25/09/05 Harvest Praise Acts 14:8-20
SLIDE 1 Paul and Barnabas
were two of the first followers of Jesus. They had been travelling together for some time. They had visited cities and towns around the Mediterranean and told people the Good News about Jesus. They had seen people's lives changed as they committed themselves to follow Jesus.
SLIDE 2 Lystra
The bible reading this morning is a record of what happened when they went to the town of Lystra.
While Paul was speaking... he saw a man who had been unable to walk from birth. Apparently this man was listening carefully to what he was saying and Paul could see that he was ready to trust in God.
He called out, “Stand up on your feet!” and the man jumped up and walked.
Now wasn’t that a good gift from God!
SLIDE 3 Perhaps he thanked God
We aren’t told any more of that man...
Maybe he was thankful to God for all that he had given to him and he spent the rest of his life learning to love and obey him and letting others know about his goodness.
3a perhaps he forgot.
Or maybe he was thankful for just a short while… but then after a few days or weeks… other things started to crowd in.. he got a job, he was able to work now, he brought a house.. and then he had a whole new set of problems to cope with every day..
and maybe God gradually became less important.. maybe he even forgot about him and ignored him.
It happens.
There can be moments in life when we feel so grateful, so thankful… (maybe when a child has been born) but then the memory fades, feelings change.. and we forget. I know someone in this town, who has been healed in a most amazing way… but that person doesn’t give God praise now, and that person doesn’t live as a friend of Jesus.
The bible record of what happened in Lystra doesn’t tell us about the man who was healed but it does tell us about the behaviour of the rest of the crowd and about what Paul had to say to them.
Slide 4 Crowd
P and B were visitors to Lystra, they didn’t understand the local accent too well… and at first it seems they didn’t quite understand what folk were saying… (like if I go into Walsall!) but eventually the penny dropped and they understood.
4a These men are gods in human bodies!
That’s what they were saying.
After seeing this healing take place…the crowd was getting all excited – and they had decided that Barnabas was the Greek god Zeus come to visit them, and that Paul, because he was Hermes, another Greek God.
Do you think it is possible to have an idea about God that is not true? I mean there are lots of ideas about God around aren’t there? Is every one of them true do you think?
Just like today… there were all sorts of ideas about God around in the time of the Roman empire. And one very popular religious idea was that…
You could never be sure what the gods might do to you.
A read through the religious myths of the time shows that their gods were immoral, selfish and unpredictable - just like human beings really!
And much of Greek and Roman religion was a sort of desperate attempt to try to keep on the right side of these gods, to avoid making them angry.
And in an attempt to protect themselves people used to wear lucky charms, and find out what their horoscopes said, and offer sacrifices to these Gods to try to keep them happy.
And so the first thing that the crowd do when they think that Paul and Barnabas are gods in human form, is to get the local priest of Zeus and start getting a sacrifice ready. To offer them something to keep them in a good mood.
But Paul and Barnabas weren’t gods.
They were just people through whom the one and only Creator God, was at work.
Paul, must have been desperate to get through to the people of Lystra. He knew that people had all sorts of different ideas about God – they still do.
Show video clip LIFE
SLIDE 5 QUESTION MARK
Some people think he started the world off and that’s all there is to it. Some people think that if there is a God… he doesn’t really care about us. Like the God in the video clip. Ready to just write us off as a bad lot. Some may believe that God is not at all concerned about what we say or think or do or how we live. Like the God in the video clip he sees all the badness… but then well… Everybody just goes to heaven to be with God when they die… except maybe one or two really bad people like Hitler or Harold Shipman don’t make it… but everybody else does.)
The message that Paul and Barnabas had to deliver was that we can know what God is like.
God has come down to us in a human body.
And the God who came to us in Jesus… was not like Hermes or Zeus or any of the imaginary gods who the people in Lystra worshipped.
In Jesus we can see what God is really like. We can see his love, and his forgiveness, and we can hear his call to us to live in relationship and friendship with him.
So Paul set about trying to help the people in the crowd in Lystra to understand that God has been trying to get through to them for a long time.
His message to them was “When you really stop to think about it, doesn't your experience of life tell you that there is a God who loves you”.
SLIDE 6
you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, God is living, the source of all life. He gives this life to each one of us. He wants to give more than this life to us. He raised Jesus from the dead and Jesus is alive now. And seeing that DEATH has to come to each and everyone of us... isn’t it good to know that Jesus is alive and all who belong to him will live for ever!
SLIDE 7
who made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. Is it really easier to believe that the whole of creation is here by accident, by chance… than it is to believe that the beauty we see points us to the conclusion that there must be a creator?
SLIDE 8
…he never left himself without a witness.
The joy and pleasure of his creation,
SLIDE 9
There were always his reminders, such as sending you rain and good crops and giving you food and joyful hearts.
the things that delight our senses… all of these point to the goodness of a God who wants to give good gifts to us. This is a personal God… who treats us with love, and wants us to know him.
In Lystra, and maybe still in Burntwood. many of the people who heard the truth about what God is like, were not ready to believe it. And Paul discovered just how quickly public opinion could change. (like Kate Moss!)
SLIDE 10 Crowd
One minute he was being called a “god”… a few minutes later… the same crowd stoned him, dragged him outside the city and left him for dead. (That’s what you call a swing in public opinion polls!)
9. The friends of Jesus, prayed for Paul who had been stoned and left for dead… and God answered their prayers, because… he got up… and the writer of the book of Acts who travelled with Paul and kept a diary, a record of what happened, tells us…
he went back into the city.
What made him go back do you think?
I think it was love that made him go back.
SLIDE 11 LOVE
Love for God and love for the people who God loved. And just because the love of God was in them… Paul and Barnabas didn't give up on them.
Not until the next day did Paul leave… and then it wasn’t for long. Soon after he came back again.
And we know from other letters that he wrote, that are in the Bible… that a Christian Church was established in that town.
Paul did find people who were ready to believe the truth... people who realised that it is possible to know God as a friend, as a loving parent,
people who realised that they could turn and say thank you to a God who made them and whose love they could depend upon.
This is the God who we remember at Harvest time.
A God who never stops showing his love towards us. A God who is the source of every good gift
a living God who gives life to every one of us
and who promises new life to all those who belong to Jesus
a creative God who is the source of all our creativity, all our skills and talents.
A personal God who made us to live in a relationship with himself…
SLIDE 12 God do you know him ?
Do you know him?