Josh Benner

Tag: paul

  • Lessons in evangelism. Studying Acts 13:13-26

    Lessons in evangelism. Studying Acts 13:13-26

    Acts chronicles events in the early church. But something else very interesting that we see from Acts is that there are places where we see Paul’s introduction to certain regions to which he would later write the letters which comprise so much of the New Testament. We see it with Galatia in chapters 13 and 14. We see it with Philippi in Acts 16, to name a couple.

    Galatia was a province in Rome. It’s in the central part of modern day Turkey. 

    And Paul was traveling to cities in this Galatian region during his first missionary journey 

    This post is part of a series looking at Paul’s missionary journeys in Galatia.

    Paul arrives in Galatia

    In Acts 13:13 and 14, where we see them first arrive in the Galatian province:

    13 Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem, 14 but they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia.

    The text says Paul and his companions. 

    Earlier in chapter 13, it had mentioned that Paul had been traveling with Barnabas and men named Simeon, Lycius, and Manaen. Later on, they were joined by the Apostle Mark (known in this passage as John).

    John Mark has left the group to go to Jerusalem. 

    Next, the verses talk about the route. They leave from Paphos.That’s on the island of Cyprus. They sail by boat to Perga which is in Pamphylia, which is also in the Galatian province. We’re not sure how long they stayed there or what type of ministry they might have engaged in. It gets mentioned in passing. 

    Next, they would have taken the Roman roads to get from Perga to Antioch. 

    And it is there where this book talks about Paul’s missionary activities in the Galatian region. Now we’re getting more into the meat of the story. 

    Second part of verse 14: 

    And on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. 

    So Paul had been Jewish and converted to Christianity. In the Book of Acts, we see a tactic he often employed was beginning in a new city at the synagogue. Because Paul was ethnically and culturally Jewish, he understood Jewish society and customs. 

    Verse 15:

    15 After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent a message to them, saying, “Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.” 

    So he’s at the synagogue service. They’re doing their scripture readings and the Rabbi allows Paul to have the floor. This was often practiced in Jewish synagogues where if a traveling Rabbi or teacher was in attendance, that he would give a message. 

    We see Jesus do this multiple times during his ministry.Paul does the same thing here. 

    Paul preaches in Galatia 

    Paul will utilize the opportunity to talk about the Old Testament and how it points to a Son of David who would be the savior of Israel. 

    But first, he talks about the Exodus in verse 17-20. 

    In four verses, Paul covers 450 years of Israelite history. Giving a broad thumbnail sketch of their forefathers. 

     The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. 18 And for about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness.  19 And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. 20 All this took about 450 years.

    Paul stresses that the Israelites had been chosen by God and that it was the Lord himself who had miraculously brought them out of Egypt and led them through their time in the wilderness in pursuit of the Promised Land.  

    The audience knows exactly what Paul is talking about. 

    It would be like if I were telling you about the founding fathers and how they debated and agreed upon they Declaration of Independence in 1776. You know what I’m talking about. It’s at the core of our history. 

    Next, Paul talks about how Israel had a monarchy established. The first king of Israel was Saul and that ends up going poorly as Saul was not a Godly king but his reign paved the way for one who would be. 

    Starting in verse 22, Paul talks about David and this matters because this is where Paul will change his tone and transition into talking about the gospel. 

    For the audience, they’re right there with him so far. He’s preaching to the choir. 

    Verse 22:

    22 And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’ 

    Paul arrives at David. The man after God’s heart. And in our passage, Paul says to this synagogue in Galatia: 

    23 Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised.

    There was a prophecy in 2 Samuel 7:12-14 about a future offspring from the line of David who would establish an eternal kingdom. 

    12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

    Paul is telling this audience that Jesus is the promised Son of David. Continuing in our passage. Paul speaks personally to the audience. 

    Verses 26:

    26 “Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation.

     He calls them his brothers. 

    He calls them sons of the family of Abraham. 

    He is pointing to the shared heritage that Jews and Christians both have through Abraham. 

    For both Jews and Christians, Abraham is the patriarch of the faith. 

    He is the one through whom the Lord had made his covenant promises of land, offspring, and blessing. 

    But through Christ, we see the greatest fulfillment of the promises to Abraham. He is the one who brings true and eternal blessings. He is the the true offspring of Abraham through whom the nations of the world would be blessed. And he is the one who brings his people to the true promised land: the new heaven, and the new earth, and the new Jerusalem. 

    Abraham was the Father of Israel. The father of Isaac, who was the father of Jacob, whose line led to David and ultimately to Jesus. 

    Abraham matters for all of those reasons but he also matters because of his faith. In Genesis, when God made his promises, Abraham believed and that belief, that faith, that trust in God was what was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 

    In the New Testament, in Galatians and in other writings, the faith of Abraham will be pointed to as an example for Christians as the basis for our justification before God. It is a matter of trusting in Jesus, believing in his gospel, knowing that he is Lord and savior and that by that faith, God justifies us. 

    In our passage, we have Abraham, revered among the Jewish people, and Paul is saying that as the people of Abraham: to us has been sent the message of this salvation.

    A lesson in evangelism

    We see something important in this passage. I can’t stress this enough but Paul is speaking to these Galatians on terms they’ll understand. 

    They might not know who Jesus is or why he matters. So Paul starts by talking about what he knows they’ll know and showing how that points to Jesus. 

    I can’t help but wonder if this disconnect has caused part of the challenge with evangelism in our society today. That we assume people know more than they do about Jesus. 

    Even for a person who goes to church, they might not know the gospel. Not all churches preach the gospel.

    I’ve mentioned before that surveys have been done and more Americans can list off more ingredients on a McDonald’s Big Mac than commandments in the Ten Commandments. 

    I read a survey this year where people answered in response to their readership of the Bible. Just 11% of respondents said they read the Bible everyday. 

    Half read from their Bibles once or twice a year…or less. 

    We can’t assume people know the Bible and we can’t assume people know the gospel. That’s part of why personal evangelism is so important. Sharing the gospel with people. Sharing Jesus with people. 

    And it’s gotten worse for younger generations. And that becomes a viscous cycle. Because the previous generations did not teach their kids the Bible and now they don’t know the Word of God. And you cannot teach what you do not know and so the problem gets worse.

    Paul at the Areopagus

    In Acts 17, Paul is speaking in Athens to a totally different group of people and he has a totally different approach to sharing the gospel. 

    There instead of talking to Jewish people, he’s talking to Greeks who believed in a pantheon of gods. 

    Paul doesn’t lay into them, he doesn’t yell at them, he doesn’t just say “you’re wrong, I’m right.” He explains to them.

    Acts 17:22-23:

    22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

    He actually commands the people for being very religious. 

    He makes light of the fact that the people were so religious and believed in so many gods that they even had an altar to an unknown god in case they missed one. 

    I don’t have time to unpack the entire section but Paul will talk to this audience of the transcendence of God, how God is the creator of all things and Paul will point to the Lord as a God who judges and the savior he has sent who has risen from the dead. 

    In 17:32-34, we see the response to Paul’s message:

    32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed

    So once again, we see Paul beginning with where his audience is and then skillfully leading the conversation to the resurrection of Jesus and to the gospel.

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  • Who is Paul? And why it matters. Studying Galatians 1:1

    Who is Paul? And why it matters. Studying Galatians 1:1

    The defense of the gospel

    I begin this post by asking you to consider two questions. 

    First question: who is Jesus? 

    Second question: who is Paul? 

    That’s the most important question that anyone can answer. Is he a good teacher? Is he a good philosopher? Is he a good idea? Is he a good role model? Is he a good man? Or is he the Lord who died for your sins? And the Son of God? And the king of kings? 

    But who is Paul? 

    While not as important to know Paul as it is to know Jesus, how you view Paul matters, and here’s why. Because how you understand Paul actually points to how you will understand Jesus. 

    A history of Pauline heresy

    When Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, we don’t know every single detail of background information but one thing seems pretty clear. 

    There were people undermining Paul to the churches in Galatia.

    Who is Paul? 

    He is an Apostle of Jesus Christ.

    Apostles were people who had personally seen the risen Lord in the early church and who were commissioned to lead the church. 

    1 Corinthians 12 lists offices in the early church:: 

    God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. 

    The apostles are listed first in that list for a reason. They were the authority. 

    We also see this in Ephesians 4:11-12: 

    he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ

    In the Book of Acts, after the ascension of the risen Jesus, and with Judas out of the picture, the first thing the apostles do is appoint another apostle: Matthias. 

    The Apostle Stephen dies in Acts 7 and we see Paul later become an apostle. After that, we never see apostles being replaced. And again, as people who had witnessed the risen Jesus, and given the unique role of the apostles in the early church, I would argue that the office of Apostle died out in the age of the original apostles. 

    So as I said a moment ago, there were people who were undermining Paul and his apostolic authority. 

    People still do that to Paul. 

    Many liberal Christians undermine Paul’s writings as just his opinion and not scripture and therefore not authoritative. 

    Paul was one Christian giving his views on the scriptures and that’s no more inherently significant than any other Christian. 

    But that’s why the answer to my second question matters so much. Who is Paul? 

    Is he just some guy who has some thoughts about Jesus? Or is he a man who personally saw the risen Lord Jesus and was personally called by Jesus to be an apostle? 

    Two radically different views of who Paul is. 

    What you think about Paul matters to what you think about the rest of the New Testament. 

    So again, I ask you: who is he? 

    I believe that he’s called to be an apostle and that this was affirmed by the confirmation of the other apostles, by the history of the church, by the fact that the early church viewed his writings to have had apostolic authority, by the account of him having been a witness to the risen Jesus and the radical conversion he had from a persecutor of the church to a man who became a martyr for the church, and because of the signs and wonders the Lord enabled him to perform during his ministry. 

    And I think that’ll hopefully give some more background and meaning to these first verse of chapter 1. 

    Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 

    Paul wrote 13 letters in the New Testament. All of them begin with his first name. That was a standard letter writing practice at the time. In these ancient letters, you would start by naming the sender. It’s the first thing the reader sees. 

    As I’ve already discussed, Paul will affirm his apostolic authority. In nine of his 13 letters, Paul mentions his apostolic office in his opening. 

    But there are a couple of unique things about Galatians. 

    First, Paul doesn’t defend his apostolic authority in his other letters as fervently as in Galatians. He usually takes it as a given that the readers will accept that fact. 

    In Galatians, he says he’s an apostle: not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead

    Paul is an apostle because of a divine calling. It’s not because he says so, it’s not ultimately because the other apostles say so. 

    In the second half of chapter 1, Paul will again give an extended version of his early actions after coming to faith and a long defense of his apostolic ministry. There is no section in Paul’s letters where he goes into such great detail to explain why he is authentically an apostle. 

    And here’s why it matters so much in this letter. 

    When people are downplaying Paul’s authority, his writing, his teaching, then it makes it easy to also downplay his message. 

    Paul talks so much about being an apostle, not because he’s insecure. 

    Paul isn’t being vain. 

    It matters that they know, and that we know he’s an apostle of Jesus Christ because Paul has the message of the truth about Jesus Christ, that he is the Lord who has died for us and that God reconciles sinful people to Jesus because of Christ and Christ alone. 

    And so Paul so fervently defends his apostolic authority because he needs to defend the gospel itself. 

    And he will be pointing to the gospel even from this first verse. not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 

    Jesus has been raised from the dead and he has led to a paradigm shift in human history and in salvation history. Everything changes because of the cross and because we have a risen Lord.  

    And Paul will point to that gospel. Because that’s what this letter is truly about.

    In verse 2, Paul says: 

    2 and all the brothers who are with me, 

    To the churches of Galatia: 

    All the brothers. 

    Paul includes his associates in the opening salutation. We don’t know exactly who was with him when he wrote Galatians. But notice that he does not call them apostles. He calls them brothers, while Paul is an apostle. 

    And then he addresses his letter to the churches in Galatia. As we’ve discussed the last couple of weeks, this was the region to which Paul had traveled during his first missionary journey. He shared the gospel, many people came to faith, but there were also very many who were hostile to the gospel. In writing to the Galatians, there were people who sought to dilute or distort the true gospel and so Paul writes as a defense of the gospel. 

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  • Galatians in Acts II – Acts 14:1-28

    Paul continues his missionary activities through Galatia. By the end of this chapter, on Paul’s missionary journey, we had seen him travel to multiple cities with people coming to faith and others opposing the gospel. We see Paul minister to people of different faiths. We even see a mob try to stone Paul to death. In the end, Paul’s focus is on the Lord who had opened the door for his message to reach people.

    Sermon transcript

  • Sermon: Galatians in Acts – Acts 13

    We see Paul’s first missionary activity in the Galatian province as the apostle begins in a synagogue and explains to a Jewish audience how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. He speaks to the audience in terms they’ll understand and that is a lesson that all Christians can learn about evangelism. There is is one gospel but there is more than one way to share it.

    Sermon manuscript

  • Bachelorette talks about faith and premarital sex


    ABC reality show the Bachelorette is in the news regarding a confrontation from bachelorette Hannah Brown and contestant Luke Parker. Brown is a professing Christian and Parker is a born again Christian. The subject of sex outside of marriage came up in a conversation. Parker said “let’s say you have had sex with one – or multiple – of these guys, I would be wanting to go home.”

    Brown says “I’ve had sex and Jesus still loves me.” Certainly Jesus is infinitely gracious. But we also should not take a casual attitude towards sin. Brown has received criticism from many Christians this week. I think her attitude is one that has become too common among professing Christians. We take anyone pointing us to Christians teachings as them judging us. And we treat “thou shalt not judge” as the first and only commandment that matters in the 21st century. (more…)