Acts 13:15-34

¹⁵After the reading of the law and the prophets, the leaders of the synagogue sent them a message saying, “Brothers, if you have any message of encouragement for the people here, say it.”

¹⁶So Paul stood up and motioned with his hand; he said, “Men of Israel and you who honor God, listen.

¹⁷The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people numerous when they stayed in the land of Egypt, and with an uplifted arm he led them out of it.

¹⁸For about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness.

¹⁹After he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave our people their land for an inheritance.

²⁰All these events took place over four hundred and fifty years. After all these things, God gave them judges until Samuel the prophet.

²¹Then the people asked for a king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, a man from the tribe of Benjamin, to be king for forty years.

²²After God removed him from the kingship, he raised up David to be their king. It was about David that God said, 'I have found David son of Jesse to be a man after my heart, who does all I want him to do.'

²³From this man's descendants God has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus, as he promised to do.

²⁴This began to happen when, before Jesus came, John first announced the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel.

²⁵As John was finishing his work, he said, 'Who do you think I am? I am not the one. But listen, one is coming after me, the shoes of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.'

²⁶Brothers, children of the line of Abraham, and those among you who worship God, it is to us that the message about this salvation has been sent.

²⁷For they who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, did not recognize him, and they fulfilled sayings of the prophets that are read every Sabbath by condemning him.

²⁸Even though they found no good cause for death in him, they asked Pilate to kill him.

²⁹When they had completed all the things that were written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.

³⁰But God raised him from the dead.

³¹He was seen for many days by those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. These people are now his witnesses to the people.

³²So we are telling you the good news that what God promised to our fathers

³³he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: 'You are my Son, today I have become your Father.'

³⁴The fact that he raised him up from the dead so that his body would never decay, God has spoken in this way: 'I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.'