Acts 14:8-20

Christians do not live for fame or fortune.  They do not live for honor or glory.  They do not live to be put upon a pedestal, and they definitely do not live for others to consider them gods.  However, that is exactly what happened to Paul and Barnabas.

They were preaching the gospel, and a lame man responded to God with faith.  He believed God could and would heal him. (Faith is a response of belief to something or someone.) I believe the lame man was responding both to the preaching of the gospel and the voice of the Holy Spirit.  Paul saw his belief and told him to stand up.  The crowd was amazed when the man jumped up and walked.

The crowd immediately deified Paul and Barnabas.  They must have had very small gods if they believed mere humans could be one.  Paul immediately began making an effort to correct their beliefs and thinking.  He told them about the one true God.  He told them about how God was the creator of all, and that God was the source of all good things and all good emotions like love and joy.  In spite of the truth of his words, he had difficulty stopping the crowd’s effort to make sacrifices on the behalf of Zeus.

Unrighteous people do not want a great big God.  They want a god that is big enough to give them things, but not big enough to require anything.  They want a god that they can worship but not obey.  They want a god who can treat the symptoms of the disease of sin, but who will not insist upon them living a life without the sin of disobedience and rebelliousness.  They would have worshiped Paul and Barnabas as little gods, but they stoned them for being messengers of Jesus.

We can glorify ourselves or we can glorify God; we cannot do both.  Glorifying ourselves can result in fame and fortune; glorifying God can result in death.  Christians give all the glory to God.