Triumphs and Tribulations Along the King’s Highway

In the year 1678, John Bunyan wrote a one of the most famous books on the Christian life ever written.

He wrote it from prison.

He'd been preaching the gospel without the express written consent of Major League Baseball and the Church of England.

And he was imprisoned for a number of years.

In that experience, he sat down and he wrote an analogy or a parable of the Christian life we know as the Pilgrim's Progress.

In this book, the main character is a man named Christian, and Christian leaves the city of destruction, a city that's doomed to be judged by God.

He flees it.

He has a burden of sin that he releases and it rolls down the hill of Calvary into a tomb and is sealed, and he embarks on a new journey on what Bunyan calls the King's Highway.

But the King's Highway, in this path to the celestial city, which we think of as heaven, is filled with both unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows and tribulations.

If he knew everything that he would experience ahead of time, he may have been tempted to never start that journey at all because it was filled with some serious difficulties.

For example, along the king's highway on his way to glory, Christian had to climb the hill called difficulty.

Later he had to pass by faith between two menacing lions, only to realize in the process of walking by faith that they were chained and they couldn't get him, but boy were they scary.

He had to descend into the valley of humiliation where he fought Apollyon, the great adversary of God's people, where he despaired even of life.

He had to traverse the valley of the shadow of death, go through darkness and snares and pits and terrors.

He even would go through Vanity Fair.

Vanity Fair was a place where everyone there was worldly and superficial, and they were living for the moment.

Who cares about the future?

Who cares about life after death?

And because of the testimony of his traveling companion, Faithful, Faithful was martyred for his faith there, paying the ultimate cost.

And we read this, and maybe we're tempted to think, man, Bunyan was really a Debbie Downer.

Debbie Bunyan, we should have called him.

But the fact is, his conception of the Christian life, as hard as it may look, is both biblical and honest.

I wonder if any of us ever find ourselves assuming that life should be easy, that the default mode of life is easy.

A straight path, a wide path, a sunny path, lots of flowers, perfect temperature.

When we think about marriage, for example, how many of us assume marriage should be easy?

How many of us think that parenting should be easy?

That work, Monday mornings, jobs, bosses, that should be easy.

That our friendships should be easy, that our mission group family life should be easy, that sharing the gospel should be easy.

The fact is, whenever we're on this King's Highway and life grows difficult, reality are the big boulders against which our lives crash and our expectations are shattered.

When that happens, we sometimes come to church asking questions like this Have I taken a wrong turn?

Maybe I'm not on the King's Highway.

Is God against me?

Because I thought this was supposed to be easy.

I thought it was supposed to be like it is in the movies.

This is not what I signed up for.

We may even ask the question, is it all worth it?

This is why I'm excited about Acts chapter 14.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

It's been one of the most encouraging things I've read recently.

We get to be flies on the wall following Paul and Barnabas along as they are traversing the King's Highway that they were on.

We get to see a further, we have a front row seat to see them responding to both the joys and the sorrows, the triumphs and the tragedies and tribulations of their lives along the road of obedience.

I'm going to title this message, Triumphs and Tribulations Along the King's Highway.

That's what this chapter really is all about.

There's a number of ways we could approach this chapter if we could just approach it historically and go through every verse, and we could plot on a map all the different cities they went to in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey and Paul's first missionary journey.

We could geek out about all those things.

But I really wanted to take a step back since we have to cover this whole 28-verse chapter.

And say, what can we glean from this chapter?

Knowing that the gospel spread, miracles happened, people were saved, opposition was mounted against them.

They were resilient, they come to the end of their journey and they praise God.

That's the story.

But what lessons can we learn from their kingdom-minded, mature perspective on life, so that you and I can travel more faithfully, more resiliently along the King's Highway ourselves.

Acts chapter 14 drops us back into Paul's first missionary journey, which is recorded in Acts 13 and 14.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

At the beginning of Acts 13, the church at Antioch of Syria, just north of Israel, commissioned them to go north into Asia Minor with the gospel.

Chapter 14 is going to plunge us deeper into that and then wrap that first missionary journey up as they come full circle back to Antioch.

They're going to take the gospel not only across the island of Cyprus and deeper into modern-day Turkey, they're going to carry the gospel to Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, and Derby.

These four cities, they stood along important trade routes in that day.

But what's interesting is they each differ in language and culture and religion, but it shows how how universally applicable and relevant the gospel is to every culture.

They're going to different cultures, religions, there were different local gods, but the gospel is the gospel, and Jesus is king wherever you go.

But these are not safe places.

These are dangerous places that don't welcome new ideas that call upon them to change.

They're threatened in Iconium, they're mistaken for gods in superstitious Lystra, and then Paul is stoned and left for dead.

But by the end of the chapter, we find them returning to Antioch in verse 27, saying this, telling them all that God had done with them, and how that God had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.

That was their summary at the end of their journey.

So let's glean these four insights from the chapter.

In verses 1 through 7, we see first that they pursue faithfulness and not ease.

They pursued faithfulness and not ease.

The chapter opens in verse 1 saying that Paul and Barnabas enter Iconium.

And they preach in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Gentiles believe.

So far, so good.

I mean, the mission they were commissioned to go on is going really well.

Gospel fruit is born.

Miracles and signs are happening, the earlier verses say of chapter 14.

But so is resistance to the gospel.

And so immediately in verse 2 we read that the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.

You ever felt like someone's mind was poisoned against you?

We can all identify with that.

No matter how you reason or defend or try to explain, it's a lost cause.

Relationships fractured, people then become your enemies.

They experience this in verse 2.

But yet at verse 3, we see that they remained for a long time speaking boldly for the Lord.

Wow.

The gospel's proclaimed, many believe, but then people are stirred up against them, their minds poisoned against them.

You would expect the next verse to read: so Paul and Barnabas got out of town.

No, it says they remained there for a long while speaking boldly.

Why?

Because they were pursuing faithfulness, not ease.

Even verse 7, when the threat becomes an organized attempt to kill them, and they do end up saying, okay, we've got to get out of here, they flee to Lystra and Derby, where they continue to preach the gospel.

They didn't change their MO.

So whether staying or moving on to the next opportunity, whether welcomed or rejected, they were really asking and answering one question.

What does faithfulness to Christ require of me now?

Is that the question that you're asking in difficult situations?

What does faithfulness look like?

Not what does what does ease or comfort look like?

In 1812, a fire swept through the Serempur mission press in India, where William Carey, who was often called the father of modern-day Protestant missions, he was in the early 1800s and he was a pioneer in Baptist missions.

He hailed from England.

He went to India.

He learned the language there, in fact, a number of their languages and dialects.

And because of the language barrier, he was a brilliant linguist.

He started out as a shoemaker, a cobbler, and God called him to the mission field.

He goes there and he begins to translate, write grammar works, and to carve typeset for old-fashioned printing presses to print gospel literature into all these different languages.

He labored for years in this printing press and on these grammars and on these dictionaries and manuscripts and gospel tracts, and in one single night, a fire came and destroyed his entire work.

He walked through the rubble, the smoking ruins, and the charred equipment with a friend, Thomas Thompson, who later wrote that as they were walking through and they were seeing equipment that was beyond repairs, they were seeing stacks of paper charred beyond recognition, that tears filled Carrie's eyes, and he said this.

Or thinking that God was against me and this must be punishment for something.

At the very least, I would be tempted to say, this is a providential sign, this is a providential sign that I need to return back to my homeland, take care of my family there, and resume a quiet and peaceful life away from the mission field.

Remarkably, Carrie and his team there at Serempore begin to rebuild and remake, and several years later they had the thing back up and running and they were printing missionary literature all over again.

It seems that Carrie embodied trust in God's promise in Psalm chapter 34 and verse 19, where the psalmist says this many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all.

Psalms 34 · chapter mention

We like to claim the last part of that, but do we believe the first part?

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

Paul and Barnabas share this perspective that sometimes even obedience to God means loss and rebuilding.

Well, we don't find any evidence in Acts chapter 14 that they were making comfort, the measure of God's presence, power, or goodness.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

So when we think about our own lives, are we measuring the good life by faithfulness to Christ or by ease?

How often we see uh jeeps driving down the road, and on the back of this rugged jeep is a tire, and on the tire is some kind of uh covering, and on this covering is the good life.

I think it's a jeep thing.

Um I always wonder when I see that, how does that person define the good life?

Most likely it's a beautiful, sunny, and 75 day with a light breeze, the top off, driving down the interstate in flip-flops and a tank top, and living the good life.

That's what the good life is for a Jeep driver, right?

But I wonder how do we define the good life for ourselves?

I think we can slip into an extremely superficial and naive way of thinking about the good life.

And if we define it as ease, comfort, sitting in the sand with a drink in our hand, we could turn that into a song if it's not already one, then we're gonna be sorely disappointed.

Jesus talked about the parable of the sower, where there are uh there are four different types of soil, and the seed of the soil goes and it falls on some really shallow soil.

And the seed grows immediately because of the warmth, but it can't grow very deep because it's kind of hard underneath the soil.

And so it grows just very shallowly and it springs up and it's all excited, but he said, as soon as affliction befalls that group of people, they immediately wither.

What my heart as a pastor is, and especially as I come to a text like this, I want us to be a people who don't wither under affliction, who aren't defining the good life by the sunny and 75 days, because there aren't as many of those as we would like.

Praise God, we see in Acts chapter 14 not just some hard things, we see miracles take place, we see signs, we see tons of conversions, we see successes, we see narrow escapes.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

There's tons of things to praise God for.

We're talking an exciting life on the frontier of sharing the gospel.

Who wouldn't want to experience all those things?

Well, brothers and sisters, it's accompanied by things beyond their imagination difficult.

Comfort is a broken compass that rarely points us deeper into God's kingdom, and so will we pursue faithfulness to Jesus or will we pursue ease?

Faithfulness is a wonderful two-edged sword.

On one hand, it keeps us from despair and fleeing and running and retreating when the road is difficult.

But faithfulness also guards us from pride whenever we're walking this steep trail, and then it levels and it enters a beautiful, broad clearing, and we see the sun and the birds and the beautiful grass and the flowers.

In other words, number two, we see them in verses eight through eighteen, letting success magnify God and not pride.

So it guards us from both retreating and from pride when we feel the thrill of success.

Number two, let success magnify God, not pride.

And I titled this part, verses eight through eighteen, that because they experienced some pretty amazing success in these verses.

Verse 18, as they flee for their lives from Iconium, it brings him to Lystra, where Paul encounters immediately a man crippled from birth.

Someone who is known in that city of Lystra as their Job, the crippled man.

People that had been given him money, they knew his parents, they knew he was a beggar, they knew he couldn't work like other people.

He had never walked, it says.

Paul walks by him, he sees him, he stares intently at him, and he discerns through the Holy Spirit that he is someone who has faith to be made whole.

That's what it said.

And so Paul commands him stand upright on your feet.

And immediately the man sprang up.

His legs received strength, and for the first time in his life he walked.

Who wouldn't want to experience that?

Who wouldn't want to see that?

Who wouldn't want to be able to report later to the church, you wouldn't believe what we saw.

This is amazing.

But it gets crazier.

The crowds in Lystra see this.

They see the man who had been born lame, or maybe he'd had an injury as a young child.

He'd never walked.

They knew him, and they saw him spring up and rock, and they saw him rejoicing, and they saw that Paul was the one who had healed him.

And they begin to worship Paul and Barnabas.

These people are so superstitious with all their gods and all their spirits.

They end up saying, in their amazement and superstition, that Barnabas must be the incarnation of Zeus.

And Paul must be the incarnation of Hermes.

Hermes was the Greek god of a number of things, but he was the messenger God.

He's the little God with the wings that carries messages places you see in pictures.

Because Paul was the main speaker.

They looked at Barnabas and said, You're the incarnation of Zeus.

That's a pretty big compliment.

They go from being kicked out of town, fleeing for their lives, probably at night, sneaking into the city of Lystra, they heal someone, and all the media, all the all of a sudden, they're elevated to the status of God-like deity is incarnate.

Wow, talk about the roller coaster of ministry in the Christian life.

Isn't that remarkable?

From the lows to the lows to the highest to the highest, from being the refuge of society to being God's in the flesh.

But rather than relishing their newfound status and telling each other, you can imagine the kind of conversation they had had with each other as they sat back and said, Are you getting this?

The people over there wanted to kill us.

They were plotting against our lives.

These people are, it says the priests actually brought sacrifices to make to them.

They were going to kill oxen and they were bringing these reeds to put around their necks, and they were bowing before them.

Paul's like, You've got to be kidding me.

But they didn't respond by saying, you know what, let's just revel in this a little bit.

Let's spend a couple days on the beach.

Let's soak in the sun and the praise of man, and then we'll correct the bad theology later.

We don't see that at all.

Verses 14 through 15 and verse 18 say this.

But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out into the crowd, crying, 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.

He turned them away from their superstitions.

These were priests of the local temple to Zeus.

He's saying, There's one true God, serve him.

But verse 18 says, even with these words, they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them.

Paul and Barnabas, no doubt, they rejoiced that God had used them in such powerful ways.

I mean, they were probably praising God, saying, Wow, praise God that you, through the Spirit, raise this man from his injury or his infirmity.

But they understood that the source of any power and any goodness in them was not their own, but was of God.

They understood with this kingdom-minded focus, this kingdom-minded perspective on their lives, that success is never meant to be a mirror through which we admire ourselves.

Our successes are meant to be windows through which people admire the goodness and the glory of God, the giver of every gift.

If we were to walk out here into the lobby, we're going to see a bunch of uh stained glass windows.

Like everyone, I love a stained glass window.

But what's interesting about stained glass windows is in the dark, they're completely ordinary.

It's only as the sunlight breaks over the horizon and the light and the rays of the sun shine through that glass that the window begins to glow with vibrant colors and beauty.

People may walk along and see the window and see the colors and see the light that it casts, and they may even say, wow, this person was amazing.

The art, the artistry in this window, it's beautiful.

They may see something genuinely beautiful in that, but if you take away the sun, the beauty disappears.

That's how it is with us.

God gives many gifts and abilities and talents and successes in the church for the joy and the building up of God's people, for the pushing back on the powers of darkness, for the salvation of souls.

He uses our words and our generosity and our parenting and our worship and our person-to-person counsel and our hard work as volunteers and so much more.

And others may genuinely see something beautiful and powerful in our efforts.

But the light does not originate in us.

In fact, pride grows when the window fancies itself the sun.

And sometimes when we do that, God says, Okay, you think this is a view?

I'm gonna turn out the light, and you realize how dark things can get in a hurry.

We see Paul and Barnabas refusing that confusion.

The crowd saw divine power, but they tried to worship the human instruments.

We do this all the time.

We live in a celebrity culture.

Man, never is this more, at least in the videos I watch on YouTube most of the time, never is this more opportunity.

Obvious than in celebrity preachers.

There's a long list of people that I admire so much for their lives, their integrity, their biblical teaching, their godliness, all the things, but it's so easy instead of just learning from them and praising God for them, to then make them the object of our praise.

To sign something to them that they didn't originate themselves.

They've got gifts they're using for God's glory.

And we end up often being very disappointed.

I'm going to share a quick story that I didn't plan to do, but I was at a conference one time, and many of you probably know John Piper, right?

He was one of my heroes from high school and college.

And John Piper was preaching, and he was preaching from Galatians that's together for the gospel conference maybe 10 years ago.

And he was preaching the house down, and about probably 10 minutes into his talk, a man came in front of me.

We were in this huge stadium, and I recognized his face.

I'm not going to say his name.

But then I heard him talk, and I'm like, that's him.

This was like a celebrity preacher that I respected on the radio, nationally syndicated, unbelievably talented minister from another city, sat right in front of me.

And I was like, that's really cool.

Well, I noticed during the during the service, he hardly lifted his head up.

He was writing the whole time and every once in a while.

And I was like, this is just beautiful.

Here's a man who is at the top of his game.

He's got more life experience and ministry experience than John Piper, but he can't, he's hanging on every word.

And to my utter shock, at one point I looked over his shoulder when he turned and he was making a shopping list.

He wasn't writing sermon notes.

I learned right then you shouldn't idolize people.

They're people just like you and me.

Even ministers struggle to pay attention in church sometimes.

Paul and Barnabas said, no, we are men of like passion as you.

How should we respond when we experience successes in life?

When we experience applause or admiration or just success.

Among our peers or at church or in our business.

Our kids grow up to be amazing, and people compliment us all the time on our kids.

My kids are still too young.

The verdict's still a long ways away.

How do we receive that?

We should receive it as encouragement, right?

But are we taking this as an opportunity to render praise to God?

If we truly believe anything good in me, the only thing good in me is Jesus.

The only thing good I do is through the power of the Holy Spirit in me.

Man, if you believe that, it changes the way you receive compliments.

Praise God.

We can through gratitude turn that into an opportunity for our own personal praise to God.

Lord, I pray that my friendships would be fruitful, and lo and behold, someone just told me I'm a great friend.

Wow.

Praise God.

Lord, I've been praying for this.

Lord, help me to point them to Jesus instead of, I'm a great friend.

And many other examples we could think of.

It might feel humble to simply brush it off, brush off the compliment, but this is a missed opportunity to render praise to God that He deserves.

Paul and Barnabas didn't let success go to their heads, which is really fortunate, because the very same crowd that could have made success go to their heads would be lobbying stones at their heads in the very next part of the passage.

We see in verses 19 through 23 a third lesson from their pattern of life.

That they see tribulation as a path deeper into the kingdom.

And we ought to see tribulation as a path deeper into the kingdom.

As is often the case in life, circumstances can change with terrifying speed.

Verse 19 narrates this.

We thought the clouds had parted.

Verses 1 through 7, the difficulties and the death threats were gone, but look at verse 19.

But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds at Lystra, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing he was dead.

Well, that turned on a dime.

The same idolatrous crowd that wanted to sacrifice to Paul is just as easily persuaded to sacrifice Paul.

They stone him, drag him out of the city, leave him for dead.

Some speculate that he actually was dead and God raised him from the dead.

We don't know that.

We just know that they thought he was dead.

He was concussed, he was unconscious at the least.

But eventually he wakes up as the brothers and sisters gather around him.

And they re-enter the city of Lystra, probably under the cover of darkness.

The very next day, what does he do?

He travels to the city of Derby, where he begins to preach the gospel once again.

Man, I greatly admire the grace of God in Paul's life.

It's like I was telling Justin earlier, Acts, the book of Acts, but especially as I'm reading Acts chapter 14, it's like we're a bunch of middle school swimmers that are like watching Michael Michael Phelps' training or something, right?

Acts 14 · chapter mention

You're seeing someone who can do things that you can't do, that I can't do, and we're we're marveling at them and the Spirit of God in them.

And that's exactly the position I feel myself to be in.

I find it hard to identify with the kind of love Paul had for people.

I feel like I would have shaken the dust off my feet.

I'd have high tailed it back to my hometown of Tarsus.

I would have retaken up tent making and I'd have said, I'm just gonna live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

These people don't want to be saved, they don't want Jesus, and I'm not gonna tell them about him.

We see something so different and so inspiring in their mentality, their kingdom focus, that made them so resilient.

What was Paul's perspective and mindset that could have made him so driven in the face of fickle human opinion and even direct opposition?

We don't have to speculate.

In verse 22, he tells us exactly his perspective.

After they saw many more people come to faith in the next city, verse 22 says, They were strengthening the souls of the disciples, these new disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

There's so many other ways I would have written that phrase.

These new disciples, who wants to discourage them, right?

Through many signs and wonders you will enter the kingdom of God.

Through many successes, through God coming through for you, through God granting favor to you before your boss and before your neighbor and before that young lady if you're a single guy, or that that young man if you're a single girl, God making all your wildest dreams come true.

That's how you enter the kingdom of God.

That's how I want to write it.

But he says, through many tribulations.

And remember, when Paul says this, he's got active scabs on his face and body from the beating and the stoning.

This is so counter to our gut intuitions that that tribulation along the path of Christian obedience that it's not a sign of the kingdom's defeat or necessarily of the king's displeasure.

That we live in a fallen world that is actually embroiled in a cosmic war.

If you were to walk outside and you see a rocket whistle across and explode and a building fall and bullets start ricocheting off, you would not get that, or you'd be like, what just happened?

Because you exited that, your house not realizing that you are now at war, World War III, right?

But if you are in the war and you know you're in the war, when you walk out your door and you see a rocket or you hear bullets ricocheting, you're not surprised.

And you're taking precautions because you know you're at war.

There's so many of us who leave our houses every day on Monday mornings and we go to work and we forget we're in a cosmic warfare.

We have difficult conversations with our spouses and we forget we're in a cosmic warfare.

We're trying to disciple our children as they grow up, and we forget we're in a warfare for our hearts and our souls.

And there are forces out of sight that are so often out of mind.

And we're not equipped, we're not fortified, we're not walking in the power of God because we don't think we need it.

Suffering does not purchase us interest into God's kingdom.

Christ alone does that.

But Jesus brings us deeper into his kingdom, which is just another way of saying, if you think, well, what is the kingdom and what does it mean to pursue and to enter the kingdom?

It means to experience the presence and the power of God as his rule spreads over the earth from heart to heart.

To go deeper into the kingdom is to be more and more under the rulership of Jesus and to see that rulership spread to other people's lives.

Jesus uses affliction.

Doesn't mean that's the reason why he sent it or allowed it, but praise God, he never lets it go to waste.

Christ redeems our tribulations to strip away our false securities, to deepen our faith, to reorder what we love in this world, to reveal the lasting beauty and value of his enduring kingdom.

I can't tell you how many times I was in kind of a spiritual lull because things were going well.

It'd been a few months since there'd been some kind of crisis or crucible, and I was feeling good.

I was feeling like success on every front.

My kids like me, my wife likes me, I go to work, and people seem happy to see me, and I'm getting the job done, and I go to church and I'm enjoying good fellowship, and life is good.

But then affliction befalls me.

Tribulation, the crucible.

And I realize that I'm not nearly as important as I thought I was.

I realize that I'm probably overlooking all the ways that I'm failing and falling short, and I've got a false sense of success in my mind.

And I realize that I can say with David in Psalm 139, Lord, there's no one I have in heaven or earth beside you.

Whereas the week before, I would have started listing friends and people and successes and all these things that I have besides God.

But whenever those things get threatened and I see how insecure they are, I work in healthcare.

I'm one patient passing away on my watch, away from my life being shattered, if that's my security.

I'm one disagreement with my spouse.

If marriage is my security, I'm one sleepless night when I'm on the couch or something, which thankfully in our marriage I've never had to do that.

Praise God.

She sleeps on the couch.

No, just kidding.

Just kidding.

I'm one bad phone call away from my life being wrecked, if that's what my security, my joy, and my value is placed on.

That's why affliction takes us deeper into the kingdom because it strips away all the other things that prop us up.

And we realize that long after all the accusations or the accolades of fickle human beings have passed away, long after the fool's gold of this world rusts, God's kingdom still stands.

And the more we are pressing into that, the more we stand with joy and satisfaction in Christ.

The path to an enduring crown is always through a cross.

Isn't this the story of our Savior?

He's the supreme story.

That the path he traveled was one of affliction, that he did not enter glory by stepping around or his suffering, but by entering straight through it.

We're told in the Gospels that Jesus told numerous times his disciples that he was going to be delivered, he was going to go to Jerusalem, be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be mocked and scourged and crucified, but then he would rise on the third day.

He told them that.

He knew exactly what he was getting into, but Matthew says he set his face like flint toward Jerusalem.

Nothing could deter him, and he pressed on that king's highway to his death.

Much like Paul, but even more so, Jesus ironically was struck down by the very same crowd that five days before had cried out, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Five days later they're crying out, Crucify Him.

He was mocked as a fake king.

He was rejected.

He was ridiculed.

He was slandered.

He was scourged.

He had nails that pierced his hands and his feet.

He was set up on a cross for all to behold and ridicule.

He was crushed under the weight of God's just judgment against our sins.

But even though he entered the grave in seeming defeat, on the third day the stone was rolled away.

Death could not possibly hold him back.

Death was broken.

Our king rose victorious.

And get this: the pain and the suffering that God's people go through, because of the pain and suffering Jesus went to for us, it's being redeemed.

In the end, the new creation will have no cursed thing.

Every tear will be wiped away from our eyes.

The fulfillment of Psalms promise that God keeps all of our tears in a bottle and all of our afflictions in a book will come to fruition as Jesus, the hand scarred Savior, welcomes us into his everlasting kingdom.

Because of Jesus' victory, our suffering is never wasted.

As he promised in John 16, 33, in the world you will have tribulation.

But take heart, I have overcome the world.

No, but the whole phrase is in the world you will have tribulation.

Flipsis.

Oppressing.

But take heart, I've overcome the world.

And so finally, armed with this invincible kingdom perspective, Paul and Barnabas could look back over their missionary journey without bitterness or boasting, as we see in the final verses of this chapter, verses 24 through 28.

Fourthly, we see that they testify to God's grace and glory.

It's such a beautiful thing to see all the things that they went through, the highs and the lows, and the highs and the lows, this roller coaster, and here they come back to Antioch at the end of the chapter.

They circle back the end of that first missionary journey to the very place where early in chapter 13 they had been, hands had been laid upon them, the Spirit had separated them for the work they were about to do.

And they get to share with the church everything that God had done.

Grace had sent them, grace had sustained them, grace had preserved them through opposition and success and temptation.

As I was preparing this, I was thinking, how would this impact a family?

And so I just want us to picture in our minds imagine a family at the end of a long, brutally difficult year.

Around the dinner table, sort of licking their wounds and talking about the year.

They've experienced sickness or financial strain or disappointment or setbacks or the death of loved ones.

And one of the family's family members, as they're venting a little, someone else speaks up, probably a little brother, and he asks this really annoying question.

Yes, but where have we seen God's grace at work?

It's a simple but really profound question.

At first the room is quiet, no one wants to answer that.

There's an exchange of cynical smirks and knowing glances.

But then someone says, you know, I do think of the friends who brought us meals for a couple weeks.

Someone else mentions the night that the family had wept and prayed together and were closer to each other than they ever had been through all the happy times.

Dad pipes up and he he mentions that, if he's honest, he's learned for the first time to pray honestly.

To learn that God invites him to lament and ask big questions like, why?

And how long?

Mom agrees that she's been brought into a deeper dependence on the Lord after it seems all self-reliance has been stripped away.

The teenage girl pulls out her smartphone and starts scrolling through photos and starts pointing out small kindnesses that God had sent their way that they weren't really thinking about.

A picture of a gorgeous sunset breaking through the rain.

The first flower of spring that she had snapped a picture of in the front yard.

The fun of a surprise birthday party.

While we may think that these things are trivial, if we were to take the time, we had the time and go back to Paul's message there in Lystra, when he's telling them, stop worshiping us, worship the one true God, he mentions those types of things as evidence of God's goodness.

He makes the rain to feed the to feed our cattle and our to grow food.

And he sends it upon the just and the unjust.

He gives us all things richly to enjoy.

These are the things that Paul said.

In other words, the list is truly endless if we view our lives through the eyes of faith.

Instead of through the eyes of a lens of the good life that God never promised.

Faith in God's active promise, active presence.

That's exactly what Paul and Barnabas do upon returning to Antioch.

They gather the church and they tell the raw truth about their journey.

The pain points, shows the scars.

Maybe Paul still had headaches from that experience.

The blisters on their feet, but also the conversions and the miracles and the answer prayers.

God had opened doors, he had granted success, and against all odds, he had sustained their faith and invited them to press deeper into his everlasting kingdom.

I'll close with this.

In the Pilgrim's Progress, Christian's journey along the King's Highway never became easy.

If you read that book or listen to the audio, it seems to get harder and harder.

But in the end, Christian reaches the celestial city because no power of hell or scheme of man could ever pluck him from God's hand.

Jesus had already traveled that same narrow road.

He had already conquered every enemy, and he promised to sustain him every step of the way.

And so, with Paul and Barnabas and Christian and Jesus Christ Himself, the faithful one, at the end of our own earthly journeys, may our own testimony be that against all the odds that we face, look what God is doing.