What Should You Expect?

Acts 14:8-20

Introduction

Most likely, you have expectations for any situation you are facing. You may not know all the details and your expectations may be wrong, but you do have expectations.

At a previous church, one where I was expected to wear a suit and tie to each service, I snuck out during a hymn and changed into a t-shirt, shorts and sandals before I preached my sermon. I was using the breaking of expectations as an illustration for my sermon. One person said: “I know what he was doing, but I hope he doesn’t do it again.”

When it comes to expectations, they often are found in the broad categories of optimism and pessimism, those who expect the best and those who expect the worst. These can be over-generalizations but we often lean toward one or the other. This may be based on our personality or based on recent events. It can also be based our theology.

One of the most common questions that people ask is: Why do bad things happen to good people? This question includes certain assumptions. It includes the idea that God is obligated to make things go fairly smooth for us, especially as we are serving him. The prosperity gospel, which argues that all Christians should be healthy and wealthy, takes this to the extreme. But it is very common for other Christians to expect God to take care of us in some way.

My question for you is this: As you serve God, what kind of life do you expect God to give you? If we see the Christian life as including certain obligations on our part, what is that we expect from God? What would it take for us to be disappointed in God?

These are fair questions and we are going to reflect upon them by turning to the experience of Paul and Barnabas. We are working with the assumption that Paul and Barnabas were godly and faithful servants of God. Let’s take a look at how that worked out for them.

Ups and Downs For Paul

We are going to focus on on Barnabas and Paul’s experience in a city named Lystra in present day Turkey. As we look at their ministry, I think you will agree that they experienced the extreme of highs and lows when it comes to ministry.

As they entered the city, they encountered a man who was unable to walk. Paul commanded him to stand up and miraculously he was healed. Luke wants us to see this as a parallel to what Peter did back in Acts 3. Paul is continuing the kind of ministry that Peter did. Now we know that Peter ended up in jail soon after that healing. How will things work out for Paul and Barnabas?

None of us know how any audience is going to react when we try to share the gospel. They may be very receptive or very hostile or they might just not care. I don’t know what Paul and Barnabas expected but I doubt it was what actually happened.

The people did not see them as apostles or prophets but as earthly manifestations of the Greek gods Hermes and Zeus. They were so convinced about this that they brought animals ready to sacrifice to them. Imagine what this was like. Imagine people not just thinking that you were sent from God but that you actually were a god. Of course Paul and Barnabas did not want any of that, but at least they were getting a positive response, even if it was a bit too positive. Of course they were able to turn this around into an opportunity to share the true gospel about Jesus.

That was far more than Paul and Barnabas could have expected. However, things went down hill from there. Some of Paul’s opponents from another city followed them to Lystra. They were able to turn the crowds against them. Paul and Barnabas were dragged from the city and Paul was stoned. There is some irony here. We are introduced to Paul as Saul at the stoning of Stephen, which Paul approved of. Now it is Paul’s turn to be stoned for the sake of Jesus. The crowd assumed that they had killed Paul and they left him for dead. However, Paul was not dead. This was amazing as stoning didn’t leave much room for error. If you didn’t die right away, you would soon die from your wounds. But Paul was able to get up and walk back into the city. Obviously God was not done with Paul yet.

What did Paul expect when he entered into Lystra? I doubt he expected the two things that happened. He did not expect to be worshiped as a god and he didn’t expect to be stoned. What he did expect was that God would be with him and that is exactly what happened.

Ups and Downs For Us

It is very unlikely that our ups and downs will range from being worshiped as a god to an attempted execution by stoning. But it is important that we reflect on our expectations about what it means to serve God.

More than a few people have had their faith shaken when they expected God to give them a reasonably easy life and bad things have come their way. If you think God will always protect you from bad things, you have to wrestle with the death of that loved one, the loss of that job, the break down of that relationship and that unsettling diagnosis. Those things come to even the most faithful Christians.

Why do bad things happen? The Bible never says that we will be protected from bad things. In fact, the Bible promises suffering far more often than prosperity. The key is not to see suffering as a punishment or as a sign that God has abandoned you.

That is not to say that we shouldn’t have expectations about what life with God looks like. The expectation does not fit neatly into either optimism or pessimism. Rather the expectation is hope based on the ongoing presence of God in our life. God was with Paul when people attempted to offer sacrifices to him and God was with Paul when the rocks smashed into his body. God is with us when we are celebrating and God is with us when we are grieving. That presence gives us hope that we are moving toward a destination where God will fix all that is wrong in the world. 

Conclusion

At some point you became a follower of Jesus. It may have been as a child, as a teen or as an adult. It may have been a specific event or a gradual process. Perhaps you are still in that process.

What did you expect the Christian life to look like? More specifically, what did you expect God to do for you in this life? Were you optimistic or pessimistic? Did you expect the best or did you expect the worst? And what did you get?

If your life is anything like mine, you will have lived a life with good times and bad times. Perhaps not on the range of the Apostle Paul but life has had its ups and downs. Our expectation of life should be the same as Paul, that God would be present with us in the good and the bad. Hold onto hope but do not let that hope be defined by good or bad things are in the moment. The hope is based on God’s presence in our life and nothing else. Let that be our expectation of the Christian life.