Preaching - Acts 13:14-25

Looking at a map of Paul and Barnabas’ first missionary journey, we can see that once they leave the isle of Cyprus they go in a northwestern direction landing in the city of Perga, which we read from the scriptures yesterday. From there they traveled north to Antioch, which can be confusing because this is Antioch Pisidia which is in modern day Turkey, and the other Antioch, the one that they left from is the Antioch that is east and in modern day Syria. Once they settled in “Antioch in Pisidia”, they did what they have presumably been doing the whole time, which is to go into the synagogue. It just so happened that they day that they went into the synagogue was the Sabbath, and apparently what is customary is for the scriptures to be read and then an open invitation to anyone who might “have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.”

Paul stands up and calls for “Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience.” I didn’t think anything of this statement until the IM said that “God-fearers were Gentiles who accepted Jehovah as their God and lived various aspects of Judaism but did not fully convert to Judaism by undergoing the rite of circumcision. Many of Paul’s Gentile converts were God-fearers who worshipped in synagogues, knew the Jewish scriptures (the Old Testament), and were in a state of readiness to accept the gospel message.” So Paul’s statement was a call for not only Jews but to gentiles as well.
Paul begins at the beginning, reminding the audience that God had chosen “the people of Israel” when they were slaves in Egypt. He talks about the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and then, interestingly, says, “and when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan, he divided their land to them by lot.” God himself didn’t come down and destroy those cities, the people of Israel did, with Joshua as their head. But the fact that the Israelites won these battles when statistically they shouldn’t have, was miraculous, and Paul is crediting God with these wins, not the people who were actually doing the fighting. The same when it came time to divide up the land, even though God himself didn’t draw out the maps and assign areas, it was through his authorized servants that these things happened. So Paul is equating prophetic law with God’s actions.
This is a really good breakdown for me because I don’t know a whole lot about ancient Jewish history. Paul attributes the Jewish government to divine design with “judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel the prophet.” This might lead one to determine that Samuel the prophet was power hungry and overthrew a free government to install a king loyal to him. But again, Paul clarifies, “and afterward they desired a king.” It wasn’t Samuel who wanted power in a theocratic government; it was the people who wanted a king. We see this same pattern in the Book of Mormon, where judges are overthrown for the installation of a monarchy. It’s people’s natural state of being, they look to their most respected leader to be their leader forever, not remembering that this person won’t live forever and afterward there will be a terrible power struggle and wickedness, guaranteed, almost every time.
Paul continued with the appointment of King Saul and then King David, whom God promised “of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus.” Those listening in the synagogue would have been very familiar with David and the prophecies concerning the Messiah being his descendent. But it’s a very subtle insertion that Paul makes because he cites the prophecy and then throws in the name of Jesus as the fulfiller of that prophecy. Paul tells about John’s mission and just names him as “John” and I had to figure out the rest from context. It’s also been about 15 years since Jesus’ death, so word of who he was and what happened to him might have spread to Turkey at this point. Or another possible reason for Paul to mention John the Baptist is because of the prophecy that he fulfilled. That might make more sense, Paul brings up David because the Messiah was prophesied to have been a descendant of David, and then he mentions John the Baptist’s mission as a fulfillment of prophecy even further. Paul is trying to use the scriptures to demonstrate to the people that Jesus wasn’t just some guy who claimed he was important and then died. He’s showing them how Jesus had been intended from the beginning to be the Savior and all the fulfilled prophecies support his claim to the Messiahship.