Many Hardships, Many Joys (Acts 14.8-28)

Introduction

“The word gospel means 'good news'. But today it's more a type of music. So when Jesus said we should go into all the world and preach the gospel he didn't mean we had to dress up as Aretha Franklin. I know that now.” So said a well-known stand-up comedian recently.

Just in case you’re wondering, I’ve not made the same mistake. Not yet anyway - though you can never completely allow for the eccentricity - or indeed stupidity - of Church of England clergy.

Background

So we’re still following Paul and Barnabas’ first great mission trip. We set off with them at the beginning of the year. Here’s where we have got to so far:

The year is about 48 AD. They start off in Antioch where they get sent out by a praying, fasting, prophetic church and they head for Cyprus. They win people to Christ there, including the big cheese on the island, cause a commotion, then they set sail and move on.

A few days later they arrive on the mainland at Perga, travel up into the Taurus mountains to Pisidian Antioch, preach the gospel in a synagogue, start a little church, start a big riot, and have to move on.

Then we get to where we were last week, down into the valley to Iconium. They preach Christ there as well, do amazing signs and wonders in the power of the Holy Spirit which confirms that what they say is from God, they see people get converted and then narrowly escape a public lynching.

Then they head 25 miles south to Lystra and that’s where we are today. The whole area is called the Province of Galatia, and when Paul wrote Galatians these were the young churches he wrote to.

First Missionary Journey (Acts 13 and 14)

So it’s only about 15 years since Jesus was raised from the dead and already the gospel has roughed up the Roman Empire and made its permanent mark on history. It has made a thorough nuisance of itself in Jerusalem, it has deeply upset the establishment in Judea, it has ridden roughshod through centuries of prejudice in Samaria creating a disturbance there, and is now causing riots and antisocial behaviour to the ends of the earth.

The Offence of the Gospel

There’s a pattern there and it’s not a coincidence. The gospel is good news but people hate it. Always have, always will. People hate it because it’s offensive.

The Bible explains that Jews find it insulting because it can only mean one thing – that they have been barking up the wrong tree for centuries. So they supress it, even today.

An Israeli Christian I know personally called Emil was led out of a neighbouring kibbutz at gunpoint just for handing out a New Testament in Hebrew. Israel is a Western style democracy with freedom of speech. But the gospel is still deeply offensive to Jews.

And the Bible says that Gentiles – people like most of us here – overwhelmingly dismiss the gospel as nonsense. Check that out. You ask people in the streets of our country about sin, the cross and the resurrection (the three main components of the gospel).

You’ll soon see that we Gentiles tend to see ourselves as good people, not sinners; we don’t get why a man dying on a cross changes anything and we are much too sophisticated to take seriously the claim that anyone can rise from the dead. Like the Bible says, we think it’s foolishness and we are offended to be told that we need to be saved.

People have always hated the gospel and they hate it more than ever today. According to an article in The Independent in July last year Christians are the most persecuted people in the world. It claimed that Christians face some form of discrimination in 139 countries, that is almost three-quarters of the world's nations.

80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians and an estimated 100,000 Christians die every year, targeted because of their faith – that is 11 every hour.

So it’s no surprise when we read in Acts 14 that when the gospel first came to Lystra, even though there was a miraculous healing bringing great joy, even though Paul specifically says in v15 “we are bringing you good news,” yet they stone him and leave him for dead.

If you’ve ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you’ll remember the scene with King Arthur and the Black Knight. After King Arthur severs the Knight’s two arms and one leg, with blood spouting everywhere, the Knight hops about still spoiling for a fight, shouting out “I’ve had worse, ‘tis but a scratch, a mere flesh wound.”

It reminds me of the sheer tenacity and stubbornness of the Apostle Paul. They stone him alive and leave him in a heap. Well, they’re going to have to do better than that! He just gets up from having these lumps of rock thrown at him, says “it’s only a slight graze” and heads off to the next town to do the same again.

Christians are like tea bags - it isn’t until we get into hot water that you see how strong we can be. Paul must have been double strength, extra flavour, hardcore builders blend.

Actually, it’s an impressive excuse for not getting to church on time isn’t it? “I was stoned by an angry mob and must have blacked out - sorry I’m late.” I mean it’s a bit more impressive than “it took me five whole minutes to scrape the ice off the car” isn’t it?

When Paul retraces his steps through those towns where they roughed him up and drove him out he says in v22, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” No exaggeration there then.

When young men and women went out to North Africa with the Sudan Interior Mission in the late 19th century, they usually had no support or preparation, they often bore extreme adversity and they took their coffins with them because they did not expect survive beyond a few years of exposure to tropical disease, let alone return.

“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” Following Jesus is not for wimps.

Healing

Anyway, the episode I Lystra starts out in v8 with a man crippled in his feet. The Bible says he was lame from birth. He had never walked. Imagine what that would have been like. But as he listened to Paul, faith rose in his heart that he would be healed, and when Paul looked at him and told him to stand, he jumped up and began to walk around. It must have been absolutely surreal to be there and see it with your own eyes.

I’ve been reading a book lately of eyewitness testimonies from the Azusa Street revival from 1906-1910. It is so encouraging.

From that revival, four years of heaven touching earth, a wildfire spread round the world and gave birth to the Pentecostal movement. There are perhaps 500 million Pentecostals in the world today and it is still the fastest growing expression of Christianity on earth.

Here’s an extract which reminded me of the incident in today’s reading. “A young man… had a club foot and, when he entered the building, tried to hide his disfigurement. He explained… that he didn’t want people feeling sorry for him... Brother Anderson began to pray for him. To their astonishment, shortly after prayer, the foot didn’t just pop out, but rather it just started to slowly move outward. In a matter of minutes, the young man was jumping, running and shouting. The foot had been deformed since he was a young child and it had just got worse as he had got older. Yet in just a few minutes, the foot was healed and perfectly formed.”

Here’s another. “Sometimes [William Seymour, the pastor who led the church at that time, that’s him on the left] would go to a certain section of cots – the cots [we’d call them stretchers] were for people who had been carried in from the hospital. Seymour would point at them and say ‘Everyone on the cots or in wheelchairs, you’re healed in the name of Jesus.’ Everyone on the cots or in wheelchairs would get up and walk around fully healed of whatever malady they suffered from.”

Here’s one more. One time, “four or five blind people were brought in from a home for the blind. Sister Lankford walked up to them and announced that God was going to work miracles. Brother Lankford ran over to them, covered their eyes, and prayed for them, laying hands on each of them. Every time he removed his hands the results were the same: they could see! Instant healings! The whole place erupted in shouting and dancing.”

Do you want one last one? I’ve saved the most astonishing till last. “Seymour asked a one-armed man ‘Can you work with just the one arm?’ ‘I’m just given minimal paying jobs and I barely make enough money to even eat.’ Seymour shook his head and responded ‘That’s not good. Are you married?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Got kids?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘This man needs to be able to make a living. This man needs to be able to pay his tithe. Will you tithe if I pray for you and God gives you your arm back?’ Seymour said teasingly. ‘Yes!’ [I read this to a local church leader and he said, “That’s my kinda healing!] Seymour burst out laughing. ‘I’m just having fun.’ He then slapped his hands on the shoulder itself and commanded the arm to grow out. Almost instantly it grew out. The healed man stood in total shock, then started moving his arm and feeling it with his other hand, awed by the miracle. A few weeks later the man came back bringing about 200 people with him, telling many at the meeting that he had got his old job back.”

You do wonder if it’s real. You do think “Hang on, what if someone embellished this or totally made it up, it’s so astounding.” But there were hundreds of people there, and that particular miracle was corroborated by several independent sources. There is no record anywhere of anyone accusing the witnesses of Azusa Street of smoke and mirrors or any kind of fraud. This kind of signs and wonders occurred daily at 312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles over about four years before it suddenly stopped. God, in his sovereignty moved on.

Jesus said “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

There’s a great prayer in Habakkuk 3 that says “Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.” That’s my prayer.

That’s why I never miss Prayer Breakfast. That’s why I will be at Ablaze Prayer tonight, no matter what’s on TV, what’s for tea, no matter how cold and dark it is or what the weather is doing. I would so love there to be a passion for prayer here. I believe we would see greater things than we do if there was.

Heidi and Roland Baker are seeing wonderful things today in Mozambique, particularly the restoration of sight to the blind. Here’s Heidi’s testimony:

“After about a year of praying for the blind [you hear that? a whole year of praying] - and not getting good results - we were in one of our little mud hut churches when a lady who was blind approached us. This little beggar lady’s eyes were completely white… As I held this lady in my arms, I felt a tremendous compassion for her.

God completely transformed her with his glory, and she fell to the ground and began to scream. As I watched her eyes, they began to turn from white to grey and then to brown. She could see! Everyone around us started yelling and screaming… The next day, I went to a mud hut in Dondo. There I prayed for another lady who was in her thirties and had been blind since she was eight years old. As I was holding her and feeling God’s heart of love for her, she began to scream, ‘You’re wearing a black shirt!’ She saw my shirt! She could see!”

Those were the first two blind people healed in that ministry. Now there are dozens. There’s power in prayer! Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. And this is the same Jesus that was proclaimed that day in Lystra.

Give God the Glory

What happened after this miracle seems a bit strange to us – they try to worship Paul and Barnabas as Zeus and Hermes. What is that about? Maybe a bit of background information will help.

It goes back to an old legend in Lystra that Zeus and Hermes once visited the region disguised as mortal men but no one welcomed them, no one except one elderly peasant couple in Lystra who did offer them hospitality despite their great poverty.

Later, according to the legend, the gods rewarded this little old couple for their generosity. And so, from this myth, a kind of superstition grew up in that place. Recently, two inscriptions have been found on a stone altar in Lystra to those two gods and that is why.

So when the locals from Lystra see an amazing miracle, you can see why they would react the way they do. Of course, Paul and Barnabas try to stop the crowds bowing down to them. In v15 they basically say “We’re just two nobodies trying to tell everybody about Somebody.”

And they say that God never leaves himself without testimony. There’s always somebody somewhere who knows God and can tell someone else from personal experience about his goodness. And if that person doesn’t live near you, you can tell it anyway from the natural world.

Notice that they start where the people are. Anyone can do this. They talk about everyday things that ordinary people can relate to; like the rain that falls from the sky, the harvests that spring up year after year, the food you enjoy on your plate every day - all this comes from God. When you look around you, you can see plentiful evidence of God’s lavish goodness, and that’s why Romans 1 says that there is no excuse for not believing in God just because you’ve never read the Bible.

I once heard the testimony of a former British Airways pilot. He was a senior Captain, at the very top of his profession. He was one of the first pilots to fly the prestigious Concorde when it came into service. He had a fantastic salary. He had a lovely family. He had a dream home with a nice garden. He had a top of the range car. He went to exotic places on holiday. He had all the toys. But he said, “The one thing I didn’t have is someone to whom I could say thank you.” And then he met Jesus...

Paul and Barnabas then travel on to Derbe, win a large number of people to Christ, manage to avoid massive social disorder for the first time in months, then retrace their steps.

They go back through the very towns where they had been beaten to within an inch of their lives to appoint leaders in the new churches before sailing back to Antioch with the First Century equivalent of a missionary slideshow for their sending church. Simples.

Ending

Here’s what I conclude as I round up this morning.

1. We may think that the day of miracles is past. In reality, there has never been a 'day of miracles,' there's only a God of miracles and he never changes. Pray for a new Pentecost, for signs and wonders and for people to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus.

2. If you’re a Christian and everybody absolutely adores you you’re probably not doing it right. As the American rapper Trip Lee said, “Don’t be deceived. You cannot follow Jesus and be liked by everybody at the same time.” My friend Andy Griffiths qualifies that by saying “True, but equally if everyone finds you obnoxious, your discipleship may have slipped a little too.” Nevertheless, the Bible means what it says when it states “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” And Jesus said that in the last days “Everyone will hate you because of me.”

3. Few of us will be called to leave our home town, train in theology and take the gospel to the ends of the earth. But every one of us should be able to say to our neighbour in plain English why we believe in God and why we think Jesus is alive.

And you don’t even need to dress up as Aretha Franklin either.

4. Finally, if you are not yet a follower of Jesus, you can become one today. Most people don’t feel like they need God. But in reality, we do, and eventually our spiritual poverty will catch up with us.

It may not happen until we face death. But the result is always the same: If we turn our backs on the only one who truly loves us and can save us, Jesus warns, “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”

Face honestly your need for God. Begin by committing yourself to Jesus Christ today and ask him to become the foundation of your life.

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25th January 2015