Acts 11

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We have been in our series, the gospel, past the edges, how Acts talks to us about how this gospel is going past the edges. It continues to kind of push past. So we saw the gospel go into Judea and Samaria in Acts six and following. And then now we are beginning to see the gospel go to the end of the earth. But this requires a few things to be in place. We talked about this last week a little bit, that it's not like it just goes off into the end of the earth. There's a couple things that need to happen. First and last week, we saw how the Holy Spirit called Saul to minister to the Gentiles. Okay, so the Holy Spirit is starting to raise up this leader, to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. And this week we're gonna see another big step. And next week, whenever Steve Beckwith is preaching, we're gonna see another, the final piece really. And so we're going a little bit out of order.

We were in Acts nine last week. We're gonna be in Acts 11 this week. It's starting in verse 19, okay? And so if you wanna turn there, we're gonna start there, Acts 11, 19. It says, now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews, okay? So the beginning tells us that we are back in Acts eight, okay? So Acts eight is whenever that stoning thing happened and then people were scattered, okay? But instead of Philip in Acts eight, it says that Philip went down into Samaria. Instead of Philip, now we're talking about Christians that are from Phoenicia, from Cyprus, and from Antioch. But they were only preaching to Jews. And although Jesus made it pretty clear in Acts one eight that the gospel was gonna go to Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth,

they mostly thought that Jesus meant only where the Jews are to the end of the earth for some reason. And it's a bit strange. We read that last word, speaking the word to no one except Jews, and it makes us ask the question why. And if we're not careful, we just fill that in with what we think, what we would have done that. Like why would somebody have done that today? And so we kind of supply that answer. But I will tell you that it is likely not a superiority thing, it's likely not racism. It's likely not any kind of partiality. So the Bible doesn't talk about racism proper, it talks about partiality, or it talks about showing favoritism. So James, for example, whenever he is writing to his church, he says don't show partiality to rich people. James chapter two says don't welcome the rich person and tell them to come sit in a chair and then welcome the poor person

and tell them to sit on the floor. You're showing partiality, don't do that. You're showing favoritism, don't do that. And we would kind of call that some other ism today, but in scripture that's kind of what it talks about. Galatians two is another example where there is racism happening, okay? Where it's actually a really big deal because Peter, the Peter, him, that guy, is showing favoritism. He's at this church in Galatia and he's sitting with everybody, Gentiles and Jews, but then when there's people that come from some men of integrity, some men of authority come from Jerusalem, they are all Jews. Peter quit sitting with the Gentiles and only sits with Jews. Well, in Galatians two, we see this major confrontation between Paul, the guy who's writing, the guy who we are about to hear about here, we see Paul and Peter and they're clashing and Paul is taking Peter to task

and he's saying, look, that's not a step with the gospel. We don't show partiality, we don't do that, okay? We don't only sit with Gentiles whenever Jews aren't around. Those are two very clear cases where there's favoritism and partiality being shown in the New Testament. We don't really see that here. Nobody says anything about it, actually. The Scriptures don't even say that these Christians were sinning by not preaching to Jews. What we're left with is kind of the best explanation that we can grasp and it's probably that these Christians were operating with a slant.

That they were operating with a slant. In other words, they knew the truth, they had the Holy Spirit, they felt sent, they cared for people, they were healing the sick and the lame, but for some reason or another, they just had this pro-Jewish slant, this Jews-only slant. It only made sense for them to preach the gospel to Jews and slants, although it's easy to kind of throw rocks at these guys, the men from Phoenicia and Cyrene, Antioch.

Slants are pretty easy to develop on our own. We just get blind to certain customs or certain cultures. A lot of times you don't see it, so I'm about to go to England on a mission trip with my kid's school. It's always a trip because, I mean that metaphorically or whatever, it's a trip and it's a trip because you're speaking the same language, but you just miss, there's just things where you don't see it until you're in a different culture and you're like, oh, what I'm seeing here is very British and what I don't see is a very American thing. So you realize how American you are by going to a different country, right? Sometimes you don't see your own culture, you don't see what you're swimming in. Okay, and just on a low level, sometimes it's just easier to interact with certain kinds of people, maybe people that you have in common with. Now, a lot of us are gonna rush to racism, okay,

but slants actually take on a much broader category than race or ethnicity. For example, you can have like a pro-intellectual slant. You only like talking to like really erudite, people that read the encyclopedia all the time. Sorry, sorry, teenagers, an encyclopedia. It's a book, it's not worth it. You can have a pro-intellectual slant. You can have an anti-sports slant, okay? You could, somebody's like, oh, I didn't watch the Super Bowl. You're like, okay, I know, thank you. Thank you for telling me that. The conversation's over. Maybe you are uneasy talking to hunters, right? Maybe you are better talking at or with professional people. Maybe you're only like comfortable talking about like work or what, you know, water cooler talk. Maybe you're just more at ease with people that are your own age, right? You and I have all kinds of slants with all kinds of ways that we're blind

to what, to people that we're not seeing or to things that we're not doing that we should be doing. And like the Christians here, it's easier, it's easy to just kind of slide into a slant and not really get what you're doing or who you are excluding, okay? Now, it doesn't say that way. Let's look at Acts 11-20. Next verse, but there were some of them, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. That word Hellenists, it's just another way to say Greeks. Okay, so Greeks would call themselves Hellenists, right? But those are interchangeable. And these are decidedly people who are not Jewish, okay? So Hellenists and Jews are, they're not totally opposites, but for the purposes of this conversation, they are, okay?

So they were speaking to non-Jews also, they were preaching the Lord Jesus. So despite there'd be a big slant going on, these unnamed Christians preached to these Hellenists, these Greeks, 21, verse 21. And the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number who believed turned to the Lord, okay? So like maybe it was easy for them to talk to the Hellenists, maybe it was super awkward and they had to push through. We don't know, we don't get the commentary here. All we know is that it goes extremely well for them. It is a good, good thing. It's something that the Lord was in. And like we talked about last week, this is all according to plan, okay? This isn't something that God is gasping on his throne about, okay? This is something that is all happening in its good time, okay? We see it unfolding in the book of Acts, okay? And we see this plan, we see a little bit more

of this plan in the next verse, look at verse 22. It says, the report of this, these Hellenists believing, the report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. Okay, so in the church in Jerusalem, this raised some eyebrows, okay? They hear about what's going on in Antioch and they're not exactly next door neighbors with Antioch. It's kind of a hall, it's kind of a journey. They hear what's going on in Antioch and they say, okay, we should check this out. It doesn't necessarily say they were skeptical, but they definitely wanted to see what was going on, so they send Barnabas to authenticate what's happening. This is very similar to what we see happen in Samaria in Acts 8, where Philip goes to Samaria, he begins to preach the gospel in Samaria, and the Jerusalem church sends Peter and John to authenticate what's going on.

And I said it then and I'll say it again, it is right for the Jerusalem church to check this out. Okay, it's not like they were hoping they weren't Christians in Antioch, okay? It's that this was completely foreign to them and they needed to know this was okay. And so to do that, they send a delegate, a representative, and it's more than quality control, right? This isn't just Barnabas making sure their teas were crossed and their eyes were dotted. This is Barnabas making sure that their actions kind of lined up with the gospel, that what they were preaching lined up with the gospel. You ever play that game telephone? Okay, fun game, okay? You line like 15 people up and you tell somebody something like the monkey's in the barrel, and by the time it ends, it's like Mary skips jump rope, or something, I mean it's totally different than what you started with, okay?

In the game of telephone, the fun of it is seeing how the message has changed. Barnabas is seeing if telephone has been played in Antioch. Okay, he is seeing if what they're know, if what they understand is the gospel, the Jesus that they're worshiping is true, is authentic. What are they doing, what are they preaching? Right, he's making sure that the gospel's not distorted. Because there is a way, there is a way to get the facts of the gospel right, like so just the actual facts, but for all that to still go wrong. There's a way to, for example, there's a way to inflate, like to have really big worship services, and call yourself a church, but you're not preaching the gospel at all. Looks like a church, smells like a church, seems like a church, feels like a church when you walk in, but when you hear them, they're not preaching the gospel. They're preaching something else,

something that makes you just feel warm and fuzzy, but is not the truth, it's not the whole truth. There's a way, even, for preachers to say things that people want to hear, but that doesn't encourage them to follow Jesus. There's a way to act like a Christian, and attend a church, and be supportive, and be a part of the community, and all those things, and not follow Jesus.

So this is still a slant, but it's potentially of a different kind. In 1119, we saw this kind of, there was a pro-Jewish or Jews-only slant, and the reason that didn't line up with the gospel is because it excluded people, right? The gospel is a message of inclusion. You and I are included in God's kingdom because of his grace, and that's a major fundamental component of the gospel, right? We were included, and so to exclude people on the basis of heritage, or anything like that, is wrong, it's not gospel. Barnabas is here is checking for a different kind of slant. Is this just a trendy thing? Is this just a fad that's happening in Antioch? Did some exciting things happen in Antioch, and then just a swarm of people just kind of gather around it, and now they're calling that church, but they're not really preaching the gospel. I want you to feel what Barnabas felt

as he's going to Antioch. This thing could have gone wrong. In fact, and we don't read about them here, there were probably times when the Jerusalem church sent out a delegate, maybe not Barnabas, maybe somebody else, and they go and they check it out, and they go, look, they're not worshiping Jesus. They're, you know, there's maybe like some, some maybe evidence of good things starting, but this isn't a church, they don't know the gospel yet, so I'll preach the gospel to them. Okay, great, good, you preach the gospel to them, but in checking that out, it's not always, this isn't just a rubber stamp that Barnabas is going to deliver on this church in Antioch, and so Barnabas is really asking the question, is this real or does this need alignment? Is this real or does this need gospel alignment?

See, for the gospel to go to the end of the earth, what we see happening all over the book of Acts, for the gospel to go to the end of the earth, not just Judea and Samaria, but to the end of the earth, okay, it is not a matter, and this is, some people think this is actually how we should do it, so I'm just telling you, I disagree with them. I love them, I disagree. It's not a matter of getting as many speakers, like actual speakers, not people speakers, but as many speakers as possible, and cramming as many airwaves as possible with the gospel, just so people can hear the gospel, okay? For the gospel to go to the end of the earth, it's not just, it's not just a message that needs to go out, it's not just information that needs to go to people. The information's important, mind you, but it's not alone. For the gospel to go to the end of the earth, the gospel must be embodied.

It must have skin on. This is why whenever God was doing something new in human history, he sent himself in the flesh, in person, the gospel embodied, acting, living, breathing, making decisions, looking like the gospel, not just being right, but acting in accordance with the gospel. Whenever Barnabas is going to check out the church in Antioch, he's not just writing down everything they're saying and seeing if it lines up with what he knows to be true, or what's in scripture, or what Jesus taught, or what his, the guy who discipled him taught him. It's not just that, he's looking at how they treat each other. He's looking at how they care for one another. He's looking at what happens whenever there's sin and people need to repent. He's looking at all of that because the gospel must be embodied, people have to see it. If we want the gospel to go to the end of the earth,

to continue to go out, if we want the gospel to go out in Burleson, we and other churches have to embody the gospel. And I can't stress this enough, when you have a church that doesn't do that, that causes a lot of damage. I have seen that damage firsthand, and I pray you never will, but there are people that believe that God hates them because of how their church treated them. These are people not following the gospel, these are people that are just, it's kind of a, they're kind of just making it up as they go along, but they tend to be really, really super strict. They tend to have a lot of rules, and not a lot of grace. And there's many pockets of things like that here in Burleson, in the surrounding areas, many pockets. And I talk to people that kind of walk out of that, and they're destroyed, they don't even know if they could come to church again. I have conversations with them, and they're like,

I didn't know pastors were like this. And look, I'm not some super great pastor. I consider myself pretty normal, pretty run of the mill. Okay, like I'm not, I don't think I'm some, there's pastors that are way better than me, that's great. I'm not even, but like I'm normal, and they're freaking out. They're like, oh, somebody who doesn't immediately judge me, who doesn't immediately like call me on the carpet for something, it doesn't check my life for sin without permission or anything like that. Like, oh, okay, this, and it's a struggle for me because I have to help them understand what you experienced was people that maybe knew things that were true, but they weren't living that truth out. And we, our work in Burleson, is gonna be helping maybe separate those two things out for people, and to say, what you experienced here is not the gospel. These people that say they believe the gospel,

but they didn't live like it, and we're over here, and we're trying to live out the gospel. The gospel must be embodied. For it to go out to the end of the earth, the gospel must be embodied. You think about this just on a personal level. You know, when you became a Christian, it was because you saw somebody else following Jesus. That was part of your journey. I don't know how much of your journey it was, but it was at least part of it. That when you come to Jesus, when you say, I'm gonna live for the Lord, part of the reason that you know even what that can look like is because you saw somebody else do it, okay? The gospel must be embodied.

And in these communities, and here's part of the problem, you know, these communities are gonna develop, right? Our community is developing and growing, that's great, but we are going to naturally kind of slide into our own slant. We just are. We're a bunch of sinners, okay? We're gonna slide into our own slant, and you and I, we need gospel realignment. We need ways for our hearts to be checked and rechecked against the gospel, not just the truth of the gospel, like as far as facts are concerned. So yes and amen to facts, but yes and amen to how that looks in real life, and how you treat your family, and how you treat your employers, employees, how you treat your spouse,

how you live, what it looks like when you pray. For the gospel to continue pushing to the end of the earth, we continually need gospel realignment. As our church grows, that's going to happen, and when we have continual gospel alignment, that is a good thing, and so you might be saying, okay, Drew, sounds great. Awesome, continual gospel realignment. I'm all for it. Can we vote on it? You know? What needs to happen now, right? How do we, what's the next step here?

Part of the reason why there's trouble on gospel realignment is that the first is that it brings us to repentance, and repentance can, it doesn't feel good, repentance doesn't feel good. In fact, you feel kind of dumb when you repent of something. You feel dumb, and you risk that. You risk disappointing people. You risk feeling dumb. You risk the consequences, and slants are easier to maintain in the moment. So we resist gospel alignment. We also resist gospel alignment because it upsets our tradition. Now tradition can be supremely helpful in that it can pass on some kind of some deep truths that's really good, but when a church has slants, sometimes the tradition kind of covers those or embeds those slants even further, and it's not good. Okay?

And so let's say, for argument's sake, let's say we're ready. How do we realign? How do we engage in gospel realignment? Well, it happens when we return to our roots. It happens when we return to our roots. In Colossians 2, 6, and 7, we kind of see this idea. We see the idea all over Scripture, but we see it a couple places. It says, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding and thanksgiving. So look at that, it says, as you received, so walk in him. In the same way that you received, the same way that you received Jesus, that's how you're supposed to continue walking in him. Okay? That's what Colossians 2, 6, and 7 is helping us understand. 1 John 3, 23, it says, and this is his commandment, talking about Jesus' commandment to his people. This is his commandment that we believe in the name

of the son, of his son Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. So he's saying, look, we gotta obey Jesus' command. What's his commandment? Believe in his name. You're like, and you might be thinking, well, I already did that. I already did that. It's just, it's the ABCs. But what you find as you grow in Christ is that you will face reasons to not believe. You will face disappointment. You will face pain and suffering. You will face loss, and you will face things that come right up against your faith in Jesus' center. Are you sure you still believe?

Is that right? And it doesn't mean we can never grow or build on top of that or anything. It just means, it just means that there's a way that we can keep the basics, the fundamentals in view. There's a way for us to return to our roots and to do it the same way that we came to Jesus to do it that same way. These unnamed Christians, okay, from Cyprus and Cyrene, who started preaching the gospel to the Hellenists, aren't doing something new and revolutionary. It wasn't some trick they learned in seminary. It wasn't some, they didn't go to a conference and learn how to speak to Hellenists or anything like that. They simply, they simply obeyed the Great Commission. They just preached the gospel to anybody who'd hear it. The end. They didn't raise an awareness campaign. There was no hashtag. There was nothing. It was just them saying, hey, Jesus said to preach the gospel to everybody.

Let's preach the gospel to everybody. That's it. They just returned to their roots. When we get back to our roots, it's to remind ourselves of the simple gospel. And there's a lot of ways to say it. I'll just say it this way this morning. Simple gospel. Jesus loves first. That's the good news. The good news is that Jesus loved you first. Before you were worthy, before you did anything, before you earned anything, before anything like that, when you were unworthy, when you didn't deserve it, he loved you for he made the first move. Jesus loves first. That's the gospel in a nutshell. I know there's more to it, but that's basically it. That's where we find our joy and peace, is that Jesus loved us first. That's where we find our value as people, is that Jesus loves us. Jesus loves us first. In response, we love Jesus, and we make disciples who love Jesus. Man, it is that simple.

It really is. It's not that complicated. And when we do this, when we engage in this kind of returning to our roots, when we do this, it really helps put things in perspective. It really helps us kind of shut out all the noise and focus on what's important. Jesus gave us a couple of different ways to do this, but one that he modeled, and one that I would consider to be most fundamental, is fasting.

So fasting is whenever you abstain from something to pray. And in a more particular way, for the purposes of our sermon today, it's a way to get back to our roots. It's a way to get back to the simple gospel. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. It just brings you back to the fundamental. Our church is starting today a 21-day fast. If that's news for you, it's okay. Today's day one. So you can make a decision about what you wanna do, how you wanna fast. If you've never fasted before, that's great. We've got some booklets and some handouts for you to go through. It'll guide you on all 21 days of a fast. You can use that or not, that's cool. So everybody's fasting in kind of some different ways, so I'll just share how I'm fasting. And I've got a couple other people in my family who are fasting like this. We are fasting in the middle of the day.

We are fasting from screen games. So games on our phone, games on entertainment systems, whatever, we're not gonna do any of that for 21 days straight, okay? I fasted before and I skipped lunch for three weeks, okay? That's a way I fasted before. Maybe for some of you, you're gonna pick a meal to not eat for 21 days. Maybe some of you are just, man, you're a fasting expert and you are only gonna do,

you're gonna do no food, only water and juice for 21 days. God bless you. I would just tell you, stay near a bathroom, okay, for about the middle of that. It's an ordeal, I'm telling you, and so I'm not trying to scare you off, but if you wanna do 21-day fast, man, go for it. The purpose of fasting is not starving ourselves so Jesus will love us more, okay? It's not the purpose. Purpose of fasting is to focus. It's to return to our roots. It's to shut out the noise. And let me tell you, when you've got a lot of things going on in your life, sometimes lunch comes at the right time and you can just eat and forget, right? You can just not deal with whatever problems you were dealing with or whatever existential crisis you're kinda handling over your lunch hour, okay? But when you are fasting and you don't have anything to eat, you are staring that crisis in the face.

It's looking right at you and you're bringing it to the Lord and you're saying, oh God, I feel overwhelmed by this. I mean, this happened to me. I did a three week fast, I skipped lunch, in the middle of that, it was awful. It was a terrible fast, you know? Like people that were kinda praying with you through, they're like, how's it going? I was like, it's going awful. I wouldn't wish this on anybody, it's terrible. But in another way, I do, I wish it on everybody because it really was, it was so humbling, man. Oh, it was so humbling and it was such a way for me to just get before the Lord and just say like, I don't, I'm not enough. I don't have enough. I can't do this. I can't be a pastor, right? I can't be a father and a husband. I can't be a friend. I'm terrible at all those things because I'm super selfish and fasting kinda brought me closer to that fact and helped me pray through that fact a little bit more.

It was super depressing to do that. And I'll, you know, lunch tasted good after that. Whenever we are returning to our roots, whenever we're doing this 21 day fast, I wanna encourage you, pick up a guide and decide, either as a family, so our family's kind of been, eight of us in our house, right? And so for us doing this May 5th through 25th, okay, these are the dates of the fast. Today's May 5th, we're going 21 days out. We, everybody's kinda doing their own thing but some of us are doing things together so that we can kinda have some accountability. However you need to do that as a family, my encouragement to you, talk about it over lunch and it's okay if you, you know, if you decide to skip lunch for the other 20 days and you ate lunch today, it's not a, okay. This isn't about, this isn't about building your righteousness tower, okay. This isn't about how cool you can be for 21 days.

This is about bringing your attention before the Lord, okay. And so I just wanna encourage you toward that because really our hope is that when we get back to our roots, that what we read about with this church in Antioch is true of us. And so when we read about this church in Antioch and we're about to do it, I just want you to just know, this is a prayer, man. This is what the Lord hopes for our church, what I hope for our church. Look at Acts 11, 22 through, 23 through 24, excuse me.

It says, when he, Barnabas, when Barnabas came and saw the grace of God, he was glad and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose for he was a good man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith and a great many people were added to the Lord. Man, let that be true of us, right? Let that be true of us. Let us remain faithful. Let us pray that we could see people be set free and enter the kingdom of God. Man, let that be true of us. Something else happens, verse 25 and 26, it says, so Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they met with the church and taught a great many people and in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians. So Barnabas sees what's going on in Antioch. He's like, I gotta find Saul. I gotta tell him. And so he finds Saul, he tells him and he's like,

you gotta see this, come on, let's go. And they stay there for a year and they train and they teach them how to be Christians. Man, there is real joy. There is real joy in doing God's work with God's people. There's real joy in it. I had a conversation, Patrick Simmons, he's out of town. I wish he was here, I could brag on him today. We had breakfast the other day. I mean, he was just telling me how things were going in his life group and the brother was just beaming. I mean, beaming. And I'm sitting there, I'm going through a fast in the moment and he is beaming. And I forgot all about the fact that I was hungry and I was just able to enjoy this brother's company and just hear all that the Lord was doing. Listen, as a church, as a church, I just wanna encourage you this morning, let's return to our roots. Let's get to joy.

Let's do it together as a church. Let's pray toward that end for 21 days. I wanna encourage you, pick up a 21 day fast packet and commit to prayer, not being perfect, but committing to prayer and together as a body. As we do that, we can see the fruit of that. We can see the Holy Spirit move among us. We're gonna enter into our time of prayer. I wanna invite the band to come back up and we're gonna enter into our time of prayer and I just, in response, I just wanna encourage you, as I pray and as we sing just a little bit, I'm gonna be back there and the couches and chairs or the lamps are turned on over there. And if there's, man, if there's something that you need, if there's a question that you have, if there's something you just need prayer for simply, that's fine. If you go back there and we pray, then you can go back to your seat. I'm not gonna trot you up here like we did the seniors,

I promise, okay, we're not doing that. We keep it all back there. And so I wanna encourage you toward that end because a lot of times when you want to respond, you need help doing that. You need help knowing kinda what comes next. And so I wanna encourage you toward that end. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this morning. I pray that you would help us, help us to walk in faith, that you would help us to walk in obedience to you, not that we could ever be perfect, but that we could experience your grace. I pray that you would double our joy as we engage in this fast together as a church, as we seek your heart for the lost as a church, as we seek to understand how to train disciples as a church.

Help us to do that together. It's your name we pray, amen.