The Foundations of the Gospel

Introduction

In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas at Lystra heal a man lame from birth, and the crowd — preaching to pagans in a chaotic religious world — mistakes them for gods. Their response lays the foundations of the gospel from scratch: there is a God, and we are made in his image, reminding us that when a culture has lost the basics, the gospel must begin at the beginning.

By the end of the 20th century, there was a growing confidence that the wonders of science would soon be able to answer all of the essential questions about life. And that religion would simply fade away, replaced by cool, calm rationalism. However, that simply hasn’t happened. And it turns out that human beings are not only far more complex than we ever realised, but we are far more spiritual. And there is this essential part of who we are that can’t be ignored. And the often rather sterile intellectualism of scientific rationalism has failed to satisfactorily answer some foundational questions about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human. However, what we are now offered is a sort of vast marketplace of spiritual ideas and practices. A sort of pick and mix of Eastern and Western philosophy of old traditions and new ideas. Some of it may be helpful, much of it really isn’t. But it reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton once said: when we stop believing in God, we don’t believe in nothing, we believe in anything.

Which brings us to this fascinating and really pertinent story in Acts chapter 14. So if you’ve been with us so far, you’ll remember that Paul and Barnabas had spent a year in Antioch teaching the church and then had been commissioned and sent out to take the good news throughout the ancient world. And they’re now travelling through the Roman Empire, telling the good news about Jesus. They are now in a town called Lystra, which is on the ancient road which ran from Antioch to Ephesus in Anatolia, which is modern day Turkey. And Paul, as he would do, is preaching the gospel to a large crowd. And as part of that sermon, he catches the eye of a man who’s been lame since birth. Verse 9 says, Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called up, stand up on your feet. And at that, the man jumped up and began to walk. It’s an amazing moment and a wonderful miracle. A man known to everyone to have been disabled since his birth is miraculously healed before everyone’s eyes. It is in fact the sort of thing that quite often went along with the preaching of the gospel in the early church and it’s illustrative of the power and the truth of the gospel message and the transformation that the kingdom of God is bringing in this world. But what happens next as a result of that would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. Did you hear what happened? Verse 11 says, when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in their own Lycaonian language, the gods have come down amongst us as human beings. Something had happened, something which they couldn’t explain and which demanded an explanation, and essentially chaos ensues as people try and make sense of what had happened within their existing religious framework. And so they say that gods have come down amongst us. Did you hear Barnabas got taken for Zeus, which is quite the compliment because Zeus is the supreme deity in the Roman pantheon. And Paul is Hermes, who is the messenger of the god, clearly because he’s the one who does all the talking. And the next thing you know, the local priest gets involved, bringing a bull to sacrifice to them as a way to try and get a grip of a crazy situation. It’s a fairly entertaining picture, but I think it’s also kind of an image indicative of the rather chaotic world of ancient pagan religion, where frankly anything goes. You know, after the rather strict moral universe of Jewish monotheism where Christianity had begun, suddenly the gospel is being preached in this intellectual and moral relativism of Roman paganism. It is a very different world. But what’s interesting about it is therefore it is going to require a very different approach. I don’t know if you know anything about Roman religion. It’s quite famous, but you might know that the Romans have this tendency to sort of copy and paste gods from other cultures. And often when they conquered a culture, they would essentially adopt those gods into their own pantheon. So the most famous of the Roman gods are Zeus and Neptune and Mars and Aphrodite and so on. But do you know where they all come from? They’re all Greek. It’s this fascinating thing that what they do is they essentially adopt the gods of other countries and cultures. And why they do it, I think, is really interesting. Because essentially what it is, is a really effective way of assimilating and absorbing different cultures into their empire. It isn’t actually clear that the Romans really believe any of this stuff or think that that matters, but it’s a really effective way of essentially exercising control. Your gods are now our gods. We are part of the same thing. And as an aside, I think it’s a really interesting observation that powerful societies, and particularly quite sophisticated ones, rather than imposing a philosophy or a religion on people. Instead, sort of embrace all of them and accept all religions into our ideology essentially to say they’re all the same and they’re all part of what we are about.

So, Barnabas and Paul are in uncharted territory and they have to act quite quickly. Verse 14, when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting, friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human like you. I think what’s really interesting is that Paul and Barnabas realise that they need to do something different to preach the gospel into this new context. And I think that’s what makes this rather peculiar story significant and interesting. And what they go about doing as a response to this is a sort of, you might describe it as zooming out, as a need to tell the big picture of the gospel and to lay the foundations which previously perhaps they had taken for granted. The Christian gospel rests on foundational truths about God and what it means to be human. And perhaps we too in our society have been able to take those for granted for centuries. But in our world today, many of our friends and neighbours have no concept of these things. We need to help lay once more those foundational truths. So therefore, what are they? What are the foundations that the gospel rests on. Verse 15. You don’t get more foundational than this. There is a God. There is a God. This isn’t just myths and stories. The universe is not a random cosmic event. Before all things, there was God. The universe had a beginning. And this elegant, ordered universe was intentionally created according to consistent, finely tuned scientific laws. Secondly, we are created in God’s image. He made us for relationship with him, for love. But he also gave us the freedom to choose. And humanity has turned its back on God. Verse 16 said, and he let all nations go their own way. And so there is this kind of innate religiousness in all of us as we seek ways to fill that kind of God-shaped vacuum that we feel.

And yet, despite our turning our back on him, he continues to love us. He blesses us with life and abundance and the possibility of joy, and he has left his fingerprints all over creation that we might seek him out. Those are the foundations of the gospel. Those, I hope, are familiar to you as ideas, but they are absolutely essential for us to understand why, therefore, Jesus and his death on the cross are necessary. And the good news is that God has not given up on us. In love he seeks us out, and he has demonstrated his love for us in this: while we were still sinners Christ died for us. And so, having laid down those foundations, the apostles say in verse 15, friends why are you doing this, we are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God. There is a God who can be known and that changes everything. You can know the truth and the truth can set you free. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen amazing footage of a child who is born with limited vision and the doctors will get involved and they’ll manage to kind of create some specially adapted glasses for the child to see and then they’ll put them on and for the first time the child will suddenly everything will come clear and they will see their parents for the first time and the joy that you can see on the child’s face is a wonderful thing. I remember the first time after I chose to follow Jesus that it was an astonishing experience of being able to see the world clearly for the first time. That all of a sudden, life made sense. Instead of the blurred chaos of modern life, Christianity offers a lens through which we can make sense of the world and make sense of ourselves. It makes sense of what it means to be human, created in God’s image, and therefore capable of amazing acts of creativity and beauty and love and sacrifice, and yet estranged from him and gone our own way, which is why we’re capable of such selfishness and unkindness. It’s the reason why science itself works, why logic matters, because in the beginning there was a rational God. And it’s why art and creativity and beauty matter, because God brought order out of chaos. It’s the reason why love is the preeminent virtue, because when we love, we are singing in tune with our creator, because God is love. The reason why none of the false gods of this world truly satisfy is because we are made for the living God.

The foundations of the gospel are essential for us to make sense of this life that we live. But we speak these truths into a chaotic world. Do you remember when Jesus stood before the pagan Roman governor Pontius Pilate? And he said, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. And do you remember what Pilate’s response was? What is truth?

And we live in a world that has increasingly lost its grip on truth. We need to help people to discover once again those foundational truths which make sense of all of our experiences of life. And they begin in the beginning. God.

Amen. Let’s just be still together, shall we.