Messengers Of Salvation (Acts 28:17-31)
We are God’s messengers of His glorious salvation to a lost and dying world. What a fitting end to the Book of Acts!
After three months at Malta, Paul departed for Rome on a ship that had Castor and Pollux as a figurehead. These were the twin sons of Zeus and Leda, who were viewed as the gods that protected people at sea. It is intriguing that Paul, who had done much to disrupt the paganism of different towns and cities, including the one he just left was being carried by a ship with these pagan symbols as the figurehead. And this ship was carrying him to Rome, where he would further dismantle paganism through the preaching of the gospel.
They landed at Puteoli, which is also called the Gulf of Naples. Puteoli is a city right outside of Naples. And this means there is around 130 more miles of travel to do to get to Rome. And here there were Christians that invited them to stay with them for 7 days.
There are two things that we can ascertain from this. The first is that Christianity had already made it to Rome. This is a major port city and apparently Christianity had already landed here. And there was already a good number of Christians in the place. The second thing to understand is that Paul had, for the first time in a while, found brothers and sisters in Christ to rest with and it seems that this was allowed. And this continued when they made it to Rome. Brothers and sisters in Christ heard about Paul and came to see him, which gave him a heart of courage and thankfulness.
This makes Paul’s journey to Rome somewhat unique. He is not delivering the gospel to the first time here in Rome. It has already made it here and there seems to be a flourishing community.
And there is a lesson here that we see from Paul, and it is that being around the people of God can give us great courage. And we find, as we are among them, that we are filled with thankfulness and gratitude.
And Paul was refreshed to carry the gospel to Rome.
We Declare The Hope Of Israel And All Mankind
Paul was given the opportunity to speak for himself once again and what do you think the message was that he delivered? Of course, it was the gospel.
Paul explained that it was because of the hope of Israel that he was in the position he was in (Acts 28:20). Paul believed in the resurrection, much like other conservative Jews. And remember, Paul was a Pharisee. This means that he was one of the well-educated, conservative, resurrection believing people in Israel. He believed in the resurrection. But he also believed in the Messiah.
This phrase, “the hope of Israel”, was a phrase used concerning the coming Messiah. This Messiah would bring peace and prosperity to Israel. He would give them safety from their enemies. And the nations would flow to Him.
Paul is told these people that this person has come. This person is the “hope of Israel”. And it is because of the Messiah that we have the hope of resurrection.
This is what we believe and we proclaim today. We are sinners who have rebelled against God and earned His wrath and justice. And we believe that God the Son took on human flesh and dwelt among us. He did this so that He could give us hope, so that He could give us salvation. He did this so that He could give us resurrection life. God the Son, Jesus Christ, lived a perfect life, died on the cross, paid the punishment for sin, and rose from the grave to give us eternal life. All those who turn from ruling their own lives and trust in Him have their sins paid for by Jesus’s death on the cross. They are credited with His righteousness. And they are declared right with God because Jesus rose from the grave.
We have this hope because of the finished work of Christ. And Paul is telling them the same thing I tell you every week. Jesus is our hope. He is our redemption. Eternal life is found in Him and Him alone.
We also find that He is declaring to them the Kingdom of God. That is, the rule and reign of God over the Earth. Specifically, Paul is speaking to them about how Jesus Christ brought the Kingdom of God to Earth. And it was through His cross and resurrection. As you look through Jesus’s teaching, you’ll find that the Kingdom of God came with Him, was still future, and was a mystery being unfolded at the present time. Simply put, there is a fullness to the Kingdom of God that comes when Jesus returns. There is an advance of God’s Kingdom here on Earth as people trust in Christ. And there is a real sense in which the Kingdom of God was already present with the people in a real way when Jesus first came to Earth. But all of this points to the Kingdom of God bring brought to us by the Son of God taking on human flesh, accomplishing redemption for us and coming again.
Psalm 2 is one of those texts that we think of concerning the rule and reign of Christ. But what we find as we explore, even the Old Testament, is that the fulfillment of Psalm 2 was to come through the suffering found in Psalm 22.
Psalm 22 details the suffering that the Messiah would one day undergo. And it depicts the death of Christ, hundreds of years before Jesus came to Earth, in great detail. When Jesus cried out on the cross, it was to call our attention to this text. It even depicts Jesus’s death on the cross. But the text ends with a picture of the suffering servant’s glorious reign.
“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. Posterity shall serve him; it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.” (Psalm 22:27-31 ESV)
The reign of the coming king would come through the suffering of the cross. It was in this way that his salvation would be accomplished.
And it seems that Paul preached this message throughout the entirety of the Old Testament. We have repeatedly seen that, beginning with Genesis 3:15, we see promises of redemption coming. In that passage, one was going to come from the seed of the woman that would undo the curse of the serpent. The serpent would bruise the Savior’s heel, but the Savior would deliver the death blow to the serpent’s head.
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”” (Genesis 3:15 ESV)
And from here, Scripture after Scripture points us to Jesus.
In all of Paul’s discourse, he was pointing the people to the salvation found in Jesus Christ.
As a church, I have often stated that we are situated near many people that do not know Jesus. Thousands of people populate the neighborhoods just a few miles from us in every direction and a vast majority of them do not know Jesus Christ as Savior.
What are we to do about that?
The driving point that I’ve been hoping we’d pick up on in the Book of Acts is that we are to be declaring the gospel to them. We are God’s messengers.
Acts has been a force for change for this church. It helped us to think through ministry priorities. It gave us the push to open the food pantry. It moved us to have the Lord’s Supper more often. And it has held the necessity of declaring the gospel to those around us right before our eyes.
We Are The Stench Of Death To Many
Paul spent whole days testifying from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. He testified from Moses and the Prophets. He testified, it would seem, from every nook and cranny of the Old Testament.
This should not be surprising to us. We have seen this over and over in the Book of Acts. Right at the beginning, on the Day of Pentecost, Peter cited Joel and Psalm 110 to declare that Jesus was the Messiah. Paul quoted Psalm 2 in declaring the Resurrection of Jesus (Acts 13). So, even though we don’t know Paul’s exact argument, we do know that the New Testament quotes or alludes to the Old Testament over 1,000 times. We’re currently reading the Book of Hebrews. And we drudged through the Book of Leviticus before that. But the reality is that the Book of Hebrews looks back to the Book of Leviticus quite often. Even there we see this sort of thing playing out.
While we cannot be certain exactly what Paul argued to the Jews during those long hours. I think we have some idea. The Early Church believed that the Book of Hebrews was written by Paul. But in later times, the people saw that the writing style was different that Paul’s other letters. And so, they have said, we don’t know if Paul wrote it or not. In the first few hundred years of the Church, they believed it was Paul but we stopped believing that at some point.
Well, I do believe that it was Paul. But I don’t believe that Paul wrote it. You see, Hebrews is not a letter. It is a sermon. And, along with many other people, I believe that it was a sermon delivered by Paul and very likely written down and passed around to other churches. And what makes this even more interesting is that Hebrews was a sermon delivered to Jews in Rome that were suffering persecution.
To make a long sidetrack short, I believe that if you went home and read the Book of Hebrews today that you would have some understanding of what Paul said to the Jews on that day.
And Paul was persuasive with his arguments throughout the Old Testament. We know this because some of the Jews trusted Christ that day. But many did not.
And why did they not trust in Christ that day? Paul makes it clear that they rejected the message of Christ because their hearts were hard.
God the Holy Spirit said, by the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah that the people in Isaiah’s day would not understand because their hearts were dull, they could barely hear, and their eyes were closed. And Paul quotes that passage of Scripture to say that the same thing was happening in that moment.
The point is this. Rejection of Christ is a moral problem. Faith is not primarily a logical or mental issue. It is a moral one. And to those people, we bring the stench of death.
During the snow, which seems long past now that it’s been 70 degrees for a week, there was a question about why the Jews rejected Christ. He performed so many miracles before them and they still rejected him. My answer took us to this text. Their consciences were seared, their hearts were hard, and that is the reason for their rejection.
The same is true for people that reject Christ today.
Your neighbor may need to hear good arguments for the existence of God. These things may help them to see that God exists and their lack of belief is illogical. For it is truly illogical to believe that somehow a fully functioning liver somehow formed from a clump of cells by chance. And just a little thought helps people to understand that. I mean, in order for that to happen there has to be hundreds of years in which a partially functioning liver somehow benefitted a person so much that eventually people had a fully functioning liver. But anyone that has had liver problems understands the impossibility of this being the case. And the same is true with the rest of our bodies. And this would apply to all of our organs. It is simply an impossibility. And the reason is because holding on to beliefs such as this one is not logical at all, it is moral.
Your neighbor may need to hear good arguments for Christianity, such as the many fulfilled prophecies in the Bible. Many of these prophecies were likely proclaimed by Paul to these Jewish people, yet they still rejected the message. Why? Because the rejection is a moral one, not logical one.
As Paul put it in his letter to the Galatians,
“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.” (Galatians 4:8 ESV)
We never know what the results will be when we deliver the gospel. We don’t know if we will be rejected or not. Here’s what we know. We know that the rejection is a moral one. And when that happens, the response can really put is in a bad mood. But we must understand what Paul understood in this moment. We are not always going to put off a pleasing aroma to those that we speak with. To some we are the aroma of Christ, but to others we are the aroma of death.
“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,” (2 Corinthians 2:14-15 ESV)
We are the aroma of death because in the message we deliver, we proclaim the wrath and justice of God. We proclaim that people are sinful and stand condemned before a holy and righteous God.
If you hear this message and die without Christ, then you will die paying for your own sins in a place called Hell. And I am currently the bearer of bad news.
But not everyone will reject this message.
We Are The Aroma Of Christ To Others
We see that it was Gentiles that knew the Gospel in Rome and not the Jews before Paul came. That was clear from the beginning of our text today. So, it is the Jewish reception to the gospel that we are primarily dealing with in what is said here. And this brings us to an interesting ending to the Book of Acts.
Paul delivered the gospel to the Jews, and unlike the other situations we’ve discussed in the Book of Acts, many believed. Paul wasn’t chased out of town. There was no plot to murder him. A good number of the Jews believed. And a whole lot of Gentiles believed.
Paul lived there for two more years proclaiming the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ without hindrance to all who came to him. He was under house arrest and the people came to him to hear him speak. And many people trusted in Jesus.
In some ways we read the end of the Book of Acts and are brought into a bout of sadness at the rejection of many more Jewish people to the claims of Christ.
But in another, far greater sense, we erupt with joy at the end of our text today. The gospel has gone forth to the end of the known world. We see many Gentiles listening and coming to faith in Christ. We see the nations flowing to Christ there in Rome.
Here we see that the gospel has made it to the ends of the Earth Acts 28, as it moved to the end of the known world. And we continue taking the gospel to the ends of the Earth today.
Some people do not reject Christ. Some people come to faith in Him.
What a privilege it is to be God’s people and being a part of the blessing of seeing people trust in the Lord!
What a privilege it is to be the instrument God used to bring eternal life to a lost sinner!
What a privilege it is to share the gospel with our children and see them come to faith in Christ!
What a privilege it is to share the gospel with our neighbor and see them trust in the Lord!
But only if you open your mouth.
We are surrounded by lost people near our church. What a privilege it would be to see them trust in the Lord! And what a privilege it would be for God to use you as the instrument for that redemption!
But only if you open your mouth.
R. Dwain Minor