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Pastor Dane talks about Paul's strategy change as he moves on to reaching the greeks for Christ.
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Pastor Dane talks about Paul's strategy change as he moves on to reaching the greeks for Christ.
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Pastor Dane talks about Paul's strategy change as he moves on to reaching the greeks for Christ.
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The apostles encounter a group of people in Lystra who are deeply involved in Greek mythology. They start their strategy by performing miracles to get their attention. The people interpret these miracles as acts of the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes. The apostles reject this and try to redirect their focus to the true God. Greek mythology was deeply ingrained in the culture, but Christianity eventually replaced it. The video describes the grandeur of the temple of Zeus and the statue of Zeus. The people in Lystra try to offer sacrifices to the apostles, mistaking them for gods. The apostles are horrified and try to redirect their worship to the true God. what you do when things are uncomfortable. So before we get started, let's go ahead and go to him in prayer. Dear God, we come before you today to now continue worship as we listen to your word and apply it to our life. Help me to stay out of the way. I hope us all to stay out of the way of what you want us to hear and what you want to accomplish tonight. Forgive us for our sins. In Jesus name, Amen. So these apostles, they're going to encounter some crazy people tonight. They're going to encounter some people that are into this religion that had existed since actually historical records can go back. They don't see the beginning. It just goes back as far as you hear the Sumerians and some of these ancient cultures, which would most likely be post-flood. It goes back all the way to this Greek mythology. And you'll even see some things tonight where it's carried on, the names of our planets and the names of the weeks of the day and things like this. People still kind of are involved in this. They're going to this scary situation. You know, at work today, I was in a meeting. You know, work meetings aren't fun, but especially a work meeting that is about going and visiting realtors. Going and knocking on doors and visiting realtors. And he even like terrified me one moment. He's like, and even take him out to lunch. I'm like, oh my gosh. And we're all looking at each other because our job typically hasn't been sales oriented. And that's just terrifying to me to go and, hey, I don't know you, but do you want to go to lunch? One-on-one, no thanks. I'm going to try to avoid that at all costs. But that's a scary situation. But it made me think of these apostles like, they're going blindly into these areas. They have no idea who they're going to encounter. And now they encounter these Greeks in Lystra. So we can kind of see the map of where they've been. The hub started in Jerusalem. They built a base in Antioch. It's the megachurch of the day in there in Antioch. They went over to Cyprus, Papho, Salamis, a really Jewish area. So first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, right? Kind of literally that's what happened. On the island there, Cyprus, they ministered to the Jews, more familiar, because they could use the Old Testament that they knew so well. But now they're going to have to change their strategy because it's a totally different group of people involved in mythology. They don't know this Jewish stuff. So what's going to be their strategy? Well, we're going to see that tonight. So their strategy starts out here in Acts 14, verse 8. It says, At Lystra a man was sitting, who had no strength in his feet, lame from his mother's womb, who had never walked. So we see there where this first strategy is going, healing, miracles, things to get the attention of people. It's amazing like today you could see a miracle and just be like, oh, that was AI generated or, you know, you'd probably blow it off. But during this time, it was more legitimate. You know, a lot of the magicians do things that are just crazy or illusionist, I guess you should say. But it had to be believable. And so he started with healing. Verse 9 goes on. This man was listening to Paul as he spoke, who then he had fixed his gaze on him and had seen that he had faith to be made well. So even Jesus said this, it wasn't about that lady reaching out and touching the hem of the garment. The power wasn't in the garment. The power wasn't even in the touch. The power was in something unseen called faith. We often want to put too much power or weight into things that are seen and, you know, modern day medicines are good, but what's even more powerful would be faith that God can heal you. But faith is a strong thing. He even says a mustard seed, if you have the faith as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains. And often we don't tap into that superpower of faith. Acts 14.10 goes on. He said with a loud voice, stand upright on your feet. And he leaped up and began to walk. And when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they raised their voice saying in the Laconian language, the gods have become like men and have come down to us. So their interpretation of this miracle, they applied it to their worldview. And that's because the worldview makes you see things through that lens, no matter what, you know, like, you know, the leftists see certain things, and you're like, how could you possibly not see, claim you love democracy. Meanwhile, you're taking your opponent off the ballot, like little things like that. It's like, how could you not see that? But through their worldview is a totally different situation. And that's how these people saw this. They saw it as miracles from these Greek gods that had been around throughout all history. And in verse 12, it says, then they begin calling Barnabas, Zeus and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. Now, this is where we left off last week in our text. But Zeus, the characteristic of him, he was called the chief God. Well, you think of Paul as the chief, you know, he's like kind of the leader, the one speaking. Well, they didn't say Paul was chief or Zeus, because he was more like Hermes. He was the communicator. So that was the difference. Zeus was the chief God, the more quiet, all powerful being that controlled everything and was the God of all gods. And Hermes, the messenger God, he was the one that communicated things. Or he was equivalent, if you line up the Greek gods and the Roman gods, the Romans kind of adapted these gods and changed their names a little bit. So this will be comparable to the Roman gods of Jupiter and of Mercury, Hermes. So Hermes became the Roman god, Jupiter and Mercury. And now we've named planets after them in their honor, apparently. So why then, you know, were they so automatically going to this mythology? Well, it was so ingrained in the culture. I mean, it had been around for thousands and thousands of years at this point. And it's a satanic strategy that Satan used is all it is. It's just a vehicle, just like any other false religion, just like, you know, Islam invented in 600 AD, another satanic vehicle that Satan used to accomplish his will, just like when people, you know, are stirred up with racist ideology and, you know, all these different things coming out of our culture today, the LGBT movement, a whole month of worshiping this movement almost in June. And it's all a strategy, a satanic strategy to replace the focus on God. But fortunately, because of these early apostles, Christianity came in around this time of the early apostles and wiped out this Greek mythology. Now, just like everything Satan uses, he just changes the name of it and adapts to it to something different. But I wanted to show you this video because they built these huge altars to Zeus and these Greek gods and the awesome situation of Christianity coming in and wiping it out. So if you just click a couple of times there, it should, yeah, there. Zeus, the supreme god of Greek mythology, has always been worshiped by all the Hellenic peoples. Given his paramount role in the Greek pantheon, several temples were edified in his honor, but none could match the temple at Olympia where the magnificent statue of Zeus was kept. The statue depicted Zeus sitting on his throne with a height of more than 13 meters. This gigantic statue was made of ebony, gold and ivory, ornamented with gems. The statue was carved by Thaddeus, a remarkable Greek sculptor. He also crafted another massive statue which represented the goddess Athena, located in the Athenian Acropolis. Next to the Parthenon, the statue of Zeus held the image of the goddess of victory in one of his hands. And this deity was always alongside Zeus. In his other hand, Zeus held a scepter with an eagle resting on its top. The eagle is the animal consecrated to the lord of the Olympian gods. The temple of Zeus in Olympia was a pilgrimage site. Thousands of Greeks traveled to the city to attend religious rituals. But many also arrived in Athens to attend the Olympic games, which were disputed in the same period of the religious ceremonies in honor of the great god. During the period when Greece was dominated by Rome, Emperor Caligula ordered the dismantlement of the statue so that it could be brought to Rome. Zeus's head would then be replaced by the emperor's. But the statue managed to escape unscathed since Caligula was killed before his order could be accomplished. Over the centuries, the festivities in honor of Zeus became less important with the emergence of Christianity. And the sanctuary of Zeus fell into decay. At the end of the fourth century of the Common Era, the Roman emperor Theodosius declared Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. And pagan practices started to be persecuted. The temple of Zeus was now regarded as an epicenter of paganism and was permanently closed. The fate of the statue is still debated by experts. Some argue that it was dismantled and taken to Constantinople, where it was destroyed in a major fire, while others claim that it was pillaged and its precious ornaments were robbed. The remainder of the statue collapsed along with the temple. The great statue of Zeus, sculpted by Theseus, was an inspiration for several other Roman sculptors who carved statues of Jupiter, the Roman counterpart of Zeus. But none was as breathtaking as the glorious statue of Zeus in Olympia. So next for us, we're gonna see the characteristic of sacrifice come along. Well, that came about in the Old Testament. God came up with that idea to point forward to Christ himself. But now we see these Greek people wanting to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas in honor of their fake god. So he says in verse 13, the priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside 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 robes and rushed out into the crowd crying out. They were angry at the fact that they were denigrating their God. This was not the God of the Bible. This was not the God they were talking about. They twisted it into something it's not. People try to define who God is today. Many churches preach false doctrine so bad that they don't even know the character of God anymore. But we see this anger arise. Is it okay to be angry as a Christian? Yes. Jesus was angry in the temple. He threw stuff around. He wasn't very happy. Emotion, anger, it motivates us. But we also gotta be smart. We gotta keep a clear mind in that anger, work methodically, and not just lash out. I like what this guy says, random guy, Lee Iacocca. A little righteous anger really brings out the best in the American personality. Our nation was born when 56 patriots got mad enough to sign the Declaration of Independence. We put a man on the moon because Sputnik made us mad at being number two to space. Getting mad in a constructive way is good for the soul and for the country. And it's also good for the cause of Christ. We gotta get mad sometimes that evil is encroaching on our church, on our family, on our lives. So we have to fight back and fight back smart. Verse 15 goes on, and saying, men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God. Vain things, like ridiculous things, these meaningless things who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. So he's trying to put it in perspective here. You're worshiping man-made things that are worthless like these Hindu little trinket gods over in India that Scott talks about sometimes, look like McDonald's toys. How in the world could somebody, you know, you put that up against the all-powerful creator of the universe who made everything, who designed our DNA all the way down to the microscopic organisms as big as the galaxies, all this powerful stuff, and they'd rather put their faith in a little piece of plastic that their grandma made in a factory somewhere. Just amazing the contrast of what people can fall for. So after thousands of years, Greek mythology was about to be, well, redesigned more so by Satan, because ideas of it are still around today, but what's the best way to reach people that don't have access to God's word? It's general revelation through nature. God speaks through nature. He shows us that we need him through nature and through the provisions that he gives us in nature. In Acts 14, 16, it says, in the generations gone by, he permitted all nations to go their own ways. And yet he did not leave himself without witness in that he did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. So he let the nations go their own way to find, they didn't have, many didn't have the Old Testament or New Testament. Does that mean God abandoned them? It doesn't mean God abandoned them. Everybody has free will, and they were able to come to him. They were able to be drawn by nature itself. And the idea of us needing him to survive was something that should draw us in. Just like a parent and a baby, that baby would not survive at all without a parent nurturing that child. And that baby doesn't really know it needs that nurturing. When it's a little tiny child, well, that's the same with a lot of people. They don't think about the fact that I need God to make sure all the planets don't spin out of control. I need God to make sure that it rains in the appropriate amount of time. I need God to ultimately, yeah, provide life here on earth, but to rescue me so I can spend eternity with him. God holds everything together. He wants us to know this. Creation is impressive, but it also shows us our need for him. He says in this, for by him all things were created, and in him all things hold together. So there in that one verse you have past, that moment he created everything in seven days, six days literally is what we think. But more importantly, currently holds them together. So think about the opposite of that. If he wasn't holding everything together, everything would spin out of control. It would be chaos. That's why Satan loves chaos. He loves the creation being out of order because he knows that God's trying to keep everything in order. And one day he's going to put it all back in order. But verse 18 goes on, even saying these things with difficulty, they restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them. They did not want any acknowledgement from their fake gods. But they sure love their gods. I mean, they were definitely stuck in their ways. Kind of like Voltaire said this, it is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. They loved the familiar. They loved their huge temples and the gold altars with Zeus sitting on it was probably pretty impressive. It was something they had grown up with. It was familiarity is a big thing. But it's so hard to get people to break free from those because they revere them, they cherish them, and they anchor their lives in them so much. But luckily God sets us free from all this stuff. He says Jesus Christ is able to set us free because he has dealt with the sin that enslaves us. Many times the world says that Christianity will put you in chains, right? It'll tie you down. You won't be able to do the things you want to do. It's very limiting and a lot of rules and regulations, but it's actually the opposite. It frees us from the consequence of not obeying those rules and regulations. He's given us a pass on our sin and set us free from the world that tears us down. But Acts 14, 19 goes on, but Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and having won over the crowds, they stonewalled and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. They were impressed by this healing and all of a sudden, boom, they switch. It reminds me when Jesus went in on the donkey, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. They were so excited to see their Christ until the political powers took over and then it became unpopular to support Jesus, the Messiah, the one who would come in and wreck their way of living. The government of that day could not have that radical type of thinking that went against the mainstream. So they crushed Jesus, literally. But he says he won over the crowds. These Jews came in from out of town and they persuaded. It means to persuade, to gain confidence. From the Greek word peito, they won them over. So there's so much power in persuasion, right? They came in and it didn't take them long to persuade them to stonewall and get him out of town. This is how evil works. It's persuasive, it's strategic. Just like the founder of, or one of the founders of this movement, the power, Steve Baiko, he says this, the power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force, but of dedication, of moral persuasion. You don't have to force people to believe certain things. You convince them to believe certain things rather than genuine, there's a couple ways to do that. You convince them through moral persuasion saying by threatening them, this will happen to you if you don't believe this. Just kind of like now if you're a conservative lawyer and you're gonna go represent a conservative, good luck because they're gonna come after your law license, they're gonna try to crush you. That's one of the ways they persuade you. So get them interested in and obsessed with these causes to control them. Now this Steve Baiko, he's a founder of a Marxist organization, a racist organization in Africa. But he wanted to get people so worked up with the race issue and get them obsessed with it so he can control them and accomplish what he wants to do. There's been movements like that today that gets you worked up and irrationally worked up and obsessed. The media is very powerful. It says control education, control their minds. They got that one down. Control healthcare, control their bodies. Control the media, control their thoughts. Control the votes, control their lives. Those we can't control, we must destroy. That nailed it, that's exactly what we're up against. The strategy of today may not be Greek mythology like it was back then, but it's control of everything that has power in our society and the threat that if you don't go along with that power, you will be crushed. Media coverage back in 2016, during the election, back in 2016, first time Trump won. Media coverage for Trump was 62% negative according to Pew Research. 62% negative, 5% positive. Back when Obama was running, 20% negative, 42% positive. And I think it's probably even worse now. I don't even think there's 5%. I don't think I've ever turned on the mainstream media and it was positive for one side or the other. Whether you're for one or the other, you think it'd be fair. But George Orwell's a good study too. And he says, he who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past. So we see that they've eliminated history in schools a lot. They've transformed it into something that wasn't. They knew that they could control education, they could control everything. And we see this final one here. How many liberals do you think work at Harvard compared to conservatives? It's almost all. So especially on the extreme ends, you see the very liberals, almost 30%, very conservatives, 0.4%. And that's just what they say. And maybe there are more conservatives in there that are just kind of going along to get along. I think that's probably the case. Because if they speak up, they know they're gone. Same thing today. We have all these oppressive things in our culture. The oppressive thing back then was these Jewish people who wanted to control the narrative, didn't want their way of thinking crushed, wanted to stay in power. And remember, they couldn't let go of this idea of Zeus either. So they used both of those things to convince the crowd. So going on here, verse 20. But while the disciples stood around him, he got up and entered the city. The next day, he went away with Barnabas to Derbe. So they got out of town. After they had preached the gospel to that city, and it made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. So they had kind of a failure there with the Greek mythologists, but then they had a victory. And then they had more failures and more victories. So that's just how our Christian life is gonna be. That's how everything in life seems to be that way. But you have to power through the bad times because you know good times are coming if you're doing the right thing. Verse 22 goes on. Strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. Now, were they gonna literally enter the kingdom of God right then in their lifetime? Well, they probably honestly thought so. They thought that they were ushering in the kingdom of God. This isn't bad, though. We all, every generation, should prepare for the kingdom. We should all wanna be a part of the kingdom, have authority in the kingdom, and that's a reward to be able to have different positions within the kingdom, the reigning kingdom, talking about the specific time period of the thousand-year reign, difference between heaven and the kingdom. And I think somehow it's got all the same place because we're all gonna be with Christ at all times. But they thought that they were ushering in the kingdom, thought they were living in the last days. I think I'm living in the last days. I wanna live like I am living in the last days. If you don't believe you're living in the last days, you should live that way anyway. You know, that's a much more effective way to think. In 2 Timothy 3.1, it talks about the characteristics of these last days that they'd be living in. Many of these characteristics you saw during the Jewish time, definitely you can see the characteristics today. It says, but realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, and unholy. That can be a good time. Unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good. And those haters of good pretend they're being moral and good, don't they? They pretend that their morality is above all. If they don't believe in a God that started morality in the first place, if there is no God, there can be no morality. He is the giver of morality. Anything goes if you don't believe in God. That's why there's no good or bad if you don't. But verse four goes on, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Wanted to highlight this one. Holding to a form of godliness. Talking about that morality again. They worship these fake moralities that they've made up out of nowhere. I think, unfortunately, a lot of those people in power have made up these fake things out of nowhere to make it an election issue, something that doesn't exist, you know? Although they have denied its power, avoid such men as these. These kind of people are scary because like I said, if God doesn't exist, there is no morality. So the ends justifies the means up to and including killing you. So if there is no God, we should be afraid of these people. We should be avoiding these people because they are defying their morality. Now, Robbie Zacharias, you know, pretty sad situation where he gave so many years of his life was just an amazing intellectual thinker on apologetics. And then after he passed away, he had a scandal come out and it just got bad. But you know, we're all imperfect, so I'm still gonna quote him. He talks about what it means to have moral law and where it came from and how people say, you know, there's just so much evil in this world. Atheists will tell us there can't be a God because God cannot allow evil. Well, he says this, when you say there's too much evil in this world, you assume there's good. Well, he could have just stopped there. When you assume there's good, you assume there's such thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral law giver. But that's who you are trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there's no moral law giver, there's no moral law. If there's no moral law, there is no good. If there's no good, there's not the opposite of it either. There's no evil. So he goes back and says, what is your question? That's one of the best quotes he ever did when an atheist asked him, how can God allow evil? Well, how do you know there's evil? Second Timothy 3.6 goes on, for among them, those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of truth. Saying, these are super educated people, they're always learning. And you see scientists today, they think they know everything. People with degrees at these big universities think they know everything. Well, as you get more college and education, it's proven that you go farther away from the truth. I'll show you. Here, the US college graph, starting in 1940, not a lot of people went to college. It was like 0.5% on average. But our enemies want people to go to college because then they can talk to them more about their ideas and convince them. But now you see it's over 30%. And for some reason, because of course, they break it down by race. There's no reason to break that down by race in my mind. But then you see from 1952, their religiosity, meaning people consider themselves to believe in the truth or have a foundation in Christ. Well, it was over 80%, 1950s, 1960s, still over 80%. Now, when did that decline come? At the end of the 1960s, into 70s, 80s, and all the way down. And it went down below 70% back in 2013. And you look at some of the more recent stuff, now it's pushing 50%. So it's just crashing and burning. So you put those side by side, the more educated people get, the farther away from the truth they get. It's amazing how that works. And that Bible verse right there proves it. I know I've quoted this before. It says, Varna estimates that roughly 70% of high school students who enter college as professing Christians will leave with little to no faith. These students usually don't return to their faith even after graduation. As Varna projects, and this is the important part, that 80% of those reared in the church will be disengaged by the time they're 29. That's sad. The ones that go to college, 80% of them become disengaged in their churches by the age of 29, isn't that crazy? They know that, man, they've got to get them into these colleges so that they can control them. And to finish up here in 2 Timothy, just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth. Men of depraved mind rejected in regard to their faith, but they will not make further progress for their folly will be obvious to all. This is the good news. Just as Janus and Jambres' folly was also, you can go back and look at that, I guess. Now you've followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and suffering. Such has happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured, and out of them, all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, but evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But I like that verse back in 11. I endured, and the Lord rescued me. So if we endure, if we power through it, that's the key. He has our back. We can peacefully be persecuting. You know, Paul was stoned, apparently, almost to death. What did he do? Quit? He got back up stronger, actually, probably, and went on anyway. Unselfishly, he could've went back and had a nice life. I'm sure he had plenty of money, but he was enduring for Christ. That's what we need to do. Let's go ahead and close in prayer tonight. Dear God, thank you for your word and how it motivates us and encourages us to go out and work harder for you. Pray that you would just give us opportunities to do so, or pray that you would just be with us, and pray that you would come back again quickly. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. More comfortable.
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