Books of the Book: Acts

Through Much Tribulation

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Jim & Mark Howard

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Series Code: ABOTB

Program Code: ABOTB00016A


00:22 Welcome back to Books of the Book.
00:23 I'm Pastor Mark Howard and I'm here with my cohost, Jim Howard,
00:26 who just happens to be my brother and a pastor as well.
00:28 We are pastoring in the Michigan Conference of Seventh-day
00:31 Adventists. Jim is on the east side of the state near Detroit
00:34 in Detroit and I am on the west side of the state in a little
00:37 place called Gobels as well as directing a school of evangelism
00:40 for the Michigan Conference called the Immanuel Institute of
00:44 Evangelism and that has been a lot of the reason that I've been
00:47 interested in studying the book of Acts, because we see in the
00:51 book of Acts this is the book of evangelism, this is the book
00:55 where we see the mission of the church being carried out in
00:59 practical terms. And it's been exciting to watch in spite of
01:02 all the odds, Jim, that keep coming upon the church, it
01:06 continues to grow. Sometimes today when we talk about the
01:10 church and the growth of the church we lament over all the
01:13 difficulties that we have in forwarding the gospel and
01:17 opposition that we meet but, I don't know, so far it's nothing
01:22 compared to what we're seeing here. For example now, we
01:24 finished last time in chapter 13 of Acts and I want to recap the
01:29 last few verses of chapter 13 but as our custom has been here
01:33 we have asked the Lord to guide our understanding as we turn our
01:37 attention to the word. So I'm going to ask if you would pray
01:41 with us now. Heaven Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit would
01:45 again be present to guide our study of your word and Father
01:49 we ask it in the name of Jesus and for his sake, Amen.
01:52 Acts chapter 13. I hope you have your Bibles with you and we're
01:58 going to go to verse 48. Now what happened in chapter 13 is
02:06 Paul preached a powerful sermon in Acts chapter 13 where when
02:11 he finished preaching and giving proofs from scripture that Jesus
02:17 was indeed the Messiah that was to come, both the Jew and
02:21 Gentile listeners begged him that he would preach the same
02:24 words to them the next Sabbath and the Bible tells us the next
02:28 Sabbath nearly the whole city came together. As is typical,
02:32 when Paul was done preaching, some were praising God, but some
02:36 were very upset. In fact, verse 46 says that Paul told his
02:39 audience, his Jewish audience, and when I say this we
02:44 understand that Paul was Jew, Barnabas was a Jew. It's not
02:48 that all the Jews were enemies but the Jewish nation, the
02:52 Jewish leaders in this locale for example unfortunately
02:56 rejected this testimony. And Paul says that, verse 46, Since
03:02 you reject this message you judge yourselves unworthy of
03:08 everlasting life. Behold, we turn to the Gentiles. Now that
03:13 phrase, you judge yourselves unworthy, God didn't judge them
03:18 unworthy. God was offering salvation, but they refused it.
03:22 It's important to understand that I've heard some Christians
03:26 who have this mindset that God has predetermined the people
03:30 who are going to be saved and lost and you know you just might
03:33 be without luck. He might have chosen that he's not going to
03:35 give you the opportunity. But that is not found anywhere in
03:38 scripture. In fact, the most famous text in scripture,
03:41 John 3:16 says, Whosoever believes in him should not
03:44 perish. God so loved the world. So you have this universal
03:48 invitation that's given but if we refuse it we judge ourselves
03:52 unworthy. So it says in verse 48 When the Gentiles heard this
03:56 they were glad and they glorified the word of the Lord
04:00 and the word of the Lord, verse 49, was being spread throughout
04:04 all the region. Verse 50 says, But the Jews stirred up the
04:07 devout and prominent women and chief men of the city raised up
04:10 persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from
04:14 the region but they shook the dust from off their feet against
04:18 them and came to Iconium and the disciples were filled with
04:22 joy and with the Holy Spirit. So as you capped it in our last
04:27 presentation of our last study, the Gentiles were glad and the
04:33 Jews were mad. That's where we move into chapter 14. As they
04:38 come into Iconium, chapter 14, verse 1, the Bible says, Now it
04:43 happened in Iconium that they went together to the synagogue
04:48 of the Jews and so spoke that a great multitude both of the Jews
04:54 and the Greeks believed. But the unbelieving Jews, and this is
04:58 starting to be a recurring theme The unbelieving Jews stirred up
05:03 the multitudes, or stirred up in this case the Gentiles and
05:07 poisoned their minds against their brethren. Now I want to
05:11 come back to that in a minute. Now it goes on to say, Therefore
05:15 they stayed there a long time speaking boldly in the Lord who
05:19 who was bearing witness to the word of his grace and granting
05:22 signs and wonders to be done by their hands. But the multitude
05:25 of the city was divided, part sided with the Jews and part
05:29 with the apostles and when a violent attempt was made by
05:32 both the Gentles and the Jews with the rulers to abuse and
05:36 stone them... That's what we were just talking about, right?
05:39 I mean we talk about what opposition we have today, but
05:43 I'm not saying that these things don't happen today in parts of
05:46 the world, but in a lot of parts of the world we have freedoms
05:50 still to be able to study and follow the word of God that
05:53 not everybody has and they didn't have here. They became
05:56 aware of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia
06:02 and to the surrounding region, and they were preaching the
06:06 gospel there. Now a couple things here, Jim. I want to
06:10 pause for a minute and discuss this stirring up. We keep
06:14 talking about it. They stirred up the people. What does that
06:17 mean? What does it look like to stir up the people? Why?
06:22 They certainly weren't uniting them with joy. They were
06:25 stirring up with them with bitterness or somehow trying
06:29 to give false accusations or in some way stirring them up to
06:32 bring them against and to intimidate the preaching of the
06:36 apostles. That's right and it says here
06:38 they stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds, and I have
06:42 a marginal reading that says embittered. But the reason I'm
06:48 asking this is this kind of thing... You know that the
06:51 Apostle Paul tells us that we are not ignorant of the enemy's
06:54 devices. In other words, the devil still uses the same
06:57 methodology and if this is how he responded to the truth in the
07:03 book of Acts, he will respond the same way today. We've
07:06 touched on this before how we don't see the Jews meeting the
07:11 arguments of Paul and the other apostles with scripture.
07:15 In other words, saying, listen fellows, let's come together and
07:18 let's look at this. You're preaching scripture. Let me show
07:20 you where the scriptures you're preaching are wrong. The reality
07:23 is you don't see that anywhere. What happens is they stir up
07:27 the people, they get violently angry and in this case they're
07:30 trying to kill them. They rally the people together to get
07:35 support and they poison their minds against their brethren.
07:39 So they're evidently speaking things about the characters of
07:44 these individuals. It makes me think of the devil
07:46 himself. In Revelation chapter 12 it calls him the accuser of
07:51 the brethren. We know that we do not wrestle against flesh and
07:56 blood but against principalities and powers, against spiritual
08:00 powers of darkness. So we recognize that this is the...
08:04 We're seeing a lot in the book of Acts by the unbelieving Jews
08:08 and what have you, but ultimately the devil himself is
08:11 doing everything he can to stop the growth of this church
08:14 because right now it's growing fast.
08:16 That's right and we'll see some of these things coming up. You
08:19 know it comes to my mind for example that the rulers in
08:23 Jesus' day said that he cast out devils by the prince of devils.
08:27 and made accusations like that so that they were defaming the
08:31 character of Jesus because they couldn't refute the truth that
08:35 he was preaching. We'll find later on in the book of Acts
08:39 that in one place the Jews gathered together against Paul
08:44 and called him a ring leader of the cult of the Nazarenes and so
08:47 they called him a cult leader. Sometimes tactics like those are
08:51 used to defame the character of a person or a movement instead
08:56 of seeking to refute the truth that's being proclaimed.
08:58 That's right. When you don't have the truth on your side
09:01 you've got do something like that.
09:02 I should add that's not to say... I'm sure the Jews had
09:05 scripture that they taught and preached. They did in the
09:08 synagogue every Sabbath day. It's not that they never used
09:11 any scripture but they wouldn't directly come to the scripture.
09:15 Now I should say that in my own experience where I've studied
09:20 with certain individuals and they've disagreed with a
09:23 position that I take on something, perhaps on...
09:26 We've talked a little bit about the Sabbath. As Seventh-day
09:29 Adventists we believe that the seventh day Sabbath is still
09:32 sacred to God and I've had people that disagree with that.
09:36 You know what, a person has a right to disagree. But I would
09:40 encourage any of our viewers, any Christian, too, if you
09:45 disagree with something. Search the scriptures and see what it
09:50 is founded on. What happens is, it's not that when somebody
09:54 disagrees with me in some cases that they don't have scriptures,
09:58 but they won't talk about the particular scriptures that are
10:01 speaking to for example, And Jesus as his custom was went
10:04 into the synagogue on the Sabbath day for to preach.
10:07 It was his custom. Luke chapter 4. Well what about this text
10:10 over here, no not that text over there. What about the one here
10:15 that says thus and so. So there needs to be an honest desire on
10:20 the part of each one of us to know God's truth even at the
10:25 cost of perhaps having to learn something new or different.
10:30 Yeah. You know any doctrine in the Bible has passages that
10:34 could be confusing and seem to be saying something different
10:38 from what the weight of scripture might be saying.
10:40 So it's possible to look at those passages that are a little
10:44 bit obscure and difficult and seem to be saying something a
10:48 little bit contrary and to use that as your support and not
10:51 feel the burden to have to go to those other passages that are so
10:55 clear in the weight of scripture and to try to explain those.
10:59 Instead you just continually point to the same scriptures
11:03 that support your view and that is an issue where we have to
11:06 look at the honesty of our own heart.
11:08 Yeah and when it comes down to it, when we find ourselves
11:12 wanting to stir up the people, we're getting angry and so we
11:15 want to get all the people that think like us and stir them up
11:18 instead of investigate, then we know that we've got the wrong
11:21 spirit. Because that's what we're seeing here. They want
11:24 to poison the people's minds against the apostles instead of
11:28 studying out the teachings that are being presented. So we see
11:32 this stirring up and it results in them actually planning to
11:35 abuse and stone them. So when they became aware of it they
11:39 fled to another location. And of course, despite the fact
11:43 that they just ran into this issue of a potential stoning
11:46 and there's this plot. In verse 7 it says, And they were
11:50 preaching the gospel there. The same thing that got them in
11:53 trouble, the same thing that this plot was created because of
11:57 it, they are not deterred at all. Then it says in verse 8,
12:01 And in Lystra a certain man without strength in his feet was
12:05 sitting, a cripple from his mother's womb, who had never
12:10 walked. Now we have seen something like this before. Back
12:14 in Acts chapter 3 we will recall that Peter and John when they
12:17 went to the temple to pray they healed the lame man there at the
12:22 temple gate. That lame man was also lame since his mother's
12:26 womb. Now in verse 9 it says, This man heard Paul speaking and
12:31 Paul observing him intently and seeing that he had faith to be
12:35 healed, said with a loud voice, Stand up straight on your feet,
12:39 and he leaped and walked, which sounds similar to Acts chapter 3
12:43 as well. Now when the people saw what Paul had done they raised
12:46 their voices saying in the Lycaonian language, The gods
12:50 have come down to us in the likeness of men! And Barnabas
12:54 they called Zeus and Paul Hermes because he was the chief speaker
12:59 Then the priest of Zeus whose temple was in front of their
13:02 city brought oxen and garlands to the gates intending to
13:06 sacrifice with the multitudes. This is an incredible story.
13:09 You know when the healing happened in Acts chapter 3 it
13:13 was primarily Jews, at least a lot more believing Jews in that
13:17 area. Here we're seeing healing that happens around those who
13:20 have a pagan background and the response is a lot different.
13:23 These must be gods. There's a lot in this story...
13:28 It's not the great power of God, it's the great power of the gods
13:30 Right exactly. So there's a lot in this story and we need to
13:33 dig a little bit deeper. But right now we need to go to our
13:37 break. So stay tuned and we'll be back with you in just a few
13:40 minutes on Books of the Book.


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Revised 2014-12-17