Turn with me this morning in the Word of God, to the 14th chapter of the Book of Acts, and we begin to read at the 8th verse. Now at Lister there was a man sitting who couldn't use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul speaking, and Paul looking in ten three at him, and seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, stand upright on your feet. And he sprang up, and began walking. When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in like when he and the gods have come to us in the likeness of man. Barnabas, they called Zeus and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the gate to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, and wanted to offer sacrifice with the crowds. But when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments, and rushed out into the crowd, crying, men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you, and 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. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways, yet he did not leave himself without witness, or he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifices to them. But Zeus came from Antioch and from Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul, and they dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered about him, he arose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derpy. Amen, may God bless his word to us this morning. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that by your spirit's ministry unto us and upon us we might find your words speak afresh to our lives and direct our footsteps, that we might ascribe glory and majesty and honor to Jesus Christ the King, or we gather in His name. Amen. Paul and Barnabas, wherever they went, seemed to endure awful discouragement. Wherever they went on that missionary journey, they came to experience both blessing as they saw people converted, as they saw the gospel of Christ go forward, and yet at the same time they saw also profound discouragement because in each of the cities that they visited, the city of Antioch, Iconium, and then at Listera, they found only hostility and ultimately they found themselves driven from the place of ministry. All this in the context of believing themselves called by God being set apart by His people to engage in the labor of preaching the gospel. They believed they were doing God's work indeed they were, and yet God's work knew both blessing and also seeming discouragement and rejection. We told that they came to Listera after they had fled away from Iconium and to this new work they were driven from one city and they moved to another. Does they came to Listera? So poor as he begins to speak about his Lord, about Jesus' centre of his soul, sees a man who is crippled from the... And as Peter once had stretched out his hand at the gate beautiful in Jerusalem, so poor here, stretched out his hand, and he spoke to this man and God in his infinite mercy healed him, and Paul said to him rise up and the man rose on to his feet. And here a miracle was performed in conjunction with the proclamation of God's word as a testimony of the power of God. And yet those who saw it mistook its meaning and warn us of how easily the miraculous work of God can be transformed in the fallen human heart for they seeing God's healing hand revealed. Immediately assumed that it was Paul and Barnabas who had done the healing and they ascribed to them worshiped. The crowd went wild. They thought Barnabas to be Zeus king of the gods, and they thought that Paul was her muse, his chief messenger. And they began not only to praise these two men, but to seek to offer worship to them, and they gathered with them the chief priest of Zeus from the very temple in Listera, and sought to sacrifice. Paul and Barnabas attempted to speak to them, and they preached to them and the difficulty lay in the fact that they had two different languages, one preached in and one heard. And as a consequence people didn't know what they were saying. And these people had understood a miracle in the context of the legends they lived in for the Latin poet of it in his book Metamorphosis speaks of the fact that in this region around Listera, 50 years earlier there had been promulgated this myth that Zeus and Hermes visited an elderly couple called Philemon and Balkus. And so the memory of this was in the people's hearts. And so they anticipated the return and when they saw two whom they could have described as the gods come into their midst. It didn't matter what they said, particularly when they couldn't understand them anyway. They thought these are the gods here as a miracle we will worship them, and they received them. It was only with enormous amount of protest that Paul and Barnabas as they ripped their clothes, a sign of their own horror. And as they said to the crowd, we are like you, ordinary folk. We are not gods. And as Paul began to explain to them as best he could, preaching a sermon about the nature of the god who truly ought to be worshiped. He focused the attention of his heroes away from himself. And the story continues that as soon as they recognized that Paul and Barnabas were only men and given that they had hostile intent and as they had enemies coming after them from Syrian, Antioch and from Iconium resulted in Paul being taken and stone. And in the incident we are given a picture of the way in which Christians are called to live in this world. To live as those who are called of God, to live in this world and yet to be distinct within it. We are called to work out our faith in the face of a world that is hostile and angry and sometimes ignorant and inductance. And here we are given the reality of what it meant for Paul and Barnabas to live with rejection that came in the form of acceptance and the temptation that comes to you and to me when all those in our community see us and would embrace us and would draw us into their own society. When we meet people who say come in and like us but who want the gospel that shapes us to be left of the door. When we are welcomed and received, when we are liked and embraced, but when the faith that shapes who we are directs what we say and what we do when Jesus Christ alive in us is disliked, disregarded and hated. When we are accepted but our Lord is rejected, what do we do? How do we live when people want to accept us and yet reject the one who shapes our life? Each one of us knows that, each of us knows what it is to be in the midst of groups of people who will humanly embrace us and say nice things about us and perhaps enjoy us in our conversation and like us. At the moment they find out that we are Christians and that the Lord is Lord of life and heart immediately you feel yourself being pushed to the outside and rejected. Paul, Barnardus, showed us here how it is we deal with this form of rejection, it's a real form of rejection and it's an extraordinarily painful one for most of us the stoning that came to Paul is not our literal experience in our life but the pain that comes is real when people reject us because we are Christians. How do we deal with it? Particularly when we want to function in this world. What does it mean to be able to live in this world accommodating ourselves without compromising? It's a tough question and yet there is not one single believer in the sanctuary this morning who hasn't had to face that. How to accommodate and live in the world without being a part of the world? We make that decision in a many different ways every day of our life. Do we struggle to say am I faithful to my God and my gospel? We know the power, we know the temptation to surrender a part of that which is true in order that we'll be accepted. Paul and Barnardus give us many clues as to how we live in this world and they remind us that we must as God's people put the Lord first no matter what the consequence. And here as they are embraced as they're fated as people offer them sacrifices they say come in your miracle workers your people who are welcomed into the middle of our society you're valuable. We can do with people like you. Paul and Barnardus though they struggle with a different language or firm turn from these worthless things to the living God that's what they said. They put first the challenge to honor God. That's very different than the way that many of us respond to being embraced and our Lord being rejected. We turn round and we think oh if I can be accepted I will reveal my Christian faith bit by bit. I will creep up on these unbelievers and then they will know. And you know what happens? We water down the gospel so that it accommodates for accepted. We no longer want to face the rejection that comes as we reveal ourselves bit by bit. Christ is hidden. Oh hidden in our hearts but hidden from those who accept us but reject Him. Paul and Barnardus knew it wasn't easy to honor the Lord but they knew that they were called to deny self in order to do this. The only way in which that can happen is when we have laid hold of the gospel with such clarity and it has laid hold of us that we understand that we bring nothing to our salvation except us in. It is God who is the Savior that it is in Jesus Christ he has come to us that he has lived and died for our sake in our place that he has justified us in his grace and that we are born of God and owe everything to him. Unless that is so clearly a part of who we are if that is the gospel then that has shaped us it has rescued us not only from darkness but from death itself. It has made us children of God and co-airs with Christ Jesus it has set us as a light within the world a light that will not be put out. Unless that is so clearly a part of who we are we will not honor God if understanding that we are sinners saved by grace is not at the heart of our experience of the gospel then we will never deny ourselves we will always seek to add something to the work of Christ. That is the people didn't want to know what Paul and Barnabas were saying the Paul and Barnabas are not God because they knew they owed everything to him to point to the Lord involved them in denying themselves. It was good to have been fated and lauded and welcomed and received and to get all that attention it would have been easy to say this is the means by which we can preach the gospel they have accepted us now we will be able to help them step by step. Paul and Barnabas did never accommodate any compromise to the gospel that they preached because that was to dishonor God. You can't hide Jesus you can't hide him and pretend that you will reveal him later and fold him as relationship develops who you are if the morning you are Christian is shaped by that it isn't one hallmark of your life it is your life it is Jesus who has given you life you cannot deny him you cannot disguise him. Without dishonoring him and that's how we are called to live in this world and you know Paul never looked back he didn't then secretly think well I've done something good for God in a later life he didn't turn round and say you know I sacrificed a lot to be a gospel creature. There's no secrets of exaltation only a genuine and deep desire to draw attention of others to Jesus and he wrote to the Corinthians or makes only a passing reference to what occurred to him when he said once I was stolen what happened to this. It doesn't go on about how painful that was and that made him a good Christian a strong leader he doesn't rehearse constantly all that he has given up all that he could have been all that he might have had to preach Christ it's done the glory is God's and it is the Paul and Barnabas are saying we will never take away God's glory. Why? Because he gave us life and that's so precious because it has brought us as children of God to the hope of eternal life we will never let it go because you want me to set first the Lord in our hearts never dishonor him never to seek to take his glory in any way. But not only that Paul and Barnabas remind us that as we live in this world you take the opportunities to speak for God and you don't stop even though you cannot understand how they will be used. Humanly speaking this wasn't an opportunity for all to preach the gospel after all he spoke a different language and we're not given to understand they couldn't know what he was talking about. He was preaching in one language and they couldn't understand the word of it and you can imagine them nodding their heads and making a sacrifice as he's preaching away they're dragging the priest of Zeus not to clue it easy for us to turn around and say why bother. They don't know what's happening they quiet fall they can't understand what you're saying. When they took him out and spurned him he returned to this city and he returned to the disciples that is that small band who under God's mercy had found Christ and become the church that welcomed him back. Paul couldn't see the results of his labors but God secured them. Paul couldn't understand what his message may or may not achieve but God knew and Paul was faithful. So often we want to be able to see the results of what we do in such a way that we'll be able to be encouraged by it. Paul was faithful sometimes West Island because we say well it wouldn't have done any good or we can be quiet because it won't be useful. That's to seize the prerogative of God who in his own way by his mysterious and eternal spirit uses his work his word. Such his hearts and life as only he is able to and we have to be found faithful without being able to understand that we will be able to quantify the results. The Lord presents us with opportunities and we have to take them even though we don't understand always what that will involve for us. Don't stop, do it. John Bunyan the author of Pilgrim's Progress was put into prison in Bedford jail for 12 years. He was allowed out whenever he wanted to as long as he undertook never to preach the gospel to a congregation again. And so he refused to preach anything other than Christ. He refused to give an undertaking that he would not proclaim the gospel and so they kept him in prison. He was easily unreasonable to say well you can't do anything in prison you just as well go home there's no benefit to you being in prison and having no audiences being at home and having no congregation. Why suffer yet which field could write of Pilgrim's Progress which was written in those 12 years in prison? That book bears the very stench of prison and of pain for Christ. He wrote it there. He wrote it there in a way that has touched generation after generation he could not understand that he refused to be silent. And that's for us to be faithful in witnessing even when we cannot understand that what we will do will have any impact. The story also gives us to understand and to take to ourselves the fact that as believers we must never limit the source of encouragement to success stories. For many of us we are encouraged in life only when we hear how God has wonderfully changed everything. Yet here we are reminded that there is an encouragement even when the end result is not what we would imagine. Paul and Barnabas were rejected yet again. Not only so Paul was stoned. Like we're reminded of the truth that David shepherd boy and the king could write as his own soul burst out in praise and said I waited patiently for the Lord. And then he inclined and to me he heard my cry he threw me out of the my replay out of the pit of destruction. We don't know how long he had to wait patiently upon the Lord. We only know that it was not an instant answer to his prayer and yet Paul heard that same word and displayed in his own life the fact of constancy. He would be encouraged not just by immediate but by the assured presence of God. We live in a world that is filled with sound bites sound bite answers to the whole of life and oftentimes we can only be encouraged we say when we see God move instantly. I pray today and I'm uncertain tomorrow and I'll say praise the Lord and it doesn't always work like that. We live in a world where real life doesn't always have happy endings. Are we therefore discouraged? Paul and Barnabas that's not how you find your encouragement. Your encouragement is to know that who you are what you do is lived in the hands of God who is sovereign and will encourage you and even when you can't see the results. You will still be encouraged because God is God. He doesn't fail sometimes his ways are mysterious but you know there is an encouragement in knowing that you want the only one who thinks like that. It's what David is able to give to Paul for Barnabas to you and to me. We're not alone in being people who deal with rough things the last a long time and there's an encouragement in that. Writing to Timothy Paul can say for this reason I found mercy so that in me as the former sinner Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe on him for eternal life. Paul was given to understand that with the great company of God's people he exercised patience without faithlessness. He couldn't see that he was encouraged to go on. You know our encouragement comes not simply because we see the miracles of life though they come and we should be encouraged by them but when they don't come we should not be discouraged. And you know brothers and sisters in the pilgrimage of life our world tells us that's how we should be because we live life in sound bites we want instant answers and God reminds us that life is not always easy and answers come over extended periods and sometimes not till eternity itself. Paul and Barnabas live in a hostile world and they knew it and we'll learn the same lesson our environment is not going to be friendly to our Lord Jesus Christ and yet he has given us life he shaped us he's made us for eternity he has laid down his life upon the cross in your place and mine. Both to bring forgiveness and the power of his transforming grace he's made us children of God and as we walk through this world he tells us you have an inhospitable environment that take heart says the author to the Hebrew letter you have God. And all that he is is for you in Jesus Christ walk on let's pray heavenly Father.