Acts 12:25
You can be seated. Turn in your
copy of God’s Word to the book of Acts, chapter 12, verse 24,
and then we’ll read through verse three of chapter 13. Just these couple of verses,
we want to look back, look forward, but also define some terms today. And so this little catch-all
of the end of 12, beginning of 13, will be our passage, Acts
chapter 12, 24 to 13, three. And before we read, let’s ask
for God’s help. Pray with me. Lord, your word is written to
encourage your saints to build them up in their most holy faith,
but it’s also written to save centers. And so we pray now that
by your word, you would convince and convert centers of their
need of Jesus Christ. and that you would comfort and
build up your saints in our most holy faith. By your grace, by
your spirit, we pray for this to be so in Jesus’ name, amen. So Acts chapter 12, beginning
at verse 24. But the word of God increased
and multiplied. And Barnabas and Saul returned
from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing
with them John, whose other name was Mark. Now there were in the
church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, who
is called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Menaion, a member of the court
of Herod, the Tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the
Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas
and Saul for the work of which I have called them. Then after
fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent
them off.” Amen. the word of the living God for
us. Back in the day when I was required to read various stories,
particularly Shakespeare, those little yellow books were very
helpful. You know them, CliffsNotes? Oh, very helpful. In the front
of the CliffsNotes, you would find a glossary of terms, maybe
words used in the language of that day that you didn’t understand.
Then you would find the list and the explanation of who the
characters are. Those were really helpful for
me. I can watch a TV show, and I’m the obnoxious one who says,
now who’s that? Now who’s that? And TV’s supposed
to make it easy for you. So these little CliffsNotes telling
us who the characters are is extremely helpful. And then when
you want to get down to a story for dummies, as if it’s not obvious,
who’s the antagonist, right? Who’s the protagonist? Who’s
the hero? Who’s the enemy in the story?
Then on for the plot or the storyline, and then the end or the punch,
the meaning of the story. We sometimes need one for the
Bible. The Bible is 66 books. It’s over 1100 chapters. It’s
44 human authors. It’s thousands upon thousands
of verses. And if we read the Bible as a
whole, we can get lost in the names and the plots and the protagonist
and the antagonist. But it helps us from time to
time to stop and see who is who and what’s what in a story. For
example, in the Old Testament, we can get lost in the patriarchs.
We can get lost in the Abrahams and the Isaacs and the Jacobs.
We can get lost in the wanderings of the wilderness or the periods
of the judges and the kings. We certainly can get lost in
the weeds of the prophets, which are major, which are minor. Were
they preaching to Southern Kingdom Judah or Northern Kingdom Israel? Were they pre-exilic, post-exilic?
We can get lost in the weeds. And no doubt as we come to the
New Testament, we think it might get a little simpler. But sometimes
in the apostolic times, in the stretch of the early church,
we need to know who is who and what is what and what’s going
on in the life of the church. And so we want to think today
about some of the offices of the church, the ministries of
the church, and how they played out in this story, this unfolding
story of the gospel of Jesus being carried by his apostles
into the world. Now today you might roll along
the highway and you might see a billboard as I do from time
to time coming out of Greensboro and you’ll see a billboard for
a church and it’ll say thus and such apostolic church with prophets
so and so and then it’ll have a picture of his wife and she’s
got a title too. Now, the co-pastor title, that
might be there, but usually she’s a prophetess, right? See those
from time to time, or you’ll see maybe some interchange of
terms, bishop, overseer, elder, deacon, pastor, apostle, teacher,
you’ll see all kinds of things. Well, I’m gonna make it really
simple for you. During the apostolic age, there were names and titles
that aren’t in play today. Some of you will remember all
the way back to February when we looked at the choosing of
Stephen to be the replacement for Judas. We looked at the office
of minister, we looked at the office of elder, and then we
looked at the office of deacon, and then we looked at the role
of the church member. view of the scriptures. Uh, that’s
all there is. Uh, there’s church members, there’s
deacons, there’s elders, and there’s ministers, uh, at the
end of the apostolic ages. So it would end at the death
of John, the last of the apostles in the late nineties, he died
on the Isle of Patmos, uh, as an old man, uh, on a prison Island
for the gospel. Uh, when John died, the apostolic
ages ended, uh, you say, how do we know this? Well, the good
answer is our confession of faith tells us that just read chapter
one on the Bible. God spoke to his people throughout
all ages. But he finally and they’re reading
Hebrews chapter one. He finally spoke to us through
Jesus Christ. Another way we know this is from
Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four tells
us that the risen and ascended Christ, when he rose up to heaven
as a victorious king, gave gifts to the church. And Ephesians
four is a wonderful passage about the life and ministry of the
church of Jesus Christ. The risen and ascended Christ
gave gifts to the church. He gave for the apostolic age,
apostles and prophets. He gave pastors and teachers
and he gave them for the purpose of building them up in their
faith until they reached maturity in Jesus Christ. And the idea
is that through the ministry of the church, we would be gathered
and equipped and be fully furnished to do the work of Jesus Christ
on earth as the church. Now, if you carry on and consider
the apostolic age, how many people today want to mimic it in two
ways? One is with the titles. Wouldn’t it be kind of fancy,
you know, if I walked around, I’m Apostle Brian, you know,
it kind of give me a little swagger in my step, wouldn’t it? But
that’s not a title that ended with John on Patmos. Others, in addition to the titles,
love to say, oh, we’re a New Testament church. And they love
to pick Antioch. Antioch is the church in our
passage today. Paul and Barnabas, Saul and Barnabas.
have returned to Antioch. Remember they had that year long
preaching, teaching ministry. The prophet said there’s going
to be a famine in Jerusalem. So they took up a collection.
Well, Paul and Barnabas, Saul and Barnabas take that collection
to Jerusalem. Now they’re back. Everybody loves to look at Antioch. It was a big church. It was a
growing church. And particularly in the 1960s
and 70s and 80s and 90s in the United States, people really
looked to Antioch as a model because it was a racially diverse
church. So after our middle of the 20th
century issues in America, everybody said, oh, the church needs to
be the first place to desegregate. And so an international church,
a multicultural church, a multicolored church is the way to go. And
there’s Antioch. is our example. Everyone wants
to be a New Testament church. Everyone wants a New Testament
title that gives them some sort of authority. Well, we have to
think about these apostolic times in the way God meant for them
to be understood. Extraordinary things took place
in these churches that don’t take place today. Extraordinary
events and people with gifts and callings were pretty common. but they don’t take place today
in the end of the apostolic times. We got church pretty simple after
the apostolic age ended. Our calling is to worship God
and our calling is to gather and perfect the saints. And we
do that through the reading and the preaching of the word and
the administration of baptism in the Lord’s supper. And we
pray together. Now the American church, I’m
sure churches in other cultures have done it too, they’ve cluttered
it up. We can be busy, busy, busy in the church building But
never worshiping, never being built up in the faith, never
praying and never going out and doing missions. The church in
our day and age has become a religious YMCA in so many ways. And so
this helps us think through what are the basics? What are the
terms? What are the fundamentals? of
the church of the living God. Well, I want us to think about
the church from this passage today and gain some clarity.
First, remembering that the risen and exalted Christ, it’s been
about 10 years now since the death and resurrection of Jesus
and our story in Acts. The risen and exalted Christ
is ruling his church from his throne of grace. And he is using
his apostles, his prophets, his pastors, and his teachers in
this apostolic age to take the gospel from Judea to Samaria
and to the ends of the earth. And it’s made its way up into
Antioch. And this, our passage today, is the beginnings of Paul’s
first missionary journey. He’ll have three or four missionary
journeys where ultimately he’ll end up at his death in Rome,
but many think he made it as far as Spain, thus preaching
the gospel to the known world. We know of other disciples. I
think Thomas went far east into India But the risen and exalted
Christ from his throne of glory takes 11 disciples, adds one
through Stephen, plus many converts and sends his gospel witness
across the globe to the ends of the earth. And the death of
Saul, the death of Stephen, the persecution of the early church,
even as we saw last week, Peter getting roughed up by Herod,
does not stop the church but increases its growth. and its
power. And so we want to think for a
few moments about how God sets apart and sends gospel mission,
gospel missionaries into the world. Some years ago, I was
at a little gathering of the old ladies at my church in Greensboro.
They all lived in this one They all lived in this one nursing
home together. And so one of them would organize this thing
where he’d come over for tea and cookies. So I went over there
and I took two of the pastoral interns with me and they were
going around the room asking, you know, so how did you get
called to ministry? How did you get called to ministry? And intern
number one gave this serious call. Intern number two gave
this serious call. Well, I got it in my head. I’m
going to tell them the story that I heard Dennis Swanberg. Could you try again? I decided
I was going to tell them the story that I heard Dennis Swanberg
tell. And so I had these ladies going. I said, you know, one night my
parents left the house. They left us at home. They went
out on a date. And we were told, do not turn the television on.
But we decided we wanted to watch TV anyway. This is not a true
story, by the way. So we turned the TV on. We watched
it and got carried away watching TV. And we heard the car pulling
in the driveway. And we went to turn the TV off,
and it was one of those old TVs where the picture slowly went
away, and there was that white dot and the hum. Well, Dennis
Swanberg tells a story, and I laid it on thick to these ladies,
that I said a prayer that minute, Lord, if you get rid of that
white dot, I’ll become a preacher. And they believed it. And I said,
I had to tell them, no, I’m not kidding. I think I got their
heart rates up and probably confused and they wondered about me after
that. How does a person get called to ministry? How do you know
a person is called to ministry? How do you know that person should
be in ministry? Well, that’s a little of what
is explained today in this setting apart and sending gospel ministers
into the world. First thing you want to think
about is a call. The second thing you want to
think about is a confirmation of that call. And then a third
part of this aspect of it would be the commission of the church
to that person to do the labor. So how is a person called? Let’s just assume they’re a Christian.
Cause that’s important, right? We don’t want non-Christian ministers,
non-Christian missionaries. But let’s talk about their call
to the ministry. It’s an inward call. They sense in their mind
and in their heart and their spirit, as they read the word,
as they sit in church, as they live life, abiding in the vine,
they sense this call that God wants them to take up the ministry
of the gospel. They pray about it. They think
on it. They continue reading the word. But at some point that
inward call needs to be an outward call. I’ll give you an example
of how it worked for me. I had the inward call when I
was in college. I began to wonder, should I go
into ministry? And so I would ask people, what
do you think? I went home after graduating from college, I was
married and I’d asked the church folks, the elders of the church,
I’d asked friends, what do you think about this? Well, maybe
that’s what the Lord’s doing. And then you get into seminary.
That’s a good testimony. Your church will send you. That’s
a good thing. You can pass Greek and Hebrew
and survive all that. That’s a good testimony, I think,
that God is calling you. And then you go through the ordination
process. You learn your history, your
government, your theology. You learn your Bible content. And then you get all that and
they license you to preach, but you’re still not called until
a church says, we want you. And so a man in our system is
never ordained until the church says your inward call seems to
be a real legitimate call. We’ll get into the confirmation
and the commission of that in just a moment. But this inward
call must be matched with an outward call by God through the
spirit, through the truth of his word. Now, there has been
a stretch of time. around a lot of young guys and
middle-aged guys that want to be in ministry, there’s a fad
sometimes where ministry looks exciting. And I’m here to tell
you, it’s very exciting, but it’s also brutal. And so you’ll
catch a guy from time to time, or sometimes, as it was the case
in this church about 20 years ago, a group of guys, they get
it in their head, we’re called to the ministry. We’re gonna
quit our jobs, we’re gonna go to seminary, and we’re gonna
do this gospel ministry thing that looks really fun. And sometimes
a group of elders needs to say, I think y’all had too much Mexican
food last night. You’re confusing your tummy ache
from the chili rellenos with an inward call of the Holy Spirit.
Why would God, why would God ask you to completely disrupt
your finances, disrupt your parenting? and disrupt your marriage to
go to seminary only to get out and have nothing left but what
you thought was a call. I think sometimes the church
needs to help people discern. No, you just need to keep your
job and tithe. You just need to keep your job
and teach Sunday school. You just need to teach your job and
be the best deacon, keep your job and be the best deacon possible.
Christian ministry is not some, you know, second higher level
sort of thing. God calls all of us to do all
kinds of things And he needs all of us doing all kinds of
things to make his church work. But there is an inward call and
an outward call. There’s also a confirmation of
the call, and that has to be from the church. And you see
that in the passage. You saw it back in Acts, earlier
chapters of Acts, with Stephen becoming a deacon, with the church
approving Saul. Paul, when he came to the church,
there has to be a confirmation and it’s by the church. You don’t
take up gospel ministry. You don’t wake up one day and
say, that looks like a really good opportunity. I think I’m
gonna go rent a movie theater. I think I’m gonna get a Facebook
site, a Google page, a website. I think I’m gonna get a Twitter
handle and a Facebook following, and I’m gonna set up shop as
a church. That’s a lot of what’s going on in our, nation today,
and it’s to the detriment of our church. Our little Presbytery,
Grace Presbytery, has a committee called the minister and his work.
And if a session believes a man is gifted and maybe ought to
move towards training for ministry, they send them to the Presbytery.
The Presbytery examines him as a will. And so there’s a lot
of eyes looking on a person. Just recently, there was a fellow
who was a candidate and there were some character issues. There
were some knowledge issues and there were some other things
that some of the wise men of the Presbytery sniffed out. And
they said to him, we don’t think you’re called to ministry. How
devastating after three years of seminary, how devastating
after quitting a job, how devastating after a certain time, But the
church was faithful to say, we can’t confirm your call. We think
you would best serve your family and our Lord, continuing to work
and provide for your family and go this way. But many times,
more often than not, the church is able to confirm, yes, God
by his Holy Spirit has shown to us that you are that man. Now in our passage today, there’s
this Holy Spirit call upon Paul and Barnabas, Saul and Barnabas.
They’re going to be set apart and sent to go around Asia Minor
preaching the gospel. And in a strange way, the Holy
Spirit during a prayer meeting says to the prophets and the
teachers and the pastors and all that are gathered, the apostles
in this early church in Antioch, you’ve got to set apart and send
Paul. It’s not that easy anymore. You know, now it’s a process
of discernment. It’s a process of wisdom and Bible reading and
prayer together. But in these apostolic days,
what a nice thing when God just sends his voice from heaven,
do it this way. That’s kind of what we want, isn’t it? But that’s
not how God works in these latter times. But here the Holy Spirit
confirms to this prayer group, set apart in sin, Paul or Saul
and Barnabas. And the church gets to obeying
God and sets apart sets them apart and send them. Now, you
could stop here for a minute and say, well, who wrote the
book on how should the church confirm? Do we want people to
lick their finger, raise up their hand and say, the wind is blowing
this way, I think I’m going. And then just do it, set up shop.
No, we don’t want that. But we also don’t want to be
so hierarchical that a person who’s gifted can’t get into ministry. And so there’s this mix, maybe
since the Reformation time, When people bought and sold church
offices, we said, you know, a man ought to be educated. A man ought
to be trained. A man ought to be prepared for
the gospel ministry. And so we have a system, I think
in our American church, particularly our American Presbyterian church,
that’s very good. And it puts the blessing of the
church on a man so that he may serve the gospel and missions. How many people, and you’ll hear
of it a little bit in the church history class that begins in
a few weeks, few weeks, how many people gave up everything to
go on to the mission field and literally lost it all? And I’m
not saying that was a good thing. There’ve been cases where there’ve
been martyrs and wonderful people called by God to go on the mission
field, but there was a rush to the mission field in the late
1800s and through the 1900s where people thought, I’ll be more
godly if I go on the mission field. So they would abandon
family and responsibility simply to go to the mission field, and
it’s not always right. It’s good when the church can
affirm and confirm a person. Well, the last thing we see in
this passage is the church commissioning. There’s a laying on of the hands.
There’s a sense here, and I don’t know if you catch it in the passage,
I think it’s really clear. As the church hears the Holy
Spirit, sets apart and sends Saul and Barnabas, on this gospel
mission, you bump right into chapter 13 and look at verse
four, which we’ll take up next week, but it says, so being sent
out by the Holy Spirit, do you catch what’s being said there?
When the church helps a man see his inward call as a real outward
call and works to confirm that call in the man and then commissions
him by setting him apart and ordaining him, it’s as if the
Holy Spirit is sending him. You catch that language? We don’t
think like that, but we really should. When we think of God
setting apart a person for a ministry, it’s as if God himself has laid
his hands on them and he has touched their mouth like he did
Isaiah or affirmed to them as he did to Moses and Aaron. I’ll
give you the words to say to Pharaoh. We should think like
that because the Bible speaks like that. And I hope this little
exercise in the book of Acts helps us see that there are some
set apart and sent into gospel ministry. They are set apart
and sent by the church, but by the Holy Spirit. If we, you know,
there’s that little tent out there by the Toyota Place, and
I don’t know what all they do out there, most of it’s nothing
I’m interested in, but just say there was a billboard as you
rode up the exit ramp, it said, Jesus is gonna be here. A lot of people would show up.
But do you know that when God sets apart a minister, whether
it’s Saul and Barnabas or your favorite minister in the church
throughout your life, when God sets apart a minister, he is
the mouthpiece of Jesus. And we could literally put on
our marquee. There’s not one out here anymore.
There’s one out this way now. Well, it’s not movable type either
anymore. Well, we’d have to hang a banner and then have the city
tell us to take it down. like they did our last ones. We could
put Jesus speaks here every week. And wouldn’t that be true? Yes.
And so why aren’t our churches full? Why aren’t people flocking
to hear the voice of Jesus through the mouth of his ministers around
the globe? Well, hopefully this helps us
think a bit more biblically about the church and the way God from
his throne of glory seeks to operate. One last thing I want
you to think about. A lot of church is just normal
kingdom business. A lot of churches just unlocking
the doors on Sunday, pouring the coffee pot, getting it running.
It’s knocking the leaves out of the doorway. It’s saying hi
to people. It’s opening the Bible and teaching
it. It’s praying together. It’s having a worship service
where God is glorified and his people are edified. And then
we go home. Actually, we don’t simply go
home. We go into the world as emissaries of the gospel of grace. We’ve gotten where church is
so complicated these days, but it really ought to be just normal
kingdom business of worship. and praying and learning and
growing, fasting and praying and sensing what God is doing
and then doing what God asks us in the world. Yes, there will
be enemies, there will be false prophets, there will be devils
and lies and haters of God and there will be obstacles, but
we ought to take courage here. God furnishes his church with
those that are needed to make it work. And his gospel, his
word multiplies and increases in this world. It’s really that
simple. And we ought to keep it that
way. Let’s pray together. Our Lord, we thank you so much
that you set apart and send people into gospel ministry. Some stay
home and preach locally. Others board ships and planes
and dugouts and other forms of transportation. They go into
the far reaches of the earth. to proclaim Jesus. Lord, help
us to see it simply and to be faithful in our everyday normal
kingdom business. For your glory’s sake, so that
Christ is known to the ends of the earth, we ask all this in
his name. Amen.