The Book of Acts 11:19-30 Antioch Church witness

We just finished the whole thing about Peter defending his taking the gospel to the Gentiles. So now what we're going to see here, in this last half of chapter 11, we're going to see that God is shifting too. And he's going to shift the base of operation. This is base of operation shift. I didn't put a lot in the charts, but I had a lot of ideas, so bear with me here. You know, if you think about it, Jerusalem has been the center, the center of what's been happening, God's working here in Acts.

But what we're going to see now is it's going to shift. It's going to shift 300 miles north. Do I have my clicker here? It's going to shift to a place called Antioch. It's interesting, I've been kind of studying that. I don't know the person. There are multiple Antiochs. This is the Antioch that's in Syria. There's an Antioch that's farther east, more toward Rome. I think there's up to 12 Antiochs conceivably. But this is the Antioch where we're going to see that God has purposed that he's going to send, actually his missionary journeys will all start from Antioch.

So what's going to happen is it's going to move from a Jewish culture to a more cosmopolitan culture. And Antioch had up to a half million people. And it had about a seventh of them were, according to what I've read, a seventh were Jewish. There were a lot of proselytites that had come to Judaism there. There were a lot of Greeks. It was a very cosmopolitan city. And we're going to see that the churches in Antioch are going to be the base of operation for Paul's missionary journeys.

We're going to see Barnus is going to come back in view here in this section. He's going to be a major player with Paul. We're going to see a shift here, but what's going to happen next week, Jeremy's going to do a parallel thing that's going on in Jerusalem. So we're going to go to Jerusalem in chapter 12. I'm going to hit 13 and it's full steam ahead.

It's like, and then it's going to be, they're going to go from Antioch and they're going to go here, there and otherwise. And another thing that kind of hits you, I haven't flipped any charts, I haven't read any charts yet, but is that You think about evangelism, we hear today a lot about what's our evangelism ministry, what are we doing here and there. Well it's interesting that in this case evangelism is going to be person to person because you're going to see that people people that knew the Lord are going to move from place to place. And they're going to move from place to place, not because they wanted to, but because they were persecuted. And that's going to become a big driver. So the evangelism plan, from the heavenly perspective, was a trial of suffering is going to come on believers, and they're going to have to move from where they are, and that's going to spread the gospel. So it's just totally different. Us writing down, here's our evangelism plan. We're going to plant this church and that church, and we're going to do this and that.

God had his plan and he didn't consult with me and say, well, how are you doing on that five year plan? It drives me crazy sometimes. I have some dear brothers in the Lord and they ask me, do I have my five year plan updated yet? And it just drives me up the wall. I don't know. Not that planning isn't good, but I don't know.

In terms of the Lord, He wants you to walk with Him moment by moment, day by day, looking to Him. Plans are good, but if you reduce the Christian life to plans, I think that's a mistake. Can I get someone to read in chapter 11? Could someone read 19-26? This is the first section of this last part here. Is that the one that's on here? I'll read it. Thank you so much.

So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that occurred in connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews alone. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus.

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed were turned to the Lord. The news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch. Then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord, for he was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And considerable numbers were brought to the Lord. And he left for Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for an entire year They met with the church and taught considerable numbers. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. Great. Thanks, Holly.

The handout there is missing a page. There are some updated handouts that are coming, so bear with us. So like I said, this is going to be the big shift. The first part, 19, 19 and 20. So first of all, it says those. Notice here, it doesn't it doesn't name names. It doesn't say.

Yeah. Here comes the additional handouts. Thanks. You can. Yeah. The visual ones have a page that was missing. So they've got to get single side. OK. I should have told you. OK. Thank you. OK. So if you notice here, it says, you know, those who were scattered, you know, it doesn't. It's interesting. And there's going to be those. It's going to be some of them. There's all it doesn't name names.

It just talks about people. being scattered because of the persecution that was related to Stephen's martyrdom. So I thought we should go take a look at that, but just kind of note that we're going to see this, and it doesn't talk about who these people are, but these people are going to be the driving force we're going to see in establishing the church at Antioch. And there was some problem already there at Antioch, but these people, this is kind of the move, the shift from Jerusalem to Antioch. So let's kind of just review again. And we've done this in the past. Let's look at chapter seven of Acts.

This is where the martyrdom of Stephen. Paul is going to be a big player here in Antioch, but he was a big player in the persecution too. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to the charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. Right. OK, so there's the event. There's the event. He was stoned.

And then we see right as we go down, transition into Chapter 8, we see we see Saul here, before he's a believer, was in hearty agreement with putting him to death. On that day, a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem. They were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. To continue on down, it talks about the fact that they buried Stephen. Saul is just on a campaign here. He's ravaging the church, entering house to house, dragging men and women. So people were very frightened and they all scattered.

So this section kind of amplifies that. We're going to see that some of the areas, this one talks about Judea and Samaria. We're going to see that actually some additional areas were Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. So that's the persecution that came upon them.

So let's just kind of look at these three places here. And I haven't made their way to Phoenicia. And actually, let's see. I'm going to go ahead just real quick. Let's look at that and come back. Let's look at our picture here. First place is Phoenicia. Actually, in studying this, it's actually, supposedly, this map doesn't show it, it's supposedly a strip of land up to 120... Phoenicia is a region. It's like what I read, it could be up to 120 miles. This picture here doesn't exactly show, it just shows a little arrow there to that spot.

So Phoenicia was one area where they were scattered to. Then the next spot was Cyprus, which is an island off the coast. And then thirdly, here's Antioch. Notice I was mentioning here before, there's this Antioch and it's on a river. I'll find the river's name here in a minute. It's next to a certain river. It's inland from the ocean, maybe 15, 20 miles, something like that. But it's next to a river. It's a giant metropolitan city.

But there's another Antioch up here in Asia. Supposedly there's up to 12 Antiochs. Because some guy who was well off, he named everything Antioch. Antioch is brothers, sisters, and mothers. I don't know. It just went crazy. There's plenty of Antiochs out there. They were scattered from Jerusalem down here to these three places. Then we're going to see some people. Some people will come and go to Antioch that live in Cyprus. And they're going to go to Antioch. So Antioch is again, it's a, it's a metropolitan area up to half a million people.

So that's a lot of people, very cosmopolitan, big Jewish population, but also a very big Greek population. So, okay. So let's go, I'm going to go back now here and okay. Phoenicia, I told you it's a strip of land and we actually, We'll see that. Actually, just turn over to Acts 15.

Acts 15.3. I just tried to find other occurrences of Phoenicia.

Acts 15.3.

Are there any current maps that kind of overlay the old ones? Because it would be interesting to know what countries these are now. I think this is Syria. That's in Syria. I don't know. I should be careful here. I know that Ignatius had the old map and the new map. I don't know. There's no such thing. Maybe. Well, I'm not sure. I'm sure. I didn't. I don't have that. So let's see here.

Yeah, actually in Acts 15.3 it says, therefore being sent on their way by the church, they were passing through both Phoenicia, Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of Gentiles. So Phoenicia is mentioned a few times. And then Cyprus is an island off the coast. And Cyprus was mentioned back in Acts 4. Actually, Cyprus is interesting. That's the birthplace of Barnabas.

Let's look at Acts 4.36. It says, Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was called Barnabas by the apostles, which translated means son of encouragement, who owned a tract of land.

Remember, he contributed it rightly. He had the right motives. You know, whereas and I said so far, I had the wrong motives. So he had the right motives. So he's he's mentioned there. So why is this going to come back in the view here in this section?

And then Antioch is mentioned, was mentioned earlier in Act six, five. So I'm just trying to track back to see where we've seen some of these names before. Act six, five. And this is kind of a pretty low-level reference. Just back when they were trying to, when the deacons were appointed, they talked about the fact that they, in chapter, in 6-5, Acts 6-5, it says, the statement found approval with the whole congregation and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith. of the Holy Spirit, Philip, and the rest of those names, I can't pronounce. And very last, a proselytite from Antioch. So here we have Antioch coming back into view.

A key thing here is, these unnamed people, these those, speaking their words, and no one except you is alone. So these are people, we are going to see two groups, Some speaking to Jews alone, and some speaking to Greeks or Gentiles. That's kind of interesting. So this group of folks, when they were scattered from Jerusalem, made their way to these three places, and they were speaking the word of God to no one except Jews alone.

That's the first group. all right so now that's a picture we just saw the three areas and now the second group is started in verse 20 some of them and these are men of Cyprus and Cyrene it seems like that the ones who spoke to Greeks were more say liberal, is that the right word? They weren't hung up in Judaism as much because we're going to see that's going to be the big issue we're going to have. The big issue is going to be do I need to, and you think that we just had the first occurrence of that when God showed Peter that what God has made clean, God accepts all men, basically. But that issue is going to continue on and on again. So it seems like these people from Cyprus and Cyrene, they were more open to going to Gentiles, or non-Jewish people. So these folks came to Antioch, and they spoke the Greek also, preaching the Lord Jesus.

And interesting here, this is not a huge point, If you think about it, the message to the Jewish people when Christ came on the scene was that he was the Messiah and that was tremendously significant. If you look at, let's just look at the fact that He's a Lord Jesus Christ. Christ being Messiah. Let's just look at Matthew 26. And this was one of the charges that they charged Christ with. And this is what the high priest charged Christ with.

Well, he asked him who he was, I should say. Acts 26 and verse 63. And this is Christ when he's If you go back to 22, it says, and the high priest stood up and said to him, Christ, Do you make no answer? What is this? These men are testifying against you.

But it says, Jesus kept silent and the high priest said to him, I adjure you by the living God that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God. And then Christ answers that question. Jesus said to him, you have said it yourselves. So basically that was one of the charges. So the fact that he was a Christ was significant. Notice that they were preaching preaching the Lord Jesus.

The message that he was a Christ would not be as significant to non-Jewish people. It was to the Jewish people, but the fact that he is the Lord Jesus. I haven't really traced this through exhaustively. It's kind of an interesting thing that you look at the message was what the people needed. Since they weren't Jewish, they didn't necessarily know that he was the promised Messiah. That was important for the Jews certainly. So let's go on. And the hand of the Lord was with them.

And it may be, and this may be reading more into it, but based upon your comment, there's a more, there's a wider scope of instruction here, because as you just said, the Jews would be as familiar with the Messiah, whether it was Christ or not. And so here, preaching the Lord Jesus is not just preaching the fact that he's the Messiah, but going back and giving the background that the Jews had that the Greeks didn't. And so when you preach the Lord Jesus, You're given a lot bigger picture. I think it's the thing that we see that God is including all men in this and the fact that he was a messiah is very significant. That totally fulfilled history. But the fact that he is Lord and he's the Lord, that's the message they needed. So that's good.

Talking about the phrase, the hand of the Lord, it's a euphemism. Does God have a hand? The Lord Jesus, he was man, so he had a hand. And we talked about the hand of God. If you look in Isaiah, it talks about the hand of the Lord, this and the hand of the Lord, that. The hand of the Lord made known to them. The hand of the Lord certainly will help them. So it's speaking of God's concern and care. So the Lord was involved in this. The hand of the Lord was with them. So they were in concert with God's will. And a large number who turned to him. And a large number who believed turned to him.

So Roger, can we translate that into today's... Hand of the Lord? Yeah, so many people will point to things and say, well God's with us, this is happening. And I think a lot of it is from a misunderstanding of what God is trying to do. A lot of people say, well, we see numbers, so God must be doing something. Well, the thing I've said before is, well, Islam is growing in numbers. Does that mean God is with them? What are we looking at? And how can we compare the type of things that are happening?

Like here it says, a large number of who believe turn to the Lord. I mean is that just talking about people converting, people becoming saved as it were, or is there more to it than simply making a profession of faith or believing on Christ? I guess what I'm saying is, is there any indication that there's some type of discipleship, that these people are not just returning to God, but they're now living and walking? It seems like there's, we're going to see it shortly here, we're going to see, Barnas is going to go get Paul, and they're going to minister for a whole year with those folks. So it seemed like there was some initial conversion, which this seems to be speaking of.

Then there's a longer ministry of growing up in the faith. So there's kind of two parts there. Nichols and noses is not God's metric. His metric is growing in grace and the knowledge of him. We see that over and over again in the epistles. Constantly we are to be abiding with him, resting with him. As you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Receive him by faith, we are to walk by faith. The Christian life is an operation of faith and trust, walking with the Lord.

There's no metric. It's a metric that we're walking with the Lord in fellowship. It's not the human metric of people. Scripture doesn't mention people. It does say that, so we have to be somewhat careful about how we divide the word. We don't get hung up, well, they have numbers here, we've got to have numbers. I don't know if that totally answers your question, but it's a good point.

A large number of them turned to the Lord. The news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem. This is happening in Antioch. These people are in Antioch and they're turning to the Lord. This is a very similar pattern. Jerusalem being the hub is like mission control. We've got to find out if that's really true. Are they really truly coming to the Lord? Let's just go back and review a previous occurrence of this.

When Peter and John in Acts 8. In Acts 8, they heard about what happened. Someone read Acts 8, verses 14 and 15. So when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

Okay, so what we see there, in that case, it was Peter and John. In this case, we're going to see something Barnabas was sent off, the Antioch. So. So that was the case where it was Samaria. So here's a very similar thing from Jerusalem. Barnes was sent to Antioch. OK.

So now what do you think? Why was it Barnabas? Do we have any indication you think that why Barnabas was, I mean it was God's choice obviously, but are there things that maybe we've learned about Barnabas that might make him, I've kind of alluded to this already, that would make him maybe the right person to go to this very cosmopolitan city? Sure, because he was from Cyprus himself and knew well the culture and the attitude of those that went to minister to Antioch. That's good. He also was a man that served as an intermediary.

Remember back in Paul's conversion? Let's look at Acts 9 and verse 27. If I go back to 9.26, when he was talking about Paul, when he had come to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with the disciples and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had just seen the Lord on the road and he had talked with him and how at Damascus he spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord.

So there's another, he had this relationship with Paul. We're going to see that's really going to be important. And now we're going to see that he's actually going to search out for Paul. He's going to try to find Paul. Where is that? And there's a little interesting thing that I haven't covered here. Yeah. OK. You know, so Paul kind of Paul, you know, kind of drops off the radar scope for a while after his conversion. OK. Well, actually, it's just right here in the section. You look down in Acts chapter nine, you look down.

Barnabas took hold and if you read down further in that same section get down to 30 and 31 or actually 29 and 30 and he was talking as Paul and arguing with the Hellenistic Jews but they were attempting to put him to death but when the brethren learned of it they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him away to Tarsus.

So Paul rides back up in Tarsus We don't have a lot of information about what was going on. What happened to Paul in Tarsus until he kind of shows back up again. Barnabas goes and tries to find him. There's this time period he's in Tarsus, which is just a little bit, I have a picture of that, he's a little bit east along the Mediterranean, east inland of Antioch. So Paul walks off the radar scope. We don't see Paul until Varnas goes and finds him. It's kind of interesting. Paul, he's kind of on fire for the Lord. He goes to Jerusalem. They don't want to associate with him. Then he goes off to Tarsus and then we don't see much about him.

Some estimate that could be anywhere from five to seven years. I'm not quite sure how they did that. Five to seven years. And so I also think let's look at, you know, let's look at Philippians three, eight. Some have taken this a little more literally and maybe it's absolutely three eight. If I can quote that right. I'm sure I can be careful.

3. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. Well, some people have said, well, maybe there's a physical component to that.

That maybe while he was off there in Tarsus for five to seven years, He was kind of disowned. He lost everything for Christ's sake. We know nothing about his ministry in Tarsus until this event right here where Barnabas is going to try to find him. We don't know very much about what happened there at all.

Now we go to 23-24. When Barnabas arrives. Barnabas comes to Antioch. He arrives and he witnesses the grace of God. There are three parts, he rejoices, he encourages, and he has a resolute heart. He is rejoicing because of people coming to know the Savior, coming to know him. That is the idea to be glad, be joyful, and encourage. He is called the son of encouragement, so that kind of fits with who he is.

With resolute heart is the idea that it's a purposeful heart, it's a devoted heart, and we kind of find this same idea in 2 Timothy 3.10. Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience. So this is a purposeful heart in terms of the Lord. So those are three things there. And it says he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit, and of faith.

So, any of you remember back in the Gospels when someone came to Christ and said, And Christ talked about being good. Do any of you guys remember what he said about who is good? Is there a... Nobody. The man came to him and said, good master. And he said, why do you call me good? There is none good but God will. Actually, I would be on the track here, but I had a guy who worked, a brother in the Lord, but he doesn't love to do that. He said, how are you doing, Roger? I said, good. He said, Roger, no one's good but God. So I go walking down the hall saying, OK.

But amazingly enough, my dear brother, he's gone to be with the Lord now, but my brother from work, Scripture does use the same word in terms of people. It uses it here in terms of Barnabas. It uses it a few other places too. does call a person in Christ good. Even though my brother kept saying there is no one good but God and gave me a hard time.

A considerable number were brought to him. That seems pretty vague. A considerable number is kind of a vague thing. It's actually the idea of a crowd. So it's a crowd. Let me give you a verse. Someone turned to Mark 2.4. So how big is a crowd? That's the question today. How big is a crowd?

Mark 2.4 is the same word used in Mark 2.4. And being unable to get to him because of the crowd they removed the roof above him and when they dug an opening they let down the pallet on which paralytic was lying. So we have verses like this that use the word crowd. It's some number of people.

So probably relative to the space you're in. You know, we had a crowd in this, you know, a crowd in this room might be called a couple hundred people. I don't know what a crowd in, you know, in one of the closets could be a lot less. What's that? What's that statement? A three's company, four's a crowd, two, three, three.

Anyway, so we have a considerable number are brought to the Lord. So, you know, So we see God's working in Antioch, Barnabas is there, and now we're going to see, apparently for whatever reason, Barnabas realized that the numbers were getting too much.

It doesn't tell us that, but his next action we're going to see, well here, actually I wanted to show you. He's going to go up to Tarsus here. So here's Antioch, and there's the other Antioch, Antioch-Basidia. So he's going to go, Barnabas is going to leave, I assume he went by land, went up to Tarsus. That's where he's going.

He's going to look for Paul. It's amazing to think that Paul was so vocal in Jerusalem there. Of course you have to realize that was with the Jewish leaders and stuff. Apparently he wasn't that easy to find. He left for Tarsus to look for Saul. When he found him he brought him back to Antioch.

Okay, and then it says, and then here's the statement. This is the other part of here. So we kind of saw the conversion, the conversion of the Jewish folks and the Greeks. And then once he finds Paul or Saul, it says for an entire year, they met with the church and taught considerable numbers. That considerable numbers is the same word, it's the word for crowd again. Why did they call him Saul? Isn't he Paul at that point? Not yet. That's coming. I forgot when that's going to happen, but it's coming. He's still Saul at the moment, but that's Paul.

So we have the conversion and then we see an ongoing ministry for a whole year with the believers there. And then the last statement here is that the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. Does anyone know how could you translate the word Christian? The literal Christ. OK, that's good. Belonging to Christ's party. Supposedly, I found references to that was a literal translation. Belonging to Christ's party. The Christ's people. The Christ's followers. And there's two other places that I thought would be worth looking at just shortly here. Let's go to the end of Acts, Acts 26. And we'll see it used there. It's only used three times in Scripture. Acts 26, 28. Could someone read that?

Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. They are Christ followers, or Little Christ, or those belonging to Christ, all Christ-centric. And that's the name that's associated with these body of believers, rather than some offshoot of Judaism. And that's significant because this is a change.

We're moving away from Judaism. And we're going to see all kinds of issues. The Judaizers are going to come along. Everybody wants to put people back under the law and circumcision and all kinds of stuff. But that's the focus. We're moving away from that.

Like I said, next week Jeremy is going to cover a parallel event that happened in Jerusalem, but then after that we're going to see Antioch is going to be the focus for the missionary journeys. They're going to go out from Antioch, all these loops, they go here and there. I'm kind of showing somebody overhead, but Antioch is the focus. Roger, I think it's interesting, both this passage and then the one you looked at earlier, the Samaritans. the missionaries, as it were, that went there, aren't necessarily...

I mean, they're not going there to convert people, they're going there to encourage the body believers that are there. And, like when we talked about, like the verse earlier, we talked about Barnabas there, he went there to encourage them, and then says, and there are a lot of people converted. Right. Which isn't... to me it implies Barnabas and Kurt stirred up the body, if you will, and it's them that were, you know, you got to come in. You know, I don't know if that necessarily holds throughout the whole. That's a really good point.

Because the thing is, we today in our world, we think, and this is kind of a reiteration of what I said earlier about the fact that we have missionary committees, we have all these kind of things, and what scripture shows is that God works, he moves people around by trials and persecution, and he uses those people in their everyday lives.

These people aren't even named. Outside of Barnabas and Saul, they aren't even named. He doesn't say who they are. He says they just talked to people and told them about Christ. So if we're to have a missionary plan, our missionary plan is to build up the bodies so that they can interact with people to tell them about Christ. That's our missionary plan. It's not the nuts and bolts that everybody wants to see. They want to see so many buildings, so many this and that, all these metrics. And God doesn't seem to be, he's concerned with people.

Like you said, I think that's an excellent point. But we also see with that, Paul speaking in Romans, he strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named. Right. Lest I should build upon another man's foundation. So it was his goal. to do that missionary. But it's interesting that, as you mentioned, Paul and Barnabas worked together. And Paul preaching the gospel to this area where Christ has not been named, and Barnabas possibly working with that to preach and encourage those that had been saved.

And so there's a whole dynamic that we have lost. That's what I was saying. It's not necessarily We only go to encourage the body believers that are there, but certainly that's a big part of it. I don't want to say need, but like you said, if the body is being taught rightly, as they go about in the world, God is going to work through them. It's how we walk by faith. Really, as we're going about, that's going to happen.

But then we also need the, you know, we need Barnabas and we need Paul. We need the son of encouragement, Barnabas, that are going to encourage and strengthen the body. And it's easy to, I think it's easy for us, as James said, to focus on the one and emphasize only the one rather than the other.

Well, that's sort of the thing that, you know, It's good to see a lot of churches have mission statements. I'm afraid the mission statement many times is salvation, which is very good. Building up the body is really, that's what we're about. People get sane, but the focus of the believers is to build up the body.

And what we've done is we've substituted the leading of the Holy Spirit for our own agenda, our mission, our goal. This is what I think mission-based work should be. And we fail to say, And he sends me to another country, and I'm there just encouraging others, but my goal isn't to plant a tree. My mission statement says, you know.

And we substitute God's plan for our plan, and that has shifted our entire mission endeavor. If you want to see God's missionary plan, just read this short little section and see how Barnum is involved. They go to Antioch, and they start this I assume it's more than one church but that's the central location which they're going to go out for all their missionary journeys and the church that started just like we just read. It's not a whole lot of dialogue but it shows that God, his plans and purposes.

It seems like Barnabas is more for growth. like the encourager and grow and continue in where Paul's more the teach and witness, you know, like, because it seems to me like some people like, you know, it's like once you have, you know, come to Christ, then it's like, okay, we counted you. You know, now we're getting another one. Yeah, we got our notch. So, you know, you do what you're going to do. So it seems like Barnabas is more there to keep encouraging, keep it going and teaching.

I think it speaks to the individual gifting of the Holy Spirit. Obviously, Barnabas had this specific gift from the Holy Spirit and Paul had his. Not to say that Barnabas never saw anyone come to Christ. He was encouraging the believers, but as he was doing that, I guarantee you, he told somebody else about Christ. Likewise, Paul was an encourager as he was.

It just seems so organic, how this is happening. That it's not, they have the committee, we're going to send Barnabas and Paul and it's going to work. It's just, it's almost like it just happened. And I think, you know, I was reading a book recently that talked about the Christian's calling in the world. And I do think that we are gifted, obviously we are gifted.

Obviously God puts us in a specific place, but along the same level we can get so focused on that gift and that calling as it were and we make it again a metric to where we're not just responding to the situation there and that seems to be what's happening here that it's not that they heard you know the word spread that something was going on in Antioch and so Barnabas went there because of his ties and all this other stuff And then he brought Paul there, because he saw what was going on. But there's such an organic responding to what the Spirit is doing there, rather than, as we talked about, having a plan. This is my gift, so where can I use my gift? My dad for years has joked about going to a church, a new church, and handing the pastor, here's my list of gifts. for you to be able to take advantage of. I've been told a couple of times, and you'd be amazed. People come saying, here I am, I've got this company.

Okay. Not that the body doesn't want that, but maybe it's just sort of, being humble is a good thing. There's just a response. It's not so formulated, it's just, it happens as they're going along. And I think that we certainly understand we're gifted, we certainly understand that there are these different aspects to how God works, but it's not... We humans like things so formalized and written down. We'll just think about how elders and deacons are called. Basically they're doing their gift and we just recognize that they're doing their gift. It's not like we say, You do this, you do that.

We recognize that God has given them that ability. It's a recognition of what God has done. It's just the flip side. I appoint you to this. No, we recognize that you can do that. It's a totally different deal. In the last few minutes here, let's just go through. The very last part of this section here is the contribution of to this kind of focus goes back to Jerusalem, how that this family, this is we just go quickly through this.

Some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one thing to recognize here, this is the transition period. Prophets are still in view here. They're forth telling of what God would do. This is Agabus. He's mentioned another time in the scripture in Acts 21 toward the end. Agabus came down. He stood up and began to indicate by the spirit. there would certainly be a great famine all over the world.

And that's kind of the inhabited world. And apparently, historical records, there was a severe famine from AD 41 to AD 54, which is in this time period here. And it's in the reign of Claudius. So there was a famine in that time period. So what happened was that, it's in the reign of Claudius, that this is really cool.

So here we have, you know, How do we know believers? We have to know that they care for the brethren. They love one another. So here we see that these believers in Antioch were concerned about the believers in Jerusalem. So in the portion that any of the disciples had means, each determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren in Judea. And Judea is a larger, including Jerusalem. And they sent this contribution in charge of Barnabas and Saul to the elders. So this last little part just talks about the body working. The body of Christ now in Antioch, now working. And they see a need because of this famine in Judea. So they send the money. So it seems like by this little statement here, even though they're off in Antioch here, there's still some connectivity back to Jerusalem. Even though Antioch is kind of the center, they still 300 miles north. It's not like you hop on a high speed train or jump on an airplane. That's a bit of a journey. 300 miles either walking or riding on a donkey or whatever they did. It was no easy trip.

So that closes out this section. And then next week, Jeremy is going to look at a really cool section. This is a neat, neat section. We're going to look at, kind of go back to Jerusalem, and we're going to look at what's kind of happening there. And then we'll switch back in 14 to Antioch. But actually the very first part kind of talks about, So I'll just leave it for Jeremy here.

It's good. There's some interesting things here. I'm sorry. Actually, it's twelve. Twelve here. It talks about Herod Agrippa and just how he sends James to his death. And then we see how Peter's miraculously saved. That's kind of good. I love that, you know. Should I spoil it for Jeremy? Sure. This will be a plot epic. Peter is miraculously saved. I won't tell you more than that. But he goes to the disciples and he knocks on the door. And this girl comes out and she recognizes Peter's voice. She doesn't open the door. She runs back inside and says, Peter's alive! Peter's alive!

Thank you. You're crazy. You're playing for me. I think that's pretty, pretty cool. We've got to keep in mind that these people don't even have the finished canon of scripture. Absolutely. They don't have the church. And yet it's amazing to see what's going on in preparation for that. Right. Exactly. It's hard to compare today with then because of the changes. Right.

But I found this, I don't know if you guys, this is the first index that I've done of Acts. I found this to be great. I now go to the epistles and I start reading Paul and I see things mentioned and I think, oh yeah, that's kind of, it helps as you start reading the other epistles of Paul especially, you see, oh yeah, there's a connectivity back there. You see this and that.

It's great. So I'm really, it's great to do this. Thanks for your great questions. Dear Father, we thank you so much Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. We just pray for your will to be accomplished here at Holly Hills and that we would just grow in the grace and knowledge of our Savior. We ask it in his name. Amen.