Paul’s sermon in Lystra stands out because it sounds different. In synagogues he traced promises and prophecies, showing from Moses and the Prophets that the Messiah must suffer and rise, and that Jesus fulfills those Scriptures (Acts 13:16–41). In Lystra, a rural town in southern Galatia, he faced people who did not know Israel’s Scriptures and who had just tried to worship him and Barnabas as gods. Rather than begin with Abraham or David, he began with the sky, the soil, and the seasons. He called his hearers to turn from worthless idols to the living God who made heaven, earth, sea, and everything in them, and he pointed to rain, crops, food, and joy as daily proofs of God’s care (Acts 14:15–17). The same gospel was in view, but the doorway into it met the audience where they stood.
This moment shows how God’s witness has never been absent. Israel received God’s written law and covenant promises; the nations saw God’s power and kindness displayed in the world He made and sustains. Paul’s words pull that witness into the open, not as a vague spirituality but as a summons to turn from idols and trust the Creator who has now made Himself known fully in His Son (Psalm 19:1–4; Romans 1:20; Romans 3:21–22). What happened in Lystra helps believers speak clearly in cultures that do not know the Bible, and it anchors confidence that the living God is already speaking through His works while the church proclaims His word.
Words: 2990 / Time to read: 16 minutes
Historical and Cultural Background
Lystra sat in the Roman province of Galatia, a smaller, rougher town than the great coastal cities where Paul sometimes preached. Luke notes that the crowd shouted “in the Lycaonian language,” a detail that explains how quickly a miracle was folded into local beliefs about the gods walking among men (Acts 14:11). Ancient stories in that region told of deities visiting mortals in disguise; the crowd reached for that storyline when a man lame from birth stood and walked at Paul’s command. They decided Barnabas must be Zeus, the chief god, and Paul must be Hermes, the spokesman, because Paul did most of the speaking (Acts 14:8–12). The priest of Zeus brought oxen and garlands to the city gates, prepared to offer sacrifice in their honor, and the whole scene galloped toward blasphemy if it was not stopped at once (Acts 14:13).
The apostles’ response is urgent and humble. They tear their clothes, a sign of horror and grief, and rush into the crowd crying out that they are merely human, not divine (Acts 14:14–15). That cry is itself a gospel step. The living God opposes the pride that tries to take His place and receives the humble who confess the truth about themselves and about Him (James 4:6; Psalm 115:1). The culture around them had many gods and many stories, yet underneath the noise lay the same human need that fills every age: people made by God but estranged from Him sought to explain life without the Creator, and they ended up worshiping created things rather than the Maker (Romans 1:21–23). Paul meets that need by starting where they can see—creation—and then moves to what they must hear—the good news.
The setting also included danger. After the crowd tries to worship them, other visitors arrive who persuade the same city to attack them. Jews from Antioch and Iconium turn the crowd, and Paul is stoned, dragged out of the city, and left for dead. He rises, heads back into the city, and the next day moves on with Barnabas to Derbe, preaching the good news and making many disciples (Acts 14:19–21). Later, when they retrace their steps to strengthen the churches and appoint elders, Lystra is on the list, and in a later visit a young disciple named Timothy joins Paul’s team—proof that even a turbulent first encounter can yield lasting fruit in God’s time (Acts 14:21–23; Acts 16:1–3; 2 Timothy 1:5).
Biblical Narrative
Luke frames the sermon with a healing that no one can deny. A man who had never walked listened as Paul spoke. Seeing that he had faith to be healed, Paul called out, “Stand up on your feet!” The man jumped up and began to walk, and the crowd exploded with the wrong conclusion in the wrong language (Acts 14:8–11). The apostles refuse worship and begin to preach in plain words. “Friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human, like you. We are bringing you good news,” Paul says, and then he names the first step his hearers must take: “turn from these worthless things to the living God” (Acts 14:15). He confronts idolatry directly, not by mocking the people but by exposing the emptiness of their gods. The world is full of objects of devotion that promise life and deliver chains; Paul calls them worthless because they are lifeless, unable to make or sustain anything (Psalm 115:4–7; Jeremiah 10:10–11).
Paul then gives the positive truth about God in words any farmer could understand. The living God “made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them” (Acts 14:15). This Creator made the sky that yields rain, the earth that yields crops, and the sea that feeds and connects nations (Genesis 1:1; Psalm 146:6). He is not a local deity, jostling for space with rival powers; He is the Maker of all that exists, and therefore the rightful Lord of all people everywhere (Isaiah 45:18; Acts 17:24). Paul adds that in the past God “let all nations go their own way,” a way of speaking about God’s patience that does not mean approval but allowance; even then, God still spoke through His works (Acts 14:16; Acts 17:30). He “has not left himself without testimony,” Paul says, and he names the testimony: God shows kindness by giving rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; He provides food and fills hearts with joy (Acts 14:17).
These are not abstract claims. In Israel’s Scriptures, rain and harvest are God’s gifts. He opens His hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing; He sends rain on the just and the unjust; He promises that seedtime and harvest will not cease while the earth remains (Psalm 145:16; Matthew 5:45; Genesis 8:22). Paul pulls those truths into the town square of Lystra and asks his hearers to see the goodness they have always enjoyed and to recognize the Giver. What they had attributed to Zeus or to blind chance had in fact come from the Creator whom Paul proclaimed. The sermon, short as Luke records it, holds both a rebuke—turn from idols—and a reassurance—God has been kind to you all along. The aim is repentance that leads to life (Acts 11:18; Romans 2:4).
Luke adds that even with these words they “had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them” (Acts 14:18). The habit of worshiping visible, manageable gods dies slowly. Yet Paul’s words plant seeds. When hostility later erupts and Paul is stoned, the disciples gather around him; the gospel has already taken root in some hearts (Acts 14:19–20). Paul and Barnabas continue to preach the good news, strengthen the souls of the disciples, and teach that “we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” then appoint elders with prayer and fasting, committing the churches to the Lord in whom they had put their trust (Acts 14:21–23). The Creator who sends rain also sustains faith under pressure.
Theological Significance
Paul’s sermon reveals how God speaks in every age and place. Israel received special revelation—God’s written and spoken words—through the Law and the Prophets, a unique privilege that brought both light and accountability (Romans 3:1–2; Amos 3:2). The nations received general revelation—truth about God seen in creation—so that His eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived from what has been made (Romans 1:19–20; Psalm 19:1–4). Lystra hears that testimony named. Rain, harvest, food, and joy are not random; they are a daily witness that the living God is present and kind. That witness does not save by itself; it summons. It leaves people without excuse for ignoring the Creator, and it prepares the ground for the preaching of Christ, who makes the way back to the God creation has always pointed to (Romans 1:20–23; Acts 4:12).
The sermon also teaches how to speak the gospel across cultures. In Pisidian Antioch Paul could assume Scripture as common ground; in Lystra he cannot. So he starts with shared experience, then moves to first truths about God, then to a call to turn away from lies toward the living God (Acts 13:16–41; Acts 14:15–17). He does not dilute the message; he arranges it wisely. The same pattern appears later in Athens, where Paul again begins with God as Maker and Lord of heaven and earth, who gives all people life and breath and everything else, so that people should seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him—though He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:24–27). The gospel honors both creation’s voice and Scripture’s voice, placing Jesus at the center as the One through whom all things were made and through whom salvation comes (Colossians 1:16–17; John 14:6).
From a dispensational vantage point, Lystra also shows the widening of gospel focus without canceling Israel’s future. After repeated rejection in the synagogues, Paul says, “We now turn to the Gentiles,” a move that fulfills Scripture’s promise that the Servant would be a light to the nations, while Scripture still holds that God’s gifts and calling for Israel are irrevocable (Acts 13:46–47; Romans 11:28–29; Isaiah 49:6). The church age brings Jew and Gentile into one body through faith in Christ apart from the law, while the covenants and promises to Israel stand to be fulfilled in their season (Ephesians 3:6; Jeremiah 31:35–37). In that light, Lystra is not an end of one plan and a start of another; it is the planned extension of mercy to the nations, grounded in the Creator’s goodness and sealed by the Redeemer’s blood (Ephesians 2:13–18).
The sermon also highlights God’s common kindness. He fills hearts with joy. That phrase is striking. Paul does not only name rain and food; he names gladness, the sweetness of shared meals, the satisfaction of a harvest, the laughter that rings out when a season’s labor ends well (Acts 14:17). Scripture elsewhere says that every good and perfect gift is from above and that God richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment, truths that keep believers from treating material gifts as either gods to be worshiped or trash to be despised (James 1:17; 1 Timothy 6:17). In Lystra, joy becomes evidence. The pleasure that men and women taste in ordinary mercies is a signpost to the Giver they have not yet known.
Spiritual Lessons and Application
Paul’s first sentence in Lystra helps believers resist a subtle temptation: “We too are only human, like you” (Acts 14:15). In any age it is easy to treat gifted leaders as more than human, to receive them as if they carried power in themselves. The apostles refuse that honor. They tear their clothes rather than allow worship, and they insist that the point of the miracle is to direct attention away from them to the living God (Acts 14:14–15). Churches today serve best when they keep that humility. Gifts are for pointing to Christ, not for building altars to the messengers (2 Corinthians 4:5–7; John 3:30). Where God uses us, we speak and act so that people learn to trust Him, not us.
A second lesson is courage joined to tenderness. Paul’s call to “turn from these worthless things” is firm and loving (Acts 14:15). He does not soft-pedal idolatry, yet he pairs the rebuke with reminders of God’s kindness: rain, crops, food, joy (Acts 14:17). The same balance serves believers who speak today. We name the idols of our age—self, sex, money, power, nation, technology—without cruelty, and we invite neighbors to see the living God’s goodness already at work in their lives, calling them home (Isaiah 44:9–20; Romans 2:4). The aim is not to win an argument but to win people to the One who made them and loves them.
A third lesson is how to begin with people who do not know the Bible. Paul teaches us to use what is near. The sky above, the rain that falls, the table set with food, the ordinary joys that brighten hard weeks—these are on-ramps to talk about the God who is there (Psalm 104:10–15; Acts 17:27–28). Creation’s witness is not enough by itself; it must lead to Christ. But in a culture that prizes evidence, believers can show that evidence is everywhere: the order of the seasons, the beauty of fruitfulness, the hunger for meaning, the sting of conscience, the ache for joy that lasts (Romans 1:19–21; Ecclesiastes 3:11). From there we speak of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the proof that the Creator has acted in history to save (1 Corinthians 15:3–4; John 1:14).
A fourth lesson comes from the cost that follows. The same city that nearly sacrificed to Paul and Barnabas soon stones Paul and drags him out as dead (Acts 14:19). The swing from applause to attack is not unusual when idols are exposed and hearts are pressed to change. Paul later tells those very churches, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” not to discourage them but to set expectations and to strengthen them in grace (Acts 14:22). Faithfulness will sometimes be met with fury; the presence of hardship does not mean the absence of God. He raises His servants after bruising days and sends them back to the work with fresh help (2 Corinthians 1:8–10; 2 Timothy 4:17).
A fifth lesson is to keep the Creator central. In some places people worship creation instead of the Creator; in other places people treat creation as random and meaningless. Paul shows a better way. He honors the world as God’s handiwork and calls people to thank the Maker for His gifts (Psalm 24:1; Colossians 1:16–17). Gratitude is a moral act. When a culture receives rain and calls it luck, receives food and calls it nothing, receives joy and calls it chemicals, it robs God of glory and drains life of worship. Christians practice a counterculture of thanksgiving, blessing the Giver at every table and bearing witness that the living God is near (1 Timothy 4:4–5; Psalm 136:1).
Finally, the Lystra story urges patience in sowing. The first day is chaotic; the second is violent; the later visits find a growing church and a young man named Timothy ready to serve (Acts 14:18–23; Acts 16:1–3). We do not measure the gospel’s power by one moment’s reception. We preach, we love, we endure, and we trust that the God who sends rain also gives the increase in His time (1 Corinthians 3:6–7; Galatians 6:9). The living God who fills hearts with joy will fill them with grace as Christ is made known.
Conclusion
Paul’s speech in Lystra shows how the one true God speaks in both works and words. He speaks through creation with daily kindness—rain, crops, food, joy—so that all people everywhere might seek Him, and He speaks through the gospel with saving clarity, calling all people everywhere to turn from idols to the living God and to trust His Son (Acts 14:15–17; Acts 17:27–31). The same God who made all things sustains all things and now commands all people to repent because He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed, giving proof by raising Him from the dead (Acts 17:31). In Lystra the message begins with the sky and the soil; it ends, as all faithful preaching does, with the Savior.
For believers, the path is clear. We refuse worship and point to Christ. We speak plainly about idols and gently about God’s kindness. We meet people in the world they know and lead them to the Lord they need. We endure hardship without surprise. And we give thanks for every simple gift that keeps beating the drum of God’s presence until the day every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10–11). The living God has not left Himself without testimony. He fills the world with evidence and fills the church with a message. Like Paul and Barnabas, we run into the crowd, tear our pride, and tell the truth.
“Friends, why are you doing this? We too are 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 you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” (Acts 14:15–17)
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