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Going--And Giving
07/25/2004
Scripture: Acts 11:19-30
Track 9 of 14 in the Being with Him Compels Us to Go for Him series


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Sermon for Sunday, July 25, 2004
"Going--And Giving"
"Being With Him Compels Us to Go for Him"
(Acts 11:19-30)
C. Sackett

It was the third largest city in the Roman Empire. One of multiple cities by the same name of Antioch but a major seaport city, fifteen miles from the Mediterranean on the Orontes River. Antioch of Orontes. It was a city of a half a million people with a Jewish population of somewhere around 70,000 or so. Cosmopolitan in nature. Very diverse ethnically and five miles away were the groves of Daphne, the temple to Apollos and the temple prostitutes. One of the Roman historians said that the filth of Antioch found its way into Rome. It was that pervasive and yet, when we come to our text in Acts 11, it is this city of Antioch that begins to surface as, well, hang on to that, we'll come back to that. We need to come to the text first.

Look with me at the end of Acts 11. We left off with the conversion of Cornelius last week and this amazing discovery that what had started to happen back in the first chapter of Acts has now made its way from Jerusalem to Judea to the outer most parts of the earth. We're gonna actually harken back there one more time in Acts 11:19

Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews.

Here we are, reference to Stephen one more time and the influence of that event of persecution breaking out in Jerusalem and how that instigated the spread of the gospel and yet you notice, there is that interesting phrase, that even as they left they spoke only to the Jews.

Acts 11:20 Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.

Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.

This transitional paragraph between the church reaching out primarily through the apostle Peter, now getting ready to introduce us to the ministry and the mission of the apostle Paul, provides us, I think, with three rather interesting lessons that show up about us as Christians and the church.

Acts 11:19-21 highlight this rather simple truth that it's often the unnamed among us who get the job done. Do you notice the language of this particular text? It's such an interesting kind of phrase. There were some men who did this, some of them, some from Cyprus and Cyrene. Up to this point Acts has pretty well identified who the chief characters were. Stephen and then Philip and then Peter and now all of a sudden it's just some of them. . . . . some men from. In fact, it's interesting that it's men from Cyprus and Cyrene who are the ones that instigate the ministry outside the confines of this rather Jewish movement. Men who were not Jewish themselves would be my guess, coming from those particular nations. One from an island in the Mediterranean and the other one from northern Africa. I think that's the nature of the church. I think it's the nature of this particular congregation. That it is the unnamed among us who have the most potential for influence out here in the world. It is rarely that it is ever the professional staff who make the major difference in the lives of people. It's just folks who are excited about their faith, talking to their neighbors, sharing what they know about Jesus with someone else.

It's interesting in this week's Lookout Magazine, the editor David Faust makes this particular comment, which I thought fit so very well. He says, "In the New Testament church believers eagerly told others about Christ however and wherever they could. Evangelism wasn't a program to carry out. It was a person to introduce. Christians didn't have to be cajoled and coerced into sharing their faith. They were motivated by grace, not guilt. They gossiped the gospel and preached the word wherever they went. In healthy churches today evangelism is spontaneous and natural. The best advertisement is a satisfied customer and a genuine Christian whose life has been changed forever by the grace of God serves as a walking advertisement for the truth of Christ."

It is the nature of the church that it isn't those names who are on billboards that really have the most significant influence in the life of the community of faith. It is just folks who love Jesus and who share their faith with their friends and their family. Don't assume, however, that it will keep you out of trouble.

Ran across this rather interesting article this week. It caught my eye, in part, because of the history of the YMCA. It is the Young Mens Christian Association just in case any of you had lost sight of that back in the sixties when the song came out. But it partly catches my attention because in Lincoln that was a part of my responsibility was to serve on the "Y" Board and so I've had some association with the "Y" and felt like, at least, in our situation, and believed that probably in this town, the "Y" maintains that sense of Christian orientation. At least that would be what you would hope and assume. Right?

A fella from Atlanta, GA or one of the suburbs outside Atlanta, named Larry Lee was on his way to workout at the YMCA facility there. There were two young men standing on the sidewalk outside of the "Y". He stopped to talk with them for a few minutes, shared his faith about Christ. They had an engaging conversation for which the young people, teenagers, thanked him for what he said. He went on in to work out at the "Y". The next day he got a call from the Director of the YMCA telling him that his family membership had been terminated. The explanation was, that what he did was bazaar and uncalled for. The Director told him that the young men he had addressed were not there to talk about religion and that he was interrupting their exercise. Lee points out that, that wasn't the case. When he encountered the young men he notes they're outside the YMCA, not exercising and we just chatted. They actually thanked me. He adds, that since the young men were local high school seniors, old enough to vote this November, I assumed they were old enough to handle a conversation about Jesus.

It is just natural for the Larry Lee's in the world to share their faith. He's a believer. The opportunity arose for him to talk about Jesus with someone so he did because that's what Christians do. They give their faith away. They don't try to hide it. They don't try to manipulate people into conversations but when the opportunity arises, there is an openness about any believer that simply shares their faith in Jesus with anybody that is willing to carry on that conversation.

But we've come to a strange place in American culture when at Christian organization you can't share the name of Christ.

There's an interesting phrase in here Acts 11:21 so incredibly important to understand

The Lord's hand was with them. . . .

You know why I think we have moved from Stephen and Philip and Peter to unnamed, ordinary people. . . . it's because Acts is not about the acts of people. Acts is about the acts of God. This isn't about whether somebody with a name presents the gospel of Christ. This is about whether the Lord's hand is upon them. And as God works in the lives of people and as God unfolds his plan in front of them, God acts and people come to faith in Christ. We're not dependant on anyone except God to accomplish his purposes. And that he will do. Great numbers, it says, came to the Lord.

Well, there's a second lesson that shows up in this text. Acts 11:22-26 The church in Jerusalem had received word about what was going on and if you remember what happened when the gospel erupted in Samaria, the church is Jerusalem sent the apostles there to confirm what was going on, Peter in particular. To lay his hands upon them. It's interesting this time they don't send Peter, they send Barnabas. Barnabas, the one who's been known by his nickname all of this time. His name is not Barnabas. His name is Joseph. But everybody calls him Barnabas. They call him Barnabas because it's the name son of encouragement and he was an encourager. And so the church took this select person and sent him to make sure what was going on in Antioch was confirmed. And you'll notice the text said he was gladdened by what he saw and he rejoiced with them and was excited at what was going on and then he does this interesting thing. He says, you folks need to remain firm having given all of your heart to the Lord. Do you notice that? Acts 11:23 He encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. You have to remember where this is. This is Antioch, five miles from the Daphne Groves. This is Roman religion. This is an era where it was okay to be religious and have that have nothing to do with whether or not you curbed your physical appetites. In fact, religion allowed you the freedom to do anything you wanted in the name of religion. And so most of the religious nature of Rome would have been bound up in some kind of sexual encounter.

Barnabas comes along and says, this is a good thing that you have done but you need to give your whole heart and you need to stay put.

Somewhere along the way all of us have to come to the reality that when we become Christians, we give our whole self to Christ. This is not just about whether or not he has our literal, emotional heart. This is about whether he has our mind, whether he has our imagination, whether he has our bodies. We're to be given to him completely, 100%. It isn't a matter, well, on Sunday morning it's church time so I take myself there and I give my voice or I give my emotional support to the church. This is about that seven-day-a-week living out your faith. . . . . .body, soul and spirit. And Barnabas comes along and says you need to give your whole self and you need to stay firm.

Interestingly enough it was not enough for an encourager alone to just remind them to remain true, so the encourager went and found Saul of Tarsus, who we will come to know as Paul the apostle and they spent an entire year (and the word in this text is) teaching the disciples. In fact, it's the word in this text for teaching that became the title of a book written early in that second century, the Didache, which was an outline of essentially the fundamentals that every Christian should believe in their mind, not just experience in their heart.

It is why over the last several months we have tried again and again to encourage you to get yourself involved in a situation where you can learn the truth. To be in an adult discipleship study of some kind, to engage in a bridge community, to make sure that you have your own home Bible study, to somehow invest yourself in the truth of scripture so that you can, in fact, remain true to the faith by knowing what it is that God is calling you to do. By having that ingrained within you, by literally doing what the psalmist says. . . . hiding the word in your heart, that you might not sin against God.

It was not enough to simply encourage people. It was not enough to just say stay firm, hang in there. There was a year's worth of invested teaching in the lives of people to help them grow in their understanding of God.

One of the things that I think we always wrestle with is how do we engage the whole person. One of the things that is growing among churches all across the United States is a re-entry of the experiential. To have multiple kinds of things happening all at the same time in order to engage all of the senses.

Was listening to a sermon day before yesterday or a couple of days ago as I was traveling and at the beginning of the service, the ushers passed bottles of honey through the audience and everybody put some honey on the tip of their finger and they (well, it was quite a long time before they were told what they were supposed to do with that). . . . .I'm thinking it's getting a little messy in the room by the time he's getting around to telling them. Now. . . .the image of the Old Testament for eating Scripture is honey. That the word of God is sweet to the soul like honey is to the taste. And they have this tactile experience reminding them that this thing that they're learning is supposed to engage them entirely.

This particular preacher whom I am somewhat enamored with because I think he is really on to something sometimes does rather bazaar thing like ah, bring a goat with him when he preaches. That I haven't quite convinced us to think about yet. But we could probably arrange to have a live goat on stage. Might be a little distracting but the sermon has a powerful message when you get done talking about the day of atonement and how the scapegoat took all of the sins of Israel and left the camp. And by the time he's done preaching the sermon and the goat leaves the building, when he announces the goat has left the building, everybody understands that our sin is gone and there is this eruption in the audience of applause. Because there is this awareness that sin has been removed.

The thing that enamors me about Rob Bell is that it's not just experience, however. About five years ago he decided to start a church up in Michigan and do you know which book of the Bible he chose to start his church with? He preached paragraph by paragraph through the book of Leviticus. That went so well, he decided to go from there to Numbers. Every sermon is full of Hebrew words, deep concepts, rabbinic insight and this church has gone from nothing to several thousand because they have wed not just the experience of faith, but the content of Scripture. That I think is what Barnabas captured here. That if you want to continue in the faith, it is not enough to merely enough to have a relationship with Jesus that somehow touches your heart, it has to also capture your imagination and your mind and your body and you have to give yourself a 100% to this process. It will never be enough, my friends, for you to come here on a Sunday morning and enjoy worship as much as we want you to do that. It will be necessary for you to invest yourself in learning Scripture.

Isn't it interesting that in that context of these people learning at the feet of Saul in Tarsus, being discipled, that they're first called "Christian".

You know that term only occurs three times in the New Testament and it's not a particularly positive term, especially here.

The people of Antioch were known for creating nicknames. Most of them were not positive nicknames. You know how, sometimes, names say a lot about you. All you have to do is say Air Jordan and if you're a basketball fan everybody knows that the guy can hang in the air indefinitely or at least he used to before he got old.

You could walk down through a variety of kinds of things and what you would probably discover is that those nicknames had a reason for originating.

They call it the "Windy City". Now, I'm not from Illinois originally and so when I came to Illinois, I discovered, at least in the center part of the state, the wind blows all the time--non-stop. I assumed Chicago was called the "Windy City" because the wind blows there. You know, I've learned since being in Illinois for awhile that's not why it called the "Windy City" at all. It's called the "Windy City" because of all those blow-hard politicians that are up there. But the name stuck.

That's what happened in Antioch. There was this group of people who were kind of weird and they were convincing other people to give their lives up to Jesus. And great numbers of people were coming to the Lord, not just Jews, this kind of sect within the Jewish nation, but now all of a sudden, the Greeks and the Romans are becoming disciples and things are beginning to change and those "Christians" (and the name stuck). But by the time Peter writes his book, it isn't because they're some weird little group in a corner, it's because they're doing things that make a difference.. . . . .that matter.

The third thing that happens in this text is this announcement of the famine. There were some prophets who came, one of them Agabus, who we'll see again. He announces there is a famine coming through the whole region, the whole Roman area. In fact, there were a number of famines that did occur. This one is probably the one referred to during the reign of Claudius somewhere in the mid-40ties.

Do you notice what this church decided to do?

Acts 11:29 The disciples, (which was, by the way, the name they preferred apparently in their own communication) The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. Here this Gentile church from Antioch has decided on their own accord to take up an offering to send to Jerusalem to the church that was responsible for them being founded in the first place to help out their brothers according to their ability.

See, one of the things that we learn about Christians, it's not just that it's the unnamed among us who are responsible for the bulk of the stuff that happens. It's not just that getting started is nothing more than just the beginning that requires our whole heart. It's that serving others is the natural consequence of our faith development. It's just the normal response for people to serve others in the faith. It's who we are because we have the nature of Jesus in us and the nature of Jesus was to be a servant. So it shouldn't surprise any of us that when they heard there was a need, they said, what do we have to do to help?

I have to confess to you that I have forever been naive. I have spent, oh, I don't know, thirty-five years as a Christian always just assuming something and I know that assumptions are terribly dangerous. It's just the naivete within me that says, you know if you got a need in a church or a need in an area just tell the Christians, they'll do something about it. And I'm naive enough to believe that it's true. I've always thought that you should be able to just simply stand up in church and say, HEY. . . . we've got a neighbor that needs and the folks would respond. In fact, I think I've seen that happen. You know. . . .it's been a month or so ago I stood up here and said we need some money to send Chrissy (?) to the mission field and I opened my pocket and you filled it with cash. My naivete says that's the way Christians work. So you know, sometimes it surprises me when I hear the people from our children's area tell me that they have a hard time getting enough volunteers to take care of our kids. That just surprises me that there isn't a rush of people to say, oh I didn't know that you needed help in the back. You need help in the back. . . .let me know, I'll come back and help.

I'm here to tell you we need help in the back!!!! So please don't thwart my naivete! If you can help. . . . . HELP. It's the natural things for Christians to do.

In fact your going to be hearing much more about this because coming up in about a month or so we're gonna go back and have Madison Park in the Park and I don't know what we're going to call it but that's where we're going to be, but we're trying to get something really kind of unusual done that day. We're still working on the details. We think we're going to be able to pull this off, but what we'd really like you to do is to come to worship in the park and bring your friends to worship in the park with you and have lunch with us. We're gonna try to figure out some good way to have lunch that's better than two pieces of white bread with some stuff slapped in between. And then, we're gonna go clean up the city. We're going to take quite a large swath east and west, north and south with trash bags through our town and just walk the streets as a gift to the community of Quincy. We just want to clean the place up. Just because believers ought to make a difference and if there is a need we ought to try to meet it. Now it's a simple kind of a thing, but it's a way of trying to help us come to grips with the fact that because we are disciples, we want to serve. And here's a way that we can serve our community. You'll be hearing a lot more about that and of course my naivete says as soon as you hear about it they'll be a "B" line out there to start signing up because it's natural for Christians to serve. In fact, here's the phrase that has really gripped me over the last couple of weeks. "Serving others, with others"

Many of you are in our bridge communities and you'll be either continuing this fall or returning after taking some time off this summer. I wonder, as a bridge community, it might not be something you would want to do to say we'll take a month of service in elementary worship as a bridge community, as a group. We'll just come to Kim and say, count on our group to do this for October. "Serving others, with others"

Or, you'll say to Bruce, give us the block from here to here. Our group will take this block because we want to serve others, with others.

The man who said that, said it in the context that they have a nearly one hundred percent rate of keeping people in the faith if those people begin to serve others with others.

Remember Barnabas? Remain true to the Lord with all your heart and now he turns around and tells us how. By serving others alongside others.

Some of that service happens inside this facility. Some of it happens within the confines of our own community of faith, but some of it happens outside of here. The issue is, it happens because that's what believers do.

Well, they called it Antioch on the Orontes. It was a cosmopolitan city who's moral filth flowed all the way to Rome according to the historian. And yet, when we pick this book up again next Sunday and we look at Chapter 12 we're gonna find ourselves at the church in Antioch and the church in Antioch on the Orontes is going to be the missionary base for the missionary journey of the apostle Paul. And this cosmopolitan, filthy city is transformed by a church into a city that sends the gospel around the "world".

And there is something down inside of me that asks this question. Would it ever be possible that the church in Quincy, IL could cause the people of the world to say there was a town called Quincy on the Mississippi from which the gospel emanated to the world. Could that be our nickname? If we would take seriously what it means to just simply do what comes naturally to believers, to share their faith, to give their faith away. To remain true with their whole heart to the Lord.. . . .to serve others, with others. . . . .to just do what Christians do, and one day they might say about us that the disciples there were called "Christian".

David Otis Fuller has made a question famous. If you were arrested, for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Do you recognize how many people in the world when asked what they are say, "I'm a Christian". That's pretty easy to do because there are not many people, at least in our part of the world, who condemn you for that.

His question is, if they put you on trial, could they prove that accusation?