I Have Not Come to Bring Peace...

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I want to ask you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the 14th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
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Hold your place there at Acts 14, verse 1.
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That will be the subject of the morning.
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We'll be looking at verses 1 through 7.
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Earlier in our worship time, we had what we call the traditional call to worship or the reading of Scripture, which we always do at the beginning of the worship service.
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And we read from the 10th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.
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Brother Chad came and read that for us.
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And in that passage, Jesus makes a very revolutionary statement.
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And though that is not our text for the morning, it does set the stage for our study.
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And just in case, since it's been a few minutes since we began worship, if you forgot, I want to read it to you again.
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Matthew 10, verse 34 says, Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
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These are the words of Jesus Christ.
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This is the Prince of Peace.
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And yet he says to his disciples very clearly, Do not think that my purpose was to come and bring peace to the earth.
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I have not come to bring peace but a sword.
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Oftentimes, Jesus is painted by the world as a very soft-spoken, somewhat squishy character.
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I believe Brother Mike once called him the limp-wristed Jesus of modern theology.
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But passages like these show us just how radical and shocking Jesus' message was.
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He says, I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a person's enemies will be those people who live under the same roof.
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This is far removed from the modern gospel, the modern evangelical, which I call evangelical gospel, of the happy, healthy, prosperous life.
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Jesus called men to self-sacrifice.
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He called men to submission.
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He called men to determine discipleship.
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Jesus called men to count the cost.
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Jesus called men to a changed life.
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And yet, Jesus is called the Prince of Peace.
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Because the peace He brings is not necessarily a peace between men.
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The peace that Jesus provides is between sinful men and a holy God.
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Those men who experience peace with God will always find themselves at war with those who are at war with God.
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I had an opportunity to dive a little bit into that yesterday as I accompanied Brother Mike to the stadium and tried to hand out gospel tracts.
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And in a sea of orange and blue and red and black, there was also a sea of hatred for the gospel.
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There were people who would stand at a distance hearing Brother Mike preach, and they would say ugly things about him.
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I hadn't told you about that.
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Sorry, Brother.
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I don't want to embarrass you.
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They would take our gospel tracts and spit on them, throw them on the ground, tear them up.
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As I said, those who experience peace with God will find themselves at war with those who don't.
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So this morning we continue our study of Paul's missionary journey, and we're going to see all throughout this chapter, but specifically here in the first seven verses, how the gospel, when it was brought into a city, brought always with it a sword of division.
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People from the same town and likely from the same families, even within the same households, become divided over this thing called the gospel.
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I always say if a man is preaching something that is not challenging unbelievers, is not hated by unbelievers, is not dividing the wheat from the chaff, then he's not preaching the gospel.
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Yet even though it brought division, Paul and Barnabas didn't stop preaching.
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They didn't say, oh no, we have to find a better way.
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Oh no, we have to find a politically correct gospel or a socially conscious gospel.
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We have to change our message because it's dividing this town and people won't like us.
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Oh, for shame! People will hate us.
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What should we do? It wasn't even on their radar.
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They stood for the truth and they would not let division be an excuse to remain silent.
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Through this lesson, we're going to see that even though the gospel divides, that is no reason to remain silent.
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We must preach the truth even when the truth divides.
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So let's stand and we'll read verses 1-7.
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Giving due honor and reverence to the Word by standing together, we read at verse 1.
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Now at Iconium, they, that is Paul and Barnabas, entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed.
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But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.
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So they remained for a long time speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of His grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.
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But the people of the city were divided.
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Some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles.
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When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews with their rulers to mistreat them and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lyconia, and to the surrounding country.
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And there they continued to preach the gospel.
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Father in heaven, I thank You for Your Word.
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I pray even now that You would fill me with Your Holy Spirit.
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For Lord, without the Spirit, I would simply be speaking into the wind and it would matter not.
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But filled with Your Spirit, O Lord, it can change lives.
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And Father, I pray that You would keep me from error, as I know that I am capable of preaching error as a fallible human being.
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And I pray ultimately, Lord, that You would save Your people.
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Lord, those who are already converted and regenerate, Lord, that they would be moved ever closer to conformity to Jesus Christ.
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That they would see in this message an understanding that their allegiance to Christ may cost them friends, it may cost them relationships, it may even cost them family members.
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But Lord, Christ is worth it.
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And for those who have not yet bowed the knee to Christ, I pray that they would see in this message the very necessity and worthiness of Christ.
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And that they would not go another day without submitting fully to Him.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.
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For many years, a slogan has permeated the evangelical vernacular.
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The slogan goes like this.
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Doctrine divides, but love unites.
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At the heart of this slogan is the idea that if we hold to doctrinal standards, the church inevitably will divide over those same standards, and as a result, the conventional wisdom has become that we are to set doctrine aside and only focus on loving one another.
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But there is a problem with that that no one wants to admit.
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Love is a doctrine too.
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Love is not a feeling or an emotion, at least not from the biblical perspective.
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Love is an action.
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Love does something.
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Now, it accompanies often a feeling, a desire, a want to do, but love is action.
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And there is not a unanimous consensus among people about how we are to do this thing called love.
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If a man is living in rebellion to God, he's living in wanton sin, is it loving to tell him about his rebellion and call him to repentance? I think we would say yes, but there are many out there, many would say no, because that would be judgmental and judging is the worst of all sins.
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So you see that even love itself can't be the doctrine because love itself has to be understood from Scripture.
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I mean, you can't just say let's all just love one another, ooey gooey evangelical stuff.
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You got to at least know what love is.
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Is it loving to tell a man about his sin or is it loving to let him remain in his sin and go to hell? I think we know the obvious answer, but this is the problem when people say that love unites and doctrine divides.
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Well, what is love? Love is a doctrine.
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So you're in a circular problem.
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And then there's even worse.
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People say, well, doctrine divides but Christ unites.
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Ever heard that? I have.
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And there's also another statement that's fraught with problems because I have to ask which Christ? Can we understand who Christ is without understanding the doctrines that surround His person and His nature? Can we be united with the Jehovah Witness who believes that Jesus is simply Michael, the archangel? Can we be united with the Mormon who believes that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, one of the gods who was born to another god who was born to another god who was born to another god? Can we be united with the Oneness Pentecostal who believes that Jesus and the Father are the same person with no distinction in their persons? Answer of these is no because they deny what the Bible says about the essential nature of Jesus Christ.
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And to deny the doctrine of Jesus Christ is to deny the Jesus of the Bible.
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And to deny the Jesus of the Bible is to deny our own way of salvation.
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And thus it comes back to this whole circular issue.
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So if someone says doctrine divides but whatever else unites, they're speaking foolishness.
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To understand our call as Christians, we have to get away from this idea that division is the worst thing in the world.
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Because though Christ calls His church to unity, He did not call us to unify with the world.
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He did not call us to unify with false teaching.
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We are warned about being unequally yoked.
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And oftentimes we only apply that to marriage.
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You know, every time I hear the term unequally yoked, it's always a believer marrying an unbeliever.
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But there's more.
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You can be unequally yoked in many situations.
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If you're in a church that's not preaching the gospel and not preaching the truth, and yet you join that church and you're fellowshipping in that church, you're unequally yoked with people that are not preaching the gospel.
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It's a similar thing.
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Jesus calls us to a type of dividing.
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A dividing from that which is false.
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Likewise, Paul tells us there will be division in the church.
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1 Corinthians 11.
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He says, I hear there's divisions among you, and there must be.
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Because it is those divisions that show who is true and who is false.
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So we have to get away from this idea that division is always the worst thing in the world.
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Because what happens is you become this ecumenical nightmare where no doctrine is off the table and everything is worthy of equal respect and equal reverence.
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And that's what's meant by tolerance today.
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And you know what? Tolerance has become the worst thing in the world.
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Because what we're being told is not just that we would give love to someone who we disagree with, but that we must glorify and accept and believe what they believe.
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And that's not what tolerance is, but that's what it's become.
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In fact, in my message in the conference, I'm going to be preaching Isaiah 520.
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Woe unto those who call evil good.
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Because that is a lie.
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Woe unto those who would look at something that's evil and say, yeah, that's fine.
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That's good.
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That's great.
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But is that not what we're told to do? Not only in the world, but in the church today.
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Oh, you can't say anything about this false doctrine.
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You can't say anything about this.
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You certainly can't name names.
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You can't say this person's a false teacher because, hey, that is just too far.
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You might offend someone.
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Oh, for shame that I might offend someone today.
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Well, when Paul and Barnabas entered Iconium, they were agents of division in that town.
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Now, I'm not saying that was their purpose.
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I'm saying that was the result of the message.
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And it wasn't one that they shied away from.
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Neither was it one that they were willing to forego to keep unity.
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They were willing to divide over the truth.
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Not because they hated the people, but because they loved the truth.
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And the truth divides.
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So let's look now at verse 1.
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We'll see the situation and how it's unfolding.
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It says in verse 1, Now at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed.
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Now in our last study, we were in chapter 13, and we saw how Paul had said to the Jewish people there that he was departing and going to the Gentiles.
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And it seems like he's contradicting himself because now he's right back in the Jewish synagogue.
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He's doing the same pattern that he's done before.
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But what we must understand was that this is the custom of the apostles to go to the Jews first.
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The Gospel goes to the Jews first.
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It's also very wise because this would have been a place where there would have already been commonality on certain truths.
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The Jews already had an understanding of God's work in history.
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They already believed that God had spoken through the prophets.
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They also were convinced that He had promised a Deliverer.
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So this is a natural place to begin.
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When Paul said he was focusing on the Gentiles, he wasn't saying to the exclusion of the Jews, that I'm never again going to preach to a Jew.
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I'm going to just leave them be.
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He's just saying that at that particular moment and in that particular situation, the Jews were so rejecting of what he said.
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I'm going to stop focusing on you guys.
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I'm going to focus on the Gentiles and my ministry.
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At that point, we see throughout the rest of Acts, Paul's ministry does become one that is not divided, but is focused on the international nature of the Gospel.
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That it goes to all tribes, tongues, and nations.
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He doesn't leave the Jews out, but he certainly focuses attention towards the lost Gentile world.
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Iconium, as well as Lystra and Derbe, is in the region known as Galatia.
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How many of you have read Galatians? Hopefully you all have.
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Hopefully you all read your Bibles.
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But the book of Galatians was written to this region.
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This is where this is.
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Iconium, Lystra, Derbe are all in the area known as Galatia.
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These would be the people to whom Paul would write the letter.
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And it's interesting that in the first part of that letter, what does Paul say? He's warning them not to abandon the Gospel that they were given.
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Why? Because Paul gives them the Gospel, he establishes churches, he establishes plants there in these cities, and what's happening to these churches? They're fighting battles with people who are coming in and trying to divide them.
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So the division didn't stop when Paul left.
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So Paul's writing them the letter of Galatians saying, you need to continue in what you were first taught, and not let this nonsense make its way in.
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And we see this in verse 2.
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It says in verse 2, But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.
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That's what was happening.
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Paul comes in to preach the Gospel.
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The Jews, hearing the Gospel, didn't want people to believe it, so they begin to poison the minds of the people.
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Interestingly enough about this word unbelieving here, it's not the typical word for unbelief.
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But it is the word which means disobedient.
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In fact, if you were just to make a mental note, Ephesians 2.1, it says, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now in the work of the sons of, what? Disobedience? It's the same word as here.
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So when it says the unbelieving Jews, it's actually the disobedient Jews.
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And how are they disobedient? These people had the Scripture.
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They had the Word of God.
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They had the Word which pointed to Jesus Christ.
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They had Isaiah 53.
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They had Genesis 3.15.
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They had Psalm 22.
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They had these passages.
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They knew the Messiah was coming.
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They had Micah who said he was going to be born in Bethlehem.
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They knew this stuff and they were rejecting Him.
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It wasn't just disbelief, it was disobedience to the Word that they had.
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And so these men stood in disobedience and they were so convinced in their disobedience that they decided to poison the hearts and minds of other men.
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Oh, shame.
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What a shame it would be.
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Not just to be in disobedience yourself, but to be willing to poison someone else.
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Oh, that word poison there, ikakoson, the root word is kaka.
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You get the idea it means something bad.
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It is.
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In the Greek.
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Most languages have a word that sounds like that and it all kind of means the same thing.
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Something bad.
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They were poisoning the minds.
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Ikakoson.
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They were making harm or mistreating the minds of these men.
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They were poisoning the well.
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You ever heard that phrase poisoning the well? And you know what that means? Like, have you ever tried to share something with someone and just before you shared it with them, somebody else had come along and told them something about it that wasn't true or was just a little off, just enough to where they are now put up walls to where they don't want to hear anything you have to say? We call that poisoning the well.
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It's already poisoned.
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You can't break through.
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Happens a lot with Reformed theology.
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A lot of times people find out if I'm a pastor of a Reformed church, people come talk to me and someone else has told them something about those mean, angry Calvinists, you know, and that's what they want to call me, a mean, angry Calvinist.
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And so they'll come and talk to me and they've already got in their minds just how evil I am.
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You know, just how bad I am.
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And so now I not only have to address their misunderstandings, I have to address the poison that's been put in their well.
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You see, the misunderstanding that's already been placed there by someone else, right? So it becomes a real battle at that point.
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Well, that's what's happening here.
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The apostles are dealing with men who other men, respected men, the Jewish leadership, is coming and telling them, no, no, this is not right.
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And they're poisoning their well.
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So now it's an uphill battle for the apostles.
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They're preaching the Gospel and the men are poisoning their wells.
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Brian Borgman said this, their disobedience became a contagion.
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The enemy is an expert at turning unbelief into a contagious epidemic.
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They were spreading their poison like a virus to shut the ears of anyone whom I hear.
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And like I said, I don't think that went away in the Galatian churches.
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Because by the time of the writing of Galatians, Paul says this in verse 6 of chapter 1 of Galatians, he says, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different Gospel.
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I'm surprised there's so many of you turning from this.
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But why were they turning? Because those mind poisoners were still there.
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They were still trying to corrupt them.
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This is not a battle that went away.
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And might I just say, and this is not a part of the application of the message, but just sort of something I want to mention to you now, there are people that want to poison your mind today.
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There are people that want to take you and have you believe something else, have you question what the Bible says, it happens through the television, it happens through the radio, it happens through your personal interactions and conversations with people.
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There are people very happy to poison your mind to make you just as miserable as they are.
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So just keep that in the mind.
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This isn't something that went away.
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The Galatian church fought this and we will fight this.
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Now you might think that that difficulty would cause the disciples to say, man, this is just too much work, this is just too hard, I'm just going to leave.
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You know what? If I just got to keep fighting with these well poisoners, I'm just going to leave.
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Look what it says though in verse 3.
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I love this phrase.
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So, meaning as a result of, what? As a result of these well poisoners, so they stayed for a long time.
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The exact opposite.
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Rather than running them off, they said, no, we got to stay here and fight.
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I'm not running, I'm going to stay and fight.
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Speaking boldly for the Lord.
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It doesn't say how long they stayed, but I do like this, the word used here is sometimes translated considerable, but it comes from the idea of being befitting or sufficient.
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So, you could say they remained enough time.
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Enough for what? Enough to establish the church.
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They stayed there long enough to do what they were supposed to do.
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Speaking boldly for the Lord.
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Who bore witness to the word of His grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.
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What were the signs and wonders for? Well, they were giving testimony to the truth of their message.
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And some wonder why signs and wonders are not happening today.
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Well, I believe there was a special gifting in the early church to accompany the inscripturation of the word.
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It is apparent that this gifting was not meant to be normative through all the ages, at least not in the way that it was then.
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And throughout the biblical narrative, miracles are always the exception, never the rule.
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Understand that.
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You can read hundreds of years of Bible narrative, and never once is mentioned of a miracle.
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It's always the exception, not the rule.
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Some may even think, well, if we could just do signs and wonders today, there would be more people who would believe.
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But that's not true.
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Even when signs and wonders were the normative part of the ministry of the apostles, they were still unbelievers.
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They would look at it and they would say, it's a trick, it's a lie, or it's a work of the devil.
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Because miracles don't convert the soul, regeneration converts the soul.
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That's got to be understood.
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I remember in the Bonson debate back in the 80s, when I was less than 10 years old, so I don't remember, I've heard it since then.
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Thank God they recorded it.
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In the Bonson debate, Greg Bonson debated Gordon Stein, who was an atheist.
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Greg Bonson was a pastor.
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And they debated on the subject of atheism and theism.
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And Bonson asked Stein, he said, what would it take for you to believe that God exists? And Stein thought about it for a minute, he kind of rubbed his face, and he said, you know what? He said, if that lectern, they were both standing at a thing, he said, if that lectern were to rise off the pulpit and stay suspended in mid-air, and I knew that it wasn't done with wires or some type of magnets or some other type of trick, if I saw God just lift it up in the air and set it back down, I would believe.
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And Bonson said, no, you wouldn't.
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You would find an excuse not to believe.
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Even if you couldn't give an explanation of it.
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You ever seen David Copperfield? There's all kinds of stuff we can't give explanations for.
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Even if you don't know, you would not attribute it to God.
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You would attribute it to anything else but God.
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Signs and wonders can only encourage existing faith.
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They cannot produce faith.
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And that's what the signs and wonders did.
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When people believed and were regenerated by the Spirit, the signs and wonders gave testimony to the truth of what they believed.
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It didn't convert the soul, it encouraged the soul.
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And like I said, we see that obviously in the next passage, because it says in verse 4, but the people of the city were divided.
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You see, even with all the signs and wonders, people are still divided.
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The word here in Greek is schizo.
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You've probably heard that phrase.
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It means schizophrenia.
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It's a person who has a divided personality.
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This schizo, this is what the town was.
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It was literally divided.
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Those who believed and those who didn't.
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Some sided with the Jews and some with the Apostles.
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Interestingly enough, this is one of the few times where Paul and Barnabas together are called Apostles.
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I don't want to spend a whole lot of time with that, but just know that there is a reference.
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We talk about apostolic authority, that authority which was vested in the 12 Apostles, and then the Apostle Paul, who calls himself an Apostle, who was born out of season.
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But then this term Apostle is sometimes used generically to talk about those who are sent.
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Apostle simply means a sent one, so in reference to this, it's simply the fact that these men were sent, they were missionaries, and thus they were Apostles of Jesus Christ.
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So there is different connotations where that word can be used.
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So these men, called Apostles by the Scripture, are preaching the truth in the city.
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They're bringing a sword.
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They put them at odds with the Jewish leaders, and thus in verse 5 it says, when an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews with their rulers to mistreat them and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country, and there they continued to preach the Gospel.
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Now I think it goes without saying, but I'm going to say it, the Apostles are not cowards.
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But they also were not in a hurry to be stoned either.
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But Kent Hughes writes this in his commentary.
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He says, Paul and Barnabas were brave but not foolish.
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They were born again but not born yesterday.
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The Lord protects His children, but He wants us to use common sense.
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So the missionaries did depart.
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Later in the chapter we'll see Paul was stoned.
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He was nearly killed.
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But this is not his time.
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So based on some type of warning, and it doesn't tell us how they were warned, it just says there arose an attempt to get them somehow.
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I imagine that what happened, the city's so divided, I imagine there's people who still have relationships with people who are in the know.
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And it got back to them in some way that, hey, they're forming a mob, and this isn't going to be a standard take you before the court, put you before the court, let you give your case, and go through the whole process.
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No, they're just going to drag you down the street and they're going to kill you.
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You might want to think about that.
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So Paul and Barnabas, they consider what the situation is, and they leave.
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But they were not discouraged.
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They continued to preach the Gospel, and they returned to both cities on the way home.
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This is what's interesting, because we're going to keep going through this chapter, and what we're going to see, they leave Iconium, they go to Lister and Derby, and then they come back through.
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The same place where they're going to get stoned, they're not afraid.
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This just ain't the time yet.
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So just keep that in your mind.
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Far from being discouraged, they were emboldened to preach in the face of even extreme diversity.
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Now, I'm going to move to the application.
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I see several principles for Christian living which can be extrapolated from this narrative, but I want to focus on only three.
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Not that three is a magic number, but they are the three that I considered as I was writing.
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And if you'd like to fill in the blanks, you may.
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It's on the back of your worship folder.
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Number one, God's people cannot be united with false religious systems.
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God's people cannot be united with false religious systems.
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It would have been easier had Paul come into town, preached, and then called a town meeting where he sought some type of resolution to the divide.
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Alright guys, here's what we're going to do.
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You're going to do your thing, and we're going to stay over here and we're going to do our thing.
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And you know what? Maybe once a month we'll have a potluck.
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Maybe once a month we'll have an ecumenical potluck where the Jews and the pagans and the Christians are all going to come together and we're all going to celebrate that hey, we're all really just worshiping the same God in a different way.
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That's how we're going to handle this.
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This is how we're going to bring unity as we're just going to lay down and unify with false religions.
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Had he done that, he would have been heralded as an ecumenical hero.
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That's what churches try to do today.
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Oh, we're going to have the Muslims come in and pray with us.
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Not here.
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Now they can come and listen to us, but they ain't bringing out no rugs and we ain't pointing towards Mecca.
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Not here.
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There's no way to meld two contrary systems together.
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Because of the exclusive nature of the claim of Christ, rather the exclusive nature of the claim of Christ, there can be no union with those of other faiths.
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It's either Christ all or Christ not at all.
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There is no middle ground.
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There is no third way.
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And there is no true ecumenicism, meaning that we're going to give up Christ and find this unity in something else.
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We can't do that.
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God's people cannot be united with false religions.
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That should seem obvious, but ain't it sad that it has to be said? Ain't it sad that in 2015 that we see on the stage, you know, when the Pope came to town, which I think the Pope's a false teacher anyway, but when the Pope comes to town, he's flanked on both sides by people in a ninja outfit and everything.
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Well, not really ninja.
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They're wearing all kinds of these different religious garb.
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Why? To show what? Just how much of an ecumenical hero he is.
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All it showed me is he doesn't know the Gospel.
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That's all.
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Number two.
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Men who proclaim the Gospel can easily be accused of being troublemakers.
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Before Paul and Barnabas came to town, there was probably a pretty relative peace.
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Now I'm saying this, I'm reading into the text here something that it doesn't say, so you can accuse me of eisegesis if you want to later.
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But based on the fact that they brought the division tells me at least that before they came there was some type of peace in the town.
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So if you want to call that eisegesis, I think I'm making a deduction from the text.
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But either way it goes, the point is this.
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We know that they brought a sword with them when they came, and they were stirring the pot and people didn't like it.
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So many people long for a soft-spoken minister who will simply live and let live.
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They want a man who won't say hard things because the hard things drum up hard feelings, and hard feelings are something we can't have.
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They desperately want someone to say peace, peace, when there is no peace.
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Paul and Barnabas were not preaching an everyone is okay message.
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They were preaching this message very simply.
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No one is okay outside of Christ.
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That's the message.
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They were not preaching everyone is okay.
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They were preaching everyone is not okay outside of Jesus Christ.
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And that got them run out of town.
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And I've seen that happen to pastors today.
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The ones who keep their heads down and they keep their mouths quiet are favored.
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I remember a pastor, a friend of mine, one time told me he was in a business meeting with the church.
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Thank God we really don't have those.
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We have elders meetings and a congregational meeting once a year.
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But the idea of business meetings where everybody gets together and we argue over the color of the carpet, that's nonsense.
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But that happens.
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He said he was in the business meeting of the church and one of the ladies of the church stood up and she said, don't you know we hired you to tell us what we want to hear? That was exactly how she said it.
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Don't you know that's why we hired you? So you would tell us what we want to hear? Those who preach hard truths are excoriated and often run out of town.
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They're called troublemakers.
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Yesterday I heard a guy say, that's the wrong place in the wrong time.
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This is the wrong place in the wrong time to be sharing the gospel.
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And I thought to myself, he was too far away for me to get to him.
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We were surrounded yesterday.
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It was a sea of orange and blue and black and red.
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It was a ton of people.
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And very many of them were three sheets to the wind as they say.
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So they were stumbling seas of people.
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And I just thought about that.
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I said, it's the wrong place in the wrong time.
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I said, well, most of you all aren't going to be at church tomorrow.
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This is the only place you're going to hear this.
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It's the only place.
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It's the only time.
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Behold, today is the day of salvation.
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There may not be a tomorrow.
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You're half drunk now.
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You might not make it home.
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This is the place.
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This is the time.
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Yes, we're troublemakers.
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But we're troublemakers because we love you and we want to trouble your dead soul that God might bring it to life and give you life.
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Yeah, we're troublemakers.
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So what? Finally, number three.
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There's a unity of faith found in the gospel.
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Even though the apostles...
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Listen to me now because this is probably the most important point of the day.
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Even though the apostles were not unified with the disobedient, they were unified with the believers.
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And I don't know that every man in that group of believers would have agreed on every point of everything under the sun.
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You know what? They may have had a slightly different opinion on certain social issues.
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They may have had disagreements on whether or not to eat certain foods or how they raised their children.
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But you know what? There was a unity in the gospel.
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I don't want you to hear this sermon and think that what I'm giving you is carte blanche, a blank check to go out and be divided from everyone.
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We cannot draw the circle so tight that only we ourselves stand inside of it and even then we're on one foot.
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The gospel isn't you by yourself in a circle.
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You understand? You know that's why we invite men in for the Bible conference, right? And we invite men who, you know what? We don't necessarily agree on every single thing with some of these men.
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We have men who come and preach who have different views of the ordinances.
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We have men who come in and have different eschatological views.
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We have men who have different levels of education and different levels of experience.
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But you know what? We are all united in the gospel.
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We would all agree with this, that man is a sinner and justly deserves the punishment of God.
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That Jesus Christ lived a perfectly righteous life and He died a perfectly substitutionary death.
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And all the sins of His people have been poured upon Him and all of His righteousness has been granted to them as a gift.
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And a man is justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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And that's the same gospel Paul preached and in that we find our unity.
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So don't let this message make you think that we are not seeking unity, because we are, but we're seeking unity in the truth.
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Because that's the only unity that matters.
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So I want to end today with a quote by Charles Spurgeon on the subject of Christian unity.
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And hear the whole quote because the first part sounds like he's going to contradict himself, but he won't.
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Just listen.
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To remain divided is sinful.
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Did not our Lord pray that they may be one, even as we are one? John 17, 22.
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A chorus of ecumenical voices keep harping the unity tune.
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What they are saying is Christians of all doctrinal shades and beliefs must come together in one visible organization regardless.
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Unite! Unite! Such teaching is false, reckless, and dangerous.
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Truth alone must determine our alignments.
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Truth comes before unity.
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Unity without truth is hazardous.
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Our Lord's Prayer in John 17 must be read in its full context.
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And when you look at verse 17 it says this, Sanctify them through thy truth.
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Thy Word is truth.
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Only those sanctified through the Word can be one in Christ.
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And to teach otherwise is to betray the Gospel.
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End quote.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for the Gospel of Truth.
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I thank you for the message that we are to be divided from the world, divided from false teachers, divided from those who would make shame of the name of Christ.
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But we are to be united in the Gospel.
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So I pray, O Father, that we would seek this week a prayer of unity for our Bible conference that's coming.
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That we would pray for these men who will come and preach to us and bring the Word to us.
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And I pray that you would use this as a time for growth and a time that we would understand the value of the unity that is ours in Jesus Christ.
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Father, for those who are in this world who believe a false gospel, I pray that the Gospel of Truth would reach their ears.
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That it would puncture the stony heart.
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Remove it and replace it with a heart of flesh.
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I pray that your Holy Spirit would grant them life who are dead in their trespasses and sins.
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And Father, I pray that you would use us.
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Help us to not fear the division that the Gospel brings.
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Help us to not add to it by our own foolish personalities, Lord, but to simply preach the truth in love and know that division will come, not because of our personalities, but because of the Gospel which does bring with it division.
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I pray, Lord, today for everyone under the sound of my voice, Lord, that they've heard the Gospel.
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And Lord, that if there are those here who haven't bowed the knee to Christ, that they would do so today.
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That they would truly want to follow Him.
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That they would want to take up their cross and leave the world behind and come after Christ and follow after Him and truly serve Him.
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Lord, that they might be unified with the body through the work of your Holy Spirit.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.