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Have you ever hurt someone, or have you ever insulted someone without knowing it? Have you ever offended a friend, or slighted a spouse? Of course you have. All of us have. And, when we find out what hurt or harm our actions have caused, we say, "I didn't understand. I didn't know." We are sorry. We regret it; but, it is too late. A revealing scar is left. It is like driving a nail into a piece of lumber. You make a mistake. That is not exactly where you wanted it. So, you take the claw-end of a hammer, and pull the nail out. The nail is gone; but the piece of wood is marred. A scar remains.

In our text this morning, Paul is preaching a sermon about some people who drove nails into two pieces of wood which formed a cross. On it they crucified the Son of God. Paul is preaching to the Jews. He addresses them as "Sons of Abraham." He tells that, when the people of Jerusalem encountered Jesus, the Messiah, in the flesh, they failed to recognize him. Even though they went to the synagogue every Sabbath and heard the reading of the prophets foretelling the coming of Christ, they did not understand. They did not know. They listened, but they did not hear. God revealed to them in the Holy Scriptures what he was going to do. He foretold the coming of the Savior. God even revealed how his chosen people would reject the Savior, deny him, and kill him. They listened but they did not hear. As Paul puts it in our text, "... they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets ..." Now, it is true that Jesus was not murdered; he was legally executed. It is also true that the Jews did not drive the nails into our Lord's wrists and feet; the Roman soldiers did. The people of Jerusalem could have legitimately "passed the buck" by saying, "We did not cause the death of Jesus; the leaders of our religion did it." In turn, the leaders of Israel could have avoided their responsibility for the crucifixion by saying, "We have no legal power to execute anyone by crucifixion." They would be right because they did not. Pilate is the one who sentenced Jesus to death.

However, the purpose of this sermon is not to lay a "guilt trip" on anyone. The truth is that the death of our Lord is so tangled up in such a web of legal and illegal maneuvers that the smartest group of criminal lawyers today would not be able to build an open-and-shut case that would convince an impartial jury who the culprit was that really had been responsible for the killing of Jesus. Pilate would not have done what he did without the request - accompanied by a subtle threat - from the Sanhedrin. And, the Jewish leaders could not have done what they did without the support and the consent of the people. And, the people did not know what they were doing. From the cross, Jesus himself, said to God concerning the people, "... they know not what they do."

The people did not know or understand what they were doing because their ears were deafened and their eyes were blinded by sin. The power of sin held the people in its vice-like grip. This is the same sin, we might add, that so often blinds our eyes of faith and deafens our ears to the Word of God. Whenever we hurt or harm someone, knowingly or because of ignorance, we participate in the activities of that universal demonic power. The Evil One holds us and our world as prisoners. Flip Wilson was right - seriously right - when he comically remarked, "The Devil made me do it." The root source is the Evil One, who sets in motion the events - then and now - that ultimately lead to the continuous denial, the betrayal, and the death of our Lord. Every evil deed we do drives another nail into the flesh of our Lord.

If anyone is guilty, all are guilty - because, all are sinners. This was the assumption undergirding all that Paul preached in his sermons and wrote in his letters. We are all guilty because all have sinned. But the final conclusion of Paul, in all that he says, is not the bad news of sin - but rather the good news of salvation. We are all saved because Christ died for us all.

In our text today, Paul not only points to the good news, he also says something else that is not as clear or as obvious as his sin-and-salvation motif. Paul says to the Jews that, in their ignorance and misunderstanding of the prophets, they fulfilled the will of God. Stop for a moment and consider what Paul is saying. He says that the Jews heard the prophets. The Jews did not understand what they heard. However, in their ignorance, they fulfilled the will of God.

What Paul is saying is that God told the people that they would kill the Messiah whom he would send. The people did not understand what God was telling them they would do; but, they did it anyway. They did, without even knowing it, exactly what God said they would do. They killed the Messiah.

What are we to make of this? Is Paul saying to us that we are a predestined people? Is he saying that God predetermines everything that we are going to do before we do it? In addition, is Paul saying that we still do not know what we have done, even after we have done it? Are memory and knowledge, understanding and belief meaningless? Are they meaningless because what we do is ultimately decided by God? Are we puppets instead of people reacting automatically to the pull of preset strings?

No. Paul is not saying this. When Paul says that even through ignorance of God's word, the Jews fulfilled the will of God, he is simply acknowledging the limitations of human knowledge and understanding. Paul is saying that so far as our salvation is concerned, human knowledge is ineffective and powerless. Our knowledge of the things of this world is apparently boundless. We can invent plastics, transplant human hearts, send satellites to distant planets, and plumb the depths of the sea; but we cannot, by our own knowledge or understanding, save ourselves. Human knowledge cannot frustrate God's plans. Human knowledge cannot crucify Christ nor can human knowledge raise him from the dead. God, and God alone, can. God alone decided that his son had to die and that he had to be raised from the dead. God determined it. God dared it. God did it.

This undoubtedly raises more questions in your minds than answers. The truth is that when we stand before the cross and the opened tomb, we stand before two of the greatest mysteries of history. The more we study, learn, and know about these mysteries, the more we know that we do not know. The deeper we delve into the depths of these mysteries, the more mysterious they become.

This is good news for two reasons. First, it says to us not only that we cannot know everything, but that we do not need to know everything in order to be saved. It is not the amount of our intelligence or the accuracy of our knowledge that saves us. God, and God alone, saves us. His knowledge of us - not our knowledge of him - is the basis of our salvation.

Paul and Luther both cry out to us from the depths of their spiritual struggle that we are justified by faith and not by our good works. Paul Tillich, a giant among theologians, speaking to the intellectuals of our age, states that we are justified by faith, not only apart from our good works, but also apart from our knowledge and understanding of God as well. For the majority of us, this is good news. This is good news because we are not pious saints of perfected piety, nor are we brilliant scholars or post-graduate theologians. We are weak and helpless mortals. We rejoice in the fact that we are saved by God's wisdom and knowledge - and by God's piety and purity. We rejoice that we are saved by grace and by grace alone.

Second, the mystery surrounding the process of our salvation is good because, it helps us to accept the mystery of life - all of life. Ask any group of scientific scholars, "What is the most fascinating fact about life?" They will probably tell you the same thing, the more they know about their own field of expertise, the more they know that they do not know. Life is emotionally exciting and intellectually stimulating because the solving of one mystery only creates other mysteries yet to be solved. There is a secret pattern to all life. One thing is related to another, and everything is related to all other things. Everything has a purpose that fits into the overall pattern of existence.

Take nature for example. More particularly, take snakes (which are a part of nature). Snakes are perhaps the most universally hated and feared creatures in all of God's world. However, if you were to encounter a member of an organization in Miami, Florida, called "Reptile Rescuers," you would hear a far different story. Their business is to save snakes from being killed by panicky people. These reptile redeemers will talk for hours about the absolute and vital role that snakes play in the balance of nature.

Everything in nature and everything in life has a purpose. We may not know or understand that purpose, but it governs our lives. Everything in our lives and everything that happens to us has a purpose in God's plan for us and for our lives. We may not understand it. We may question God and even challenge him. We may even doubt him. Like the people of Jerusalem about whom Paul is talking in our text this morning, we may also go so far as to desire the very death of God. But, the truth remains that human knowledge and understanding are poor, at best, and are seriously limited in solving the basic meaning and purpose of life. The ultimate meaning of life is hidden in the mystery of God himself.

Despite the fact that God has revealed so much of himself to us, God still is God. The details of his will for us and for our world are a divine mystery. No amount of pious praying can probe the mystery of why God permits a particular disaster, tragedy, or experience of suffering to happen in our lives. No amount of brilliant biblical research can satisfyingly answer the question, "Why does God permit this to happen to me?" A baby is born blind. A teenager is helplessly hooked on Crack. A parent-provider for a family is struck down in middle age by cancer. A faithful saint of the church is confined to a nursing home and loses all human dignity while enduring a lingering death. No pulpit prince can ever preach a sermon that will justify these facts of life in the light of a compassionate and a loving God.

All we can know (and this only partially) is that everything that happens will eventually find a place in the ultimate plan of God. God does not grant us theological or biblical expertise. He only grants us the power and the spiritual strength to trust him - to trust that he is still in control. And, ultimately everything which happens has a positive purpose in his plan for us and for our eternal destiny. Everything - absolutely everything - is transformed into good by the mystery of the providential power of God. One day, when we do see God face to face, it will be a compassionate and a loving face that confronts us and comforts us. He will wipe away all our tears and eliminate all our questions, doubts, and fears by the mysterious presence of his holy love.

In the classic story, The Monkey's Paw, a friend gives to a poor man and his wife a petrified monkey's paw which has the magical power to grant three wishes. The first wish of these poor people is for wealth - five hundred pounds. There is a knock at the door, and a man from the town factory delivers the sad news that their son has fallen into the grinding machinery of the mill. He has been instantly killed. Then, the messenger presents them with a compensation check for five hundred pounds. They panic! They grab the monkey's paw. They wish their son to be alive again.

Another knock is heard at the door. They rush to open the door, and there stands their son. Yes, he is alive, but his body is torn and twisted in painful agony. They are horrified at the monsterous sight of their son and his pleading appeals for mercy. They grab the monkey's paw. With their third and last wish, they wish their son dead again - dead and at peace.

The universal and enduring popularity of this classic story, The Monkey's Paw, is that it speaks to a deep desire within all of us for the possession of magical wishes to get anything that we desire. Most of us really prefer magic rather than mystery. We want our prayers to work magic for us. We want God to be like a super slot-machine that, if we pull the right handle of faith, we will hit the giant jackpot, win the lottery of life, magically have all of our dreams come true immediately, and have all our desperate desires instantly granted.

God, however, is not a God of magical powers. He is a God of mysterious powers. He gives us no monkey's paw which possesses three magic wishes. God gives us only the innocent hands of his Son with nails cruelly driven through at the wrists into the timbers of a cross. God gives us only the compassionate and scarred hands of the living Lord raised in a divine benediction over our lives.

Rejoice in God's mystery. Someday we will know that God's mystery is far greater than any magic, because the mystery of God is the great miracle of his divine mercy. There is a positive purpose in everything that happens in our lives. Trust God. Trust the miracle of his mysterious mercy. Trust - because there is a power, a peace, and a joy in that mysterious mercy of God that passes all human understanding.


Acts 14:8-18
The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Counterfeit Faith

Have you ever unintentionally passed a phony five dollar bill? According to the United States Treasury Department, you may have. And one of the reasons you may have is because a man by the name of Blinky was the greatest counterfeiter of all times. He made five dollar bills that defied detection. It was impossible, even for the experts, to identify the real bill from the counterfeit. It is estimated that hundreds, if not thousands, of the Blinky-made five dollar bills are still in circulation.

A bizarre set of circumstances finally led to Blinky's arrest and imprisonment. It seemed that he was so successful at counterfeiting five dollar bills that he decided to expand his operations. He started making twenty dollar bills. He was arrested while passing one of his phony twenties. In court, his lawyer followed the same line of defense; he challenged the experts to identify the phony bill from the real one. Immediately, the experts did so. Later Blinky discovered where he had made his tragic mistake. The bill that he had used to copy his counterfeit twenty was itself a counterfeit.

Our text this morning is about counterfeit faith - the counterfeit faith which Paul confronted in Lystra. According to the dictionary, the word "counterfeit" is defined as something made in imitation of something else. It is, a fake or copy made to resemble the real or the genuine article. It is exactly that kind of faith that Paul and Barnabas experienced in the pagan city of Lystra.

Paul and Barnabas were on a missionary journey witnessing and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They had experienced both acceptance and rejection; but, they had no idea of what was going to happen to them as they entered Lystra. Immediately, a crowd gathered, and Paul began to preach.

Preachers are taught in the seminary that one begins a sermon where the listeners are - hitting a point of human interest or a common concern. So, Paul begins his sermon talking about the Creator God who made the heavens and the earth. Lystra was a dry and arid country; so Paul stressed in the introduction to his sermon the fact that the God which he represented was the God who sends the refreshing and life-supporting rain.

The people listened intently. Then, seeing a man who was crippled from birth, Paul stopped his sermon. In a loud voice he cried out to the crippled man, "Arise, stand on your feet." Immediately, the man leaped to his feet and began to walk.

At first, the people were stunned; but, then they suddenly exploded with the excitement of a true conversion and started to shout, "The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!" The people had witnessed a miracle, and they spontaneously began to celebrate. They decorated several bulls with garlands of flowers and led them to the temple of Zeus to offer sacrifice to the visiting divine dignitaries from heaven.

This spontaneous accolade to Paul and Barnabas, being mistaken for gods, is easily understandable when we learn from Roman historians of the time that there was an ancient legend which was popular in the days when Paul and Barnabas made their visit to Lystra. According to the legend, Zeus and Hermes, disguised as mortals, had come to the region of Lystra some years before. All except two people in the community rejected them. The two gods, in turn, sent judgment on the area - except for the old couple who had accepted and welcomed Zeus and Hermes into their home. Because of this, the old couple were made guardians of a magnificent temple on the out-skirts of Lystra. When the old couple died, they were turned into giant trees as living memorials for their kind reception of the gods. Perhaps it was under these very trees that Paul and Barnabas first preached.

There is little doubt that, when the people saw the miracle Paul performed, they remembered the legend, and they were certain that their visitors were gods in disguise. Barnabas with his white hair and muscular build was identified as Zeus, the head of the pantheon of pagan gods. Paul, because of his speaking skills, was declared to be Hermes, the god of eloquence and rhetoric.

The positive response of the people to Paul's preaching was really the reaction of a counterfeit faith. It was a faith-reaction, not resulting from the heard Word of God. It was the legacy of a legend. Paul never had the opportunity to get to the body of the sermon and to preach about Christ as the living Lord. The people's premature reaction was that of amazement to a miracle. Plus, it was an ingrained superstition that the gods played at the game of walking among men and women while masquerading as mortals. The people actually acted before they heard the Word of Christ proclaimed.

We sometimes say that a person's mouth races at ninety miles per hour before his or her mind is in gear. So, the people of Lystra went through the appearance of an excited faith before they had ever heard the Word that produces faith. That is why their faith was counterfeit. Because it was not born from the hearing of the Word, it was not genuine faith.

Last week we talked about the need of the heard Word becoming transformed into a life of faith. Today, we see the danger of a premature action - before the Word of God is fully and faithfully proclaimed. The people heard the nonverbals of the miracle that Paul performed. The words which they heard were the echoes of their own desires and fears. They heard in the miracle what they wanted to hear; therefore, their faith was self-initiated. And, self-initiated faith is counterfeit faith.

Today, we face the danger of counterfeit faith. We fail to hear the Word of God because of preconceived or preestablished ideas of what we think is the word that God would speak. Frequently, that is why there is a vast gulf between what a preacher says in the pulpit and what the people hear in the pews. People have a built-in computer which is programmed to provide answers that have been fed into the computer before the question is asked. Like the prince in the story of Cinderella, who searched for the one foot that would fit the glass slipper, we have a glass slipper of expectations; and we will accept only those ideas about God which fit the slippers that we think are valid and reasonable.

Some of us, when we hear about the virgin birth, the miracles of healing, and the strange stories about Jesus stilling the storm, walking on water, and changing water into wine, attempt to dilute the miracle into some type of rational and scientific interpretation that fits our preestablished slipper of truth. However, when we do dilute a miracle, we actually dissolve it. To explain a miracle only results in explaining the miracle away. And, a faith without belief in miracles is, in the light of the New Testament, a counterfeit faith.

Many of us, when we hear that we are to love our neighbors, interpret the word "neighbor" to be people like ourselves, people who are the same as we are - the same social class, the same color, and the same economic status. We say to ourselves, "God really doesn't want us or expect us to love the hardened criminals in prisons, or the dirty and smelly street-people, or drunks, or prostitutes, or perverts." That extreme love does not fit into our conservative glass slipper. So, we limit "neighbor" to our own dimensions. And, when we do, our faith becomes counterfeit.

Surveys tell us that when most of the people in the Christian church today hear the good news about unmerited and unearned grace, they accept it only with a conditional "if." Many of us add an "if" to total grace. We think that God is a God of total grace - if we do something to deserve it. We are encouraged in this type of thinking by modern advertisements that continually speak of a "free gift" which will be sent to us "if." In Christian theology, such a phrase as a "free gift" is redundant. The New Testament knows of no gift of grace that is not free. If a gift costs something, then it is not a gift; it is a purchase paid for, or it becomes a service that is bought. Despite what the Bible proclaims, we still believe that one does not "get something for nothing," or "everything has its price," or "beware of Greeks bearing gifts." These are the glass slippers, fashioned by our "common sense," into which we attempt to force the foot of faith. When we do, the faith that we possess is not genuine. It is counterfeit. It does not fit the faith of the New Testament.

One of the greatest barriers to receiving the seed of God's Word in our lives is all the weeds that grow and flourish within us. Our minds and hearts are literally jungles of pseudoscientific mind-sets, superstitious fears, and the bank of natural knowledge that we call "horse sense" (which, in most cases, is not very complimentary even to a horse). Tragically, most of our responses to God's revelation are not based on "horse sense" as much as they are an expression of our "bullheadedness." We hear only what we want to hear. We believe only what agrees with what we already believe. We accept only what fits our Cinderella slippers. As a result, we end up with a counterfeit faith.

It is interesting to note that if you read on in the Book of Acts beyond the limits of our text, you will discover that the people of Lystra, who at first hailed Paul and Barnabas as gods, soon completely changed and called them demons. They drove them from their city - stoning the preachers of Christ and leaving them for dead outside the city walls. But, that is another story. The story of our text is about fitting the Word of God into our own preconceived presuppositions and never hearing anything except what we want to hear.

Now, where is the Gospel - the good news in all of this? Is it not more discouraging and condemning than it is helpful and healing to hear about the counterfeit faith, which Paul and Barnabas encountered as they preached the Word about Christ Jesus? Perhaps, if we confine ourselves exclusively to this single text, there is no good news. However, the truth is that we do not have to limit ourselves to any one text, and the Book of Acts certainly does not limit its story to one event. The Book of Acts goes on to report that, despite the rejection and despite the counterfeit faith, the church of Jesus Christ grew, flourished, and established a beachhead in Europe that would eventually spread across the world.

God is not frustrated by counterfeit faith. He who healed the crippled man in Lystra can also cure the crippled minds that have been corrupted and twisted by counterfeit faith. God can, and will, harness and tame our bullheadedness. God can, and will, take our superstitions in his stride and change us into people who recognize the truth when we hear it. God will create people who honestly desire to hear what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. God is still God, and our personal salvation still ultimately depends not on our faith - true or counterfeit. Our salvation, and the salvation of all people, depends on God's faith - God's faith in us - a faithfulness that will never surrender or accept defeat. God's faith is a faith that will persevere against all odds and win!

In the town of Livingston near Victoria Falls in Africa, there is a museum which holds the memorabilia of the missionary David Livingstone. One of the most prized and popular exhibits is a gold watch and chain worn by Dr. Livingstone. His close friends tell that each night before he went to bed, the last thing he would do was to wind his watch in preparation for his next day's work.

The night that he was told that he was dying and would more than likely not live through the night, Dr. Livingstone raised up on his elbow, reached for his gold watch, and carefully wound it as if preparing for another day's work.

In contrast to counterfeit faith, that was a true act of genuine faith. David Livingstone knew that with his death the Christianization of Africa would not end. It was not his work that would conquer Africa for Jesus Christ - rather, it was God's work. Even though Dr. Livingstone's efforts to serve Africa were at an end, God's efforts were not.

The faith of David Livingstone and his trust in the power of God is today vindicated by the fact that Christianity is growing more dramatically in Africa than on any other continent of the world.

Rejoice! The future of the church is not in our weak little hands. The church is in the all-powerful, never-tiring hands of God. The faith that saves us and our world is God's faith in us. This faith is not counterfeit: it is solid gold. Therefore, rejoice! Wind your watch - tomorrow belongs to God.