City 2 City

Now here's a question to start you off with. How far would you go with following Jesus? How far would you go with it? How seriously will you take following Jesus. It's a familiar story maybe to many of us.

Pop that first picture up This is a picture of 5 fine young men in the fifties. They were Nate Saint Roger Euderian, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, and Jim Elliott. And they were 5 missionaries in the 19 fifties, who attempted to reach the savage tribe of the Alca Indians in Ecuador. And after establishing contact, the band of missionaries here flew into the jungle for the first, proper meeting with stone age natives famed for killing each other on a regular basis. Lots of battle spearing each other all the time.

These 5 men and their families had made a huge sacrifice to even be in the country. They had excellent educations from top university of their day, the world was at their feet. They were the finest of the best of the best, finest men. You'd ever find. And all of them had wives Some of them even had small children waiting for them at base camp as they made that trip to make contact with the natives.

Perhaps, you know the story. The exact happenings of that first contact are a bit hazy but all 5 of those men were brutally speared to death on that fateful day when they first made contact. And they left widows, they left fatherless children. And all just because they wanted with all their hearts to reach that tribe with the good news about Jesus Christ, to take the Christian gospel to a tribe that had never heard of him before. Now what's even more amazing perhaps is that several of the widows of those men actually went back to the Alka Indians to the very people.

That had been involved in the incident, and they lived amongst those warriors who had slaughtered their husbands. And they did it so that they could fulfill their mission of telling them about Jesus. And by the grace of god, the tribe actually became believers. They became Christ lovers, saved and forgiven through the work of the women whose husbands had been killed. Amazing story, isn't it?

And the words of Paul in this chapter would have been very well applied to their lives let me just pop it over on the next screen. Verse 22, right in the middle of chapter 14. Paul says this, We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of god. It's a statement, isn't it? Paul said those words only days after he himself had been left for dead.

In 1 incident. We'll get to that in a minute later on this morning. But now perhaps you're thinking, you know, okay, there's different kinds of Christians, aren't there? There's a spectrum of of Christians. You know, we've got, the apostle Paul, and you've got the Jim Elliott sort of end of the spectrum, haven't you?

They're all over here, and their wives as well. They're on 1 end of the spectrum and and I'm kind of on the other 1. Yeah? They're the sort that get up at 5 AM and, you know, they're they're high achievers. They're that kind of personality maybe.

I'm more the kind of lie in personality. I'm a plodder. They're exceptional. You know, and we can't all be like them. The thing is That would be all very well if Paul had said to these people, I must go through many hardships.

But he didn't. He said, we, he expected this. He was talking about everyone who tries to live a godly life in Christ Jesus. That's who he's talking about there. Everyone who tries to do that Now, certainly your situation and your personality as well might be very different.

But the call to follow Jesus is the same for you and me as it was for them. It's the same call on our life. The story goes that in the early 19 hundreds, and I have tracked down what I think is the actual newspaper, the Explorer Erner shackleton put an advert in various London newspapers to try and get men to come on his polar expeditions, trying to follow him out into a dead zone, basically. They say the advert read like this. I think that is the advert there.

Men wanted for a hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months in Constant danger, safe return, and then he puts a little thing there at the end honor and recognition in case of success. You know, not necessarily. I mean, you don't even know the names of half of these men, do you? Or any of them, perhaps? Now Jesus took the same recruiting approach in Luke chapter 14, as that.

He said, anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. And then he gave, and we'll look at these just now, just quickly. He gave 2 pictures to illustrate. He said, Suppose 1 of you wants to build a tower, will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he's got enough money to complete it. If he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him.

Saying this fellow began to build but wasn't able to finish and there's a memorial to it that everyone will see from now on of the folly, the stupidity of this man. He gave another picture or suppose he says a king is about to go to war against another king Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with 10000 men to oppose the 1 coming against him with 20000. If he's not able, he will send a delegation while the other's still a long way away and we'll ask the terms of peace, but of course he will. It would be a slaughter, wouldn't it? Leading your men to death?

And then Jesus summed up saying in the same way Same as those 2 illustrations. Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. I bet some of you here don't like that sentence. We don't do it. We don't like hearing that.

Everything Any 1 of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. You gotta let go. You gotta take your grip off everything if you wanted to put your grip on Jesus. You wanna hold on to him. Gotta let go of everything else.

That's a strong, tough call, isn't it? Count the cost says Jesus. Don't you come and follow me unless you're all in? Yeah? Don't just test the waters, jump in.

Better not to start, he says than to get halfway through and find that you can't continue, because then your state will be even worse than it was to begin with. And Jesus invites all of his followers to pick up a cross and to follow him. Following Jesus cannot be done half heartedly. It's all in or nothing. Now I'm preaching that as much to myself as to any of you, of course.

And I think Paul shows you and me what it might look like in this chapter to live that way. And if I'm honest, it unnerves me. It leaves me with the conclusion that actually, do you know what? If there, you know, only if there isn't any other way I can be saved. Only if there isn't any other savior, only if there isn't any other thing I could do.

Only then would I really want to be in on this deal because it's sacrificing everything else I have following Jesus' heart? We make it easy sometimes, but it's actually hard. It's not easy. In chapter 14 of acts that we're looking at this morning, the apostles, the missionaries there, they face a variety of different kinds of opposition and rejection. So let me catch you up with our top high end, visuals.

Here we go. Paul and Barnover a call by god and commissioned by their church to be the first missionaries to go to the gentiles. So they're going to people completely outside of the Jewish culture. People who are not like them. They're strange.

They're different. They're foreign to them. And first, they head to Cyprus. Now that's fairly home territory for barnabas. But it's a it's a foreign place really for Paul and they start to encounter the reality of pagan culture, gentile culture.

And there, they go head to head. We heard it in our first installment, didn't we? Head to head with Elimas, the sorcerer, And they take him on before they see their first convert, Sergio Powerless, the Roman proconsul. He comes to believe in the lord Jesus before they leave the island. It's a wonderful thing.

And then they head up into Turkey to Poseidian Antioch. Where they saw a massive rejection of their message from the Jewish community. And the Jewish community stir up persecution against them and get them spelled out of the region. They get them kicked out. And that was what we looked at last time.

And now in chapter 14, We read that they arrive in iconium here. There we go. We're in iconium and I'll read you from verse 1 of chapter 14. In iconium, Paul and Barnabas went as usual to the Jewish synagogue, and there they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and gentiles believed But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the gentiles and poisoned their mind against the brothers. You see, Jess, when things start to actually be, you know, going their way, that's when bam opposition.

And they hit the brick wall again. Why? Well, and and this is really the key to what we're talking about this morning. It's not actually them that people have a problem with. It's their message.

That's kind of why we spent last month a bit time looking at their message. It's not the apostles, not their personalities. It's what they're saying. And whatever situation or people these missionaries preach the message to, it always seems to cause trouble. How does it cause trouble?

Well, we saw it last time. Do you remember? Paul preached a message that said Now, remind you, we can be declared by God legally right with God. Clear and free. Sorted, cleaned up.

No condemnations. All charges dropped. How? By keeping all of god's commands? No says Paul by simply putting your trust in Jesus.

That's the good news. Jesus died on the cross took your sin, paid for it all, and it was all done. Just turn away from your sin, turn to Jesus, ask him for forgiveness. And trust that he will do all the rest. That's the gospel and it's a great message, but Paul then goes a bit further.

This he says to them He says this to the law keeping Jews all invested in their law rules sort of system. This is a right standing with god that you could never get by keeping all of god's commands. He says that to them. You'll never get this rightness by keeping god's commands. No matter how hard you try.

So the Jewish law, the religious system that you've all dedicated your lives to, and invested in in great, at great cost. Cannot actually help you to get right with god in the first place. Try to save yourself by doing good by keeping god's laws by working for it. Is is actually bad news. Why?

Because frankly, it's impossible. We know that, don't we? You know, the debt that we have, we just don't grasp the debt of our sin, the debt that we have between us and God. It's kinda like having a national debt. It it's a figure so big.

You can't get your head round it. The national debt of our country is is some weird figure. It goes up by like a 17000000000 pounds every day. It's going up. It's just this accumulating debt.

Think about how what it would be like to try and pay that off. If you're put into 1 of those dickensian debtors prisons, which I've never really understood. You take someone who's a debtor and you put them in a debtors prison where they can't earn any money and they stay there till they've paid off the debt. So they can't get themselves. Do you see the hopelessness of a situation like that?

That's the situation we're in. The law won't help. The gospel though is a free gift, that's what the word grace means. It's a gift of rescue from god through Jesus, which is good news. That is good news.

He pays the debt and you're out of the prison. But it is good news that divides people and we start to see that really happening here. There will be those who receive the gift and there will be those who are what they're just too crowd, I guess, to accept the gift and their hearts become hardened to it. They cannot accept a message that tells them that the belief system that they thought all the while was a rock under their feet is in fact quicksand and they're sinking into it. That's what Paul's saying.

And they are so proud that they determine to take as many people down with them as possible. That's what we've just read, verse too tells us that those those embedded Jews who've just had pointed out to them the the uselessness of keeping their law to save themselves They poison the mind of the gentiles. They spread their poison into the crowds. You can sort of guess how it went. They probably said something like, you know, of course, they're talking to pagans here.

So you know what people what sounds too good to be true is too good to be true. These apostles, their message just doesn't add up, does it? This and and this teaching, do you know what it's gonna do? It will rot the moral fabric of our culture. You tell people that they're forgiven.

You tell them that they don't need to keep the law to be saved. You've got a recipe for disaster. You'll have crime rates going up. You'll have immorality everywhere. Cause because you all know that the 1 good thing that religion does is it keeps people in line.

At the very least. And so we read in verse 4. We'll pop it up on the screen. The people divided Some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles, and there was a plot afoot amongst the gentiles and Jews. Together with their leaders, to mistreat them and to stone them.

And it's an obvious point perhaps, but people will always respond to the Christian message. They'll respond to our witness to Jesus by either receiving it or rejecting it. And the rejection can be quite hostile. And though Paul and Barn of us spent, were told considerable time there in verse 3, They knew the time would come where they'd have to move on and take the message elsewhere, onwards to Listra where things really start to get exciting, but we're going to sing first. So we're gonna sing our next song.

It's Christ, the king of every age. And then after this, Paul will lead us, praying. The brothers have to move on way to the next town. So from iconium, they traveled on to Listra. There they go.

And let me read to you from verse 8 of acts chapter 14 In Listra, their sataman crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked. And he listened to Paul as he was speaking, and Paul looked directly at him and 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. He leapt up.

Now Lister was a town sort of further further down, towards south there. It's slightly off the beaten track a little place, really. And the town was full of superstitious pagans who like most people around them worshiped sort of Greek and Roman gods. There was a local story that went in this area It was a story that Zeus, the god's Zeus and Hermys had once come down to the area disguised as mortals. So they put on clothes and started walking around.

And Zeus and Hermy's had gone around lots of different homes asking for shelter, asking for hospitality. And everyone had shut the door on them. They got no no luck there, but then they came to this elderly couple and this poor old couple gave hospitality to hermes and Zeus out of their poverty. They looked after them. And in typical pagan god fashion, these gods rewarded the elderly couple by not killing them.

By sparing them whilst destroying everybody else in a terrible flood. Now, here were Paul and Barnibas 2 mortals who, have just done a miraculous sign, and it's got the cogs turning in the heads of the local people. Here's a man. He's been lame from birth. He's never walked.

Luke tells us this has been, you know, it's from from birth. He's never walked. He's never used those legs yet with a word or 2 from Paul, he's calls him and the man jumps up It's a full, it's a total healing, a man who's never used his legs, never learned to walk, never had a mummy holding by the hand, and as he takes his first steps, never used those things and think how complicated these are. He he goes from lame to leaping in an instant. It could only be the work of the gods.

Couldn't it? Now, all of this gets discussed and we're told in verse 11 that it gets discussed in the local dialect of the people of Listra. And we've got to assume Paul and barnabas don't understand. That's why Luke's telling us that. And they don't understand what's being going backwards and forwards all this excited chatter until it's nearly too late.

By the time that Paul and Barnovas have figured out what's going on coming down the street is the priest of Zeus and he's bringing cackle with him to sacrifice to the gods who've come amongst them. You know, they don't wanna make the same mistake twice about the hospitality thing. This time they're going big style. They're going to shell hospitality. Have a great feast to all the sacrifices for Zeus and Hermy's here.

The apostles are shocked and they do their their sort of, you know, their cultural thing. They rip their clothes and they come out to rush into the crowd and they're saying So verse 15, we probably got this for the screen. They say to them, men, why are you doing this? We too are only men human like you. We're bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living god.

Who made heaven and earth and seeing everything in them. In the past, he let all the 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 plenty of food and fills your heart with joy.

It's all they can do verse 18 there. To stop the sacrifice being offered. They have to basically just completely stand in the way of it all. And Paul is very quick at this point to take the gospel opportunity that's just risen and to explain the good news to these people. This is good news, not just for Jewish people.

It's not just good news for educated god fearing gentiles who might hover around the sun the synagogue. This is good news. He says for pagan idolaters, like most of his crowd in front of him. This this that Paul declares is good news for Kingston, isn't it? Because perhaps we're not all that different from the people of Listra.

Our culture isn't prone to worship anything. Including celebrities, people, prone to worship anything except the only 1 whose act actually worthy of our worship, the living god who made everything says Paul. We'll worship everything except for the 1 who made everything. Isn't that our western culture? Paul continues, he says this.

Look, in the past, that is before Jesus came and everything changed, God let the nations go their own way, but even then he didn't leave them without the clear testimony of his kindness Seeing in the bounty of the world around them. You've got the rain that falls. Where do you think the rain comes from? The growing crops You just plant seeds in the ground and there's there's food, you know, who does that for you? The seasons turning.

All of those says, Paul, they prove God's kindness, god's grace to mankind. He looks after you. And now that you know who you should be worshiping, you've just been persuaded. You you were about to worship us. You you think we're from god.

Now that you know, turn from your worthless gods. Listen to who we say you should be worshiping. That's really what they're saying. Stop worshiping the gifts. Start worshiping the giver, Jesus.

Well, that message clearly puts the cat amongst the pigeons, but things turn actually really ugly. We're told when some of the Jews from the previous town turn up amongst the crowd. See, the Christian Gospel offends people. It offended the Jews how dare you say we've got no power to save ourselves. Our belief system doesn't have the power to do that, and it offends the gentiles How dare you show disrespect to our beliefs, to our religion?

How dare you disrespect our priest and our temple? How dare you call our god's worthless things? That's offensive, isn't it? It offends people in our culture today for exactly the same reasons. Doesn't it?

Are you really saying I'm a sinner? Are you telling me I'm not good enough? You telling me the things that I do with my life and my body in my mind they're not good things. You telling me I need saving. Are you calling my religion false and yours right?

Is that what you're saying? You know, it's funny this, isn't it? In in my experience and, you know, talking to Pete and Tom as well. It's even with a Christian audience, when you make statements like, now, some of you might want to cover your ears. Mohammed is a liar.

Mohammed is a liar. Or Islam is a false religion. It's wrong. Even Christian audiences flinch. Don't use their part of you that's been so tainted by culture that you flinch at that?

Can he really say that? But Paul certainly wasn't scared to go for the jugular. To call it as he saw it, to tell the truth. That's what verse 15 is. You know, verse 15 there.

If I quoted verse 15, in the in the Kingston mosque or in a Hindu Temple or the the Guradwara down the road, it would be seen as highly offensive, wouldn't it? Turn from these worthless things, you say to them. Probably be seen. Actually, it would be seen as a hate crime, wouldn't it? Stop hating on them.

In fact, in some countries, what happened to Paul next is precisely the response that you would expect still. Look at verse 19. That short little sentence, they stoned Paul, and they dragged him out sides the city thinking he was dead. They upped stones, and they let loose a barrage of rocks until Paul had slumped on the ground a bloodied mess lifelessly lying there. And then they drag his body out to the city dump.

Now I don't want to scare you but I do want to wake you up. Does that wake you up? The first 3 centuries of the church saw thousands of Christians, martyred in sick and brutal ways, read some church history, and it didn't happen because they were violent revolutionaries or because they were nasty people. It happened because of their message. It happened because their message was offensive to the world that they lived in, and they weren't gonna pull their punches.

They were gonna tell the truth. Now, look at what happened in Listra here. Paul, look at it. Paul's healed someone. That's all he's actually done.

He's made a a man who's never used his legs able to walk and leave. And then he's preached a message, which 1 did they stone him for? Everybody likes a healing. No 1 will ever have a problem with us picking up little or running a homeless shelter or running a food bank or doing debt counseling, all of which we should get behind. They're fantastic.

But open your mouth and warn people that they cannot say themselves from hell that they need a saviour or that what they're worshiping is actually worthless and will lead them astray. And it's another story. People don't want that. Well, just want to encourage you before we sing a song that god never leaves his people. See, Paul gets knocked down, but the very next verse.

He gets knocked down, but he gets up again. And you ain't never gonna keep him down. Not when god's got plans for him, and we're going to sing, but we're not going to sing that song. Okay? This completely lost.

They're all blank faces here at the front. Don't worry. So let's sing. You know, some people believe Paul quite possibly died that day. I don't know if that's true, but it's certainly true that he was tough as nails.

Because he got back up again. You've got to give it to him. The day after being stoned, he hobbles down the road to preach to another town. And so they move on to a little town called Derby. There we go.

It's a little easter egg there for you. 1 writer says of Paul like a bleeding track of a hair across the snow. That was Paul's track across Europe. A picture, isn't it? Bruce and battered.

They preach the same good news in the city of Derby where verse 21 tells us they won a large number of disciples. He just gets back up hopples down the road to the next town preaches and as a harvest, and it's wonderful. You see, preaching the good news, you know, it may meet with division. It may meet with offended people and persecution and opposition from the world, but god will build his church and we need to believe that. It's true, isn't it?

The message he's given us has the power of god for the salvation of all who believe due Greek, Kingstonian. It does. The gospel has that power, and it will save. We need to be preaching it. Well, look at verse 27, when Paul and barnabas finally get back to Antioch.

This is how the the chapter ends. They come back to their home base in Antioch. They gathered the church together were told and reported all that they had achieved. No. All that god had done through them.

It's all them, isn't it? And how he had opened the door of faith to the gentiles. God has the power to save people. God opens doors, god opens hearts, god opens eyes, and ears to receive the gospel. It's why it's worth preaching it.

No point if it's just us, is there? The good news will succeed because god is building his kingdom. And no power in heaven on a or on earth can stop it. And do you believe that? If you don't believe that, you won't open your mouth.

You won't care how you live really, if you don't really believe that. Well, on their way home before we get to this point, They stop. They go back over their tracks and they stop at all of the different cities in which they were persecuted, remember, which has been a common theme everywhere they've gone pretty much. So that they can then encourage the new converts, people who've just believed, and they can appoint elders, people to look after them. I don't know how much more experienced as Christians they would be after only probably a few few short weeks or months, but he wants them to be taken care of.

And what does Paul himself want these people to know? Well, he has a very simple message. We started our service with it. What will encourage them? Now picture, Paul.

He stands in front of them bearing the physical battle scars. Of an encounter with a barrage of rocks. This is a man who's been stoned only a few months earlier. Paul wrote to the Galatians, listen to this. This is what he said at the end of chapter 6.

I bear on my body, the marks of Jesus. What do you think that meant? Now, this picture sort of just wrung a bell this morning with what I won't ask him to get up, Paul, could you, Roy, do you want to stand up and show us your he's a living slide for us? Now, I'd like to say that Rory received his attractive, Shiner there from, preaching the gospel, but I don't think it was, was it? No.

Okay. Well, you better sit down then. But Paul did and he bore in his body on his body the marks of Jesus. It's like a living, you know, a scar testimony to a truth, isn't it? He tells the brothers and sisters in Listra verse 22 to remain true to the faith.

Keep trusting Jesus. Don't turn back to your idols. Don't go back to your religious system or your rule keeping. Keep trusting Jesus. Just Jesus.

But listen, we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. That's what your life's going to be like. He says, it's gonna be like. You're on your way to the kingdom of God, you know, you're on the way. And this is what your life will be like.

You know, we moan about how tired we are sometimes, don't we? You know, even teenagers, I had teenagers this morning, all looking half dead as I was trying to talk to them this morning. We moan at how tired we are. I do it too. We we do things like we leave inviting non Christians to the next church event.

We lead that to someone else. Yeah. Why do we do that? Because we're worried people might think we're pestering them or bothering them, or they might think we've gone a little bit nutty on the religious front. They might worried they might think we're a bit weird You know?

It's a fear that we have, isn't it? We struggle with our priorities. Sometimes we can't we don't make to their prayer meeting because we've got other priorities. Or we go out to talk to people. I go out to talk to locals and when someone shuts a door in my face, I feel hurt.

I do. I feel discouraged. I don't wanna carry on. You know, we aren't meeting in secret in fear of our lives for talking about Jesus, not yet in this country like some Christians are today. But if we do seek to live a godly life, in Christ Jesus.

To witness to the world around us, the Bible is very clear. We will not be popular. We will suffer. It will be persecuted. People will avoid us.

We we yeah. Some of you have experienced this. People avoid us they will laugh at us. They will talk at us behind our backs. We'll be called bigots and homophobes and intolerant.

And there won't be any justification for it. They will try to trap us in our words, try to make us look stupid, try to ask us a question we can't answer. And we will feel at times isolated and alone. Is that ringing your bell with anyone? As 1 author puts it, In our culture, we die the death of a million paper cuts, but it's a death, it's a cross nonetheless, isn't it that you're asked to bear?

The road to god's kingdom says, Paul is beset with hardships. You have a cross to take up. And the question is, are you in? Are you all in? Or are you not?

It's what I wanna leave you with this morning. This is a quote we'll end the service with from Jim Elliott who considered the cost. In fact, he wrote this in his journal a little over 6 years before he lost his life. Before he went out to those tribes people, he wrote He is no fool who gives what he can't keep to gain what he cannot lose the kingdom of god. Well, let's sing our final song before we close.