Transcript

Washington DC contains shrines and memorials to our nation’s founders and great leaders, such as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

Painted on the ceiling of the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, 180 feet above the rotunda floor, is a scene of a man being lifted up on the clouds into the company of gods and goddesses such as Minerva, Neptune, Venus, and Mercury.

It is called “The Apotheosis of George Washington.” Painted in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi, the painting depicts George Washington rising to the heavens in glory, flanked by female figures representing Liberty and Victory.

A rainbow arches at his feet, and thirteen maidens symbolizing the original states flank the three central figures.

Apotheosis means deification, the elevation of someone to divine status. We would not agree with the extreme that this painting goes to in lifting up George Washington, and fortunately our cultural history does not deify him.

But this reminds us how mankind does have a tendency to exalt our great men and women to the status that belongs to God alone.

Paul and Barnabas experienced being lifted up as gods in Lystra. But it is inspiring to see their firm denial of it and how they pointed the people to the one true and living God.

Acts 14:8-10: “And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked: The same heard Paul speak: who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed, Said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked.”

Leaving the city of Iconium after nearly being stoned there, Paul and Barnabas traveled around 20 miles south to go to Lystra.

According to verses 6 and 7 of this chapter, we see that after arriving in Lystra, “they preached the gospel,” the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Typically, Paul would first go to the Jewish synagogue in a new city, but nothing is said about this in Lystra. This teaches that there were not enough Jews in the city to warrant having a synagogue. There were Jews in Lystra, however. Timothy hailed from Lystra, and Acts 16:1 tells us that his mother, Eunice, was a Jewess.

As Paul proclaimed the gospel in Lystra, he did some open-air preaching, probably in the public marketplace.

And as he did so, he took notice of one of his hearers: “there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked.”

Dr. Luke could have simply said the man was lame, but instead he goes into detail. And Luke’s sad threefold description of the man is meant to emphasize his helplessness and hopelessness. It’s meant to make your heart go out to him.

He was without strength in his feet. He had been crippled since he was born. And he had never walked, a blessing that he saw others do every day, but had never done himself.

And verse 9 states that “the same heard Paul speak.” He listened intently and with interest as Paul spoke and preached the gospel in Lystra. And the idea of this phrase is that he kept coming back, he regularly heard Paul speak.

You can almost feel his hope and him hanging on Paul’s words. Out of the dozens that might have been in the crowd, this man caught Paul’s attention. And verse 9 states of Paul, “who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed.”

Paul observed him intently, and by the Holy Spirit, Paul perceived that he had faith to be healed. Paul could see it this man had faith that God, through His servant, could heal him and make him whole.

And his faith was the result of the proclamation of the Word of God, for Paul teaches in Romans 10:17 that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” And what this man heard from Paul about God he believed, and he had faith to be healed.

In response to that faith, Paul, an apostle with the gift of healing, in the power of the Spirit, “Said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet.”

And the faith that Paul perceived was then made plain to all by the fact that when Paul said “stand up,” he didn’t question the possibility of it. He truly believed that God could heal him through Paul. And thus, he immediately obeyed Paul’s command.

And the miracle was total and instantaneous. And for the first time in his life, “he leaped and walked.”

Now, when you remain in the same position for a long time, getting up requires some effort. And you usually get up with stiffness in your muscles and joints, groaning as you do, and your bones are cracking and creaking and you then limp around for a bit.

This man had been in the same position his whole life. But when Paul said “Stand up” he leaped up and he walked around with no limp. He was completely restored.

And as he leaped and jumped, we can only imagine his joy and excitement. And the blessing of walking for the very first time had to be indescribable for him.

And the term “walked” means to walk around. He started walking around here and there, all around the marketplace, everywhere he could in his excitement.

Having faith in that day DID allow this man to be healed. But with the completion of God’s Word and revelation, the gift of healing ceased. Thus, no amount of faith can bring healing today when there’s no longer men of God around with the gift of healing.

Having said that, God is still the Great Physician, and He can have mercy and heal according to His perfect will. But healings like this, done in the power of the Spirit through men with the gift of healing in response to faith, this has stopped.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “This (lame man) represents the impotency of all men in spiritual things till the grace of God puts strength into them.”

From our mother’s womb, we each are spiritually impotent, and without strength and unable to save ourselves or make ourselves whole spiritually. We need the grace of God.

And as Romans 5:6 states, “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Like this lame man, we are helpless and hopeless outside of Christ.

But in our great need, Christ fixed His eyes on each of us and out of His infinite love, He died for our sins and rose again. And when we trust Him, He makes us whole.

And spiritually-speaking, He tells us to stand up and walk. And when we trust Him, we then leap up for joy and walk and move forward for Him.

The healing of this lame man is significant. We are meant by the Holy Spirit to recognize the parallel and almost identical record of the healing of this crippled man and the healing of the lame man by Peter earlier in Acts chapter 3. Luke uses similar terms, phrases, and imagery which makes the connection unmistakable.

The man at the Beautiful Gate in Jerusalem was “lame from his mother’s womb.” Just like this man in Lystra, who was “a cripple from his mother’s womb.”

Before the lame man was healed, in both accounts we read how Peter fastened “his eyes upon him,” and it says here that Paul was “steadfastly beholding him.”

After Peter healed the lame man in Jerusalem, Acts 3 says, “And he leaping up stood, and walked.” After Paul healed the lame man in Lystra, “he leaped and walked.”

And after the miracle, it had a great affect on the multitudes in both Jerusalem and Lystra.

The record of Acts is about the fall and diminishing of Israel. Thus, it starts with Peter but ends with Paul. It begins with Peter ministering to Israel in Jerusalem and offering the kingdom to her, but after Stephen’s stoning and Israel’s fall, we see how it turns to the nations and ends with the ministry of Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, in Rome.

The record shows that what Peter could do as the leader of the 12 apostles of the kingdom and God’s program with Israel, Paul could do the same as the apostle that God raised up for this new dispensation of grace and His program with the Gentiles.

Acts vindicates Paul’s apostleship. Peter was an apostle without question, but this man, Paul, who came later after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, his apostleship and authority was in question and was challenged.

But the book of Acts leaves no doubt as to Paul being an apostle. He was saved on the road to Damascus and directly commissioned and sent by the risen Christ to the nations as an apostle. And the power he demonstrated here and in many other places showed his calling as an apostle and that he came behind Peter in nothing.

Acts 14:11-13: “And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men. And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people.”

Undoubtedly, the lame man was well known in Lystra. And it was an amazing thing to have this man who never walked a step suddenly leaping and walking around Lystra.

After God performed this spectacular miracle through Paul, and the people saw what Paul had done, “they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.”

Paul said with a “loud voice” to the lame man to “Stand up,” and then in response to the miracle, the people “lifted up their voices.”

The people were overwhelmed and excited, and reverting to what is natural in that state of excitement they spoke in their native dialect of Lyconian, and began shouting that the gods had visited them and had come down in the likeness of men.

The miraculous healing of the lame man convinced them that supernatural power was at work in their city, which was true. But not knowing the true and living God they logically supposed that the miracle was due to their false gods at work.

So they said that Barnabas was Jupiter and Paul was Mercury. In the original Greek, the gods are said to be Zeus and Hermes. One is Roman and the other is Greek.

In their polytheistic belief system, Jupiter of the Romans was equivalent to Zeus of the Greeks. And Mercury of the Romans was the equivalent of Hermes of the Greeks.

Jupiter, or Zeus, was the kings of the gods. Mercury, or Hermes, was the messenger of the gods. Mercury is displayed in flower shop windows which bear the FTD label. He has wings on his helmet and his feet because he was the speedy messenger of the gods.

Barnabas must have had an air of authority about him, because they regarded him as Jupiter, or Zeus. And Paul was regarded as Mercury or Hermes. Since Paul was the chief speaker and the more talkative one as he proclaimed the gospel, it made sense to those in Lystra that he was Hermes.

You see the devil at work here again. You find satanic counterfeit incarnation in their beliefs in Lystra. Satan often counterfeits the truth of God to deceive. Because the true God did come down to us from heaven and God’s Son did come in the likeness of men.

And here in a satanic polytheistic, pagan belief system, they believed that their false gods could come down as men. Satan does anything and everything to keep people from faith in Christ, even copying the idea of incarnation and deceptively applying it to idolatry.

Because the people were speaking in the Lyconian language neither Paul nor Barnabas comprehended what was going on at first or that they were declaring them to be gods.

After declaring them to be gods, “the priest of Jupiter” got to work. Because, after all, if Jupiter had come to earth in the form of this preacher, he had work to do in leading the people in the worship of him.

Verse 13 gives a detail about the makeup of ancient Lystra that Jupiter “was before the city.” This means that a temple for Jupiter stood in front of the gateway of their city.

The priest started making preparations to make a sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas and to celebrate the presence of the deities among them. Two oxen were brought to the temple, one for each of the gods. Decorative garlands of flowers were placed on the horns of the oxen and on the idols at the place of sacrifice.

Acts 14:14-18: “Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, 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, 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. And with these sayings scarce restrained they the people, that they had not done sacrifice unto them.”

When Paul and Barnabas finally heard and understood that the priest of Jupiter had brought oxen and garlands to the city gates intending to make a sacrifice to them, they realized that things had gone too far.

Paul and Barnabas were not flattered by the praise and adulation of the city, instead they were deeply horrified by them declaring them to be gods.

This account is in contrast to Herod Agrippa I a couple chapters earlier who accepted worship by the people as a god and did not give God the glory. As a result, he was eaten of worms and died. Here Paul and Barnabas fiercely refused worship as gods.

This led them to first, “rent their clothes.” Paul and Barnabas were both Jewish men and this act was an instinctively, emotional Jewish reaction and a public expression of protest, sorrow, and revulsion at blasphemy.

Determined to put a stop to the sacrifice, they didn’t respond to this from a distance, they fearlessly “ran in among the people” among the frenzied crowd, and passionately cried out, “Why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless, lifeless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them.”

Far from seeking their worship, Paul stated firmly and insisted that they were not gods, but said, “Men, we are men!” They were mortal men with the same human nature as them. They were not divine; they were human beings just like they were.

Paul told them they had come to Lystra to preach that they should turn from their useless and empty idolatry, meaning that Jupiter, the king of the gods, and Mercury, the messenger of the gods are not real. They are imaginary, fictional and fake.

Paul stated that he came that they should turn from what is fake to what is real: the living God, the One Who created the universe. Their idolatry was wrong. And God was not merely to be added to their beliefs about many gods. Rather Paul called them to turn from error and their false beliefs altogether, and to turn to what is true and right.

This account begins with the impotence of the lame man, and God’s power over it in healing him. And here Paul points out and contrasts the impotence, the powerlessness of idolatry with the omnipotence and power of the living God, who created all things: the heaven, the earth, the sea, filling them all with life, beauty, design, and detail.

Like later with the Athenians, with a pagan crowd, unversed in the Scriptures, Paul did not begin by appealing to passages from the law and the prophets.

He appealed first to natural revelation, the creation and the One who is the Creator of all things, the first Cause in a cause-and-effect world.

Verse 16-17 says of the living God that He “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.”

Charles Swindoll insightfully says of these verses, “Paul and Barnabas continued with an answer to the obvious question: ‘If this God is the one and only Creator, then why haven’t we heard of Him before now?’ Paul and Barnabas said that the nations had been allowed ‘to go their own ways’ but that…God had revealed Himself by way of nature’s bounty.”

All have evidence of the existence of the living God in creation and by His providence. It is He who in His goodness, lovingly provides rain and fruitful seasons, which gives us the food that fills our hearts with the gladness that comes from the provision and enjoyment of food.

Paul states “in times past” all nations were allowed to go their own ways with their beliefs, BUT NOW he was calling them to turn from their vanities and idolatry to the living God.

This passage gives strong testimony to the fact that following Israel’s fall, now God had again begun to work among the Gentiles through Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles.

All the while, in times past, God had bore witness to the Gentiles of His “eternal power and Godhead” in creation (Rom. 1:20). But now, God was turning to the Gentiles to give all nations the opportunity to turn to Him and be saved by grace through faith alone in Christ.

As a result of these sayings, still really wanting to believe the gods had come down to them, the people of Lystra reluctantly and scarcely called off the great sacrifice to them.

Acts 14:19-20: “And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.”

Unbelieving Jews from the two places where Paul had just ministered, “Antioch and Iconium,” came to Lystra and then incited a riot against Paul.

The length of the journey showed their hate-filled zeal as they were willing to trek 85 miles from Antioch to Iconium and then about 20 miles from Iconium to Lystra.

These Jews were so stirred against Paul and the gospel of grace that they were willing travel these many miles so they might have the opportunity to kill Paul. That’s how much they hated Paul and the gospel of grace he proclaimed.

And behind the scenes of this is the devil who was attempting to stop God’s new program and silence God’s spokesman of grace who was taking the good news to the nations.

Arriving in Lystra, the Jews “persuaded the people.” And the Gentiles of Lystra were quickly swayed and willingly followed their lead.

In an act of mob violence, the crowd of Jews and Gentiles then caught Paul and stoned him, an act which Paul recorded in 2 Corinthians 11:25, when he wrote, “once I was stoned.”

How brutal this had to have been for Paul, to stand before this angry crowd as rocks were hurled at him as hard as they could throw them. Rocks pummeled him all over his body, causing severe pain, deep bruises, and cutting and tearing flesh resulting in bleeding, being hit in the head and dazed, until finally he was knocked unconscious.

These rocks were thrown by some of the same people who hailed him as a god, but their desire to sacrifice to him turned into a desire to stone him. One minute, Paul was a god to be worshiped; the next minute, he was a criminal to be slain!

And similar to Lystra, when our Lord entered Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, the people cried out “Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord.” Days later, some of the same people were crying, “Away with Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

After being knocked unconscious, Paul was drug out of the city, his would-be executioners “supposing he had been dead.” Personally, I don’t think Paul died. The word “supposing” usually means to suppose something that is not true, to think, deem, regard.

And there are examples of this in Acts, such as the Philippian jailer after the earthquake “supposing that the prisoners had been fled,” when they had not.

Some also equate this event with Paul’s third-heaven experience in 2 Corinthians 12, but Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:2 that this took place 14 years prior to writing that letter.

Paul wrote 2 Corinthians in AD 55. Paul was in Lystra around AD 47. So that third-heaven experience was at least 6 years before Paul was in Lystra.

But Paul not dying shouldn’t make us think any less of what happened next, for after stoning him and hauling him out of the city for dead, verse 20 reads, “Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city.”

These men who stoned him were so wicked and heartless, that they did not even consider a burial for a man they thought they had killed; they just drug him out of the city.

In contrast to them, you see the broken-hearted believers standing around Paul’s battered, unconscious body, which was a sign of their love for Paul. And doing this was not without risk, because the mob could’ve decided to come after them too.

Imagine these believers’ shock though, when God miraculously restored Paul following his stoning. And he stood up! Then the first thing he did was to go right back into Lystra.

These unbelieving Jews had driven him out of Antioch and Iconium, and Paul wasn’t going to let them drive him out of Lystra. He was going to leave Lystra on his own terms.

And you have to love this grit! Nothing daunted him, not even being nearly stoned to death. It’s been said, and I agree, that “Paul never did a braver thing than to go straight back into the city which had tried to murder him.”

And can you imagine the reaction of the people as he entered the city, the same place in which he was stoned and left for dead? His appearance surely indicated a miracle to the city and the mob. And this would have given him a great platform to proclaim Christ.

In Philippians 4:9, Paul wrote, “Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”

Paul’s example of fortitude and determination for the cause of Christ, that we learn of and see here in Acts 14, is an example to each of us to emulate in our lives and ministries.