He Rose Up
Preached by Ben Bechtel
August 23, 2020
Scripture Reading
Acts 14:1-28
1 Now at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. 2 But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. 3 So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. 4 But the people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles. 5 When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to mistreat them and to stone them, 6 they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country, 7 and there they continued to preach the gospel.
8 Now at Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. 9 He listened to Paul speaking. And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, 10 said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And he sprang up and began walking. 11 And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” 12 Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. 13 And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the crowds. 14 But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out into the crowd, crying out, 15 “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. 16 In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. 17 Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” 18 Even with these words they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them.
19 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. 20 But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. 21 When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. 23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.
24 Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. 25 And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, 26 and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. 27 And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. 28 And they remained no little time with the disciples.
In my opinion, the best cultural moment that occurred over the course of the lockdown time period was the airing of the documentary The Last Dance. This documentary followed the 1997-98 season of the Chicago Bulls, the last season before this storied dynasty led by Michael Jordan was split up. It was a sports fan’s heaven. One of my personal favorite elements of that team was their pregame walk out song. When I hear that song, I still get chills. That song with the announcer shouting the names of Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen, and Michael Jordan still gets me ready to run through a wall.
This chapter in the book of Acts is like a great pump up song for us as the church of Jesus Christ. Maybe today is just another mundane Sunday for you. Church doesn’t feel weighty and exciting. Living another day following Jesus and getting to the pillow tonight might feel impossible. As we listen to this pump up song this morning, I pray that we as the church would be reenergized and encouraged to persevere in our pursuit of God’s mission for our lives and for the world in the resurrected Jesus. The angels in heaven are watching and they’re cheering from the stands as we study God’s word together.
Last week in Acts 13 we focused on how we need to keep the resurrected Christ and the work he is doing in our day at the front of our minds and imaginations. This morning, in Acts 14 we are going to see two ways that we all are tempted to take our eyes off of the resurrected Jesus and what he is doing in the world. But along with that, we will also see two pathways that God provides for perseverance in fixing our eyes on him.
1. Pleasure in the Goodness of God
We are going to hop right into the middle portion of the passage this morning, but before we do that let me step back and explain some historical details about what is going on in the text. Paul and Barnabas leave as missionaries on what is commonly called their first missionary journey and after stopping in several towns on the island of Cyprus, they land back on the mainland and journey to a different Antioch, Antioch Pisidia, which is where we found them last week. In this chapter they are going to head to three more towns, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, before backtracking and finishing chapter 14 back in Antioch, having completed this first missionary journey.
So, after they flee potential violence in Iconium, Paul and Barnabas come to Lystra, twenty miles south. When they arrive, Paul performs a miracle by Jesus’s power, a miracle which mirrors very similar miracles by both Jesus (Luke 5:17-26) and Peter (Acts 3:1-10).[1]Paul is a full-fledged apostle, working signs and wonders in the name of Jesus testifying to the name of Jesus. However, the people of Lystra see this miracle and they conclude that Paul and Barnabas are incarnations of the gods Hermes and Zeus. And all of a sudden Paul and Barnabas find themselves in the middle of a pagan worship service.
Now, why would they think this? Was it just the sheer power of the miracle? Not quite. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a Roman poem written just 40 years prior to the apostle’s arrival in Lystra, there is a story about the gods coming down in the form of human beings to another town.[2] The whole town rejected them but one couple among them showed the gods hospitality and so were rewarded while the rest of the town was judged. The people of Lystra did not want to be like the town in the poem that rejected the gods. So, they decide they are going to hold a worship service for these gods who became men.
I was talking about this passage with a church member this week and he compared it to the scene from The Return of the Jedi when these tribal small bear creatures called Ewoks think C3PO the droid is some kind of god and begin holding a worship service for him. Lystra was an uncivilized town, a town with a lot of spiritual “enthusiasm.” It can be easy to denounce their worship of the apostles along with the primitive bear creatures from Star Wars. But we do the very same thing. Blind human religion seeks to elevate individuals and things in the created realm to the place of God. This is what the Bible calls idolatry.
In one sense, these men at Lystra are more honest and closer to the truth than we are in the West. They understand that human life is inherently religious, that all people are made to worship. In our cool, detached, secular culture we have found ways to mask our inherent desires for religious rituals, but they are still there.
Let me give you one example, health and wellness. Many people in our culture today worship the god of appearance by obsessing over health and wellness. We go to the temple of the gym to perform our ritual duty and offer ourselves as sacrifices while gazing at ourselves through the religious icon of the mirror. We seek the advice of our spiritual guru, our health and fitness coach. We only eat ceremonially clean foods and ostracize all that is unclean. We cleanse our own personal spaces with the ritual washing of essential oils. Friends, we are as inherently religious and idolatrous as the people of Lystra. As the theologian John Calvin said, the human heart is an idol factory. (FCF pt. 1) When we give things in our world worship, these seemingly benign realities in the world actually become idols, and this takes our focus off of God’s mission.
How do Paul and Barnabas respond to this idolatrous worship service in their honor? They do a few things. First, notice in verse 14 they tear their clothes, which was a sign of mourning a blasphemy against God. And then in verse 15 they first insist that they are “of like nature” with the people at Lystra. They are not gods, because they are creatures. You see one fundamental aspect of all of Christian teaching is that God alone is God and that nothing which God has made is God. This is similar to what he says in Romans 1:25, that humans worship created things rather than their Creator. This is the definition of idolatry, of false worship.
Next, Paul calls the crowd to turn from their created idols and embrace the living God. What is it that compels us away from our idols to worship the God of the Bible? Look at verse 17 again with me:
Yet [God] did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.
The gods of the Greeks and the Romans fought and killed one another and humans for selfish reasons, were constantly deceiving one another, and took wives from other gods and from humans. But there is a better God, the living and true God. God in his goodness made the whole world to testify to us that he exists and that he is so much better than our puny Gods could ever be. The whole world sings of the goodness of who God is. And this good God provides for and gives his good gifts to all, even those who don’t seek him.
If you are here and you don’t believe in God, do you see what this passage is claiming? How can we claim there is no evidence for God? It’s everywhere! The very breath you breathe in and out to claim that God doesn’t exist is not only a testament that he exists but also that he is kind to you. It is acknowledging God’s goodness in what he has made that is a remedy for idolatry because it directs our gratitude to where it should be. And in the process, we actually enjoy created things more when we see God in them.
As Christians, our attitude toward God’s creation should consist of what one Christian philosopher calls the “double movement”: first, we notice the inherent goodness in created things and second, we direct our gratitude for these thing to God because it is his goodness, his kindness, it is himself that we encounter in created things.[3] Our secular world only does the first part of that equation, but they have nowhere to go with their gratitude and worship. But we are invited deeper into the pleasures of the world, deeper into pleasure in the goodness and beauty of our Creator God. We often think that in order to persevere in our Christian lives we must avoid the things of this world because we have a tendency to treat them as idols. (BI pt. 1) On the contrary, the real path to perseverance is beholding the goodness of God in the things he has made.
Christian, this means for you that you don’t have to be afraid of enjoying what God has created and given you in his goodness. The world is a playground of pleasure in God. Our nephew right now is two and a half, and the world is just an awesome place to him. He can’t get enough of it! That is how Christians should be. God has given us food, drink, mountain lakes, sex, meaningful work, our dogs all as a signpost to how lavishly good he is! Jesus dethrones our idols and sets himself, the true living God on the throne, and he wants your life to be a constant experience of his goodness and worship.
2. Pleasure in the Suffering of Christ
The peace doesn’t last long in Lystra. Just shortly after this, trouble arises for Paul (verse 19):
19 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.
We see here in this chapter why Paul says in Galatians 6 that he bears on his body the marks of Jesus. The Jewish leaders track him down from Antioch and Iconium to Lystra, which together would have been about a one-hundred-mile journey, like walking from here to Philadelphia, to stir up the crowd so that they stone him and leave him for dead outside the city. That escalated very quickly.
What is Paul’s response to this opposition and persecution? How does he respond? Look at verses 20-23 with me:
20 But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. 21 When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. 23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.
Paul displays courage and an unwavering focus on Jesus and his church. Look at this! The guy gets left for dead and then goes back into Lystra to sleep. Then he leaves the next day to walk 60 miles to preach the gospel at the town of Derbe. Not only that, after he preaches at Derbe, he then goes back through the towns of Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch in order to encourage the church in the faith and establish pastor-elders at those churches. Despite this immense suffering, the apostle Paul’s focus remains on Christ and his church!
How does Paul remain so steadfastly committed to Jesus and his church in the face of such opposition? How can we? Look with me at Luke 6:22-23:
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven…
(FCF pt. 2) We all think that suffering is the opposite of pleasure, the opposite of true joy. But suffering for the kingdom of God is not a grit it out and bear it kind of suffering. Suffering and sacrifice for the kingdom are joyous because we know for whom we are suffering and toward what we are suffering. You see, Paul got up and kept preaching after nearly being beaten to death because Jesus was beaten to death out of love for him. Paul came back to the city of Lystra after being dragged out because Jesus was crucified outside the city for him. Jesus suffered and died the death we all deserved for all of our worship of things other than God and all the times we’ve chosen the path of selfishness. Paul suffered and sacrificed for the one who suffered and sacrificed everything for him.
Not only that, but Jesus’ suffering was the pathway to glory. That is why it says in Hebrews 12 that Jesus’ motivation for enduring the cross was the joy set before him. He saw the joy of the day when he would be seated in power at the right hand of his Father and so he persevered to the end. We suffer toward that same end. As verse 22 says we suffer to enter the glory of the kingdom, a kingdom for which suffering brings joy even now. Look at how the church to whom the letter of Hebrews was written responds to the suffering they were facing (Heb. 10:34):
…you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.
(BI pt. 2) Ultimately, we can persevere through tribulation because of the pleasure it is to know Jesus, the one whom we suffer for, and the kingdom which he has invited us into, what we suffer toward.
I bet Paul and Barnabas said to each other on the way to Derbe man, this sucks and everything hurts, but there’s no place I’d rather be. And when they get back to Antioch, Paul and Barnabas don’t mourn because of their tired eyes and the scars all over their bodies, but with the church they rejoice that God had made a way for the Gentiles. It was joy in the Christ who suffered for them and who shared their experience of suffering with them that enabled them to continue on in doing hard things for the kingdom of God.
Friends, you’ll never be able to stay faithful in service to Christ and his church like Paul did if you view suffering and loss for the sake of the kingdom of God as a chore rather than a privilege. You’ll never give up your time to serve in this local church with that view. You’ll never give of your time and possessions to serve the poor with that view. You’ll never love people you don’t really like let alone your enemies with that view. However, we like Paul can joyously lay aside our love of comfort because Jesus walked the path of tribulation before us and is with us in our own suffering, sacrifice, and service for the kingdom. How can our response to this not be, “let goods and kindred go/ this mortal life also/the body they may kill/God’s truth abideth still/his kingdom is forever”? Now that is a pump-up song.
[1] Darrell Bock, Acts (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 474.
[2] Bock, 475 n.5.
[3] Alan Noble, Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2018), 92.
