Apologies everyone! Our sermon audio didn’t get recorded this week. Here is the full transcript of Pastor Dan’s sermon on Acts 13:13-31, 38-39.
Our Scripture reading for today picks up right where we left off last week. Paul and Barnabas are on a missionary journey. They sail from the island of Cypress and end up in Antioch—a city that’s basically on the border of modern-day Turkey and Syria.
When they arrive in Antioch, they go to the local synagogue to worship (as all good Jewish boys do). Some Scriptures are read—and then these visitors are invited to give the sermon… which is pretty different from how we do it today.
Is anyone visiting for the first time today… and wanna preach? It is Father’s Day, so I could use the Sunday off!
It’s a little weird, right? We don’t do it that way anymore. Equally weird though is the content of Paul’s sermon. Sermons in the ancient world were pretty different from how we do it today.
Paul doesn’t open with a joke, or a personal anecdote. He doesn’t launch into a detailed analysis of a single passage, before landing on three points of practical application. No, Paul gets up there and tells a story. He pulls from about a dozen different Bible passages, covering more than 1,000 years of history—arguing that it all points to Jesus.
I’m gonna read Paul’s sermon again for us—just so it’s fresh. Acts 13:16…
16b “Fellow Israelites and others who fear God, listen. 17 The God of this people Israel chose our ancestors and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. 18 For about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness. 19 After he had destroyed seven peoples in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance 20 for about four hundred fifty years. After that he gave them judges until the time of the prophet Samuel. 21 Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for forty years. 22 When he had removed him, he made David their king. In his testimony about him he said, ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, to be a man after my heart, who will carry out all my wishes.’ 23 Of this man’s posterity God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised…
26 “Brothers and sisters, you descendants of Abraham’s family and others who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. 27 Because the residents of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize him or understand the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath, they fulfilled those words by condemning him. 28 Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. 29 When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. 30 But God raised him from the dead… 38 Let it be known to you therefore, brothers and sisters, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; 39 by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.
That’s Paul’s sermon. It’s a story! We’ve seen the same sort of thing from Peter, and Stephen, and other disciples in Acts. When the first Christians preached, they told a story. That’s what a sermon was. That’s how they understood the Gospel!
They told a story that (I’m betting) is pretty foreign to most of us.
Many of us in this room have been Christians our whole lives. We’ve been in church for years. We’ve sat through hundreds (if not thousands) of sermons. And yet, I would bet that the average Christian today could not tell the story of the Gospel—they couldn’t summarize the story of the Bible—as clearly and succinctly as the first Christians.
Somewhere along the way, we undervalued the power of stories. We assumed that stories are for children. We stopped telling stories. Stopped listening to stories. In many churches, we dropped the story entirely and reduced religion to ethics—assuming that religion is all about learning to be a good person.
I’m gonna tell you something—it’s not that hard to be a good person. Ethics isn’t rocket science. “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” That’s ethics! You don’t need to come to church for an hour every week to learn that.
We need to reclaim the story. We come to church and engage in worship, in order to ground ourselves in a specific story. We read that story, study that story, we talk about that story, we sing songs about that story—so that we can go out there and live the story out. And we do all this because stories shape reality.
Stories shape reality. The stories we believe, the stories we listen to, the stories we see ourselves as part of determine everything else about our lives on this giant blue rock.
I was reading an article recently about declining birthrates. Millennials and Gen-Zers aren’t having kids at anywhere near the rates of previous generations. Sociologists are freaking out about this. There are a lot of different theories as to why. One of the prevailing ones is that our young people have been given a story of hopelessness.
Our world is dying from climate change. Western democracies are flirting with authoritarianism. Our institutions are failing. If you’re my age (I’m 38) you’ve already participated in multiple elections where the person who received the most votes didn’t win. Columbine was my freshman year of high school. We now have two generations of young people in this country who saw our classmates killed by preventable gun violence, while the adults in our lives did nothing to stop it.
That’s the story many of our young people are living in. That’s the story shaping our reality. Of course we’re not having kids! Why would you have kids if that’s your story?
An increasing number of the stories we live in are political stories. Politics is the real religion of our age—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
As we endure another election season, we’re gonna hear the story about how this is the most important election ever! They say that every time. It’s always the most important election. If our guy (or gal) loses, it’s always the end of the world! The end of democracy. The end of America as we know it! I’m actually tempted to believe it this year—but my rational mind says: “No!” That’s the story we hear every four years—and it’s never true! But we believe it, we fall for it—because stories shape reality.
Some of us live in nostalgic stories—longing for the world as it used to be. “If only we could get back to the way things were when I was kid… those were the days!” I’ll tell ya what—things weren’t any better when you were a kid. You were just a lot less aware of how messed up things were.
Some people live in a Capitalistic story—a consumeristic story. If I can get the right job, if I can get the right promotion, if I can earn enough money, acquire enough stuff—then I’ll be happy! Then my life will have meaning. But it never works. It never satisfies.
An increasing number of people are living with no story at all. No sense of meaning or purpose. No narrative to make it all fit. We go to work. We go to school. We pay our bills. And then in our fee time, we numb ourselves with entertainment… or fall down rabbit holes on the internet… trying to forget how meaningless our lives have become. That’s probably the saddest story of all.
Amidst all the competing stories of our world—political stories, nationalistic stories, stories of identity, success, despair, nostalgia—the Gospel stands out as a story of hope. A story of forgiveness. A story that’s available to all people—regardless of race, or creed, or sexuality, or ability. A story that offers to make sense of it all by infusing our lives with hope. But only if we allow it to. We’ve gotta reclaim THAT story!
It’s a story about a God who formed the world out of love. A God who made human beings in God’s image, inviting us to partner with God in caring for creation.
But we rebelled. Human beings rejected God’s story and tried to write our own. We tired to write a story of power and success—a story that would let us take whatever we want and use it for ourselves. That story has resulted in death, chaos, and despair.
But God didn’t leave us in despair. God called the family of Abraham. God called the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and transformed them into a kingdom. God put a king on the throne named David, and God promised that a descendant of David would one day come to rescue the world.
More than 1,000 years later, Jesus stepped on the scene—a descendant of David, born into poverty, God in human flesh. He healed disease, cast out demons, calmed storms. Jesus forgave sins and restored outsiders to community. And he taught his followers to love our enemies—giving us a glimpse of heaven on earth.
In response to that, we killed him. The State executed him for treason. But the death of Jesus was biggest surprise of the story. Because he took our hate, he took our sin, he took the worst human beings could throw at him, he took it all down to the grave and he buried it. And on the third day he rose again.
Jesus came back to life—defeating death, overcoming sin, and giving us a glimpse of the eternal life that is offered to us all.
Those of us who follow Jesus are invited to continue that story. To live in that story and write our own chapter. We are invited to partner with God once more, in the work of restoring the world. That’s the Gospel!
The Gospel is not a formula. It’s not a set of doctrines. It’s not a prayer we say to get into heaven. The Gospel is the story of God saving the world in Christ—and it’s a story that we are invited to live in.
Why do you think God called the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt? Of all the tribes, of all the peoples God could’ve picked—why choose a nation of slaves? The stories of this world weren’t working for them anymore. The story of Egypt—a story that promised wealth and security—that story failed them. They were ready for a new story!
Why do you think God called Moses when he was living in the desert as a fugitive from the law? His life a total failure? He was ready for a new story!
Why do you think God called Abraham and Sarah? An elderly couple in their 90s with no children and no hope? Why do you think God called Ruth—an immigrant, destitute, who lost her husband and her family? Why do you think God called David—a shepherd boy, the lowest in his family—to be king over God’s people? Why do you think Jesus called a bunch of poor fishermen, failed revolutionaries, and a tax collector to be his disciples? All of them were ready for a new story!
I’m ready for a new story! Our world is ready for a new story! Our friends, our neighbors are starving for a story of hope.
Center yourself in this story. Live in this story. Let the story of the Gospel work in you to overcome all the hopeless stories of our world.
Climate change is a big problem. Gun violence is big a problem. Elections are important and have real consequences—that’s why we fight for women, and immigrants, and those at the margins. But none of those stories get to define our lives.
God will not abandon this world to decay—that’s what gives me hope in the face of all that hopelessness.
I believe that God can redeem anything. God is working to redeem everything. The same God who raised Jesus from the dead is working to overcome death all around us. That’s the story shaping my reality. And it’s a story I’d love to share with you.
The reason we come to church every week is to be reminded of that story. To ground ourselves in that story. To study it, and wrestle with it, so that we can write our own chapter!
If you’d like to learn that story better, start reading it. Start with the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read those stories over and over. Get lost in them. Let them reshape your imagination. Invite God to put that story in your heart. To bury it so deep within you, it transforms you from the inside out.
If you’re new here, you don’t already have a church home, or if maybe you’ve been hanging out here for a while, never really plugging in—get plugged in! Get involved at our church! Help us write a chapter of the story together.
And if you’re new to all of this, or maybe it’s just never really sunk in before and you wanna learn more—we’ve got a class on the Bible and how to read it starting in a week-and-a-half. It’s a seven-week class, Wednesdays at 6pm, here at church. Sign up at the Connection Center for more information.
I believe in the power of God’s story to transform the world. I believe in the power of the Gospel to rewrite our lives and infuse them with hope. If you’re ready for a new story, I hope you’ll consider this one.
