After being expelled from Pisidian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas head into the countryside and preach the Gospel in the provincial town of Lystra. After healing a lame man, the city responds by declaring them to be gods! We'll learn the Gospel always creates division, and we'll see how godly men respond to unhealthy amounts of praise and adoration.
Transcription (automatically generated):
We are going to be in Acts Chapter 14 today, so you can turn there in your Bibles. Let's take a look at our map and refresh our memory as to where we are in our study. Through the Book of Acts, we're accompanying Barnabas and Paul on the first major missionary journey in church history. Their home base was the church in Antioch in present-day Syria.
God commanded the elders of that church to send out Paul and Barnabas on this missionary journey. They started by traveling to the nearby island of Cyprus, ministered across the length of it, then departed for Perga, which is in present-day Turkey. They traveled north into the region known as Pisidian, Antioch Ministered in the principal city there, which was also called Antioch. In last week's study, we saw God move mightily through Paul's preaching among the Gentiles, with many of them turning to the Lord. However, the Jewish religious leaders became jealous and stirred up trouble against Paul and Barnabas, leading to them being expelled, kicked out of the region by the civic authorities.
So, they made the 80 miles, roughly 129-kilometer journey southeast to the cosmopolitan city of Iconium. And that's where we pick up our study today in Acts Chapter 14. And we read in verse one in Iconium, they entered the Jewish synagogue as usual and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. So they stayed there a long time and now underline this and spoke boldly for the Lord, who testified to the message of his grace by enabling them to do signs and wonders.
Many turned to the Lord in Iconium, both Jews and Gentiles. But once again, the Jews who refused to believe stirred up trouble and opposed the preaching of the Gospel. They turned the opinion of the unbelieving Gentiles against Paul and Barnabas in Pisidian Antioch. They had been expelled from the region, forcibly removed by the civic authorities.
There was no option to continue, but that wasn't the case in Iconium. You see there they had run up against trouble and opposition, but they hadn't been forcibly removed, which is why we read they stayed there a long time and spoke boldly for the Lord. I just love that juxtaposition. They have trouble stirred up against them. So how do they respond?
So they stayed there a long time and spoke boldly for the Lord. They didn't just stay, they didn't just speak. It says, they spoke boldly for the Lord. Would you make a note of this on your outlines? Nothing significant can be accomplished for the Gospel apart from boldness.
I'll say it again, nothing significant can be accomplished for the Gospel apart from boldness. It is the essential quality that enables believers to willingly risk rejection and persecution. When the Sanhedrin demanded they stop preaching in the name of Jesus, Peter and john answered them whether it's right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide. For we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. And when they reported the threats of the Sanhedrin to the rest of the Church, the church responded by coming together to collectively pray for even greater boldness.
And God gave it to them and they went out and witnessed with even greater power, authority and anointing. There's got to be boldness or there will not be evangelism. You can have a 95-year-old woman used powerfully by the Lord, but I guarantee you this if she is effective in evangelism, that 95-year-old Romans will be a bold 95-year-old woman. Here's a truth that many of us need to hear, because I know many of us are scared. But this is the truth.
If we are waiting for someone to give us a method to share the Gospel that does not require boldness, we will be waiting forever. If we are waiting for someone to give us a method for sharing the Gospel that does not risk rejection and persecution, we will be waiting forever. The only solution is to, as the early church did, pray for boldness. And then we must in faith be bold with the Gospel. The only way evangelism happens is with boldness given to us by the Holy Spirit, but still the faith to step out in that boldness, risking rejection and persecution.
And as Paul and Barnabas preached boldly in Iconium, the Lord empowered them to perform signs and wonders, miracles, healings, to testify to the authenticity and power of the Gospel they were preaching. In verse four, we read, but the people of the city were divided underline that word divided. Some siding with the Jews and others with the apostles. We're going to talk about it a little bit more in just a couple of minutes in this message. But for now I wanted you to underline that word divided because that's what the true Gospel does.
Everywhere it goes, the true Gospel divides because the Gospel is a line in the sand, it is binary. The Gospel shatters any notion that goodness and spirituality and righteousness exist on some sort of spectrum and the Gospel creates division. It's this line in the sand you are on this side with the kingdom of light or this side with the kingdom of darkness. And as I said, we'll talk more about that in just a minute. It says apostles, plural, meaning that Barnabas was also considered an apostle.
There were uppercase-A apostles Paul and the members of the Twelve and there are lowercase-a apostles. The defining difference is that the uppercase-A apostles were appointed directly and personally by the Lord Jesus, while uppercase-A apostles were and are appointed by a church who affirms the gifts that God has placed in them and commissions them to go out and plant churches. The original Greek word for apostles simply means sent one - "apostolos." Lowercase-a apostles don't plant one church. So someone who goes and plants a church is not necessarily a lowercase-a apostle, a uppercase-A apostle, and they do still exist today, goes out and plants multiple churches, appoints elders over that churches, and then continues to provide. Guidance and accountability and prayer support over the elders of those churches.
Not exercising necessarily total authority, but sort of being a father to those collective group of churches. So, while Paul was also an uppercase-A apostle because he was appointed directly by the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus, both he and Barnabas had been sent out by their home church in Syrian Antioch as lowercase-a apostles - "apostolos," sent ones. Verse five. When an attempt was made by both the Gentiles and the Jews with their rulers to mistreat and stone them, they found out about it and fled to the Lyconian towns of Lustra and Derbe and to the surrounding countryside. Realizing that Paul and Barnabas were not going to be easily intimidated, they didn't care what people said about them on social media.
The unbelieving Jews worked with the Gentiles that they had turned against the Gospel, which included the civil leaders of the city, and hatched a plot to stone Paul and Barnabas to death the next day. But by the grace of God, the plot was uncovered and shared with them, who wisely fled to the surrounding countryside. Now, when you find out that a mob is going to murder you tomorrow, that's what we call in ministry God closing a door, okay?
The tragic truth is that most of the opposition the Gospel experienced during the first three decades of the church came from the Jewish people. John the Apostle wrote plainly about how they collectively responded to Jesus. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. In Jerusalem, persecution came from the Jewish religious leaders. In Samaria.
The opposition came from Simon the magician who was Jewish. Likewise, it was the Jews who opposed Paul. In Damascus, Herod murdered James and imprisoned Peter with the intention of murdering him as well because it pleased the elite class of Jews. In the city of Jerusalem on Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas were opposed by Elmyas, the Jewish sorcerer. They conspired to have Paul and Barnabas expelled from Pisidian, Antioch, and we see them here plotting to kill them both.
And the trend will only continue through the Book of Acts. The greatest tragedy of redemptive history is that the chosen people of God collectively have rejected their Messiah. The Bible teaches that there are two Israels, and this is a concept that will really help you understand so much of the Bible of the New and Old Testaments, the New and Old Covenants. The Bible teaches there are two Israels, ethnic Israel and spiritual Israel. Ethnic Israel is just that.
It includes everyone who is ethnically Jewish. Spiritual Israel includes everyone who follows Jesus as the Messiah, as their lord and savior. As Paul wrote in Romans Nine, not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. In other words, Paul was saying, not everyone who's ethnically Jewish is part of spiritual Israel. The ethnic Jews who followed Jesus, such as the apostles, such as the 120 who were in the upper room in Acts chapter two on the Day of Pentecost, are part of true Israel, spiritual Israel.
And if you follow Jesus as Lord and Savior, you are part of spiritual Israel. The Jews who opposed the Gospel were not part of spiritual Israel, only ethnic Israel. And I share that, lest anyone be tempted to fall into antisemitism, always remember our Messiah, our Savior, was and is Jewish. The apostles were Jews. The twelve were all Jewish.
The Church was founded on the foundation of Jews. So there are brothers if they follow Jesus as Messiah, and there are, thankfully, many who do, but far, far more who sadly don't. The Gospel divided the population of Iconium. People turned to the Lord, or they opposed Paul and Barnabas. Nobody seemed to be neutral in the city.
And that is what is happening in our world today before our very eyes. And most Christians are incapable or unwilling to recognize it. They are incapable because they don't know what the Bible actually teaches. They are unwilling because they do not want to accept the possibility that Christianity may bring persecution into their lives. How desperately we need to be reminded that from the earliest days and years of the Church, the Gospel has always brought division.
Its content has offended people to the point where they wanted to stone to death the men preaching it. From the earliest decades of the Church. As Jesus told Nicodemus, this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people love darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it so that his deeds may not be exposed.
But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God. The light of the Gospel reveals who we truly are, and 99.99% of the time, who we truly are does not line up at all with who we want to believe we are. We want to believe we're just amazing, beautiful souls with limitless potential. We're pretty great and incredible. But what the Gospel does is it Paul's back the curtain and exposes all of our true motivations, all of our innermost thoughts, all of our sin and our wickedness and our hidden perversions.
And Jesus said, because that's what the Gospel does. Those who love their sin will inevitably hate the light, and those who hate their sin and are desperate to be freed from it will seek the light. Write this down. The true Gospel creates a division between those who love and hate their sin. The true Gospel creates a division between those whose love and those who hate their sin.
This is why the seasons of history where Christians live peacefully beside non-Christians are aberrations. They are exceptions to the general rule because everyone who seeks the light sorry, because everyone either seeks the light, our hates the light, and those who hate the light sooner or later will inevitably seek to extinguish it. So if you've had the fortune of living in a time when Christians and non-Christians live peacefully side by side, be thankful that is not normal. Because sooner or later those who love their sin hate the light and seek to extinguish it. That's what was happening in the days of the early church and it's what is happening in our world right now and we're headed there increasingly.
And Christian, you must understand this reality. You must be prepared for the persecution that is only going to increase because the darkness will hate the light. There's so much foolishness bandied about in terms and concepts like winsomeness. It's this ludicrous idea that if Christians are just loving and nice to everyone, then we will win people over to the Gospel by being nice and embracing. This idea inevitably leads to the belief that if your faith offends someone, then you must not be loving enough.
You must not be nice enough, because if you were, they wouldn't be offended by you or what you're sharing with them. Now, there are two glaring problems with this approach. Firstly, who gets to define what love is? When we talk about being loving, when someone says I'm just going to be loving, by whose definition? Who gets to define what loving means?
The vast majority of Christians today allow the person on the receiving end to define love. Meaning that if the person doesn't feel loved by how you're sharing with them or how you're treating them, then you must not be loving. It places the Christian in the position of saying to the other person you just tell me what you consider to be loving and I'll do my best to loves you in that way. The problem is that Christianity are supposed to derive their definition of love from God and from his word. The Bible says God is love and therefore only he is qualified to define what love is.
And he has. He has in One Corinthians 13 where he writes about the love of God. And I have to say this because of course, every time you read First Corinthians 13 it triggers memories of weddings for people. And you might have even had this read at your wedding. It's so popular because it's such a beautiful description of love.
But when we read it at a wedding we just show how absolutely delusional we are because this is a description of the love of God. None of us, if we were homes for just a second, can naturally of ourselves love another person like this. It is adorable, but completely delusional that any of us would think so. This is not how we can love on our own. This is a description of the love of God.
Let me read it to you. In one Corinthians 13, Paul says about the love of God love is patient, loves is kind, love does not envy, it is not boastful, it is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking underline that is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Now, underline this sentence love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
That's how the Lord loves you. And that's the love of God that he wants to put in us, to pour our to other people. It can only come from God because as I said, none of us can love another person like that in our own strength. We need the love of God to flow through us to others. And it says in one Corinthians 13 the love of God is not self-seeking.
When a Christian allows the recipient to define love and then works to love them in the way they want to be loved instead of by God's definition of love, that Christian is being self-seeking. Now, why do I say that? Because their ultimate concern is not what is best for the other person. They are not foremost concerned with that person's good. They are concerned with themselves.
They want to be liked. They want to be thought of as being loving. And they are unwilling to be disliked for standing for the truth and what is actually in the other person's best interests. That's what the love of God does. It says I'm going to love you the way that God loves you, because that's what's best for you.
And if that upsets you, I'm sorry, but I love you so much that I will even put up with you, disliking me rather than lie to you and support you going in a direction that is not best for you. That's what a love that is not self-seeking looks like. The men of Iconium conspired to stone Paul and Barnabas to death, not because they were unloving, but because they were loving. They were telling them the gospel truth. The love of God finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth.
Who defines unrighteousness? Who defines truth? It's Jesus, the one who is the way, the truth and the life. True love, the love of God cannot affirm that which is not true. True love cannot call that which is sin good.
It cannot affirm evil and wickedness. True love cannot endorse that which God opposes. That's why when a Christian or a non-Christian asks us to affirm their sin, we can't, because we are called to truly love them, even if they say it'll make me feel more loved if you would just affirm me and agree with me in this and support me in this. We can't because we're called to truly love them. We cannot share in someone's temporary happiness when it is acquired by sinning against God.
We must love them. And we know that sin always produces destruction and death in every area of life. This is also why we rejoice when we see believers choose the truth and choose to follow and obey Jesus in every area of their life. Love rejoices in the truth. Make a note of this.
When we allow others to define love, we place them above God. When we allow others to define love, we place them above God. Because we say your definition of love is more important than God's definition of love. And we put them above God. We're called to honor God and loves people with the love of God.
The second major problem with the I'm just going to be loving and nice approach is that they killed Jesus, they killed Paul, they killed all the members of the Twelve save John, and not for lack of trying. They killed over 6 million believers during the first 250 years of the church and they've killed millions since. Let me be really blunt here. Those who say I'm just going to love people where they're at in the way they want to be loved, and I think that's the most effective way to share Jesus with people. And if people feel loved, then everything will work out and they'll come to know God.
People who aren't good at evangelizing people, it's because they're just not being loving enough or nice enough or kind enough. Anyone who says or believes such things is claiming to be more loving than the millions of our brothers and sisters who have been martyred over the past 2000 years. Because they're claiming, well, if you guys had just been more loving or maybe nicer or just more tolerant, then you wouldn't have been martyred. They're claiming they can do a better job at loving people than the apostles did. They're claiming they can do a better job of loving people than Jesus did because they killed Jesus for what he said.
Jesus the apostle and the millions martyred over the past two millennia of the church age were not murdered for not being nice enough. They were not murdered because they weren't being loving. They were murdered because those who hate the light will inevitably seek to extinguish it. You and I are not going to do a better job of loving people than Jesus did. So write this down.
When we define love, we place ourselves above God. When we define love, we place ourselves above God. We say God. I see first Corinthians 13 and that's nice, that's a good start, but I've got some ideas for improving it. Maybe if you had loved people like I love people, Jesus, they wouldn't have killed you now, please hear me on this.
Stick with me, because I'm about to say something that's hard to hear. Unlike my fluffy sermon up to this point, this is an unbiblical belief held by far too many Christians. And the reality is this hear me on this. If your faith in Jesus is not causing any tension in any of your relationships, then you're almost certainly not actually loving anybody. I'll say that again, if your faith in Jesus is not causing any tension in any of your relationships, then you're almost certainly not actually loving anybody.
Because the gospel divides Scripture is explicit on this issue. Jesus spoke plainly, saying therefore everyone who will acknowledge me before others, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever denies me before others, I will also deny him before my Father in heaven. Don't assume that I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I came to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. The one who loves a father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. The one who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever doesn't take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it.
And anyone who loves his life because of me will find it. Jesus is clear the true Gospel will bring division. It will destroy some relationships. And if you love those relationships more than you love Jesus, then you are not worthy of Him. Why?
That last verse tells us because Jesus is offering us nothing less than life. He is offering us eternal life. And he's offering to bring our dead spirit to life here and now. He is offering to save us from death and bring us into his family. To give us the gift of abundant life, love and joy and peace and homes like we've never had before.
And that is only found in Him. Jesus is worth it. What is it? Whatever it costs to follow Him. Whatever it costs, he's worth it.
That's why Jesus never apologizes for any of the difficulties following Him may bring. He never says, hey guys, sorry about the persecution that following me might bring. You know why he doesn't apologize? Because he is worth so much more than whatever it costs to follow Him. He's worth more.
Returning to Paul and Barnabas, we read they fled to the Lyconian towns of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding countryside. Let's take a look at our next map here. These were quiet provincial towns that were well off the beaten path. And their first stop of note was in Lystra. It was about 18 miles, or 29 km from Iconium and was the homes of Lois, Eunice and Timothy, who are going to enter our story in a couple of chapters time.
And they may have been saved during this visit to their town by Paul and Barnabas. Verse seven. There they continued preaching the Gospel. As was the case when the Gospel moved out from Jerusalem, persecution merely spread the Good News into new regions, causing the church to multiply and more peoples to come into the family of God. Verse eight in Lystra.
I can't help saying those names correctly, sorry, it's like an OCD thing. In Lystra, a man was sitting who was without strength in his feet, had never walked, and had been lame from birth. Now, that doesn't mean that he had, like, never been cool in his life or that he had been uncool from the time he was born. When it says he had been lame from birth, it means he had never been able to walk. His legs didn't work.
He listened as Paul spoke. So Paul would have been preaching in Greek. He would have likely been in the marketplace because apparently there was no synagogue in Lystra, which means that the Jewish population in that town would have been really, really small. So Paul goes into the marketplace, begins speaking in Greek, the common language of the empire, and Paul would have been preaching a very, very different gospel from how he preached in synagogues. He wouldn't be appealing to the shared history of the Jewish people because that would have meant nothing to this gentile audience.
So Paul is preaching very, very differently. And then in the middle of his message, we read that after looking directly at him. So the Holy Spirit causes this layman to catch Paul's eye in the middle of Paul's sermon, it says in Paul seeing that he had faith to be healed. So the Holy Spirit tells Paul that that guy can be healed. Right now, Paul said in a loud voice, stand up on your feet.
And he jumped up and began to walk around. In an instant, this man is healed. And for the first time in his life, he walks in front of everyone in the packed marketplace in the town square. And what's interesting to me is that it says this lame man had faith to be healed. He was listening to Paul preach the Gospel.
And here's what that means. He was believing it. He was believing what he heard. We don't know that exact moment, but salvation comes at that moment of belief. It doesn't necessarily happen at the moment of an altar call or raise your hand or come forward.
There's this moment of belief that only the Lord specifically knows when it happens. And this man had apparently already reached that moment. He is placing his faith in God and in Jesus. And the Lord was able to use that little bit of faith to work a miracle in this situation and do something incredible by healing this man through Paul. Now, those raises the obvious question about what the connection is between our faith and God doing a miracle in our life.
And all I can tell you, if I'm going to be honest, is that the relationship between those two things, our faith and God doing a miracle in our lives, the relationship between those two things is complicated. It's complicated. I don't know how else to say it. In Matthew 13, we read this about Jesus. He went to his hometown and began to teach them in their synagogue so that they were astonished and said, where did this man get this wisdom in these miraculous powers?
Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother called Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas and his sisters? Aren't they all with us? So where does he get all these things? And they were offended by him.
They know that what he's saying is amazing. It's divine wisdom. They recognize that he's doing miracles in his ministry, but they're just unwilling to believe because they look at him and they say, you're just a Redneck like us from the sticks up in Galilee. You're not anything special. You're nothing like the Messiah is supposed to be like.
And they actually get offended. They're like, how? How dare you be different from what we expect? How dare you be exceptional when you come from among us? And so Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his household.
I love that Hebrew proverb, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household. Here's the idea. This might surprise you, but you know what? When I come home from church or when my kids see me in the morning, never do they go, dad, you're just so whose. You know so much about the Word.
You've been studying it for years. Teach us, father. Teach us to walk in the ways of the Lord. Just dispense some of your wisdom to us. Please enlighten our Saul.
Never, ever happens. Never happens. It's just oh, what do you mean I have to clean my room?
Because a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household. Every pastor knows this. A pastor can tell those church week in and week out, hey, guys, we really got to start doing this thing. We really got to start doing this thing. Nobody will do anything.
He can bring in a guest speaker, and that guest speaker can say the exact same thing. You guys need to start doing this thing, and everyone will go, wow, oh, my gosh. I have never heard anything like this message. Where did this guy get this from? And the pastor is just in the back pulling his hair out because he's like, I've been telling you this for years, and you just wouldn't listen to me.
What is that dynamic? A prophet is not without. Honor except in his hometown and in his household. And Jesus was saying, that's the case right here. I'm here among my people.
I'm here where I grew up, and so I get no honor Hebrew, because this is my hometown and I'm a real prophet. But then it says, and he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. Isn't that interesting? And he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. Our brother James writes about the same concept concerning wisdom.
Now, if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord being double-minded and unstable in all his ways. So we can see it plainly according to the Scriptures, sometimes God desires to do something in our lives, but he will not do it unless we have faith that he can do it.
That's clear. I know that makes cessationists uncomfortable, but it's clear in Scripture. But we also see examples in the word of people being miraculously healed when they brought no faith to the table. I think of the crippled man in the pool of Bethesda. At the pool of Bethesda in John chapter five.
He had no idea who Jesus even was. And Jesus just walked up to him and said, do you want to get well? The man had no faith, yet Jesus said, Get up, pick up your mat and walk. And Jesus gave him the faith to stand up, and he did it, and he was healed. We also see examples in Scripture of people desiring healing, having faith and yet receiving the answer of no from the Lord.
I think of the famous example of Paul himself, who, after receiving an amazing revelation of heaven, wrote therefore so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness. Now, is anyone seriously going to claim that the reason Paul wasn't healed is because Paul didn't have enough faith when he asked God to heal him? Of course not.
That would be ludicrous. Of course Paul had enough faith. So why didn't he get healed? Because God was loving something else in Paul's life through that issue. So in light of all of these different possibilities, I think the best we can do to be consistent with Scripture is to say that there are some times when God wants to heal a believer, and that person's faith plays a large rose in whether or not the healing takes place.
Other times Jesus might just do it and heal someone, and other times he might say no because he's doing something else. And God is the only one who knows why he chooses to do one of those three things when a person is sick, only God knows. So here's what I would say. We should have faith. We absolutely should have faith.
We should have faith in the power of God and in his ability to heal. We should have faith that our Heavenly Father loves us and cares about us. So we should have faith in the character of God and in the character of his goodness. So therefore, we should ask for healing, believing that God cares about us. We should ask for healing in faith and then trust that whatever God decides to do, he's God.
He's good and he's doing what is good for us. I always tell people this if you're sick or someone you love is sick, should you pray for healing in faith? Absolutely. And here's why. Because if you don't exercise faith, you'll spend the rest of your life wondering what could have happened if you had.
And if you exercise faith but they don't get healed, then you can absolutely trust that the will of God was done and you can have peace in that. So absolutely have faith in God, trust God, and pray in faith for healing. And then trust in the goodness of God. Whatever the outcome, he's only ever good. Always.
And let me just say this too. Any pastors, preachers or teachers who don't acknowledge the different possible outcomes that I just described to you, the different possible outcomes we see in the scriptures, any pastor, preacher or teacher who doesn't acknowledge those possibilities is a false teacher. People like Bill Johnson and Bethel, who peddle the prosperity gospel and teach aberrant pentecostal theology, anyone who teaches that your faith is basically the only determining factor in whether or not you get a miracle. Such people are false teachers because they are not sharing the whole counsel of God's word. As Paul would say, mark those people and avoid them.
In this brief interaction between Paul and the lame man, we see a beautiful picture of God's grace, god's sovereignty and our free will. Let me explain it to you. I love this. This man was lame. He was unable to walk, completely incapable of healing that which was broken in himself.
The grace of God came to him through Paul. He didn't look for God. The grace of God came and found him where he was at because he couldn't even walk anywhere to look for the grace of God. But the grace of God came to him through Paul preaching the gospel, the good news of Jesus. The man heard it.
He believed it. And then he heard a voice commanding him stand up. On your feet. This man had done nothing to earn his healing. God's grace came to him and god's grace called him to stand to his feet.
But in order to be healed, what did the man have to do? He had to obey the word of the Lord. He had to choose to exercise the faith that God had given him and choose to stand to his feet in obedience to the Word of the loved. So if you're watching or listening to this and you're not a disciple of Jesus, you need to know that like this lame man, the kingdom of God has come near to you. The grace of God has come to you.
You weren't looking for it, it came to you. And God is the one who has given you the faith to obey His Word. But you have to choose to exercise that faith. You have to make the choice to obey and to respond to the call that God is giving you. And so if that's you, and you want to respond to the grace of God that has come to you, we want to invite you even just to go to our website.
To learn more about what Jesus has done for you, go to GospelCity.com/Gospel or just click the Gospel button on our homepage and let me just explain the incredible ways in which God loves you and we'll give you some next step there. So go and do that immediately after this message if you want to exercise this faith that God is giving you. And you realize you've never really given your life to Jesus, you've never really placed your faith in Him and chosen to follow Him as your Lord, as your Master, and as your Savior. Verse eleven. When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted, saying in the Lyconian language, the gods have come down to us in human form.
Barnabas, they called Zeus, and Paul comes because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the town, brought bulls and wreaths to the gates because he intended with the crowds, to offer sacrifice. So this scene is absolute chaos. Paul is in the middle of a sermon when the Holy Spirit directs him to heal this lame man. And the crowd present responds by freaking out and thinking that Paul and Barnabas are gods.
The crowd is in an absolute frenzy and word quickly reaches the priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the town, and he shows up with some bulls ready to sacrifice them to Paul and Barnabas. And all of this is happening in the native language, which Paul and Barnabas don't understand. They don't know what is going on. Now if you're wondering why these folks had such an extreme reaction to this miracle, the reasons are twofold. First, as I mentioned earlier, these are provincial, smaller towns.
The populace would have been far less educated and therefore far more superstitious and ignorant than those living in the larger cities. These were not the brightest folks. But secondly, the Romans. Poet David, who died in 17 Ad, recorded a tradition in Lustra that told of a time when Zeus and Hermes had visited Lystra incognito disguised as humans. When they showed up in town and asked for food and lodging, everyone refused them except a peasant named Philemon and his wife Bacchus.
In response, the two gods drowned the entire town in a flood. But they transformed the humble home of Philemon and Bacchus into a magnificent temple where they served the gods and were turned into two stately trees following their deaths. So when Paul does this miracle, their paradigm of the spiritual world told them these must be gods. Specifically, it must be Zeus and Hermes visiting us once again, and they freak out because they're determined not to repeat the mistake of their ancestors. So they're going to shower the god this time with worship and affection and sacrifices and food and adulation.
They decide Barnabas must be Zeus, which means Barnabas likely was the more physically imposing of the two. And they call. Paul comes. Hermes was the messenger of Zeus, and so they likely refer to Paul as Hermes because he was the primary speaker of the two, the messenger. When the priest at the nearby temple of Zeus heard about this, he also scrambled to make a good impression.
He's like, I'm not going to die in some natural disaster from offending the gods. And so he shows up to do the only appropriate thing and offers sacrifices to them and put wreaths on their necks. In verse 14 it says, the apostles Barnabas and Paul tore their robes when they heard this. This was an ancient expression of deep grief or horror and outrage. It was something men did when they heard something blasphemous spoken or witnessed a blasphemous act.
And for anyone who loves Jesus, being worshipped is blasphemous, because we believe all honor belongs to Jesus. And so in their minds, I mean, poor Paul and Barnabas. This is the worst thing that could have happened. They got up that morning with the goal of leading people to worship God, and instead the people are worshipping them. They're like, this is the first day of ministry ever.
This is literally the opposite of what we sought out to do. Then we read Paul and Barnabas rushed into the crowd shouting, people, why are you doing these things? We are people also, just like you, and we are proclaiming good news to you that you turn from these worthless things to the loving God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea and everything in them. Paul would later write to the Romans that since the creation of the world, god's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse. You see, people understand there must be a power behind creation.
God has built us to recognize, design and order in creation and to recognize that a god must have created this. And Paul's a people. Paul's appeal to the people of Lystra is to turn from baseless myths and legends and idols made by their own hands to the God who is the power behind the glory of the universe. Anyone who's searching for the truth of reality, anyone, must answer several key questions. And the first question you have to answer if you're going to be a serious seeker of truth, is why is there something instead of nothing?
Why does anything exist? Why is anything here? And you'll find that if you begin to dig into and think and critique the answers that you were taught in public school or college, they are woefully inadequate for any explanation that has something coming from nothing without the involvement of any creator is, quite frankly, nonsense. It's nonsensical. Consciousness cannot come from unconsciousness.
Order cannot come from disorder. You cannot have code in creation without a coder. The universe is in entropy. Creation requires the exact opposite to take place. Everyone is worshipping something.
And the call of the gospel is to turn from those worthless things to the living God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them, because none of those worthless things can save you. None of them can give you peace. Nothing else but God can give you a joy that transcends your circumstances. None of those worthless things can cleanse you of your sins and free you from your guilt and shame. And none of those lesser things can bring you into the family of God, give you a new identity in Christ, turn from those worthless things and worship the loving God.
Paul and Barnabas realize in this moment that they've got to get way, way more basic in their gospel presentation. And so for this audience, the good news is not that the long-prophesied Hebrew Messiah has come. The good news is that they can know the true and living God, who is the ultimate power behind all things and the creator of the universe. They can know the God of gods. And instead of worshipping meaningless idols made by human hands, they can worship the living God.
And here's the good news he's good. He is good. He's not capricious like the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon. He's not capricious like the Olympians or the Immortals or the Eternals. The living God is good.
I also noticed that the reaction of Paul and Barnabas to the crowd shatters the misguided notion that if more Christians could just get a platform in the culture, then we'd be able to influence the culture for gospel purposes. There are many Christianity who believe that we need to just acquire influence in the culture by gaining a platform in the music industry, the film industry, and fashion culture on social media and in the mainstream media. Because if we can get a following, if we can gain influence, then we can leverage it for the gospel. Our on a more common level, you and me can think, well, I'll just work on being really relatable, really likable and agreeable. I'll just learn how to gain influence over people by never offending anybody and learning how to fit in with them.
And then when I've succeeded in doing that, then I'll share the gospel with them. But what always ends up happening when we do that? As Paul told the Corinthians, do not be deceived bad company, corrupts good morals. Hear me on this. When we try to win over the world by becoming like the world, all that happens is we end up becoming like the world.
They don't become more like Jesus, and neither do we. We're called to be like Jesus, to speak like him, to live like him, to love like him, not like the world, like Jesus. And if there was ever a cultural platform to be strategically exploited for gospel purposes, this was it. Do you think that you might have the culture's attention when they think you're gods? You better believe it.
Think how tempting it would have been for Paul and Barnabas to just say to the other, okay, hang on, let's not be too hasty here. I mean, they're hanging on every word we say. I mean, why don't we just roll with it for a couple of days, use our influence to share the gospel, because people are going to listen to everything we say, and then in a couple of days we can set them straight and tell them we're not gods. What do you think? Would have been easy to do, right?
But how did Paul but how did Paul and Barnabas react? They tore their clothes. They told the people, we're just men like you. And they urged them to not worship them, but to turn and worship the true and living God. They were horrified that they were receiving any glory instead of Jesus.
Paul tells the crowd in past generations, he that's God allowed all the nations to go their own way. That's why there are problems in our world. God allows us individually and collectively to choose who we serve and submit to. The world collectively has rejected God, and as a result, the nations are ruled by wicked and evil men. What Josephus Dd Mestra wrote in 1811 is still true every nation gets the government it deserves.
And what an indictment that is on our nation. Verse 17 although he God, did not leave himself without a witness, since he did what is good underline good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and filling you with food and your hearts with joy. Here's the idea everything good comes from God. Anything that is genuinely good that is experienced by a believer or a non-believer comes from God. Rain, the harvest, good food, the ability to feel joy, to share laughter, music, art, beauty.
If it's truly God, it comes from God. He is the only source of goodness in the universe. As our brother James put it, every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights. And Paul tells this crowd that anything good they've experienced was given to them by God as a witness to his reality, that even when men are evil and reject Him, God is still good, because that's just who he is. Indeed, God's grace toward the unbeliever during their earthly life is incredible.
The question is not why do bad things happen to good people? The question is always why does anything God happen to anybody, ever? When the reality is that humanity has collectively rejected the Lord? The answer because God is good and God is gracious. Paul's overarching point is, we're just men.
We're not the one who send reins on your crops or fill your heart with joy. God does that, so give Him the glory. And then the last verse we'll read for today, verse 18. It says even though they said these things, they barely stopped the crowds from sacrificing to them. If you're not a believer and you want to respond to the grace of God that has come to you today, please go to the website and watch the Gospel video.
Fill out the form and let us know that you've begun your journey of faith with the Lord. And we want to make sure you get connected with a good local church and begin your walk with Jesus. Take that step of faith and do that if you're not a believer yet. If you've placed God I'm sorry if you've placed others above God by allowing them to define love repent. If you've placed yourself above God by allowing yourself to define love repent.
We're going to pray for God to fill us with His Spirit so that we are full of his love, because nobody in our loves needs our definition of love. They need God's love poured out on them as he pours it into us and we pour it out on them. People need the love of God, not our love. And we cannot conjure up within ourselves the love of God. It comes from him.
So we're going to ask Him to fill us with His Spirit, that his love might flow through us to those he's put in our lives. And then we're also going to pray to be filled with the Spirit, that we might be bold with the Gospel, and we might listen when the Holy Spirit calls us to step out in faith and be bold.
And we're going to ask that the Lord would help any of us who haven't done so to accept the reality that the Gospel brings division. And if we're waiting for a method that won't bring division when we share the Gospel, we will be waiting forever. And we can't do that because there's people who need to know the Lord. So let's pray together. Would you bow your head and close your eyes?
Lord, thank you so much for Your Word, for the wisdom and the loving confrontation in Your Word. And thank you for servants like Paul and Barnabas, and for everyone who truly loves you and seeks to serve you today. Thank you for the gifts that they are to the Church. Jesus, Father, I pray for any of us who have allowed someone else to define love or allowed ourselves to define love. Lord, please forgive us for doing that.
We want to repent of that. We want to look to Your Word to see how you define love, and then we want to love people like that in the way that is pleasing to you. And so in order to do that, Lord, we need to be filled with Your Spirit, because we can't stir this up within ourselves. It's a gift from you. So fill us with Your spirit.
Fill us with Your love that it might be poured out through us, onto those in our lives. Jesus, fill us with Your Spirit so that we can be bold with the Gospel. And Lord, help us to exercise faith, that even where there is fear, we would choose to exercise faith, believing that you will give us the words to say and the boldness. We need to share you with others and then help us to be okay with whatever the outcome is, because you're the Lord of the harvest. You're the One Who decides how people respond.
And so help us to be faithful, to share the good news, because that's what You've called us to do, and then to leave the results up to you, because you alone are God. We love you, Lord. We bless you. We're so thankful for all Your goodness and just. Lord, we just thank you for every little god thing we experience in our lives.
For every little good thing we will experience today, for the taste of good food, for a smile, for laughter, for the ways that we get to experience love that comes from you and is directed toward us by others who love you. For the things we see that are beautiful. And God. Lord. Just thank you.
You've pour out so much goodness into our lives, and it all comes from you. So we glorify you for it, we praise you for it, and we can't wait to experience the ultimate good, which is going to be spending eternity in Your presence. We love you so much, we can't wait to see you. In your name we pray. Amen.