Holy Scriptures and Israel

Gideon Levytam: The study of Acts chapter 13. And Paul is saying he suffered their manners.

You know how Israel grumbled and complained, and were dissatisfied, and didn't want this, and rebelled against Moses and against the Lord, just like you and I do it against the Lord ourselves in our life as believers in Yeshua. We grumbled, we complained, we are unsatisfied, we are unhappy, and we always have this human nature that rises within us by complaining against God.

And Israel have done it the same thing these 40 years in the wilderness journey. And that's why he continued now in verse 19, not only that he suffered their manners in the wilderness, but in verse 19 it says, he destroyed the seven nations there in the land of Canaan.

In other words, he brought them from Egypt to Canaan, and then he brought them into the land. And those seven nations, you know the Jebusites and the Girgashites and all those names that we have in the book of Exodus. God have dealt with those nations when he brought Israel into the promised land.

And he continued in verse 20 and ultimately he speaks about the judges. It says in verse 20, "And after that he gave unto them judges for about the space of 450 years." And you know, brothers and sisters, we are studying now the book of Judges.

For 450 years in the history of our people Israel. God raised a judge. He led the people to victory. And when the judge died, Israel back into sin and disobedience and departure from the Lord.

And he raised another judge. And this judge delivered them from all the bondage, and then for a while Israel had peace, had Shalom. And then when the judges died, back they are going in disobedience to the Lord. The cycle that we mentioned in the book of Judges that existed among our own nation, sin that brought judgment of God, that brought a cry for help and mercy from the Lord, that the Lord raised a judge and delivered our people from the hands of those that oppressed them until the cycle continued.

And this is so true because we see it in ourselves. This is the same thing. We see it in the life of the church, the same thing. God raises men and women who are godly for a season. The people have been moving in the right direction, and then when those are gone away, the new generation that was born, they forget the things of God and they are back away from the Lord.

And then God had to raise and to make a revival and to stir up the people of God to be restored to himself. It's the cycle that we experience as well. This is the period of the judges, where every man did that which was right in his own eyes until Samuel.

Notice that now in verse 20, "And Samuel the prophet." In Hebrew we call him Shmuel HaNavi, the prophet whom God had raised him to introduce to the nation of Israel the man that is after God's own heart, David the King.

And so we find out that afterwards Israel desired a king. In verse 21, and again I want you to see that God allowed Israel to have their own hearts a king after their own choice by the name of Shaul. And Shaul was the son of Kish. He was a man of the tribe of Benjamin, and he allowed him to rule over them because they wanted to be like other nations.

And then Shaul reigned, but Shaul didn't obey God. And you remember when God told Shaul through Samuel, through Shmuel, "Shaul, destroy Amalek, don't leave anyone alive." And Shaul instead of listening to the word of God through the prophet Shmuel, he disobeyed God, and he allowed the king of the Amalekite to remain alive.

And he kept all the flocks and so on. And then God had to tell him, "Why didn't you obey my word?" And because he disobeyed his word, he ripped away from him the kingdom. And Shaul lost the kingdom. And again, I want to say that there is a reason why God took away from Saul the kingdom, because Saul was a man of the flesh.

He was not a man after God's own heart. And the Amalekite speaks of the flesh. They were the enemy of God's people right when they left Egypt. They were opposing the people of God. And again, God had to remove him. And then, finally, look at this, brothers and sisters, you find out in verse 22, "After he removed him," and again, look what God is doing, it says here, "And he raised up unto them David to be their king."

And then notice this wonderful touch. He says to whom he gave testimony, He said, "I found David the son of Yishai, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, which shall fulfill all my will." Now, people ask me sometimes, Brother Gideon, "How could David be a man after God's heart? Look what David did. Look at the sins that David have committed."

God could say that David is a man after God's heart, it's not because David was a perfect man, because there's nobody that is perfect. There's only one, his name is Yeshua. But he could say that David was a man after God's heart because David was broken when he sinned against God.

He did not have a persistent rebellion against God. He was broken before the Lord and he says, "Lord, I have sinned against you, against thee only have I sinned." And he repented, and he turned to God. And God found pleasure when we repent of our evil doing and turning to him.

Because he knew we are failing people. He knew we are sinners. It's not catching him by surprise, but a man or a woman after God's heart is a man or a woman who are broken before the Lord and saying, "Lord, I have gone wrong. I have sinned before you. Help me to turn around."

And you know, David did so. David was broken before the Lord when he failed the Lord. And he had God's glory and purpose in his own heart because he wanted the Lord to be glorified. And that's what makes someone a man after his own heart.

Just turn for a second to First Samuel. The scripture shows us concerning David, a man after God's own heart. First Samuel chapter 13, where we read when Samuel was going later on to bring a king for Israel. We read here in verse 14 of First Samuel chapter 13, verse 14.

"But now thy kingdom shall not continue." That was Samuel saying to Saul. "The Lord had sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be captain over his people because you have not kept that which the Lord commanded thee."

And that's what Shaul was told by Samuel, that the Lord will raise a man after his own heart. And here Paul is repeating it when he's saying to these people in the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia, that God will raise a man after his own heart which shall fulfill all his will.

Now, brothers and sisters, you notice how many times Paul pointed to the plan and the purposes of God. Verse 17, the God of his people. Verse 18, he suffered their manners. Verse 19, he destroyed seven nations. Verse 19b, he divided them a land. Verse 20, he gave unto them judges. Verse 21, he gave unto them Shaul the son of Kish. Verse 22, he removed Shaul. Verse 22b, he raised up unto them David.

Again and again it is the story that Paul was speaking about what God was doing on behalf of the people of Israel. And why does he say all this? Because he was ultimately wanted to lead to the person of Yeshua the Messiah. And so verse 23, 24, and 25 of Acts chapter 13, he leads now in his message to the person of Yeshua the Messiah.

And so he says, "Look, of this man's seed," that is of David, "has God according to his promise raised unto Israel a savior, Yeshua." Notice that it was according to his promise. When you look at the record of God's word to the nation of Israel, he promised that the Messiah will come.

How he's going to come, through which tribe he was going to come, through which family he was going to come, where he will be born. He promised this in the Hebrew scripture. And they knew that. He's not talking to people outside of the synagogue here in Antioch of Pisidia.

He's speaking to his own Jewish brethren. He says, "Listen, God made a promise that the Messiah will come of the seed of David." Do you know today there is no one in our own people that doesn't know that the Messiah will be a descendant of David?

He's going to be a descendant of David, the king of Israel. Everybody knows that. And they knew that when Paul was reading to them the scriptures and telling them about the history of our nation Israel. And then he's pointing out, "Listen," and by the way, there is no coincidence because the words for savior and the word for Jesus is the very same word.

In Hebrew, Yeshua means a savior, or Yeshua. The name of Yeshua and the action of Yeshua is the same thing. When you say Yeshua, you say salvation. When you say Yeshua, you say a savior. When you say Yeshua, you also call him by his name.

So there is no coincidence here. There is really a fulfillment of what we already read in Matthew chapter 1, and you shall call his name Yeshua, for he shall save his people from their sins. And so now in verses 24 and 25, it says here that when John had first preached before his coming, the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel.

And that John fulfilled his course, he said, "Whom think ye that I am? I am not he. But behold, there comes one after me whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to unloose." And so the Apostle Paul brings the history of the promise of the coming of the Messiah from the time that he have chosen Israel since Abraham, through the wilderness journey after coming out of Egypt, all the way from the judges, all the way to Samuel, all the way to the kings, and ultimately to John the Baptist.

God sent Yochanan Hamatbil, John the Baptist, to be the announcer of the coming of the Messiah Yeshua. And he himself have announced, and he said, "Listen, I am not the Messiah." And he's actually what he's pointing here to what John said in the Gospel of John, in John chapter 1.

He says, "I am not he. But the one that is coming, I am not worthy to loose his shoes." John the Baptist said, "I am not worthy to even loose his shoes. He is that Messiah, the son of God. I am just a prophet, just a servant, announcing to you Israel the coming of the Messiah."

And so after the Apostle Paul rehearsed before the Jewish brethren of his in the synagogue of Antioch of Pisidia, the history of Israel, now in verse 26 to verse 37, Paul declared before his Jewish brethren, the Lord Yeshua as the promised Messiah.

And again, brothers and sisters, I want you to notice this is the first time the Apostle Paul had a public preaching. And he's beginning as we mentioned this in Romans 1 and verse 16, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of the Messiah, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes," and he says, "to the Jew first and then also to the Gentile."

And he began here in the synagogue. And now he's presenting before them the Messiahship of Yeshua. And he began in verse 26. He appealed to the Jewish brethren in the synagogue, and we read, he says, "Men and brethren." You notice he called them brethren.

They are not saved yet. He is a believer, he is saved. But they are brethren, they are Ahim, because they are part of the nation. They are part, they are descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And then he called them, "children of the stock of Abraham. And whosoever among you who fear God, this is the proselyte, to you is the word of this salvation is sent."

He is now pointing directly to those people who are sitting in the synagogue. He says, "You know what? Oh, yes, that's the history of our people. That's the promises of God that come to pass. But all this is for your benefit," he's saying to them here.

He says, "Brethren, men of the stock of Abraham, God fearers." He said, "To you is this word of salvation was sent. It is for you," he's saying to them. And then the next verse 27 on, he's moving on and he's pointing to the Israeli ruler in the past who rejected the Messiahship of Yeshua.

Remember, Paul was not just simply talking down about his own people. He cared for them. So when he was pointing to them, he says, "Look how even our own forefathers who rejected the Messiah, they really fulfilled the word of God." Look he says now in verse 27, "They that dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, not yet the voices of the prophets, which they read every Shabbat. They have fulfilled them in condemning him."

Do you see what happened when the leaders of Israel in the city of Jerusalem, when they have rejected Yeshua the Messiah, actually, they have fulfilled what was already written in the Hebrew prophets. You remember what Isaiah said, "Who has believed our report? To whom is the arm of the Lord had been revealed?"

You remember what he said? He's already prophesied at least 700 years before Yeshua came. He was speaking to the nation of Israel prophetically about the Messiah, and he was telling them, he was prophesying concerning the rejection of the Messiah.

You remember even Yeshua himself being prophesied through David in Psalm chapter 22, he's one of the prophets, where David says, "My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me?" And Yeshua has spoken that on the tree when he was raised in Matthew chapter 27 on a Roman tree.

On the cross, he cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But it was already prophesied by David in the Psalms that he will be rejected, and he will be despised, and he will not be acknowledged by the nation at his first coming.

So Paul is saying, "Look, they that dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not know, nor the voices of the prophets. They are read every Shabbat." They have fulfilled it in condemning him. They did not know.

Now we know that they knew, and God knows that they knew, and God knows that people know today very clearly that when they reject the message of the Gospel that they know very well they reject the Messiah. They know it, and God knows it. But Paul is showing to them here, they knew but they were blinded.

Satan blinded them. And they were blinded. They did not know even if they read the scripture, even if they read the prophets every Shabbat day. Brothers and sisters, it is being read today every Shabbat day and our own people don't even realize that it is prophesying concerning Yeshua the Messiah.

I'd like you, please, to turn with me just to another verse in the book of Corinthians. Second Corinthians chapter 3, please. I want to point out to what he said elsewhere, the Apostle Paul to the Corinthian believers. Second Corinthians chapter 3, he says there in verse 11, "For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remains is glorious. Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech. And not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. But their mind were blinded. For until this day remains the same veil, untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is done away in the Messiah."

He's saying, "Up to today there is a veil over the hearts of our own nation, the people of Israel. That the only way that this veil will be taken out when they read it and see it as it is pointing to Yeshua the Messiah."

But as long as the Lord is read every Shabbat day without seeing the person of the Messiah, the veil is still remaining over the faces of our people. And no wonder, when we talk to our mothers and our fathers, and our brothers and our sisters, we can see that they just don't get it because of their rejection of Yeshua the Messiah.

They don't see that it is pointing to Yeshua the Messiah. And those of us who are Jewish can say, "I know that by experience, because I read it, and I heard about it myself, and I never saw it in the scripture in the Torah that it is pointing to the Messiah Yeshua."

And so it says him that, "Even if they read the scripture every Shabbat day, they do not understand, and they do not see." And that's why it says here now in verse 28, "And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired their pilot that he should be slain."

You remember when they brought Yeshua to Pilate. John tells it, the evangelist in the Gospel of John. And he asked the Jewish leader, he says, "You find anything?" He says, "I found no fault in him. There's no wrong. You have done nothing wrong."

But the leaders still did not want to accept him. They accused him. Three times Pilate says, "I found no fault in him at all." And yet, as it says here, "Even though they found no cause of death in him, desired they Pilate that he should be slain."

Now Pilate was guilty as well because his wife told him, "Have nothing to do with this just man." But you know Pilate washed his hands in water, and he says, "I am innocent of the blood of this innocent man." And then he sent him to be crucified.

There was no fault in Yeshua. There was no sin in Yeshua. There was no guilt in Yeshua. He had done nothing wrong. He had been such a blessing to the nation, such a blessing to the people around him. And yet men have sent him to the cross.

And that's what happened here. And notice that he's the Apostle Paul is pointing out actually to the resurrection of the Messiah, because here it says that, "When they have fulfilled all that were written, they took him down from the tree," and I'm reading now verse 29, "And they laid him in a sepulchre, but God had raised him from the dead."

See Paul giving them the Gospel, the life of the Messiah, the death of the Messiah, the burial of the Messiah, the resurrection of the Messiah. This is the Gospel. The perfect sinless life of the Messiah. No fault in him. And yet he had to die.

They placed him on a Roman cross. And then he had to be buried in accordance with the Psalmist. And then he had to be resurrected. And he said here, "But God had raised him from the dead." He's talking to his Jewish brethren as the audience.

He's saying to them, "Listen, men rejected him, men despised him, men put him on the cross. But God raised him from among the dead." God was satisfied with the work of Yeshua the Messiah. Romans tells us this. He was put to death by men, but he was raised for our justification.

God raised him from among the dead because he was satisfied with the work of Yeshua the Messiah. And so the Apostle Paul pointing to the Gospel. And that is the Gospel, brothers and sisters. The Gospel is glad tidings, good news.

Somebody paid the price for our sins. Somebody had to die that the sinner can be forgiven. That is the Gospel. The life of the Lord, the death of the Lord, the burial of the Lord, and the resurrection of the Lord. And he's moving on now, and look at this, brothers and sisters, he's speaking in verse 31 and he's saying here, "He had been seen for many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. And we declare unto you the glad tidings. How that the promise which was made..."