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May 24, 2026

"They Continued to Preach the Gospel" (Acts 14:1-7)

Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church Scripture: Acts 14:1–7

Hear now the word of the lord from Acts 14:1-7. 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. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. 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. But the people of the city were divided.
Some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles. 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. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Please be seated. And as you're taking your seats, please join your hearts together with me this morning in prayer. Gracious Father, we thank you for the good news of Jesus Christ. Father, we have no hope in this life or the next. Without it.
We stand guilty of your wrath and condemnation. Guilty in such a way that it would be righteous for you to condemn us for all eternity to hell, to endure the wrath of your judgment against us because of our sin. And yet in your mercy, you made a way for us to avoid that, pouring out that wrath not on us, but instead upon your only begotten, beloved son, Jesus Christ, who endured the torture of not only the physical pains of the cross, but the spiritual anguish of your wrath poured out against him as he was crucified in our place. We pray now that this gospel of Jesus would call us to faith again this morning. And we pray that this would embolden us to share this good news for a long time with those who desperately need to hear it outside these walls.
It's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.
Well, we have seen several ways of already in which people come into the church. We've seen a covenant baptism where a child born by covenant promise to the children of believers is brought into the church. We have seen a woman profess and reaffirm her faith. And she has been a believer, but now brought into the fellowship and membership of the church. And in the passage we are looking at today, we see the third way.
It is the missionary way, where missionaries come to a new place and where they preach the gospel in that place. And people who have not known about Jesus previously hear that good news, respond in faith and are brought into the fellowship of the church.
As we study this passage this morning, I want to say that one of the blessings of preaching God's word is that I have a whole week to sit with this and to let the word of God convict me first about what I am going to preach about on Sunday so that you might be convicted along with me. And as I prepared to preach this week on the subject of evangelism, I was certainly convicted of this as I was studying it. But I was unexpectedly convicted by a couple of things that happened Wednesday. But I have to actually back up to last March. If you remember, last March, I visited this church as a part of the candidating process, and there was a big meeting in the fellowship hall.
Maybe some of you were involved in that. Well, the very next day, I went to a presbytery meeting of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which was at First OPC in South Holland. And while I was there that day, I heard a presentation by a group in the OPC called Reformation Chicago. And this group of students from Mars, we're seeking to bring the whole gospel to the whole city of Chicago. And a lot of what they do is by ambitious, bold, prayerful, regular street evangelism on the streets of Chicago.
If you go to their website, Reformation Chicago, you'll see a video of them preaching on the train platforms and sharing gospel tracts and talking with people, engaging them on the street corners, in public parks, at major events. Now, I've done some of this evangelistic work in the past. In fact, many years ago, when I was in high school, I came to Chicago and was a part of a youth ministry that was just sent out into Millennium park in downtown Chicago and just struck up conversations with people to share the gospel. Terrifying, yes, but incredibly stretching for my faith. But as I was talking to on Wednesday, one of these members came to our presbytery meeting of the Chicago Metro Presbytery of the pca.
And they were wanting to get to know us a little bit and to maybe present some of what they were doing at the next presbytery meeting, which will be here in August. But as I was talking to one of these members, they were talking about what they were doing and about the boldness with which they go out to evangelize. And as I was thinking about this passage, because I had just written the sermon the night before going to this presbytery meeting, it reminded me of what we see here in this passage. And I think as I was looking at what was happening 2000 years ago in Iconium and thinking about what's happening today on the streets of Chicago. It made me ask a key question as we have sought to discern God's vision for his church through our study of the book of Acts.
What is God's vision for the church's role and the church's mission for our evangelism? And so our theme this morning as we study this passage is this, that we must persevere a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord. We must persevere a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord. And we're going to see three parts to the way this preaching of the Gospel of Jesus goes into Iconium and beyond. First of all, there is bold preaching that reaches and captivates and confronts people directly.
Second, there is deep preaching that tries to reach the entirety of this area. And then third, there is wide preaching that reaches beyond this area when all the area has been evangelized. Bold preaching, deep preaching and wide preaching.

1. Bold Preaching (Acts 14:1-2)

So we will start with this bold preaching right in the faces of people in verses one through two. Now, if you remember, Paul and Barnabas had just been.
They had just been oppressed, they had just been persecuted in the previous area where they were in Antioch Pisidia. So they continued on to Iconium. Iconium, as the commentators tell us, was a rugged, isolated city in central modern day Turkey. This would have included a diverse group of people, including both Jews and Gentiles. And we see both of those groups in this passage here.
Now we read in verse one. Now, at Iconium, they entered together. And that word together is a little bit hard to translate. It might mean together according to this. It means literally something like according to the same.
So according to according to the same, like at the same time they were entering in together. Or it could mean according to the same process, according to their normal procedure for entering into a new area. Whatever it means, they entered together or in the same way into the Jewish synagogue. That's where they had been ministering in the previous passage in Antioch Pisidia. And they will do this really everywhere they go.
They go first to the Jews to preach the gospel. Now, if you remember, as we looked at the previous passage there, Paul had turned to the gentiles in chapter 13, verse 46 in Antioch. And they shake the dust off their feet as they leave Antioch Pisidia. But they had not given up on the Jews in their totality. We read, they came immediately into the Jewish synagogue, and there they spoke in such a way that right away a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed they're preaching boldly is what we read in verse three.
They were speaking boldly for the Lord, preaching and proclaiming the message of salvation in the Messiah of the Jewish people, in Jesus Christ, a Messiah who is a light not only for the Jews, but also a light for the Gentiles. And yet we read in verse two that just as it happened in Antioch Pisidia before the unbelieving Jews then stirred up the Gentiles, so they're working together and they poison their minds against the brothers. There was this disobedience, there was this unbelief from both Jews and Gentiles that pressed against the apostles, even while there was also much faith that was being brought into the city. Now, I mentioned that on Wednesday I was convicted in a couple of ways. One of them was then at another point at the presbytery meeting.
These are not all just dry, dusty reports and, and votes and things like that. We heard a report from the RUF campus minister at Northwestern University, Teaching Elder Andrew Barber, and he was talking about some of the evangelistic ministries of his students on the campus of Northwestern. And he said he was giving them some coaching. He's saying, it sounds to me like as you're working with some of these students, you're trying to get them to like Jesus. And then he said he challenged them instead to call these students to worship Jesus.
Don't get them merely to like Jesus, as though that's a nice guy, that's a good teacher, that's a compelling figure, but to worship him as Lord and Savior, and that's a very, very different impact. It is a bold thing to call sinners to turn from their sin to faith in Jesus Christ. You see, what Paul and Barnabas are doing in this area is they are speaking boldly enough and we are called to speak boldly enough so that people must come to a different direction one way or another about Jesus Christ. Either they will believe or they will walk away and realize that that preaching of Jesus is a threat to them because it is a threat to their way of life, even as that threat is also their only hope for salvation this life and the next. As we enter into our personal conversations, we shouldn't be just talking about sports and entertainment with other people.
We should talk to them about the necessity of faith in Christ in the ministry of the church. We're not gathered just to have social gatherings, to have a good time together. As important and valuable as it is to do fun, fellowship things together, the real call that we have is to bring people face to face with Christ and In our worship service and in our preaching. This is not for your entertainment. This is a time when Christ is exalted in our midst and when from the pulpit we preach that there is no way to heaven except through faith in Jesus Christ.
He is the straight and narrow way, whereas the wide path of the rest of the world leads to destruction. So I want to be very clear. This is what we preach here. We preach what the Scriptures teach. That all of us are sinners who are condemned under the wrath of God because of our sin.
All of us are lawbreakers of God's holy law that we read responsively together. And if we have stumbled in one place, James tells us that we are guilty of violating all of it. You are a guilty sinner, condemned to death. But the judge, the righteous king, so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son into this world. And His Son came not to receive a lot of praise by the whole world.
He knew that he was going to come into a world who would reject him. His own people would receive him, not the darkness would recoil and revile against him. And yet he came into this world taking upon himself a human nature like us in every respect, except for sin. He lived the perfect life, fulfilling everything commanded in the Ten Commandments as well as the ceremonial law that was given to the Jews. And under that, he was condemned to die on the cross.
Not for any sin that he has committed. His trial was a sham. And yet he was condemned, crucified and murdered. Three days he was in the tomb. And yet on the third day, he rose from the dead, never again to die.
This message of salvation is that by his shed blood at the cross, Christ Jesus atoned for the sins of all those who trust in him for their salvation. Jesus is indeed the way. He is the truth. He is the life. And no one will come to the Father except through Him.
Do you know Him? Do you trust Him? There's no salvation except from Him. Understand that he threatens to undo every part of your way of life that is lived in conformity with the ways of this world. Understand, he threatens everything that you hold dear to in this world, except understanding that in him there is blessedness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, now and forevermore.
There are only two ways to go, only two ways to live. Either you will follow him or you will cast him off. But that's the boldness of the message that Paul and Barnabas preached. And it's the boldness and faithfulness of the message that we preach here today.

2. Deep Preaching (Acts 14:3-4)

This preaching, however, Was not a one time shot, not for us. This is why we gather week by week to preach this message and not for the apostles. So we see that it was not just a bold message, it was a deep message where they tried to saturate this entire area where they were preaching. Look at verse three, we read. So they remained for a long time speaking boldly for the Lord.
Now this word so has generated a lot of discussion because there's a question of how exactly it fits with what came before. Earlier we read about this growing dissension, how the unbelieving or the rebellious Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. And so some people say, well it doesn't make sense, sense to then say, so they remained for a long time preaching, speaking boldly for the Lord. Why would they do that if there was so much opposition? Well, it's an interesting question because we should not only notice that there was opposition, we should also remember what we read in verse one, that there were a great number of both Jews and Greeks who believed even as there was also the counter reaction of unbelief and rebellion stirred up.
And we should also read that while there were these two strong responses to the Lord, we also read that the Lord himself was active in their midst. We read. 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. So yes, there's a strong response against, but there was a strong response of faith. And throughout this there was the Lord Himself actively at work opening wide doors for effective ministry in this area.
Why did they stay? Because this was their task. Their Master had commissioned them to preach his gospel in this place. He was at work. And see, evangelism is not done and not judged primarily by the responses.
Evangelism is done and evangelism is to be judged by how faithful that message is presented to people. I've continued, I've been thinking a lot about evangelism. This week was reading a book about evangelism and about preaching in the streets. And it was a book that challenged me to think about the fact that that evangelism is faithful. When that content, the content of Jesus Christ and Him crucified is put before people.
And when the question is asked, how many people did you lead to the Lord? The faithful evangelist can say, all of them. Now it's the Lord's up to the Lord about what happens when they are brought to the Lord, when they are confronted, brought face to Face with the Lord in the proclamation of his gospel. But when Jesus Christ is faithfully shared, faithfully proclaimed, every single person is brought to the Lord. This is why they continued in this faithful work, speaking boldly for a long time in this area.
In my previous church, I had a farmer, a man named Perry, and I like Perry a lot. And he told me one time, well, every. Every year, I would always ask them where they were in their planting. Are you about to do that? You getting ready for that?
You putting down fertilizer? Okay, how's it growing? Are you managing the weeds? How's that going? There hasn't been a whole lot of rain.
I know you guys don't irrigate. How's that going? But at harvest time, they're always very busy. And after harvest was done one year, I was talking to Perry and he said he brought along one of his nieces or nephews, I can't remember which. And they were riding along in the combine.
And when they got to a certain point, Perry turned to his niece or nephew and he said, hey, you helped me find something that I've been looking for for a very long time. The very last ear of corn. They finished the harvest. That's what's happening here. They are looking for the last person who has not heard the gospel of Jesus.
And they're looking for it for a very long time. And so look at verse four. The entire city was divided, but the people of the city were divided. Some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles. Our task is not done so long as there is anyone who has not heard the gospel of Jesus in this area, so long as there are some who are not on one side or the other.
But there's this third group of people who just don't know about this gospel. So long as there remains someone who is left in the field during the harvest that we are called to continue to go and preach the gospel deeply, continuing to reach everyone who has not yet heard one of the ways that God often uses new churches. And again, this reformation, Chicago is a new church. I'm happy to say that in the inner city of Chicago, they've started a church plant. And some of those members are people that they met just preaching and evangelizing on the streets, just met out of nowhere, had not heard the gospel.
But finally, when they heard the gospel, came to faith in Jesus Christ. Now, they've had a lot of rejection. They've been despised in many ways. And yet some of the harvest that the Lord of the harvest is seeking to be brought in, have been brought in. And one of the blessings of new churches to reach the loss is those churches know that early on they will not survive as churches unless they reach new people.
So there's this motivation to get out there and to evangelize. And this is something we really need to wrestle with, because one of the temptations of an established church, especially a church as established as ours. I said it is so easy to be complacent. Look around, there's lots of people here. This is great.
It's easy. We don't need to do a thing. They're right here around us. And yet the Scriptures teach that God's vision for his church is that his church would continue to be relentless in deeply reaching the entire city with the gospel of Jesus. Now, until Jesus returns, there will always be unbelief.
But our task, our duty, the commission of our Master, the Lord Jesus, is to make sure that whatever unbelief exists is a conscious unbelief of someone who, having heard the free offer of the gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, understands exactly what they are rejecting. There's more work left to do, brothers and sisters.

3. Wide Preaching (Acts 14:5-7)

But we see then in the third section that it's not only this area. We see that the vision for the church is to not only be focused on the area where God has put us, as important as that is, but to lift our eyes to the horizon, to preach widely. The third section is wide preaching in verses five through seven. And we see that much of the impetus, just as it was to get them to Iconium, so also to remove them beyond Iconium. Much of the impetus of this is driven and fueled by persecution.
Verse 5. When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews with their rulers. There's political involvement with their rulers to mistreat them and to stone them. They learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia and of the surrounding country. Now, stop there for just a moment.
We have to ask, why did they flee? Did they suddenly lose heart? Did they suddenly take their eye off the ball? Did they suddenly decide, I didn't sign up for this and move on? No.
Again, what we saw, the whole city was divided against them. The whole city was evangelized. Not all had believed, but the whole city had been confronted with the reality of Jesus Christ. Rch Lenski writes, their work in Iconium had been completed boldly to the depths of the city. And now they continue to spread this gospel far and wide.
And so in Verse seven. We read that when, when they went to the surrounding areas, the other cities, we read there, they continued to preach the gospel. One area was evangelized. Their duty was to continue on to the next. And without missing a beat, they continue preaching the gospel in that same way in this new area.
Well, the application of this, I've been so challenged just swimming in this week is that we are called to spread the gospel boldly, deeply, and we are called to spread it far and wide to the ends of the earth. The work that Paul and Barnabas were just beginning to spread the gospel of Jesus throughout the earth was beginning in those days. But that missionary journey still continues. I don't know if you are familiar with a group called the Joshua Project. The Joshua Project monitors where the Gospel has gone and been preached.
And there's a particular concern to monitor the unreached people groups of the world. And so the way the Joshua Project puts it is that out of 10,422 people groups in the world, 4,488 of them, that's not that short of half of them are unreached. An unreached people group is where there are less than 5% of professing Christians and less than 1% of evangelical Christians. These are places where even if they wanted to learn more about the Gospel of Jesus, they would not be able statistically to find anyone to talk about him with. You think also about the languages into which the Bible has and has not been Translated.
Out of 7,390 languages in the world, only a tenth of those languages have a complete Bible. Only 700 plus have a complete Bible in English. We have an embarrassment of riches. You can find the Bible in any kind of translation you could possibly want, and so many that you wouldn't want to read because they are not faithful translations. But 90% cannot read the whole Bible in their own language.
Maybe they can read it in sort of the universal languages they use around there. But how many of you could read the Bible if it was in the language you learned in high school? French or Spanish or German or something like that?
In this area, many in Lansing and the surrounding areas have opportunities to hear the gospel. There are many good gospel preaching churches where they could darken the door of a church and hear the gospel even this morning. But there are so many places that do not have that kind of a presence. No church where they could go to hear the Gospel of Jesus preached on a Sunday morning. Our task is indeed to continue reaching Lansing and the surrounding areas as boldly and as deeply as we can.
But we cannot take our eyes off of the global horizon for missions work, for spreading the gospel as widely as possible.
Would you prayerfully consider whether the Lord has called you to global missions? The PCA's Foreign Missions Organization, Mission to the World MTW has a challenge. They want to challenge each church to send 1% of their people off to the mission field. It's not even a tithe. It's a tithe of a tithe of our people sent off to the mission field.
Can we do that? Is the Lord stirring in your heart to reach to the ends of the earth? Maybe an unreached people group or maybe a place that you have a particular heart that the Lord has been building in you to make sure the gospel goes to that place.
Would you prayerfully consider whether that's your call, whether you should be someone to take the gospel wide? Because again, the message has not changed since the day when Paul and Barnabas were preaching this. As Paul summarizes all of this in Romans 10, verse 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. We preach that here, and that message needs to go out everywhere as we are called to be Christ's witnesses to the ends of the earth. But as Paul goes on in Romans 10 and verses 14 through 15, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. All of us are called to speak boldly and deeply wherever we may find ourselves.
Some are called to go and to speak widely. What about you?
Well, I want to close this morning's sermon with just a statement of my own conviction. I need to grow in this area again. I've done this before. I got to participate in some of the evangelistic outreach ministries of the outreach task force here. I know that Wednesday cruise nights are coming up the parade, getting to hand out gospel tracts.
In that midst, there's some real work that our church is already doing. But I know that I personally need to grow and to learn more in this area. So I asked. I. I had dinner with this young man who's out there preaching in Chicago. I said I would love.
I've not stopped thinking about you since last March. I would love the opportunity to go with you when you do this event. So we were texting and we found some times that'll work. And so I'm going to go on a Friday in July if you would like to take the train into the city to evangelize people on the streets of Chicago with me on an afternoon in July, come talk to me. I'd love to talk talk with you.
I'd love for you to go along with me as I just go see what they are doing to reach the lost. As we prayerfully consider how we will reach this area as we think about the brothers in arms that God has given us in the other faithful churches understand this city, this area, this world belongs to our Savior, our Captain, our King, Jesus Christ and our Master has sent us to bear this good news to those who are not yet under his authority.
What's the role that Jesus is calling you to be engaged with in spreading that gospel from Lansing to the ends of the earth? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray the gospel would continue to go out. We pray that you would grip our hearts with the glory of Christ that we would not cease proclaiming Jesus name from here to the ends of the earth as far as you call us and whatever opportunities that you give to us, knowing that we are poor sinners, undeserving wretches, that we are beggars who having discovered the bread of life are called the sheep that with other starving dead people as well. We pray that your spirit would go before us to raise the dead to life to look to Jesus in faith when they are confronted with this gospel.
And we pray that we would ever be faithful here to hold high the banner of Jesus Christ our Lord and captain. It's in Christ's name that we pray.

other sermons in this series

Oct 4

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"Preparation and Fulfillment" (Acts 19:1-7)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 19:1–7 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Sep 20

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"Many Gifts among Many Members" (Acts 18:18-28)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 18:18–28 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Sep 13

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"My Grace Is Sufficient for You" (2 Corinthians 12: 1-10)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:1–10 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church