Through many tribulations

Sermon for midweek of Trinity 7

Acts 14:8-23

Sunday’s Gospel about the feeding of the four thousand gave us a much-needed reminder that God’s compassion always extends to those who believe in Him, and that He will always provide for His people, and that, yes, He uses His ministers to do it. That reminder is much-needed, because God’s providence is often accompanied by a strong dose of pain. And if we focus too much on the pain, then we’ll miss the glorious providence that accompanies it.

No one knew this to be true more than the apostle Paul. The Lord provided so bountifully through his ministry! Through him, as a “jar of clay,” the treasure of the Gospel was handed out to entire continents, and through his epistles, that treasure has been handed out to the whole Christian Church on earth. But where the Gospel was preached, there pain inevitably followed, as we heard in tonight’s lesson from Acts 14. And yet, Paul never let himself be deterred by the pain. He always turned Jesus’ disciples away from the pain toward what God had provided for them in Christ.

Acts 14 recounts Paul’s First Missionary Journey, with Barnabas as his faithful companion and fellow apostle. (Yes, Barnabas is one of the few ministers outside of the Twelve and the apostle Paul who is also referred to occasionally as an apostle, partly because the Holy Spirit chose him directly to be Paul’s coworker on this journey). They set out from Antioch in Syria and sailed to Cyprus, then up to Asia Minor, where they visited the cities of Perga, Pisidian Antioch, and Iconium. In each of those cities, Paul and Barnabas went first to the Jewish synagogue and proclaimed to their fellow Jews how God had fulfilled His Old Testament promises to Israel in sending Jesus the Messiah. They preached that God’s forgiveness comes through this Man who was crucified but whom God raised from the dead. In practically every instance, a number of the Jews believed, but most didn’t, so the Christ-believing Jews would end up leaving the synagogue with the apostles, who would then take the Gospel to the Gentiles. Meanwhile, the Christ-hating Jews would insult the apostles, tell lies about them, and rile up the citizens in each city, not only to reject the apostles’ message, but often to attack them and try to imprison or kill them. The triumph of the Gospel in each place was accompanied by its share of pain.

After leaving Iconium, where the Jews had tried but failed to stone Paul to death, the apostles arrived in Lystra, and you heard a while ago how things went there. They may have gone first to the synagogue, but our text has them speaking primarily to the Gentiles. And one of them who was listening was crippled in his feet. But he believed Paul’s message, and as the hand of the Lord’s providence, Paul healed the man on the spot. But when the crowds saw the miracle, they didn’t give praise to God, the Father of the Lord Jesus. No, they had always been pagans and were still pagans, worshiping the Greek gods. They thought that Zeus and Hermes had come down to them in the form of these men named Barnabas and Paul, and their pagan priests hurried away to bring in some animals so that they could offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas.

Now, if Paul had been seeking fame and recognition for himself, he might have accepted those sacrifices. If he had been worried about offending the people, worried about driving them away, he might have just let them go through with it, figuring he would straighten out their false beliefs later on. But, no, he told them to stop it, to stop what they were doing, not to dare offer sacrifices to them. These are the very practices that the true God hates and that He will not tolerate any longer. Yes, he risked offending them. He risked having them walk away from the Gospel, because Paul was unwilling to let them blend their pagan practices with the truth of Christ.

And that’s exactly how it has to be. The truth of the Gospel is destroyed if it is mixed together with pagan ideas or practices. The truth of the Gospel, the truth of God’s Word is not just “a” truth, but “the” truth. Our world might tolerate Christianity if Christianity would admit that it’s just one good religious option among many. The truth is, most of modern Christianity does make that claim. But true Christianity is what St. Paul practiced in tonight’s reading. It claims to be “the” truth, and it rejects every other religion and religious practice.

That includes the religion of Christ-hating Judaism. And the Jews in Lystra understood that. They understood that the preaching of Jesus as the Christ would upend their religion. Christ claimed to have fulfilled the Old Testament that God had made with Israel through Moses. Christ claimed to have instituted a New Testament in His own blood. And the apostles insisted that the religion of the Old Testament, in order to continue as a valid religion, as a true religion, had to transition into a New Testament, Christian Church, or else become an abomination. The Christ-hating Jews understood that and fought with all their might to prevent the transitioning of their religion to Christianity.

The Jews who tried to have Paul stoned to death in Antioch and in Iconium followed him down to Lystra. They weren’t content to let him move on to another city. No, they had to stamp out his preaching and the Christian religion he was spreading. And in Lystra, they were successful (sort of)! They got the Gentiles to turn against Paul to the point that they picked up stones and stoned him to death for preaching Jesus as the Christ.

Or so they thought. They thought he was dead when they left him. But he wasn’t. He must have been horribly cut and bruised. But, after they left, he got up and went into the city with those who had become disciples of Jesus. And then went on to the next city, to repeat the cycle all over again. Preaching, accompanied by pain, but focusing still on God’s providence.

Bruised and battered as he was, Paul made many disciples in the next city, Derbe. They saw his battered body and must have heard how it happened, and must have been so astounded that Paul was not only willing to keep preaching about this Jesus, but even rejoiced as he did it. He, the bruised and battered one, comforted them. It says that he strengthened the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”

That’s the reality. We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God. Entering the kingdom is worth all the tribulations we have to bear in this world. Suffering for the name of Christ, who suffered so much for us, is an honor. So we might as well suffer with patience. We might as well endure the world’s hatred and violence with rejoicing. We might as well go on doing what is good and speaking what is right, without complaining, and moaning, and groaning about it, and without clamoring for the government to swoop in and give us justice. God knows well how to preserve His people in this world, and how to allow us, sometimes, to endure shame and violence at the hands of evildoers. Pain inevitably accompanies God’s providence in this world. But God’s providence also accompanies the pain and is far greater than the pain will ever be, because His providence isn’t temporary, like the pain is. His providence stretches into eternity, into the true and perfect kingdom that awaits us above. So set your sights on that kingdom, and on the King who came down into this kingdom of toil and tribulations, to win for us that kingdom above that is free of all suffering and pain. Amen.