The Message of Grace | Acts 14 | Pastor Keith

Please take a seat, open your Bibles to the book of Acts

Acts 14 · chapter mention

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.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

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,

Matthew 10:23

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

2 Timothy 4:2

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

Acts 10 · chapter mention

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.