Good News for Lystra

Acts 14:8-18 

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Common grace is a term you may or may not recognize, but it is a concept you surely understand. Common grace is the grace of God that is experienced by all people everywhere. It is the experience of God's goodness that is known to believer and unbeliever alike. What Professor John Murray describes as every favor of whatever kind or degree falling short of salvation which this undeserving and sin curse world enjoys at the hand of God.
God is certainly kind to those who have no right to expect anything good from him. That is what makes it grace. It is his favor that none of us can or have earned. And what makes it common is that it is extended to everyone. As a psalmist declares in Psalm 145, verse nine, The Lord is good to all and His mercy is over.
All He has made over the years. Scholars and theologians have recognized various aspects of common grace, and John Frame in his book Systematic Theology, cites six of them. He notes that common grace is evident as God restrains sin, God graciously prevents fallen man from being as wicked as he could be. Common grace is evident also as God restrains his wrath.
If he were to completely pour out on people the punishment that is deserved. No one no one could stand. But instead he is patient. He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Common grace is evident in temporal blessings. We see that in nature, Even though creation was subject to futility at the fall.
The natural world still manages to contain moments and glimpses of great beauty, both the moments and the ability to behold. Those moments are examples of calm and grace, as are the harvests in the produce that we receive from the Earth. God literally shines on his creation with his son and nourishes the Earth with his reign. Both the good and the evil are blessed by this.
The just and the unjust. Receive this from the hand of God. We are all beneficiaries of God's warmth and God's refreshment because of common grace. The same grace of God is seen in the moral realm when unbelieving people do good things. God equips mankind with a conscience and the ability to know Him and his ways, even if the intention to honor him isn't present in an individual.
Jesus reminds us even sinners do good to those who do good to them. Common grace is evident in that all people believing or unbelieving can know truth. They can know God. They can catch a glimpse of truth and reality. And finally, God's common grace exists as even unbelievers may experience some blessings of the Holy Spirit. Influences and operations.
The results in the experience and the power of glory, even if not leading to salvation. It is the third aspect of calm and grace that I want to talk about a little bit this morning. This is the one that we see Paul using in this morning's text. The evidence of God and creation creation is a witness, Paul says of God's existence.
He says the same thing in Romans chapter one. And yet being a witness and a beneficiary of God's common grace is not equivalent to trusting him or being eternally saved. There is a difference between calm and grace, which is enjoying all the blessings of God that come to all people everywhere. There is a difference between common grace and saving grace, which is believing in Christ and receiving what Christ has done.
And in our text for the day, Paul brings the good news of saving grace to the people of Lystra who have, to this point, labored under common grace. Our father, as we come to your word, we do so humbly and we do so anticipating that you're going to speak to us every time we crack open that Bible, you speak, help us, Lord, today to have hearts that are open to your voice, eyes and ears open as well, to hear and to see what you want to show us, what you want to reveal.
Be glorified. In this time we pray. In Jesus name, Amen. So now Paul and Barnabas come to life through Lystra, some 18 miles away from meconium, which is apparently or so they believe, just about enough far away to get away from the officials there who wanted them dead. So they figured eight miles ought to do it. Let's try as a Roman outpost.
Some people kind of call that a a backwater type of town. It appears to be mostly, if not all, gentile. And one of the reasons to believe that this was a gentile location is that the pattern previously established by Paul and Barnabas to go and preach first in the synagogues was not followed. And so some have just simply surmised there's no synagogue there because there's no Jewish presence there, no Jewish worship.
So and secondly, as we get deeper into the texts that Justin has read, we learn that the people of Leicester were already worshipers of Greek gods. They had a temple set up to Zeus in Leicester. Paul and Barnabas come across a man who was crippled and he has been lame from birth, unable to walk from his mother's womb.
And once again, as is common in Luke's description of miracles, you must have picked this up by now. We have little information. Luke always tells us what we need to know. Not always what we want to know. We don't know this guy's name. We don't know much about him at all. But what we do know, what Luke to share with us is that he's listening intently to what Paul is saying.
Which means, of course, that Paul is preaching, which is what Paul does whenever he shows up in town and he has this crippled man's full attention. Verse nine is an interesting verse because Paul looks intently at this man and sees that he has faith to be healed. Now how one sees the faith to be healed, that that defies explanation.
It is not natural, this knowledge that Paul has. This is supernatural knowledge that God has given to him. Paul knows somehow that this crippled man is a candidate for healing, and so he commands him in a loud voice. He doesn't do what you or I might be compelled to do if we felt the spirit leading us that way, just sort of walk over and kind of hedge the bed.
I think you got, you know, he commands in a loud voice for this man, stand up on your feet. And a man sprang up and he began walking. And we are meant to understand here, beloved, that our God is an amazing God and that God is a healing God. Now, we don't know how old this man was. We only know that he was a grown man, not a child.
If he was a child, that would have been a different Greek word used for it. He's a man. And being a man crippled from birth means that for however many years he's been on the planet, he has not had the use of his legs. So I want you to understand this miracle is more than the simple healing of crippled feet.
It is a healing of a body. It is a healing of a body that has no muscular ability whatsoever to support itself. And some of you have experienced surgeries on your extremities. You understand how a limb can atrophy just from lack of use. You break a leg or you break an arm and you have that in a cast.
You see how it gets smaller and smaller and weaker and weaker. I want you to consider the condition of this man's legs that had never been used.
Not just his crippled feet, but his body and how God instantly changed all that. And he was able to obey that command. Stand upright on your feet. Our God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that we could imagine or think. Now, we should note here that something similar has already happened in chapter three. You may remember that was a while ago, but a man who was lame from birth is sitting outside the temple gate and is healed by God through Peter.
And yet, in this overarching narrative of X, now we're in chapter 14. Peter's fading from prominence and Paul is emerging. So it may not be exactly accurate to say it like this, but I must say it like this. Anyway, there's a new sheriff in town, and it isn't Peter. It's Paul. Peter has a significant apostolic ministry that's going to continue.
But here's the point. So does Paul. So does Paul. Through Paul, a crippled man is healed. And once again, the signs accompany the preaching. The signs affirm the power of God in the proclamation of the gospel. Immediately, the the crowd is energized by the miracle. And who wouldn't be? Could you imagine being part of that, seeing something like that?
And almost as quickly as they are energized by the miracle, they misinterpret it. Verse 11. And when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices saying, and look, Ionian the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. Their response is why some consider Lystra a backwater place. The people are not as sophisticated as the folks to whom Paul will be preaching a little bit later.
In Athens, though, they have this similar penchant for worshiping false god, and they want to ascribe this miracle to these false gods. And they believe Paul and Barnabas are the incarnation for them of the Greek gods, Zuse and Hermes. Now, that may seem like a leap. If that seems like a leap for someone to take that a worker of miracles is all of a sudden an incarnate God.
There's a good theory about why these people here wouldn't make it. It has to do with a tradition from that region chronicled by the writer of it, a story told of just such a visit by those two gods who showed favor to a couple who entertained them, but brought awful judgment on the majority who did not. So they kind of think this has already happened and we're not going to get tricked again.
We know this is Zuse and Hermes. That's their tradition. That's what they thought was happening. So so the superstitious people of Lystra see this as a test, very likely a test of their gods, and they don't want to blow it and they don't want to risk judgment. They don't want to do the wrong thing in their minds. The excitement over this healing is broadcast in the native tongue of the people, which is not known to Paul and Barnabas.
They don't they they speak Greek. They don't know this this dialect, they don't know this language. And so they have they're going to be naturally a little bit slow on the take to understand what's going on, All the conversations happening around them and all the excitement around them is happening in a language they don't understand. Have you ever had that experience where you're in a foreign land and people are talking all around you and you have zero idea you're looking at them, you're looking for their facial expression expressions, You're looking to see if you can follow, if you can follow along.
It's a little unnerving, don't you think? A little exasperating at times. I remember one of our first trips we flew in Gary, Remember when we showed up to fly out to the to the lake and a fly and fishing trip, and one of the planes had its engine all over the dock, which itself is a little unnerving if you're like me and you don't like to fly anyway.
But when we asked about flying out is our day to fly out. It was like one hotel motel, one motel in this place. And we had one night and we were supposed to get in this plane. It was supposed to take off and we show up and yes, it's windy, the wind is blowing and that's what we're told.
Or B, we in boys, big wind at French. That's French for big wind. Be big wind. I'm thinking big wind or motor all over the world. Well, no, but anyway, and all along they're having these conversations around us, but we cannot understand a thing and we're completely, utterly at their mercy. It's an unnerving thing to have all this go on around you in a language you don't understand.
A few years ago, I was in the Dominican Republic and I was preaching in a little motel called Mala Nieto. And the culture of the Dominican Republic is somewhat different in terms of the the church culture is different. It's a lot louder than ours. There's a lot of conversations going on even in worship. They don't always sit and pay attention or aren't that polite.
But we're out in Mala Nieto and the crowd starts is is fairly small crowd, but the people come in as we go. That's another Dominican thing. That's really cool. As soon as they start hearing noise, they gather into the church and then they come and it's my turn to preach. So I get up there and I'm preaching along and more and more people are coming, not because the preaching is so wonderful, but because that's what you do when the lights are on in the Dark Mall, a needle, but they're coming in.
They're hanging out just outside the church a little bit. You know, motorcycles are pulling up and scooters are pulling up and there's quite a bit of noise going on out there. And it's the culture you just power through. It's what you do. But our host was offended by that. Pastor Tonya, some of you have met Pastor Thomas. He's been here and he's preached and he stopped me.
You stopped me preaching, and all of a sudden he started again in a language I have no idea what it was. But I can tell you this, I didn't have anything to add about I want to write about and everybody's eyes are getting wide. And you can tell that he's clearly reprimanding some people. I don't know what he said, but I know this.
It wasn't pleasant and I wouldn't want to been on the receiving end of it. This is Paul and Barnabas there in Lystra and all this is going on around them and they don't have any idea what's what's happening. They know that God has just performed a wonderful miracle. And obviously they're rejoicing and the people are rejoicing. But then they look up and they see this priest coming with an ox in tow, and they get a sense that, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait a minute.
These guys think we did this? These guys are going to worship us. They're setting themselves up to worship us. Verse 14 When the Apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out into the crowd. So to tear one's garments is a cultural sign of grief to the hypocritical readers of the prophet Joel. Remember this verse.
God says, Wouldn't you rend your hearts and not your garments? If it's easy, it's easy to act like you're heartbroken. But God is saying, No, you're not heartbroken about your sin, you're just tear in your clothes. I want you to tear your heart. But rending the garment was a sign of grief, and it was also something that happened when people thought that blasphemy was occurring.
And in this case, we have both of those things taking place. What's unfolding is a matter of sadness, of course, but it's also a matter of sacrilege, because at first neither Zus nor any false gods should be given the glory that belongs to the one only true God. And further, it would be blasphemous for Paul and Barnabas to receive honor for a miracle that God performed, that that's who did it.
They didn't do it. God did it. And indeed, it would be a gross injustice for any man to receive the credit for God's work. And that that applies to all of us, doesn't it? Because God graciously uses us for his work, but not so that we would receive the glory for it. But Jesus said that let your light shine before men, that they can see your good works and glorify your father in heaven.
That's how it's supposed to work. We shouldn't want the glory that belongs to God. Remember in Chapter 12, Herod was lauded as having the voice of a God, and he didn't. He didn't distance himself from that compliment. In fact, he sort of owned it. He sort of believed it. He did not transfer any glory to the true God.
They said, You speak as if you have the voice of a God. And he's kind of thinking, Well, yes, I do. And as a result of him not being willing to to give glory to God, the Angel of the Lord struck him down. That's at chapter 12. And then, of course, remember Peter and Cornelius, when Peter was first interacting with Cornelius, Cornelius came and he fell at Peter's feet and he worshiped him.
But what if Peter say to him, he says, Stand up. I too, am a man. I'm just a man. Don't worship me. Don't fall down in front of me. And here Paul is doing the exact same thing. He and Barnabas are not going to get anywhere near close to this cult of personality where they're going to allow themselves to be worshiped.
They know who deserves credit, and they actually panicked about the fact that that they would be receiving credit. They belonged to God. This is a lesson to be heeded by all ministers of the gospel. It's not about us. It's about God. And S.J. Mahaney, in his book Humility is is quick to tell us that we should all be about the practice of transferring God's glory.
That is any glory that should come to you, transfer to God. He's the end in your day. With that thought, as you pray to God, God, if any glory has come to me, if any praise, I give that to you. I give that to you. Any good that I have been able to do in this day, it is because of you and because of your grace, because of your goodness.
Yes. That's the attitude of servants. That's what we want. We are not any of us to be glory hounds, okay? None of us should be glory hounds. Paul cries out to them, Man, 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 in the earth and the sea and all that is in them.
And what we have in the next few verses here, next Chapter 14 appears to be well, it's just an excerpt. That's what we have. Here is an excerpt of a maybe just a massively condensed version, which Luke also does of a longer sermon, the likes of which we'll see in a little while. Three chapters later, as Paul addresses the Athenians in Chapter 17, he's going to basically follow the same format.
So if we want to know what he's preaching here in Leicester, we could skip ahead and say it's probably going to be really close to what's going on in Athens. But for now, what we have is only enough to see how Paul brought the good news to Leicester. What are you doing? That's how he starts it. What are you doing?
Why are you doing things? Hold on. We're bringing you good news. And this is how Paul brought the good news to Leicester. And in his response, the way that he does it. And what makes this a noteworthy passage is it is very different than how he did it in city in Antioch, and how he brought the word in Iconium previously.
And that's the takeaway or that is a takeaway for us from this text is this To be effective in evangelism, one must have a flexible approach. Think that through. To be effective in evangelism, one must have a flexible approach. Who are we talking with? What do they value? What do they believe? What have they experienced, and how does that lead us into a gospel conversation?
In verse 15, Paul calls the lessons to repentance, saying they should turn from vain things to a living God. The word translated vain here means empty, without profit. Their idols, as we have been studying in our Sunday school class Idols of the Heart, we're learning this Their idols are worthless, their gods are non gods. They cannot speak, they cannot move, they cannot save, they cannot deliver.
We're also learning that it's not just Bible characters from past times who are idolaters because of sin. All of us have this bent. All of us have this desire to chase after vain things. We put our hope in lesser things. C.S. Lewis has famously said We are half hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition. When infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum area because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
The invitation of the Gospel is a plea to give up the pursuit of those vain lesser things to take God up on His offer of a holiday at the sea, to stop trusting in what can never rescue, can never satisfy, can never deliver in order to find one's purpose in salvation and fulfillment in Jesus Christ. So I ask you, friend, what vain things because we are all prone to it?
What vain things have you given yourself to do? What in the end is turning out for you not to be as profitable as you thought it might be, or as powerful as you thought it might be, or meaningful as you thought it might be, or fulfilling as you thought it might be. Whether you are a believer who's gotten your priorities in a mess and it happens to all of us, or you've never received Jesus Christ as your savior, the message is the same Turn from the worthless things and give yourself to the one who's worth everything.
Turn from all the worthless things and give yourself to the knowledge and worship of the true and loving God. The hymn writer puts it this way Jesus calls us from the worship of the vain World's Golden Store from each idol that would keep us saying, Christian love me more. That's the call of Christ. Love me more, Love me most.
Brad beg me in his book Gospel Trees and gets right to the point. If you've never read that book, I highly recommend it to you. But it will be one of the titles in our lending library that soon. Up and going Gospel Trees. And he says this disappointment awaits you if your expectation is fixed on anything other than God.
Disappointment awaits you if your expectation is fixed on anything other than God and the Prophet Jonah issues a similar warning. Jonah, to those who cling to worthless idols, forfeit the grace that could be theirs. So put away your idols, put away your functional saviors. Embrace the real Savior Jesus Christ. Step away from the mud pies of your life that is figuratively, at least, what Paul is saying.
His altar call is an invitation to the people of Lystra to leave behind their vain worship and turn to a God whose blessing they already enjoy, who has been good to them, even though they didn't know it, even though they didn't ascribe God's goodness to their situation. Did you see that is altar call is an invitation to the people of Lystra to leave behind their vain worship and turn to God whose blessings they already enjoy, a God who has already been good to them, even though they didn't know it was him, even though they didn't know who to ascribe it to at the time.
Doesn't that sound like an approach in a conversation that you can have with just about anybody to talk about Jesus? How good is God? Yes, there's a lot of bad stuff going on out there. But I tell you what, the sound of those birds in the spring, the warmth in that sun, the green grass starting to polka. I mean, come on, These are all blessings of God.
This is common grace. We all have it in common. This. This is how we begin to talk with people or how we could begin to talk with people about Jesus. Paul points out the common grace of God, and that is a road for him to preaching the saving grace of Jesus verses 16 to 17. 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 good with food and gladness, you've already been enjoying the goodness of God. Let's dig a little deeper, is what Paul is saying. There's a little more to the story. And that story is Jesus now the saving grace part of his sermon?
We don't have it here in the Chapter 14. Luke doesn't record it again. All we have here is evidence that it occurred because in verse 22 we find the disciples were made at Lystra and we know this, don't we? The disciples are not made disciples cannot be made apart from the preaching of the gospel. The story enlisted now has a peculiar ending, and we're going to take that up next week, Lord willing.
But for now, I want to leave you with a rather lengthy quote from a Tony Merida from his commentary on X. He's driving home on an application from this text. He is noting, of course, a flexible approach to evangelism employed by Paul and Barnabas. The way that they ministered and connected Jesus to a Gentile pagan culture was quite different than how they had done it to for a Jewish audience, again, flexibility is an important aspect of effective evangelism.
If you want to get better at sharing the good news, you have to be flexible. The story of Jesus is not a one note song. There are many ways to get to Christ. A one size gospel presentation is not going to fit everybody. You may have the Romans rolled memorized. Good. Use it when appropriate. You may have your own way of getting to Christ.
Good, but be open to do it in different ways. When you're talking with different people, the question is how can we get to Jesus? We'll be more effective in sharing Christ when we thoughtfully consider who we're talking to and when we will give some thought to the natural roll on ramps that are present to get us to that highway of the gospel message.
Merida writes this He says, We have no right or need to edit the gospel, but we do need to understand our audiences. We must begin by establishing a point of contact with people, and then we must lead them to the Gospel conflict. Often points of contact can be made by simply observing what humans see and experience and then working from there.
Most people share, he says, a hunger for love and community, a search for freedom, a need to be rid of guilt and shame, a quest for meaning, a longing for significance, a thirst for satisfaction and joy, an attraction to beauty in creation, a love for creativity and innovation. And I would add, of course, we all share common grace.
We all share the blessings of God, evidences of God's goodness in everybody's life, believer, unbeliever. We all share that this may be the lowest common denominator between all people everywhere. Doesn't really have much of a doesn't have a beat back. It's like when they have a beat and there's a reason my phone is in the building next door.
Greatest fears we all have and we share common grace and sometimes pointing out this common grace, as we see in Paul's approach in Lystra, opens the door and sometimes it opens the heart for conversations with people about a God who loves them so much that he gave his only son to be their savior. Our Gospel conversations with others, unbelievers who've never heard the good news, those caught in the worship of vain things, or even Christians who priorities have become skewed.
These conversations may have any number of starting points, any number of on ramps. And yet, as theologian John Start put it, and we will conclude here, wherever we begin, we shall end with Jesus Christ, who is himself. The good news and who alone can fulfill all human aspirations. Let's stand and sing are closing him this morning.