Acts 13:25-42

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.