This morning, we continue our series in the book of Acts, and we'll look at the first half of Acts 14 today. Beginning with Acts 14 verse one, let's give our attention to God's inerrant, infallible, and inspired word. Now in 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 others with the apostles. When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews with their rulers to mistreat them and stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derby, cities in Lyconia and to the surrounding country. And there they continued to preach the gospel. 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 to walk and begin walking. And when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices saying in Lyconian, 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, Zeus, the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance of the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifices with the crowds. When the apostles Barnabas and Saul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed 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 all 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 and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. Even with these words, they scarcely restrain the people from offering sacrifices to them. But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul, dragging him out of the city, supposing 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. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this wild passage. Lord, I pray, as has already been prayed, I pray again that your Holy Spirit move in them and me. Lord, for your glory, you are at work in our generation, the generation of our children. We pray, Lord, that you would be working this morning. Use my feeble efforts, Lord. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen. Amen. Well, kids, I'm halfway through the sermon. I'm going to ask you to draw something. So if you go ahead and start finding something to draw with, you'll need it halfway through the sermon, okay? And kids, I don't know if you know the word unflinching. Do you know the word unflinching? This is the definition for it. It says, a not shrinking, a not yielding or pulling away in the face of danger or fear or pain. Synonyms are fearless, steadfast, and unwavering. This is something that all men desire to be, and all young boys desire to grow up to be. Unwavering. This is what women desire their husbands to be, and young girls dream of one day marrying a man like this. Now Hollywood pumps out fraudulent imitations of this by the droves, right? You can think of a number of actors and every movie they're in, right? It's a fraud, right? They aren't really, they don't really have courage. It just appears as such. A few authentic, real authentic examples are hard to find, right? I think so. I want to tell you about, give you some data points. I'm not going to, I'm either endorsing them, nor am I going to offer any critique of them. But just for facts to build a case here. When I grew up, I heard about the promise keepers. All right. And so many thousands, hundreds of thousands of men would gather in stadiums. And then another book came out. This is more of my dad's generation called Man in the Mirror, a movement. And organizations start from that. And they encourage men to be better husbands, fathers, Christians to embrace godly manhood. And when I was in college, a book came out called Wild at Heart by John Eldridge. And it too was similar vein. It said that in the opinion of that author, that every man has three great desires, a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. That's just three of many, many examples in recent years of this effort of men trying to find what it means to be a real man. You can probably think of many others, and there's probably many others now. For me personally, I love watching many of you. I've talked to about historical stories from World War II of people who did courageous things. There seemed to be a lot of those in World War II. Tom Brokaw wrote a book in 1998 called The Greatest Generation, as he coined that term for that generation. Many of our, whatever it be, your grandfathers or some great grandfathers would serve in that era. We seem to be living in an age when young men are grasping for something that's solid, right? Many of them are fed up with the entertainment driven churches. And so some of them, they end up in the Catholic church or Anglican church. They want something that has historical roots right there. We do live in a time when people are looking for this. So I ask you men, how content are you with your courage, with your life, with your manhood? If you look at the outline on page seven, we see a beautiful picture of unflinching resolve in this passage. And so that's the first point, unflinching resolve, an example to imitate. Secondly, Christ is building his church. Just those two points this morning. unflinching resolve, an example to imitate. We'll begin there. Let me just remind you, chapter 13, they're on this first missionary journey, right? So they're traveling around Mediterranean world. 13, we read a long sermon, right? Where he preaches more Jewish context. I'll come back to that. But they, persecution rose up there and so this these are the end they actually drive get driven out of the district this is uh third chapter 13 51 and 52 but they shook off the dust from their feet against them and went to iconium and the disciples were filled with joy and with the holy spirit which is amazing we've already talked about that so i've never been driven out of a town i doubt it's much fun but like you would think they'd be like okay now it'd be a good time we should probably head on back to back home they don't right they just keep plowing ahead to the next city and so we pick up in the next city I'm looking at verse one of our chapter today. So this is chapter 14. We'll just walk through this passage verse by verse. Now in Iconium, they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. Remember, this is their pattern. They go often to the Jewish synagogue first. If there is one, they preach there. And if they get kicked out, they end up with the Gentiles. And I'd love to be there. Wouldn't it be cool? Great number of Jews and Greeks believed. But of course it doesn't say that way. Look at verse two, but the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their mind. Isn't that an interesting expression? You know, you can get food poisoning. You eat bad food. Water can be poisoned. They poisoned their minds. What's that mean? Kids, what do you think? Can your mind be poisoned? You better believe it. It's happening right now in universities, public universities across our country, even some public schools, right? And that's not even to speak of TikTok and YouTube, right? Where godless ideologies are just put forward and many, many believe it poisoning their minds, right? So opposition stirred up. How does, how does Paul and Barnabas respond? Do they run for the Hills? No, of course not. Look at verse three. So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord. They bore witness to the word of his grace, granting the Lord who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. Right? So they double down, don't they? They actually say, Hey, if there's going to be all this opposition, we're going to stay even longer than they maybe would have. Pastor Richard Phillips, I thought said it well. He said, they didn't reason that where there's opposition, we must retreat. And what they reasoned was where there's opposition, we should fortify the advance. They didn't hold that opposition called for a quick retreat, but a more vigorous assault. And because of the slander and the threats, they stayed longer than they might've otherwise. Undoubtedly for the sake of the church that had begun because of their preaching. Thought that said it well. Look at verse four, it goes on. So they stay longer. The people of the city are divided. And this is this I want to draw attention to. They're divided. Some sided with the Jews and then some with the apostles. We've seen this, haven't we, through Acts? This always seems to happen, right? You get two groups of people, some that are thrilled and some are driving them out of town, right? Some are believing and others are upset. We saw this last week, in the last several weeks in Antioch at Basidia. As I reflected on this passage, I actually journaled for myself and actually decided to share with you. And so this is, because why do I share this with you? Because the word of God needs to first impact the pastor, right? If the word of God doesn't impact me, I can't preach it to you. And so this is some of my reflections. The gospel always produces a divided response. If my ministry doesn't produce a divided response, I am doing something fundamentally wrong. But my idolatrous love of the approval of people runs cross-grain with this. My calling is to preach the gospel unadulterated and undiluted. I'll admit, I do find it easier to do this from the pulpit than face-to-face. I know the results are determined by the soil that the seed lands on. It's so obvious with farming, but hard to remember with people. I've often not identified the difference between people with hard hearts and those with soft hearts. There is a balance I need to find between casting pearls before swine, as scripture says, and slowing down enough to allow time for the word of God to do its work. As I've learned over the past year, the evangelistic tools I've exclusively used for most of my adult life did not match the farming context I'm farming in. The reason I share these personal reflections is I want you to personally reflect, right? As we read these passages, you see them get this divided response. How does it make you feel? How do you approach things? Some of you might be called to be pastors and missionaries one day. Many of you are not, but it still applies. How does this apply? This is what we want to look at. I know one lesson from this is if you're familiar with the term social graces, I didn't come into a marriage or adulthood with many. My wife had many. And so she shared some with me. I've, I've better social graces than I did a decade ago. But often I think our, our social graces actually undermine our effectiveness to tell people the truth. Interesting. I say it that way, right? To tell people the truth. We, we often, most of us, if not all of us, we prize ourselves in being truth tellers, right? I doubt many of you are admitted liars, right? We, we, but what about in this area? Many of you believe, if not, most of you believe there's a judgment to come. Heaven and hell are real places. Don't you believe those things? Most of you do, right? But do we tell the truth? Now, if you're here just exploring Christianity, you get a pass. Not for you, but for the rest of you, you don't get a pass. If you believe all these things, do we tell people the truth? It's scary. It is scary to tell people the truth about things we know, we believe. We even talked about it in Sunday school this morning. I've been personally convinced that the more and more I live in my Christian life, that I have really deep seated cowardice. Like there's a lot of coward in here and I don't like it. And layer by layer, the Lord is stripping it away. But funny, there just seems to be more of it, right? I don't know if you can relate. So let's look what happens next. Look at verses five to seven. When an attempt was made by the Gentiles and Jews with their rulers to mistreat them and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities in Lyconia, to the surrounding country. and there they continue to preach the gospel. Okay, so again, they're getting run off, right? And you might say, oh, it doesn't sound like unflinching courage to me. They're fleeing. You know, there actually is, through the whole Bible, there are examples of courageous men and women that God calls, sometimes to stay and face trials, and then other times to flee. It's a very biblical pattern. I think it was John Piper that first pointed this out. I was like, that's a really good point. He listed a whole bunch of passages. It's true. Jesus, a lot of other people, sometimes they stay, sometimes they leave. They say, ah, we think it's time to go. Now they want to stone us. And we're actually going to see both in this one passage. And so then they go to the next city. Again, we might think, ah, they might go home. No, they just keep going on and look at verses eight to 10. So now they get to Lystra. Let's see what happens there. Now in 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, Paul looking intently at him. I love that. Paul's always been looking intently at somebody, seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, stand upright on your feet. Right? And we've seen Jesus did this. Peter did this, right? Similar miracles like this. He sprang up and he began walking. Yeah. So again, we have a miracle. Uh, how does the crowd respond? Look at the next verse. This is wild. When the crowd saw that Paul, what Paul had done, they lift up their voices saying in Lyconia, the gods have come down in the likeness of men. That's not exactly the response they were hoping for. Uh, so Paul, they named Zeus. I'm sorry, Barnabas. They named Zeus. Paul, they called Hermes because he's the chief speaker. Um, the priest of Zeus, you know, here, he's bringing out this oxen and garlands and want to offer sacrifices. And so it's wild, right? Now we remember from Herod, remember that story? If somebody calls you God, right? There's a certain way you're supposed to respond. Not like Herod did. So they obviously are going to correct him. Look at verse 14. When the apostles, so they're using apostles, maybe with a small A, they're sent out from the church, not with like a big A, like the apostles that Jesus sent out. The apostles, Barnabas and Paul heard of it. They tore their garments and rushed out to the crowd crying out. What do they say? Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you. You might remember Peter with Cornelius. He said something similar, right? Don't because remember, Cornelius fell down at Peter's feet. He wanted to worship him. He said, I'm a man just like you. Don't worship me. We bring you good news, right? And so they're going to begin to proclaim the gospel. which is great. There's two things. I want to look at what they say. Okay. And there's two things I want to draw out of it. One is the presentation of God as creator. The second is their boldness and directness. Okay. So look at verse 15 and following what they say. They say, men, why are you doing these things? We are men of like nature with you. We bring you good news that you should, or you should listen to this. You should turn from these vain things to a living God. That's pretty bold. who made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that's in them." That's a quote there from I think Psalm 146, six, right? The heavens, the earth, and all that's in them. What is, what is he doing? So contrast that with what he did in the previous sermon, right? It was a bunch of Jews and he started with the history of Israel. Remember, we looked through that, right? He doesn't start there. Right? Old Testament prophecy starts with God is creator. Why does he do this? Well, because everyone, their whole life has been seeing God as creator, right? All humans look at the world around them. Romans one makes this argument, right? And everyone is without excuse. You know, God is not going to judge anyone for rejecting a gospel they never heard. Did you know that? On judgment day, if you never heard of Jesus, God's not going to judge you for that. What he will judge everyone for, and I'll read in a second what Romans 1 says, is that you had a creator. It is obvious when you look at the world around us, everyone should know that, and that you should worship the God that created you. Let me read to you from Romans 1. This is Romans 1, 19 and 20. It says, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived. ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Every human on this planet that's ever lived is without excuse because of this. They have lived in God's world and they should have worshiped him. Now rather they build idols and they worship the sun God. And you know, they don't actually worship the one who made everything. It should be obvious. Somebody greater than all of it made it. Okay. So that's where he starts right in there. He says in the, he made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that's in it. But I want to draw out, not only that he started with the creator. And from that, my point is this, when you're evangelizing, you're sharing the gospel with somebody, where they are makes a difference. If they've grown up in a Christian environment, you have more to work with. They grew up in a Jewish environment. You can start there. If they got none of that, well, you might want to start with Jesus as creator. God made all this. I think that's a good, good application. Okay. The other is their boldness and directness. Look at the middle of verse 15. I really like this. He says, you should turn from these vain things. What's he referring to? The Greek gods. Well, that's not very politically correct. So much for social graces, right? Turn from these vain things to the living God. What you have is a fraud. You need the living God. Is he telling the truth? Yes. He's telling him the truth. That's what they need to hear. They need to hear that what you're doing is vain things. As I said before, I think our social grace is often undermine our effectiveness to actually just tell people the truth we know. So let's look on. Oh, kids, here's where you need that. Did you get something to write with? All right, on the bulletin or something. Now, adults, if you don't have a kid nearby, you get to draw your own picture. Kids, you get to draw it for your parents. All right, so what we're gonna do is draw two circles that overlap each other, okay? Two circles that overlap each other. Adults, you might have heard this called a Venn diagram. All right, so we have two circles and they overlap. So you have part of the two circles that are overlapping each other. All right, now shade in the part that they overlap. All right, in one of the circles, write neighbor, and the other circle, write me. If you don't know how to spell neighbor, just ask a bigger kid beside you or your parents, they'll help you. Neighbor and me. I think that a lot of us approach our friendships with those around us this way, right? What do you talk about with your neighbor? Well, the little shaded area, right? They got a lawn that they're trying to keep alive. They have a favorite football team. They have a job. They have kids. What do you talk about? Well, those things. It's the common ground. Think of a doctor thought like this. He goes to med school and then he comes to patients. He says, well, I'm just going to talk about the common ground with my patients. They didn't go to med school. Let's just talk about what we have in common. What a lousy doctor. No, it's all this over here. I didn't pay my copay for you to tell me what I already know. I paid my copay so you can tell me what I don't know. Hope that makes sense. Your neighbor needs the rest of this. Your neighbor needs what they don't know. And actually, have you ever talked about what you don't have common ground with? What's the foundation of their life? What are they thinking? And then obviously the gospel is going to fall over here in this side. I see it's a helpful little diagram to think about. I start with a, that's a great place to start. Start with common ground, great conversation, but just don't end there. Right? Did they, did they just, it was just a common ground conversation. Turn from your vain things to the living God. Nope. Not so much. All right, we go on. I just hope you're seeing their confidence. I mean, look at verse 18, even after all these words, they scarcely restrain the people from offering sacrifices to them. What a wild scene, but we can't stop there. Can we? All right. Look at verse 19. But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, so the previous cities they were, they hated them so much, they track them down in the next city. And having persuaded the crowds, are you serious? The crowd that just was about to worship them is now persuaded to do what? Look at the rest of the verse. To stone Paul, dragging him out of the city, supposing he's dead. Stoning was an awful way to die. Having huge stones thrown at you. until you die. And so they chuck stones at Paul until they're convinced he's dead. And then look at verse 20, but when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and we'll, we'll finish that verse in a second. I mean, I can't make this stuff up. I mean, this is crazy from one second. They're about to worship him to then they've stoned him. I mean, how fickle can this crowd be? We've consistently seen this throughout the book, haven't we? That opposition, the more faithful you are, the more you speak of Christ, the more opposition rises up. And this is a pretty vivid picture of it in this. If you are trying to find your best life now, if you're looking for country cub Christianity, you're in the wrong place. You've probably figured this out if you've been here very long, right? We are dead set as a church on serving Christ in this community, whatever the cost. That's our heart as a church, whatever opposition arises, whatever it costs. It's the same. We share the same gospel with our neighbors that Paul did. They got him stoned that day in Lystra. Remember where we long back in the book, Stephen, Stephen was stoned. Who was there who was watching that, who oversaw that stoning of that righteous man? It was Paul. It was Paul. You think Paul was remembering that? I guarantee it. As they pick up stones to hurl at him, he remembered that day as he oversaw the stoning of Stephen. I bet he remembered what Stephen said. This is Acts 7, 55. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. I bet Peter remembered that. He might've thought something like, well, Jesus, here I come. My race is done. I'll be with you before the day is done. They stoned him. They were satisfied that he was dead. They dragged him out of the city. Paul opens his eyes not to see Jesus, but all his friends standing over top of him. Probably much to their shock. I mean, surely now Paul and Barnabas would head home. Is that what the verse, look at verse 20. He goes back into the city. Are you serious? He goes back into the city that just stoned him. This is unflinching resolve if I've ever seen it. Unbelievable. And then after that, finally, Barnabas probably drags him out of the city and says, why don't we move on? They go to Derby. They don't even head home now. Unbelievable. It's unbelievable. You know who this reminds me of? Elizabeth Elliot. Have you ever heard of Elizabeth Elliot? If you haven't, I'll tell you a very short version of the story. January 8th, 1956, her husband, Jim Elliot, along with four missionary buddies were speared to death by the Alcas, a tribe in Ecuador, in the jungles. They'd gone there to be missionaries, And there's not time for me to tell you the whole story. But do you know what happened after that? Her husband was killed. All their friends were killed. Two and a half years later, Elizabeth Elliot, with their three-year-old daughter, their only child, Valerie, go to the Akkas. Goes to that violent tribe that killed her husband. Going with them is Nate Saints, one of the other guys, missionaries that was killed. His sister, Rachel St. They go to this savage tribe that killed Elizabeth's husband and Rachel's brother. That is unflinching courage. It's not just men that need unflinching courage. It's also women. If you aren't familiar with that story, there's 2005 documentary, Beyond the Gates of Splendor, 2006 feature film, End of the Spear, a great retelling of the story. There's a lot more to it. It's a beautiful story. It reminds me of this. We got Elizabeth Elliot, we got Barnabas, we got Paul. Hollywood can't dream up stuff like this. This is, what's crazy is this really happened. Like this is history I'm retelling. Some of it's from 50, 75 years ago. Some of it's from, you know, 2000 years ago, but it's true. Like these are real people just like you, just like me. So we could enter a sermon here. and just say, be like these guys. You need unflinching courage. You can do it, get out there and do it. But that would really sell this passage short. So secondly, and far more briefly, Christ is building his church. Look with me back at verse three. There's something else in this passage you might've missed. Verse three. So they remained there a long time, seeking boldly for who? The Lord. Who? Who's the who? The Lord. The Lord who bore witness to the word of His grace. Whose grace was it? His. Grand signs and wonders to be done by their hands. It was their hands, but His power. The Lord was doing this. Remember, as we've been going through the book of Acts, this is about Christ. Christ is building His church. Yeah, so He might be up in heaven. You can't see Him. It is His power. You know, what Paul and Barnabas did, they could not do by human effort. This is not just great. You know, they are heroes, but they aren't just great people. I mean, for crying out loud, what did he do in his own strength? He was an enemy of the church. He was trying to destroy the church. The Lord saved him. It was the Lord that was carrying him. I just, I want you to see this. This is Christ's power that is accomplishing this. This is not by their own strength. I want to read to you several passages to help make this point and bring it home to you. First Corinthians two. So this is Paul writing to the Corinthians. This is chapter two, verse one to five. He says, and I, this is Paul speaking. When I came to you brothers, I didn't come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with a lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to do nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness and fear with much trembling. My speech, my message were not with plausible words of wisdom, but a demonstration of the spirit and of power so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but the power of God. Right? This church, this church here isn't built on me. It's built on Christ. Paul later, when he speaks of his own thorn in the flesh, this is now second Corinthians 12, nine and 10. But he said to me, this is Paul speaking of God or Christ. My grace is sufficient for you for my powers made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me for the sake of Christ then. I'm content in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities. For when I'm weak, then I'm strong. Those are the words of Paul, that man of unflinching courage. This doesn't sound like Hollywood's mantra, does it? So to all you men and actually women too, and kids who will grow up to be men and women, if you want to live courageously, facing challenges with boldness, not shrinking back, I found it's very helpful to acknowledge our fear, our cowardice, that we're actually weak people. I think that's a good starting point. That's not what the world says. The world says, well, pretend that you aren't all those things and just put on a good face, fake it till you make it. Now what the gospel says is actually acknowledge, oh, I'm weak and I'm a coward, but God is the strength in me. I hope you see that contrast. Our response should be like Isaiah 6, 8 says, And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send? Whom shall go for us? Then I said, here I am, send me. Right? You don't have to be great. God's the great one. You do have to be available. You do have to be available. That's actually what our goal is as a church, right? We just want to be available. God use me. This year, as we think about living on a mission, that's what we're doing is saying, God use me. I'm weak. I'm scared. We can acknowledge that does not surprise God. I've used this passage many times, but I love it so much. You're getting it again. First Corinthians one beginning in verse 26 for consider your calling brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth, but God shows the foolish of the world to shame the wise. God shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God shows what's low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, so that it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Do you see this pattern? Do you see the pattern? We are weak, God is great. That is the people that God uses, the man, the woman, the child. I don't know if you've ever heard the expression, the world is your oyster. Have you heard that expression? Do you know where it comes from? I don't often quote him, but best I can tell from my research comes from William Shakespeare. His play, The Merry Wives of Windsor published 1602. He had a character named Pistol says, why then the world's mine oyster? which with my sword I will open. So you have a picture here of this guy with his mites going to shove the sword into the oyster, pop it open and get the oyster out, right? The world is your oyster. Not because with your might, you're going to take a sword and thrust it in and pop it out and take out some oyster or take out a pearl. No, Christ did that. Christ isn't with a sword. He has broken it up. We talked about this recently. His kingdom has already come and not yet. You remember that? Between D-Day and V-Day. You remember that? He's the one that's done it. He's looking for just willing people who will honestly say, hey, I'm a coward too. I'm scared, but I'm available. Use me, God. Here I am. I think that is a far more helpful application. Where did, where did Paul get this from? Who's he following? You have to excuse this is old NIV. That's what I memorized it in. Philippians chapter two, Paul says this, your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God, a thing to be grasped. made himself, but being found in human likeness, he made himself a servant, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him. Given the name is above every name in the name of Jesus. Every knee should bow. This is Christianity is bowing knees. Have you done this? This is like a really strong position, isn't it? This is Christianity. Every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess Jesus Christ is Lord. Lord means the guy in charge. Is he in charge of your life? God calls men and women and children to humble themselves before him. Christ is our example. Paul said this in first Corinthians 11 one, be imitators of me as I am of who? Christ is the way that verse ends. Christ came in weakness. He turned the world upside down, didn't he? Won our salvation. You don't need to be like Hollywood. Unflinching courage looks like humility. Acknowledgement of our weakness. And so we end as Hebrews 12, one through three says, again, this is old NIV. Therefore, since we were surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders this sin that so easily entangles us. Kids, sin easily entangles you, doesn't it? It does me too. Let us throw this off and run the race with perseverance that's marked out for us. Fixing our eyes on who? Jesus, not Paul, not Barnabas, not Elizabeth Elliot. Jesus. Fixing our eyes on Jesus. Oh, that this would sink into your hearts. It's in the process of sinking into my heart. Oh, that we'd be transformed, that unflinching courage would come to a bunch of cowards and fearful men and women and children who say, here I am, send me. Let's pray. Lord, we were a little church, like a little mustard seed, but Lord, we know that you can do a lot with a little. We thank you for the example of Paul and Barnabas, their unflinching courage, unflinching resolve in the face of unbelievable opposition and incredible physical pain. Lord, I pray and thank you for Elizabeth Elliot and her example and all those Akka Indians that you saved through her unflinching resolve. Lord, I pray that you'd use our church, even in children that are hearing this sermon today, Lord, that some of them would get ahold of this and we grow up to serve you in their generation, courageously facing whatever persecution comes. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.