“Mistaken Identities”
Acts 14:8-18
December 16, 2007
(NOTE: I began my message with a slide show of "celebrity lookalikes", which can be easily found via a Google search.)
Mistaken identity can be fun…(SLIDE SHOW)
This man was never really President; he is not Bill Clinton.
Nor is this man our Vice-President, Dick Cheney.
Would you have voted for either of these two men? That’d have been a problem, since neither of them has ever run for president.
This guy was never a top gun or a rain man, and he wasn’t’ born on the fourth of July.
This man was never Bond, James Bond.
Nor was this man ever the Terminator, or the Governator.
And this guy never made anybody an offer they couldn’t refuse, at least not that we’re aware of. (Brando)
You…you talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? (DeNiro)
This is not Roy Orbison. Oooh, ooh, pretty woman.
Oooh, ooh, pretty woman. (Julia Roberts)
Oooh, ooh, pretty woman. (Michael Jackson)
Not the richest ex-con in America. (Martha Stewart)
Not the richest man in America. (Bill Gates)
This guy probably couldn’t teach you a thing about golf. (Tiger)
This guy never played a swashbuckling pirate. (Johnny Depp)
This guy never made beautiful music. (Paul McCartney)
This guy never made great movies. But then again, neither did this guy. (Michael Moore)
This guy is such a close match for that guy…what’s his name…that he could have fooled me! (Elvis)
U2? (Bono)
And the guy on the left has actually been arrested twice, for looking like the guy on the right! (Osama)
Mistaken identity can be fun. And it can be tragic.
Headline in Wednesday’s AJC - DNA test frees man who served 30 years
John White confesses he’s no angel, and admits that he committed the robbery and drug offenses that earned him prison sentences of 7 and 2 years in the 1990s. But the Meriwether County man always said he was innocent in the 1979 rape of a 74-year-old Manchester woman. White, who was convicted of the rape and sentenced to life in prison, was released from the Macon State Prison in Oglethorpe Monday night after new DNA tests ruled him out as the rapist. White was arrested six weeks after the August 11, 1979 rape, and the victim, who had also been beaten and robbed, picked him out of a photo line-up. She later picked White, then 20, out of a line-up, and he was found guilty the following May of rape, aggravated assault, burglary and robbery and sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years. He served about 10 years of that sentence before he was paroled in 1990.
In 2004, White wrote a letter asking for help from the Georgia Innocence Project (GIP), a non-profit organization started in 2002 that uses DNA testing to free those wrongly convicted of crimes. The GIP took on the case, and discovered earlier this year that while a piece of human flesh found at the crime scene had been destroyed, hairs collected and linked to White through microscopic analysis were still on file at the Meriwether County Superior Court Clerk’s office. In early November the evidence was sent to the GBI Crime Lab for DNA testing. Thursday the lab determined that the hair did not come from White, but from another person already in the DNA database.
White admitted that he hasn’t always lived a "model life," but said he has "no fear" of his future behavior resulting in another arrest. "I’ll try the best I can to rebuild my life," he said. "The first thing I’d like to do is embrace God a little bit better." We should pray that John White will do just that.
I want to talk today about several cases of mistaken identity that we find in the middle of Acts 14.
Paul and Barnabas are in the middle of their first missionary journey when we find them in Acts 14. After spending time in Iconium, seeing some come to faith but facing threatening opposition, the apostles journey to Lystra. Lystra, a city of unknown origins, was made into a Roman colony by Caesar Augustus in 6 B.C., who brought veterans of the Roman army into it, along with their families. These represented the ruling class, with commerce and education being overseen by a few Greeks living in the town. The population was mostly uneducated Lycaonians, and if there were any Jews living there, they were few; we find Paul preaching, not first in a synagogue as was his typical custom, but in the open air. This very likely indicated that there weren’t enough Jews living in Lystra for there to even be a synagogue. It is as Paul is preaching that we find our first case of
I. Mistaken Identity: A Lost Cause - :8-10
From the text, it is abundantly clear that this man is helpless when it comes to walking; the repetition gives it away. He’d always been this way; he’d never once had the experience of putting one foot in front of the other and making his own way around. Something so simple, which you and I take for granted, he’d never done. We think nothing of it, but you can be sure that this man must have thought a million times, “if I could only walk, the places I’d go; the things I’d do!” Our human pride is such that we don’t generally like it when others have to do things for us; this man never knew anything else. He was dependent on others for most everything in life. Had he given up hope? Why not? What did he have to place his hope in? The gods hadn’t done him any favors. Something as simple as walking down the street was only a pipe dream to him, one he dared not entertain lest despair overwhelm him. Though the text doesn’t say it, he probably made his living, such as it was, by begging. And the people who passed him by each day? Probably a mixture: some had pity, and would drop a few coins in his pot, while others stared straight ahead as they passed, steadfastly avoiding eye contact. Probably some regarded him as a wretch, cursed by the gods and probably deservedly so. In short, he looked for all the world like a lost cause.
But this was a case of mistaken identity. The man might have had bad feet, but he had keen ears, and he heard the message Paul was sharing, and the Bible says that Paul saw that he had faith! We spoke some months back about “visible grace”; now, we see “visible faith” on the part of this man. And in the context, “faith” is about more than just simply physical healing, more than just “I believe I can be healed”; there is a spiritual dimension implicit in the words, I believe. Somehow, this man’s face radiated faith. And Paul, somehow sensing this, commanded the man to get to his feet—something he’d never done in his entire life, not even once. Notice what happened here: faith led this man to do something. And we find out, contrary to popular belief, that white men can jump! Faith without works is dead; just saying, “I believe”, without accompanying action, is of little value whatever.
Now, let’s remember something: we have to always remember that faith is only as good as its object.
• We need to have the right object of our faith. The object of faith is God, not faith itself (we don’t need “faith in our faith”, as some would tell us).
• Every person has faith in something. The most hardened atheist is a person of faith. You cannot live on this planet without having faith in something, in fact in many things!
• It is faith, Hebrews tells us, without which it is impossible to please God. I’ve had conversations with more than one individual recently about this very thing, that as followers of Christ, we have to live by faith, to trust God’s heart when we can’t see His hand. I’ve got to live that way, not only to please God, but sometimes, to keep my sanity!
But before we leave this and move on, we need to ask this question: who have you subconsciously identified as a “lost cause”? It’s tempting to write people off, isn’t it? It’s tempting to look at circumstances and determine, in all our great wisdom, that they’re just too big for God. Congenital lameness was a biggie—but for God, it wasn’t anything at all. Neither, likely, is that thing that you think is such a biggie in your life, or in someone else’s life. Too big for God to handle. Hopeless. No chance. Lost cause. Don’t you believe it!
II. Mistaken Identity: Gods Come in Flesh - :11-13
When you first read this entire passage, one question that jumps out at you—at least it did me—was why it seemed to take Paul and Barney so long to realize what was going on. Here the people were shouting about these guys being gods, and the priest of Zeus begins making preparations to offer sacrifice to these men, getting cows together and garlands and the whole bit: well, why didn’t Paul and Barney figure this out and do something more quickly? The answer is simple: the crowds lifted their voices in Lycaonian. This was a different tongue than they’d heard in Pisidian Antioch and in Iconium; it wasn’t familiar to them.
There was a local legend that told of earlier occasions in the history of the city when Zeus and Hermes, Greek gods, had come down to visit the city of Lystra, and the natural assumption of the people was that it had happened again. Ovid, in Metamorphosis, retold the legend, that Zeus and Hermes had come to the region disguised as ordinary men, seeking lodging for a night. They were turned away from a thousand homes, but were finally taken in by an elderly couple. The gods then proceeded to turn the humble home of this couple into a temple, with a golden roof and marble columns, and to make of the couple priest and priestess of the temple, who instead of dying, were transformed into sturdy trees. Then, Zeus and Hermes proceeded to destroy all the homes that had rejected them with a terrible flood. Spooked by this myth, the people of Lystra weren’t about to repeat that mistake, and so when the healing took place, they leaped to what seemed to them a rational conclusion: Zeus and Hermes were back!
Zeus was, of course, the head honcho god in the Greek pantheon; Hermes was his herald. Barnabas was the quieter of the two, perhaps appearing more dignified, whereas Paul was the talker, the main preacher, and it would be fitting that he be considered Hermes, the spokesman of Zeus.
And if these guys were Zeus and Hermes, far be it from the people of Lystra to fail to honor them; rather, cows were decked with the appropriate garlands for the purpose of sacrifice; everything was being made ready! Understand that the people of Lystra were responding with what they thought to be a high complement: worship! They were trying to do the right thing—and they were sincere! But sincerity isn’t enough. In fact, naked sincerity isn’t really much of a positive quality. I suppose it trumps insincerity, the kind of thing that causes people—like, say, football coaches—to profess loyalty one minute and then the next to jump ship. Ahem…but sincerity in the service of a lie is no virtue, and that’s exactly what was happening here: they were sincere, but sincerely wrong!
Sometimes the messenger gets killed, but sometimes the messenger has the opposite problem: he gets praised too highly! And sometimes people make heroes of communicators, to the degree that they either don’t hear what they’re saying—they just love the experience—or they swallow uncritically what the communicator says. Witness the defense that always arises when some superstar preacher, or for that matter, athlete or entertainer or whomever, is found to be at fault in some way. We have such a culture of superstardom that we elevate personality above truth, and that is a dangerous, dangerous thing. As someone has said, there are two truths in life we can take to the bank: one, there is a God; two, you ain’t Him! And yet there are some people who seem not to know this. The people of Lystra didn’t know either, as it turns out, ascribing godhood to both Paul and Barnabas in a severe case of mistaken identity.
Can we ever be guilty of mistaking the identity of men, esteeming them too highly?
III. Mistaken Identity: The True God - :14-18
It took awhile, as we said earlier, but Paul and Barnabas began to realize what was being said, and immediately they take action to stop it. Tearing one’s clothes was the appropriate Jewish sign that blasphemy was being committed, and this Paul and Barnabas did not hesitate to do.
But they didn’t stop there; they began to proclaim the good news, and it started with what for the people there was some bad news. Paul spoke of their need to turn away from “these vain things” – this referred to either their gods, or the sacrifices, or likely, both. The good news of the gospel of Christ has an element of bad news in it, and that is that what we are naturally doing, and what we are naturally following, is foolishness. We’re naturally on the wrong path, not the right one, and absent a turning from those wrong things, we do not come to God in Christ.
Notice Paul’s approach. When he is speaking to Jewish audiences, who had knowledge of God’s dealings with Israel, of the Law and the prophets, Paul would make this the theme of his speaking. Here, though, he was dealing with rank pagans, people who were worshippers, not of the God of Israel, but of the Greek pantheon of gods. And thus, his appeal is not to what we call the “Old Testament”, but rather to God’s natural revelation of Himself.
This is something we need to recognize as followers of Christ in the early 21st-century. We can no longer assume things that we perhaps once could. Terms that are familiar to us as Christians, because we have heard them in church all our lives, in many cases, don’t have meaning to people outside of the church. We don’t have a culture in which Biblical terms and concepts are familiar any longer. We know what terms like “sin” and “redemption” and “grace” mean, but these carry uncertain meaning for those outside the church. We can no longer take for granted that the name “God” is one which finds consensus of meaning.
For many years, I was taught, and taught others, that we began to share the gospel by pointing out man’s sinfulness. I no longer believe or teach this, because the beginning of the gospel story isn’t my sin; the beginning of the story is God. Now, the basic content of the gospel message doesn’t change; the core revolves around Christ, His sacrificial death for us, His resurrection and ascension to Heaven. But our approach needs to differ depending upon the audience with which we are presented.
Paul begins at the beginning, with what theologians call “general revelation”. God is identified by Paul as
• One – “a living God” (as opposed to a multiplicity)
• Creation
o The critical nature of the Genesis narrative
o If He is Creator, He knows what is best for us
• Providence
o Merciful
Romans 1:19-20
Not indifference to sin, but patience
o Rains/fruitful seasons
o Food and gladness
We should be careful to not ever suggest that people apart from God cannot have a significant measure of happiness, because they can. This is a gift from God, whether they realize it or not.
• Presence, and witness-giving
This was not enough of a witness, in itself, for the Lycaonian people to believe and be saved. But it is a “starting point” witness, particularly for people who were quite mistaken as to the identity of the true God.
Can we ever be guilty of mistaking the identity of the true God? We only begin to rightly understand ourselves when we begin to rightly understand God. There is no remedy for mistaking the identity of the true God. There is one God, Who came in the flesh; that’s what we celebrate at this time of year. And it is through this God that we have eternal life, meaning and purpose for this earthly life. That’s what Paul ultimately preached to some folks in a little backwater town like Lystra 2000 years ago, and that message is the same today.
