Please take a seat, open your Bibles to the book of Acts
chapter 14. Please check out tomorrow's
devotion. I've written it and I've put a
couple of questions there for you to look at in regard to the
world events, Ezekiel 38 and 39. Will this current crisis, this
war continue or what you know? And so I've put some passages in
there. The answers are found in the
book Always 38 and you'll see some interesting things in
there. That's the daily devotion that's
coming out tomorrow. Acts chapter 14.
We shifted. There's a big shift that's gone
from Peter, the early church to Peter, and now it's gone from
Peter to so he's now called Paul and the first missionary journey
and we'll see that completed tonight.
Now what happened in Iconium? Iconium is in South Central, not
South Central LA, but South Central Turkey.
I find it quite fascinating that Turkey was one of the the very
thriving places of Christianity. Galatia, it's called the church
area of Galatia. And we see so much happened
there and how today Erdogan rules over Turkey, It's a Muslim
nation, how things have changed so much.
But now it happened in Iconium. That's southern part of Turkey,
central, southern central part of Turkey that they went
together to the synagogue of the Jews.
This is Barnabas and Paul and so spoke that a great multitude of
the Jews and the Gentiles believed, as was the pattern,
they would find a synagogue, they would sit there, they'd be
recognised, especially Paul. He was a student of the great
Gamaliel, rabbi teacher, and they would as part of the normal
services, anyone would like to bring a word.
Paul would take that opportunity, get up and start
teaching about Jesus Christ. So both Jews and Gentiles or
Greeks believed, but the unbelieving Jews.
Now here's the thing. You know, we so wish that every
time we spoke to someone that's a Christian would respond, don't
you? You're like, oh, that sounds
good. Yeah, but people don't.
But everyone does. Actually.
Jesus talks in the sorrow on the seed, one and four, one and four
respond. Everyone hears, but only one in
four actually responds in in the sermon and in the parable and
the sour and the seed. But so even though Paul's this
great preacher, astounding preacher, unbelieving Jews
didn't receive it, stirred up the Gentiles and notice it says,
poisoned their minds against their brothers.
There is a battle that goes on and it's in our in our minds.
Paul prays that we would when we're dealing with our unsafe
loved ones, that we would pray that their minds would be open
to receive the gospel. And so there's this battle of
our thoughts. This is where the war goes on
much most of it even in our in our own lives.
You know, we wrestle not with flesh and blood.
We get these thoughts, these attacks, they come in well.
Here is where the spiritual battle is occurring in the minds
of the listeners that Paul and Barnabas were preaching to.
It says, therefore, notice, it says therefore they stayed there
a long time. Why did they stay there?
Because they wanted to continue, not to just be a pushover.
They wanted to, we call it Christian apologetics.
They wanted to argue the toss that Jesus is the Christ.
They weren't just going to go, OK, we'll move on.
No, they wanted to proclaim the truth of the gospel.
Therefore, they stayed there a long time, speaking boldly in
the Lord. The only way you can be bold is
in Christ. Christ gives us the boldness to
speak when there is spiritual opposition.
Who was bearing witness to the word of His grace Notice?
So they've been preaching about the grace of God through Jesus
Christ, and God was supporting their preaching.
How granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.
And so Paul and Barnabas would preach.
That's the most important thing they're teaching then to support
God's Word. The power of the Holy Spirit was
allowing the impact on people's lives to change.
They were changed by the work of God.
God is always in control. But verse 4, the multitude of
the city was divided, part sided with the Jews, part with the
apostles. And when a violent attempt was
made by both the Gentiles and Jews with their rulers, this is
a mob to abuse and stone them. They became aware of it and fled
to Lystra and Derby. In Matthew chapter 10, verse 23,
there's a a verse we read over and it speaks of when
persecution comes, Jesus says move on to the next city, move
on to the next city. And so this is what they did.
OK, OK, we're moving on cities of Laconia and to the
surrounding region. What did they continue to do?
Preach the Gospel? Notice this.
I find this fascinating that over and over and over as
impostors was going to start the Gospel of Matthew.
We see Jesus do it. We see John the Baptist do it.
We see Peter do it. We see Saul do it, Paul do it.
I kind of wonder what where did the baton drop between the early
church believers and what they preached in the modern day
church that is the gospel because it is growing rare now
to go into a church and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ talk.
What is the gospel? The death, resurrection and
coming again of Jesus. What the death on the cross
means, the salvation of all those who'd received by grace is
forgiveness and the coming of the Lord, the power of the Holy
Spirit against sin to be forgiven, to be justified as we,
as we saw it. Don't ever, don't ever fall for
the thing. Well, we've moved on from that.
You know, I mean, I am safe. No, we always need to hear the
gospel. We always need to hear the
gospel. We always need to be told the
truth of the gospel. Calvary Chapel pastors we used
to meet once a year, Annual conference.
Pastor Chuck would teach and along with other pastors of
Calvary Chapel be over 1500 pastors from all over the world.
We would gather and you know what?
We never learned nothing new. We never heard anything new
because if it's new, it's not true.
And if it's true, it's not new. And so should you.
Peter in the his letter would say, I want to bring into
remembrance, don't, don't yawn at the things of the Bible.
Don't yawn at the book of Genesis and, and the fall of
man. Don't yawn at, at, at, at, at,
at at the gospel of Christ in your life and, and the impact of
it. It is the message for a lost
world. This is why Jesus came.
He came to save sinners like us, and they were preaching the
gospel there. No matter.
They preach the word. It's interesting in Second
Timothy chapter 4, verse 2, before Paul is about to be
executed, he's in prison. He's in Rome, he's chained to
the guards. These are his last words.
So what are his last words to his faithful Timothy?
He's about to meet Timothy, preach the word, 3 words.
I'm going now, Timothy, I'm going to die.
Preach the word. I hope you preach the word to
your kids. I hope you never Tyre of telling
them who Jesus is, why he died on the cross, what the cross
means, how it works, how he rose from the dead, how this is the
sign of the truth and that is coming again.
And in Lystra, a certain man without strength in his feet.
Now this doesn't mean he was injured or he came to Lane later
in years. He a cripple from his mother's
womb. Notice he's from birth, never
walked. Sounds a lot like Axe earlier,
doesn't it? Peter and John on the way to
pray super and gold have I known but such as I have give I thee
similar except in this situation Paul and Barnabas is not going
anywhere. He's not preaching at the time
it says and the Greek language and I looked it up says this man
heard Paul speak speaking and what's what it's saying here.
Paul was just sharing and talking with a group of people
and this guy who's lame, he's sitting there and he's, he's
cued in, he's connecting, he's he's sucking in everything that
Paul's talking about to these other people and says Paul
observing him intently, seeing that he had faith to be healed.
Does this not sound like the same situation with Peter and
John? Look, he looked at him intently
and I want to explain this. It happens not a lot, but I've
had it happen in my life and in this church.
There are times when you're connecting with someone or you
see someone connect and God gives you that kind of push,
that exhortation to go. You need to go and pray for
that. And, and this is a, it's a, it's
an odd situation. There was a person in our
church, they're not here tonight, and they were in
sitting down and I knew there was something they were praying
about. And I'm pretty, pretty sure it
was about a job. And they were quite concerned
about the situation. So I went over to them.
I said, see, you're here tonight.
What's the situation? I said, I'm praying about a job.
Exactly. Let's pray.
Let's pray that you get that job.
It wasn't anything to do with me, it wasn't anything to do
with him, but it was God connecting the dots at the time,
moving through my heart with this person who was listening
intently. We pray next day, have the new
job next day. It doesn't happen all the time,
but there are times when I'll say I need to pray with you now.
I need to pray about this and it's God and hopefully over the
years you get to recognise God saying this is the time to pray
this without any doubts. This is what's this is what I
want you to do. And so Paul does this notice
Paul observing him intently, seeing that he had faith to be
healed. He saw this guy.
There was a connection. The light, the green light went
on within Paul to go and God says this is what I want you to
do. Paul goes and he says to him
with a loud voice. So it's not like, oh hey, stand
up. I think God, he doesn't do that.
Notice he said it was the loud voice to him, so there's can't
be any. I mean, this is not like hit and
miss. He says with a loud 1 stand up
straight on your feet and you go, well, how's he going to
stand up straight? He's never walked in his life.
He's never stood up on his feet in his life.
Kind of like when Peter grabbed that guy's arm and lifted him up
in the air. He could have just fallen back
on his backside, couldn't he? But Peter knew, Paul knew.
There are times in your life when you're praying that God
will give you the green light and you're as you're praying,
you go, this is on, we're on. There's no doubt about this.
This is the Lord telling me to pray this away about this
situation. God is the author of that.
You see, here we see a desperate desire meets a passion for the
lost. The man heard there was a
connection of faith and a miracle occurred and it says and
he leaped and walked. Now when the people saw what
Paul had done, they raised their voices saying in Laconian
language, I guess that's Turkish.
I don't know. The gods have come down to us in
the likeness of men and Barnabas.
They called Zeus Paul Hermes because he was the chief speaker
in the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of the city,
brought oxen and garlands to the gates.
They were going to have a big sacrifice with the Malchus cause
all the gods have come to town. There's a story that sits behind
this. It's not in the Bible was told
that this is what part of the reason was that previously the
gods, it's all myth had turned up to this location in Lystra
and only two old people welcomed them and the rest of the town
didn't and the rest of the town died and only two people lived.
And so there's this this myth mythology behind this.
So when this has happened, the towns go whoa, we're not doing
missing out this time. We're on.
We're in this. Now.
I want you to notice this. A miracle occurs.
What does Paul do? But when the apostles Barnabas
and Paul heard this, they tore their clothes.
A Jewish reaction to blasphemy ran in among the multitude.
Hey, hey, stop, stop, stop, stop, man.
Why are you doing these things? We are also men with the same
nature as you and preach to you that you should turn from these
useless things to the living God.
Now I'm going to stop here because there's another lesson.
Paul, in preaching to the Gentiles, didn't give them a
lesson on Old Testament covenants and times.
Why they they haven't got a clue.
They don't know anything about never heard of Abraham, don't
know anything about that or or Jacob or anything Egypt and
stuff like that. No Paul and ministering to the
Gentiles speaks to them about the God of creation.
They that they can connect with that they can connect with.
And so he says, notice, let me speak to you about the living
God who made the heavens creator, the earth, the sea, and
all things that are in them. I want to talk to you about the
Creator God, the very first verse.
In the beginning, God created heaven and the earth, who in
bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their ways.
Nevertheless, He did not leave himself without witness.
In that He did good. How did He, the blessings of God
fall upon you? He brought rain from heaven,
gave you fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and
gladness. And with these sayings they
could scarcely restrain the multitudes from sacrificing to
them. Trouble is the crowd.
Zeus. And who is the other God?
Hermes then Jews from Antioch and Iconium lob, and having
persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul, dragged him out of
the city, supposing him to be dead.
So as Paul's been stoned for preaching the Gospel, who do you
think you thought of? Yeah, man, the circle had really
changed. He's identifying with Stevens.
He's identifying with the God of Steven.
So they drag him out the city. It's a brutal beating to be
stoned. And, you know, people don't go,
oh, I'd recover out of that. Yeah, I just got a big boulder
in the head. And another because this is a
mob, and they're picking up boulders.
First of all, they start off the big boulders that's to stun you
and knock you out. And then they hammer you with
the little bowlers, drag him out the city.
He's dead, limp bodied. However, when the disciples
gathered around him, you kind of wonder, is the disciples
scratching on their head, going, we're on a missionary journey,
what do we do now? Paul's dead, Where do we go?
He's the Barnabas is there. But Paul's doing most of the
preaching. Now what do we do?
So they're standing around him and then he rose up.
What does Paul do? Says let's get out of here.
I've had enough of this mob. Nope.
This. He's got bits and pieces hanging
off his nose. Blood here.
It's bruising. Right?
And where was I with you? I want to tell you about Jesus.
He just does it. You see, here's the here's
here's what I see as about when a person gets saved.
It doesn't matter what happens to you.
It doesn't matter if the doctor says you've got four months to
live. It doesn't matter if you lose
your business. It doesn't matter if things
aren't going well. I mean, getting stoned and left
for dead, not going too good today, Paul, he didn't change,
he continued. This is the race I've been given
to run. He got back and began to run the
race again, proclaiming the gospel.
I want to let you see what salvation in a true believer
looks like. It's real, it's mighty, it's
powerful, and it is unstoppable. So the crowd turned.
Now, as we'll find out later, there was a little kid in the
crowd looking on. The dead body, I believe Paul's
dead doesn't say, just as as if he was dead and his name is
Timothy. So from this horrific scene with
this person, here's another connection.
This young boy says, God, he's been raised by Lois and Eunice.
His dad's a Gentile, not a believer.
If God says to this little boy as he sees this man laying on
the ground, I want to be like him.
I want to do what he does. And Timothy later would become
the new Paul. Isn't it amazing?
Isn't it amazing how the connection came to Timothy?
Not over. Well, there I wasn't.
Church of men are the heavens open up?
And oh, that's this beam of light came down on a man.
Everyone said you should be a preacher.
No, he's looking at a dead person and when notice verse 21.
I'm going to repeat it again broken record when they had
preached what same stuff the Gospel to the city and made many
disciples. They returned to illustrate
Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the
disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith and saying
we'll stop there. Look at three things.
When they had preached the gospel, first thing they did,
that's our job, going to all the world preach the gospel.
What's their second job? Because just going in the world
preaching the gospel, that's not just it.
Second thing is make them disciples.
We've been told to do that as well.
So you don't just lead someone to Christ now, you nurture them,
pray with them, help them read the Bible, help them to
understand the Bible, help them to grow on the things of the
Lord. That's why church is so
important. And thirdly, it says exhorting
them to continue in the faith and go, guess what?
Things are going to be just perfect.
Now notice what Paul says exhorting them to continue in
the faith. Look what he says saying this is
how he exhorted them to continue to be believers.
We must through many tribulations enter the Kingdom
of God. What?
How many people would hear that coming up The older core, you
know that you come down the older core.
Let me tell you, life's going to get really hard.
Life's going to get really difficult.
Things are going to go, you've just ended war.
War is just started on you. And so Paul wrote that Timothy,
he says if you're going to live for Christ in this world, what
you shall suffer what tribulation.
Why is it that we see him as a church today, the modern church
today. It's so anathema about well,
we're going through a tough time.
You know, things are difficult. Kid at school says the teacher
and he accused me. I'm a I'm a Christian and they
they, they make fun of me and you know, guys at work and I get
a hard time. My boss.
Welcome to the Kingdom of God, to the army of the Lord, to the
ministry of Christ. That's normal Christianity
because that's what it is to live as light salt in a in a
dark, putrid world. We, we got to recognise that
somehow or over time we've only looked at the blessings of God
going, oh, everything's just going perfectly well, I don't
know about that. So we must through many
tribulations, enter the Kingdom of God.
So when they had appointed elders in every church and
prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in
whom they had believed God. Now these men that we have
raised up here in this place, in this new church, we ask that you
give them wisdom, guide them, grant them to lead this church,
and then they ought to move on. In First and Second Timothy, we
learned that Timothy was told how to look for and to appoint
faithful men. You know what?
Faithfulness is 85% turning up. That's what faithfulness is just
turning up is 85% of faithfulness just turn up.
If you turn up, God will use you during the Calvary Chapel days.
Again, great glory. There was a couple of other Mike
McIntosh. And now they're they're all,
they're older than I am. That's pretty old.
And they would, and I've told you before, but they would
gather on their school holidays. They would come, imagine school
holidays. They would come to the church
and sit at the front of Chuck's office waiting to go and do a
job. Hey, can you go and sweep up
down. Yeah, yeah, we're on.
Could you go down the shop, buy some new pencils for this?
Yeah. Great.
And those people, those young men, then became the actual
pastors of churches, of Calvary Chapel.
There's this, there's this, this desire to serve the Lord.
Faithful men just is turning up. After they had passed through
Presidio, they came to Pamphylia.
Now, when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to
Italia. From there they sailed to
Antioch. So remember, they've been in
Turkey. So they hop on the boat on the
coast of Turkey, and now they sail back the Mediterranean and
they go back to Antioch in Syria.
To the north of Syria, sorry, to the north of Israel is Syria.
Antioch is there. Antioch had become the
headquarters of the early church.
Moved from Jerusalem to Antioch, from where they sail to Antioch
where they had been commended to the grace of God, recommended
commended to the grace of God for the work which they had
completed. They've been away for about a
year doing all this so far. First missionary journey.
And when they had come gathered the church together, what did
they do? They reported all that God had
done with them and notices that he God had opened the door of
faith to the Gentiles. Where did it start?
Do you remember Acts chapter 10 with Peter and then Paul took
over because Paul remember his calling was being Peter would go
to the Jews and Paul would be the one who would lead the
ministry to the Gentiles. And so they stayed there a long
time with the disciples. The door.
Did you know that that door to the Gentiles, that's us is still
open. There was a time and I tell you
as a Calvary Chapel pastor in Australia and in West Australia,
it was, it was tough in California and the US Calvary
Chapel, you used to, there used to be a joke.
You used to put a sign Calvary Chapel out front. 50 people
would come to church, 100 people would come to church in
Australia. Calvary Chapel.
What is that? No one knew.
And I, I used to think I'd tell you, talk to Helen.
We had just the kids coming to church, maybe one or two other
people and we'd pray and pray and, and and and it was God
teaching us I to be faithful. But B.
What happened is Calvary Chapel San Bernardino in particular,
under Pastor John Miller and other Calvary chapels connected
with us through prayer and began to pray.
And through prayer, I know that the hard hearted Australians,
and we are hard hearted Australians, started to be
softened. People began to come to Christ
and then I got a job that happened to be with the state
government police and I still am.
I'm going for catching up with the Governor General and the
Commissioner of Police next week just for casual, going for a
walk together and Calvary Chapel was allowed to have this
opening. It was all the work of God that
we would be talked to the Premier, we would talk to other
people and we would mention Calvary Chapel when we got this
block of land here. Sadly, I'd never heard of
Calvary Chapel, nor had the I can't think of his name now.
He was a Governor General in waa lawyer, but doesn't matter,
doesn't matter names. And I had to meet with them, him
and Nigel, sadly, because we said, you know, we'd like to
have a church here. And he said tell me what's a
Calvary Chapel? And then they researched us, got
a little bit more about in America and explained.
And it was God who allowed us to go for them to go.
You know what, We'll give you give you this block of land.
We'll give you this block of land, millions of dollars worth
of land. Just got to build a church on
it. I went, oh OK, we're in a
community centre across the road.
Build a church. It's got like someone I used to
say to people, it's like someone saying I've got a Rolls Royce,
the latest Rolls Royce, it's worth 4.5 million.
You can have it. If you give me $100,000 today,
you go in cash. I haven't got $100,000.
You know, it's like it's the deal, it's the deal.
And I, I remember saying, Lord and the Lord pushed me aside and
said, this is not your church. You have nothing to do with
this. This is my church.
I'm building it. And within seven years this
church was owned. Within seven years, we never
raised any. You got to put your house up for
collateral. We went to a bank.
All the banks got to be kidding, went to one building company
said not a not a hope. This is when there was the GFC
was going on the world financial crisis.
We're going to build a church. And so we went to these places
and then a bank said, yeah, we'll give you a loan.
No guarantees now houses, you know, all the churches, if
you've ever been around church, you know, people pledge their
church. And then we have this, this
metre on the wall that when we're nearly there, we're going
there and let's, you know, let's, let's have another
washing cars this weekend. We raised $300.
We just need another $1,000,000. We got 300 so far.
And God did it all. You see, God works miraculously.
It's His work, and He invites you tonight, like Paul and
Barnabas, to be connected by faith to His work.
But you only get that connection as Paul and Barnabas did when
they saw that man. If you're on the mission, if
you're home and not on the mission, you won't see that guy.
You won't even come across that guy.
God has it worked for us. The door is open.
God has opened the door. The time is short, the rapture
is soon, the tribulation to follow.
We live in exciting times.