This is the sermon text for my sermon preached on July 28, 2024. As I was heading to a preaching conference I was unable to upload the video.
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.
Acts 14:8-18
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.
While I was in seminary, I was able to visit with my extended family which all live in Northern Kentucky near Cincinnati, a couple hours away from Asbury. I’m the youngest of my cousins and so it’s a rather large extended family and when we would get together it would easily be 20-30 people. At the time, my cousin who is 5-6 years older than me had a son who was a toddler, maybe 2 or 3 years old at the time. At one of our family gatherings, his son crawled up in my lap, to the amazement of everyone, since he rarely wanted anything to do with anyone except his parents. He sat there for quite a while looking quite comfortable and content, until he looked over and saw his dad standing on the other side of the room. Immediately, he looked back at me, then to his dad, then back at me with the biggest, most fearful eyes. You’ve never seen a kid jump out of a lap and run across a room so fast. It’s one of those stories that gets told every time we are around each other.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been mistaken for someone else, but that is exactly what happened to Paul and Barnabas as they preached and healed in Lystra. As the story goes, Paul heals a man who was lame since birth. Paul looks at the man and scripture says he sees that the man had faith to be made well. Now I want to make a quick statement about the role of faith in healing. I want everyone to notice one thing here, it doesn’t say that the man had ‘enough’ faith to be healed. This isn’t a statement about some amount of faith that is required in order for God to work. God isn’t waiting for us to reach some arbitrary ‘level’ of faith in order to be able to perform miracles in our lives. Jesus himself said that faith in as small an amount as a mustard seed is enough to move mountains. What God is looking for is belief and trust that God will work. Paul, through the power of God, is able to see that faith in the eyes of this man and God is gracious enough to heal him.
I wish I had some good answers as to why God heals this man but doesn’t seem to act on our faith and prayers in the same way. I have no good answers as to why God performs some miracles and yet lets other prayers go unfulfilled. I have had prayers go both answered and unanswered. I’ve mentioned my father dying of cancer when I was a teenager. This past week was the 35th anniversary of his death. I prayed with deep tears for his healing, but it did not happen this side of heaven. This year will also be 10 years since Krystal was diagnosed with breast cancer. I prayed with deep tears for her healing, and we continue to celebrate that she is cancer free. Why did God answer the one prayer and not the other I don’t know. But I do know that in both God walked with me and strengthened my faith.
I’ve seen miracles happen and I’ve seen them not happen. I can’t explain the mystery of God at work. But what I can understand and I stress to you today is that God is not ignoring you. God is not failing to hear you. God is not waiting for you to develop some mysterious level of faith to act. God’s will is mysterious, but our only hope is to have faith in God. And if we trust in God, He will use even the hardest of times to draw us closer to Him.
Now immediately upon seeing the lame man healed, the crowd starts to shout in their local language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” They call Barnabas ‘Zeus’ and Paul ‘Hermes’, and they begin to make arrangements to offer sacrifices to them. Now this seems to just come out of the blue for us as readers, but this is a reaction to a Greek god myth about a time that Zeus and Hermes visited the same region disguised as humans. In that story, Zeus and Hermes go door to door looking for a place to stay the night. They are rejected by everyone except a poor couple named Philemon and Baucis, who welcome them in and offer them a meal and a place to stay. As they are serving their meal, they discover that their pitcher never empties, and they realize that the two men are Zeus and Hermes in disguise. Once revealed, the gods warn the couple to flee the city, which they destroy for their lack of hospitality.
In the light of that myth, we can now understand the crowd – They see Paul heal the lame man and they immediately jump in to action. They are afraid that if they don’t show Paul and Barnabas the proper hospitality they will be wiped off the face of the earth. So when they start to offer sacrifices to them, Paul and Barnabas clue in to what is going on and they respond –
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.
Acts 14:15
What is the good news they share? First, turn from these worthless things. Other translations say turn from these vain things. What things is Paul talking about? He’s talking about the Greek god and goddess system and idols they worship. This is where I like the translation ‘vain things’ because, at its center, an idol is our attempt to shape god in our own image. It is shaping our beliefs about who God is and how we can manipulate the will of god through our actions. Instead of a faith that is built on the foundation that we are made in God’s image and made to be God’s representatives to the world, the ‘vain things’ of idols and lower-g gods is built on the idea that we can define and manipulate god based on what we think and feel.
And Paul tells the crowd in Lystra that they can turn away from these vain, worthless things and turn instead to a living God. Unlike the gods of wood and stone that they worshiped with shaky hope and superstition, Paul says they can worship the living God of the universe who made all, sustains all, and provides for our needs. They no longer need to fear vengeful false made-up gods and instead can turn to a living, eternal God.
And to show this is true, they point to this testimony – God has provided for them. God loves them enough that he brings sun and rain to grow crops, he provides food for them and gives them joy in life. And he does this without the requirement of sacrifices that their false religion required. The Roman god/goddess pantheon had no less than a dozen god or goddesses related to agriculture in some way or another. They had gods over the sky and sun and rain and earth and seeds and fertility and springs and health and more and more, and each required their own worship and sacrifices. And if your crops were failing it could have been any of a number of god or goddesses that you have offended in some way. Or maybe that god just decided to punish you for some unknown reason. But the true, living God isn’t a god that plays games and looks to be appeased in order to provide. No, the God of Heaven and Earth is a gracious God who, as Jesus tells us,
He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Matthew 5:45
This is the good news for the people of Lystra, and this good news is good news for us today. That call is still there for us to turn away from the vanity of defining God in our own image instead of living as the image of a living God. Now I don’t know anyone who actually builds idols of wood and stone, but we are often guilty of shaping our image of God to fit what works best for what we feel and believe. Maybe we want a God that is loving and forgiving and is always willing to accept us, which in part is true, but it is incomplete without also knowing that God wants for us to live in alignment with His will. Or we may think that God is only a distant actor – that God worked in the past or will work in the future but God doesn’t often work in our lives today. We may believe in the theory of God, but the practice of God in our lives we see as only about what we learn to do in our own will. But God is more than just some far off figure, but a real and present reality of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. In fact, Paul would later write in Romans –
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Romans 8:8-9
Here’s the good news – we don’t have to try and figure out who God is, because He has revealed Himself to us in Jesus. He has shown us his nature through creation and expressed his heart through scripture. He has repeatedly reached out to humanity as the pinnacle of His creation and called us into relationship with Him. When it comes to knowing God, we don’t have to worry if we have it right or wrong – we can look at scripture and discover the truth of a living God. We can set aside any superstition we have about what we have to do to earn God’s favor and instead turn to a relationship with a living God who wants us to live life with him as our Father. And we can know that God is a true and living God because we can see the testimony of His love for us in creation. Regardless of our belief and relationship with God, He loves us and He provides for us.
This morning, I have this challenge for you – look at what you believe about God. Do you look at God as some far off distant ruler who only comes in to act when things go bad? Or maybe you think God is sitting on the sideline waiting for you to develop ‘enough’ faith for him to work? Or you fear offending God so much that you live your life trying to appease him instead of trying to live your life in relationship with him? Friends, the good news for us all today is this – you don’t have to keep worshipping the image of a god that you’ve designed in your mind and you can turn to a living God who wants a living relationship with you. God isn’t looking for fearful servants hoping to earn his love, but offers us His love freely through the grace offered to us by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Look at your life this morning – You may come here with brokenness and bitterness over what has or has not happened in life. You may be here questioning if God is even interested, if God is ignoring you. Or maybe you’re here to bargain with God, trying to earn his favor with good deeds and trying to do enough to balance out the sin in your life. Friends, hear this good news today – whatever you think you need to do or not do to earn God’s love, whatever ideas you have shaped in your head about who God is and what he requires – the truth is this – The God of the Universe, the God of all creation, the God who provides for the just and the unjust – God loves you. And God loves you enough that while we are still yet sinners he came to earth to die for our sin so that we may be raised with him in righteousness. God loves you and wants to be in relationship with you. God isn’t looking for servants to offer him sacrifices to appease his wrath. He is looking for men and women who are willing to accept His grace and be restored to the image of God that we were created to be.
If you’ve come today and you are hoping that somehow, someway you can be made right with God. I have good news – God wants to be in relationship with you, and through the death and resurrection of Jesus we are made right with God. All it takes is giving ourselves to him so that he can restore us to who he created us to be. If that is what you want, I invite you to join me now in prayer –
Almighty God, we come to you today seeking to know you and to be loved by you. We come knowing that we are unworthy, but knowing also that our worth comes in your love for us. We offer ourselves, not as a sacrifice to appease your wrath, but as a broken creation, trusting in you to restore us as your image bearers through the grace of your Son, Jesus Christ. We invite you into our lives and welcome the relationship you offer as our Living God. May we have life in you and may we live that life abundantly as your sons and daughters. In Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.