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The Acts of the Apostles
will give you the sure mercies of David. Wherefore He saith also in
another psalm, Thou shalt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.
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.”
And now, having spoken plainly of the fulfillment of familiar
prophecies concerning the Messiah, Paul preached unto them repen-
tance and the remission of sin through the merits of Jesus their Saviour.
“Be it known unto you,” he said, “that through this Man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by Him all that believe are justi-
fied from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of
Moses.”
The Spirit of God accompanied the words that were spoken, and
hearts were touched. The apostle’s appeal to Old Testament prophecies,
and his declaration that these had been fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus
of Nazareth, carried conviction to many a soul longing for the advent
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of the promised Messiah. And the speaker’s words of assurance that
the “glad tidings” of salvation were for Jew and Gentile alike, brought
hope and joy to those who had not been numbered among the children
of Abraham according to the flesh.
“When the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles
besought that these words might be preached to them the next Sab-
bath.” The congregation having finally broken up, “many of the Jews
and religious proselytes,” who had accepted the glad tidings borne to
them that day, “followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them,
persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.”
The interest aroused in Antioch of Pisidia by Paul’s discourse
brought together on the next Sabbath day, “almost the whole city ...
to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes,
they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were
spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.
“Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary
that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing
ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life,
lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying,
I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for
salvation unto the ends of the earth.”