Through The Bible - Acts 14 - Part 1

Brett Meador: I'm not sure generally the best preaching is the whole fire and brimstone sermon. There is a place for that I think, and there are examples of that in the Bible, but the Bible does seem to put an emphasis on the idea of the Lord's goodness.
Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador underscoring the unearned favor of God. Remember Romans 2:4, it says it's the Lord's goodness or kindness that leads men to repentance. He's the forgiver of sins. That's what is going to draw all men: the grace of God. Paul and Barnabas get that right. In Acts chapter 14, the missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas continued as they faithfully preached the grace of the Gospel to the multitudes in Iconium. Some believed, others rejected, and the city became divided. But despite the growing opposition, Pastor Brett Meador notes the apostle's courage to stand for Christ and the wisdom to trust God's lead in today's word.
Brett Meador: I love how in the Bible we have God's word. The average secularist would say, "How do you know it's God's word? There's no way to know that or prove that." But I believe if you take a careful look at the scripture, it can't be denied that it's God's word. When we see Paul and Barnabas go around and they're preaching the word, right there, there's power. You can see it in the story. The word of God was preached and many came to know the Lord. But equally proof positive is there was a pushback. Whenever something's really true and right, sometimes you'll see something that's massive pushback as well. Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is quick, or living, and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword." In the Bible is just embedded all kinds of truths. I have a hunch when we get to heaven, we're just going to be blown away how much we missed, how much we didn't know, or how much that was already there but we just scratched the surface. Go with me to Genesis. I just want to review this. I've gone through this before but I feel compelled to do it again. Genesis chapter 5, starting in verse 3. It says, "Adam lived a hundred and thirty years and begat his son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth." Then verse 5, "And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. And Seth lived a hundred and five years and begat Enos. And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died. And Enos lived ninety years and begat Cainan. And Enos lived after Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years, and he died." Why are these people living so long? It's the antediluvian world. It's a very different world before the flood. There's all kinds of interesting things. If you're interested in a really great read of the commentary on Genesis, there's no better work in my opinion than a book called *The Genesis Record*. You want to check that out. He talks about the way the water changed because of the flood, changing the whole structure of the firmament and the atmosphere. It's just a whole different deal, but anyway, these guys live longer. Verse 12 says, "Cainan lived seventy years and begat Mahalaleel." Verse 13, "And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years, and he died. And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years and begat Jared. And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years and begat sons and daughters. Verse 18, "And Jared lived a hundred and sixty-two years, and he begat Enoch." Then verse 21, "And Enoch lived sixty-five years and begat Methuselah. And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years and begat sons and daughters. All the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty and five years. And Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him." He was raptured before the tribulation of the flood came down. Interesting picture there. Then verse 25, "Methuselah lived a hundred and eighty and seven years and begat Lamech. And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred and eighty-two years and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and he died." He was the oldest guy in history that's recorded there. Verse 28, "Lamech lived a hundred and eighty-two years and begat a son, and called his name Noah, saying, 'This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.'" You say, "Okay, Brett, this is why we don't like reading the Bible. The secularist, the atheist, it's just a dumb genealogy." But this is one of those places I find very interesting, just so rewarding to do a little deeper work. In the Genesis 5 genealogy, if you break down these names, it's just really interesting. Adam means man. Good word for the first guy that lived on the earth. His son was Seth. The reason he's called Seth, which means appointed, is when he was born, if you recall, Eve said, "For God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew." That name came from Eve and it means appointed. Then Enos, depending on what translation you have, his name means subject to death. Who calls that? It means immortal, frail, or miserable. Its root form, *anash*, means to be incurable or subject to death, like when you see a wound that's wounded to death. It also includes the idea of grief, sickness, even wickedness. The idea of subject unto death is just doomed in that way. That's his name. Cainan, Enos's son, came from the word sorrowful, which means dirge or elegy, like you would at a funeral. Then Mahalaleel. His name means blessed of God. It's interesting. Cainan's son from *Mahalal*, which means blessed or praise, and *El*, which is a name for God. Thus Mahalaleel means the blessed of God, which is kind of cool. Jared, Mahalaleel's son, comes from the word *Yared*, which means shall come down or coming down. Some authorities suggest this might have been an allusion to the sons of God who came down to the corrupt daughters of men, resulting in the Nephilim in Genesis chapter 6. But "one that comes down" is Jared. Enoch, Jared's son, means dedicated. Enoch, first of four generations of preachers. In fact, the earliest recorded prophecy comes from Enoch, which amazingly enough details the second coming of Christ. Enoch gets the name dedicated. Methuselah. Now there's an interesting entomology. This big word, the oldest guy, his name means his death shall bring. What in the world of a name is that? The flood of Noah didn't come as a surprise. It had been preached on for four generations. But something strange happened when Enoch was 65, from the time which he walked with God. Enoch was given a prophecy that as long as his son was alive, the judgment of the flood would be withheld. But as soon as he died, the flood would be sent forth and the destruction of all living things except for Noah and his family. Enoch named his son to reflect the prophecy. The name Methuselah comes from two root words: *muth*, a root which means death, and from *shalach*, which means to bring or send forth. Thus the name Methuselah means his death shall bring. After Methuselah dies, of course, the flood comes and that comes to pass. Why would you name your son "his death shall bring"? That's why, because of the prophecy. A couple more. Lamech, Methuselah's son, was named Lamech, a root still evident today. We use our word lament, which means lamentation or sorrowful or despairing. Lamech is really despairing is probably the best definition of that. Does anybody remember what Noah's name means? Rest and comfort, because that's what the text tells us right here, that his name was Noah because he would bring rest and comfort. Nice little study entomology of names, but if you haven't seen this before, it's quite striking. When you put it all together in a nice little list, you read this. This is what the whole thing reads: man appointed subject unto death, sorrowful. The blessed of God shall come down dedicated. His death shall bring the despairing rest and comfort. That's the Gospel in a nutshell right there. I love that. It's almost like God says, "See?" I'll take a little boring list of genealogy and tucked away in that thousands of years right here in the names is this hidden little Gospel message. I'm convinced there's a lot more of this in the Bible that we probably don't even have a clue about. The Gospel message embedded. Remember the Bible says, "Lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me." Even the Old Testament is about Jesus and that's why we can look for these things. Typology and we'll see this more in the New Testament telling us that we need to look back to the Old Testament for those kinds of things. I just love the power of God's word. We left off on our first missionary journey of Paul in Antioch in Pisidia, which is Turkey. Thus far we saw them bounce to Cyprus and the two main cities there, Salamis and Paphos, and then Perga and then Antioch. Iconium was where we left off and things start to heat up there in chapter 14. Let's read verse 1. It says, "And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also the Greeks believed." Good news. People believing. They're hearing the word and believing. But there's always the but there. Verse 2, "But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil affected against the brethren." Interesting phrase there, "they made their minds evil affected." Does that happen today? I think the ESV says "poisoned their minds." That's a good way of putting it. Are people's minds being poisoned today? We laugh at that because it's so ridiculously true now. People's minds are being poisoned. Let's think of how that happens. There's so many ways a person's mind can be poisoned. One of the ways that's probably as old as the sun is for people to just say something bad about somebody that's not true. You can plant the seed or the poison in someone's heart and even if it's not true and later revealed to be not true, there's still the sense that that person did that. It's one of those things because we're not like God where we can forgive and forget and wash and start brand new. Old things pass away, all things become new. I'm so thankful for that character of the Lord, but we can't do that. It's hard to unlearn. Some of the accusations that come to people or gossip. When you gossip about somebody and say something that's not true, it really is one of the horrible sins that I think we don't measure the repercussions of that probably as carefully as we should. These Jews go and sort of poison the water, the minds of the people. Christians should be above that kind of behavior. True or false, we shouldn't spread rumors. I've noticed over the years as an old-timer Christian who's been around the church a long time, there's a way Christians get around the gossip thing by spiritualizing everything. "We really need to pray for brother so-and-so." "What's going on?" "Well, I can't really tell you because I don't want to gossip, but he's wrestling with a sin, and it's kind of a sin that most men wrestle with." People try to act like we're covering. No, you're just exposing and being a whack-o. You're being gossipy. You say, "I would never gossip about someone like that," but here's the thing: are you one that listens to gossip? Because that's just as bad. If you're a person that people like to come up and gossip to you, have you ever heard yourself thinking, "Why does everybody come talk to me?" The answer to that is probably you're the problem. I'll tell you why, because you're adding fuel to the fire by listening to what they're saying. As Christians, we need to be next level and shut that down early. When they come up and say, "Did you hear about sister so-and-so?" how do you shut that down? I think you try to say something nice about sister so-and-so. If they say, "Did you hear about sister so-and-so?" you can say, "Oh, I love that sister. She's so great. Did you hear about how wonderful she is and what she did with her kids? Man, what a great sister in our church." Suddenly, they're going to be like, "Oh, yeah, anyway, bye." You can shut it down. If they keep going, shut it down. I'll tell you why. There's actually a proverb that talks about this. Proverbs 26:20: "Where no wood is, there the fire goes out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth." In other words, if you're going to listen, you're kindling wood to keep things ablaze. You're part of the problem. Don't be a listener. Shut it down. There's no fuel here. If somebody comes to you with gossip or hearsay, we should only deal with things that are true. I've made mistakes like that as a pastor, talking about stuff that I heard about or thought about or did this and that, later to find out maybe it's not true or it was just a little twisted or a little different. It's a hard thing. Whenever you open your mouth, it's easy, especially in our culture. There's a plethora of tidbits of information that you hear about, and you have to be really careful about that. Don't be wood where the talebearer can have no place to light the fire. How do you shut it down? I love what Philippians chapter 1, verses 9 through 11 says: "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ; being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God." Approving the things that are excellent. Only talking about the things that are good. Looking for that. Again, there is a difference when we're supposed to call out heresy, false teaching, false doctrine. That's different. But again, we have the measuring rod of the word. If somebody's teaching something contrary to the word of God, then we need to, especially as a pastor, call that out. But when you're just trying to gossip, we got to shut that down and instead approve that which is excellent. They're using the oldest trick in the book here. Paul and Barnabas were preaching the truth and what do these people do? They come and dilute the truth with poison, falsities, and sadly it's going to cause quite a stir here. Let's take a look. It goes on in verse 3. It says, "Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord." Paul and Barnabas didn't give up. When the poison was being put out, Paul and Barnabas said, "We're going to hunker down and keep preaching." They kept going a long time, boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of his grace and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. Notice how they handled the poison. This is something in a culture of poisonous words. How did they handle it? Number one, they started speaking about the grace of God. While they were bashing the truth, the Jews, Paul and Barnabas just focused, as it says in verse 3, "they gave testimony unto the word of his grace." I love that. How can the people of Iconium, the pagans there, turn toward Jesus? His kindness. Remember Romans 2:4. It says it's the Lord's goodness that leads men, or kindness, that leads men to repentance. That's the right thing to do. I'm not sure generally the best preaching is fire and brimstone. Fire and brimstone sermons, there is a place for that I think, and there are examples of that in the Bible. But the Bible does seem to put an emphasis on the idea of the Lord's goodness. That's what leads people to repentance. Rather than beating people over the heads with our Bibles and saying, "Stop abortion," and "Stop this," and "Stop that," no, we need to remind them the Lord is good. Remember his graciousness. He's the forgiver of sins. That's what is going to draw all men, the grace of God. Paul and Barnabas get that right. God has a deep love for each person in Iconium and Paul and Barnabas are trying to reach them with his grace. That's pretty important. Remember Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:1, "Therefore, Timothy, my son, be strong." What's the one thing Paul wanted Timothy to be strong in in ministry? Be strong in the Lord? No, didn't say that. Be strong in... not even the word. Be strong in grace. That's what Paul told Timothy. That's interesting to me. Here's Paul, the big master teacher, theologian, teaching young Timothy, and he says, "Be strong in the grace." There's a lot of other things I probably would have put in there, but being strong in grace is the one that made the scriptures. What is grace? God's favor, undeserved, unearned favor that he wants to show. Guess what? Timothy was going to need that grace because he was going to a place called Ephesus that was very pagan and he needed to be all about preaching of the grace of God. I love how Paul and Barnabas are doing that. They're being strong in grace just like Paul would tell Timothy later. The second thing that they do here is they keep preaching the grace of God to the people, but then they also start doing miracles, signs, and wonders. Does the Lord still do miracles today? The answer is yes. Some people don't believe that, but I believe absolutely and we see that happen all the time. We've got so many cool stories. I remember one particular story that was kind of close here because we pray for people and see healing a lot. But this one was kind of interesting. We used to do Tuesday night Motocross where all of us would get 30 or 40 Athey Creekers and we'd ride our dirt bikes. It was a great time of fellowship, then we'd have the holy anointing pizza afterward and a Bible study. It was just a great time. One such incident, we're up there riding and one of my buddies crashed and hit a berm real hard and broke three ribs. We hauled him off to the hospital. I went into the emergency there and we were just sitting there talking while the doctors came running in. They looked at the X-rays and stuff and they said, "Man, forget the ribs. You have a real problem in your lungs." They said, "You have what looks to be very advanced cancer and we need to take another scan." I forget what kind of a scan they were going to do, some MRI or something. We were just sitting there kind of stunned. They said, "Yeah, we don't even care about the ribs. We got to get this cancer thing." Well, it was kind of cool because he and I just sat there and he was a man of faith who believed in healing and I believed in healing. So we just prayed there. This is the exact prayer: "Lord, would you heal this guy? Would you heal up whatever's going on in his lungs? Would you heal that right now? Whatever scan they do next, Lord, would you just make it so that even the doctors are kind of stunned and don't understand what's going on? Because you're the great physician." That was our prayer. We just prayed the prayer of faith believing, knowing God can do that. Sure enough, you guys guess the story. They came back after the second scan and said, "Man, we don't know what we saw in the other scans, but perfectly clear. Everything's great. Let's get back to fixing your ribs." We see that kind of stuff. Go to the elders and have them pray and anoint with oil. That's what James tells us to do. We believe in that. Don't sell short healing. I just wanted to make that point. We're seeing healing happen. Churches tend to magnetize one way or the other. Either it's all about miracles and the Holy Ghost, or miracles aren't for today. These guys went and preached the word first. The word was the priority and it seems to me that the miracles came after. That's kind of the perfect order. I believe that's the order that Mark, that Jesus talks about in Mark chapter 16. If you recall when Jesus is kind of signing off in the Gospel of Mark, he says, "And these things shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." This is what Jesus said. One of the things that I love about this to remind us, what does it say at the beginning? "These signs shall follow them that believe." One of the things we've done wrong, it's not following after signs and wonders, it's the signs and wonders that follow after the believers. Some churches have got that backwards. "Let's look for miracles. It's all about the Holy Spirit and miracles and speaking in tongues." That's not really the order here. First the followers of Jesus, they're saved by the word of God and discipled, and then the signs and wonders follow them that believe, not believers following after signs and wonders. Some churches, some of which you probably know, they've swapped that around and it's a bad standard to chase after the signs and wonders without the real solid discipleship of the word first and foremost. I hope you're careful on that one. It has to do with where they put Jesus. It's not that there's glitter falling or they're flopping around in the aisles, that's something I don't appreciate, but what I really borderlines on heresy is this idea of we're better than Jesus, more important than Jesus, we can do greater things than Jesus, and they sort of minimize Jesus. That's my number one complaint. Really important. I'm not just trying to bash, I'm actually trying to warn because that's a real problem. All that to say I do believe in miracles. Don't diminish that, but let's keep our priorities straight.
Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador illustrating how it was the bold preaching of Paul and Barnabas of God's grace that resulted in the solid discipleship. And there's much more of this verse-by-verse study of Acts chapter 14 to come next time in Today's Word. And a reminder that if you've missed any portion of our study, you'll find all of Pastor Brett's messages online at todayswordradio.com. You can also watch full video messages from him by going to todayswordradio.com. Well, Pastor Brett is with me now. Brett, I've asked you this before, but I know you grew up in a Christian home. Your folks were very involved in ministry. Do you have some stories about how those experiences made an impression on you and how you minister today?
Brett Meador: Growing up in a Christian home really was a giant blessing and I think I'm realizing even more and more how huge that was for my ministry right now. I think I'm only now fully starting to realize. My parents, hardworking people, they were fairly new Christians when I was born, but they were hungry for the word. My dad being in construction, we'd travel around different cities on the West Coast: different construction jobs in Southern California all the way up into Oregon. But we attended churches: Baptist church, Assembly of God, Nazarene, wherever the nearest church was, we'd go. So as a little kid, those churches all left impressions and I think were largely part of shaping what I thought about church in general. Finally when we settled in Southern Oregon, my parents, there wasn't really a great through-the-Bible teaching church that was nearby. So they called up a friend from Southern Cal and they came up and started a church in my own home. I had a experience going from a church with 10 people in my living room and that church grew to over 7,000 people in about a 25-year trajectory. So it was by that experience I became deeply involved in ministry from a very young age just because it was what my family did. I don't remember anything but serving, watching my parents serve people quietly, praying with sincerity, studying the word faithfully. Those impressions really stuck with me. One of the biggest things I learned from my parents is it's not about the spotlight. It's just about being faithful and my parents really modeled that. They weren't the front of the sanctuary kind of people as much as they were behind the scenes just serving. That was a giant thing for me personally.
Guest (Male): Thank you, Brett, for sharing some of those personal stories about your upbringing. Like you said, what a blessing to have parents like that to model Christ and service to you. Well, if you'd like more information about Athey Creek Church, Pastor Brett Meador, or Today's Word, you can visit our website at todayswordradio.com. Next time, Pastor Brett will continue our verse-by-verse account from Acts chapter 14. Today's Word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.