Acts 13:16-17, 22-25

“From this man's offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised.” (Acts 13:23)

The missionaries cross to Asia Minor, where Paul’s first recorded sermon is preached in Antioch. The speech is given at length, so that on other occasions Luke needed only to say that Paul “proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues” (13:5; 14:1; etc.) without feeling obliged to give the content of the preaching each time. And like the speech, the response was also a paradigm, with some Jews believing but many rejecting the gospel. It is possible to see in the pattern of ministry outlined in this passage a parallel between Jesus and Paul. Simeon had announced that Jesus would be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32), and in Antioch Paul defined his task in precisely these terms (13:47). Notice too “the similarity of the setting between Jesus’ inaugural address and Paul’s (Luke 4:16f.; Acts 13:14f.); the division created by the sermon, the reference to Gentiles and the opposition.

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