May 31, 2026

"The Darkness Cannot Overcome It" (Acts 14:8-20)

Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church Scripture: Acts 14:8–20

Hear now the word of the Lord from Acts, chapter 14, verses 8 through 20. Now, at Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul speaking and Paul looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made, well said in a loud voice, stand upright on your feet. And he sprang up and began walking.

And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycan, the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. Barnabas they called Zeus. And Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates of. And wanted to offer sacrifice with the crowds.

But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out into the crowd, crying out, men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you, and we bring you good news that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations, he allowed the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness. For he did good by giving you rains from heaven in fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.

Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them. But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium. And having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city. And on the next day, he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

And as you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together this morning in prayer. Gracious Father, we pray that as we study your word this morning that you would indeed open our hearts to understand, open our eyes to see and open our ears to hear the good news of the Gospel of Jesus. That we would turn from the vain things with which we fill up our lives to serve you, the living God and Jesus Christ, your son, whom you have sent. And so, Father, as we study this passage this morning, we pray that your word would be lively. Not because there is something lacking in your word, but because we are dead to the things that you declare in this living and lively word.

And so, we pray, make us alive by your spirit to hear what you have to say and to come in worship by faith in Jesus Christ to be made well, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, what a joy it's been to study through the Book of Acts so far to see the way that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has progressed from just a little group, a little band in Jerusalem to start to reach the ends of the earth here in Lystra. Now, as we have seen the Gospel go forward at every turn, we have seen opposition. There's progress, but there's also fierce opposition everywhere.

The Gospel begins to gain traction and to move forward. Now through most of the Book of Acts so far, because of where the Gospel has been preached to start off with, we have mainly seen opposition coming from Jewish quarters. We have seen Jewish opposition to the Gospel. And Indeed in Acts 13, verse 46, we saw Paul turning away from the Jews in order to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. And the Gentiles there rejoiced at that time.

But especially starting in this passage, as we see the Gospel go to the Gentiles, we saw it a little bit in the last passage as well. But especially in this passage, we are going to start to see the opposition from the Gentiles rise. Even though the Gospel is going to go beyond the Jews to the Gentiles, this does not mean that the Gentiles will universally receive the Gospel of Jesus. Yet their reasons for rejecting Jesus are going to be different from the Jews. And so we're going to see this dynamic where we are seeing the Book of Acts holding Jesus Christ out as the Messiah, the long awaited Messiah promised to the Jews, who will not be the Messiah of the Jews only, but also to the Gentiles.

And we are going to see that Gospel fall to call Jews to faith, but also Gospel or Gentiles to faith. But we are also going to see resistance and opposition form from both of those. But this morning, as we see Gentile resistance, Gentile opposition to the Gospel, our theme this morning is this, that Gentile darkness cannot overcome the light of the Messiah. The Gentile darkness cannot overcome the light of the Messiah. Now for this theme summarizing the passage, but I'm drawing off of the language and the imagery of two other passages that I want to read as we get started.

The first passage is from John, chapter one, verse five, which is talking about the birth of Jesus into this world as the true light that was promised to come into this world. And In John chapter 1, verse 5, John the Evangelist writes this. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Darkness has not overcome it, the darkness cannot overcome it, as we're going to see today. But then in Ephesians 4, 17, 18, the same Paul who is preaching and evangelizing in this passage is writing to the church in Ephesus.

And he writes this about the Gentile condition. He says, now I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. The futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. So darkened in understanding and hard in heart.

So those are going to form the basis of the three sections that we're going to divide this passage up into. First, the light of the Messiah. The light of the Messiah. The light shines in the darkness. That's the light of Jesus, the Messiah.

Second, darkened understanding. We're going to see the darkness of the understanding of the Gentiles in the second section. And then third, hardness of heart, heartness of heart, that once they understand what exactly the apostles are doing, they hate what the apostles are doing. And that's that hardness of heart. So let's start in the first section with the light of the Messiah in verses 8 through 10.

1. The Light of the Messiah (Acts 14:8-10)

Now, in these verses, it's very important to understand that this story is very similar to what we read in Acts chapter three, where we encountered another lame man there in Jerusalem, there outside the gates of the temple. And this man was miraculously healed so that he could walk again, not by Paul and Barnabas. At the time, Paul was not yet converted to the Lord. We don't know where Barnabas was, but rather to the apostles Peter and John. And just like this man, we read that this man was crippled from birth.

So also we read in Acts 3 that that man was lame and crippled from birth. And that man also was healed by faith. But one small difference is in verse nine, we read that this man's faith is understood or discerned from Paul, who looked intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made, well, his faith preceded the healing. Whereas in Acts chapter three, the Jew who's sitting outside the gates of the temple, it seems very much like he's just asking and begging for a little money for alms for the poor, and he's healed. And then subsequently, the faith seems to arise in his heart.

But in both places, in Acts 4, 9 or Acts chapter 3, verse 16. And then also here in Acts chapter 14, verse 9, we read that faith plays a very important part in the healing of these men. We also have an important word that is shared in both of them in the fact that Paul in verse nine, read that he sees that this man had faith to be made well. Well, that word. There is a word that was also used translated as healed in Acts, chapter four, verse nine.

And it's the normal word that we use for saved. This is the word of salvation. We would use this to talk about the spiritual healing, the salvation that someone has when they come to faith in Jesus. But that word is used here in this sense of saving, in a physical sense, healing this person, making this person well. And so what we're made to understand is not to necessarily disconnect the ideas, but to see that the physical healing of these two individuals is meant to be a picture of the spiritual healing they have in their lives.

If you remember, Jesus did the very same thing when he healed the lame man, the man who could not walk, who was brought to him through the roof by his friends. And seeing their faith, he made that man well. And then he told the man, in doing so, your sins are forgiven. There was a big discussion. How does he have the right to forgive sins, in other words, to heal him spiritually?

He says, well, you tell me what's easier to do to make this man walk, or to say that I can forgive his sins, but so that you know that the Son of Man has power to forgive sins, take up your mat and walk. And that's exactly what he did. In all of these cases, people who cannot walk are made to walk. So that you can see that the Son of Man has the power to spiritually heal, to forgive sins. But there's a big difference in this passage from the last passage in Acts chapter three, namely, in Acts chapter three, the man sitting there was a Jew in Jerusalem who was outside the gates of the temple.

And when he was healed, one of the important things that happened is suddenly he no longer had a physical infirmity that disqualified him from entering into the temple to worship. And we read that he entered into the temple with Peter and John after he was healed. Well, this man is also near a temple. But it's not the temple in Jerusalem. It's a temple of Zeus in Lystra.

And when he's healed, he's not going to go into that temple. Heaven forbid, he's going to stay out of that temple. He will be permanently barred because of his faith from entering that temple. But in verse 10, we read that when he is healed, we do read that he sprang up. And here's another point of comparison.

This word for sprang up is the same word that was Translated in Acts 3. As he leapt up, he leaped. It's that word that we sang about, leap ye lame for joy. And the reason that's important is because it's a very rare word. It's only used three times in the New Testament.

One here in Acts chapter 14, another one in Acts chapter 3. But it is a word that is used in the Old Testament in Isaiah, in the Greek translation of Isaiah, about the Messianic promises that the Messiah would cause the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to leap like a deer in Isaiah 35, verse 6. And so in Acts chapter 3, when the lame was made to leap, that was demonstrating to us that the Messiah had come and the Messiah's healing had come to that particular man. But notice, we are not in Jerusalem anymore. We are not near the temple of the God of Israel anymore.

We're near the temple of a pagan God. But the message here is still the same, that the Jewish Messiah is able to heal this pagan Gentile on foreign soil. Now this brings us back to the end of Acts chapter 13. We're in Acts chapter 13, verse 47. Paul is talking about his commission to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah.

And he says, for so the Lord has commanded us, saying, I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. Now he's quoting there Isaiah 49, 6. But he omits the sentence that comes right before that which says this. The Lord is saying to the Messiah in this prophecy. He's saying, it is too light a thing, that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel.

I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. The light is coming into the dark places. The light of the Messiah is entering into gentile darkness to dispel the darkness. And whether in Jerusalem or in Lystra, the lame will leap like a deer to demonstrate the Messiah truly has come. Now, Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

That word Messiah is translated into Greek in the word Christ. It means anointed one. And the idea is that Jesus is sent for the salvation of the whole world. As Jesus himself told the Samaritan of the well in John 4:22. Salvation is from the Jews.

It's not from anywhere else. It is from the Jews. But. But Jesus salvation is for all the nations of the earth to the end of the earth. So what this means is that When Jesus came into the world, he was careful to fulfill all the Jewish laws, to fulfill all the Jewish prophecies about the Messiah.

But in doing so, he did not purchase salvation for Israel alone. He purchased salvation for the entire human race. Because he was not narrowly a Jew. He was a Jew. He was a full blooded Jew.

But yet he before that, from all eternity past, had existed as the eternal Son of God, the creator of heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. And this eternal Son of God took upon himself a human nature like ours in every respect, yet without sin, living a perfect life according to God's moral law, and then crucified, cursed and killed for the sins of human beings, for every tribe, language, people and nation, rising from the dead on the third day with the power to heal and to save all those who look to him in faith. And as a herald of this gospel, I once again have the privilege of declaring the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to you again. Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Christ.

He has come not only to save his people, that would be too light a thing, but he became a light of salvation to the ends of the earth, as the eternal Son of God, born as a human baby to a human mother, crucified, dead, buried and raised. And as he himself declares in Isaiah 45:22, turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other.

But just as we have seen the Jews reject their Messiah in Acts chapter three, if you remember that whole story, as that moved into Acts chapter four, there was persecution that arose. Why are you teaching that Jesus is the Christ in the temple? Why have you caused trouble by healing this lame man? And that led to persecution for the apostles there? Well, now, in the same way idolatrous Gentiles will reject the Messiah, but first by misunderstanding what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah.

2. Darkened Understanding (Acts 14:11-18)

And this brings us to the second section, darkened understanding in verses 11 through 18. What we see in 11, in verses 11 through 13 is a very blasphemous response. Jesus, the Christ has healed this man. And yet the people there, as the crowds, observe this, as they witness this. This happens outdoors, outside.

And as the crowds, who were just bystanders, see this crippled man from birth now suddenly leaping up, springing up and walking around, they make a calculation. They try to understand what's happening. But in their darkened understanding, they blasphemously declare that the gods have come down to us, the likeness of men. Now, Peter, or, excuse me, Paul and Barnabas, do not understand at first what is happening. Why?

Well, we're told in verse 11 that they declare this in, like, Lycaonian. They declare this in a foreign language that Paul and Barnabas do not understand. And so they're calling Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes because he was the chief speaker. But still it's not entirely clear what they are saying until in verse 13, when the priest of Zeus comes out from the temple, whose temple was at the entrance of the city, bringing oxen and garlands to the gate and wanting to sacrifice with the crowds. As they see this happening and understanding that they are the ones that the people intend to worship, in verse 14, they respond with tearing their garments to blasphemy.

Now, you may remember Jesus when he was being examined by the high priest and declared that he was indeed the Christ, the son of the living God. That the high priest. Now, he was wrong, but the high priest interpreted what Jesus had said as blasphemy. Now, again, that was the wrong interpretation of what Jesus said. The Jews misunderstood Jesus.

The Gentiles misunderstand the apostles of Jesus. But when blasphemy happens in the Jewish mindset, what do you do? You tear your clothes. High priest tore the clothes, thinking that Jesus had blasphemed. He was wrong.

But here, correctly, the apostles Paul and Barnabas hear it. And they tear their garments because of the blasphemy and rush out in the crowd crying out, men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you. And then it declares to them, we bring you good news. You think that you have something good in your midst.

You think gods have come into your midst, but I come to bring you good news. They are preaching to them. And notice what he gets to. He doesn't really fully get to the story of Jesus yet. He has to start by reorienting them to the true creation story of the Bible.

Now, what's very interesting, if you read the stories of the Greek mythology, of how creation came into being, it's a very complex process that involves a lot of chaos. Chaos is actually the name of some entity out of which creation came to be. And then there's conflict among the various gods, Zeus, whom they believe they are worshiping here, the high God was not actually the creator. That happened kind of before Zeus rose to prominence. But there's all these battles, all these wars in the heavens.

There's conflict, there's. There's, there's warfare. And suddenly out of that comes creation. Now, the common narrative, especially among atheists, is that if you look at the creation story of the Bible, well, that's just one more creation mythology, just like the ancient Greeks and all the other ancient peoples had. But understand that the modern ideas of the Big Bang theory and evolution are much closer to a pagan Greek creation mythology, where there's conflict and survival of the fittest.

That is much closer to the Greek creation myth than what we have in the Bible. The Bible is utterly unique in the creation story story that it tells, namely, that there is one living God who created all things. The heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. Even secular historians who were looking at ancient creation mythologies recognize that everything has warfare out of which creation emerged, except the Bible. Utterly unique in the creation story that this tells.

But Paul is saying you need to understand the true creation story to understand there is a true living God. We are not that God, but He exists and he has provided for you. He has given you food and gladness throughout your life, and he has come to declare to you salvation. But yet in verse 18, we read, even with these words, they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them. They remained darkened in their foolish gentile understanding.

So this morning I want to declare to you, maybe you are caught in our culture's mythology, the scientistic mythology, not scientific. The scientific method involves hypotheses, testing and experiments to verify a hypothesis into a conclusion. Well, you cannot test or hypothesize the creation story. By definition, creation happened exactly once. It cannot be tested.

This is not science. This is not scientific method. This is a philosophy. It is a religion. It is a worldview that starts by rejecting any possibility of a living God, by declaring that there is only and has always only been the material world, and then reasoning from there.

But I declare to you something so much better than your scientistic mythology. There is a living God who created the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything that fills this earth. He did not do this by a battle in the heavenly places. He is the only one who has existed from all eternity. You did not emerge by random chance.

You are not the product of primordial ooze or precocious apes. You were the loving creation of a God who made you in his image. Image and sent His Son to take upon your nature, to die in your place so that you could live with him forever.

You've seen some of his blessings in life. You've seen some of his goodness, and you have eaten of the food that he has provided to you. You have experienced some of the gladness that is just here as a part of the created order that this God created. But there is something so much better in Jesus, the Messiah, his Son, who has come to bring you salvation beyond this life, into eternity to come.

3. Hardness of Heart (Acts 14:19-20)

Well, Paul, after correcting the pagan darkened understanding of these Greeks, these, these people of Lystra, once they understand what's really happening here, this is where we see the third section of the hardness of their heart in verses 19 through 20. But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium. Now stop there for a moment. If you remember, these are the last two places where the apostles had been. And there they were preaching the gospel and many were coming to faith.

And then the Jews looked around and saw what was happening. And many Jews had believed, but many unbelieving Jews were stirred up to oppose them. That happened first in Antioch, Pisidia, and then in Iconium. And now apparently these unbelieving, rebellious Jews have followed the apostles to the next place they go. But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.

FF Bruce, a commentator on this passage, remarks that there is a grim irony in the quick reversal of the local attitude to the two apostles. What this passage shows us, it reveals that the crowds, they hadn't really heard, they hadn't really embraced the Gospel of Jesus in their darkened understanding. They were excited because they thought they understood what was happening, but they interpreted everything that the apostles were doing and saying in light of their own darkened understanding, in light of their own pagan idolatry. But when they finally understood that Barnabas and Paul were not Zeus or Hermes, and when they realized that these men actually represented something that was dangerous to those pagan myths and those pagan religions, they turned on them. They weren't simply ignorant.

This was not only a matter of they were being darkened in their understanding, but when the darkness of the understanding is actually clarified so they see exactly what the apostles represent. That's where you see the hardness of their hearts to the Gospel of Jesus. And so we read that given the chance, they stone Paul and drag him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. Now this, I think, is another part of the irony. They started by believing that these two were gods by definition.

Gods don't die, at least not from interaction with human beings in the warfare of the gods. Sometimes gods can die, but not in that way. The gods are by definition immortal. And yet these who they thought were immortal, they believed were dead. They believed Paul was dead, but apparently they were Mistaken.

It's unclear if this is a miracle or if Paul is just very badly battered and beaten and sort of revives. Here. Luke doesn't really exactly say, but in verse 20, we do read that when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city and. And on the next day, he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. This remarkable boldness here, after being first attempted worship toward him, then after being stoned and left for dead, what does Paul do when he rises up from this?

He goes back into the city that had just tried to kill him. Now he doesn't stay long, not because he was afraid. He just continues on to Derbe, and then he will continue to preach the gospel. If you peek ahead, we'll read in verse 21, when they had preached the Gospel to that city and had made many disciples notice that they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. So they're going to come back to the very place that tried to kill him.

It's just they have more work to do. The Master's call remains on their life, and they have more people who need to hear the Gospel of Jesus, the Messiah.

What's our application today? There is a tremendous picture here of the task of the church in evangelism, in reaching the nations to the ends of the earth. And the Book of Acts is giving us this incredible perspective to really understand evangelism for what it is and what it isn't. Where we are seeing that evangelism calls us to proclaim the extraordinary hope of Jesus Christ as light for salvation to the ends of the earth, but then to also be soberly aware that this light will be rejected by the dark that overcomes the entire human race. The darkness of understanding.

And once you get a little underneath that, the hardness of heart that rebels against the Gospel of Jesus. But nevertheless, we see here, and through the entire Book of Acts, that Gentile darkness cannot overcome the light of the Messiah. This perspective gives us such incredible freedom because we don't have to worry that evangelism is something that we must control. No one has ever been saved by our clever speech or by our profound wisdom. Rather, they are simply saved by faith, a faith that they received as a gift given to them by the work of the person of God, the Holy Spirit.

But more than that, we don't even have to worry about whether people will like us or not. Because, see, if the world applauds us, look at the work that this church is doing. Aren't they wonderful citizens of our worldly kingdom? If the world applauds us. It's going to be on their terms.

The more they come to understand who we are, what we represent, and the fact that we want to see the entire world come under the dominion of King Jesus, the more they will hate what it is that we stand for. Our goal is not to get the world to like us. Our goal is to get the world to worship Jesus.

But that, of course, will not happen universally. If the apostles were not skilled enough evangelists to bring all of these people to faith in Jesus, we aren't either. And yet the Holy Spirit is absolutely, perfectly effective to save anyone whom he chooses to bring to faith. This is good news. You can share the gospel without fear of messing it up.

You can share the gospel without fear of rejection. Because if they really knew what you believe, they would reject you. So what does it matter? Share the gospel. There's a great freedom here.

We don't have to conceal the message. We don't have to calculate whether our message will be approved. The world won't like it anyway. And yet, in the face of the opposition of a darkened understanding and a hardness of heart that is at the core of this world, we really do bring truly good news. We get to declare that King Jesus is God's only begotten Son, that he was appointed by his Father as the Messiah who brings light and life to the ends of the earth for the salvation of all peoples, from every tribe, language, people and nation.

It is God who converts. It is God who gives faith. This lame man was converted by the Holy Spirit when he listened to Paul simply preach the gospel. We have no control over the response. But here these three drastically different responses.

Saving faith on the one hand versus pagan worship versus stoning. Really there are only two choices. There's belief and there's unbelief. Our evangelism is not evaluated on the outcomes that are produced, but on the faithfulness. Simply declaring that Christ is the Messiah who died, was buried and raised from the dead for the forgiveness of sinners, and that he is coming back one day.

So I want to ask you this question. Who in your life needs for you to be faithful to share the gospel with them? With that question, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would make us bold.

Father, we recognize that you don't need us, and yet you call us to use us to declare your gospel, the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ, to a lost and dying world. And so we pray that you would make us bold, that you would lead us in faith and faithfulness And Father, we pray that the Holy Spirit would be the one to bring to faith those who look to Jesus Christ. We pray that the salvation would indeed come to the ends of the earth to reach all your elect from every tribe, language and people and nation. We pray this in Christ's name, Amen.

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)

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Sep 13

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

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