72 Acts 13:44-45 OPPOSITE REACTIONS TO THE WORD OF GOD Introduction: In our text today we see two very different reactions to the word of God which Paul and Barnabas presented in the city of Antioch of Pisidia. In fact they are very opposite reactions. I. The reaction to Paul’s message on the previous sabbath On the previous sabbath day Paul and Barnabas had attended worship services at the local Jewish synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia. The Apostle Paul had been given an opportunity to speak. Paul had declared to the people that Jesus is the Savior which God had promised through the prophets of old. He had declared that although Jesus had been crucified and yet He had risen from the dead. Paul declared to the people that by placing their faith in Jesus that they could be forgiven of every sin. A goodly number of Jews and Gentiles who were proselyte Jews heard his message and got saved as Paul preached to them and appealed to them to place their faith in Jesus. At the close of he service a huge number of the people expressed their desire for Paul and Barnabas to return the next sabbath to speak to them again about Jesus. However, a large number of them did not wait until the next sabbath day to learn more about Jesus. They followed Paul and Barnabas to their place of abode drinking in every word that Paul and Barnabas had to say about Jesus. What happened was that Paul and Barnabas persuaded those who had believed in Jesus and were saved by the grace of God that they should continue to meet together and to work together as a group of Christians. In other words, Paul persuaded them to unite together as a New Testament church to continue in the Christian work. Just what transpired during the week before the next sabbath, Luke does not tell us. But a great deal must have happened during that week. What happened on the next sabbath day makes that obvious. II. The grand reception to the word of God V. 44, “And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.” Paul and Barnabas showed up at the Jewish synagogue on the next sabbath day as they had, no doubt, promised that they would do. But when they got there they were in for quite a shock. Luke says that almost all of the people of the whole city showed up. I am quite sure that the building in which the synagogue had been meeting was not large enough to accommodate this great crowd of people. Antioch was a large and prosperous city. It was built on a very active trade route. The building must have been packed and a large crowd of people had gathered out side the building. The way I picture it is that Paul and Barnabas probably never got inside the building. As soon as they arrived they were immediately surrounded by a large crowd of people and they could not even get to the door of the building. Now keep in mind that this was a Jewish synagogue and the majority of the people who showed up on this sabbath day were not Jews. They were Gentiles. You can be sure that the leaders of that synagogue were not at all pleased with this gathering. The Jews of that synagogue had welcomed Gentiles into their services who were willing to become proselyte members of the Jewish faith and have all of their males circumcised. But they were not at all accustomed to having uncircumcised Gentiles --- Gentiles who had not joined the Jewish faith-- - to show up and to dominate the activities of their synagogue. There was such a large crowd of Gentiles present that there was not much those Jews could do to carry on their service as they were accustomed to do. All that the people of this crowd were interested in was to hear Paul and Barnabas speak about Jesus. It is obvious that those who had gotten saved on the previous sabbath had gone out to the citizens of this town and told a very exciting story. They had told about two Jewish missionaries arriving in the city who spoke at the Jewish synagogue on the previous sabbath day. They said that those two missionaries told them about the God of the Hebrews promising to send a Savior to the world. The missionaries had told them about the Jewish leaders at Jerusalem crucifying the Savior that God had sent. The missionaries said, however, that God had raised the Savior from the dead and that anybody who would place their faith and trust in Him would be forgiven of all sin. They told the people out in the city, “These missionaries are going to come back on the next sabbath and speak to us again about the Savior. You people ought to come and hear them. You need to hear about the Savior that the God of the Hebrews has sent.” Luke says that the people of the city did just that. They came. Virtually the whole city came. That whole synagogue was packed. That whole area around the synagogue was packed with people. They had come to hear about the Savior that God had sent to save lost sinners. Apparently they got their opportunity to hear what they had come to hear. Verse 45 says that the Apostle Paul spoke to them and he surely must have told that great crowd essentially the same things he had told the people in the synagogue on the previous sabbath. III. Great opposition to the word of God But the Apostle Paul was not the only one who spoke to this crowd. Keep in mind that this was the meeting place of a Jewish synagogue and the leaders of the synagogue also had something to say. V. 45, “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.” The word, Jews, as used here in this verse, refers to the Jewish leaders of this synagogue. It does not refer to all of the Jewish people who made up the synagogue. According to verse 43 many of the Jewish people of the synagogue had trusted Jesus and had been saved. They were among the ones whom Paul and Barnabas had persuaded to join together as Christians. But these were the leaders of the synagogue and they had a powerful influence upon the people, especially upon the majority of the people who made up the synagogue. After Paul spoke to the crowd, the Jewish leaders also spoke to the crowd and they did not speak in favor of what Paul had said about Jesus. In fact they contradicted what Paul had said. They surely did not deny that God had promised a Savior, but they denied that Jesus is the Savior that God had promised. They surely would not deny that Jesus had been crucified, but they claimed that the reason He had been crucified was that He was trouble maker. They surely would not acknowledge that Jesus had arisen from the grave. They must have followed the lead of the Jewish leaders at Jerusalem who said that the disciples of Jesus had stolen His body from the grave. So they told this great crowd of people that Jesus was not resurrected, and that the Christians had stolen His body from the grave. They could not have told a bigger lie than that, because the body of Jesus was guarded by Roman soldiers. There is no way that His disciples could have stolen His body. Some of the Devil’s crowd is still telling that same lie today. But the point is that they spoke in outright opposition to what the Apostle Paul told them about Jesus. What makes their deed especially wicked is that they really did not speak out of a deep conviction that Paul was wrong in what he said about Jesus. Luke says that they were motivated to speak out in opposition to what Paul had said by their jealousy. They were afraid that the Jewish people in their synagogue would stop looking to them for leadership and would look instead to Paul and Barnabas as their leaders. It would have been bad enough for them to oppose the truth about Jesus being the Savior even if they had sincerely believed that Paul and Barnabas were wrong. But they were not really concerned about the truth. What they were concerned about was their positions of leadership. This is exactly the attitude that the Jewish leaders at Jerusalem had toward Jesus. The chief reason that they hated Jesus and demanded His crucifixion was because they were afraid that they would lose their positions of leadership to Him. Now the Jewish leaders at Antioch of Pisidia do the same thing. They did not give any real consideration to the possibility that Paul might be right and that Jesus really is the Savior. They were not even concerned about finding out the truth. IV. Some of the different reactions to God’s word today Would it not be great if we could get the people of our day to believe the word of God, especially the gospel message, the way that many of the members of the Jewish synagogue had done on that first Sabbath day when Paul spoke? They had believed what Paul said about Jesus. many of them believed in Jesus and were saved. They went out into the city of Antioch and spread the news about Jesus. Would it not be great if we could get the people of our area to come out to hear the word of God the way that the Gentile citizens of Antioch did? They overflowed the Jewish synagogue and crowded the streets around its building. They listened when Paul preached anxious to learn about the Savior and apparently anxious to be saved. How difficult it is to get people to come to the house of God today and to hear the word of God! Even here in the Bible belt and even with the best advertisement and the presence of the most noted speakers it is still hard to draw such a crowd. In most church services it is hard to get a majority of the church members to attend. Instead of being anxious to hear God’s word, they prefer to hear almost anything else. Instead of being in church, they prefer to be almost anywhere else. Then when you do get such people to church it is hard to get them to believe the truth of the gospel message and to get them to trust Jesus and be saved. We can just thank God for the faithful few who do come regularly and who do believe God’s word and seek to live by its teachings. Conclusion: 1. You have come to God’s house today and I am going to ask you to be faithful to come regularly. 2. I am going to ask you to believe God’s word --- especially the gospel message about Jesus Christ being the Savior. 3. I am going to ask that if you have not already done so that you trust Jesus here today to save your soul. 4. I am going to ask you who are saved to surrender your life to Jesus and let Him have His way with your life.