This week, we are continuing in our new sermon series, “Embracing the Weirdness.” For the past two weeks, we have been drawing our attention to the fact that obedience to God is… well, pretty WEIRD.
We have seen that we are often willing to follow God in the things that keep us from standing out, but when our obedience to Him makes us look weird, we tend to draw the line. Even convincing ourselves that God would never ask us to do anything that would make us look weird, let alone actually BE weird. Oh, but He does!!!
Last week, we saw in Acts chapter 16, there are times obedience to God means making decisions that many people would never understand, but God can do incredible things through that kind of faith.
This week, we watch as Paul suffers greatly for his obedience, and we also get a glimpse into what it really means to die to ourselves and to “count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Acts 14:19-20
"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."
Community Group Questions:
Read: Philippians 3:4-8, Acts 13:14-23, Acts 13:28-33, Acts 13:38-43, Acts 14:1-7, Acts 14:19-23
Discuss:
1. How does it affect us when we are unfairly treated (whether it’s being looked down on, passed over or far worse) because we are being obedient to Christ?
2. In Iconium and in Lystra there were large groups of unbelieving Jews who were set against Paul and Barnabas who actively sought to discredit their message. How did this affect their actions?
- How do we react when we face opposition? How do we respond to those who come against us?
3. When Paul continues to preach in Lystra, he is stoned by unbelieving Jews who followed him there from Iconium. What is Paul’s response to this stoning?
- What does this response tell us about his commitment to the gospel?
4. Paul was a man who no longer had anything to lose! What of ourselves do we still have left to abandon? (Oh, man!!! This is a good one guys!)