Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. Today, as Paul brings out the big idea in chapter 11, we see that Christianity is rapidly expanding to places as far off as Antioch. Now, I love hearing about the dynamic ministry team that God puts together to evangelize and share the gospel and so much more. So enough of me. Let’s get started. Acts chapter 11: Expansion.

Have you ever noticed that people hear and believe what they choose to hear and believe? Now, I’m not pointing fingers. This is a tendency for all of us, I’m afraid. When someone is explaining something that we don’t want to hear, we might as well put our hands over our ears and sing, la la la la la, because we tune out what often doesn’t agree with our own ideas. Many of the Jewish Christians in the earliest church saw what we call today Christianity as just new and improved Judaism, since they saw Jesus as the fulfillment of their messianic promises made in the Old Testament. In their minds, the Messiah was still theirs, and the Way, as it was called, was theirs too, and it was not for outsiders.

In chapter 10, remember, Luke described how the apostle Peter was called by God to the home of a Gentile, a Roman officer named Cornelius. After some initial reluctance, Peter traveled there and shared the good news about Jesus with Cornelius and his family and friends. The message was gladly received, and Peter found himself baptizing new Gentile believers in Jesus. Well, somehow word of that spread like hot gossip among the early Christians got back to Jerusalem before Peter could even get back there. And when he did, Peter found himself immediately confronted by surprised and unhappy members of the Jerusalem church. They couldn’t believe what they had heard.

Peter, you really went to Caesarea and met with Gentiles? You spent a couple days at their house, shared meals with them? I heard you baptized some of them as followers of Jesus. What? This was all unimaginable to some of the early Christians in Jerusalem. It was unimaginable to Peter too before it happened.

He told his fellow Jewish Christians in Jerusalem honestly, although this was not something he’d wanted to do, he was convinced Jesus told him to do it. And then he told them about that strange vision of the animals in the sheet, how the Lord had three times said to him, Don’t call things unclean that I call clean, and how the representatives from Cornelius had then appeared out of nowhere at the place he was staying, right on the heels of that vision. I can hear Peter saying, I can put two and two together. He was telling those questioning him, I’m positive the Lord led me to do this. Most convincingly, he relayed how once at the Roman officer’s home, when he was sharing the gospel story with all these people, the Holy Spirit came on them when they believed, just as he had on the disciples of Jesus in the upper room on the day of Pentecost.

He could only conclude this was God saying these people are being given the same gift, meaning the Holy Spirit, that you have been given. Who’s to think that I could stand in God’s way? Peter asked them. Like, I really didn’t want to do this, but what could I do? After hearing him out, his questioners couldn’t argue with his actions. It does sound like God may, in fact, want to grant repentance to the Gentiles, they said, shaking their heads reluctantly.

Hard to believe, but, um, I guess okay. They backed off their challenge to Peter then, for the time being. But the question of Gentile equality in the Christian movement was not yet completely settled, as we’ll see. Old prejudices die very hard and very slowly. Beginning at verse 19, Luke describes how early Christianity continued to spread and grow. After the persecutions that Saul of Tarsus led, believers had fled Jerusalem in all directions.

Some went up the coast to what is today Lebanon. Some fled to islands in the Mediterranean like Cyprus. Some traveled as far as Antioch, Syria, which is actually a few miles today inside the Turkish border with Syria. And these early Christians were sharing the good news with other Jews wherever they went, explaining why Jesus was their Messiah and the Savior the world needs. It was in Antioch, actually, that Luke tells us a critical shift took place in the expansion of Christianity. In the first century, Antioch on the Orontes River was a very influential city, the third largest in the Roman Empire, and it was the perfect cosmopolitan setting for the kind of church that God wanted to see born and thrive.

We don’t even know their names, but some Christians reached Antioch and began sharing the gospel there, not only with other Jews either, but with the majority population who Luke refers to here as Greeks. Luke says, And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number of these people received the message and turned to the Lord. This was another major turning point. By the way, when Luke describes them as Greeks, he doesn’t necessarily mean they came from Greece. He means they were Greek speakers. Greek culture had permeated most of the Mediterranean world during the time of Alexander the Great’s conquests a few centuries before.

The Greek language had become common throughout much of the Roman Empire, just about like English has become common throughout much of the world today. Even if it was their second language, educated people anywhere in the Roman Empire understood Greek. That’s why it’s not surprising that the New Testament was first written in Koine, that is common Greek. Now, Antioch was 300 miles from Jerusalem, so the gospel has now spread quite a distance. Christianity is rapidly expanding. Earlier, when word reached the Jerusalem church about Philip’s evangelistic work in Samaria, remember, Peter and John went there to investigate.

Now, as the word reached Jerusalem that Gentiles in faraway Antioch were accepting the gospel message, this time it was Barnabas who was sent from Jerusalem to investigate. He was a good choice because, as a native of Cyprus, he was a Greek speaker. He was also just a good man, full of faith and the Holy Spirit, as Luke puts it. When Barnabas got to Antioch, what he found there amazed him. Large numbers of Gentile people in this big city were coming to faith in Christ. He was sent to see what to make of these reports trickling back to Jerusalem, but once he reached there, he was enthralled.

Barnabas knew instinctively, immediately, God was heavily at work at this place, and he knew what had to happen next. He had to organize a church there and provide some foundational teaching and leadership for all these new converts. He also realized that was a job way too big for him to do alone, and it’s that realization that led to God using him once again as a mentor in the life of Saul. When he thought, Who could help me teach and guide this new, growing, mostly Gentile church? he remembered Saul. Hadn’t God said that Saul was His chosen instrument to take the word to the Gentiles?

So the question was, where was he? Last Barnabas heard, and this was some time before, Christians in Israel had put Saul on a boat, remember, for his native Tarsus for his own safety. Barnabas decided to head there in hopes of finding him. Tarsus was about 90 miles from Antioch, and honestly, Saul could have been anywhere by this time, but God was obviously leading in all of this. Barnabas wasn’t chosen for this role by accident. Once to Tarsus, with a little investigation, he found Saul, told him the exciting news of what was going on in Antioch, and invited him to join in helping there.

We’re not sure what Saul was doing at the time, but this sounded like a much better opportunity. After hearing Barnabas’ report, I bet it took Saul maybe five seconds before he said, Okay, I’m in. And so a dynamic ministry team for the cause of Christ was born. Returning to Antioch together, Luke says Barnabas and Saul worked at teaching, evangelizing, and organizing this new church for a whole year. Then he adds this interesting note at verse 26, And the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. I don’t think that’s a name the early believers adopted for themselves.

It’s apparently what others called them. The label meant of the party of Christ, and was probably intended by their opponents maybe in sort of derogatory way. In Antioch, these people who were always talking about someone they called Christ, a dead man they claimed was resurrected, people crazy enough to believe that they called Christians. And it stuck. What’s important to see here is that this rapidly growing church at Antioch was composed of both Jewish and Gentile believers, undoubtedly many more Gentiles as time went on than Jews, because this was a very cosmopolitan city where Jews were just one small minority. No one in Antioch could say the Christian movement there was just a sect of Judaism.

That’s for sure. The last scene in this chapter is about how a Christian prophet named Agabus, who’d come to Antioch from Jerusalem, revealed that a serious famine would soon strike Israel. Let me say some things for a moment about prophets, if you don’t mind, since this comes up a few times in Acts and I’d like to clarify something. In the Bible, the term prophet is used for someone God chose to speak for Him to His people. It comes from a root word that means to be another’s spokesman or mouthpiece. In the Old Testament, we read about God using prophets many times to warn the nation of Israel to be faithful to Him or making promises to His people about the coming Messiah, for example.

In these earliest days of Christianity, realize the New Testament writings, which we’re studying now, which are our guide, these had not even been written yet. God still was speaking to people through prophets during that era, revealing spiritual truth to them about this new age they were entering into. In my view, just like apostles, prophets were a foundational office. The apostle Paul wrote later in Ephesians that the Christian church was built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets. In that era, God was revealing new truths through men like Agabus and others, and sometimes revealing to them even future events as well. This was a very important office.

These were God’s mouthpieces during this period when He was doing something new, and before the Christians had the inspired New Testament documents we have to guide them. So, let’s think about prophets for a minute. I hear people today claiming to be prophets. You probably have as well. Always test what people making such a claims say, first of all by whether it’s consistent with the New Testament Scripture, which we do now have access to, because God is not adding new revelation to the Bible. I believe it’s claimed to be a finished product, a complete revelation of what God wants us to know for our time.

Our faith was, to use one of the apostles’ words, once for all delivered to God’s holy people, once for all. And secondly, if someone claims God told me this or that and makes a prediction about the future, watch carefully whether the things they say come true as they said, and I mean 100% true as they said. Why would I emphasize this? Because every false cult that has come down the highway began with someone claiming to be a prophet and claiming to have some new revelation from God. It’s a very serious claim to make to speak for God. Many frauds have used that claim for their own personal advantage or for political purposes lately, or to grift off well-meaning but naive Christians.

Others have used the claim to be a prophet to mislead people from the truth in God’s Word by claiming God has now given me additional information to the Bible. If the things someone is claiming who says they are a prophet are not consistent with Scripture, they are false teachers and avoid them. If the things they are saying, if it’s futuristic, do not 100% come true 100% of the time as they said they would, they are false prophets and should be avoided. That should be called out. It’s just too potentially dangerous, damaging, when self-appointed people claim to speak for Almighty God. False prophets not only confuse sincere Christians when their so-called prophecies don’t pan out, they make a mockery of our faith before the watching world as well.

We know for sure that God used legit prophets in the early days of Christianity’s development, as he did here with Agabus, or with the apostles like John, who wrote the Revelation. But my understanding is that that was a special time. That was a foundational era. We call it today the apostolic age. God was doing extraordinary things then to build the foundation of his church. Now, I recognize God is sovereign.

He can work in the world however and whenever he chooses. I’m just putting this piece of wisdom out there for you. When someone claims something so significant as to be God’s mouthpiece, this warning from the epistle of 1 John chapter 4 should come to your mind. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. We can test what men or women who claim to be prophets say by seeing if it’s consistent with what’s already written down in the Word of God, and also if it’s predictive, whether or not, as I said, if it comes true precisely as they said, 100% of the time.

Because realize, in biblical times, God told the nation of Israel if someone claimed to be a prophet and claimed to be speaking for him, and what they said proved not to be true or proved not to come to pass, that was a capital offense under Israel’s laws. That individual should be put to death according to Deuteronomy chapter 13 and also chapter 18. That’s how seriously God takes someone claiming to have new revelation from Him and to be His spokesman. Man, I have seen and heard a number of so-called prophets recently in America who’ve made bold predictions claiming to be channeling messages from the Holy Spirit, which, in time, have proven completely wrong. Such false prophets should be absolutely shunned by the Church of Jesus Christ. They should consider themselves fortunate we’re not living under the laws in Deuteronomy any longer.

It’s critically important that we know God’s Word so that we can recognize the error in the messages of false teachers and false prophets, and also so that we can test anyone claiming to speak for God by whether or not the things they say come to pass. If they don’t, mark them down as false prophets and turn away from them. Don’t make excuses for them. Don’t rationalize their errors. This is important because truth is important, and because God’s own reputation is on the line. I, for one, don’t in any way want to be associated with the many false prophets that flood the internet these days.

I’m urging you to beware of them. This chapter ends with Saul and Barnabas realizing the problem presented by the famine Agabus told about coming to Judea also presented an opportunity. This opportunity was to be compassionate and generous with those in Judea and would be a teaching moment for these new believers in Antioch. And it was even more than that. Paul and Barnabas saw in this coming crisis in Israel a way to try and bind rapidly growing Christianity together, Jewish and Gentile believers, people from very, very different cultures separated by centuries of prejudice. Saul and Barnabas understood how critically important unity was to the Holy Spirit being free to work through them to advance the gospel.

So, after learning from Agabus about what was coming, the church at Antioch gathered a sizable offering, money, for the relief of the Jewish Christians in Judea, who would be the hardest hit by that famine. And Paul and Barnabas, they personally delivered that love gift to Jerusalem church’s elders. Can you imagine how that would have been received by people in Israel who were fearful about the future, people who were getting hungry? You want to build a new relationship or overcome a strained relationship? I don’t think there’s a better way than with an unexpected, generous, and needed gift. Hey, while I’m tackling some contemporary issues the church faces brought up by this chapter, let’s also talk briefly about the unity of believers.

We’ve already seen a pattern a few times in Acts of how when the Christians were unified, the gospel advanced, and then when problems arose that broke that unity, progress ground to a halt. Already in this chapter, we saw Peter doing his best to convince the skeptical Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who saw Christianity as their thing, that God had bigger plans to include people they didn’t imagine should be a part. Now we see Paul and Barnabas delivering this generous gift from the Gentile believers at Antioch to the suffering people back in Israel. At least in part, I know, they were thinking they were trying to create a bond, trying to kind of glue things together, the rapidly growing, expanding church. Peter, James, Saul, Barnabas, these early Christian leaders understood this and placed a high value on unity, which kind of begs the question, so what in the world’s happened?

I mean, one of the most frequently asked questions I get is, why is there so much division among people who call themselves Christians? To those outside of our faith, it must look like a bunch of different teams in competition. When I’m asked that question, I honestly answer that there is admittedly way too much. That this is not what Jesus prayed for, or obviously this is not ideal for spreading the gospel. You know, this hurts the Great Commission. How much more powerful would our movement be today, just as we see demonstrated in Acts, if there was real unity among real Christians?

Sadly, some of the divisions over the centuries have happened over personalities and over egos. People want to follow this leader or decide this leader has some, you know, some corner on the truth and adopt all of his opinions and interpretation. Some have happened over racial or ethnic divisions, which is exactly the opposite of the best of the early church, which bridged huge historic divides and knocked down long-held prejudices. None of these things should divide Christians. The local church I belong to, where I serve as a teacher, has had leaders from several faith traditions, even pastors who’ve been trained by different denominations. We don’t always agree over every detail, but we come together over the big things at the core of our faith.

We agree on who Jesus was and what he did, on the power of the gospel to change people’s lives, on the authority of the Bible as the final word. Our church, which is nominally affiliated with a Baptist organization, many, I can tell you, would not even know that who attended. It’s not important. We’re all Christians. Members are black and white and Hispanic and Asian, and there’s no distinction. We’re all Christians.

But I have to also add that when I’m asked this question about unity, there are some divisions that are necessary. Sadly, there are many churches today—you can’t see me, but I am using air quotes when I say churches—churches which no longer believe that Jesus was who He claimed, or that salvation is through His sacrifice on the cross, or that the Bible is inspired by God and trustworthy. That division between those who hold to the truths taught by Jesus and the apostles and those who no longer do, that’s a real one. There cannot be any real unity between truth and error on the major tenets of the Christian faith. We’ll learn a lot more about that going forward. Where we’re going to leave the story today, the early church is expanding rapidly, crossing cultural and ethnic barriers, and the apostles are doing their best to try to keep it together.

Will they be able to? See you next time as our history of the earliest Christianity continues. Thanks, Paul. To those of you who are joining us for the first time, thanks. Thanks for listening, and we pray that God’s Word brought insight in your walk through the Bible. You see, Share the Word is a Great Commission project whose focus is to systematically go through the New Testament one chapter at a time.

Everything we produce for Share the Word is free for you to use and to share. So share it with others, and check out our archives at sharetheword.org. Thanks again, and from all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.