Possibly the most-mocked practice of American Christianity over the last century has been a ritual engaged in by a few small holiness and Pentecostal churches, mostly east of the Mississippi River. In those churches, worshippers pick up, hold, and handle rattlesnakes and copperheads and other venomous serpents as an act of worship, believing they are thereby demonstrating the power of the Holy Spirit over the devil and all evil. A detailed academic study that compiled cases from 1900 to 2015 documented 105 deaths from the practice, most of which were fatal snakebites during worship services. The majority of victims were male (about 74%), and most deaths occurred in Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. There are probably still about 130 snake handling churches in America today.

One of the passages these sweet, deluded brethren look to for warrant is Mark 16:17-18, where Jesus prophesies, “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” They also point out the passage we are looking at today as we make our way through the last chapter of the book of Acts. So look at it we will.

The last two Sundays we read about Paul’s trip across the Mediterranean Sea on his way to Rome, ending with a monstrous storm and a catastrophic shipwreck on the shore of some unknown island. Today we discover the name of the island, and a whole lot more.

No, we are not one of those snake handling churches. But where we agree with them Is in the belief that the Bible is the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, fully inspired by his Holy Spirit, entirely true in all that it teaches. So when we read the passage we’re about to study each Lord’s Day, we stand.

Acts 28:1-10

I told you last week that we’d discover the name of the island they crashed on this week. And here it is: Malta. That’s where those yappy little Maltese dogs get their name. Perhaps even Publius had one in his house when Paul came. Who can say? What we need to do right now is notice three elements of this story and listen for the things they show us.

The snake shows us something about predictive prophecy

Listen again:

Acts 28 ³ When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. ⁴ When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.” ⁵ He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. ⁶ They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.

⁷ Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island, named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days. ⁸ It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him, healed him. ⁹ And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured. 

That passage back in Mark said that five signs would accompany the followers of Jesus Christ:

1. They would cast out demons;
2. they would speak in new tongues;
3. they would pick up serpents with their hands;
4. if they drank any deadly poison, it would not hurt them;
5. they would lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover

We see in this passage, in the snake and the healings, two of the five signs Jesus prophesied. We also have seen tongues and exorcisms repeatedly in the book of Acts. This is all the fulfillment of predictive prophecy.

So let’s stop for a moment. There are a couple of potential problems here. One is that the whole idea of predictive prophecy is dismissed out of hand by plenty of naturalistic, materialistic, skeptical modern minds. The other is that the end of mark is missing from some of the earliest copies of the Greek New Testament, and plenty of people seriously question whether Mark wrote it or Jesus said it. Some of you weren’t even aware of those objections, but some of you were. If you don’t care about the doubts of the doubters, then you have my permission to take a brief nap for the next few minutes. But Jesus loves the doubters, and so do I. In fact, I’m kind of one of them. So I want to at least address their questions.

First, I understand that plenty of people are pretty skeptical about the idea that Jesus the prophets were actually able to tell the future. I respect that skepticism, or at least I understand it. All I can say is that the God who could speak the whole universe into existence one morning before breakfast without blinking an eye would have no problem telling the future. In fact he doesn’t just see it. He sets it. If you cannot believe that I understand. But I can, and I do. I can only beg you to just consider that The statement, “because I can’t tell the future that means nobody can” is either true or false. If you think that your inability to believe something is de facto proof the thing can’t be true, I can only ask you to explain to me Quantum mechanics, The internal workings of an automatic transmission, our love. I submit to you that all of us deal with and even rely on things we cannot understand or conceive all the time. Most rationalists and skeptics are not nearly as rational or skeptical as they tell themselves they are.

Second, that passage in Mark is a deep, deep rabbit hole that we have no time to go searching down this morning. If in fact it is not original, but was somehow slipped into the text sometime after it was written, we may be sure that happened very early in the history of the document. Bible scholars have been debating the question of the ending of Mark since the early 300’s. On the other hand, other Bible scholars were quoting from the longer ending as far back as the late 100’s. Most Bible scholars throughout history have handled it by including it with a note about the question of its authenticity. I’ve always just taken it to be the authentic word of God and assumed that people have problems with it because it says weird things. I think we should respond to the weird things that we find in the Bible by believing them and assuming that we are the ones who have a problem.

The most reasonable thing is to think that Jesus was simply prophesying the supernatural gifts that would accompany the Apostles And the other first-generation Christian believers throughout the Apostolic age. He predicted the signs, they experienced the signs, and the writers of the New Testament reported the signs. The only one that was not reported later in the New Testament was the one about poison. However, Papias of Hierapolis, writing around AD 120, claimed that Joseph Barsabbas the Just, who was chosen to take Judas Iscariot’s place among the apostles in Acts 1:23, was forced to drink poison but suffered no ill effects. So what we have is Jesus in Mark 16 prophesying what signs would accompany his Apostles, with all of those prophecies being fulfilled in the Apostolic age.

Jesus was not declaring in Mark 16 that all of his followers throughout all of history would experience all of those signs and miracles. He was predicting those signs, not prescribing them. He was issuing a prophecy, not a commandment. In particular, we have no reason to think that Jesus expected his followers to intentionally allow themselves to be bitten by rattlesnakes or purposefully drink strychnine to somehow prove the presence of the Holy Spirit working among them. That’s a serious misuse of the Bible. And it literally has cost a lot of people their lives.

So what about tongues and healings? We’ve talked about tongues a lot as we’ve gone through the book of Acts. All of those sermons are available on our church website. If you’d like to talk to me about them face to face today, I’ll be standing at that door when our time together is done. As far as the gift of healing, you’ve heard me say as recently as last week in Sunday school that I think some people do experience miraculous healings to this day and I have no reason to think otherwise. God can do whatever he wants to do. Well, one thing he can’t do is lie. Everything he says is always true. That’s why we study the Bible so carefully around here.

The snake shows us something about predictive prophecy. Specifically, anything Jesus or his apostles clearly predict will come true. It cannot be wrong.

The healings show us something about miraculous missions

Watch how the lost people on Malta interact with the supernatural when they see it.

⁴ When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.” ⁵ He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. ⁶ They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.

In verse four, the ESV translation of the Bible has the word “justice” capitalized. The Greek word is Dike. It can mean, simply, “justice.” Alternatively, it can be the name of a goddess. She was called justice and her job was to see to it that justice was done. These pagans think that Paul is being judged by a goddess, until they see that the snake bite is having no effect, and then they come to the conclusion that Paul himself must be a god. It reminds us of the time earlier in Acts when the people in Lystra see the one true God do a miracle by Paul’s hands and came to the conclusion that Paul and Barnabas must be the gods Hermes and Zeus. Those people in Lystra were pagans. These people on Malta are pagans. They are not bad people are cruel people. In fact, Luke has just gone out of his way to point out how kind and compassionate they were to Paul and the other castaways from the shipwreck. They were just pagans. They did not know the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had their own gods and their own ideas and their own spiritualities—just like the pagans we used to be, and the pagans who are all around us every day. Not vicious people or vile people or violent people, just lost people.

Let’s read on:

⁷ Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island, named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days. ⁸ It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him, healed him. ⁹ And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured.

Just as Jesus had prophesied during his final few days on this earth, and just as Luke has described repeatedly throughout this book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit, God does some spectacular miracles of physical healing to demonstrate that Paul and his team are representatives of the one true God, speaking the one gospel that everybody needs to hear. The supernatural, miraculous power of the Spirit of God to save the souls and transform the lives of lost people was on clear display as he healed their sick and injured bodies.

The fact is, wherever the gospel is clearly declared, the miracle power of the Spirit of God is clearly displayed. Sins are forgiven, shame is washed away, relationships are repaired, and—whenever God sees fit—bodies are healed. The supernatural power of God to certify his gospel by doing visible, verifiable miracles is always present.

Yes, you did hear me say that there was a unique kind of miraculous sign that was peculiar to the Apostles at the Apostolic Age. Paul says to the Corinthian Christians, ^“The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.” In other words, the apostles were empowered to lay the foundations of the churches with unique signs and wonders. To think that the kinds of things you see throughout the book of Acts are the same sorts of things you should expect to see every day in your life does not match with what the Bible itself says you should expect. I do in fact think that an awful lot of the hullabaloo that you see on TV and online is fake. In fact, more than once careful investigative journalists have exposed the deliberate fakery of crooks and charlatans portraying themselves as preachers of the gospel.

Still, God is free to do miracles and healings and signs and wonders whenever he pleases. He often does, especially when by so doing he can help lost people to see the truth of the gospel they’re hearing faithful Christians share. You should never let the presence of counterfeits discourage you from praying to God for signs and wonders, for healings and miracles. He is often delighted to say yes to prayers like that, for the gospel, for his glory, for the good of his people and even of those who are not yet his people.

The response shows us something about helpful holiness

Plenty preachers are all too eager to quote Jesus in John 15:

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. ¹⁹ If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. ²¹ But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father also. ²⁴ If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’

I’m certainly one of those preachers. We tell ourselves that what is really at the root of our hearts is love for Jesus and willingness to suffer for his name, and sometimes that’s even true. But if I’m really honest, all too often it’s just about our own bravado. We want to sound like heroes, like Christian soldiers wearing Purple Heart medals.

If you look at that passage more carefully, you’ll notice that Jesus words are targeted at religious leaders and how they often resist the message I’m Jesus and his followers. What you’ll often see in the Bible—and in daily experience—is that the common people often really appreciate Christians who are willing to speak the gospel and live the gospel with love. They might not always agree with what the Christians are saying. In fact it’s rare for people to respond to their first hearing of the gospel by turning away from their old ways and embracing Jesus as Lord. But they can recognize sincerity and generosity and compassion when they see it, and they’d normally respond with appreciation and their own kind of generosity.

Have you ever noticed how often even unbelieving businessmen and community leaders are eager to help churches do their work? It’s not because they hate Jesus and hate his people. That would be silly to think. Its religious leaders who usually hate Jesus and hate Christians. When we show ourselves to be kind and giving and eager to help and heal, people tend to notice that and reciprocate. That’s exactly what you see happening in verse 14.

¹⁰ They also honored us greatly, and when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed.

Once again God is using the resources and the cooperation of people who don’t even believe in him to get Paul to Rome to testify before Caesar.  It’s Amazing to watch God at work.

I started off this talk by pointing out that the snake handlers of Appalachia are among the most mocked Christians in America. And they are. And frankly they should be. What they do is just simply crazy, and it’s not anything that the Bible actually tells us we ought to do. But I have to come back to this simple thing: I have more in common with that man in the orange shirt staring a copperhead in the face than I do with any secular or unbelieving professional of any sort. That nut case with the snake in his hands trust Jesus and believes his word and does what he believes the Lord is telling him to do. He is my brother. The most educated and sophisticated man in America, if he does not know Jesus as Lord and savior, is a stranger to me. He’s not my people. Joe Bob in Possum Holler with the cottonmouth wrapped around his neck… he is mine and I am his because we have Jesus in common.

In fact that is the thing that makes a church family a church family: our common bond in Jesus Christ. We are bought by his blood and adopted by his Father and filled with his Spirit. We belong together. Some of us are men and some are women. We have white people and black people and even a couple of Native Americans. Some of us have a little bit of money, and some have almost none. Some of us have advanced degrees, and some have never made it out of high school. But we have Jesus in common, and that’s what makes us one.