ACTS "Forgiven"- Acts 13:36-39 - Part 1

Brett Meador: By him, Jesus, all that believe are justified. The word justified is one of the greatest words in the Bible if you ask me. It’s really a demonstration of his grace, unearned favor God wants to show you. No matter how bad you've been, because of Jesus, if you should repent of your sin and accept Christ and believe the work of the cross, you will be forgiven and justified just as if you'd never sinned, rendered righteous and innocent.
Curt: In Paul's very first sermon, he made a powerful declaration that we can only find forgiveness and salvation through Jesus Christ. Beginning in Acts chapter 13, Pastor Brett Meador illustrates that what the law could never accomplish, Jesus Christ has fulfilled. In today's word, we discover the assurance, freedom, and hope that are found through justification by grace.
Brett Meador: Aren't you thankful that we serve a loving and patient and merciful God? If you could think about what if he wasn't? But we serve a God that's clearly compassionate, kind, merciful, and patient. The possibilities of that not being, well, we know that with God, he's merciful and his mercy endures forever. So, that's good news. I think of other examples. You can't really think of many. I remember years ago when my kids were little and Deb and I were living in a house. I'll never forget when the farmer would go out and till up the dirt out there in the Filbert orchard. The field mice would come running and they'd go straight to our house. They wanted to live in our house. Somewhere we had a little hole or something where the mice could get in and every time I'd have to do battle with these mice. I'd get mouse traps and all that stuff. This one particular time, my sister Jenny came over with her kids. All of our kids were little at the time. We came over from a church event all together. Jenny, we put her in with her kids in one of the kids' rooms and made a little guest room out of it. We were all getting ready to hit the sack. At about 11:00 at night, Jenny comes running out. "There's a mouse in this room!" It’s tough because it's hard to catch a mouse when it's running around the room. They're so fast. Jenny said, "I am not sleeping in there if there's a mouse in that room." I understood that. I said okay, and I went and got the big gun: our cat at the time, Yogi. I got Yogi and carried him into the room, closed the door, put a towel so that the mouse couldn't run out under the door, and there we were. I saw the mouse right in the corner, quivering in the corner. I sat Yogi just two feet right and I set him down. Then the little mouse made a run for it. Big mistake. Yogi caught that out of the corner of his eye and bam, like lightning, just so fast I couldn't believe it. I looked and Yogi had the mouse in its mouth and the little tail flapping out here. I picked up Yogi and tucked him like a football and I started running. I was going to put him outside. Jenny said, "You didn't get the mouse. You're just acting like you." No, I got it. She said, "No you didn't. I'm not sleeping in there." I turned around and showed her Yogi's little face with the mouse. She and all the kids screamed. Debbie and everybody. But I proved that we got the mouse. Some of you are saying, "That poor little mouse. You killed the poor little innocent mouse." In my little kingdom, I didn't want a mouse in my house. I am that kind of person in my kingdom of my house. I remember thinking, "I'm so glad God doesn't do that to us." I'm kind of sick of people. What would God have to do to get rid of people? There goes the Earth. The Earth is done now. God just flicked it. Remember the Bible says his hand spans the universe and the Earth in the spectrum of the universe is like a microscopic little tiny dot. Isn't it amazing? Not only is the Earth a dot, but our continents are little specks. Then inside of the speck of the continent, we have states and we have cities. Then you are a speck in a speck. Do you ever start to feel a little insignificant? You're a speck on a speck in a speck around a speck and God still says, "I care about you." God could just flick us with his massive universe hand, but he doesn't. That's why David, the Psalmist, actually asked this question rhetorically in Psalm 8:4. He said, "What is man that thou art mindful of him or the son of man that thou visitest him?" David's acknowledging what we're thinking about now. We're just little nothings on this earth, but God in his omniscience and his omnipresence is able to not only have a care for us, but he actually visits us and he thinks of us. He's mindful of us. That's just something that's even hard to remember. I think we take this for granted. Oh yeah, God loves us. But man, what is man that thou even think about us? Not only does he care about us and he visits us, but as it turns out, he actually did something more than that. God's not like me with the mouse. God not only doesn't want to kill us, but he visits us and then he was willing to die on the cross for the sins of the world. That's way past my ability to think. You and I might think, "Oh yeah, I know the theology of the Bible. Jesus came, God became a man, Emmanuel, died on the cross, rose from the grave, we got our theology all down." Can you just step back for a second and say, "Wow"? That's just amazing that God would do such a thing. He cared about us that much that he was willing to become a man and die for the sins of the world. If you're ever grouchy, bummed out, or depressed, think on those things. Remember that. It really gets down to a single word and that is the word forgiveness. Why did God do that? Because we desperately needed forgiveness. Without forgiveness of sin, the Bible says we all would be doomed. That's the natural flow of things. We are all sinners. Bible says we've all fallen short. No one's righteous, not even one. So that's the natural flow. Everything's going straight to hell. Can you say that in church? I just did. Why? Because people need to know it's real. In our text here in Acts chapter 13, we're going to see Paul's first sermon that he's going to give. He's not called Paul yet. He's still Saul, just FYI. We'll see his name change here in a while. Basically this sermon reminds me of Stephen's sermon. Remember Stephen's sermon we went through a few weeks ago, the one in Acts 7 where he gave a history of the whole Israeli existence? It was like a quick survey through the Old Testament. Paul's doing a similar kind of sermon here in Acts chapter 13. Today I just want to show you a couple verses, but it's Acts chapter 13 and it's verses 36 through 39 that I'd like to look at. This is just one of those scriptures you have to step back and realize the magnitude of what's being said. Acts chapter 13, verse 36 says, "For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption. But he, whom God raised again, saw no corruption. Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you for the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." Again, verse 38 and 39: "Be it known to you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man, we're talking about Jesus, is preached to you the forgiveness of sins and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses." Now, you got to remember Paul was an expert. He was the expert on the law of Moses. If you're a mathematician and the one you grew up and learned by was Albert Einstein, would you say that's probably a pretty formidable mathematician? Saul was trained by a guy named Gamaliel, who was the Albert Einstein to math as Gamaliel was to Judaism and theology of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. Paul was raised to know the law of the Jews, the law of Moses. But here's this guy who was once killing Christians and imprisoning them. Now he's saying the Christians are right and here's the truth: No one was ever justified by keeping the law of Moses, but you now can be justified through Jesus alone. Through this man is preached the forgiveness of sin and the promise that he would forgive you. It's interesting because he starts with David. We started in verse 35, David was laid unto his fathers and it says he saw corruption. What's that all about? David, like everybody else on the planet, when he died, his body deteriorated and went into decay. Once you die, your body dies and it's that, but it's also the result of sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, all humanity dies, goes into the ground, and this is what Paul's saying. David, you might say, "What does David have to do with anything and why is he talking about that when he goes right to talking about Jesus?" You got to remember the Old Testament, the Hebrew people, they knew that when you talk about David, that would point to the Messiah which they knew was called the Son of David, which Jesus was the rightful one given that title, Son of David. David was one who saw corruption. That he died and was buried and did not raise up from the dead. Even though David was that, it was also because of his sin. I think you could say the corruption was a result of even his own sin and thus he died even as we all sin and fall short and the wages of sin is death. But I love what verse 39 starts to give us: "And by him, Jesus, all that believe are justified." The word justified is one of the greatest words in the Bible if you ask me. I love it. There's nothing in the cosmos that I can really compare to it because what can make something that's really ugly and bad completely disappear and be erased forever to where it's never going to be brought up again? You might have a judge let you off with a gavel and say, "Case dismissed," because of some technicality or some loophole. Case dismissed, but everybody's going to know that you did something that got you into trouble and that sticks with you. But when it comes to God's economy, who does he justify? All. All that believe are justified from all things. You might think, "Well, I've done really bad stuff." All here is including the bad stuff you're thinking you and know you've done. Even that stuff. He can justify you freely. We may be justified from all things, which the law of Moses never justified anybody. That's the thing. The word justified, the Greek word is an interesting word here in Acts 13:39. If you look up the Greek word, it's dikaioo, which means to render righteous, just or innocent. There's no other model in the universe that really works like justification where it’s truly like I like the more layman's term: justification, just as if I'd never sinned at all. It's like you never did it and that's the work that Jesus Christ does. He justifies us. Jesus does not only forgive us, but we're justified in him. Forgiveness takes care of the debt of sin. You and I owe a debt and there's a forgiveness that comes to the believer, the Christian. It's a paying of a debt, that's forgiveness. Justification puts a positive credit on your account with God. It's really a demonstration of his grace. The word grace: undeserved, unearned favor God wants to show you. No matter how bad you've been, because of Jesus, if you should repent of your sin and accept Christ and believe the work of the cross, you will be forgiven and justified just as if you'd never sinned: rendered righteous, just and innocent. Don't you love that part of God's forgiveness, that he is able to forgive and forget? You and I can claim to do that. You sin against me, I sin against you, and I can come up and say "I'm sorry" and you'll say "Okay, I forgive you." Will you forget too? "Oh, I'll try." But that's all we can do. We don't have the ability to forget. You'll always remember that time Pastor Brett sinned against you and called you a nincompoop or something. I can't believe it. I said sorry and I even can mean it, but you say "Yeah, but I'll never forget that." That's just human nature. God has that ability just to wipe it away and say "I remember your sins no more." What an amazing part of God. A man was telling his friend about an argument he had with his wife and commented, "I hate it every time we have an argument, she gets historical." He said, "You mean hysterical, right?" And he said, "No, I mean historical. Every time we argue, she drags up everything from the past and holds it against me." I'm sure none of you wives would do that to your husband. But being historical, are you good at that, bringing up old sins? Are you Santa? Are you keeping a list and checking it twice and remembering who's naughty and nice? Thanks be to the Lord, he doesn't. For the believer, for the person who repents of their sins, he doesn't keep a list. He says, "I've blotted out your sins and wiped them out altogether. Put them as far as the east is from the west." How did this happen? This is through the line of David. That's the connection why Paul's connecting David. David not only is the great-great-great-great grandfather of the Messiah Jesus, but David is also a perfect example, even in the Old Testament, of how God's mercy is so amazing. His forgiveness. Forgiven. David knew what that meant and he was one who talked about it. I love the Bible that it doesn't have just pristine, stained-glass Bible characters that are all perfect. I love it because I can relate to the characters of the Bible. There's only a couple characters that go out unscathed without major sins recorded. I love Joseph who's a picture of Jesus in the book of Genesis. Because he's this perfect picture of Jesus, there's no record of sin on him. Even though he was a normal guy and he did sin, the Bible doesn't tell us any of his sins and there's a whole huge section of Genesis written about him. That's amazing. Daniel's another guy who gets a whole book of the Bible and there's no recorded sin on Daniel's account. But almost everybody else, maybe Job I'll give him maybe that clearance as well. You can make that argument because some of his discussion with his friends wasn't so great. But other than that, all the Bible heroes: David, Abraham. These guys were great guys, of course. But how could we call them great? How can you say the Bible calls David a man after God's own heart? Wow, you must have been really righteous to be called that. Yes, but how did David become righteous to be called a man after God's own heart? Forgiveness. David was a murdering, adulterous sinner. It's really something. Would you keep your finger here in Acts and turn with me to Psalm 32? In Psalm chapter 32, David had several sins recorded in the Bible. Of his most egregious, you might argue, he did a bunch of sins. But one of the biggest ones was adultery and murder. The story is really kind of something because this touches on one of the major themes we're talking about today and how this all shakes out. So David, during the time of war when the men were off at war, but for some reason this time, David stayed home. So all the men are gone and he's just there chilling on his rooftop one nice evening when he looks down on the City of David. The City of David was there on the hillside looking down on the Kidron Valley. David looked down there and he saw this woman taking a bath. Ironically her name, Bathsheba. In Psalm 32 what we have is David's what's going on in his mind and his heart when this whole story goes down. That's kind of what we're looking at here in Psalm 32. The one thing you need to know about this sin of David is, like Numbers 32:23 says, "Be sure your sin will find you out." David's going to have to learn this, but it all comes in the story. David's looking at this woman. He lusts after her, sends a servant to bring her to his house. They sleep together and then they have she gets pregnant. Her husband Uriah the Hittite, he's off fighting the battles and now she's pregnant. So David gets into cover-up mode where he says, "Okay, we got to fix this." So he says, "Okay, bring Uriah. Let him come home for leave." Then he'll sleep with his wife tonight and then when she gets pregnant, we'll be able to cover it up because he was here and he slept with her. They didn't have DNA and stuff in those days. So they bring Uriah, but Uriah does something that's kind of interesting. Instead of going into his house and giving his wife a kiss on the cheek and having a night of romance and reunion, he sleeps on the front porch and doesn't even go into his house. It kind of makes you wonder, did Uriah know something was wrong? Something sort of stank about the whole situation? So he doesn't even go in his house. David's thinking, "Oh man, now there's no way we could sort of pass it off like he got her pregnant." So he sends Uriah back with a letter and gives it to Joab, the commanding officer of the Israeli army. The letter basically says this: Put Uriah at the very front line of the battle and then give the charge to retreat but just don't tell Uriah. Leave him out there by himself. Joab's like, "Cool, whatever." So they do that. Uriah dies in battle, which is murder. David murdered Uriah by that action. When the word got back to David, David's thinking, "Great, mission accomplished." What's really sad is before Uriah's even cold, David marries Bathsheba. Now you say, "Okay, it seems like he got away with it." Oh, he sure did. Just like you and I, we think we got away with it. But remember Numbers 32:23: "Be sure your sin will find you out." Not God, God finds you out. He already knows long before you even did it. But your sin will catch up to you and David's going to have to learn this. So David's thinking everything's great, but Nathan the Prophet shows up at his house and says, "David, I got to talk to you." "Sure, whatever." Nathan said, "There's a little family in Israel here. They've just got this one little lamb. He's a baby fluffy cute little lamb and they're like their little pet. It's just a sweet little lamb. The neighbor's got flocks and herds and all kinds of wealth and he's got thousands of sheep. But this one family is poor. They have one little lamb. The rich guy had a dude over to his house for dinner. Instead of going from his own flock, he sneaked over to the neighbors' with the little sweet little lamb, slit its throat, cooked it up, and gave his guest lamb chops from the poor family." You got to remember David's a shepherd originally. He has a heart for the sheep. David hears this story. In fury, he rages and says, "That man should surely die!" Then Nathan says to David, "You're that man." David knew what he was talking about. That he took the wife of a poor little guy who's out fighting battles. David, even though it was against the Lord to have multiple wives, the Lord even said kings aren't supposed to multiply wives, but David was already doing that. David just multiplies another wife to himself. It's like the guy with the big flock and then the poor little family. It's the same thing. That's why Nathan tells the story. David says to Nathan the Prophet, "I have sinned against the Lord." He's not weeping, he's not sobbing. Was that real repentance? Does anybody know? Was that real repentance? The answer is yes, and the reason we know is because Nathan says on the Lord's behalf, "Then your sin is forgiven." One thing you should know, though, when you think, "Oh good, I'm so glad God forgives sin." He does. And he forgets our sin. But there is something on our side that you need to remember. There's often repercussions of our sin. The Lord will forgive you, you get to go to heaven, it's amazing. But when you do sinful stuff, it still hurts: the sin itself. David would live a brutal life from this point on. He'd end up losing the baby. They'd end up with a military coup from his son. David will die a miserable little old man, which is really sad. He should have died a glorious King of Israel. But his sin caught up to him. All that to say, why are we here in Psalm 32? Because David tells us what went on in his brain at that time. You're going to recognize this, I bet some of you. He starts out in Psalm 32:1, "Blessed," King James word for happy. "Happy or blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." Now would you pause there just for a second? This is an interesting word: covered. It's a word that you and I should take note because in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, there's a word for covered and the word is atonement. It means to cover up. That's kind of an interesting thing. Now good news, by the time you get to the New Testament version of atonement in the Greek text, it means a different thing: similar but different. In the Old Testament it means to cover up, like sweep it under the rug, but it's still kind of there. But in the New Testament when our sins are atoned for, the idea is to do away with completely, to blot out our transgressions. The reason I tell you this is because there's a difference between trying to cover up your sin versus the Lord covering your sin. This is what David's saying. Blessed is he whose sins or transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered. The idea: if you try to cover up your sin, it's going to be revealed. God's going to reveal it. Be sure your sin will find you out. But if you confess your sins to the Lord, you can be sure the Lord will cover your sins and in the New Testament sense it means cover and do away with completely, which is wonderful. David's saying you're going to be happy if your sins are forgiven and if your transgressions are covered.
Curt: Pastor Brett Meador turning to the Psalms to illustrate the grace of God to both forgive and forget the debt of sin. It's good news from today's word promised for the repentant heart. I invite you to stay right there as Pastor Brett will join me here in a moment to talk a little bit about how we can share our faith with others. But first, Today's Word is the radio ministry of Athey Creek Church, just south of Portland, Oregon where Pastor Brett Meador's the senior pastor. We invite you to find out more by going to todayswordradio.com. If you've missed any portion of this study, you'll find all of his messages online at todayswordradio.com. All right, Pastor Brett is with me. It's been said that public speaking is at or near the top fears for most people, even sometimes rated higher than death, which is crazy, right? And for Christians, it seems that sharing their faith with others is also a fear for many. How then, Brett, can someone drum up the courage to share their faith in Jesus with another person?
Brett Meador: Good question, Curt. A lot of Christians are nervous about sharing their faith because they're afraid they'll say something wrong or get rejected or expected to have all the answers. But honestly, evangelism isn't about being a perfect debater or about pointing people to great intellectual endeavors. It's about pointing people to Jesus. We can all do that. A lot of the fears we have, have you ever noticed how many of those are just unfounded? They really don't have any real teeth. In Acts chapter 4, people marveled at the disciples that they were unlearned and ignorant men, but then they recognized that they had been with Jesus and that's the key. Sometimes people forget salvation is ultimately God's work. We're simply called to just be faithful witnesses about what God has done in our own lives and everybody can do that. The pressure isn't on you or me to save everybody. That's the Holy Spirit's job. So one of the simplest ways, in my opinion, to share your faith is just tell your story. What Jesus did in your life. The hope that you've found in him and we can talk about that. That's why Romans 1:16, Paul said, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power." What is? The gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation. So if somebody feels fearful, I would encourage them: pray for boldness, love people sincerely, and then just trust God with the results. Curt, eternity is too important for us to stay silent about Jesus Christ.
Curt: Yes, absolutely. I appreciate that advice to pray for boldness, love people, and then we just trust God with the results. It really does take the pressure off. Thank you, Pastor Brett. I want to mention again that if you'd like more information about Pastor Brett Meador or Today's Word, just go to todayswordradio.com. Well, next time, Pastor Brett will discover the blessing of being justified before the Lord and the freedom that comes through his amazing grace. Today's Word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.