Your Purpose in God’s Redemptive Plan
Sometimes life can feel trivial. Small. Unimportant.
You wake up and go through the motions. You get ready, head to work or school, and work through a checklist of things that have to get done. Then you come home to another checklist. Then you go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, you start to wonder if anything meaningful is actually happening.
There's not much excitement. Not much passion or adventure. And when you do feel something, it's usually worry or anxiety. The world seems crazy. Everything's expensive. No matter what you do, things seem to stay the same, or get worse.
So where is God in all of this?
Many of us quietly settle on an answer that sounds something like this: "Well, at least one day I'll get to heaven, and things will be different then." Until then, we're not really sure what our purpose is.
But is that really all there is? A repeating set of duties that don't seem to make much difference in the big picture?
No. And Acts 13 shows us why.
A SERMON THAT STARTS WITH HISTORY
In Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas are on their first missionary journey. They sail from Paphos to Perga, where John Mark leaves them and heads back to Jerusalem (a decision that will cause real tension between Paul and Barnabas later on). From there, they travel inland to Pisidian Antioch.
And Luke slows down and lets us see what happens there.
On the Sabbath they entered the synagogue and sat down. After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the leaders of the synagogue sent word to them, saying, "Brothers, if you have a word of exhortation for the people, please speak." (Acts 13:14–15)
Could the setup be any better? God sent them out to tell people the good news about Jesus, and now the synagogue leaders are literally handing them the floor.
So Paul stands up and speaks to two groups: "Fellow Israelites," meaning the Jewish people living there, and "you Gentiles who worship God," meaning the God-fearers who believed in Israel's God but hadn't fully converted to Judaism.
And he doesn't start with Jesus. He starts with history.
WATCH WHO'S DOING THE WORK
The God of the people of Israel chose our ancestors; he made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt; with mighty power he led them out of that country; for about forty years he endured their conduct in the wilderness; and he overthrew seven nations in Canaan, giving their land to his people as their inheritance. All this took about 450 years. (Acts 13:17–20)
Paul is covering Genesis through Joshua in a few sentences. But notice who the subject of nearly every verb is.
God chose. God made them prosper. God led them out. God endured. God overthrew. God gave.
Paul is telling history, and history is really His story.
If you've read those Old Testament books, you know how much happens in those 450 years. Slavery. Plagues. Grumbling in the wilderness. Battles and setbacks. There were plenty of moments when it looked like the enemy was winning or when life seemed random.
But it wasn't random. God was at work the whole time, carrying out His redemptive plan and fulfilling His promises and purposes.
And Paul keeps going:
After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish... After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: "I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do." (Acts 13:20–22)
Again: God gave. God removed. God made.
David wasn't perfect. Far from it. Adultery. Murder. A family that fell apart. Once again it would have looked like evil was winning and life was just a messy series of events.
But God was at work behind the scenes.
WHAT GOD PROMISES, GOD FULFILLS
Centuries earlier, God made David a promise:
Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever. (2 Samuel 7:16)
One of David's descendants would establish God's forever Kingdom. The Messiah, the Savior of God's people, would come from David's line.
And here's what Paul wants his listeners to see: what God promises, God fulfills.
From this man's descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as he promised. (Acts 13:23)
That's why the very first line of the New Testament calls Jesus "the son of David." Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.
Even the forerunner was part of the plan. Isaiah and Malachi had said someone would come to prepare the way, and God sent John the Baptist, who said plainly, "I am not the one you are looking for. But there is one coming after me…" (Acts 13:25).
God is at work in the details. He works with human choices to bring about the fulfillment of His promises.
EVEN REJECTION WAS PART OF THE STORY
But here's the hard part. The very people who read the prophets every Sabbath didn't recognize Jesus when He came.
The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. (Acts 13:27)
They overlooked what their own Scriptures said about Him. Pride got in the way.
But even that didn't catch God by surprise. Psalm 118 said the stone the builders rejected would become the cornerstone. Isaiah 53 said the Messiah would be despised, rejected, and pierced for our transgressions.
Their rejection didn't derail God's story. It fulfilled it.
And then came the turning point:
But God raised him from the dead… We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. (Acts 13:30, 32–33)
Paul walks through Psalm 2, Isaiah 55, and Psalm 16 to make one point clear: David died, was buried, and his body decayed. So when David wrote about God's Holy One not seeing decay, he couldn't have been writing about himself.
He was writing about Jesus. The descendant of David who was raised from the dead, never to see decay, and who now reigns on David's forever throne.
NOW THAT'S GOOD NEWS
And having built all of that up, Paul lands the plane:
Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin, a justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses. (Acts 13:38–39)
Talk about good news!
Complete forgiveness of sins. Freedom from every sin. Justified, declared right with God, through Jesus.
That's something no one could ever get through the law of Moses. The law can show you the standard, but it can't give you the ability to meet it. All it does is reveal your sin problem and your need for a Savior.
Jesus is that Savior.
And after the service, many of the people followed Paul and Barnabas, who "urged them to continue in the grace of God" (v. 43).
That's worth pausing on. You become a Christian by grace through faith. And you live the Christian life the same way: by grace through faith. Not by grace to get in and then effort to stay on God's good side. Grace from start to finish.
TWO VERY DIFFERENT RESPONSES
The next Sabbath, almost the whole city showed up to hear the word of the Lord.
But not everyone was happy about it.
When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy. They began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him. (Acts 13:45)
Why react that way?
Pride. In their minds, they'd kept the law, the rituals, the sacrifices. They deserved God's blessing. But these Gentiles? Surely they didn't. So the whole message must not be true.
How sad. Paul had connected every dot for them, and they walked away because the grace was too wide for their liking.
Paul had even warned them, quoting Habakkuk: "Look, you scoffers, wonder and perish, for I am going to do something in your days that you would never believe" (v. 41).
But the Gentiles responded completely differently:
When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. (Acts 13:48)
They didn't have to become Jewish. They didn't have to meet a set of standards no one could ever live up to anyway. Jesus offered them eternal life as a free gift, and they believed. Their lives were changed, they told others, and the word of the Lord spread through the whole region.
Even when persecution drove Paul and Barnabas out of town, Luke ends the chapter like this:
And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 13:52)
YOUR PURPOSE IN GOD'S REDEMPTIVE PLAN
Why so much joy?
Think about everything Paul just showed them. Over and over, God was the subject of the verbs. God chose. God led. God gave. God promised. God fulfilled. God raised Jesus from the dead.
God had been at work all along, moving history forward to bring the promised Savior into the world.
And now these new believers had received Him. Now Christ lived in them by His Spirit.
Which means what?
They had become part of God's story.
Not spectators. Not people waiting around for heaven. Participants. That's their purpose: God was now at work in them and through them to keep advancing His great redemptive plan.
And here's the amazing thing: the same is true for you today.
Jesus hasn't come back yet, which means God's story is still being written. He's still at work, moving things forward toward His redemptive purposes. And it's not just God "up there" somewhere. It's God in you.
If you belong to Jesus, you are an active participant in God's great big redemptive story. That's your purpose.
WHAT THAT MEANS FOR YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE
It means your life isn't trivial. Your days aren't a random, disconnected series of events. You're part of something far bigger than yourself.
It means life is an adventure. As Christ lives through you, He produces things like love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness in the middle of your ordinary Tuesday.
It means that when life doesn't make sense, when circumstances are hard and you can't see what's going on, you can trust that God is doing something you can't see yet. He's still writing the story. So you can persevere, and even trust that He's up to something greater.
So don't let the enemy convince you that God is distant, uninterested, and uninvolved, and that the best you can hope for is to make it to heaven someday.
You are part of His story right now. Don't miss out on experiencing Him and what He's doing in and through you.
HAVE YOU ENTERED THE STORY?
And if you've never received God's free gift of salvation, this is your invitation.
Everything Paul preached in that synagogue is still true today. Through Jesus, forgiveness of sins is offered to you. Through Him, everyone who believes is set free and made right with God. Not because you earned it, but because God promised it and God fulfilled it.
So why not receive it today? Why not step into the adventure God created you for, with Him?
