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I'm going to be reading from the book of Acts chapter 14, which I'm hoping yes, well come up on the screen, or you might like to follow along on your devices, Acts chapter 14. At Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There, they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed, but the Jews who refused

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to believe stood up the other Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there speaking boldly for the Lord who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders. The people of the city were divided. Some, sided with the Jews, others with the apostles. There was

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a lot of foot among both Gentiles and Jews together with their leaders to mistreat them and stone them, but they found out about it and fled it to the Iconian cities of Listera and Derby, and to the surrounding country where they continued to preach the gospel. In Listera, they said a man who was lame, he had been that way from birth and had never

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walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, stand up on your feet. At that, the man jumped up and began to walk. When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Iconian language, the gods have come down to us in human form. Barnabas, they call Zeus and Paul, they call

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Hermes because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and reeds to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them. But when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting, "Friends, why are you doing

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this? We do our only human like you." We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way, yet he has not left himself without testimony. He has shown kindness by giving your reign from heavens

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and crops in their seasons. He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy. Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowds from sacrificing to them. Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconian and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered

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around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day, he and Barnabas left for Derby. They preached the gospel in that city in one large number of disciples. Then they returned to Listera, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. We must go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom

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of God, they said. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and with praying, fasting, committed them to the Lord in whom they had put their trust. After going through the city, they came into Pamphlya and when they had preached the Word in Perga, they went down to Atalia. From Atalia, they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed

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to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened a door for faith to the Gentiles. They stayed there a long time with the disciples. This is the Word of the Lord. Thank you. If you don't have a device, maybe you have a Bible.

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I've got a Bible. Well, it's a great pleasure to be with you all. I'm so pleased to see you all here and to know that there are so many people who are eager to pray for the gospel to come to South Asian people in Sydney. I haven't been told the definition, but I'm assuming that means India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, at least, which

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means places that are natively Muslim or Buddhist or especially Hindu. So, I'm just so grateful for the such a committee and for all of you who are already engaged in bringing the gospel to such people in our midst. As we've already mentioned in the 20 years or so since 2000, 3 million permanent migrants have arrived in Australia and 700,000 of them

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were born in India. 30% of them reside in Sydney. As I already said, the projections are that in northwest and southwest Sydney, in those growth corridors, there will be 20, 30, 40% of the populations will be likely to be people from South Asia. So, it's an important gospel moment for us as the church in Sydney to be responding to. Can I also say welcome

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to Vishal Mangaladi and his wife Ruth, distinguished guests, very long-serving faithful courageous servants of the Lord, and so we're very honoured by your presence and very much looking for your ministry, Uncle. Well, let me pray. Gracious God and loving Heavenly Father, we thank you for your kindness towards us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, for

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the gift of this day and this time to spend together in this way. We pray for the presence and Presidency of your Holy Spirit, and we pray Father, now that you would in your mercy bring your Word to our hearts in convicting power, that we might see your Son, love him and serve him gladly until he comes. Amen.

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Well, of course, in the Book of Acts, in the most wonderful way, we see the progress of the unstoppable gospel in the face of many kinds of obstacles and opposition internal and external, but we also see the power of the gospel to break down centuries-old cultural barriers. And in chapter 13, the church in Antioch, which we're told, we're just given

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the names of five leaders of the Antioch Church, a multi-ethnic church. And just from the names of those leaders, because we're not told much about them, but we can at least say there were two Jews, one a Pharisee of Pharisees, schooled by the Great Gamalial. There were two North Africans, perhaps one of them at least, Black, an aristocratic

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Greek, three ethnicities, four cultural backgrounds from four nations. And this is in Antioch, a city that had a high wall all the way around it and to protect it from invaders, but 16 internal walls to separate the Jews from the Persians, from the Chinese, from the Romans, who were all there in Antioch, but the likelihood of them breaking out into sectarian conflict

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if they weren't separated was so great that they'd erected high walls between them. But the gospel brought the walls down. And nobody knew that the gospel could do that, but in Antioch, where they were first called Christians, a new tribe, a new nation had come to be made up of many nations. It's just beautiful. The gospel did that.

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You have to stop timing when that happens. And this multi-ethnic church commissions Paul and Barnabas to go on a missionary journey, the journey recorded in chapters 13 and 14. As you know, it's a loop from Antioch in Syria across the Mediterranean to the island of Cyprus up north into Turkey, as we call it now, to confusingly another Antioch, Pysidian Antioch,

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and then east to Iconium and Lystra and Derby, and then they come back and make their way back to Antioch in Syria. In chapter 14, at verse 27, we read, "When they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done through them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles." The two chapters of Acts take about six minutes

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to read, but the missionary journey lasted about three years from 45 to 47 AD. Here's the question, "How had God opened a door of faith? What were the marks of the progress of the gospel? How did the gospel go out so that people believed it and were established in faith in Christ? How did it happen then? What can we learn about what to expect in the progress

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of the gospel today?" Here are four things that I think are worth noticing. Proclamation, position, superstition, and consolidation. Firstly, proclamation. In chapter 13, Luke records for us Paul's speech in the synagogue in Pysidian Antioch. It's a sample of the gospel message that they proclaimed in every time. It's a message about the Son of David, Israel's

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Savior Jesus, who was crucified by Pontius Pilate, but whom God raised from the dead. And the message is summarized in verse 38 of chapter 13. I want you to know that through Jesus, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, forgiveness. And verse 39, Paul says through him, "Everyone who believes is set free from every sin from which the law of Moses could not free them,

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freedom, freedom, and forgiveness for everyone who believes, Jew and Gentile, through Israel's Savior Jesus, crucified for sin and raised from the dead." That's the message, a message about Jesus. That's the offer for forgiveness and freedom from sin. That was the business of Paul's missionary journey, the proclamation of freedom and forgiveness through Jesus.

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Now, it's worth noticing, isn't it? That if we think about Hinduism and Buddhism, the faith of two-thirds of the subcontinent, both identify the problem in the human condition as Sonsara, the cycle of life and death and rebirth. And the goal of both faiths is to achieve freedom for the up-bund, the soul in Hinduism, or to break free from the cycle

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of karma in Buddhism. The gospel resonates with these themes. This is an offer that will resonate with people who are seeking truth, freedom, forgiveness. That's what's on offer. So chapter 14 verse 1 says, "They spoke and a great number of Jews and Greeks believed. Verse 3 says, "They spoke boldly for the Lord. When they had to leave Iconium, they went

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to Listera and Derby and verse 7 says, 'They continued to preach the gospel.'" Now we'll see in a minute how Paul engaged with the pre-existing beliefs and the mistaken understandings, but the essential message, the proclamation, was the message of Jesus. There is a need, of course, to respond with sensitivity and wisdom to the questions and concerns that our

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friends and culture have about Christian faith. We need to do that as well as we can. And the resurrection of Jesus makes its impact on the issues of the day, whether poverty or the environment or the tidal wave of mental health challenges. But we must never forget what the Christian message is, and especially when seeking to proclaim it to those who already

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have a faith. What is the message we want to bring to them? It isn't primarily a message about family or marriage or the origin of life or the age of the earth, or even about doing good, all of which are important in their own way. It's a message about a man, a God man, Jesus Christ, God's Son, God's King, the Savior of the world who brings forgiveness

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and freedom by His death and resurrection. That is the message we want to share with people. That is the message that changes the world one life at a time. It is one of my privileges, and I have many privileges in this role to visit the churches around the diocese, together with ordinary Christians, Sunday by Sunday in their local communities. And every church

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I go to, where they are making an effort to hold out the gospel, people are responding, some people respond, repent and believe. Recently I was in a little church in Western Sydney, which nobody would think twice about as they walked past it down the suburban street. I met five men from a Muslim background who had come to the Lord there. I met two women

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from an oriental background who had come to the Lord there. Eternity was being changed inside the doors of a funny old church building that nobody would think ever did anything. And lives were being changed. Lives were being secured for eternity and individuals, men and women and their families coming to know freedom and forgiveness from God. What could

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be better than that? Where are we? First one of chapter 14 says, "At Iconium, a great number of Jews and Greeks believed. In Derby, verse 21 says, they preached the gospel and won a large number of disciples. Local proclamation is the means by which God saves his people." Chapter 13, verse 48,

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when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the Word of the Lord and all who were appointed to eternal life believed. God has determined. God has predestined that his people will believe when they hear the gospel. The great encouragement to keep on speaking about Jesus is that God has appointed people to believe.

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As Jerry was saying earlier, since 2011, the largest single source of permanent migrants in Australia are people from India. Currently, about 9.5 percent of overseas born migrants, the second largest group, now the United Kingdom, the third largest from China. Do you think that God has appointed people to believe from the South Asian continent? And how are

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they going to hear? After the United States, the country that has the largest number of cross-cultural missionaries in the world is India, 40,000 internal cross-cultural Indian missionaries. Isn't that wonderful? Closely followed by Korea as a mission-sending country. Do you think that any of those whom God has brought here to Australia are among the elect? What do

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you think? We have no reason to think otherwise. God has appointed people to believe and they come to faith as you did as they hear the gospel proclaimed. And that alone is sufficient reason to keep on speaking. Mission societies have developed, as you know, what is called creative access mission. When you can't send a missionary to a country as a missionary,

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we send them as water engineers or business school teachers or whatever it may be. And as they do the thing that they are skilled to do, they develop friendships and relationships with local people. And perhaps in God's kindness they'll have the opportunity to speak of Jesus. We have to go to great lengths to get some people into some countries so that

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some others can hear the gospel. But God is bringing people here. God is bringing people here. We don't have to do anything. Except love them, pray for them, speak to them, befriend them so that God in His mercy may save some. The first mark of the mission is proclamation. The second is opposition. Not everyone believes. Some reject the gospel,

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chapter 13 verse 46 says, in 14 verse 2, they refuse to believe. The ESB put it, they thrusted aside. They were not helpless. They were deliberate and active. They thrusted aside. They rejected the gospel. They refused to believe. But not only that, they opposed the mission. The rhetoric of a pluralist and inclusive society is that everyone is entitled

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to their view, their experience, their voice. But the reality often is that some not only reject the gospel, they want to prevent other people from hearing the gospel as well. So verse 2 says, those who refuse to believe stirred up the other Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. They're not responding to the message or offering

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an alternative. They're targeting Paul and Barnabas and spreading false reports against them to others. But the campaign of opposition doesn't stay a matter of slander and gossip. It moves on to physical violence. Verse 5 says, they plot to mistreat and stone them. The opponents follow the apostles to Listera and verse 19 says, they stirred up the crowd.

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They stoned Paul, dragged him out of the city and left him for dead. God has appointed people to believe and God sends his messengers into the world to proclaim forgiveness and freedom. It's good news and in Listera and Derby, a great number believed. But from the very beginning, this work has always been opposed by those who reject the

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gospel and refuse to believe. Don't be surprised. Don't be dismayed. Don't be deterred. We know all too well the course of opposition to the gospel in India since May, ethnic and religious violence in Manipur in northeast India has resulted in the deaths of at least 142 Christianity today reports and the destruction of more than 300 churches and hundreds of villages

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resulting in tens of thousands of internally displaced people. Even in our own context, gospel proclamation is increasingly limited and opposed. But there is no prohibition on people voluntarily engaging with one another. Only not many volunteer. But many subcontinental people do not have the kind of hang-ups about speaking about God that many Anglo-Australians

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do. Because we have fostered in our Western culture a distorted world view that excludes and separates what is called religious from what is called secular. Whereas South Asian world views typically integrate the two. The Hindu world view is of the divine force in everything and everywhere and especially in human being. So there is no dichotomy between

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material and spiritual, secular and religious. A much less hard kind of division. I don't mean that gospel proclamation to South Asian people will not encounter opposition and it is certainly an encountering opposition in India, for example. And I'm sorry to say in Sri Lanka as well. And just in the last week in Pakistan, bombings. But I do mean

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that we ought not to think that the kind of opposition we experience, perhaps in conversation with Anglo-Australians, will be necessarily reproduced among South Asian people now living in Australia. Opposition does not mean God is not at work. Opposition does not mean we need to change the message and opposition will not stop those whom God has appointed

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from believing. Proclamation, opposition, superstition. In Listera there is a man paralyzed from birth. Paul is preaching to the man. He recognizes that he is placing his faith in Jesus and Paul calls out to him, stand up. What Luke records in Listera is that after the healing of the paralyzed man, the people rush to the wrong conclusion. They think

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Paul and Barnabas are their gods, Zeus and Hermes, come to visit them. So the priest of the Temple of Zeus quickly calls together the crowd with the intention of offering sacrifices to the apostles. The fact that the priest of the Temple of Zeus and the crowd thought that Paul and Barnabas were gods is a pretty good indication they were convinced of the

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fact of the healing. But they interpreted it incorrectly. A healing by itself doesn't tell you anything about the gospel of the Lord Jesus. So whenever there is gospel proclamation, there is the need to correct the superstitious and mistaken ideas that already exist about God and the spiritual life. And we meet this all the time, of course. Some people don't

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want to hear anything about the Lord and they tell us so. But others are interested to hear what we have to say, but they already have their own ideas or their religion or their spirituality. And we need to respectfully and gently address those as well. In Australia, 39% of people now say they have no religion. But 57% say they believe in God and the afterlife.

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And 70% say they believe there is a soul. And 30% say they pray every week. The majority religions of South Asia, 400 million Buddhists, 1.1 million Muslims, 1.9 billion Muslims, 1.1 billion Hindus. It was the famous Leslie Newbygun who spent 40 years as a missionary in India who returned to England and declared that England needed to be re-emangelized.

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That was in the 1970s. But he observed that many Hindus had no difficulty making an offering to an image of Jesus at Christmas time. He was simply absorbed into the existing framework of polytheistic Hindu devotion. In Sri Lanka, as you drive north on the western coast, you leave Colombo in the very Buddhist area and along the road you will see Buddhist shrines

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with statues of the Buddha and offerings of food and coins and flowers. And as you travel a little further, you get to a Roman Catholic area and you will see the same shrines with food and coins and flowers. Only now the statues are of the Blessed Virgin or Saint Anthony. And you go a little further and you come to a Tamil area and you will see the same shrines

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with food and coins and flowers. Only now the statue is of Ganesh or Krishna. The gospel of forgiveness and freedom always has to confront mistaken spiritualities and superstitions. Annually, in India, the Charadam Yatra Pilgrimage claims hundreds of lives. The death toll has declined because of the pandemic. In 2019, it was 90. In 2022, it was

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108 in 27 days and this year, so far in 45 days, 119 pilgrims have died. And we can only feel dismay for these devout pilgrims and their devastated family members, but their deaths were completely unnecessary. No doubt they were devout and sincere and yet in making this trip, thinking that it would secure some blessing, some divine favor for themselves or their

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families. They were actually in the grip of a superstitious delusion that led to their premature deaths. Freedom and forgiveness of sin come through faith in Jesus Christ and in no other way, no religious practice or spiritual discipline can secure what Jesus offers or improve on the achievement of the cross and the empty tomb. And of course,

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the non-religious world is even more crowded with superstitious practices and rituals from not walking under ladders to consulting newspaper horoscopes or accessing online affirmations. It is not necessary for anybody to make a religious pilgrimage to Mecca or the Vatican or Canterbury or the Ganges or Buddha Gaya or Lords or Jerusalem. Freedom and forgiveness

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of sin come through faith in Jesus Christ and in no other way. Whenever the gospel is preached and believed, it confronts superstition because it lives in our hearts. As Paul speaks to the crowd of followers of Zeus, he wants them to know, this is very beautiful. It says, "When the crowd saw what Paul had done in verse 11, they shouted in the Lake

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Coney and language." Paul and Barnabas must have been translated or, if not, the Lake Coneyans were listening in their second or third language. This is a common experience in gospel proclamation in Australia today that we are often proclaiming the gospel to people in what is their second or third language and the Lake Coneyans are mistaken.

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And Paul and Barnabas, see how kind they are. The people treat them like gods. What comes into your mind when I say that? But Paul and Barnabas rush out, tear their clothes and say, "Friends, what are you doing? We too are only human." Isn't that kind? Of course, that's right. It is essential. But at the moment that people start to sacrifice to you,

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you might be tempted to do something else. Friends, we are just the same as you. Not superior, not coming to tell you all the ways in which you're wrong and we are right and we are better. Not yet we proclaim a true God. And they say, "You know him. He is the living God who made everything." The God who made everything. Hinduism sees everything as infused with the divine.

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The Bible teaches radical differentiation between the Creator and the creation. Nothing that is in the world is God. Do not worship or live in fear of the mountains or the rivers or the fields. Love and war and sex and money and power are not gods. Real estate and music and food and celebrity are not gods. Do not worship them. Do not make sacrifices to them.

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Do not serve them. Worship God and serve him. And Paul says, "The God who made everything is God." Not capricious, not petulant, not deceptive. Good and generous and kind. He sends the rain to water the fields, to grow the crops, to feed you and to make you happy. He is a good God. Worship and serve him. Paul preached the gospel in Listera. They'd heard

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of the freedom and forgiveness that Jesus brings. Now he confronts their superstition. The Creator God, the good God, the living God, the one who sent Jesus. Worship and serve him. And finally consolidation. Proclamation, opposition, superstition, consolidation. And I'll be brief. We're told that in Iconium, a great number of Jews and Greeks believed

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there were believers in Listera who came to Paul's aid when he was flagged outside the city. In Derby, they won a large number of disciples, but the mission to the cities was not over at the point at which some believed. So verse 21 says, "They went back." They went back to Listera. They went back to Iconium and they went back to Antioch in Listera. They'd

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been stoned, dragged outside the city, left for dead, but they went back. In Iconium, their opponents had stirred up the people against them and plotted to mistreat them. So they fled, but now they went back. In Antioch, they'd been driven out by the leading men of the city and women of high standing. The apostles had even shaken the dust off their feet, but

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now they were going back. Why? Verse 22, "They returned strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith." They returned to places where they encountered strong opposition so they could strengthen the believers they'd left behind. Evangelizing South Asians will be costly for you if you set about the task in a deliberate way. But

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faith in Christ is very likely to be very costly for any of our friends who repent and put their faith in Christ. Resolving to share the gospel with them means resolving to strengthen and encourage them in the face of opposition. They may lose their culture. They may lose their community. They may lose their family. They will need encouragement and strengthening.

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Not just a Sunday catch-up after church, but a new family in Christ. The apostles appointed elders. They committed them to the Lord in prayer and they entrusted them to the Lord. Of course they had the Lord. The Lord who'd sent the apostles in the first place. The Lord who'd appointed them to believe, to hear the message and receive it with thanks and trust.

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The Lord who had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Through many hardships we come to the kingdom they told them. It may be a costly obedience. It might be a hard discipleship, but there's no risk because they committed them to the Lord in whom they had put their trust. Formax of the gospel. The gospel progresses by proclamation, freedom from sins condemnation

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and forgiveness through Jesus. Opposition arises, but God has appointed some to believe. We need to confront superstition and put our faith in a living God. And as we proclaim Christ and some believe, we must take time to strengthen and encourage one another because the road can be hard, but we need have no fear because we have put our trust in the Lord

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who is trust worthy. Amen.