Worthless Things vs. the Living God
Notes
Transcript
Now at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. But the people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles. When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to mistreat them and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country, and there they continued to preach the gospel.
Now at Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul speaking. And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And he sprang up and began walking. And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the crowds. But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out into the crowd, crying out, “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. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” Even with these words they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them.
This morning we return to our Acts series, a series that we started at the beginning of June last year. We’ve taken a few breaks as we’ve gone, but over the course of this summer, my plan is to preach through, for the most part, to the end of the book.
Last time we were in this book, we left Paul and Barnabas back on their first missionary journey. The map is back! Following the black line, they initially sailed from Antioch in Syria on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, they went to Cyprus, and then headed north into modern-day Turkey. In the other Antioch, Pisidian Antioch, they had success among some Jews and Gentiles, but there was some persecution. Chapter 13 verse 51 told us, “So [the apostles] shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium.”
Maybe some of us are wondering what that was about. Back in Jesus’ ministry, Matthew 10, he sent out the 12 disciples to preach, and one of the things he told them was, “ If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.’” It’s a sign of judgment. But having faced persecution, they continued on, and we pick up the account in the red circled area. These 2 men, apostles, sent by God and the church to tell the gospel, went to Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and the surrounding area.
As we begin, I invite you to join me in reading question and answer 95 from the Heidelberg Catechism responsively. It’s a short one that goes along with the Catechism’s treatment of the first commandment. What is idolatry? Idolatry is having or inventing something in which one trusts in place of or alongside of the only true God, who has revealed himself in the Word.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if you think about the context of when God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, it was a time when those who surrounded and influenced God’s people had idols. They had deities that either they or those leading them had envisioned and created that they called gods. Those people gave them personalities; some even shaped them into images with wood or stone or metal. People truly believed these imagined gods controlled different parts of life. So, they would pray and sacrifice to them; they danced to appease them. Different groups in different places had different gods, but usually they viewed the gods as being in another realm.
That’s what was going on back then, over 3,000 years ago. Because we don’t see it as much or as readily, perhaps we think idolatry is dead. Yet there are still people today, I won’t say just in other parts of the world, it can be here, too—people who believe in those kinds of gods and who have idols. As Christians, we believe that is sin; it’s a rejection of the one true God. Yet false gods have taken on other appearances, too. The idols that others worship and that we might be tempted to honor are different. We talk about the gods of money, luxury, fun—some people seek those as the most important things; they will do anything for them.
Another idol that people worship is other people. We live in a society, a culture, where people are obsessed with and idolize others. It can be athletes—we over-admire how they play and their importance in the grand scheme of life. We need their autographs, because some value has been placed on them touching something and writing their name on it. Some will overlook any of their idol’s flaws and treat them as if they can do no wrong. People idolize, they do the same sorts of things with, singers, models, and online influencers who have risen to celebrity status. These people who amass wealth and incredible followings on social media by people who don’t personally know them, whose lives are very different from theirs, and yet their followers hang on their every post and idea. It can become idolatrous.
I don’t know if many of you have seen the movie “Wayne’s World”—I’m not recommending it—but if you have, I can’t help but think of Wayne and Garth bowing down to their musical heroes, saying, “We’re not worthy! We‘re not worthy!” Maybe some think, “It’s just for comedy,” but that treatment is all too real in the lives of many people. To over-praise, over-value, over-reverence someone, giving them godlike status—that’s a form of modern-day idolatry.
We are focusing our attention on the latter verses of our passage, on what happened in Lystra. In Acts 13, Paul temporarily blinded a man, but this was the first time we’re told he healed a man who was crippled. If you remember earlier in Acts, this seems to be a pattern for those God worked through. Peter healed a crippled man, Philip had done so as well, and now so had Paul.
Rather than tell us more about that man and any further interaction, Luke, the author, quickly turns the focus to the crowd. The people of Lystra started speaking in their native tongue, which Paul and Barnabas evidently didn’t understand, and the townspeople started not just celebrating them, but they worshiped them. They weren’t just cooking up their best steak and getting ready for a night of thanks; there were sacrifices being brought for the missionaries.
What is going on here? There was a legend in which the Greek gods, Zeus and Hermes, what names these people started calling Barnabas and Paul, came to a town as two men. It kind of follows what we hear in certain Old Testament accounts when angels or messengers came—they looked just like people. So, Zeus and Hermes in human form went through this town and no one showed hospitality, no one welcomed them in, except this old couple who were poor. The legend went, the old couple was rewarded, and the rest of the town destroyed. So, in real life, these people never wanted to miss on showing hospitality if the gods showed back up. They saw Paul’s miracle, and thought, “Surely it’s happening; here they are! Let’s pull out all the stops.”
We come to our first point: Believers should treat unnecessary praise with humility. Verses 14 and 15, “…They tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: ‘Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you…’” If we’re honest, most people quite naturally like to be treated nicely; we like to be pampered. Maybe we don’t like a huge fuss to be made over us. We’re typically modest as compared to extravagant, but if others insist on doing something for us, eventually we let them. We come to the conclusion that they aren’t going to give up. As believers, we even fit that into our view of service sometimes: those who love to show gratitude in material ways, we or others can honor them by accepting their gift to us.
Let’s be absolutely clear, though: enjoying a nice gift that someone offers in gratitude, even if we think it’s way too much and we’re undeserving, is not the same as allowing others to treat you as a god. One person treating another as the most important being there could ever be, revering them as if they personally controlled or changed your life on the scale of eternity should not be allowed. We need that reminder: at the end of the day, regardless of our influence or power, whether great or small, each of us is only human. It doesn’t matter how smart we are or how rich we are or what our last name is or any other marks that add prestige. None of this changes or removes from us the call to pursue humility, to put others before ourselves.
Paul offered this encouragement later in his ministry, in Philippians 2 verses 3 and 4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” If someone is puffing you up, if they’re instilling in you or you can tell they’re pushing for others to see you as so much better than them—we need that reminder that all of us are human. That is something that we should desire to make clear. Not one of us are perfect—we’re not God. Neither is our favorite athlete or celebrity or economic guru—they are not god. As Paul wrote to the Romans, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought…”
Another important piece that we notice in the events of Acts 14 is how quickly they did this. As soon as they understood what was happening, Barnabas and Paul “tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd.” They could not let this go on any longer. They would do what they could to make sure these people didn’t think the wrong thing. They hadn’t come here to be praised; they didn’t come here for fanfare. They came that more people would give praise to God. So, we should follow that example, treat unnecessary praise with humility.
Something deeper needs to be done, though. Our second point: Believers ought to direct the focus of others to Who alone is worthy of worship. What were the next words out of the missionaries’ mouths? Back to verse 15, “‘…We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God…” Up to this point, we’ve focused a lot on the problem of people idolizing people. That’s really just the surface level of what was going on. Yes, these people were trying to worship Paul and Barnabas, the men who were present with them. They did extravagant things, but they did so with the assumption that they were Zeus and Hermes.
All false gods and idols are worthless. All these legends, myths, and things that anchored these people and they relied on for hope—it’s all empty. These missionaries had such a heart for the lost, for people like this. In a couple months we’ll come to Acts 17. Paul was in Athens and there in verse 16 we read, “…He was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” When these men traveled around and came into contact with people who didn’t know “the Living God,” who didn’t know Christ, which Paul knew what that was like earlier in his life, it burdened them.
They didn’t just look at the masses and say, “Well, if they get it, great; if not, oh well.” No, they wanted people to know the truth and to be saved. Meeting these people, they said something about it. It’s easy to say, “They were sent by God and the church. This was their life’s work. They were supported to go and do this.” I won’t disagree with that. But if we recognize there are people putting their trust in nothing or in something worthless, and we can share what we know to be “good news” with 1 person or 3 people or a small group of 10 people or a larger assembly, do we feel a burden to tell others about the truth? I’m not saying you have to go find an unreached people group on each continent or even that you have to travel our country or our state and find all these people yourself, but we all come into contact with people who don’t know the Lord.
I know it’s the case with our GEMS group and the Rebellion youth group. Those are groups where some young people, a small portion of our area’s population, don’t know Jesus. They aren’t walking with God. They haven’t found the most valuable Living God at this point. If they don’t hear, if they don’t know, if we pass up every opportunity to tell them where their worth is found, have we shown them the love we could have shown? In both those ministries, there’s a lot of fun and friendship, but I know the leaders take seriously the call to teach and to lead back to Jesus.
It can take a while to get through to people, and many we may not. It can take a while to know an impact was made in even just one person, and we may not hear about it. But it’s not about being praised for our work! Each of us have the calling to show other people to the Savior, to the One who is worthy of their worship, to the one who we must check ourselves to be sure that we are worshiping him alone. We find our satisfaction, our joy, our worth in him—knowing that he is more than capable to take what we might feel like was our weak work and use it for his glory. Everything else people try to trust in and admire and worship apart from the Living God will blow away like chaff in the wind, will fade like mist, will slip away like sand. Out God is God alone.
Let’s move to our final point now: The Christian’s good news involves Jesus and everything else God does. Verse 15 concludes about the living God, he “‘…made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them…” And while we don’t deny he chose to work with and among and through the Jews in a special way leading up to Christ, verse 17, “‘…Yet he has not left himself without testimony…’” What Paul is saying there is God has regularly provided for people that have been outside of Israel, outside of the flock, as well.
One of the hardest questions we might consider is, “Why won’t people just come to God when we tell them?” Why do they fight? Why do they reject it? Even when people have been through tragedies, even when whole groups of people have been abused, and those have come at the hands of other sinful people, not of God—we believe God is a refuge. Why don’t the lost or the unbelieving just get it? They need hope, why not surrender themselves to God and believe?
Unfortunately, we don’t have easy answers for why exactly certain people believe and others don’t, why some grow up in the faith, but then abandon it. We can go back to God’s foreknowledge and predestination, but we often feel burdens about what happens or what doesn’t happen right now. We want people to have what we have. Yet whether we’re at peace or struggling, one of the most important things we can do is to rely fully on God when we share his gospel.
God has told his people throughout history how he has cared for them. He loves us and provides for our every need. Jesus is absolutely necessary for salvation—what he did, and that people must believe in him. But we believe God has also made this universe and sustains its life and our lives. That’s good news because things can look dark due to sickness or war or issues like erosion or drought or changes in climates and weather. Yet we don’t believe God will ever let things go out of his control; he will not let things fall apart from his plan.
We have a ton of good news to share. It’s not good news from those who people idolize, it’s from our God alone who is real, who loves his people, who has provided for all things throughout all of history. Because he gives us such incredible news and has done incredible things for us, we do worship and magnify him. We watch our thoughts, our attitudes, our actions that we will not name other things as gods, we will guard against that which would take away honor and glory from him. We want others to leave worthless things behind, to leave that which cannot provide anything, that they would come and experience life from the Living God. Amen.