We're going to read from Acts 14 now. Acts chapter 14. And we are up to verse 19. Acts 14, starting at verse 19, it says, 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 around him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia, And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Atalia, and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. When they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. And they remained no little time with the disciples. Amen. We who have been saved, we understand that we serve an all-powerful God. And we also understand that his love for us is immeasurable. And so, those two truths should, might lead us to the conclusion that we should never suffer any harm or distress. After all, if God really loves us, and he has the ability to prevent our suffering, well surely he would exercise this power and give us a trouble-free journey through life. Isn't that what love is? Yet had he wanted to give us that from the moment of our conversion, he'd have simply changed us in a twinkling of an eye and transported us to his paradise, but instead he ordained that we should continue to live in this world while simultaneously living in his kingdom. The fact is God's purposes for us include tribulation, suffering. Now we're given hints in the Bible why God chooses this path for us. but a full explanation is something we'll have to wait for. But regardless of what insight we're given into the reasons why God ordains to put us through this in life, we do learn that tribulation is a core experience of the believer. Now, you might remember, but we did look at this issue of suffering not that long ago. So as not to repeat myself, I thought that I would look at it from a slightly different angle. And I thought we'd look at the sufferings of Paul and also the example from Jesus, which Paul had. Paul's suffering shouldn't be thought of as normal. His excessive activity that we're studying right now, brought excessive suffering. Now if you cast your mind back, a good few weeks now, but we looked at Paul's conversion, and we considered that, and you might remember that the risen Jesus talked about just how much Paul would suffer for his sake. Paul's suffering shouldn't be thought of as something to copy. We don't seek to suffer so that our faith becomes real. We ensure our faith is real, then accept that suffering will come with it. Now you might think It's a bit silly, you know, the idea that someone would purposefully bring suffering on themselves to make their faith real. You might think I said this, you know, just to make a point. But even from the earliest days of the church, people have tried to bring suffering on themselves so that they'll have more assurance that their faith is real. Christians, would preach publicly in a contentious way, knowing full well that it would bring down the attention of the authorities on them and get them into trouble. A small number of Christians even resorted to self-harm. Because they thought that a life without persecution or harm was not a real Christian life. for a very small number within that group. Some of them even resorted to suicide because they thought they were doing it in the name of Christ. So let's be clear anyway that deliberately trying to bring suffering on yourself in that way is sinful. We don't seek it out. So let's have a look at What Paul suffered, let's look at Paul's persecution, what he suffered here, and also we'll extend that to other things that he went through. So, what's happening here? Well, there's a very real and dangerous turn of events taking place. Now, you'll remember last week that Paul, the week before, Paul had healed a disabled man. And the response of the pagan crowd, if you remember, was to declare him and Barnabas to be Greek gods come down in the flesh. And the apostles strenuously denied that they were. And it was an awful thought and they were just men made in the image just like the people were, the other people. The apostles had been preaching the sovereign grace of God and saving people from their sins. In other words, they preach Christ crucified. But the crowds, being made up of perfectly normal people, hated this gospel of grace. Because the natural man hates the gospel of grace. They're okay with the gospel of works, of merit. but not one of grace. So these people in the story, they'd interpreted this event of the miracle the way we'd expect pagans to interpret it. I think it must have been disappointing for these people to hear from the apostles that they were not gods. It sort of burst their bubble, really, And so now perhaps they've gone off Paul and Barnabas a bit. But what turns the tide is the arrival of the Jews. So now they come from the towns where the apostles have preached the gospel. Antioch, up north, and Iconium. There's another Antioch down in sort of Israel. So these, if you've got your Bible open and you look back to verse five in this chapter, it will remind you that the Jews had already sought to stone the apostles to death, but the apostles got away. Now these places, these places of fear, Antioch up in Pisidia and also Iconium. Well, they are miles away from where Paul is in Lystra. Miles away. And some Bible commentators have doubted whether those people would have made such a long and difficult journey, you know, just to throw stones at Paul. Well, to answer that, we only need to remind ourselves of the lengths Paul himself went to to hunt Christians back in the day. He went all over the place, so let there be no doubt that just as the Jews would travel far and wide to make one convert to Judaism, as it says, so they'd travel wherever necessary to silence those who they saw as enemies. The Jews, just like they've done before, they persuade the crowds to turn against the apostles. And these people who, remember, just a short while ago, hailed Paul as, you know, the god Zeus in the flesh, they now pick up stones to kill him. And the Jews, well, they happily joined forces with outright pagans. They joined forces with the pagans to kill this man, one of their own, who dared to change his mind, have a different theological position. It's not clear what happened to Paul when he got stoned, but a stoning would cause broken bones, internal bleeding, brain trauma, those sorts of things. Paul is so close to death that they decide he must be dead. And so they drag him out of the city and dump his body. We know Paul isn't dead because it records for us that the people, it says, merely thought that he was dead. Anyway, some of the people who'd who've believed the gospel and become disciples of Christ are present and they go to see what they think is the dead body of Paul, maybe get ready to bury him. Paul had surprised people when he healed that disabled man, didn't he? Because although the man had never walked, His healing was pretty dramatic. You know, when he was healed, he just jumped up straight away. And this sounds something like what happened to Paul, because despite all the damage done to him, the severe, you know, physical trauma, he managed to get up and walk back to the city. So there's something of a miracle involved there. He did stay overnight in the city, I mean, you know, he should have been in A&E. He should have been taken to theater, had all kinds of operations, and occupied a hospital bed for a few weeks. Instead, he embarks on a 100-mile journey to Derby. Then he returns back all that way, back through Leicester, where he was stoned, preaching all the time. Then back up to Iconium and Antioch, the very places where the Jews had come from, the ones in Stoneton. A brave man, after his near death experience, he just carries on. He doesn't focus on his own horrific experience. Because if you look at verse 21 onwards, it says there that Paul along with Barnabas, It's said that he encourages the brethren, he appoints elders to oversee the churches, he fasts, he commits them to God in prayer. But he also makes sure they understand what they're in for. Because verse 22 makes it clear that our entrance into this kingdom of God involves many tribulations, suffering, So he wanted them to be prepared. He wanted them to steel themselves through the power of God for the trouble they'd likely see in the future. Paul himself, I think, had learned a hard lesson because he was the one who'd been involved in the stoning of Stephen. Stephen died, of course, and now Paul has tasted it for himself. And so, Paul knew that he was coming to realize that the more that the gospel spread, the more opposition would come. Let's read a summary from 2 Corinthians now, because in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul gives some examples of some of the things which he had suffered. 2 Corinthians 11, And verse 24. 2 Corinthians 11 verse 24, Paul says, five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. So the 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. So that. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from the Gentiles. Danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. That's quite a sobering list. I wonder how far I'd get before I just give up and just give up to it. It seems clear that the God who ordained that this evil should come upon Paul was the same God who stood right next to him during it, strengthening him physically and emotionally and incredibly even, filling him with joy throughout it all. Now don't misunderstand me. During all these things, Paul was genuinely injured and scarred. This is what he says to the church in Galatia, in Galatians 6 and 17. Galatians 6, 17 says, From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. You might think everyone loved Paul. Christians today tend to, you know, see him as a hero of the faith. I don't know, maybe they idolize him, but in his day, there were people who disliked him, disagreed with his doctrine, wanted him to suffer, wanted him to just go away. And that's not the Jews, that's just the Christians, by the way. That was just the Christians. And so we find that a few times in his letters he's defending himself. He has to reluctantly resort to defending himself then. And he's here speaking to the Galatian church, telling them to stop giving in grief. He tells them that his body is scarred from all the assaults and accidents he's suffered in the course of his Christian ministry. He doesn't want credit for it. He wants them to see it just as evidence of his commitment to the cause of Christ, just to see his sincerity. I testified to you a few weeks ago how God always rescues me out of my times of trouble. And the other Paul here makes the same confession. He says, He says in 2 Timothy 3, he talks about my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. Which persecutions I endured, yet from them, yet from them all, the Lord rescued me. The Lord rescued him from all of these tribulations. A preacher was once overheard chatting to someone one day about a day he'd spent in the country, and there was snow on the ground, and he spotted a line of blood on the snow, and it turned out to be the blood from an injured hare. So whether it had been hit by a car, got by a fox, shot or something, I don't know, it was injured. And this hare had left a trail, a big trail of blood behind it as it looked for a place to lie low and lick its wounds. And then that preacher thought how it reminded him of the Apostle Paul, because he'd spent years doing the work of God all over Europe. And through his suffering, it's like he left a trail of blood after him. So we've looked at some of Paul's tribulations, both in the current passage and also examples he gives elsewhere. But I want to talk also about Christ's tribulation, because this is at the root of why Paul is doing what he's doing. Really, to be willing to go through all that he went through and not give up, there must be a strong motivation from somewhere. And for Paul, his motivation was found in Jesus Christ. He served Jesus out of love. He served Jesus out of an appreciation for dying for him on a cross. He saved Jesus because he wanted this kingdom of God to be extended. And when he wasn't in the mood for saving Jesus, he nevertheless continued to save because it was his duty. Paul knew enough about Jesus to know that he too had suffered in life and especially in death. I mean, you think about when Jesus came into this world, He was under the threat of being killed by a king. Once his ministry had begun in earnest, people were plotting to kill him. When his time on the cross drew near, he suffered this dreadful anxiety within himself. When he was arrested, he was brutally beaten. When he was sentenced, he was nailed to a tree. And then, when that clock struck twelve at midday, there began a torment within his soul that is unimaginable to the human mind. All that which you and I should have suffered, he insisted on taking upon himself. These sheep, who he died for, numbered in their many millions, maybe tens of millions, and every one of those will, in their time, be stopped in their tracks. One way or another, the Lord shows them their sin and the sentence for it, and also that saviour who died to give them that pardon. I said earlier that Jesus had warned Paul at his conversion that his life from then on was going to be different, it's going to include much suffering. If the Lord ever had such a thing as a favourite disciple, he didn't, he doesn't, but surely Paul would be it. And yet he saves him and the first thing he says to him is, your life's going to become very difficult. Paul had been a rising star among the sect of the Pharisees. He had the respect and the fear of the people. He had a great career, if you like, ahead of him. He was more zealous than any of his peers. The Lord took all that off him and said, have all this suffering instead. Now, You and I know that's not the whole picture. Because it wasn't a bad thing which happened to them, of course, it was a very good thing. And the truth is that no matter what tribulation comes their way, the believer will never want to go back to what they once were. The only people who go back when they meet tribulation are people who are false professors. But there's even more to the Christian life. You know, it's not that just God enables us to cope until our time's up and we die. He fills us with his spirit. And the effect of the Lord God, the Holy Spirit living in us is what we know from the Bible is called the fruit. of the Spirit. It's what we've been studying in our Sunday evenings and times together. And the Bible of course lists a number of the effects which God has on us by his Spirit. I mean just consider the first three alone and it enables us to see how they affect the believer who goes through tribulations. The love which comes from the Spirit means that the believer is able to be kind and gracious even to the people who harm him. The joy which comes from the Spirit enables them to find happiness even in the midst of their suffering. And the peace which comes from the Spirit means they experience a strange lack of anxiety about the bad things that they're going through. So even in all that persecution, sorry, in that tribulation, Paul was still loving and joyful and peaceful. The level of Paul's persecutions, his tribulations, might be more than what most believers experience, but tribulation must come. Again, the people who Paul was warning at the time, These disciples, they were to suffer in ways which we might not, but tribulation must come. You've noticed maybe that I don't refer to myself as a Calvinist. I don't use the term Calvinism very much at all. And there's good reasons for that. But many of my beliefs would fit that description. You wanted to put me in a box. That's not so inaccurate as I want. In fact, my previous two messages have been thoroughly Calvinist, if I can use that word. But that doctrinal position, whatever we call it, it helps me understand what's going on with suffering. It's not out of God's control. My friends, certain Christian friends of mine, who are of a different persuasion, they believe that bad things happen to us because it's our fault and these things are carried out by Satan. And then God, because he loves us, he steps in, intervenes and helps us. Now I'm as baffled by their belief as they are by mine. When a while back, when a Christian friend told me that they'd nearly been in a car crash, which would likely have killed her. I spoke about it as something sent by God, that calamities come from the hand of God, whether he does it through other people or Satan or not. When I said that, my friend's jaw just fell wide open. She was horrified at the thought that a God who loved her would bring something bad into her life. Now, had she gone to a different church, she may there have heard the plain truth from the Bible itself, where God himself says to us that he's the one who brings these things into our lives. He says, Don't think that if evil comes your way that I haven't sent it. I don't know how clearer that needs to be. The Lord sends tribulation, He works out His purposes in it, then He delivers us from it. His sovereignty allows Him to do it, and His loving purpose for each of you causes Him to do it. In one of Peter's letters, he also raises this issue of suffering. It's found in 1 Peter 2. And in, so the second chapter of 1 Peter, verse 20 and 21. It says, if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this, suffering, You have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. Strange as it sounds, Jesus' suffering was an example for us to follow. His suffering, great though it was, didn't cause him to abandon his mission. He drew on the strength of heaven and endured, and so should we. The Sovereign Lord has ordained that we should go through a number of tribulation experiences. Now, when we were first saved, when we entered into his service, the terms and conditions of that stated clearly that we should expect suffering And when you look back over the past 2,000 years and read some of the things that Christians have suffered, you understand the reality. During his earthly ministry, the Lord told his followers that they should work enthusiastically for him and accept the consequences. He talked about, Jesus talked about the difficulty of the Christian life as being like taking a huge wooden cross on your back and going through life like that carrying a symbol of death because you must die every day in a sense you must die so that the new creation Christ within you can flourish but he continues Jesus continues, he says to his followers then and to us now, that if we're not prepared to do that, if we're not prepared to take up our cross every day, well, we are not worthy of him. We become something he's ashamed of. Think about that. And we have no right to believe that we even belong to him. Now, when I talk about tribulation in the churches where I speak which is really just England and Wales I have to do some explaining because let's face it we're not persecuted not really you know yeah okay there's some fella down down south who got arrested and spent a few hours in a jail cell okay that's bad It's a bad omen, if you like. Maybe you have things to come. But is it really hardcore persecution? No, of course not. The thing is, tribulation, as mentioned in the Bible, can be other things. You know, it can be other things than persecution. It can be other trials. Paul mentioned being in fear during his ministry. You know, out on the sea, the boat's knackered, you can't steer it. Anytime it can be submerged and you'll all die. That terrible fear was a tribulation. It's not all about persecution, but we can't escape this fact that persecution should be expected in all Christian lives. Now remember, persecution does not have to be being tied to a stake and set alight and burned to death. It doesn't have to be that. It could be someone on the street calling you stupid because you give them a leaflet about God. It could be someone in work just ignoring you, avoiding you because they found out you're a Christian. Friends, we are in a fortunate position, if I can use that word, In the general persecution which the church suffers, there are times of peace and our little congregation being in this location at this time hasn't suffered any major persecution. But there are two reasons why you might have lived your life without any persecution of note. There's two. Firstly, you could just be living in an artificial situation. Your faith is real, but this situation is slightly artificial. It could be that God has decided that our generation here will escape the wasting of our church. It could be that. But does this with a possibility? The Christian today might have avoided all persecution by not serving God as they should, they could be hiding at home. They could be lying low to avoid anything unpleasant because of their faith. I don't want to discourage anyone, brethren. It may be that you are serving God faithfully, as best you can, and the Lord has simply decided to grant you an easier pilgrimage. You shouldn't assume, in other words, that your safety, the safety you enjoy now, you shouldn't assume that means that you're doing something wrong. That is not the case. But it should encourage you to think about it at least. Regularly take stock of your service to God and see if you are daily taking that cross up, that burden of Christian service and carrying it. Are you making sacrifices for the cause of the gospel? Or do you love the luxurious lifestyle that you have? Are you being faithful witnesses to the Lord? Well, I wouldn't want to be hard on people or myself, but I'd venture to say this, that if you're a Christian and you've never had so much as a negative word directed to you, at you, because of your faith, there's probably something wrong. Paul was persecuted and his motivation was the great persecution that Christ suffered on the cross in particular. I just want to talk in the time we have about entrance into the kingdom because our text in verse 22 there says, about entrance into the kingdom of God. And I want to just quickly make an important point about this kingdom first. Now you might think about the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, that it's necessarily something future. But if you go home and you look at all the occurrence of those terms in the Bible, you'll hopefully see that there's more than one aspect to the Kingdom. Certainly it does describe something in the world to come. But there is a present aspect to it. So I want you to understand, it's my conviction that when you were converted to Christ, you became citizens of the Kingdom of God. You personally are a tiny location of the Kingdom of God on Earth, if you like. And when we gather together like today, it's like we've created a kind of a bubble, if you like, of the kingdom of God. That's what's happening. And you think about it, as we speak now, there are thousands of little pockets of the kingdom of God scattered all over our land. Wherever heaven's influence exists, God is acknowledged as king because we're his subjects. We are in the kingdom because we recognize that we are his subjects. We've already entered the kingdom of God in a sense and our entrance into the kingdom continues day by day. How so? because we're moving further and further towards our final destination. It's as if we already have our King in view and one day we'll be able to enjoy a more immediate view of him. Now if you read that verse, you know, tribulations, enter the kingdom, you might think, well, it's easier to read the verse as, okay, we go through this lifetime of tribulations and then we get into the kingdom after we're dead. But there is more to it than that. Now, I don't know whether this helps as an illustration, but let me steal this imagery in the text and apply it to something else and say this. tomorrow, through many doors. When our Christian journey starts, we meet with our first tribulation, whatever it might be. Could be small, could be big. And when I get to my workplace, I meet many doors. But I go through that first door into the foyer, and if Karen happens to ring me, I'll say, oh, Aunt May, I've just arrived in work. I'm in work. But there are still many doors and things to get through yet. So my entrance into work isn't one event, is it? It's numerous smaller events. I'm still in work at the start. I'm in work, really. I'm still in work when I get out of the lift. But the most important event of them all is the final one when I arrive at my desk. And so, Our life now as believers is a continual entrance into the kingdom of God. But this process will have an end. The crowning event of our grand entrance into the kingdom is actually our resurrection to eternal life. Because then we'll know God like never before. And all those cries which have gone up down the centuries saying, thy kingdom come, we'll have their answer. The kingdom will extend to every corner of the world. Now, we can discuss this later, but I believe it's probably theologically incorrect about talking about us going to heaven, because rather, the scriptures talk about heaven coming to us. Why do you think we pray, thy kingdom come? So it's the other way round. In reality though, that's just a small distinction, because is it really that much different I mean, whatever this environment is which we're resurrected into, might not be distinct from heaven. So whereas now we have, we think of the earth and then God's habitation in a different realm, maybe in the future, these two things are just one. Maybe that's it. The truth is such things are too high for us, but the scriptures say that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So whatever your imagination conjures up for your eternal destination, I'm sure it blesses your soul to consider that it is a world which is sinless, it's a world which is inhabited by your resurrected friends, and a world in which you'll see the glorified resurrected Son of God face to face And so these holy daydreams of ours stimulate us and keep us going. And I'm sure these type of thoughts kept our forefathers going through times of great persecution. Friends, in the days ahead, should you only so much as feel a bit downcast because of this hostile world, remember that your feet are planted firmly on holy ground, the holy ground of God's kingdom. You are currently making your royal entrance into the kingdom, and that day is coming very soon, when you'll reach that wondrous destination. All along the way, counted worthy to suffer for Christ. Amen.