Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Acts 28:24–27
“Some [Roman Jews] were convinced by what [Paul] said, but others disbelieved” (v. 24).
Throughout Paul’s ministry, the Apostle never lost sight of the fact that the gospel is for the Jew first and then the non-Jew (Rom. 1:16). He understood that the Jews had a certain priority in the history of redemption—in terms not of importance but of order. The Lord, after all, had entered into a covenant with the Hebrews to be His special people, a holy priesthood, before He spoke to the other nations (Deut. 7:6–8). It was not that God disregarded the other peoples of the world, for His goal from the very beginning was to bless every tribe and tongue (Gen. 12:1–3). But He did reveal His covenants to the Jews first to establish them as the people through whom the Savior would come. Thus, it was fitting that the Jews be the first to hear about Jesus the Redeemer. Consequently, when Paul was planting a church in a city he had never evangelized before, he first preached to the Jews. We see this in all his missionary journeys recorded in the book of Acts (chs. 13–14; 15:36–18:22; 18:23–21:14).
The church had been planted in Rome sometime before Paul came to the city, but Paul still followed his practice of proclaiming the gospel to Jews before he preached the good news to gentiles. He argued from the entire Old Testament that Jesus is the promised Messiah as he spoke to the leaders of the Jews in Rome (Acts 28:17–23). As we see in today’s passage, some of the Jews were convinced, whereas others did not believe, and this resulted in a disagreement between them. Finally, the Jewish leaders left Paul when he quoted Isaiah 6:9–10 and told them that it was rightly applied to their fathers (Acts 28:24–27).
Isaiah 6 features God’s call to Isaiah the prophet to preach repentance to the old covenant people, and verses 9–10 predict that the Lord would use the words of Isaiah to harden the hearts of many of his Jewish hearers so that they would not turn from their sin. Centuries later, Jesus quoted the same text to explain how His parables are intended to reveal the kingdom of God to those Jews who want the truth and hide it from those who do not. Those Jews who rejected Paul, then, did not do something unprecedented but repeated the history of the Jews’ not heeding the Lord’s messengers. When people do not desire the truth, God is pleased to harden their hearts and minds and confirm them in unbelief (2 Thess. 2:11–12). The Lord will, when He so chooses, hand over to error those who love error, for He is sovereign even over unbelief.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Some people object that it would not be fair for God to harden people against the truth. Yet Dr. R.C. Sproul reminds us in his commentary that “the closing of the ears and eyes is God’s judgment upon people who, in the first place, did not want to hear and did not want to see.” The Lord will not hide the truth from those who truly seek it, so let us seek it, knowing also that such seeking comes only by God’s gracious gift.
For further study
- Exodus 4:21; 8:15
- 1 Samuel 6:6
- Matthew 23:37–39
- John 12:36b–43
The bible in a year
- Micah 3
- Revelation 10