal faith. But how to reconcile them I no longer wish to know, because I do not believe that God intends we should know.”

My friends, we see it right here in our text: “As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” But look at verse 46 again: “Since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, we turn to the Gentiles.” 

Since you reject it. You see, the Bible never says that men are not saved because God did not choose them. The responsibility of men for going to hell lies squarely on their own shoulders and their choice to reject the Gospel. God does not want one man to perish. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He desires that every man come to faith in Christ. 

Jesus said that He longed, that He had a great desire to gather the children of Israel together as a hen gathers her chicks. But He says, “Listen, you were not willing.” You were not willing. Did you hear that word, willing, my friends? The Bible teaches that a man has a will, contrary to Mr. Luther—that every man has a choice. The Bible teaches that Jesus died for every man. Not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Whosoever will may come. 

And it's clear right here in verse 46 of our text that the reason these men will perish is that they chose to reject the Gospel, to reject Jesus. And look at the next phrase in that text: “You have judged yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.” They judged themselves. They made a choice to be envious, to be proud, to seek their own gain and not submit themselves in faith to the Gospel. 

And that is why they perished, my friends. The Gospel is not the problem. God is not the problem. It's not God's choice that they perish. It's not God's truth and grace in the Gospel that is judged here. They judged themselves unworthy. What an amazing statement! 

This reminds me of a trip we made years ago to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area up in Ely, Minnesota. We took a guy with us who was a city boy through and through. I was skeptical about taking him in the first place, but a friend of ours wanted him to go along. I remember the first evening we were there after driving 15 hours north from Indiana up to the beautiful Northwoods of Minnesota. 

We canoed and backpacked for hours to get into this amazing little peninsula of red pines on Horse Lake where we made our camp. I remember the sunset and the beauty of the calm lake that evening. Just as dusk was settling, loons began to call. This young man named Scott said, “What is that god-awful noise?” 

You see, the call of the loon in that moment was not judged; it was beautiful, it was amazing, it stands on its own. It was Scott that was judged by his own words. As my friend Anders from Sweden says so often, “This says a lot more about you than it does about me.” 

Listen to me, my brothers and sisters. Settle this doctrine of election and human will in your minds. Let the tension that God allows to just be. Believe them both with equal faith, but know this: when a man rejects the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it says a lot more about that man than it does about God. 

God is not the cause. God is not at fault. He is reaching out His hands all day long to a stiff-necked and rebellious people. Don't blame God for men perishing, because it is man who judges himself unworthy of eternal life, who chooses by his own will to reject Jesus and His good news of salvation by grace through faith alone in Him. 

So we see disturbance when the Gospel is made clear. We see desire, and we see discontentment. Finally, in our text, we see that when the Gospel is made clear, there is delight from the fruit that is produced. 

Verse 47 of our text says, “For so the Lord has commanded us, ‘I have set you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.’” Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many had been appointed to eternal life believed. 

The word of the Lord was being spread throughout all the region. Look at the last verse of our text, verse 52: “And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” 

This is really the encouragement and the instruction for us this morning from our text. We don't really care much for the necessary disturbance. We don't really like the discontentment, the anger among those who reject the Gospel. But our delight, our joy, is when men respond in faith to a clear presentation of the Gospel. 

When there is fruit that comes from the truth—lives changed, men born again—this is our delight. And it's God's delight as well. In Luke 15:7, He said, “I say to you, likewise there shall be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.” 

In verse 10, He says, “Likewise I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents.” God rejoices over sinners who turn to Jesus and believe Him. 

The message I really want for you to take home from our text is that true faith can only come—salvation, conversion, this amazing change of the new birth can only come when the Gospel is made clear. When men hear a message about Jesus and choose to turn to Him in faith. Yes, some, perhaps most, will reject, will hate the message, and maybe even persecute the messenger. 

Some will be angry and hostile when we make the Gospel clear. But the glorious truth is that many will believe. We saw the same thing in the ministry of Jesus on this Earth. In John 10, Jesus made it clear that He is the Messiah, the Son of God. He made it clear that His sheep hear Him and follow Him, that they are His and they are secure in Him. 

He made it clear that He is equal with the Father. When He spoke these clear truths, it says that the Jews picked up stones to stone Him. It doesn't get any more hostile than that, my friends. But then John says, “Many believed on Him there.” 

This is what our life is about. This is why we are here. God has prescribed that the way a man comes to faith and salvation in Jesus Christ is by hearing the message preached. He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 

We are ambassadors for Christ, and it's our mission to go out into this world and preach this clear message to every creature. Sometimes I talk to pastors and other believers who do not really believe in making the Gospel clear. They don't want to offend anyone, they don't want to drive people away. 

Sometimes I hear them talk about how their church is growing, how they're filling up the place week after week. I wonder—my friends, I do not know, but I wonder about these kinds of situations as to who is really saved and who is not. It's one thing to draw a crowd and please the people and tickle their ears, but it's quite another to make the Gospel clear so that men understand and are confronted with a choice as to what they will do with Jesus. 

Franz Habener said, “If you have some glad, some sad, and some mad, you're getting the cross okay.” It's okay to have some mad. Jesus did, Paul did, everywhere he went. If no one is mad, if no one gets upset, maybe we're not getting the cross. Maybe we're not making the Gospel clear. 

And maybe we're endangering the souls of men by giving them false assurance. This is not what we want, my friends. We want men to be saved and to glorify God. Again, I just want you to understand that there's only one way, God's way, for this to happen, and that is through the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, making it clear. 

Let's close in prayer. 

Father, we're thankful for Your words. We're thankful that You have revealed so much to us about Yourself, about Jesus, about salvation, about eternal life, about the Christian life in this new covenant. We also know, Lord, that we don't know everything. We trust You, and we believe You, and we leave the secret things to You. Help us just to know Your Word, to know the truths that You've given us and to believe them. And Lord, to obey that which You've revealed to us for Your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.