Acts 13:14-47

¹⁴And Paul and Barnabas went on from Perga to another town called Antioch, in the country called Pisidia. Then on Saturday, the day the Jews get together to show respect to God, Paul and Barnabas went into the Jewish meeting house and sat down with the men there.

¹⁵Some of the leaders in that meeting read from God’s book. They read words from the Law that Moses wrote, and they read other words that God’s men wrote. Then the leaders asked Paul and Barnabas, “Friends, do you have something to say that will help the people here? If you do, tell us.”

¹⁶So Paul stood up and lifted up his hand to get the people to listen to him. He said, “All you Jewish men and all you other people that respect God, listen to me.

¹⁷A long time ago the God of us Jewish people picked our grand-fathers of long ago to be his own people. They went to the country called Egypt to live, and while they were there, God made them strong, and they had a lot of kids. So they became a really big mob of people. Then God used his great power and took them out of that country.

¹⁸Then they were in the desert country for 40 years. Sometimes they didn’t listen to God, but he looked after them anyway.

¹⁹Then they came to the country called Canaan, and God helped them fight against 7 different tribes, and they won. They killed all their enemies, and God gave that country to his own people to keep.

²⁰All of that took about 450 years. Then God picked leaders to look after them, until the time that Samuel was their leader. He was a man that told God’s messages to the people.

²¹Samuel was their leader, but the people asked him to get a man to be their big boss, and God gave them a man called Saul. He was the son of a man called Kish. Saul belonged to the Benjamin tribe, and he was their big boss for 40 years.

²²Then God stopped Saul from being their big boss, and God picked David, and made him the big boss of the Israel people. And God said this, ‘Look at this man, David, the son of Jesse. He is a man that makes me happy. He will do everything that I want him to do.’

²³And God promised that a man from David’s family will come to save us Israel people. And now that man has come. His name is Jesus.

²⁴But before Jesus came, a man called John came and talked to us Israel people. He said, ‘Stop doing bad things. Turn around. Turn back to God, and then I will baptise you.’

²⁵And John said, ‘Who do you reckon I am? Do you think I’m that special man that God promised to send? No way. He will come later. I am nothing. I’m not good enough to touch his feet or untie his shoes.’ That’s what John told everyone when he was finishing his work.

²⁶Listen, friends. Some of you are Jews that belong to our grand-father Abraham’s family, and some of you are not Jews but you respect our God. All of you listen to this message that God sent to us. It is about the way God wants to save us.

²⁷A long time ago the men that told God’s words to people wrote those words in his book. They said that God will send a special man, but people will kill him. And people read those words from God’s book in their meetings every Saturday, but they don’t understand them. The people in Jerusalem and their leaders didn’t know that Jesus was that special man, and they said, ‘We have to kill him.’

²⁸So, even though he didn’t do anything wrong, they asked the judge, Pilate, to kill him anyway.

²⁹In that way Jesus died, just like those men wrote in God’s book. And after they killed Jesus they took him down from the cross and put him into a grave.

³⁰But then God made Jesus alive again.

³¹Then Jesus’s followers saw him a lot of times. They were the mob from Galilee country that came to Jerusalem with him. And now those people are telling everyone about Jesus.

³²And we are telling you the same good news about Jesus. You see, a long time ago God promised our grand-fathers that he will do something good for them,

³³and now God did it for us, their grand-kids. He made Jesus alive again. You see, we can read it in God’s book, in the part called Psalm number 2. We can read that God said, ‘You are my son. Now people will know that I am your Father.’

³⁴You see, God made Jesus alive, and he will never rot in the grave. We know this is right because we can read that God told his son, ‘I made special promises to David, and I’m making those same promises to you.’

³⁵And there is another psalm that David wrote, and in it God said, ‘You will not let your special person rot in the grave.’

³⁶But God was not saying that about David. You see, at that time, David lived for God, and then he died, and people buried him next to his grand-fathers. His body rotted in that grave.

³⁷But Jesus’s body didn’t rot in a grave. God made him alive again. So God didn’t say those words about David. He said them about Jesus.

³⁸You see, my friends I’m telling you this message. Jesus died for us, so if we believe in him God will not say we are guilty for the bad things we did. The law that Moses gave us can’t make us right and good, so that God will not say we are guilty. But if anyone believes in Jesus, God will make them right and good.

⁴⁰A long time ago God got some of his men to tell people this. They wrote in his book, ‘Listen. You people make fun of God, but I will do something that you will not believe, even if somebody tells you about it. You will be really shocked, and then you will die.’ So you people be careful. Don’t be like those people that God’s men wrote about.” That is the message that Paul told the people in that meeting in Antioch.

⁴²Then the meeting finished, and Paul and Barnabas started to go out of that meeting house. Some of the people asked them, “Can you come back the next Saturday and tell us more about those things?” And a lot of Jews and other people that respected God followed Paul and Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas talked with them and told them to keep on trusting God, and keep letting him help them.

⁴⁴The next Saturday nearly all the people in that town came together to hear God’s message about Jesus.

⁴⁵But the Jewish leaders saw those big mobs of people and they got really jealous. They started saying bad things to the people about Paul, and they said, “Paul is telling lies. His message about Jesus is not true.”

⁴⁶Paul and Barnabas were not frightened of them. They said, “God sent us to tell his message to you Jews first. But you wouldn’t listen to it, and that shows us that you don’t want to live for ever with God. So now we will tell that message to people that are not Jews.

⁴⁷You see, God told us to do this. It’s in God’s book. He said, ‘I gave you this job, to be like a light for the people that are not Jews. You will tell people everywhere in the world that I can save them.’”