to preach the gospel.” Well, you’ll notice, Paul is still preaching the
gospel to the Jews.
I want you to notice something else. Look at verse 43. There is a
response. “Then when the meeting in the synagogue had broken
up, many of the Jews and the God-fearing proselytes followed
Paul and Barnabas, who speaking to them, were urging them to
continue in the grace of God.”
You see there are some evangelical Christians who misread the
Book of Acts. They speak here of the great turn to the Gentiles.
I want you to see with me that the turn to the Gentiles was not a
turn against Israel. The turn to the Gentiles was not a turn against
the Jews. That is slander. It was a turn against a Judaism that had
rejected the Messiah but not a turn against the Jews. The promise
of Jewish evangelism is that now, as then, the Jewish people who
have been seeking a messiah and looking for David’s Son and
David’s King, find Him in Jesus the Messiah.
The foundation of Jewish evangelism is the gospel itself to the extent
that a failure of Jewish evangelism is a repudiation of the gospel.
The promise of Jewish evangelism is so great that we know that
whenever the gospel is preached, there will be a response. To our
eyes it may be great or small, but to God’s eyes, it is the power
of God to salvation. The promise of Jewish evangelism is for now,
as it was for then, but it is for the “not yet” even more than it is
for the now. For we live in the assurance that the promises made
to Israel have not been cancelled, and we live in the assurance
that there will be an even greater ingathering to the Messiah
in the age that is to come. So, we look forward now with great
hope and expectancy and confidence to what will happen and
our responsibility in the present is to make sure that Israel is not
without a gospel witness.
20 | To the Jew First