Sermon Tone Analysis

No, no, no, not that

Last week we finished moving out of the Rocksborough house, Karen’s old house, and it is officially sold.

Six months into our marriage, we now have one house… but we still have two houses worth of stuff.

Across the creek there, in long family tradition, we have a storage unit full of furniture and dishes and stuff.

Our garage is full of stuff.

And we have the joyous work of deciding what works best in our house… which means some of the stuff I had there needs to go.

For most stuff, super easy.

My coffee table was an old pallette up on crates.

Hers was an actual table.

Let’s go with that.

Her TV was better, let’s upgrade.

But in that process, I have discovered some odd things.

We will be having that conversation about getting rid of stuff… and this is what happens in me:

“Oh, yeah, we could swap out that table, that’s fine… change up that room cool… oh NOT THAT PICTURE!”

Super defensive, super upset, emotion from out of nowhere!

What is that?

Well we talk about it.

My sister gave me that when she helped redecorate my house three years ago.

It carries all this weight of sentiment and meaning to me, it was part of my identity in a way I didn’t expect or anticipate.

And what do you do when you sense of self or your sense of place is threatened?

The most human thing is to defend it.

To reject the change and hold on to the known.

We experience this in all avenues of life.

In fact, whenever we get defensive it is likely because something deeper is being threatened, down at the level of belief and identity.

Those things are incredibly difficult to change.

Painful to change...

Down at those deepest levels are our ideas about who we are, and our ideas about who God is are down there as well… because that shapes who we are.

What do you do when those ideas and ideals are threatened?

Or to ask that a different way:

What do you do when God turns out different than you expected?

He will.

He is.

He is different than you expect!

Paul’s Missionary Journey, continued...

First to the Jews, then to the Greeks.

They are in Iconium.

There is a “great number” of believers… but also great opposition.

So perhaps Paul and Barnabus will be driven away immediately?

(Note that Paul and Barnabus are here, fluidly, without great fanfare, called apostles.

Paul would later argue boldly for his status and calling as an apostle.

Lystra

Now they have traveled to Lystra, 30 miles away.

Their evangelism strategy has proven effective so far… so they repeat the same kind of strategy.

This time the action focuses in one of the signs and wonders in particular.

Miracle at Lystra

This is always amazing to me.

There is no question in Paul of the Father’s will here, there is clear vision.

He “sees” that the man has faith to be made well… so do it!

Miracle!

As men always do, they attempted to squeeze the miracles of God into the boxes of their own understanding.

They have a place where miracles fit… it is in the gods that they know: Zeus and Hermes.

This is appropriation.

This is human.

We will always attempt to fit new experiences or information into the framework of understanding we already have.

What do I already know that can explain this miracle?

And the local priests are quick to try and make some money off this new encounter.

That is of course, unacceptable to Paul and Barnabus.

How unacceptable?

It is time to get crazy dramatic.

Paul tries to open their eyes, their minds, to see the God who is!

He doesn’t fit in their existing categories.

Appropriation isn’t going to work, they need revelation.

They need a whole new understanding, a whole new set and way of thinking!

A living God, a Creator God...

How amazing is that?

I imagine like Grandma trying to force soup on you.

No, no thank you, no I don’t want you to murder a bull in front of me.

Please and thank you!

You cannot appropriate God as He actually is.

You cannot fit Him into your models of worship, your pre-existing understanding of the world, or your expectations for how He should work.

What happens when you try?

Paul and Barnabus reject their misguided sacrifices.

So does God.

He isn’t Zeus.

He isn’t Hermes.

He seeks to make Himself known.

So the question is, what do people do when God doesn’t fit inside their boxes… and refuses to squeeze in?

Jews came from Antioch and Iconium.

Think about that for a second.

People who walked 30 miles (from Iconium) or 150 miles from Pisidian Antioch!

How angry do you have to be to travel that kind of distance!

I HATE this new thing you are saying about who God is… and I hate it SO much I will travel for days or weeks to try and make sure that no one else listens to you either.

“And they persuaded the crowds...”

These are the very same people who were worshipping Paul and Barnabus in the previous verses.

How quickly that turned!!!

The crowds, having been persuaded, they turn on Paul in a brutal way.

In Iconium they had attempted to stone Paul.

Here they really did.

They stoned him… which means they threw rocks at him until they thought he was dead.

So at the least they knocked him unconscious, maybe a mild coma… maybe even dead for real.

Paul Keeps Going

Seriously???

He has just been stoned!

More than that, he returns to the cities that had attacked them!

What a change.

What a transformation.

Contrast with the man being stoned.

Just a very few years ago, Paul was one of those Jews willing to travel 100s of miles to murder people claiming God was different from how he understood God to be.

He was either complicit in or maybe even organizing the stoning of the first martyr for the name of Christ: Stephen.

Then he was faced with revelation, blinding light, the voice of Christ, miraculous healing and… when face to face with the revelation that God is who He actually is… and that it didn’t fit his expectations… Saul/Paul accepted and received God as who He revealed Himself to be.