God’s Witnesses – Acts 14:11-18

As king of the reunited country of Israel, Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great was feeling his oats.

He had stretched forth his hand to please the Jewish leadership and vexed the church of Christ.

He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword, and intended to do the same with Peter,

But the Lord wasn’t finished with the Apostle Peter, so an angel was sent to release him from jail,

And Herod’s plot was foiled.

Soon after that the king traveled up to the twin cities of Tyre and Sidon with a fire in his gut.

The Sidonians had in some way offended his royal lowness,

And he was threatening to rase their city to the ground,

But an assembly was arranged in the local amphitheater in an effort to avert disaster.

“And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them. And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.

And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.”

I hope that you can see some of the similarities between that incident in Acts 12 and what took place in Lystra.

Whether or not the Sidonians were sincere in proclaiming Herod to be a god is immaterial.

As he took his seat, with the sun shining off his gold-encrusted royal robes,

And as he began to rebuke the city for its transgressions against his will,

Some of the crowd began their absurd chant: “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.”

JEHOVAH could have smitten them all for their foolishness,

But the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and plenteous is mercy.

Instead God chose to smite only Herod for not putting a stop to it.

Not only didn’t Herod silence the crowd, he was pleased to hear it and somewhat believed it.

He immediately passed out, was carried out, and checked out a few hours later.

Paul and Barnabas, likewise were being praised as gods.

At first, because of language problems, they didn’t realize what was going on,

But once they did, they took immediate steps to quash the idea.

I have no doubt that some self-professed servants of God, might have permitted that lunacy to continue.

There are some people who would think that all this attention could afford them a greater opportunity to preach the gospel to these people.

They could straighten out the confusion later,

But in the mean time, the people of Lystra and Derby would be hanging on their every word.

They could take as much time as necessary to fully expound the facts of the gospel, giving the Holy Spirit the opportunity to wean them away from worshiping Jupiter to worshiping the Lord Jesus.

Of course, personal pride would have nothing to do with the situation.

This would all be done for the “glory of the Lord.”

But the Bible, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 condemns the idea that the end justifies the means.

It is never right to do wrong to do right.

Every angel of God, put a stop to the worship that men tried to give them.

And from time to time Godly men were given obeisance, but they too refused it.

For example, when Cornelius bowed before Peter, the Apostle courteously but firmly told him to get up.

And in Acts 14 these missionaries were forced to energetically oppose their own worship.

“When the apostles, Barnabas & Paul, heard of, they rent their clothes, & ran in among the people,

Crying out, & saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you,

And preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God,

Which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:

Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.

Nevertheless he left not himself without witness,“

This morning, let’s think about Paul’s REFERENCE TO THE WITNESS that the Lord has left to Himself.

God has never left Himself without a witness in this world.

I’m sure that we might be able to think of others, but here are three witnesses for Jehovah.

The first and foremost is the written revelation; THE WORD OF GOD; the Bible.

There was never any problem determining to what race of people the Apostle Paul belonged.

He was an Hebrew of the Hebrews; a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

And he possessed a natural love for his nation, just as we do for ours.

In the Book of Romans he wrote:

“Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.”

“I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,

That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.

For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

Paul was a son of the tribe of Benjamin, BUT he was also a Christian, a child of God.

And that means that he was a man of truth.

So despite his chauvinism, he testified that Israel in the sight of God was a wicked nation.

“For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”

While Paul was so candid about Israel’s sins, we might expect him to be candid about her blessings as well.

“My brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:” are truly blessed.

They are Israelites; to them “pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;

Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.”

For centuries one of the greatest privileges of being an Israelite was the possession of the law, the covenants and the promises of God.

Or to put it another way: It was to Israel that God entrusted the written revelation of Himself.

And there are a thousand things about the Lord which human beings could never know if He hadn’t told us about them in that revelation.

In one of his sermons, C.H. Spurgeon said:

“If you wish to know the Lord, you must know His Word.

If you wish to perceive His power, you must see how He works by His Word.

If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by His Word.”

To this I agree whole-heartedly.

But consider especially the last part of that quote :

“If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by His Word.”

Not only do the prophecies of the Bible prove its divine origin, but it also proves the existence and the character of the One who inspired it.

There have been multitudes of prophecies recorded in the Bible, which have been literally fulfilled. Amen?

And there are a multitude YET to be fulfilled.

When the prophecy and its fulfilment are separated by hundreds of years . . .

When the prophecy is of sufficient detail to remove any doubt about collusion or conspiracy . . .

When there are multiple prophecies about various aspects of one event, such as the incarnation of the Son of God . . .

Then there is evidence of a sovereign power controlling that fulfillment.

In other words there is evidence of God.

Every prophesy and every fulfilment of prophesy tells us something about Jehovah which we could never learn apart from the fact that that prophesy was first written into the Word of God.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

90% of the Lord’s magnificent attributes could never be learned by deduction or natural observation.

For example, to my way of thinking, the first and highest of God’s attributes is His HOLINESS.

By reading Bible history, and in hearing the Lord’s declarations, we know that God is holy.

But I don’t think that anyone can, by the study of God’s creation as it is today, reach that conclusion.

And yet we are commanded in the Word of God to be holy, because He is holy.

And all men everywhere will be judged for their failure to be holy and God is holy.

Some people look at the tragedies of September 11, 2001 and say that it is impossible to believe that there is a SOVEREIGN GOD capable of stopping evil in this world,

But the Bible says that there is such a God.

And it also tells us in general terms why the Lord permits tragedies like that.

Others look at the crib death of a baby and declare that there is no such thing as DIVINE LOVE;

But there is – “for the Bible tells me so.”

How could we ever determine the ETERNALITY, or OMNISCIENCE of God, if we weren’t told about them?

And then there is the Gospel – Ah, the gospel.

Sin is something easily perceived, but the removal of sin and of its guilt is inconceivable.

That the holy God, should accept sinful souls to Himself is inconceivable.

That the holy God, should devise a plan to redeem a few of those sinful creatures without compromising His holiness is inconceivable.

That the Son of God, should become a vicarious substitute for the wicked is inconceivable.

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

We would never know the gospel, if the Lord hadn’t published it for us in His Word.

God has not left us without a witness of Himself, in that He did good and gave us the Bible.

But there is ANOTHER WITNESS which has been left – not only to Israel, but to all mankind.

Jehovah is “the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:

Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.

Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

Creation testifies, in a somewhat limited way, to the existence and the nature of the Creator.

I realize that Psalm 147 was written to be used by God’s saints in their worship of JEHOVAH.

But the words of that Psalm COULD have been preached as a sermon to the heathen of Lystra and Derby:

“Praise ye the LORD: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely. Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.

Sing unto the LORD with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God:

Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains. He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.

He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man.

The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.”

Think about what this Psalm says:

It begins by telling us that praise to the Lord is appropriate, if not absolutely obligatory,

Because JEHOVAH is omnipotent and omniscient.

Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.

If for no other reason than rain in the mountains and grass for the deer to eat, God should be praised.

And certainly the Lord is not dependent upon creation or man, but just the opposite.

“He taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man.

But he, “taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.”

This is precisely what Paul would like to see and hear from these people in Lystra.

This is what the Lord wants from the people in this room and from our neighbors in this city.

Man can see a witness for God whether looking thru a telescope or a microscope and every place in between.

I was talking to Bro. Nimmo on Monday and said that once I got rid of my prejudice against it, now every-where I look in the Bible I see the evidence of sovereign election.

The same could be said for God’s creative hand:

Once man strips himself of the follies of evolution, he can see the hand of God, everywhere he looks.

Both here and around the fire at family camp, we’ve talked about some of God’s marvelous creatures.

We’ve talked about the miraculous properties of RAIN and the way that the Lord waters the earth.

Water behaves in a fashion unlike any other material in the world.

The way that it freezes; the way that it melts; the way that nourishes. Water is miraculous.

We’ve pointed out how that so many animals and plants couldn’t exist for a single season without the support of other creatures.

It takes great faith to believe that evolution is responsible for those interdependencies.

We’ve talked about how various parts of our bodies, such as our EYES or our CARDIO-VASCULAR SYSTEMS, are so complex that they could never evolve even in a hundred trillion years.

They had to be designed and produced as complete system or they could never exist at all.

We’ve mentioned that if the earth was much further from or closer to the SUN there would be no life here.

The universe and the solar system are products of design.

And they have been maintained thus far in such a fashion to preserve life on earth.

For by Christ “were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible & invisible,

Whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers:

All things were created by him, and for him:

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”

In recent years science has discovered genes, chromosomes and DNA.

We have found that contained in virtually every cell is more information than 3 or 4 sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

That in itself is a witness for the Lord,

But the order and arrangement of that information is so minute and so precise that there is no other explanation except for the hand of God.

“The living God, has made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:

Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.

Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

Philosophers talk about the COSMOLOGICAL argument for the existence of God.

That is basically the proposition that the cosmos exists, and somehow it began.

Either the universe is eternal or Someone Who is eternal created it.

Then there is the TELEOLOGICAL argument for God.

That is the contention that since order and arrangement pervade the universe,

There must exist a Greater Intelligence Who made it.

Among several others there is the ANTHROPOLOGICAL argument.

The mind and heart of man constantly whisper of the existence of God.

And nearly every culture and every society have professed some a belief in some sort of deity.

As I said last Wednesday, only as man becomes more filled with himself and proud of himself does he try to do away with thoughts about God.

These heathen in Lystra were well aware of the witness of God.

What they needed was a Name and a face to put with the evidence.

And that brings me to our last witness for the Lord – GOD’S AMBASSADORS.

When Paul and Barnabas figured out that the people were preparing to worship them,

“They rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out,

And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you,

And preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God.”

If you did something that got me so upset that I starting ripping my clothes off . . .

If I grabbed this suit coat and started to tear it,

You’d probably think that I lost my mind.

But 2,000 years ago, that kind of behaviour didn’t indicate insanity; it meant that the person was struck with uncontrollable grief or that he was otherwise greatly upset.

For these missionaries, it was the quickest way to get people’s attentions and to stop the proceedings.

Paul and Barnabas were men basically like any other man on earth.

“We also are men of like passions with you.”

There are some who think that Paul was saying that he was prone to fly off the handle and to do unthinking, stupid things like worship false gods just like the Lystrans.

And although they did have emotions and sins like everyone else, that was not what he was saying here.

All they were saying was that they, too, were men – creatures of God’s creation.

They were not worthy of worship, because they were worshipers of God themselves.

BUT despite being mere men, they were also servants of the Most High God.

They were preachers of righteousness, urging all men everywhere to repent and trust Christ;

“That ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God.”

Despite the beauties and lessons of nature, we can’t know very much about the Creator by the study of botany or biology.

We must have the Word of God to bring the truth of creation into perspective.

And the Bible reveals so much about the Lord in so many different ways.

It has prophesy, and law, it has the history of God’s work among different people and nations.

And of course, then there is the story of Jesus.

One of the things in the Bible, for which I often thank the Lord, are the biographies.

There is nothing like putting eternal truth in a human form, because that is something I can understand.

Our study of the Book of Acts is just that sort of thing.

Then taking that Biblical biography one step farther, the Lord has ordained that those histories, biographies, prophecies and revelations should be shared from person to person.

“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Paul said, “Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you,

And preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God.”

In Acts 26 when Paul was being tried before Agrippa, he talked about the commission that he had received from the Lord Jesus.

Christ said, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.

But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;

Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee,

To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision:

But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.”

The three witnesses that I’d like to bring to your attention this morning are CREATION, the BIBLE and the rest of these CHRISTIANS around you today.

CREATION testifies that there is a God.

The BIBLE reveals that He is a God of holy love, who has come to earth with the purpose of redeeming sinners like you from the guilt of your sins.

And the third witness is ME.

I am one of those sinners, deserving of the Lake of Fire for all eternity.

But the Lord has saved my soul and bestowed upon me eternal life.

About forty years ago Christ gave me a new heart and I began a life of repentance and faith in Him.

I acknowledged my sin and my sinfulness, and from that time I knew that my only hope was in the person of the Lord Jesus.

My faith and my hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the cross.

I am a man of like passions with you, and I preach unto you that ye should turn from your sin and the idols of your heart to serve the living and true God.

Have you repented and do you trust Christ?