Acts 14:21-28
Amen. You can be seated. Please turn in your copy of God’s
word to the book of Acts. Acts chapter 14 verses 21 to
28 will be our passage for the day. Some of you have already
taken a sneak peek ahead and think we did a few of these verses
already. There’s a method to the madness, you know, there
always is. So last week, I think we looked at maybe 19 through 22-ish, something like that.
So we’re gonna go back a little and go forward a little. Next
week, we’ll look at Acts chapter 15, where it’s the great council
of the church at Jerusalem. That’s a big moment in church
history. But today, this passage shows us Paul and Barnabas completing
their first missionary journey. Remember, they were sent out
by the church at Antioch. And by the end of our passage
today, they’re gonna be back at Antioch giving a slideshow.
right, a missionary report. And so as we read and look at
their missionary report, we want to take note today of several
things that could help us think through, is our church being
biblical? Are our missionary efforts being
biblical? And so as we prepare to read
God’s word, let’s ask him one more time for his strength. Lord,
we look to your word now to know who you are, what you have done,
and what you expect. of your church, of your saints.
So let your word read and preached help us to understand all that
you are, all that you’re doing, and how we might be faithful
and obedient in our Christian walk and in our Christian service. We ask your blessings now in
Christ’s name, amen. Acts chapter 14 beginning at
verse 21 says this, Speaking of Paul and Barnabas, when they
had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples,
they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening
the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith
and saying that through many tribulations, we must enter the
kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders
for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed
them to the Lord in whom they had believed. And they passed
through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. And when they had spoken the
word at Perga, they went down to Italia and from there they
sailed to Antioch where they had been commended to the grace
of God for the work that they had fulfilled. And when they
arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that
God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith
to the Gentiles. And they remained no little time
with the disciples. Amen. This is the word of the
living God. May he add his blessing to the
reading and preaching of his word. Amen. Several months back,
I had a little medical issue and I went to see the doctor
and he identified the problem. And there was a solution given,
which was to have a little surgery. And so I’m an inquisitive guy.
I ask him all kinds of things. You know, is it going to hurt?
Am I going to know about this? What’s my recovery time? All
the rest. But one of the things you always ask is, is there another
way? Can this be done another way?
And what’s their answer generally? No. It cannot be done another
way. There’s a problem and there’s
a medical solution and so we’re going to go that way. So I get
a little smarty pants. Well, what if I was in a different
culture? What would you, would you, would you do it a little
differently? What if I was in this part of the world? What
if, uh, what if it was with this age group, how would you do it?
What if it was with that age group, how you do it? Now you
see what I’m getting at here. I’m being maybe a little bit
of a snarky theologian because why is it when we come to the
important task of missions or church? Uh, why is the age old
problem sin? Why is it not met with the same
age old solution that God has given to us in his word? When I went to see my general
surgeon, his answer was, well, we’re going to take the problem
and we’re going to fix it this way. This is it. So why is it
when we come to the church or to missionary efforts, we say,
we’re going to take the same old problem and we’re going to
throw something else at it. That’s an interesting question,
isn’t it? We have all these studies on contextualizing the gospel. We have all these studies on,
well, if you’re going to go here to this age group or these people,
you need to do it differently. No. What does Paul say in Romans
chapter 10? He says, how beautiful are the
feet of him who brings good news? See, brothers and sisters, we
can’t do missions. We can’t do church without the
Bible. And here we sit in worship on
the Sunday closest to October 31st when we remember quite well
our church history that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on
the chapel door at Wittenberg and later he went to trial and
the Diet of Worms and the Catholic Church stood him in front of
all these people, all these sharks that were surrounding him, saying,
you better recant, you better recant. It’s gonna be off with
your head. The Pope isn’t happy with you.
And what did Luther say? My conscience is bound to the
word of God. Unless you can take the scriptures
and prove to me otherwise, here I stand. We sang just a little
bit ago how firm a foundation We think about all that we have
learned about the Bible over the years of our Christian faith,
and we want to stand on the Bible, but why is it when it comes to
the most important, let’s just say cancer in our body, why is
it when we come to the most important heart surgery that needs to be
done in our lives, why is it that when we come to the most
important spiritual issue that needs to be fixed, we say, well,
there’s all kinds of ways to do it. When God says, no, there’s
only one, it’s by my word and it’s through my spirit that I
awaken sinners to their need of grace. And that’s exactly
what we see in the life and the ministry of Paul and Barnabas. They are set apart and sent by
the church at Antioch. In fact, verse 26 says, they
were commended to the grace of God for the work that they would
be sent to do. Here it says fulfilled, because
that’s the report. But you remember several chapters ago, they laid
hands on them and said, get on that ship and go to Cyprus. Get on that ship and go from
Cyprus over to the mainland and make your way through as God
opens doors. for Gentiles and Jews to come
to faith in Jesus and do the work of the ministry. So we wanna
think about this work of missions, this work of the church of Jesus
in three ways. The first way is the going. Jesus’
first word in the Great Commission is the word go, right? The church must be a going church,
or if we are unable to go, we should be a sending church. John Piper, a great theologian
in our American time, who’s now, I believe, a retired minister,
maybe from a church in Minneapolis, wrote a famous book on missions
called Let the Nations Be Glad. Comes right out of the Psalms.
And he says the church must go, the church must send, or the
church is disobedient. Those are your three options.
You can go on the mission field, if you’re so called, Uh, you
can send to the mission field if that’s your role, maybe as
a sending church, or you can do nothing and disobey. And so
here we see the apostles go because they are sent by the church of
Jesus Christ. I think we talked about this
last time we looked at this issue of missions. It is the church
that sends, you don’t wake up tomorrow and say, I think I’m
going to be a missionary. And you call the realtor and
sell the house. You, um, You know, you have a yard sale the
next weekend and you get rid of all your stuff. That’s all
well and good, but it’s the church who sends, right? It’s the church
who identifies those who are capable, those who are ready,
those who are faithful, those who are mature. And this is how
missions was told to me as a kid. A sending church is like a group
holding the rope at the top of a cave, at the mouth of a cave.
And as they hold the rope, that rope lets missionaries down into
the darkness, into the far reaches of the earth. And as long as
that sending church is holding the rope, the missionary is supported
through finances, through prayer, but also through a common effort
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Paul and Barnabas are
being let down into the darkness by the church at Antioch. They’re
set apart and sent from Antioch. They go down to the port. They
set sail. Remember, they worked across the island of Cyprus.
They got on the mainland north of the Mediterranean Sea. They
went to the other Antioch of Pisidia. And they went on into
other cities where they proclaim the good news of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. And we can look at the history
of missions through the early church, the apostles. We can
even look at missions today. And we say, are they being faithful?
Are they doing what God has sent them to do? Well, so as they
go, their task is the second thing we want to look at, and
it’s establishing the church. So as they go or on their journey,
their task is to establish the church. And in our passage, you
see five or six action verbs. You see five or six action verbs
that let us know What the nitty gritty day to day life of the
church and missionary efforts ought to be. Let me just say
before we get into some of these words, mission work, church work,
establishing church ought to be word centered. It ought to
be word powered. Go back to my medical condition,
there’s only one way to fix it, right? Well, there’s only one
way to fix the darkness of the world. There’s only one way to
fix the sin problem in the world, and that’s through the gospel
of Jesus from the word read and proclaimed. So these action verbs,
as Paul and Barnabas go and establish the church, well, they preach.
You see these right in the passage. They preach, they make disciples,
they strengthen, they encourage. They appoint elders, and then
in prayer, they commit these churches to the Lord as they
move on to the next one. Now think for just a moment about
Paul and Barnabas’s ministry as they go, or even missionaries
we send today. We ought to send the church to
establish the church. We’ve gotten into this mentality
in our day and age where Christianity is individual. Christianity is
about one person at a time. Actually, it’s about the church.
It’s about growing the church, establishing worship. And so it’s important to note
that as Paul and Barnabas went from town to town, city to city,
they would stay a while. And after they preached the gospel
and made converts, they would make sure that there was a maturity
in the faith. We think these stories are quick,
quick, quick, but the several missionaries of journeys of Paul
and Barnabas and others are years and months and days. It wasn’t
just a crusade where every head bowed, every eye closed, raise
your hand, you love Jesus, you prayed that prayer, good for
you. Everything’s all hunky dory. Now, they went and established
the church of Jesus. They established worship. government
order and growth and discipleship. And so in these words, these
action verbs of establishing the church, we read about the
word preach. Well, how do we define that? That’s when the
preacher gets up and we just hold our breath for 20 minutes
or so and hope he gets done in time for the congregational meeting
or to get the quincies before the Baptist, right? That’s our
definition of preaching. I have this really thick, boring
book in my office. It’s exciting to me. It wouldn’t
be exciting to y’all and it’s on It’s so technical, it’s called
Ministry of the Word, Words in the Book of Acts. It’s the Greek
New Testament verbs for speaking the word of God in one way, shape,
or form. Here the word preach is this
Greek word called uangelizomai, which is, it sounds like evangelism,
right? If you were to look at it, evangelism,
it’s a specific New Testament word that means tell the gospel. That’s pretty fascinating, isn’t
it? There will be other words that mean preach, like preach
the word, proclaim the truth. There will be other words that
talk about, like argue against people that are wrong, right?
There’s all kinds of word ministry words in the New Testament. Here,
it’s the evangelism word. So what are Paul and Barnabas
doing as they go through all these cities? They are proclaiming
to lost people to people living in darkness, the light of the
gospel. That’s what they’re doing. They’re
proclaiming Jesus to people that have never heard of him. Now
we live in what Flannery O’Connor, the Southern author, calls the
Christ haunted South. You ever heard that term? I think
it’s a wonderful phrase. We live in the Christ haunted
South where everybody’s a Christian. Everybody goes to church. Well,
that’s not true anymore, is it? We live in the post-Christian
South, because all you New Yorkers have moved down here, right?
No, that’s Florida. But you could say at one time,
the Southern United States were kind of Christian. And even if
you weren’t a Christian, you probably went to church. Even
if you weren’t a Christian, you probably live by the Golden Rule
or the Ten Commandments or something. That’s out the door, that’s gone.
That’s bye-bye, no more. We need to change our mindset. Because as we walk out these
doors and as we go home and as we go into the marketplace, the
workplace, wherever place during the week, we don’t need to assume
everybody is a Christian anymore. We need to assume this is a dark
and dying world. This is a crooked and depraved
generation. And we need to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s
a big shift, a big change. And just because somebody has
a Jesus shirt or uses God talk these days, that does not necessarily
mean faith. And so the church must more and
more in this dark generation preach salvation by faith through
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. The second action verb under
establishing the church is making disciples. Well, in one sense,
you make a disciple by preaching the gospel and they’re no longer
a pagan, but a Christian. But there’s another sense to
making disciples where we we teach them the creeds, the doctrines,
the the foundational things. So so we teach the big stories
of the Bible. Have you noticed when we’ve read
an account in Acts of Peter or somebody preaching? Especially
if it’s to the Jewish faith, they show how God, God met with
Abraham, God met with Isaac, God met with Jacob, God met with
Moses, God met with David, God met with Solomon. and about the
prophets and about how God dealt graciously with Israel. That’s
how they would make disciples. Look at all God has done for
you. We do the same and we preach and proclaim Christ, but we tell
you what to believe and how to believe it and how to put it
into practice in your life and all those sorts of things. So
they’re preaching, they’re making disciples. Now, in their ministry,
they would go to a town, they’d preach, they’d make some converts,
they’d hang out a little bit, they’d get run out of town, stoned
or something. So they go to another town. In
our passage, they’re circling back through. We’ve got to steal
that back, right? Circle back. They’re circling
back through. I’ve got one left. They’re circling
back through the towns they’ve already been in, and they’re
worried. Hey, this is a hostile culture. They’re worried. This is a dark world still. I
mean, what are 25 or 50 or 100 converts in a dark pagan society? That’s not much. That’s hard.
That’s difficult. They’re coming back Paul’s got
all the bruises from a stoning and in that last city they were
in and they’re saying look Christianity is hard walking with Jesus is
hard and so they Strengthen them and the way the phrase is given
in our New Testament. It’s a repeated thing It’s like
going to the gym and getting in your reps It’s like getting
on the floor and doing your push-ups. You just do them and you do them
and you do them. They’re giving them their spinach Right like
Popeye They’re feeding them their Wheaties, right? They’re strengthening
them in the faith so that as they go into that hostile world,
they have the strength of the scripture and the Holy Spirit
to help them. Then it says they are encouraging them through
what’s for sure to come. Remember last week we said, come
to Jesus and all your problems will go away. That’s the false
doctrine that’s being proclaimed today. Come to Jesus and you’re
gonna have some new problems. Come to Jesus and life will get
more difficult because all that’s lacking in Jesus’ suffering will
come upon you, the saints of God. And so they encourage them
in their faith. And then it says as they’re establishing
the church, they’re appointing elders. They’re giving them good
church government, good spiritual oversight. And then I love this
last phrase. This is the phrase every pastor
needs to get in his head, every elder needs to get in his head,
and probably every one of you mama bears. need to get in your
head. You can only do so much for your
flock, and you can only do so much for your children. And then
you do what it says here in verse 23. They committed them to the
Lord. That at the end of the day is
the best your pastor and elders can do for you. That at the end
of the day, moms, is the best you can do for your children.
Oh, sure, raise them, change their diapers, teach them the
fear of the Lord. And the same with the church.
We change diapers. We do a little of that around here. No, I’m
sort of joking, but we have to commit people to the Lord. That’s
all we can do at the end of the day. And so as Paul and Barnabas
move on in their missionary journey, they commit these people to the
Lord. So they’re going, they’re doing all these action verbs
as they establish the church. Pretty soon we’ll see letters.
The letters to the Philippians and the Galatians, letters to
the Colossians. They’re going to continue ministering
to these church. But the last thing we see in
our passage, after they go, after they establish, they return home. And they give a report. I remember
as a kid, we had a lot of missionaries pass through our church. And
this was back in the day of slideshows, you know, the little carousel
and cha-chunk, next picture, cha-chunk, the next picture.
And the room heated up from that light bulb that emitted all these
greenhouse gases. And the environmentalists would
have hated. But you remember those slideshows, cha-chunk,
cha-chunk. Now it’s PowerPoint. Or now, guess what? We don’t
have to require our missionaries swing through and raise money.
We just look at their website. We just look at their Facebook.
We just look at their videos on YouTube and see what they’re
up to. It’s amazing how technology has changed. But they return
from the mission field. And in fact, verse 26, where
it says, they set sail to Antioch, where they had been commended
to the grace of God for the work they had fulfilled. They arrived,
they pulled the church together, they baked cookies. That’s not
in there, but they had something, I’m sure. And they declared all
that God had done with them and how he had opened up a door of
faith to the Gentiles. Isn’t it amazing to have two
things here in this passage? A list of things to do to establish
a church. And then a list of things to
measure the success of the church and missionary efforts. Think
back to my surgeon. What if he had said, well, I
think there’s another way. We’ll get you to stand on your head
and rub your belly three times and I’ll clap my hands and we’ll
click our fingers and then you’ll be all better. I would have been
sorely disappointed, right? And I know that’s a little bit
of a hyperbolic way of saying it, but we’ve gotten into doing
all kinds of things, all kinds of ways, just not in the Lord’s
way. How can we then expect fruit? How can we then expect churches
built up and established around the world? For a little stretch
of time, I was part of a denomination, and their missionary efforts
went like this. We’re gonna send a team to the
mission field. Not just a person with a twinkle
in their eye and a dream in their heart, but we’re gonna send a
team, and on that team, there will be a pastor. And if we can
afford it, there will be two pastors and there’s going to
be at least one deacon and at least one elder. And then we’re
going to send people gifted and skilled in this team who can
do, if it’s a third world country in particular. who can dig a
well or build a village or that sort of thing. But do you catch
their priorities? We’re gonna send a pastor or
two, an elder or two, or a deacon or two, and then we’re gonna
put in that team folks who can help do, but where do most mission
teams start? They start with the, well, we’re
gonna send a well digger. Well, that’s great to send a
well digger, but what if that well digger only digs wells and
never preaches the gospel? You see, you really haven’t sent
the church. And I know in a day we say, oh, don’t be judgy. Don’t
critique the church. But isn’t it amazing to see what
God will do if we trust in his means for establishing his church? Let’s not become wiser than God.
Let’s not figure there’s another way. Let’s just take him at his
word. Let’s sing how firm a foundation. Let’s sing Psalm 46. And let’s
say, God build your church by your word, through your spirit.
through faithful men and women set apart and sent to do the
work of Jesus. Let’s do pray together. Lord,
we thank you that you show us in your word, our marching orders,
for how to do church, how to do missions work. We thank you
for Paul and for Barnabas. And we thank you that down through
the ages in some way, shape or form, the gospel has made it
to us. Whether it was through our parents,
Maybe it was through the church, through an evangelist, maybe
even through a missionary. The gospel somehow, some way
in your divine sovereignty came to us and now we are stewards
of it. So Lord, help us to be faithful
to your word. Help us to be true to your means
of establishing and building up your church. Not only this
one, but ones we may support around the world, helping make
Jesus known. Lord, we thank you that we can
have confidence in your word and your ways, and that when
we do your work by your ways, you will bring fruit from those
labors. So give us confidence in your
word and in your pathway to making Christ known to the ends of the
earth. And we thank you for this time to think on these things.
We pray your blessings in the name of Christ. Amen. We want
to sing a sort of missionary slash harvest song that we might
usually sing a few weeks from now at Thanksgiving, but I thought
it appropriate today. So let’s stand and sing 551. We plough the fields and scatter the good
seed on the land, but it is fed and watered by God’s almighty
hand. the breezes and the sunshine
and soft refreshing rain