Bentley Baptist Church Sermons
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Bentley Baptist Church Sermons
Lessons from Antioch
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www.bentleybaptist.org
We're continuing in the book of Acts, going to be reading from Acts, chapter 11. It will be up on the screen, but I always encourage you to open up an app or, even better, open up a Bible and just engage with it. It's just a bit more personal and immediate. So, acts, chapter 11, verse 19.
Speaker 1:Now, those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks, also proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. News about them reached the church in Jerusalem and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antioch. When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, and a large number of people were added to the Lord. Then he went to Tarsus to search for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught large numbers.
Speaker 1:The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. In those days, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and predicted by the spirit that there would be a severe famine throughout the Roman world, and this took place during the reign of Claudius. Each of the disciples, according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brothers and sisters who lived in Judea. Sorry, there we go up on the screen. They did this, sending it to the elders by means of Barnabas and Saul.
Speaker 1:So Jesus said that he would grow his church and I don't know about you, but most Christians I speak to just ordinary Christians. Obviously, pastors always feel good when their church is growing, but I think most Christians also feel good when they have a sense that the church is growing and healthy and strong. Now, growth can lead to all sorts of challenges and problems, but that's a discussion for another day. The thing with growth is it's often a sign of health and being part of a growing church can mean that we're part of good things that God is doing. Now I don't think we should chase growth per se. I gave that up a long time ago. But there are things we should do anyway that will very often lead to growth, and the book of Acts is about the growth of the church and particularly the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome.
Speaker 1:And in today's story we see significant progress as the gospel moves to the third largest city in the empire, so Antioch in Syria. Now there's two Antiochs in the ancient world. One was in Syria and one was in another province that I forget right now. So this is often called the Syrian Antioch. But it's not only the gospel's advancement towards Rome that we see. We also see a change a little bit in sort of I guess you'd say God's strategy, because I don't think any human is orchestrating this, as different sort of missionaries engage a different sort of audience. But even as the church becomes increasingly multicultural, there's a beautiful display of unity and giving and receiving by the Greek-speaking and Gentile church in Antioch and the Hebrew-speaking Jewish church in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:So we're going to look this morning and see what we can learn from this church at Antioch. First, I do want to just pull up a map. Sorry, there we go, we'll get there, okay, map of the area. So we have, jerusalem is down here. That's the Dead Sea there, and then up here we have Antioch. So you can see it's quite a ways. It's several hundred kilometers Over here. I mentioned Tarsus I hope you can see my little pointer up there. So that's where Paul was hanging out, was Paul's hometown, and so as we go through, you see Tarsus is actually quite a bit closer to Antioch than Jerusalem is. So we see the church starting to develop a little bit of its own personality, the Gentile church, even at this early stage.
Speaker 1:So until now Christianity, as the Antiochans dub it, has basically been a sect within Judaism. It was very Jewish and it's mostly been the thoroughly Jewish apostles who have advanced the gospel, although we do see Greek-speaking Jews doing that as well. But then in the previous passage, if you were here last week, luke describes the gospel's giant leap across this chasm. And it really was a chasm between Jews and Gentiles when the first Gentiles, the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, became believers. And now it seems like the gospel is completely off the leash and the kingdom grows as persecuted believers scatter and share the message.
Speaker 1:Now isn't that interesting. You'd think that persecution would have quelled the spread of the gospel. That's sort of what persecution usually aims to do persecution of Christians, at least but instead it was like beating a fire, you know, you see, you can beat a fire and sometimes it'll put the fire out, and sometimes you beat a fire have you ever done that? And the sparks go everywhere and start other fires. And it's like that's what's happening here, when the Jewish authorities are trying to beat down the Christians and of course this still happens today. Wicked governments try to suppress the gospel and sometimes they succeed, and in history they have. But do you know where the fastest growing church in the world is today? Iran, that's right, iran, where Muslims can be put to death for becoming Christians. And yet they're becoming Christians in their thousands. They're driven into underground churches, house churches, and the government tries to pound them. But like those sparks, just the gospel just keeps spreading. And Iran isn't the only place where that's happening.
Speaker 1:So look, no one welcomes persecution, but we need not fear it for the sake of the gospel. We'll probably fear it for other reasons, but we need not fear it for the sake of the gospel. But it does mean we need to be walking closely with Christ and loving him even more than our own lives if we're going to withstand that and, given that there is an eternal aspect to this, holding on in the face of persecution does affect our eternity. So it's important and, as Jesus said, anyone who loves spouse, parents and children, even their own life, more than him is not worthy of him. Quite the challenge. But these people were up to it Now. They had scattered, they had fled persecution, but they took the gospel with them and fearlessly preached it.
Speaker 1:Part of the key to the spread of the gospel was its democratization, and by that I mean ordinary believers recognize that it wasn't only the job of the Jerusalem apostles, wasn't only the job of the Jerusalem leaders to share the gospel, but it was theirs as well, and that they had permission and they had power by the Holy Spirit to do that. And, of course, at first it was just Jews who shared the gospel with other Jews and, let's be honest, it's always easier to communicate with people who are like me, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, by the way. You know, in terms of the Jews, they needed the gospel just as much as anyone else. And who better to share the gospel with Jews who were thoroughly steeped in their scriptures than someone else who spoke the language, understood their culture and the scriptures as well. They need the gospel. They still need the gospel. Jesus is still their Messiah.
Speaker 1:But notice the people who start to cross the cultural barriers and go to the Greeks, jews, jewish believers, but from the island of Cyprus, which you see up there, the pink blob in the middle of the map, and from Cyrene, which is in North Africa, sort of off the map, further along from Egypt, in what is now modern-day Libya. And so these Jews, they had grown up with the scriptures in a sort of probably a sort of Jewish sub community, but they'd grown up in the Greek and Roman world. They probably spoke Greek natively and although look, let's face it they were probably repulsed by a lot of what happened in Greek and Roman culture, because even by the standards of our pretty lake society, a lot of it was pretty disgusting. But they would have understood the culture. These people weren't necessarily qualified in a formal sense, but a few things made them ideal missionaries. First, they had a passion for Jesus. They loved the Lord. They were being persecuted, but they kept preaching after all. Secondly, they knew the culture they. And third, they evidently loved the people in that culture, even though they were so different to them, lived values that would have been abhorrent to them, hung out in communities that were different to their own, but they loved the people enough to reach out to them and friends.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be a pastor or go to Bible college to be qualified to share the gospel. Now, being a pastor can be complicated. Leading a church, even a fairly modestly sized one like ours, requires a whole bunch of different skills. But sharing the gospel, no, you can do that. You can do that. In fact, no one can do it quite like you. There are people you can go to and places you can go to. That I can't, that no one else can. So who is God calling you to share the gospel with? And what does that look like? Maybe it's friends, maybe it's colleagues, neighbours. Maybe it means asking them if they want to read the Bible with you. I've got a friend who's just asked me to read the Bible with him finally, after many years of just befriending him. Maybe it's inviting them to the Alpha course in May. Maybe it's just sharing a story of faith All sorts of ways we can share the gospel. But who do you have a gospel heart for? How can you reach them.
Speaker 1:Now, there was one other factor that made the church in Antioch so successful, and this was maybe a little bit outside their hands, not entirely, but that was the God factor. The Lord's hand was on them. Luke tells us they were fruitful not just because of their skill and passion, but because God's favor was on them and working through them. And you know, god's hand will also be on us when we step out for him. But maybe, like me, you struggle with that a bit. You struggle with, maybe, knowing how to take the first step, or maybe you're afraid of failing. You know, in terms of taking the first step, we talk here about finding people of peace, people who, like you, you just get on with, people who listen to you, who are open to what you say and you know, maybe even sharing your faith, and people who serve you. If someone offers to buy you a coffee or mow your lawn or whatever it might be, there's something deeper going on there and that can be an opening to sharing the faith. But then you've done that. Maybe you're afraid of failing, maybe you're afraid of looking a fool, maybe you're afraid of imposing your beliefs on others. So how do we get past that? Well, as I've said, it's identifying people of peace.
Speaker 1:Partly. Partly it's a faith issue, I think, for a lot of us. Do we believe God will honour our obedience? Do we believe people need the gospel honor our obedience? Do we believe people need the gospel? If you don't believe that, fundamentally, we're just not going to care, we're not going to think it matters. Partly it's a love issue. Do we love people enough to want to share this message of salvation with them? Partly it's a listening issue. I mean listening to God. Are we hearing what the voice of the Spirit is saying to us in this regard? Maybe it's all of the above, maybe it's something else. What do we do? Well, I think there are some things we can do to prepare the hearts of people, the soil of other people's hearts, as well as to strengthen our own in this regard.
Speaker 1:And so we talk about blessing people in our context. You know, it's very easy to bless someone, isn't it? You're not putting anything on them, you're not demanding anything of them, you're not trying to sell them anything. I just want to bless you in the name of Jesus because I want good things to come for you. Anything. I just want to bless you in the name of Jesus, because I want good things to come for you. In blessing them, we can add them to our five. Remember when we went through and talked about blessing and how we talked about finding a five five people you can bless for five weeks. Maybe we can find people and add them to our five. And there's brochures out in the foyer if you want to look at that Speaking.
Speaker 1:Blessing doesn't just benefit the one we're blessing, it softens our heart as well. And, of course, we can pray. We can ask God to give us a heart to reach out, a boldness or whatever it is we need, whatever it is we feel is holding us back, and we can pray that God will give them a hunger and so that there's sort of a moving towards each other in regard to the gospel, and pray that God will save them, because there is an element of God's sovereignty in this. God will do things when you're praying that just go beyond you Takes a little bit of the heat off us, doesn't it? Let God be God in people's lives. So these believers are crossing cultural boundaries, they're seeing God's hand move, but then something happens in the church, because it's not just about you know, putting it on to you guys here to get out there and do it, or on me to get out there and do it. There's other things going on in the church that help strengthen it and grow.
Speaker 1:So the church in Jerusalem gets wind that God is moving in Antioch Now. Jerusalem is still the mother church. There's a lot of respect there. That's where the apostles are based, so it still holds authority and spiritually it's well resourced. And so they send Barnabas, the son of encouragement. We met Barnabas when we looked at the conversion of Saul, and Barnabas went and advocated for Saul when he went to Jerusalem. And everyone's freaking out because Saul is the chief persecutor of the church at this point.
Speaker 1:Now. Barnabas is a Cypriot, so Cyprus up there, and so he's one of these Greek-speaking Jews that knew the culture and he comes and strengthens the work and the church in Antioch grows even further. Now Barnabas either decides that he needs a little help or he sees an opportunity for Saul, and so he goes to Tarsus and looks for him is what the text indicates. He has to go on a search. Tarsus was Paul's home city and Paul is another Jew who understands Gentile culture, grew up in it. Although the narrative in Acts flows seamlessly from one event to another and it all seems to happen fairly closely. Actually, this could have happened with a decade after Paul's conversion. So time is flowing on, and so Saul has had this time to develop his understanding of the gospel, experience God in new ways, a little more deeply, and his sharp mind and deep training in the scripture is going to prove invaluable. And of course, as we go deeper into Acts, it becomes more about Saul who becomes Paul's ministry.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing when it comes to gospel ministry, churches don't have to do it alone. It's really important that we as a church are in relationships with other churches, with other ministries, so that we can find support and certainly we can work with other organisations. We're part of the Baptist movement in Western Australia, the Baptist Churches of WA. We're partnering with Alpha. We partner with local houses of prayer I've told you about 24-7 Prayer, that we use some of their resources and we're working with other churches. So these are good, but I think there's also value in cultivating what we might call apostolic relationships.
Speaker 1:Now I want to be a bit careful here, because talking about apostles can be a little bit controversial. Of course, there is only 12 apostles. They are unique in the Scripture. They were the 12 Jesus appointed, and they're all dead. They're not being replaced. But there are still other apostles. Man, an apostle in the New Testament in the Roman world, was simply an emissary, someone who was sent on behalf of someone else, and it became to be used in the church of particularly significant people.
Speaker 1:In the more structured churches that have bishops, the bishops have sort of arisen as successors to the apostles, and so today we'll look we may not call them apostles, but we'll look to trusted leaders who exhibit the character of Christ, who have a heart for the wider church and who have leadership and ministry gifts that can help not just one church but multiple churches in their mission. I'm reasonably limited. I've got a heart for one church. I love working with other churches as partners, but my ministry is here to Bentley. There are others who will have ministry to the wider church and bring something unique.
Speaker 1:Now it's important to understand that when people come in like that, they don't exert institutional authority. They can't tell us what to do. But such people, because we see something in them and they see something in us, they exert a relational authority because we let them speak into our lives, because we know we can see the Lord's hand on them and their heart for us. If anyone ever does lord it over the church, we should rightly flee from them. But when these apostolic figures come in humility to serve and speak into a church and its leadership, they can be a real asset to the church. They can supercharge our personal growth, encourage us so much as well as build into the health of a church. That's what we see happening in Antioch, between Antioch and Jerusalem, with Barnabas and then Saul, not sent by Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:But not only apostolic ministry, but also this prophetic ministry comes from Jerusalem as well. In this case a prophet, agabus and there's others with him predicts the future under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Now, in the early church, prophets were fairly common and often itinerant. In fact, one of the earliest Christian documents written may even be with the New Testament, but soon after the Didache gives instructions on how to handle these itinerant prophets that were coming around, because sometimes they'd bludge off the churches and the Didache said don't let them do that. When we think of prophetic ministry, we often get Old Testament images in our mind of fiery prophets announcing judgment and calling the people back to faithfulness. And well, maybe there's a place for that. But in my experience, new Testament prophecy and prophecy today is far more about encouragement and there is a guidance, there is what God is going to do, but it really builds us up. So we received an encouraging word last year from Kate Lewis at the local Houses of Prayer gathering on the Sunday. After that and later incidentally, later this year she'll be returning to run some seminars on prophetic ministry specifically and hearing God's voice. So just keep tuned in when we give you the dates, and I don't want to talk too much about prophetic ministry this morning. We're out of time for that anyway.
Speaker 1:But what fascinates me about this passage? Not so much that they receive a word, because that sort of comes across kind of ordinary here, but what they do with it. See, agabus gets up and says guys, there's going to be a famine in the land. And poor Claudius the emperor at that time he had several natural disasters that he had to deal with, including several famines. And so what does the church do? Well, if someone comes in and says, guys, there's going to be a disaster, there's going to be this famine, what are you going to do? I'm going to start stockpiling food or something, right? What does the church do. It's like, oh man, we'd better get with the program and give money away.
Speaker 1:What a heart of generosity to the mother church, jerusalem. Now, I'm sure they probably prepared themselves as well, but isn't this a beautiful picture of the church, as Jerusalem has been building into Antioch spiritually. Now they repay the mother church with a material blessing, and we see this happen again later as the gospel spreads to further Gentile churches. There's more famines and the Gentile churches turn around and give to what was evidently the impoverished Jerusalem church. A generous church shares in giving and receiving, both spiritually and materially, and let me commend Bentley Baptist. We do this particularly through our missions giving, which will be coming up in May, june. We give away tens of thousands of dollars and we have given away tens of thousands of dollars, and we have given away tens of thousands of dollars over the last three years. So let's put this together.
Speaker 1:What can we learn from Antioch? Well, first and most important, that God's hand was on the church, and we want God's hand on our church, and I believe God's hand is on our church. Be encouraged church. So there is an element of divine sovereignty, but God also responds to our faithfulness, and so are we seeking God's favour through prayer and also through obedience.
Speaker 1:The Christians who brought the gospel to Antioch were bold in the face of persecution. They fled persecution. They were getting away from it, but they didn't let it stop them. They were passionate for the gospel and shared it wherever they found themselves. So how can we fan our passion for the gospel and for Jesus? Some of the Christians were able to leverage their culture and their experience to jump cultural boundaries and break new ground. So here's a question for you how has God uniquely positioned you as a believer, also us as a church, to reach the people around us? And at the same time, the church benefited from wider relationships, receiving the blessing of apostolic and prophetic ministry and repaying it with material blessing. And this knit the churches together and benefited both. Because ultimately, it's not about our church, it's not really about any church, it's about the church, it's about the kingdom of God and his glory. And so are we open to letting others speak into our church, and I think we are. We welcome guest speakers, but not just the odd guest speaker, but perhaps other voices who might speak a bit more authoritatively, not to lord it over us as I said, we run from those sorts of people, but to build us up Apostolic leaders and prophets who we allow to speak into our church and into our lives.
Speaker 1:Leave those thoughts with you to ponder. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the connection we have through history. It always blows me away that this is our story. The story of Antioch is our story, the story of Antioch. We are connected through generations of believers who have faithfully passed on the gospel to the next generation until it's reached all the way down here to the bottom of Australia. Lord, we want to be a healthy, growing church. We want to see the gospel impacting the lives and community around us. So we pray that you will move in our church, in our hearts and in our community for your glory, amen.