Unfinished Business: Fortifying the Faithful

Don’t know if you’ve seen any of these videos making fun of different delivery companies’ approaches to getting parcels to us? Too realistic to be funny? But delivery has been a crucial part of life through the pandemic!

Our house is up on a farm and a good while back now, the farmer decided to close off one of the ways to get to us, one of the lanes people used to use. And unfortunately it’s the one all the satnavs always seem to take people! So now there’s an amazon delivery driver stuck there most days —yes, we really are that sort of customer!— an amazon driver getting stuck at a locked gate trying to find us - maps just keeps sending them the wrong way and we can’t seem to fix it.

Of course, when they call - well, if they call - I know exactly where they are, [map] and how to get to me - it’s easy “just head down to the B9080, turn towards Kirkliston, then take the next lane up”

But so often they see things differently - don’t know the area, don’t know where they are, don’t know where I am, don’t know what any of the roads are called...

There are some seriously heroic delivery drivers, for the record, who I’ve talked in like an emergency aeroplane landing - but also, it’d be fair to say, there are definitely some a little more at the “meh” end of the spectrum..

Here’s the thing: When you’re giving people directions, the directions have to make sense to them. You have to know what will connect, how they see things, to help them move forward. And that’s what we’ll find in our bible reading today.

We’re working our way through a book in the bible called Acts which is the story of the very first churches and how they got started. At the moment we’re in the middle of the first big mission trip and last week’s episode ended with Paul and Barnabas fleeing a plot on their lives. This week we pick up the story as they arrive in a place called Lystra. Hannah’s reading for us this morning - Hannah, lovely to have you with us today!

Acts 14:8–20 NIV

In Lystra there sat a man who was lame. He had been that way from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, “Stand up on your feet!” At that, the man jumped up and began to walk. When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them. But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: “Friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human, like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them. Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe.

A new beginning in the mission

So, if you’ll forgive me - and Lystra, if you’ll particularly forgive me! - let’s start this morning with Lystra’s Leaping Lame

If you’ve been with us from the beginning of our studies in this part of the bible, or if you’re familiar with what’s in it, when you come across this leaping lame thing, you might be forgiven for thinking “hang on a minute, have I seen this somewhere before?” In fact, to use one of my favourite moments from one of my favourite movies, you might be feeling just a little deja vu...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8XQV0PYf3c just too good to miss the opportunity for that. A bit of deja vu? Haven’t I seen this somewhere before? Well, yes, you have.

We’re in chapter 14 of acts but back in chapter 3 something very similar happened: Peter and John, at the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, heal a lame man. And the closer you look, the more similarities you see - in fact, there are far too many parallels for this deja vu moment to be an accident - it’s Luke, our author’s, intent to have us connect these two events, to go “have I not seen you somewhere before?”.

Take a look at this:

As each story starts, each of the men healed was noted as “lame … from birth” Acts 3:2 // 14:8 by our author, doctor Luke - he always has an eye for these details.

In both cases, the apostles involved “looked straight at him” Acts 3:4 // “looked directly at him” Act 14:9 - our bible translation, which is generally excellent, on this occasion hides the fact that the original Greek language underneath is exactly the same both times...

And then a moment later in both cases we see the man “jumped to his feet an began to walk” Act 3:8 // “jumped up and began to walk” Act 3:8 - and the word used here for jumping up is found nowhere else in the entire book of Acts, the word for walking only used once elsewhere, and with a metaphorical rather than physical sense.

There are even more parallels if we look a little wider - an opportunity to speak that results, forceful opposition showing up, and great courage displayed in responding to it. But that’s for another day.

There are a lot of parallels - but so what? Well, we’re meant to get deja vu and to connect the two.

And why does our author want us to do that? Because what we have here in Lystra is a new beginning in the mission , something just as significant as what began with that first healing back in Jerusalem. Now it might not have looked like much as we heard the story read to us - really the whole Lystra visit sounds like a bit of a mess. But let me show you why this is so significant, why this is marked out by our author as being a parallel to that first step in Jerusalem years back.

This is the first truly pagan stop in the journey of this message about Jesus - what I mean by that is this is the first place where they’re truly starting from nothing in terms of the religious knowledge and background of the people they are speaking to. Up to this point, every time they’ve arrived in a new city, their first stop has been the synagogue - the Jewish religious building. Every time they’ve arrived in a new city, their first audience has been Jewish or at least people termed “god-fearers” meaning they share the Jewish understanding of the world. Last week, John was walking us through this pattern being repeated in the cities of Antioch and Iconium.

But here in Lystra, no synagogue to visit, only a temple of Zeus. No more than a few Jewish people in total. No god-fearers sharing that Jewish understanding of the world, even. Here we only see worshippers of the Greek gods - people with a very different basic view of the world.

Now our missionaries are still presenting the same good news - Acts 14:7 “they continued to preach the gospel”, we’re told. They’re still making the same call to turn towards God. But when we hear the apostles speak here, it’s a really different presentation of the message. Like how I have to explain the way to our house very differently to people who don’t know the area, to start from where they are, and use directions which make sense to them. It’s still the same message - wherever you begin, and however you explain the way, the destination is still the same - it’s all coming to Jesus. But before we think about that some more, the apostles have a new problem on their hands:

“the gods have come down” v11. Now there’s a temptation as modern people for us to really look down on people from the past, to think they were super-gullible - “chronological snobbery” is what someone labelled this - so when we see the people of Lystra jumping to this conclusion we can turn our nose up at them and think to ourselves “hah! ignorant fools! we are so much smarter”

But before we write these guys off, it turns out they had a pretty good reason to respond very eagerly when people who looked like humans but seemed to do god-like things showed up. In the Roman poet Ovid’s epic, Metamorphosis, we have a compilation of Greek and Roman mythology - and one of the stories he captured comes from this area, telling of Zeus and Hermes visiting in human form, not being welcomed, and sending a catastrophic flood as a result. If you’d heard that story told as your people’s history, and then some guys showed up who were doing god-like things, think you might want to avoid another catastrophic flood, and so be quick to celebrate unusually powerful people?

In any event, it’s still a big no-no for Paul and Barnabas to be worshipped as gods. They don’t understand what’s going on to begin with because they don’t speak the local language, but when they see the parade getting going they’re mortified! “no! stop! why are you doing this! we are only human like you” — we’re not these gods you are worrying about a visit from! This isn’t some divine test, a re-sit to see if the people can do better - instead Paul and Barnabas insist they are bringing good news (v15), not a test or trouble.

A new beginning to the message

But back to this radically differently presentation of the good news. This is nothing like Antioch which we looked at a few weeks’ back with Luke. There’s no “The god of the people of Israel chose our ancestors...” Act 13:17 ff, no recalling of their history with God, pointing to promises God had made, quoting bits of the bible. Instead where does Paul start with sharing the good news? Right at the very beginning, at creation: “the living God who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them.” Acts 14:15

We’ll see something very similar again when Paul is in Athens in a few chapters’ time - Acts 17 - again, there he’s speaking to people who have no Jewish background, no shared framework of understanding. And again he starts right at the beginning. It wouldn’t be right to call it common ground that he starts with - the Greeks had their own ideas about where the world had come from - just like people around us do today too - and they wouldn’t all be nodding and agreeing when Paul says one god, the living God, made the heavens and the earth. That wasn’t what their origin stories told them. But in starting there, he wasn’t making any assumptions about what they knew, wasn’t trying to build on a foundation which hadn’t been laid.

The fancy word for what we’re seeing here is “contextualisation”: expressing the same thing differently to different people - so that it still connects. It’s an essential part of communication. I could talk to my delivery driver until I’m blue in the face about road names and the like and do a perfect job of giving directions - but I’m wasting my time! I’m not communicating because he has no idea what any of the things I’m talking about are. I have to start from where he is, start with things that make sense to him, and then we can communicate. No point in Paul trying to build from Yahweh’s promise to the people of Israel when he’s chatting with a bunch of Zeus-worshippers! He has to start where people are, start with things they know, or at least that make sense to them.

But notice something else with me: his first point, if you pay attention, is that things need to change. The message he is bringing these Lystrans isn’t “good news - keep calm and just carry on” - what he calls good news is the message that they should turn from “these worthless things”. - that’s the Greek gods Paul is talking about there, the ones these people are worshipping, the ones they thought were disguised as Paul and Barnabas. This is no softball gospel - even though he’s careful to contextualise, to make his message connect, he’s not buttering it up to make it easy for his audience to swallow.

He’s calling what they worship today “worthless” or empty or vain - nothing, nothing at all. He’s saying they’re wasting their time on it, wasting their life on it. And they don’t need to. There’s an alternative, a better way - that’s the good news.

Does that sound like anyone you know: wasting their life on worthless things? Not that they’re wasting their time worshipping Zeus - probably not, anyway - but they’re pouring out their life pursuing things that are useless, pointless, empty - things that will only distract them or worse crush them in the end, not save them. Money. Achievement. Power. Success. Fame. Golf. It’s good news that they can turn away from these false gods and their false worship. It’s life and freedom instead of death and slavery. They can turn instead to worship the creator of this amazing world.

To worship the creator who’s left them testimony - or evidence - of his goodness in his world, in the remarkable way it’s designed for us, it provides for us. That’s where Paul goes next. For these peasant farmers Paul is talking to, he speaks of rain from heaven and crops in their season. Maybe you’re a farmer or a gardener and you see God’s goodness the same way - maybe not, but we all see God’s goodness displayed in his amazing creation - whether it’s the beauty or the complexity, the awe-inspiring scale or the elegance, the order or the design. Elsewhere this same Paul will write:

Romans 1:19–20 (NIV)

...what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made...

If you’re with us this morning, and you see the evidence God has left us in creation, but you’ve never taken that step of turning, turning away from pursuing other things, turning towards God, let me tell you the good news: you can, and you must, turn away from these other non-gods, these other worthless things which will only waste you and crush you in the end. You can, because of Jesus, turn towards this creator God, this God of goodness and provision. He will watch over your life, even call you his friend, and in Jesus he will save you from the coming wrath. That’s where Paul would have got to here if his message hadn’t been cut off - we’ll see the whole thing in chapter 17 coming up.

Creation has so many good things in it, shows us so much of the good of the creator - a creator who has reached out to us in Jesus. But you must turn to him. If you don’t know how, or you just want to hear some more first, ask a Christian you know, or drop me a note and I’d love to chat.

Now the main thing here at Hope City is sharing the hope that we have in Jesus with those around us. What we have here is obviously pretty key as we think about how to do that effectively. So if you’ve already turned away from empty things, and turned towards the living, all-creating, all-good God, what do we learn here which can help us this week as we seek to share this good news with those around us?

First, when we share our hope with someone, we have to start where they are. Like my delivery driver - I have to know where he is if I’m going to give him any useful directions at all and not just accidentally take him off a cliff. If I’m going to give him directions which will be any help, which will make any sense to him, I have to know what he sees, I have to know his world. If you want to share your hope with someone, if you want to help them find their way towards Jesus, you have to know where they are, you have to know their world.

And that means almost all the time sharing our hope has to begin with caring enough about someone to listen, and to ask good questions. It has to start with discovering where they are, diagnosing how they see the world. I read one person describe it as having “holy curiosity” about others, giving them our attention, and seeing what we can learn. Discovering what they do understand and what they don’t. What do they know already, and what have they never heard. What do they value and do respect, and what’s meaningless to them - like the Jewish scriptures would have been here to these Lystrans.

We want the easy life of a script which we can just memorise and then repeat to anyone and everyone, job done - but there’s no two people alike. So first, start where they are.

Second, point out the evidence. Here, Paul points to God’s “common grace” as it’s called - the way he gives us good things and provides what we need through his creation - he “fills your hearts with joy,” Paul says. He’s talking their language, connecting with those farmers, showing them evidence of God. It’s no slam-dunk and the Greeks would have had other explanations for why things were the way they were, just like people would today - but it’s still evidence, and it’s still worth pointing to. And it’s not the only evidence we have.

One writer I found really helpful on this, Oz Guinness, talks about “signals of transcendence” - things in our ordinary world which point us to the truth that there’s something more. Like beauty - of a sunset, or a poem. Or morality - just knowing something is wrong, or right. Or vastness - of a cathedral or a galaxy. These things speak to our soul of there being something more. Maybe one of these would be meaningful to someone you know, might wake their curiosity. Or there’s amazing evidence for Jesus as a real historical person, and the resurrection as a verifiable historical event. We’ve got some great books on that here on our giving away shelf which you can just take if you’ll read them or use them. So don’t be afraid to point out the evidence - even if you know others might just explain it away.

And finally, call people to turn - at the end of the day, it’s our hope that people change direction and become followers of Jesus, that they turn away from the other things which dominated their life, that they turn around, or repent would be the bible word here. It’s hard to actually get this part of the message about Jesus out in our permissive “you-do-you” world so I’m definitely prone to bottle it when the time comes rather than calling someone to actually do something about what they’re considering, and take that pivotal step towards Jesus.

But there’s a real help for us here in today’s passage: it’s good news. Remember it’s actually good news you are sharing with people when you call them to turn to God. It might not sound like that to them, but it’s an escape from an empty, futile way of life. Liberation from slavery to things which will only crush us in the end. It’s an invitation into what we were made for, designed for, rather than a prison sentence. No-one who turns to the living God looses out in the end.

So what do we learn? start where they are; point out the evidence; call people to turn.

I want to close by giving us just one minute to reflect on what we’ve talked about. If you’ve never made that turn towards God, maybe use this minute to think about the evidence you’ve seen of God’s goodness - in his creation, in other people, in your life, in sending his son. If you’re part of our mission to share the hope that we have, why not think through some of the people you know, and consider where they are; if you know them enough, what might be a next step towards Jesus? If you don’t, how will you learn more? One minute