Written by: Gareth Wroe - Christ Church Fulwood, Sheffield

Acts 14 v 16-18
In the past, God let all the nations do what they wanted. Yet he proved he is real by showing kindness, by giving you rain from heaven and crops at the right times, by giving you food and filling your hearts with joy.” Even with these words, they were barely able to keep the crowd from offering sacrifices to them.

Notes 
Have you ever had that experience of someone talking to you and not knowing what they’re going on about? If I said to you that a person had “Rampant caries with advanced periodontitis and ought to be sent for an orthopantomagraph” you’d say “what on earth are you going on about?” I used to be a dentist and a simple translation of the above statement would be that the person had “grotty teeth and gums and needs to be sent for an X-ray”. My point is that it’s no use talking to somebody about something if they don’t have the background knowledge to understand you. 

When Paul talks to the people at Lystra about God he starts where people are at, and talks about stuff they understand like farming and food. Maybe this principle is one that we should think about. We need to be careful about “religious” words we use, it’s no use asking some one who has no church background if their “sins have been washed by the blood of the lamb”! And like Paul it would be good to understand their backgrounds first before steaming in with the gospel. Next time you get an opportunity to chat to someone about Jesus ask God to show you how best He could speak to them. 

Acts 14 v 19-20
Then some Jewish people came from Antioch and Iconium and persuaded the people to turn against Paul. So they threw stones at him and dragged him out of town, thinking they had killed him. But the followers gathered around him, and he got up and went back into the town. The next day he and Barnabas left and went to the city of Derbe.

Notes 
I would hate to be a comedian... well sometimes I’d hate it. What if you told a joke and no one laughed. I’m sure that must happen to comedians a lot. It would be a nightmare wouldn’t it? Imagine you have a new show and it’s opening night, the venue is booked for a month and you have no idea how your audiences will react. If the place is booked for a month I guess you’d just have to keep on going no matter what. If you had a night where people thought you were hilarious it would be easy to come back the next day, but if there were just a few titters one evening, and that was all, then doing the same show the next night would not be so easy. 


Sometimes I find it’s like that as a Christian. One day you might tell a friend about Jesus and they say “that’s sounds great, how do I get to know Him then?” the next day someone may just ignore you and not want to listen. Paul, in our passage today, was no stranger to this problem. One day people were trying to worship him as a god because of his message and the next they were trying to kill him. The great thing about Paul is that no matter what happened he just kept on going, neither success or failure bothered him. Even after he was stoned he was off to Derbe the next day to tell people there about Jesus. I guess Paul was one of those cool people who just seem to do exactly what God wants them to do no matter what had happened the day before.

Acts 14 v 21-23
Paul and Barnabas told the Good News in Derbe, and many became followers. Paul and Barnabas returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, making the followers of Jesus stronger and helping them stay in the faith. They said, “We must suffer many things to enter God’s kingdom.” They chose elders for each church, by praying and giving up eating for a certain time. These elders had trusted the Lord, so Paul and Barnabas put them in the Lord’s care.

Notes 
This passage gives us a list of stuff that new churches need. Read it again and see if you can spot what I’m talking about.
Lets look quickly at each one, cos I reckon that these things could be very helpful for churches that have been going for a while too.
First there’s “making people stronger”. We’re not talking about a work out, you keep Christians strong by getting them to pray, read their bibles and meet together regularly. 

Next there’s “helping them to stay in the faith”. I know a number of people who start off well as Christians and then fall away. One of the main reasons for this is that they haven’t been helped enough. Having someone who really knows their stuff Christian wise and is willing to sit down and talk through issues and doubts is a real bonus. That’s what I think Paul and Barnabas were doing. We need to keep in mind that friends of ours who become Christians don’t just need evangelising but they need help along the way too.

The third thing churches need is to know that “they must suffer”. The Christian life is not easy, Paul and Barnabas knew this from their travels. Young and old Christian need to remember this and work hard at the hard work!

Finally Churches need to carefully “choose elders”. Paul and Barnabas prayed and gave up eating (fasted) in order to focus on picking the leaders God wanted. We may not yet be in the position of having to choose people to lead us, but it might not be long before that responsibility comes and then taking a leaf out of Paul and Barnabas’s book, along with all these other handy hints and tips for churches, could save us a lot of trouble. 

Acts 14 v 24-28
Then they went through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. When they had preached the message in Perga, they went down to Attalia. And from there they sailed away to Antioch where the believers had put them into God’s care and had sent them out to do this work. Now they had finished.
When they arrived in Antioch, Paul and Barnabas gathered the church together. They told the church all about what God had done with them and how God had made it possible for those who were not Jewish to believe. And they stayed there a long time with the followers.

Notes
One of the most encouraging evenings in our church’s calendar is the Missionary Supper. What happens is that about 350 people cram into our church hall and are fed, before being herded across to the church to listen to some of our missionaries. Our church send’s people all over the world, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, you name it we’ve got somebody there, which is dead exciting. On the evening of the missionary supper we get to hear what’s going on in these places and some of the stories of what God’s doing are fantastic. 

Paul and Barnabas obviously knew all about the missionary supper principle and once they had finished their journey they didn’t just put their feet up, watch Eastenders and have a cup of tea. They went straight to their Christian mates and told them what had happened. It must have been so encouraging to hear about all the people who had believed in the Gospel, especially those who weren’t Jews.

The thing about all this encouragement stuff is that you don’t have to be a foreign missionary to get into it. Coming back from school and telling your youth group or church about a good conversation you have had with a teacher who doesn’t know Jesus, or a friend who has just become a Christian, is massively encouraging to other Christians.

So don’t forget to tell people all about how God is using you. 

Acts 15 v 1-2
Then some people came to Antioch from Judea and began teaching the non-Jewish believers: “You cannot be saved if you are not circumcised as Moses taught us.” Paul and Barnabas were against this teaching and argued with them about it. So the church decided to send Paul, Barnabas, and some others to Jerusalem where they could talk more about this with the apostles and elders.

Notes
Circumcision was a way of life for most Jews, and it must have been a really hard thing to change once the first Jews became Christians. However it was something that had to change ‘cos now God’s message was to be to everyone, not just the Jews. Paul wrote to the Romans and told them that circumcision of the heart was what was important and that physical circumcision was a religious exercise that did not matter now that Jesus had come. 

Our youth group recently went away for the weekend. The speaker who came to teach us started with a session where we were told to “Forget everything your Church says”. This was quite a shock, as you can imagine, and I began to wonder whether I had chosen the right man for the job, but as he continued to speak I realised what he was getting at. There is probably loads of stuff in our churches that we do ‘cos they say we should rather than because God wants us to do it, things we do ‘cos they are just religious. Don’t get me wrong here I’m not suggesting that we should not listen to our church leaders, much of what they say will be very helpful. All I’m saying is that we should keep our brains switched on, just like Paul and Barnabas did, and think about stuff carefully rather than just accepting it blindly. Once we’ve thought about it, tested what folk are saying against the Bible and prayed, then either we go along with things ‘cos they are OK, or, and this is the tough bit, we go and talk to our leaders about what we think is wrong.

Acts 15 v 3-5
The church helped them leave on the trip, and they went through the countries of Phoenicia and Samaria, telling all about how those who were not Jewish had turned to God. This made all the believers very happy. When they arrived in Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the apostles, the elders, and the church. Paul, Barnabas, and the others told about everything God had done with them. But some of the believers who belonged to the Pharisee group came forward and said, “The non-Jewish believers must be circumcised. They must be told to obey the law of Moses.”

Notes
Recently I’ve been taking a load of rubble out of my cellar to make it into another room. Although this sounds a simple job it involves pick axing some rather tough concrete and carrying what works out about 16 tons of dirt, in buckets, through the hole that was once meant for coal and then down about twenty steps to a skip. There is no way I could do this job on my own so I asked for some volunteers from our youth group. Much to my amazement about 15 people came to help out, and they worked really hard. We filled about 1 and a half skips and I couldn’t believe how well things were going. It was just as I was thinking this is great that one of the lads got a pick caught on one of our radiator pipes which sprayed everyone in the cellar which slowly began to fill with water.

The point of telling you this tale of woe is to illustrate the fact that as Christians you will probably find that when things are going well disaster will strike. Paul and Barnabas are off on tour again with some great stuff to tell people. Everyone is happy and folk are welcoming them with open arms. Now this is when the devil decides to stir things up a bit, and the Pharisee’s turn up teaching all sorts of stuff which takes away the freedom of the Gospel.

The devil doesn’t like it when things are going well for Christians. We need to keep remembering that we are in a battle, opposition will come and we need to fight it.

Acts 15 v 6-8
The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this problem. After a long debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God chose me from among you to preach the Good News to those who are not Jewish. They heard the Good News from me, and they believed. God, who knows the thoughts of everyone, accepted them. He showed this to us by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us.

Notes
In South Africa under apartheid, a young black boy was walking alongside his mother when a tall white man who was passing greeted them by raising his hat. The boy was amazed and asked his mother why the white man had done such a thing to two blacks. His mother told him that the man was a priest to which the boy replied “I want to be a priest too”. That boy was Desmond Tutu who became one of the most influential Christians in South Africa.

No matter how much we like to think we are fair and don’t ever discriminate against any body, I reckon there will always be some people that we think could never become Christians or will never be as “good” a Christian as we are. Like in Jerusalem we have a past history to contend with. They had the whole of the Old Testament in which they were God’s chosen people, “why should everyone else be accepted all of a sudden?”. Before you say how selfish and misunderstanding they were, just think about how you may be similar. We have all been brought up in certain cultures in certain ways and with certain prejudices. Ever thought that the rude boy at school deserves to go to hell, or the ethnic minority group down the road will never be able to understand the Gospel, or that some one who has special needs can’t get to know Jesus? Just think, what wouldn’t have happened if that priest hadn’t raised his hat to that black boy. Paul reminds the people in Jerusalem, and us, that the Good News and the Holy Spirit is for everyone.


word-on-the-web uses the Scripture text taken from the Youth Bible, New Century Version (Anglicised Edition) copyright 1993 by Word Publishing Milton Keynes