Greetings and welcome to Witnesses of the King, an exposition of the Book of Acts. I will be leading you through this today. My name is Eric Newcomer, and I'm the pastor of White Throne Baptist Church, and I'm bringing you today a text from Acts chapter 14. We're going to look at verses 8 through 23. Up until Acts chapter 10, the book of Acts has been focused mostly on the gospel going to the Jews, and to the Samaritans who had Jewish roots, and to people called God-fearers, or those who feared God, who were following Judaism. even if at a distance. But now Paul and Barnabas have gone on a missionary journey. And the pattern they are establishing is to visit the synagogue and speak to the Jews, if indeed it has a synagogue. Then as their welcome is worn out at the synagogue, they take their Jewish converts and with them turn more openly to the Gentiles with the message. And a great number of both Jews and Gentiles are coming to believe on this trip of Paul and Barnabas. But now we're going to a city called Lystra and the two find no synagogue there and they preach openly to the Gentiles at Lystra. Now there's a little bit of background you need to fully understand the story that we're dealing with here, the account that we have in Acts chapter 14 because here as Paul and Barnabas, as Paul performs a miracle, Paul is mistaken for the Greek god Hermes and Barnabas is Zeus and we wonder okay this is absurd, how could these things be? But a little background on Lycerae, we find out some things about it. First of all its location is in southern Asia Minor. And you want to take a note that it's mentioned here. It's mentioned in Acts chapter 16. It's also mentioned in 2 Timothy chapter 3 because this is where Paul met Timothy. And so Timothy's actually from this and he will bring him on later missionary journeys. It was on an important trade route and it was found in the midst of some mountainous regions that were sparsely populated. the site of Lystra was found in 1885, they actually found a statue of Hermes there dedicated to Zeus. And they found inscriptions regarding priests of Zeus indicating that there must have been a temple to Zeus there in that town. But most interestingly this area is mentioned in the writings of the Greek poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses in which he writes about the various times amidst the myths and legends of when the gods would disguise themselves and walk among human beings. In one particular episode he writes of Zeus and Hermes disguised themselves as human beings and went visiting humanity in this area and they were looking for hospitality because they were deciding whether humanity was worth allowing them to continue and King Lycan, which is difficult to pronounce in our language. We'll just go with that Was met by Zeus and Hermes and welcomed in and he was a great king and he gave a great feast in hospitality to Zeus and Hermes, but then attempted to serve his own son to Zeus and this greatly angered Zeus and Zeus turned him into a wolf and to this day this is where we get our term lycanthropy which is the condition of being a werewolf or other such metamorphosizing conditions and so it's interesting that even from this legend we get a term like this which has led to the legends of werewolves to this day and so this goes way back these kind of legends and so in the history of this very region You have a tale of a visitation of both Zeus and Hermes and along with that tale the very important lesson of entertaining them well. So now come Paul and Barnabas visiting. Here's what happened. Let's go to the scripture for this and we'll take a look. I'm under wrong scripture. Let's go to Acts 14 beginning in verse 8. It says, now at Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. Sound familiar? Yeah, I'm thinking Acts chapter 3. He listened to Paul speaking and Paul looking intently 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. And when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lyconian, The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, and wanted to 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, for he did good by you, 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 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. So when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made 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. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they believe. Well, let's begin then with a word of prayer. Father God, we commit ourselves to you in whom we believe. And we commit ourselves to you that you would take this scripture and you would use it to teach us and to guide us and to instruct us in the ways of following you in all that you did. And Lord, I pray that you would give us the faith to understand these things, that you would intervene in our lives, Lord, that we may, in turn, with your word, intervene in the lives of others. Lord, it is our sincerest prayer that you glorify yourself in these things, that you be found, and you be found to be great as we know you to be. Lord, I pray that you'll give us understanding, that you'll give me clarity, and that you'll give all of us faith to accept what we hear. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well there you have a very interesting scene in Lystra and a scene that can seem somewhat absurd. At some level it's amusing with the locals wanting to worship and offer sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas and it makes you kind of imagine okay how far did they go with this and what kind of things were said and how did Paul and Barnabas respond to this? Well we know they tore their clothes, they were grieved by it but Wasn't there just a moment, just maybe a flash of, oh this is really funny to them? I don't think so, but maybe. But if you know God, you know this, the notion of someone treating you as a God is absolutely horrifying. If you know your own frailty and your own human limitations, and you know the greatness of God, if you know God is to know His greatness, and for someone to ascribe those things to you is absolutely horrifying that they would do so. But our reaction to this scripture might be this, how does this possibly apply to us? There's not the blatant kind of idolatry we have in our world today where there's various temples in town pertaining to particular gods and sacrifices being made to them and things of this nature. The truth is in the Western world today the Christian age has pretty much eradicated those things. Society today however does have myths and worship as superstition. Now we find ourselves in what we call the scientific age in which we explain nature, we observe natural law, we connect it to the events that we see, we observe in a very orderly fashion, and we run experiments to learn, to confirm what we are seeing. But nevertheless, what we're going to find out as we really pick this apart, take a look at what happened here, is that there is indeed nothing new under the sun. That brings me to my first point here that I want to share with you today, and that's simply this. we preach to religious people like Paul and Barnabas going into Lystra preaching to these people that already had these established religions of the Greek gods and in the Greek they use the names of the Greek gods here though if you're using the King James Version this might have been Jupiter and Mercury but those were the Roman names for the very same gods But understand this, no less than Paul and Barnabas preach to religious people, we ourselves preach to religious people to this very day. And we're going to have to, in order to understand this, dispel two very great myths that we have. And we're going to dispel them using the principles taught in the Word of God. The first myth is this, very simply, that some people are not religious. Some claim to not be religious. Look, every human being is a mixed cocktail of religion out of the vanity of their own minds. And the scriptures make this very plain to us. Their religion and their life is usually one part reality and about four parts wishful thinking. Every human being has some kind of a religion because the word itself comes from a Latin root meaning to bind. People bind themselves to a set of beliefs that they willingly accept as true and then they live somewhat according to them and the moral codes that they produce. Now a great mistake we make is to think that the notion of a religion has to include some kind of a god or spirit or some kind of a transcendent reality or spirit world. But that is simply not the case. Satan is much too crafty for that simple of a notion. He has people now to make a religion out of not having a religion. Popular today is the notion of being a religious or being without religion. And among those who claim no religion today, if we watch their actions and weigh them according to the revelation of the scripture and what it has to say about mankind, we find them to be indeed very religious. They will demonstrate it in their actions. No one is neutral to religion. Because if we think about it, in order to live life, in order to exist, in order to make a living and cope with the day and deal with people, we have to adopt in our minds certain unprovable things that we believe and we act upon, right or wrong. And this is a binding commitment and it is made by faith. This is religion. And this religious urge inside every human being, put there by God, is there because we were made for God. Without Him, without connection to God and His objective standards, we are incomplete. And so human beings disconnected from God have to invent something to fill that empty space in which he should be. Now the second myth we have to dispel is this, that unbelief equals ignorance. Unbelief equals ignorance. Now I want to be fair here and I want to accept the fact that unbelief has an aspect of ignorance. And that the preaching of the gospel to somebody gives them information, and that information is used to spark the faith, to bring them to belief. And so we have to acknowledge that ignorance is an aspect of unbelief, but unbelief does not equal ignorance. There is a component of the will. in unbelief. Yeah, you heard that. There's a component of the will. Let's go to the Scriptures, of course, to see that this is so. If we take a look at John 3.18, which comes right after one of our favorite verses, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life. Jesus says this. He says, whoever believes in him, that is Jesus. He calls himself the Son of Man here. is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. So here you can have, you have Jesus ascribing to unbelief a conviction, a condemnation of not believing in him. That implies that there is an act of the will here in the faith. That this unbelief has an aspect of will. It's also clear in Mark chapter 16 as Jesus commissions his disciples to go and preach the gospel before his ascension to heaven. It says whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. So this is an active verb by those not believing. In other words, they are actively not believing. They've heard the information, they've heard the proclamation of the gospel is the assumption here in this context, but they have not believed. And finally, the clearest statement of this great truth is found in Romans 1 beginning in verse 18. Look what verse 18 says here. It says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. So what Paul is arguing here is, as he presents the gospel in the book of Romans, he begins with this very simple thing. God is revealed through creation. And creation reveals the fact not only that God is, but that God has certain attributes. However, In our unrighteousness, that is, in our fallen state prior to God intervening in our lives, we actively suppress the truth. The verb there, translated as suppress, is an active verb. In other words, these people are holding down, holding back, pushing away the truth. And so the unbelief does not equal ignorance. Unbelief has an aspect of ignorance to it, but ultimately unbelief most importantly has an aspect of the will. This is particularly seen in the book of Revelation. We'll talk about that a little bit later when we talk about this unbelief in the midst of even great signs. So if I'm making the claim that some people are, or if I'm dispelling the myth that some people are not religious, I'm basically saying everyone is religious. Everyone has some kind of a religion. And what is that religion? Well, the predominant religion today can be described in many, many ways, but an easy way to think of it is what we call humanism. Now, a lot of people say, well, it's naturalism, or it's this-ism, or it's that-ism. Let me throw this word out there just as an opportunity for us to discuss these things. In humanism, all meaning of life, all authority, all basis of morality and truth are found in human beings and their work and their systems. And even all hope for the future is bound up in human beings. Progress. As I state it that way, you might be able to begin to see this in the world. In humanism, people continually make idols of human beings. Leaders, artists, philosophers, scientists, self, most importantly. And to tell if someone has just a bit of humanism in them, see how they react when someone famous comes into the room. Do they treat them a little differently? Even a little? See, we find ourselves in what many call the scientific age. I don't call it that. I call it the marketing age, because I believe even all our science has been mostly a commercial endeavor and has mostly been used to persuade people one way or another about something. But we find ourselves in this marketing age. And part of this that we see in society today, our humanism has a flavor of scientism to it. and many subscribe to scientism. Now this is not science. Science is about discovering knowledge through the scientific method which involves observation and experimentation and an interpretation of results. Scientism takes whatever someone who claims to be a scientist or someone who has employed the scientific method, it takes whatever they say and their fancy sounding words is unquestionable absolute truth. This is an exercise of faith. To have all your faith and trust in science is actually counter to science. True scientists know that all of the answers that the scientific method yields are always in doubt. For it to bring unquestionable absolute truth The scientist would have to be omniscient in order to know every potential influence on a situation and on their experiment. And then that scientist would not only have to be omniscient to know all those things, he'd have to be omnipotent to control all those things through the course of an experiment. Omniscient? Omnipotent? Does that sound like God? Yes. Even our most well-supported theories. Theories that allow us to do things like make automobiles and cell phones and send objects into space and these kind of things. These kind of very practical theories that we have acted on and proven again and again and again. When they are put into extreme circumstances, they are often put to the test and often found to break down under the most severe circumstances. But for the window in which we use these things, they're close enough. But we take those and we call them law when they have sufficiently proven themselves, a theory that has proven itself over and over. We'll call it law. But we understand that these things are not necessarily absolutely true. And think about this, evolution is the adopted creation narrative of humanism and scientism. And to show that this is not scientific is this easy. The theory of evolution, when I speak about that I mean the theory of nothing to human beings. They'll mix terms up and they'll talk about evolution, they'll say well it's a proven fact, but when they're saying that they're usually talking only about the very narrow band of natural selection. in which certain attributes are lost from the genetic pool because of adaptation to environment and the survival of the fittest principle kicking in. But what I'm talking about is when they suggest that human beings formed at the end of this great chain of events of chaos and accident, Let's take a look at that chain of events and show that it's unscientific. In that chain of events, the very first event is you have nothing becoming something. Then you have something dead, that something that is dead becoming something living. And then that something living becomes a different kind of something living. All three of those crucial stages of their creation narrative is supported by exactly zero observations and zero experiments. And I'll back that up, and if you want to argue with me, I'll give my email address at the end. But those things are supported by no observations, no experimentation whatsoever, so you cannot even apply the scientific method, so you cannot call the theory of nothing to modern mankind as scientific. So ultimately the creation narrative of scientism itself and of humanism has to be accepted by faith. And when it's accepted by faith, we understand this to be a religion. And if they want to compare religions, we will. So ironically, what their creation narrative really is, is a hiding place from truth. A hiding place from truth. Now in scientism they also have psychology, and psychology plays a role of reinterpreting our need for God and the concept of sin and the concepts of redemption and all these things as some kind of psychoses that need to be driven out by therapy or by drugs. And so scientism is a real part of the humanism that we see today. And it is those blindly following others, humans, who claim to have some kind of knowledge. There's also an expressive individualism about today's flavor of humanism. And this expressive individualism, as it was coined by Truman in his book, which the name of the book escapes me right now, but look for Carl Truman. He wrote a great book on these issues. Another aspect of today's humanism is this expressive individualism in which each individual ultimately is God, able to define truth for himself. And then there's this great need to express this truth. and truth and fulfillment of life are found in knowing oneself and being true to oneself. Doesn't that sound like the plot of half the Disney movies you've seen? Is if you just know yourself or believe in yourself or you're true to yourself that everything will work out in the end? See, this is part of a grand faith because it has to ignore all the evidence of the fact that this self-centered aspect of humanism is destroying society itself. The individual as God is a delusion of self that has grown to the point that people are now demanding that the world around them bow to their own concept of self. People are choosing an identity. which clearly contradicts their biological, observable, scientific reality. And then these delusions of self have grown to the point where they demand the world to bow down to them. They demand of all society to use their particular pronouns to allow them to compete in a sport according to their own perceived gender, rather than their actual biological gender. The individual, then, has been elevated above society itself. And interestingly, this aspect of today's humanism is in complete conflict with the scientism part. as it must deny reality itself. So I say to you today, if you're one of those who claims to be without religion, and yet you believe in this expressive individualism, you believe in a human being's right to identify their own gender, and yet you claim to believe in science, you're living with a massive contradiction that you've got to come to terms with. Society willingly ascribes truth to these delusions and applauds the hubris of those demanding their rights, demanding their recognition, and it's applauded as courage. Then they'll claim to be without religion. So look what happens then when Paul and Barnabas come rolling into town with the gospel. And Paul sees a man, and I don't know how he sees that he has faith to be healed, but the man has faith to be healed, so Paul heals him. And the man is instantly healed, and they knew the man was crippled from birth. They understood these things to be true. They look at these things and they say that gods have come down to us and the likeness of men. And how crazy is that? And then they set about to worship Paul and Barnabas. And do you notice they never ask Paul and Barnabas how they would prefer to be worshipped? They never ask Paul and Barnabas, are you Zeus? Are you Hermes? They just start to act. And then look what Paul and Barnabas do. Paul and Barnabas do not allow the delusion. They put a stop to it, and they explain the truth. They say, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you, and we bring you good news. Now I have to admit, I might have been tempted to say, hey yeah, we're Zeus and Hermes and we're your gods. And we tell you today, why don't you just follow Jesus instead and we'll tell you about who he is and what he's done. And then what we're going to do is we're going to leave. And after we leave, we want you to tear down our temple And we want you to worship and follow Jesus. Now that's a funny idea, but that's not what Paul and Barnabas did. The gospel is about truth. The gospel is about reality, the very reality with which we're in. Proclaiming Jesus to today's society isn't as different from what happened with Paul and Barnabas as we might think. We come along and we bring the gospel and people will say, oh, you proclaim Jesus. I've heard of him. I understand. human beings evolved to embrace religion as a means to explain their world and to cope with life and this is becoming irrelevant now because we have science to prove everything for us and science says that we evolved and science says that miracles don't happen etc etc and you've heard those kind of things before But what we say to that is everything used to argue those points is from God. Without the Creator God of the Bible, it is impossible for rational thought or even science to take place because these things are ordered. People believe that all life and meaning came about by accident, out of chaos. If you are a humanist and you accept the theory of evolution, what you are saying is that all order has come out of what was originally chaos. But even your science shows the impossibility of this. The laws of thermodynamics show this to be an impossibility. What we have in reality is we have order comes from order. And that is our Creator God. Life only comes from life. That is God. Thought from thought. reason from reason, logic from logic, emotion from emotion, love from love, that is God. All these things, order, thought, reason, logic, emotion, love, do not spring from cosmic dust and rocks banging together or from any kind of chemical primordial soup. But let us show you why you love, why you hate, why you desire, why you think. Let us show you even what is wrong with the world and what is wrong and broken inside of each of us. And let us show you the Creator God who has made a way for it to be restored and renewed. Order out of chaos. Only a Creator could bring order out of this chaos. Proclaiming Jesus to today's society is also like this. Sometimes we'll preach Jesus and his love for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And we'll preach those things and I'll say, oh, he's all about love. Well, then that means he's got to respect my true identity. That means that he wants me to be happy. And frankly, I'm happy doing this. And since he loves me, he'll be happy about it too. He's all about acceptance. He will have to take me as I am. But our gospel message is a no. Jesus is all about God. He loves you too much to have you stay lost in your sin. And he loves the Father too much to allow you to continue to blaspheme God with your errant lifestyle. He will give you the grace and power to overcome. He will conform you to the image of Jesus Christ for your maximum and eternal joy that will far outweigh any temporal and temporary happiness or fulfillment that we get from our sins. But you must repent and turn to Jesus Christ. Also very popular today as we bring the gospel and we preach the gospel and we preach about God is this topic of justice. And they'll say, oh, I know God. God's all about justice. So what he's going to do is he's going to bring total equity to planet Earth. He's going to redistribute all the funds, all the money, and everything else and give everyone an even playing field. He'll be my Robin Hood. He'll take from the rich, he'll give to the poor, and we'll all be happy. And to that I will say, yes, God is all about justice. But firstly, justice for your sins. And secondly then, he is about character, in which contentment and charity rank far above these material considerations. That's something we all, in our hearts, know to be true. That money doesn't make people happy. Opportunity doesn't make people happy. That's a matter of the heart. That's a matter of contentment. That's a matter of being born again to the likeness of Christ who set aside all his privileges, set aside all his things, came to earth forsaking all those things to walk among us homeless and preaching the truth that we all might be saved. All this is to say that we proclaim people, we proclaim Jesus Christ to people just like Paul and Barnabas did. The terms are different, the religions have different labels, but they are religions nonetheless, and the responses are largely the same, as you've probably guessed now by reading the book of Acts. So what happens when we do this? What do we see in the passage here? Well, we see very clearly in the passage that most will reject the truth. And this is important because this is even in the face of great signs. Paul did a miracle. Paul healed a crippled man. And this deserves some attention. The only one talking in this scene should be Paul. Because think about this, here's a bunch of people, we're standing around, we're listening to some people talk, and then all of a sudden one of those people looks at a man born lame and heals him. Now, who in this situation has the right to talk? I think it's just Paul. Paul has broken what we perceive to be the natural order of things. To restore to a man something no human being can do, even to this day. Do we ever do that? Someone born lame and give them motion. And so he does this miraculous thing. And a rational human being might speak in this situation to ask, what's going on here? How did you do that? What did we just say? Who is that man and where did he come from? And has he always been lame? Can anyone testify to this? Let's investigate what has happened here. But that's not what happens. They go on making assumptions. And it took everything Paul and Barnabas had to stop them sacrificing to them. So even in the midst of great signs, people will reject the truth. Most will reject the truth. And many people in the church today bemoan the fact that, oh, if only great signs were done, if only everyone in our congregation would be healed, or even one of them healed miraculously by some way that would grant the attention and draw people in from all around to come hear the gospel. Look, Paul did it right in the midst of these people. And these people showed up from another town to persecute him. Surely they had heard what he just did. But it didn't change their mind. They set about persecuting him and trying to stop him anyway. So even in the face of great signs, people will, most will reject the truth, even in the presence of perfect teaching. Paul is the greatest Christian teacher we've ever had. When you read his letters, you understand that his understanding of both the Jewish world and the Jewish scriptures and the Greek world and even their writings and everything, it comes through in what he did and all their philosophies and worldly knowledge and all those things. He brings those together. He's the perfect bridge between Jew and Gentile, and he is teaching these people himself. Who can do better than that? And yet most rejected the message. And so people reject the truth, even in the face of great signs, even in the presence of great teaching. And this is why. Because they love their religion and their sin. And I think you can probably cross out at this point their religion. And it really comes down to this. People just love their sin. They just love the way they're living. They love the way they do things. They love their life the way it is and they don't want to be interfered with. And so what happens when the gospel comes to people, they'll try to incorporate it into their knowledge. They'll try to bring it into their understanding. And that's why when they saw what happened here, and they saw the power demonstrated, they took that and incorporated it into their narrative. Oh, this is Zeus and Hermes. They've come back looking for hospitality. We better do right by them. or they'll wipe us out like they wiped out the people in this valley before, according to the myth. They will try to incorporate it or they'll try to draw you into what they call neutral ground. But then we know there is no neutral ground. There's the gospel and there is error. This is why Jesus said, broad is the way that leads to destruction and narrow is the way and few there are who find it that lead to life. He said, many are called, but few are chosen. Jesus made it very clear that this was a minority project, that this gospel going out to the world would result in most people rejecting it, but some believing. And that, indeed, is a major point. Some will believe. And this is a tremendous encouragement because regardless of the superstition, the depth of their depravity, the horrible nature of their sin, no matter what, God is saving people. And this is our commission to go and preach to all the world until redemption resounds to the ends of the earth. Look at this in Acts 14.20 here. When the disciples gathered about him, he rose up. They stoned him and then they dragged him out of the city, presuming him dead. And what do the disciples do? The disciples follow the body. They followed this for some reason. Whether to give them a proper burial or something, nevertheless, they believed. Why? Because they're called disciples. That means learner. These were the believers. These were the ones moved by what he said. And even though a sufficient number were moved to actually bring him to a stoning in this town, some were moved to believe. And they gathered around Paul and they ministered to him. And then he comes back here later, in verse 23, it accounts this. He leaves that city, goes on to Derbe, and then he comes back, visiting all the cities where they had been, and it says, when they appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. In other words, they came back to Lystra. They appointed elders there. That means there was a church there, and they appointed to them local leadership, because now they were a growing congregation of believers. On this journey, we know God, and we make Him known. It's really that simple. And by this, God is glorified in our sight and in the sight of all the world. Most will not believe, but some will, and for them, it will be worth it. Let me ask you a question. What if you had a boat, and you came upon a great shipwreck? And of course, there's many people floating in the water, they're treading water, they're fighting for their lives to stay alive in the water. And as you come upon them, you find that a madness has overcome them. that many refuse to get in your boat. You reach for them, and they swim away, and you try to pursue them, and they swim further, and they scream curses at you, and they tell you, no, no, no, don't help me, no, no, no, I'm waiting for the next boat, no, no, no, I'm waiting for my boat, no, no, no, the ship hasn't wrecked, I just fell off it for a moment, I'll find it here momentarily. A madness has come over these people, and yet, not all of them. Some of them reach out for you. Some of them call to you when they see you from a distance and you come to them and you pluck them out of the water and they are saved. Let me ask you a question. After the first 2 or 3 or 4 or 10 refuse your help, would you keep going? Would you keep asking? Would you keep searching? Of course you would. Because you would think to yourself, surely not all these people are mad. Surely someone's going to accept my help and be saved from drowning. And indeed that is what we do. And so when they refuse your help, when they scorn you, when they stone you, whatever they do to you, go to the next town. Go to the next person. Because some refuse the help, it does not make the attempt futile. Because some will be saved. And for them, it will be worth it. That brings us to our encouragements today. The first thing we want to do is this, I want you to be sure that you let God reveal himself to you. And to put this negatively, I'm going to say it like this, stop trying to stuff God into your own mold, into your traditions, into your limited understanding. And we all do this, even after believing in Jesus Christ, even after coming to faith, we have a tendency to try to conform God to our image of Him. when in fact what we should be doing is allowing Him, the Holy Trinity of God, to speak to us, to dictate to us who He is. And I say the Holy Trinity for this reason, because it's the Father who planned salvation, and the Father who gave His Word. See, it's the Father who sent His Son. By His Son are we saved. By the Word it is revealed to us, and by the Spirit of God it is shown to us. His Body, the Church, the Body of Jesus Christ, is where we find these things, the Word, the Spirit, the Truth. The only way to test the Spirit, the only way to test the information is this Word of God, which the Father sent to accomplish all His purposes. Let me show you something here, and let me have this give you a two-fold confidence here. The Lord speaks about accomplishing something for his people Israel in Isaiah chapter 55. And he says this, he said, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. Now he just spoke about and gave an analogy of rain falling to the earth. It does what it's supposed to do. It waters the plants. It gives growth. It does its job. And then he says, my word is like that. It goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. God's word will succeed in the thing for which he sent it. Why did he send it? He sent it for his glory that many can be saved. And so it's by that word, indeed, that we are saved. So let God reveal himself to you. Let him dictate the terms. Let him describe himself to you in his word and through the preaching and teaching of his faithful people. And then secondly, let God reveal himself to others. You're already a believer in Jesus Christ. then let God reveal himself to others through you. And right now, what we're learning in the Book of Acts is that in every circumstance, in every people group, rich or poor, black or white, Greek or Jew, male or female, God is saving people. And this is the point of the book of Revelation. One of the points of the book of Revelation is that God has saved for himself a people from every tribe, tongue, nation, and language. He's across the board saving people. Millions upon millions coming to know him. And so, it is upon us to go and do it. Let God reveal himself to others. And I want to show you here, I've got it in my encouragements here. In evangelism, that means this. Because it is accomplished by the Word of God and the Spirit of God and the work of Jesus Christ, well then, the first thing we need to do in evangelism is develop a desire We must want this to go to the masses. We must want people to be saved. Listen how Jesus is described when he saw the crowds, the masses of unsaved people around him. It said, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Do you see the very first thing in evangelism is that we would have this same desire as Jesus Christ had. May we see and be driven with compassion for people. So the first thing is that desire and how do we get that desire? We pray for it. And we pray for those who will be saved and we pray for those who will preach salvation to others. Prayer is essential in evangelism because ultimately salvation is a work of God. And the work of God is spurred on by the prayers of his people. It's a great mystery why he chose to do it that way, but he chose to do it that way. Don't expect anyone to be saved in your congregation or in your family or anything else if you haven't prayed for them. So prayer is essential in evangelism. And then next in evangelism, and these aren't necessarily in the order of importance, but these are the main things. Next in evangelism is this, the Word of God. The Word of God is the key. It is the Word of God that he promises will accomplish what he sent it to do. Our own words do not carry any such promise, except as they are the Word of God. And so this is important in evangelism. And finally, everything else, all the other things, all your understanding and arguments and things, and all the things you heard me say earlier, Those are all secondary to all these other things. Desire, prayer, God's Word. These are the main things. And so let's go to the Lord right now in prayer. Let's ask Him for these things. He has promised that whatever we ask in His name, He will grant. And He has indeed expressed His great desire that we would follow Him in our desires and in our evangelism. So let's meet Him in prayer right now. Father God, we thank you for this word today. We thank you for your servants, Paul and Barnabas, and all that they did and all that you have preserved for us to see. And Lord, this day, here's our earnest prayer. Firstly, that we would get you right by allowing you to dictate the terms. Set aside our prejudices. Set aside our religious convictions. Set aside those vain thinkings we have and the influence of this world. And Lord, take over and make yourself known. And let us then have the faith to respond to who you are, to accept who you are, to turn to you and repent of our sins and even repent of our misunderstandings. The things that we embrace that were false for Lord. We desire truth For we desire many to be saved And Lord, we desire to desire as Jesus did. We desire to look upon people with compassion, to view them as sheep without a shepherd, as harassed and helpless. Lord, help us to see with a heart of compassion, with the heart of Christ, the great lost masses, so that we will be motivated to preach the gospel. And Lord, then equip us to preach. Give us the faith to boldly go out and do it and to bring the Word of God. For Lord, we desire to be on this cutting edge of the Kingdom of God intersecting the world. And we desire to be there on the front lines proclaiming the truth and seeing souls saved. Lord, grant our desires this day. Make yourself known and glorified through this we thank you in Jesus name Amen Well, I promised earlier that I would give my email address and I'm going to do that. You can contact me at WhitesRunBaptist at gmail.com and it is there where I will personally answer those things and I will interact with you. Whatever your objection or concern or just help, you need help for things, you need prayer for things, you need help finding a church in your area, please give us a letter there on email and help us to help you. And we will be earnestly praying for you as you do so. So feel free to contact us. Hopefully that will be a benefit to you. And until then, may God bless you richly with His truth.