A Mission Church with a Missionary Vision (Road Trip with Paul)
Acts 13:1-3
INTRODUCTION:
Last week Ronnie talked about how Paul was transformed from Saul to Paul --- from a persecutor of the church to a preacher of the gospel. Today, we’re jumping 15 years later to the time when the newly forming church officially sent Paul out as a missionary.
Paul had spent years in Arabia before he went to Jerusalem and met with the apostles. Paul wanted to be sure the gospel that had been revealed to him was the same as the gospel the apostles were preaching. It was. After this, he went to his home in Tarshish. And everywhere he went, Paul talked to people about Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of the World.
Meanwhile, the church in Jerusalem heard something was happening in a city about 300 miles to the north. The church in Antioch was growing fast, with both Jewish and Gentile believers. They sent Barnabas to Antioch to find out what was going on.
1. The Church
Acts 13:1 says, Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch) and Saul.
This church had initially been started by Jewish believers who fled persecution in Jerusalem. It’s interesting that one of the teachers there, Manaen, was brought up with Herod. Back in chapter 12 we read that King Herod was persecuting the church. In fact, Herod had executed James, the brother of Jesus, and then he imprisoned Peter. While Herod was an enemy of the church in Jerusalem, his child-hood friend, Manaen, had become a believer. He probably fled for his life, to escape death at the hand of his former friend, Herod. And that’s how Manaen became one of the leaders in the church of Antioch.
This town that the Romans called “Antiochia” is now called “Antakya” in Turkey. Antakya is predominantly Muslim, but several small Christian communities are active in the city. The largest church is named after St. Paul. The picture on the screen shows the view you could see from that church if you visited Antakya today.
Christians still make pilgrimages to Antakya. Currently, though, tourism has been interrupted because of the civil war right across the border in Syria.
In the first century, Barnabas arrived in a city that was the 3rd largest city in the Roman Empire. Antioch was a multicultural city, home to Macedonians and Greeks, native Syrians and Phoenicians, Jews and Romans, besides a contingent from other parts of Asia. And it was a city where the gospel message had taken root and was growing exponentially.
In fact, Acts11:26 tells us that the believers were first called Christians in Antioch. By the way, this was not a complimentary name, and not the name they chose for themselves. Outsiders couldn’t help but notice this growing new sect, and they called them Christians, using the Greek word for Messiah – Christ.
When Barnabas saw how the Holy Spirit was moving in Antioch, he traveled up to Tarshish and brought Paul back to help him work with the new church. Along with others, these men taught and strengthened the growing church in Antioch.
2. The Send-Off
Acts 13:2-3 says, While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
What an amazing send-off! It’s really interesting, because Antioch itself was a mission church – probably no more than 5 years old. Antioch was a mission church with a Missionary Vision. I’ve learned that vision for outreach and evangelism is often what separates growing churches from dying ones. Any church that either quits supporting missions or fails to get started in the first place is doomed to stagnation and eventual death. Evangelism and missionary vision is why Christianity exploded with growth in the first century, all the way to Rome, the capital city of the Roman Empire.
This sending of missionaries has been repeated thousands and thousands of times since this first official commissioning of Paul and Barnabas from Antioch. Looking at church history we are able to see how the gospel has moved forward, so that now, in 2015, the gospel has been preached in virtually every nation in the world. In fact, the groups that do Bible translation work (Wycliffe and Pioneer Bible Translators) have come up with a time line for the completion of Bible translations in every known language within the next 25 years. The gospel advances more rapidly in any group that has a translation of the Bible in their own language.
Our church has always been a missions minded church. In fact, the last time I preached from this text in Acts, it was for David and Suzie Snyder and their send –off as our first living link missionaries. They had been training in Kenya and were about to go full time to work with the Maasai tribal people in western Kenya.
Not only did our church support them as their largest missions donors, but we sent people to Kenya to visit their mission on at least 2 occasions. Phil Adams and I went there for two weeks, and the Longfields took their boys to visit the mission and work with the mission on a missionary trip.
Right now we are actively connecting with a mission family in the Dominican Republic. The Christian Dominican Medical Mission was started 30 years ago by Gary and Cindy Cline. They are both registered nurses in the military who took their medical skills with them into missions work among the poor people outside Santa Domingo, the capital city.
Their sons, David and Joseph are working with the same mission. David has established a ministry training program to educate bi-vocational ministers, and Joe has started a new church in the outskirts of Santa Domingo. Richard, our youth minister, has visited this mission twice and last spring he took a group of high school and college students to work there with the mission. David Cline visited our church just recently to present the work of the mission.
We also support a mission in Japan where Andy Rodriguez and his wife Jenny, are working with a church called Mustard Seed Christian Church in Nagoya, one of the large cities in Japan. Andy was in Ronnie’s youth group at the Hill Country Chapel. Then he went to Ozark Christian College, and while there developed a passion to follow the example of the Apostle Paul who started churches in large cities in faraway places. He has been working with the church in Nagoya for about 5 years.
Andy was warned that it would be so hard to reach people in Japan that he would have to be there for 20 years before he ever saw his first convert. But God blessed this ministry so much that they are in a growing congregation of about 125 having baptized quite a few Japanese young people. They have recently moved to a larger facility because they outgrew the other place they were renting. Ronnie has visited the church in Japan twice, and Andy and his family have been with us on several occasions.
I mention these two examples of our mission connections because they illustrate the way a mission minded church connects with its missionaries.
A portion of the money you give in your offerings supports these and other missionaries. And we do more than send money overseas. We become partners with our missionaries and share with them in their work through our interest and our prayers.
3. The Road-Trip begins
We look back at these first two missionaries, Paul and Barnabas, and we read how that first Road-Trip began.
The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John Mark was with them as their helper. Acts 13:4-5
The map on the screen shows where Paul and Barnabas went for this first missionary journey. Paul and Barnabas (and John Mark who traveled with them for part of the trip) had a strategy on this first official missionary journey. In each new location, they sought out the Jewish synagogue and started by teaching the local Jews about Jesus.
You’ll notice there are TWO cities called Antioch. Both cities called Antioch were thriving Roman colonies with significant Jewish populations. In the second Antioch, the Jewish leaders reacted to the gospel … for the same reasons that the Jewish leaders had rejected Jesus. They were jealous of the crowds Paul and Barnabas were drawing --- and they spoke out against them and their message.
Here was the response of these first missionaries:
Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For this is what the Lord has commanded us: “‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”
When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. The word of the Lord spread through the whole region. Acts 13:46-49
Today’s missionaries also have to be ready to adjust to the wide variety of circumstances and opposition they may very well run into. I remember talking to Art Morris, a missionary for 50 years in India. Every time he described a problem they ran into, he’d smile and say, “What a challenge!”
There’s a story told about David Livingston, a 19th century missionary to Africa. A missionary society wrote him and asked, “Have you found a good road to the area where you are working? If so, we want to send some men to help you.” Livingston replied, “If you have men who will come ONLY if they know there is a good road, then I don’t want them!”
In the first Century, the church --- though violently opposed --- exploded with growth. There are also parts of the world today, where Christianity is advancing rapidly. It is not coming because of large sums of money available to spread the gospel or because of highly educated church leaders working in these hard to reach areas of the world. No, God is working quite apart from human cleverness or highly funded enterprises.
Paul spoke about God’s ways of doing things when he wrote, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things- and the things that are not-to nullify the things that are.” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28)
God is working through average people who shine God’s light in dark places. Sometimes that light shines in the darkest prisons where Christians have been imprisoned because of their faith. And the light takes hold and catches fire in the hearts of the people around them.
Recently I read a book called “Dreams and Visions” by Tom Doyle who was a missionary in the Middle East for 11 years. He tells the stories of Muslims who have turned to Christ for salvation --- often from brief encounters with other believers --- and sometimes from Jesus himself appearing to them in dreams or visions.
Despite living in cultures where converting to Christianity can result in execution, thousands are coming to faith in this part of the world. (Sounds similar to Paul’s day, doesn’t it?) In fact, observers are saying that the fastest growing religion in Iran is now Christianity. (Which may explain why the government there is coming down so hard on Christians!)
Take a look at the two charts on the screen – one shows the approximate numbers of people who follow the various world religions. This information is from 2005. The other chart shows the conversion rates. The information here is approximate because only God knows the REAL truth about how many people are putting faith in Jesus – there’s no way to get accurate statistics because --- in so many parts of the world --- people have to hide their Christian Faith at threat of death from the Muslims or Hindus or Communist leaders.
I have heard that since 9/11 there have been more conversions of Muslims to Christianity than any other time in history. God is now opening doors to the gospel like never before. All we have to do is pray for and participate in the work God has prepared for us to do. Jesus put it this way, The harvest fields are ripe, pray therefore to the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into His harvest fields. (Luke 10:2)
CONCLUSION:
In the New Testament we see that every believer spread the good news everywhere they went. Before Paul and Barnabas were commissioned to go as missionaries, they were already telling everyone they met about Jesus. The Christians at Antioch were also taking every opportunity to spread the gospel during their normal daily lives. That’s how the church in Antioch got started.
We all walk through our days as missionaries. San Antonio is similar to Antioch in being a multicultural city. People from all over the world live here, so we don’t have to go to faraway places to reach people for Christ.
Perhaps the hardest door for us to go through is our own front door. We need to remind ourselves that there are many receptive hearts nearby. Ask the Lord to commission you to go out with a mission to whoever God would have you to reach for Him. They’re there; look for them!
