Worshipping the Man of God

Introduction

Text: Acts 14:8-18

There is a very common plague in churches that has really been around at-least since the 1970’s. That plague has led church members to confuse the messenger with the message and the preacher with the God he proclaims. It is a problem in Fundamentalist churches and in Contemporary churches alike. That problem is hero worship. Back in the 1960-70’s, Independent Fundamental Baptist churches were some of the largest churches in America. The First Baptist Church of Hammond Indiana under Jack Hyles averaged 20,000 people every single Sunday. Everyone wanted to learn what they could from Jack Hyles and be like Jack Hyles. He set the tone for IFB churches that lasted into the early 1990’s. Men began to lift preacher’s like Jack Hyles up to hero status. Fundamentalism became a movement of who’s your favorite preacher and less about the bible. It was commonly preached that this man was the Man of God and above being questioned. So in a way the problem was self-perpetuated by the preacher. Prior to preparing this message, I listened to the testimonies of one of his daughters and his grandson about the abuse that existed in these churches. It wasn’t until after multiple situations of sexual scandal at First Baptist Church that the church began to wake up from their delusion. While this problem still persists in some circles of Fundamentalism, we have seen too many big preachers fall into sin to continue worshipping these men.

Fundamentalism isn’t the only group that has been plagued by such hero worship. The largest churches today are often not the Fundamentalist churches. They are often Neo-evangelical churches like Hillsong. Between their multiple campuses Hillsong churches average 47,000 people in attendance. They have been popularized by their band and celebrity preacher Carl Lentz. Among those who attend services at Hillsong churches are Justin Bieber and NBA star Kevin Durant. If you look at pictures of Carl Lentz you will see a hip preacher who has given in to the rock music culture. Pants that come down seductively low while he walks around on stage with $3000 Yeezy sneakers. Lentz is literally a rock star worshipped by thousands. It is a shame when the preacher is worshipped instead of the God he is supposed to be pointing people to.

This isn’t something new. As we will see in our text this morning people have been worshipping celebrity preachers for thousands of years. Sometimes it isn’t the preacher fault as was the case for Paul, but it doesn’t make it right either. Our response should be the same as the Apostle Paul’s was when he faced the worship of the preacher. From this text I want to look at

I. The Great Things they do are not manifestation’s of their own power. vs 6-10

This passage lays out the first miracle performed among the Gentiles as a confirmation of the gospel message as it goes out from Jerusalem. Luke has specifically placed this passage here to parallel the same type of miracle in Acts 3 showing the power of God in healing a cripple. Prior to this miracle, Paul has been preaching the gospel and the man that he heals has faith to be healed. Paul sees him there and he begins to focus in on this man. In fact it say he steadfastly beheld him or stared at him. Finally, he cries out with a loud voice stand up and the man obeys and is healed. This is a pretty simple miracle compared to others in the bible, but the people of Lystra are amazed at the healing.

I think the clear implication is that anyone who heard Paul preaching would have known that he was not the power behind the healing. The power behind this miracle that Paul had performed was God Himself. Sometimes people can mistake all the great things that God accomplished through a person with some power or ability of that person.

It would be kinda like thinking that when the Publisher’s Clearing House guy comes up to your house with that big check in his hand that he personally was giving you a million dollars. The man with the big check is merely the spokesperson for the company. The company itself is actually giving away the money.

Paul was merely the messenger and we must be careful not to worship the messenger or confuse the message with the messenger. Paul never would have wanted to receive the glory for the things that he did and it wasn’t anything special about Paul that enabled him to do these things. God was the power behind the miracle. An early church commentator on this passage described it like this:

And he saw Paul coming, a man small in size, bald-headed, bandy-legged, well-built, with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed, full of grace. For sometimes he seemed like a man, and sometimes he had the countenance of an angel.

Paul was nothing to write home about physically. Here is a short bald headed man with bow legs, a long nose and a unibrow coming to preach the gospel. Granted unibrows were a thing back then, but still; Paul did not have any physical or natural abilities to cause him to be lifted up. It was all of God.

Later when dealing with the same problem in the Corinthian church Paul would write:

1 Cor 3:4-9 “For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.”

A. In 1741 Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God which helped spark the Great Awakening. The nation was turned around in that moment and thousands were saved. But the sermon’s effect had nothing to do with Jonathan Edwards. His delivery was not spectacular. The power came from God and it sparked a spiritual revolution in this country that changed the course of our country.

B. Hudson Taylor began a missions movement in China that flooded the country with missionaries until the Communists took over during WWII. We can look to the great things that he did and desire to do things like that, but Hudson Taylor knew that God was the source of his strength. His autobiography is now called Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret because he knew the power came from abiding in Christ.

When you hear a great sermon or see a preacher who is able to do great things for God; do not mistake their success with any personal ability of their own. It is only God who can make us to prosper. There have been good preachers who walked with God who pastored churches of 25 and there have been preachers who pastored 40,000 but did not even know God. When we see a hero of the faith, lets see them for what they actually are: sinful men used by God to do great things.

II. Idolatry is contrary to the message of the Gospel. vs 11-15

The second thing that we see this text say about celebrity preacher worship is that idolatry is contrary to the basic message of the gospel. Two weeks ago, I preached a gospel message from Acts 13 and I pointed out that even the Christian needs the message of the gospel. This is just one more example of why we need to grasp the truths of the gospel.

The people and the priest of the city think that Paul and Barnabas are gods. In our bibles, Paul is called Mercury and Barnabas is called Jupiter. In Greek these are actually the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes; but the KJV translators chose to use the Roman versions of these gods. Zeus would have been the head god and Hermes the messenger of the gods. Since Paul was the spokeperson, it was natural to assume he was Hermes and Barnabas the older man in the background they assumed to be Zeus. Pagan religions taught that sometimes the gods would come down in human form and live among men.

They began to prepare sacrifices for Paul and Barnabas. When they hear what is happening, they rush in to stop it. Vs 14 The response all true men of God and preachers should have when they notice this in their people should mirror that of the Apostles Paul and Barnabas. they rent their clothes. Rending you clothes was a sign of deep mourning and grief. To see people lift you up instead of Jesus should be a tragedy to us. Think of the way people mourned over 9/11. It should devastate us when men give us the glory instead of God.

Pauls responce is twofold:

A. We are merely men

We are men of like passions with you. Foundational to an understanding of God is knowing that He is different than us. God is perfectly Holy, we are sinners. God is omnipotent and we are weak. God has perfect pure passions, but we all struggle with sin daily. Paul is arguing that we are flawed human beings just like you.

James 5:17 “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.”

No preacher is beyond sin. I have my own struggles with sin. They might be different than yours are, but I am still a flawed human being. There will never come a point when I get beyond that. All the Great preachers you can think of had sin problems:

Jonathan Edwards

Charles Wesley

CH Spurgeon

DL Moody

None were perfect. If the fact that your pastor gets impatient sometimes throws you for a loop, you might just be thinking of them in the wrong way.

Acts 14:15 “And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:”

B. The gospel calls us to turn from idol worship

Essential to the gospel is an understanding that there is only one God. Part of the gospel is turning from those idols to the living God.

Idolatry is anything that is worshiped instead of God. The idols of the world are all worthless things compared to the greatness of our God. Back then they worshiped fictional or spirit beings that were less than God almighty. These gods were often carved into statues of gold, silver and wood. But today, we have our idols as well.

We idolize ourselves.

We idolize entertainment

We idolize celebrities.

Vs 15 In that same message two weeks ago, I preached on the gospel and in the introduction I reminded us that the gospel is necessary for the believer to keep in mind. We should never get past what Jesus has done for us in dying for our sins. Our response to the gospel is summarized as repentance and faith.

Repentance or changing our mind about self-dependence to save ourselves.

Repentance from anything we worship instead of God.

Repentance from sinfully choosing our own way

Faith in the gospel that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and rose again to pay the penalty for our sins and offer us forgivingness.

Any man who allows, promotes or ignores the worship of himself does not fully grasp the truth of the gospel. We are all sinners before a Holy God needing salvation.

III. Only God is God. vs 16-18

If our eyes are were they should be, I don’t think we are going to have this struggle. Our eyes should be on Jesus Christ and Him alone. There is only one God. God is God and I am not. In this text we see some truths about God that make Him distinct from all human beings.

A. Only God is powerful enough to create all things vs 15- God created everything that exists included you and me. Even the greatest of men was created by God. Imagine you were a toy maker and you made amazing toys. Even the best toy that you could possibly make can not rival the maker. God alone as the maker has the right to be worshiped. He made us and He purchased us with His blood on the cross.

B. Only God is patient enough to continually reach out to men who insist on worshipping other things. vs 16 Think of the most patient man that you have ever met, they are extremely impatient next to God. God suffered or allowed the Gentiles to walk after their own pleasures or according to the rule of their own hearts for a time. Acts 17:30 “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:” Winked at refers to overlooked. Mankind is so consumed with sin. We foolishly create idols to worship and pursue meanwhile ignoring what truly matters in life. Daily, moment by moment God is mercifully being patient with us.

C. Only God continues to be gracious and give good things to men who are enemies of God. vs 17 But even when we didn’t want anything to do with God, God did not give up on us. We refuse to listen to God and His word, but God has given us the rain from heaven, seasons of harvest. He has allowed us to fill our lives completely with food and gladness. God has been good to everyone. We call this common grace. Romans 2:4 “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”

Conclusion

I have mentioned this quote by Paul Washer many times in the past but I want you to say it with me today: “There is no such thing as a great man of God, only weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and merciful God.” Say it twice He went on to say, “Men and women who are used of GOD, if I had only a few words to describe them, they are the passionate-weak, they are the violently-desperate.”

The men and women who have been used by God were men and women who were passionate about seeking after God. They were not perfect, in fact they were hopelessly flawed. But they would not be satisfied by anything else other than Jesus Christ.

There are men and women that we can look to and see that God used them. We can desire to imitate them as Paul told us to but only as they follow the Lord. We can respect them, but we must never lose sight of the amazing God that we serve. Any true man of God would never want to eclipse the glory of the Son of God. They would point up in the sky and say, “look there.” They would plead with you to stop looking at everything else, stop going about your life distracted by all the sights the world has to offer. They would say even to their wife, don’t behold me with single focused admiration; but gaze upon the Great God.

We ought to have rent our clothes and cried out Men and brethren do not this thing. Don’t do it.

I know you know I have flaws. I fundamentally believe in authentic ministry, but I don’t ever want you to believe everything I say just because I say it; or do what I say just because I told you to. Only God is God.

We should:

1 respect our pastors and preachers

2. listen to our pastors and preachers

3. imitate the good in their lives

4. even obey our pastors and preachers

but we should never elevate them to a position of worship. This leads to a lack of accountability, it sets them up to fail and they will eventually fail you. It puts more pressure on them because they have to appear to be perfect but ultimately, it draws your heart away from where it truly should be: on Jesus Christ.