Acts chapter 14, and we'll read
from verse 8. So we're back at the history
of Paul and Barnabas. And there sat a certain man at
Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's
womb, who never had walked. The same heard Paul speak, who
steadfastly beholding him and perceiving that he had faith
to be healed, said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked. And
when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their
voices, saying in the speech of Laconia, The gods are come
down to us in the likeness of men. and they called Barnabas
Jupiter and Paul Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. Then
the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought
oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice
with the people. which when the apostles Barnabas
and Paul heard of, they rent their clothes and ran out among
the people crying out, or ran in among the people crying out,
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, who
in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless
he left not himself without witness, in that he did good and gave
us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with
food and gladness. And with these sayings scarce
restrained they the people, that they had not done sacrifice unto
them. And there came thither certain
Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and
having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he
had been dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood
round about him, he rose up and came into the city, and the next
day he departed with Barnabas to Derby. Well, I just wanted to to pass on a few thoughts in
this. I'm just looking to see that there's some other visitors
have come in. So good to see you as well. I
just wanted to draw your attention to a couple of things with respect
to this little narrative here. Here we have a story from the
Book of Acts, which has, like all good stories, a first part,
a middle part and an end part. And we can see that this story
has almost divided naturally into these three aspects, all
connected and yet all having an important place in the way
in which the story unfolds. The first thing we can see about
what happened when Paul and Barnabas went to Lystra was that they
encountered a man there who had been crippled from his mother's
womb. And he was sitting perhaps at
the entrance of the town as Paul and Barnabas came in. Remember
these two missionaries, these two believers had travelled from
Iconium because they had been chased out of that city, that
city that we spoke about last week. Perhaps you'll remember
that Iconium is a city now, it still has a place, there's still
a place called Iconium, or Konya, it's now called, actually, in Turkey. Oh, that's the wrong
picture, there we are. Let me go back. Sorry about that. There we are. We can see that Iconium, right
up at the top middle there under Galatia, was where the apostles
had come from, and they had fled from Iconium down there to that
number six and into number seven. And it's at Lystra now that we
find the apostles. So they'd been chased, really.
They'd been chased from Antioch. to Iconium, and they'd been chased
from Iconium, and now they were down at Lystra. And as they come
into Lystra, into this town from Iconium, here is this man sitting
at the gate. What I wanted to mention just
about Lystra and Iconium, which I thought was quite interesting,
is that Iconium is now a city of millions of people. It's a
huge city in modern day Turkey. One of the largest in the whole
country. Millions of people live there.
They don't even know where Lystra is. Lystra is in a field somewhere,
under a hill somewhere. It's a little bump on a field
and nobody really knows where it is. So it just shows you how
these cities over the past couple of thousand years have changed
and No doubt there will be some archaeological work done to identify
Lystra in days to come, but apparently at the moment they think they
know where it is, but they have to make sure. Paul comes into
the city and here is this man, crippled from his mother's womb,
never having walked. And we're told that the apostle
looked at him. He looked at him and he saw,
as he began to speak, as he began to preach, that this man had
faith to be healed. And so the apostle looks at him
and he calls upon him to stand upright. And the man, having
faith, His legs were healed. God healed him in his feet and
in his legs. And never having walked before,
he leaped up in the air and he began to walk." And those of
us who have been listening to these stories or are familiar
with the Book of Acts at all will remember that that is a
very similar miracle to the one that had been performed by Peter
and John at what was called the beautiful gate of the Temple
back in Jerusalem. And here we have a very similar
miracle being performed in a different place and by different people,
but very similar as far as the person who was healed and the
reaction of the people who saw it. And perhaps there is a parallel
being drawn for us here as to how the preaching of the gospel
and Holy Spirit power began there just after Pentecost to come
to the Jews. And here was a very similar miracle
performed amongst the Gentiles, perhaps again initiating this
ministry that was going forth to the Gentiles. Faith had been
given to this man while Paul had preached the message of the
gospel. And faith is essential. in any
relationship with God. If we are to have any spiritual
relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, it must be by faith. We can talk, and we can sing,
and we can gather together with the Lord's people. We can try
to worship with them. But in order to have a personal
relationship with God, it must be having personal faith. And here we see that the preaching
of the gospel brought that faith to this man. If somebody said
to me, I wish I could believe, I wish I could know Jesus personally,
I wish I had some sense of being at one with God. I would say
to that person, go and hear the Gospel preached. Go and listen
to the Gospel. Find a Gospel preacher and hear
what the message of the Gospel is. Because Peter tells us that
we are born again by the Word of God. which liveth and abideth
forever. And if we would have that new
birth, if we would have that growth in grace, if we would
have that spiritual strength and maturity, then it must come
by faith, which is a gift from God, and faith cometh by hearing. And the word of God being preached
to us is therefore a very important thing. So not only are we told
here that there was a beginning to this story, but when the people
of Lystra saw what had happened, we move into the middle part
of this story. And the local people saw the
miracle. and they were amazed and they
wanted to worship Paul and Barnabas. Indeed we're told in the verses
there that they said the gods had come down. They thought the
gods had come down from wherever the gods lived and they wanted
to worship the apostles as Jupiter and Mercurius. We know that these
are names of the stars, Jupiter and Mercury, and so it's obvious
that these people had no real faith in God. They believed in
many gods, they were idol worshippers, and they were probably worshippers
of the stars as well. And here they used these names
and they gave them to Paul and Barnabas. It's an amazing thing
really to see how these people reacted to the preaching of the
gospel and the evident power of God amongst them. They even
wanted to sacrifice an ox, sacrifice oxen to these two men. And it's
sad in a sense, there's a pity because here are ignorant superstitious
people. And yet there is judgment also
because the natural man in his natural condition is always opposed
to God and always wants to find another God in another way and
to reject the one true God. And until grace breaks down that
opposition through the preaching of the gospel, there will always
be this ignorance and this superstition amongst men. Our message is to
point to the true God, to turn men and women from their vain
things. And that's what the Apostle Paul
says to these people. He says, God has given you a
witness in the preaching of the gospel. He has sent you a message,
the message of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he has brought a
preacher to your very town, the town here of Lystra. And they were to listen to the
gospel being preached. Well it seems before there was
too much reaction to what the Apostle had to say that we come
to another part of this story and here we find in the end of
this account, at least for today, that when we mentioned the Apostles
having been chased from Antioch to Iconium and then to Lystra,
we find that the people who chased him kept on chasing him and they
had followed him from those two cities, perhaps getting encouragement. The people from Antioch got encouragement,
Antioch and Pisidia got encouragement from the people in Iconium and
they came maybe as a gang of men and they wanted to hurt the
apostles. And so these Jews came from Antioch
and Iconium, having followed Paul and Barnabas, and they persuaded
the people there in Lystra that they should try to kill the apostles. How fickle men are. They wanted
to worship Paul and Barnabas one day as gods, and the next
day they tried to stone them to death. They tried to stone
the apostles when they were in Iconium and now they wanted to
stone him here in Lystra. Stoning was a terrible death. Stoning was something that was
very painful and very graphic and very brutal. And of course,
we know that Paul knew about stoning because he had been party
and witness. at least to one stoning and perhaps
more than one over his lifetime. You'll remember that as Saul
of Tarsus, the Apostle Paul had been engaged and involved and
active in the death of Stephen, the first martyr, by stoning. And he knew what was happening
to him when these men grabbed him and dragged him and threw
him into the middle of the circle and then picked up stones and
began throwing those stones at him. Paul was stoned. We realised that there would
have been probably a bit of a riot, there would have been a terrible
noise going on and these stones, these boulders would be heaping
down upon him. They would be crashing into his
body, into his legs, into his chest, into his back, into his
face and into his head. And the people would stand and
stone them until the blood flowed and until the person went unconscious. And even then, in order to make
sure he was dead, they would probably continue piling up those
stones upon him. And after they had finished and
they were sure that Paul was dead, they dragged him unconscious
through the streets of Lystra and they dumped him outside the
city in order to rot away. But we're told something very
interesting right at the end of this little passage in verse
20. We're told there that, This is a miracle. You see here
in the midst of Paul's suffering, in the midst of this attack,
this assault, this stoning that took place, God protected him. And I don't imagine for a moment
that those stones didn't cut him. I don't imagine that he
didn't bleed. I don't imagine that those stones
didn't pierce his skin and cause him to fall unconscious. I'm
sure they did. He was stoned. And he was stoned
by people who knew how to stone and how to execute their victims
by that method. And so the Apostle Paul suffered
stoning. But in that, God healed him and
protected him. And it was almost as though he
had been untouched when he rose up. and he went back into the
city, despite the efforts of his persecutors. I don't know
whether any of them saw him that day, but they must have been
amazed that here was the Apostle Paul, back upon his feet, and
well, it appears. Salvation is a spiritual thing,
but sometimes God shows evidences of salvation in practical and
physical ways. It was God's purpose that his
gospel would go on. It was God's purpose that that
gospel would be preached to many, many people, that the Gentiles
would hear. And it was God's purpose that
his preacher in that gospel preaching would be the Apostle Paul. And Paul was saved in order to
live another day, in order to fight another day, and in order
to preach another day. And we're told that the next
day Paul and Barnabas departed out of Lystra and went to Derby. We'll go back to Dare be on another
occasion, the Lord will. But there we are, that's our
account of Paul and Barnabas's preaching ministry and his stoning
in Lystra for today. Thank you for your attention
and for listening.