00:00: Would you pray with me?
00:05: Father, we are gathered here today because of your grace to us in Jesus Christ.
00:11: We are here because you love the world by sending Jesus to live the perfect life we should, but don't.
00:22: To be unjustly condemned and to accept upon himself the punishment for our guilt, our failures, our rebellion.
00:37: Even submitting to that punishment willingly unto actual death.
00:47: That his death would count for us.
00:49: Our guilt would be credited to him.
00:51: His righteousness credited to us.
00:54: It is because of your grace in Jesus Christ, your love in Jesus Christ, that we have become your people and gather together to honor you, to understand you, and to follow you as a community of brothers and sisters who love you and one another and the world around us that needs Jesus.
01:18: We ask these things that you would continue to work in these ways.
01:27: We specifically ask that you would open our minds and our hearts to the preaching of your word.
01:34: Cause each of us to focus in on some aspect that particularly applies to us.
01:42: And we ask that your spirit would direct us in these things.
01:46: In Jesus' name, Amen.
01:50: The word Christian gets used a lot of different ways these days.
01:54: I don't know if at any time it's been used in more different ways than it is these days.
01:59: And a lot of them are incorrect, at least biblically speaking.
02:05: Christian is not a political category.
02:10: Christian is not a synonymous description of somebody who aligns with a particular political party.
02:19: It's not even somebody necessarily who went forward at an altar call or some sort of gospel preaching moment and had an experience where they became a Christian per se.
02:34: A Christian, in the biblical sense of the word, is someone who has turned away from their sins and toward Jesus.
02:46: The biblical word is repentance.
02:49: And instead of relying on themselves and what they can do is instead relying on Jesus for acceptance with God, for forgiveness, forgiveness, and to be approved by God.
03:03: And a Christian, as a result of those things, is a Jesus follower.
03:09: Somebody who is apprenticing to Jesus.
03:12: Not to become a Jesus, but to become more like Jesus.
03:16: To follow him in all that he calls us to do and be.
03:21: Which means we have to ask the question, if we here are Christians, what does it look like to follow Jesus today?
03:28: What would it look like for each of us to grow in faithfully following in Jesus' footsteps?
03:36: To live as somebody who trusts Jesus in 2026?
03:43: Acts 14 gives us some insight into that.
03:46: Acts chapter 13 and 14, as a combo, describe what Christians call Paul's first missionary journey.
03:54: In the book of Acts, we have a number of these different outings where he goes out and tours different areas and shares the gospel.
04:00: The chapters 13 and 14 are pictured on the map on the screen here.
04:04: Essentially going from the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the Israel-Palestine region, the northern part of it in particular, into southern Turkey, modern-day Turkey, with a trip through the island of Cyprus on the way.
04:20: And you can see on the map that he, Paul, or Saul, and Barnabas travel together.
04:25: Partway through, John Mark leaves and heads back.
04:28: And then they continue the journey.
04:30: And then when they reverse route, they go back and revisit most of the places, not Cyprus, but most of the other places that they had previously been.
04:38: So it gives you a little picture of the geography that we're dealing with today.
04:43: And I believe as we look at chapter 14, we're going to find some really helpful examples that are completely relevant to us today.
04:51: What does it look like to live for Jesus?
04:53: I think the first and most central thing that we see in chapter 14 that becomes glaringly obvious is the centrality of the gospel.
05:03: We could be tempted to explain that in a way and say, well, they're traveling missionaries.
05:07: Of course the gospel is going to be central.
05:09: But that's not distinctive to missionaries.
05:12: For every Christian, regardless of specific calling, God means for the gospel to be central to our lives and to our very identity.
05:23: The good news of who Jesus is and what he's done for us, what that means for us because we're connected to him by faith, that is at the center of who we are.
05:33: And then by extension, at the center of what we do.
05:36: There's a lot of things that you might say about yourself in describing yourself.
05:40: Oh, I play softball.
05:42: Okay, that's something you do.
05:44: But if you stop playing softball or pickleball or what have you, it doesn't change who you are.
05:50: You might work in a particular field or industry that doesn't define who you are.
05:56: Christianity, on the other hand, is not something that we do.
05:59: It is who we are.
06:01: Our relationship to God through Jesus Christ is the defining characteristic of who we are.
06:09: We are forgiven, loved, adopted people set apart for God, set apart by God from the world and from sin and from self to be for him.
06:22: The gospel is absolutely central.
06:26: It's central not only for unbelievers who need to become Christians, for them to hear the good news message they need so that they can repent and believe and be accepted by God, but then for everything that comes from that, for, in the case of Paul and Barnabas, church planting, but also for Christian living.
06:45: The identity that you have as a believer should be central in your marriage, in your parenting, in your finances, in your job, what kind of job you do and how you do it.
06:58: Now, I'm not saying that you have to be in an explicitly Christian job, far from it, but you ought to do any job you have in an explicitly Christian way as unto the Lord and there are certain jobs that genuine Christians ought never to take, certain industries that are out of bounds morally.
07:17: The gospel is central for the friendships that you have and for how you spend the things that God has entrusted to you, finances, leisure time, and so on.
07:29: In Paul's case in Acts chapter 14, he is sharing the gospel message, the salvation message.
07:37: Everywhere they go, he and Barnabas are traveling and wherever they go, they're sharing the gospel.
07:42: Last week, we talked about what it is to live on mission, treating our daily routines as a purposeful assignment from God to share his love and good news message with the people around us and that's what Paul's doing.
07:54: Now, you see it in verse 1.
07:56: Now, at Iconium, they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed.
08:03: Now, it doesn't say the word gospel, but he has to be sharing the good news of Jesus because otherwise nobody could get saved, right?
08:11: He spoke in such a way that both Jews and Greeks in the synagogue hear the gospel message, understand it, and a bunch of them become believers in Jesus.
08:20: We see it in verse 15.
08:22: He rebukes the folks that are calling him Barnabas.
08:25: God says, men, why are you doing these things?
08:28: We also are men of like nature with you and we bring you good news.
08:33: That's the word gospel, good news.
08:34: We bring you good news that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, right?
08:43: They're bringing this message about Jesus, the good news message, and saying, you've got to turn away from all these other religious things and all these other religious ideas and turn to the one true God who created everything.
08:56: Or verse 21, when they had preached the gospel to that city, meaning Derbe, and it made many disciples, again, they're fulfilling the great commission, they're sharing the gospel.
09:08: Do you understand the gospel?
09:11: Now there's a lot of things that you could share in the context of sharing the gospel, but the most central elements are this.
09:17: God entered the world as one of us.
09:22: God, Jesus, became a human being, took upon himself human nature so that he could live a perfect life like we should and don't, so that he could substitute himself for guilty people and take our punishment that we deserve on himself.
09:42: And that counts in God's sight for everyone who turns from their sin toward Jesus in faith.
09:50: And then we want to tell people this means that you, if you do this, if you trust Jesus, you will be forgiven by God.
09:57: Every failure of every sort, of every type, past, present, and future.
10:02: It means you will be completely accepted.
10:04: God will have zero anger, zero animosity.
10:09: No condemnation will remain from God towards you.
10:12: You'll go from being an enemy of God, a rebel against God, to being not only accepted by God, but he will adopt you as a son or a daughter.
10:20: You will be dearly loved by God in a way that you've never experienced.
10:25: And in fact, God will begin living in you by his Holy Spirit and enabling you and guiding you in ways that you never thought possible.
10:33: And so we want people to understand that it changes everything when we trust in Jesus.
10:39: 1 Thessalonians 2.4 uses the phrase, entrusted with the gospel.
10:45: Now, in context, that's talking about Paul and his ministry colleagues, but really it's true for every Christian in the larger context.
10:53: You, Christian, have heard and understood the gospel by God's grace and have therefore also been entrusted with the gospel.
11:03: God wants you to do something with this gospel, and it's important that you do so.
11:08: There's at least three things that you need to do with the gospel.
11:11: Number one, believe that good news and be saved.
11:18: Become right with God.
11:20: Get saved.
11:20: Number two, that gospel is meant to produce life transformation for you.
11:26: We might call it evangelism and discipleship.
11:30: You're meant to believe and then grow in that belief.
11:32: Or, as we say in our mission statement here, for every believer to become, make, mature, and multiply fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ.
11:44: And here's the third thing, and I think this is where we sometimes drop the ball.
11:48: You are entrusted with the gospel in order to share it with others.
11:55: We are not meant to keep the gospel to ourselves.
11:58: We're meant to share it with others.
12:00: Suppose I know that I'm going out for the evening with my wife.
12:07: We're going to go out and have dinner and maybe some dessert, walk around.
12:11: And I feel a little bad because the kids are being left at home.
12:14: So I bake a few pans of brownies so they can just go hog wild.
12:19: And as we get ready to head out the door, only one kid is nearby.
12:21: So I say to one of the kids, hey, there's brownies.
12:24: Help yourself.
12:25: Make sure your siblings hear about it.
12:27: They can help themselves as well.
12:28: And when we get home, I say, how did it go?
12:31: And that one kid says, oh, the brownies were great.
12:33: I think I ate a whole pan worth.
12:35: Did your siblings want any?
12:37: It seems like there's a lot left.
12:38: Oh, I didn't share with them.
12:40: Oh, that kid's in trouble.
12:42: Right?
12:43: Like, you didn't lose anything by sharing.
12:46: There was plenty for everyone.
12:48: You would not even have one less brownie by sharing.
12:51: You were meant to share.
12:52: I didn't give you the brownies so that only you would have the brownies.
12:56: God did not give you faith in Jesus Christ so that you and you alone would have Jesus.
13:05: He means for you to share that gift.
13:07: That's part of what it means to be entrusted with the gospel.
13:10: And we see Paul and Barnabas living that out.
13:14: And what happens is they share the gospel.
13:17: There's a consistent reality that follows.
13:19: It's got two halves.
13:20: It's really simple.
13:22: Some people believe and some people don't.
13:24: That's normal.
13:26: That happens time and time again.
13:28: We see it in Jesus' ministry in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
13:32: We see it in the epistles and in Acts as we see the early church sharing the gospel.
13:38: And we see it in our lived out realities today.
13:41: It is normal that when you share the gospel some believe and some reject.
13:45: Some trust.
13:46: Some opposed.
13:48: You see it in verses 4 and 5 for example.
13:50: But the people of the city were divided.
13:52: Some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles.
13:55: When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews with their rulers to mistreat them and to stone them that's ugly.
14:05: Some of the folks come to faith and yet some of them Jews and Gentiles and their leadership respectively that's coordinated opposition.
14:18: Some people will get really upset and really offended and in some cases even dramatically and drastically oppose those who share the gospel.
14:31: I was talking to someone just recently about how hard it is to be the outsider.
14:37: To not be offensive to anyone to be kind to everyone and yet to still be disliked simply for believing Christian things.
14:45: that's normal in this life.
14:50: It's normal in our era but it's normal across history across culture.
14:54: Some people are going to get bent out of shape just because we stand for what God stands for even if we're not mean or rude to anyone.
15:04: Look at verse 19 in Lystra agitators come from Antioch and Iconium and they flip the crowd against Paul such that he gets stoned meaning they throw big rocks at his head and then they leave him for dead thinking that they had actually killed him which was their intent.
15:23: And yet he goes back into that same city later on and strengthened the disciples there.
15:29: I want to point something out about this map.
15:31: You'll notice if you look carefully on the right on the east there you see the city of Antioch that's where they start and you'll notice on the northwest corner also Antioch.
15:42: It's one of those cities that has multiple cities with the same name.
15:47: Where is Springfield in the United States?
15:49: Well there's a lot of Springfields.
15:51: Similarly Antioch was a recurring name and Antioch on the east side that's home base for them.
15:58: That's where they're going out from.
16:00: Antioch in the northwest part in the southern Turkey region is one of the cities to which they went sharing the gospel.
16:07: So just keep that straight in your head.
16:08: the gospel message is going to unite some people and divide others.
16:16: Now it doesn't just unite them as in they get along but it unites us that we have a common father in heaven.
16:23: It unites us in that we are brothers and sisters in Jesus and we are on the same mission together.
16:28: We are called to be about fulfilling the great commission and we are commanded biblically to do it in the context of community.
16:36: That doesn't mean you can't share the gospel as an individual.
16:39: Of course you can but it means as Hebrews 10 24 and 25 talk about that we are not to give up the habit of gathering together.
16:47: The word church literally means the assembly or the gathering.
16:51: We cannot and are not intended by God to try to do the Christian life Lone Ranger style.
16:56: We're meant to do it together to regularly and habitually do life together.
17:02: Now attending church on a Sunday morning fantastic highly recommend encourage you to do so.
17:07: That is a piece of it but it also means connecting with fellow believers in such a way that you know each other that you are encouraging each other that you're carrying one another's burdens that if something's wrong in your life there are people close enough to you to spot that to speak up to help you to reach out.
17:27: You can't be on your own.
17:30: It unites us in that and it helps us to stand firm.
17:34: Paul and Barnabas are traveling from place to place bringing the gospel with them and time and again they have a mixed response and they expected that just as we should expect that.
17:44: Expect that sharing the gospel will sometimes produce life transformation that goes on to eternity and that sometimes people won't even care at all or they'll be upset with you but they don't quit.
17:56: They don't say oh well you know a lot of people don't like what we have to say let's just pack it up and go home let's just live out the rest of our lives in Tarsus or Jerusalem or whatever.
18:04: They didn't say in their minds or their hearts it's just too hard it's too inconvenient I'm throwing it in the towel.
18:11: Instead they keep at it.
18:13: Sometimes they stay in the same place where there's opposition.
18:16: We see that in verses two and three for example.
18:18: The unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.
18:23: I love the beginning of verse three.
18:25: So they remained for a long time speaking boldly for the Lord.
18:30: Hey you want opposition?
18:31: I'm not going anywhere.
18:33: I'm staying put.
18:33: I'm going to keep preaching Jesus.
18:35: Sometimes it means they move on to a different place.
18:37: We see that in verses five to seven.
18:40: There's a death plot against them so they move away from that city and instead bring the gospel to a couple of other cities in the region.
18:46: Or verse 19.
18:48: Paul gets literally stoned almost to death at Lystra so he moves down the road to the next town and shares the gospel with them in Derby.
18:57: Don't give up.
19:00: Because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation as Romans puts it.
19:06: Don't give up.
19:07: This gospel message is life for the world.
19:12: And if people don't hear the gospel through believers like you and me they will not be saved.
19:18: Eternity is in the balance.
19:23: As we live the way that God is calling us to live as we are doing the Christian life well who gets the glory?
19:34: God.
19:36: Now I'll use myself as an example but I could insert your name just as easily.
19:41: When I do what Dylan does in Dylan's strength I screw everything up.
19:47: But when I do what God wants in God's strength that's where success comes from.
19:55: The successes in my life are the result of God's grace to me and through me and the failures in my life are when I unplug from God's purposes and plans and power and do my own thing.
20:07: Same thing's true in your life.
20:09: And so anytime there's reason for praise God gets the glory.
20:13: In our passage this morning we see some challenge with this idea.
20:22: In verses 9 and 10 Paul heals a man who was crippled from birth.
20:26: It's in the midst of a public preaching of the gospel kind of situation and when the people see this healing they're so excited that verses 11 through 13 the crowd saw what Paul had done they lift up their voices saying in Laconian the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men.
20:45: Barnabas they called Zeus and Paul Hermes because he was the chief speaker and the priest of Zeus whose temple was at the entrance of the city brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the crowds.
20:55: Like the crowds are so excited by this they start declaring that these two fellas must be gods entering into the world like people and let's worship them.
21:07: Let's literally slaughter oxen and put garlands around them and treat them as though they're very gods.
21:12: That's messed up.
21:14: That's not how they should be responding.
21:19: But it's even worse than it looks.
21:22: Given the context Paul and Barnabas are already telling them about Jesus.
21:28: We see in verse 15 they say men why are you doing these things?
21:34: We also are men of like nature with you and we bring you good news that you should turn from these vain things.
21:43: They pronounce them hey this is the very opposite of what you should be doing folks.
21:48: Our message is don't do this.
21:51: You should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.
21:57: They're preaching the gospel and these people are so impressed with the healing that they say let's do the very opposite of what he's been telling us about.
22:04: Let's treat people like they're God instead of treating God like God is God.
22:12: And when they hear that message they still want to double down on it.
22:16: They even with these words they can barely keep them from worshiping them the passage tells us.
22:24: The reality is that sinful man's propensity for false worship and for works based standing with God runs very very deep.
22:37: God made us for worship and in our sinfulness we tend to want to worship something just about anything other than God.
22:48: The reformer John Calvin rightly said man's nature fallen nature man's nature so to speak is a perpetual factory of idols.
22:58: We're constantly finding something to latch on to to give the glory to treat like we ought to only treat God.
23:06: And it's heartbreaking how often we see professing Christians around us people that say that they're Christian doing this very thing trusting in works or describing God in a way that doesn't match the Bible at all.
23:19: Right?
23:20: A God whose values are those that totally match contemporary culture.
23:26: Values that don't match the Bible.
23:29: A Jesus who has no problem with sin rather than a Jesus who saves people from sin and from God's wrath against them because of their sin.
23:39: We see people today that have this idea that God is just like I am but somehow to a more extreme degree that's what God's like.
23:49: I'm basically good God's just even better at being me than I am at being me but the Bible presents God entirely differently.
23:56: God hates sin.
23:59: He hates that which is contrary to His will His ways His nature and He punishes it and the only way out of that punishment is Jesus.
24:08: I talked to somebody just recently who said that he had become a Christian a couple weeks before and as we talked he had no concept of the gospel.
24:16: It was all about trying to do good stuff and saying something about Jesus.
24:22: I was like no you don't have to do good stuff for God's acceptance.
24:25: I talked to them about the truth of the gospel and while we can point the finger outwardly I think if we're honest we have to point the finger at the person in the mirror as well and recognize that there are times when the unbidden self-righteous and works mentality that God's more accepting of us when we do good flares up.
24:52: It's part of us that just kind of defaults that direction what do we do in those situations when we find ourselves or those around us beginning to treat ourselves or something else as God instead of God.
25:08: Well look at how Paul and Barnabas respond to this situation.
25:11: They reject it.
25:12: They say I want no part of that.
25:13: Nope.
25:14: I am not God.
25:15: I am not to be worshipped.
25:17: God alone is.
25:18: They redirect it away from themselves to the one true God.
25:22: That's what we need to constantly be doing.
25:23: Nope.
25:25: That's not me.
25:27: When God does something good through you and somebody praises you which is legitimate give God the credit.
25:33: Give God the glory.
25:35: It's the exact opposite of how Herod responded in Acts chapter 12.
25:40: Remember Acts 12 we saw the multiple death and near death stories and it ended with Herod doing a public speech and some people sucking up to him and they shout the voice of a God not of a man.
25:51: verse 23 and immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give God the glory and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.
26:02: Paul and Barnabas are the flip side of that and saying this is what it really does look like.
26:06: When people treat you like a God you say no, no, no.
26:10: I'm not.
26:11: I'm not him.
26:11: He is.
26:12: John the Baptist is another great example.
26:14: People were focused on John the Baptist.
26:15: He's like I'm a nobody.
26:16: I'm just here to point to the somebody.
26:18: And that's Jesus.
26:20: You are called to turn attention away from you and toward Jesus.
26:25: It's part of what it looks like to follow Jesus.
26:28: Every time we're tempted to honor ourselves to puff ourselves up redirect the spotlight put it on Jesus.
26:37: Some of my kids have been involved in plays and musicals through school and at times have run lights and that spotlight is a powerful thing and it needs to be directed to the right actor.
26:51: And wherever that spotlight goes that's where everyone's attention goes.
26:55: You're watching any performance you are watching the person in the spotlight.
27:01: God belongs in the spotlight.
27:03: Our lives are the spotlight that should be shining on God.
27:11: Did anybody struggle with verses 18 and 19 when you read it?
27:14: As you heard Carl read it?
27:17: They drive me nuts.
27:18: The stark contrast is just dumbfounding.
27:21: It leaves me gobsmacked with how utterly fickle people can be.
27:27: So the folks respond to Paul and Barnabas with praise as though they themselves are gods and then agitators show up from some nearby towns and the folks completely flip.
27:44: even with these words they scarcely restrain the people from offering sacrifice to them but Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and having persuaded the crowds they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city supposing that he was dead.
27:59: They go from wanting to worship them to let's kill him because some agitators show up.
28:04: I hate that.
28:08: I hate how fickle people can be.
28:11: They're on team A until somebody else tells them about team B oh let's do that all the way to the point of mob mentality death.
28:19: May it not be so with us.
28:22: We need to not be fickle like that and catch this biblically you don't avoid fickleness by just digging in your heels and being stubborn in whatever you currently believe because you could be off base.
28:37: Rather we need to keep growing in spiritual maturity so that we're not yanked every which way by whatever new thing comes along.
28:48: Ephesians 4 speaks of Christians using our spiritual gifts to build each other up until verses 13 and 14 we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by human cunning by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
29:23: If you don't keep growing in your spiritual walk, you remain very vulnerable to being misled by false teaching, about religious stuff, by schemes, by tricks.
29:36: You have to keep growing.
29:39: You have not arrived.
29:43: Doesn't matter which one of you I'm talking to, you are not there.
29:46: Even the most biblically knowledgeable, most servant hearted, most loving folks in this room, you have not arrived.
29:54: Keep growing.
29:56: Keep growing, so that you are less and less volatile, less and less prone to be yanked here and there by whatever comes along.
30:04: And finally, this last reality that we have to look at in this passage, for good and for bad: suffering is a normal part of the Christian life.
30:16: Now, I'm pulling that from verses 21 and 22.
30:20: Paul and Barnabas mostly retrace their steps.
30:23: They visit the churches where they had planted, the cities where they planted churches, and they encouraged the believers unto faithfulness in these places.
30:31: When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.
30:48: The connection there is implicit, saying we don't want you to give up on believing in Jesus.
30:55: We want you to keep on trusting in Jesus.
30:57: But for that to happen, you need to recognize life's going to be hard sometimes.
31:02: It's only through those hard things that we, who are trusting in Jesus, cross that finish line into the kingdom of God.
31:07: So don't let struggles, hardships, tribulations, sufferings turn you away from trusting in Jesus.
31:15: This is the experience that you need to expect as a Christian, that it will involve hardship.
31:20: Hardship in the Christian life is normal.
31:24: Now, I said, for good or for bad.
31:28: Well, isn't it obviously bad?
31:28: Right, nobody likes suffering.
31:31: Suffering is not in itself good.
31:31: Well, yes, hardship is bad.
31:31: It's painful.
31:36: It's often undeserved.
31:36: It's often unprovoked.
31:36: We don't enjoy it.
31:40: We shouldn't unnecessarily seek it, and I don't think that we're even meant to enjoy suffering in and of itself.
31:47: But there's also part of suffering that's part of God's good and gracious plan.
31:52: It's part of how God matures us as Christians, and it's part of how God glorifies himself, as his people say, given the choice between sticking with God even in suffering, or turning away from God to avoid the suffering, I choose Jesus.
32:06: It's worth it.
32:11: It's worth it to stick with Jesus, even with the suffering.
32:11: That's part of that package deal.
32:15: When we choose that, we honor God, we glorify God, and God uses it to mature us.
32:23: Romans chapter 5, verses 3 to 5, I'm using the NLT, so it's a little easier, read here.
32:27: It says, we can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance, and endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.
32:42: And this hope will not lead to disappointment, for we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.
32:52: That suffering is part of how God's going to strengthen you, so that you don't turn away from Jesus.
32:59: I'm going to do one side note here.
33:03: You know what else is normal?
33:03: Elders.
33:05: Just a passing note on verse 23: Paul and Barnabas set up each church with elders.
33:11: It's normal, in fact, it's normative.
33:13: It's not just the pattern that was typical then, it's the pattern that is meant by God to be standard practice in churches.
33:21: That's why there are qualifications spelled out in scripture, Titus chapter one, first Timothy chapter three.
33:27: This is what elders are supposed to be like, these are the qualifications they need to measure.
33:31: It's why, in Titus one five, as part of that passage, Paul instructs Titus with these words.
33:37: He says, that is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.
33:47: If there aren't elders yet appointed in that town, in that local church, things are not yet fully in order.
33:52: Normative practice.
33:57: Now, that doesn't mean that there's no checks and balances on the elders, but it means that God's design for church leadership is elders, and not every church practices that.
34:09: It's important that we do practice that, not just, oh, you gotta have somebody you call an elder.
34:13: The elders need to actually work at measuring up to those standards and function in the way that they're supposed to function biblically, because that's God's design for the thriving of the church.
34:22: We want to thrive as the church.
34:27: We want to thrive as we follow Jesus.
34:30: We may not like that hardship and tribulations are part of the Christian life, but they are used by God for our good.
34:36: And knowing that can provide reassurance, because it means that experiencing hardship doesn't necessarily mean you messed up, or that you ticked God off, or that God's punishing you.
34:47: Christians experiencing hardship need to know that hardship does not necessarily indicate that God is trying to correct you or punish you, or that God has bailed on you and abandoned you.
35:01: Rather, it's an indication that God is at work in you, and likely also through you, for his good purposes.
35:09: Now, when we act like knuckleheads and we do stupid things and bring the hardship on ourselves, we need to own that before God, and confess that, and repent of it, and turn from it.
35:19: But even then, we can be confident that God will work for our good.
35:24: He will never leave us.
35:24: He will never forsake us.
35:27: And he will even use our knuckleheadedness to accomplish what he wills, to make us more like Jesus.
35:35: In fact, the promise of Jesus' unfailing presence with us is part of the great commission.
35:42: After telling his followers to make disciples, to baptize people, to teach them to obey everything Jesus has commanded, he says, and behold, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
35:56: If you, as a genuine Christian, ever find yourself in a moment when Jesus is not with you, then Jesus is a liar.
36:04: You will never experience that, because Jesus would have to be a liar for you to experience that.
36:13: God is always with you.
36:13: We need to recognize that, so that we don't misinterpret the hard times we go through and attribute wrong to God.
36:23: When you have hard things, know that you're not alone, that God's walking with you through it.
36:31: Lean on him, he'll guide you, he'll give you strength, he'll raise up brothers and sisters to walk with you through that hardship, and so on.
36:39: Be confident of this: God knows what he's doing, and you don't walk through anything, ever, that doesn't have divine purpose in it.
36:50: Let's pray.
36:52: Father, we want to honor you, not just in this gathered time, but in the entirety of our lives.
37:03: We want to honor you with how we visit with each other, with how we welcome guests, with how we spend our afternoons and evenings, with the kind of employees we are at our jobs, the kind of parents and grandparents we are, the way that we love and serve our children and grandchildren, the way that we respond to our parents and grandparents, the way that we seize the opportunities and gifts you provided, but do so in a God centered way, not losing sight of you being the greatest gift.
37:37: We pray these things in Jesus name, amen.